Lords Sitting of 4 February 1965

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The Lord Chancellor on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Chester
The Lord Roborough—Took the Oath.

INFORMATION FROM INDUSTRY ON PRICE INCREASES
3.6 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: 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 under what powers the Secretary of Stale for Economic Affairs required information from certain industrial firms as to the reasons why they had recently increased prices for certain of their products; whether the Government will now publish the terms of the letters; and what use they intend to make of the replies.]
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD CHAMPION): My Lords, in view of the concern felt by the Government about the numerous increases announced in food and other prices my right honourable friend, the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, announced on January 4 his intention to invite representatives of the trade associations to explain why the increases were necessary. There was no question involved of powers or compulsion. The terms of the letters which went out from my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and from the Board of Trade varied slightly. In general, however, they drew attention to the importance of achieving stability in the general level of prices, of traders seeking to absorb increased costs through greater efficiency, and suggested meetings at which the basis of price increases made or contemplated might be discussed. I am glad to say that the trade associations approached, and their members, and have shown themselves most co-operative in this question o, f such great public interest.
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Until all the inquiries have been completed it is not possible to say whether further action is called for.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, while we are all anxious to keep down prices, will the noble Lord not agree that it is the duty of Parliament to examine all methods by which it is intended to keep down prices? Will the noble Lord confirm or deny that letters have gone out, not only to trade associations, but also to individual firms? If this is so, is it not open to objection as being a private inquisition without the authority of Parliament; and ought not the Government to come down and obtain proposals in order to enable them to get the powers that they would require to make such inquiries? Also, as the noble Lord has not really answered the last point in the Question about the use to be made of the information, will he confirm that, in view of the long tradition that information rendered to the Government is treated as confidential, there can be no question of divulging the information so obtained?
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, the letters went out to all people who might be able to help the nation in this matter, There was no question of an inquisition, because, as I stressed in my original reply, the people concerned were invited to supply the information. Clearly, if you receive an invitation, you can reject it. The question whether some use can be made of such information in the future is a matter upon which at the moment discussions are going on. Good progress has been made in these discussions with both sides of industry on the details of the machinery. My right honourable friend the First Secretary of State hopes to make an announcement shortly about what has been agreed. I cannot, of course, anticipate his statement.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend this question? Is this not still a free country? Does not that freedom extend to the right of Her Majesty's Government politely to seek information from industry about certain matters in the public interest? Why should it be questioned that the Government have a right to ask questions? Is it not the case that the Government are not compelling anybody to answer, but are seeking information; and is it not the duty of good

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citizens, so far as they can, to supply that information?
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, I am grateful that I can make a very short reply to that, and the answer is, Yes, Sir.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, while recognising that the Government should get all information that will help them in the discharge of their responsibilities, I do not think the noble Lord has quite met the point raised by my noble friend in the last part of his Question. Presumably, the answers to these invitations were confidential. A lot of information which goes to the Board of Trade is always of a confidential nature. What my noble friend was asking with regard to this information, as I understood him, was whether the information which was given by these associations and by individual firms would continue to be completely confidential and would not be disclosed to the prejudice of any individual firm or anyone else. That, I think, was the point, and I do not think the noble Lord has dealt with it.
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, we recognise this, and I am sure it would be the wish of the Government to treat such information as confidential, as indeed is information received under the Statistics of Trade Act, under which an important questionnaire goes out and if the information received were not confidential difficulties might arise. I cannot answer this point specifically, although I think it is so. I will inquire and let the noble Lord know the answer to this specific point which both he and the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, have made.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, I am sorry to come back to this point, but I think it ought to be made clear publicly, beyond any doubt at all, because if there is any possibility of this information not being treated as confidential it might affect the replies to the invitations sent out. I merely rise to say that I do not think it will suffice to let us know; it ought to be made clear publicly that this information is, and will remain, confidential.
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, this is a point on which I am sure it would be possible to get the information to the
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public. If the noble Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, would put a Question down, I should be most happy to answer it. I recognise the importance of the subject.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, is it not a fact that for many years every Government, of every complexion, has been collecting information from firms in a form in which the details of the information from individual firms are not disclosed, but are aggregated? Is this not the basis on which a great deal of valuable economic information is collected by every Government?
LORD CHAMPION: Of course that is the basis of the Statistics of Trade Returns which are sought and obtained from industry.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, may I once again stress the fact that individual replies are not disclosed—
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE EARL OF LONGFORD): My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he proposes to put this in the form of a question? The noble Lord was rising to stress a point, and that cannot be regarded as a question.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, if I may say so—I am subject to correction by the noble Earl—I think he was just a little previous in stopping me before I had even got my first sentence out. It is quite common in this House to make a preliminary observation before putting a question. May I stress the fact, as I said—
Several Noble Lords: No, no!
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: That is not a question.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am coming to the question.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: No, that is not allowed.
LORD DRUMALBYN: All right. Is the noble Lord aware that the real point in this question is the confidentiality of the individual reply? Is the noble Lord further aware that some of the replies—I make no complaint about this—seem to have been given to the Press at the same time, and, as a result of the action that has been taken by the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, some partial information has been given and has

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appeared in the form of a pamphlet already issued by the Labour Party?
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, if the noble Lord will put down a Question, as I suggested, I hope I shall be able to answer the points he has now raised.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, will the noble Lord appreciate that any action to reduce prices is most welcome to the public, and will Her Majesty's Government not be deterred in this matter?
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, we have No 1ntention at all of being deterred on so important a matter to the housewives and others of this country.
LORD CONESFORD: Do housewives buy stamps?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he would inform the House why the reply to his noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth was, "Yes, Sir". instead of, "Yes, my Lords"?

COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRANTS AND PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS
3.16 p.m.
THE EARL OF GAINSBOROUGH: 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 is the total number of cases in England and Wales of pulmonary tuberculosis at December 31, 1964, or other convenient date:—

(a) notified in respect of Commonwealth immigrants and their dependants;

(b) what proportion this number bears to the total number of Commonwealth immigrants in England and Wales;

(c) what is the total number of cases in the total population of England and Wales.]

THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS AND FOR THE COLONIES (LORD TAYLOR): My Lords, the total number of cases
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under supervision for tuberculosis at chest clinics in England and Wales on December 31, 1963, was 346, 371, of whom 16, 343 were new cases of respiratory tuberculosis notified in 1963. More recent figures are not yet available. Separate statistics are not kept for immigrants.
THE EARL OF GAINSBOROUGH: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his Answer, may I ask whether he will bear in mind that the incidence of tuberculosis among immigrants, more particularly in view of the fact that some of these people live in overcrowded housing conditions, is of considerable concern to public health authorities throughout the country? Will he keep the matter under review, bearing in mind the experiment which is now being undertaken at London Airport in screening immigrants for detection of this disease on their arrival in this country?
LORD TAYLOR: Yes, my Lords. The matter will be kept under review, and it is extremely important to make sure that overcrowded housing conditions are dealt with, whether they affect immigrants or other people.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether, when the mass X-ray is made at London Airport and he has these new statistics (and no doubt later on at other airports there will be new statistics), he will ask for them to be broken down, so that there may be an indication as to what part of the Commonwealth these immigrants who are suffering from tuberculosis come from, and particularly, of course, those areas where the highest proportion is found?
LORD TAYLOR: There will certainly be statistics available in due course, I imagine, but it will take quite a time to collect them. They will not be immediately available. The X-ray machine, to which the noble Lord, Lord Newton, gave so much attention when he was in office, is only just coming into operation now. It will be some time before it is in use. The number of immigrants who are not X-rayed, for various statutory reasons and for purely technical reasons, will remain substantial, particularly the short-stay immigrants and the dependants of immigrants, and much will depend on persuasion and good will. But as soon

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as statistics are available I am sure we shall make them available to the public and to this House.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend can say what the percentage is between the number of new cases in the year he has quoted, as against previous years in recent history?
LORD TAYLOR: Yes, my Lords. The notifications for respiratory tuberculosis have been falling steadily in England and Wales for many years, from about 37, 000 in 1954 to a provisional figure of under 15, 000 in 1964. I stress that the latter is a provisional figure.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, will Her Majesty's Government not try to enlist the support of the High Commissioners of these overseas Commonwealth territories to ensure that their subjects go before mobile X-ray clinics at regular intervals?
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, we do indeed seek to enlist the support of the High Commissioners to make sure that everything possible and practical is done; but, unfortunately, in many of these territories there are no mobile X-ray units, or there is only a limited number of them, and so we cannot do everything he would wish in this direction.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, the noble Lord misunderstood me. I meant, in the towns of this country where the immigrants chiefly are.
LORD TAYLOR: Yes, my Lord, certainly.
THE EARL OF GAINSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his Answer, and also to the noble Lady and other noble Lords who have taken an interest in this matter.

ENFORCEMENT OF FIREARMS REGULATIONS
3.22 p.m.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of numerous recent shooting incidents, they will impose
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more stringent regulations as to the possession of firearms, and take steps to see that these are effectively enforced.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My Lords, my right honourable friend is examining as a matter of urgency, in consultation with chief officers of police, the adequacy of the present legislation affecting firearms, and he hopes to make a statement at an early date.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for his Answer and look forward eagerly to the statement. Is the Minister aware that an Assistant Commissioner of Police in the Metropolis is reported to have said recently that a shot-gun is part of the average adult Englishman's equipment? And will my noble friend give an assurance in the strongest possible terms that that is not the view of Her Majesty's Government?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, if an Assistant Commissioner made the remark attributed to him, it is a view of his that I do not share, because I understand that there are something like half-a-million shot-guns in the country and rather more than 20 million Englishmen: one would not expect that only 2½ per cent. of Englishmen are average.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, even if a shot-gun is part of the equipment of the average Englishman, would the noble Lord not agree that if we are required, rightly, by the Government to possess a licence in order to sell a packet of cigarettes, a pint of beer or a bowl of goldfish, it is not unreasonable to ask us also to possess a licence in order to sell a shot-gun?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, this is a matter which is, of course, receiving the attention of my right honourable friend.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, is the noble Lord not aware that a great number of the firearms used in shooting incidents are, of course, stolen? Perhaps the police could help and advise gunmakers on how to protect their premises from raids.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, it is the case, as the noble Viscount says, that many of the offences which have caused public concern in recent months have been committed with stolen firearms. The noble Viscount will also be aware that before a firearms dealer can sell his wares he must first of all be registered, and, secondly, he must keep a register of all sales. But this, again, is a matter about which my right honourable friend is considering whether further steps can be taken.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, will the noble Lord not agree that firearms would not be so easily stolen if they were not so readily available? Will he take steps to put a stop on the sale of firearms to the general public altogether and to confine them to restricted channels, such as the police or public authorities, who should allow sales only to persons who can prove bona fide need?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, Part I of the Firearms Act, 1937, provides that any person possessing firearms or ammunition must have a firearm certificate issued by the Chief Officer of Police. The Home Office insists upon very strict enforcement of the law in this respect. But if my noble friend has information regarding any cases where there is reason to believe that the regulations are not being properly carried out, I shall be glad to have it and put it before my right honourable friend.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, will the noble Lord give an assurance that in any future consideration that Her Majesty's Government may give to legislation the highest possible priority will be given to protection of the public?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, that, of course, is always the duty of the Home Office and it is a consideration foremost in the mind of my right honourable friend.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: My Lords, is it not the case that the present regulations cover only rifles and what the noble Lord's noble friend wishes them to cover as well is shot-guns? Would it not be possible to control the sale of shotgun ammunition in the same way as rifle ammunition is controlled at the moment?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, everything, of course, is possible. The noble Duke is not right in saying that only rifles are covered by Part I of the Firearms Act, although he would be right in saying that shot-guns are not included in Part I if they are more than 20 inches long. This again, plus matters which noble Lords have not yet mentioned, are among the matters being urgently considered now and about which we hope to make a statement quite soon.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the modern air rifle is a much more dangerous weapon than air rifles of some years ago, and that air rifles can be purchased without a certificate by boys of 14?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, my noble friend is in error there. It is an offence for anyone under the age of 17 to purchase an air rifle; it is an offence to sell an air rifle to anyone under the age of 17; it is an offence to give an air rifle to anyone under the age of 14; it is an offence for an air rifle to be carried by any person under the age of 17 unless it is in a case; and it is an offence for a child under 14 to fire an air rifle unless he is in the presence of an adult or in a room and unable to fire outside. We do feel that since the Air Guns and Shot Guns, &c., Act, 1962, was passed there has been a distinct improvement in the situation, which was admittedly very dangerous.
LORD SWANSEA: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that, whatever restrictions are placed on the acquisition of firearms and shot-guns, they would not hinder criminals from acquiring them through their usual underground channels? Surely the proper course is to increase the existing penalties.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, that, of course, is the first and most obvious thing which is being considered by my right honourable friend.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, as the questioning all seems to be one way, perhaps the noble Lord will allow me to ask him whether he will not also remind his right honourable friend that pigeons and grey squirrels and many other things are a real menace to our

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well-being in this country and that in many cases a shot-gun is almost our only weapon against them.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I will certainly bear in mind what the noble Lord has said, but I can think of many things and objects which are a menace but for which I would not recommend the use of a shot-gun.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, will the noble Lord ask his right honourable friend, in the consideration which he is rightly giving to this matter, when he comes nearer his conclusions, which may well, and again probably rightly, end up in tighter control of the acquisition of firearms, to consider the point of not making it so stringent that it becomes almost unreasonably difficult to obtain a firearm in cases of wholly legitimate need?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, that point I will certainly bring to the notice of my right honourable friend, who has it already well in mind. The noble Lord will, however, realise that if there are half-a-million shot-guns in use it would be an enormous administrative problem if we were to have stringent controls in all cases.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, would it be possible for the Government to make these recommendations available to the House before we debate the Second Reading of the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Bill in the near future.
LORD STONHAM: I cannot, of course, be bound by a date, but I am confident that the intentions of my right honourable friend will be known long before we debate that Bill.

BUSINESS
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, in anticipation of a Private Notice Question, I should like to inform the House that my noble friend Lord Stonham will be making a statement on Commonwealth immigrants shortly after 3.30 p.m. It may also be for the convenience of noble Lords to know that my noble friend the Leader of the House will be making Statements on the Commonwealth Prime
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Ministers' Meeting and on awards to industry.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, I do not understand what the noble Lord meant when he said "In anticipation of a Private Notice Question". I do not think that any Private Notice Question was to be asked in your Lordships' House to-day.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I do not wish to delay the House, but the explanation is simple. I understood that there was a desire from the noble Viscount's Bench that a statement to be made in another place should be repeated here. Unfortunately, the statement in another place arises from an oral Question, and it is the usual practice to get over the difficulty by having a Private Notice Question here, and I was anticipating one. I mention it merely to ensure that at later dates we shall not be in difficulties in making in this House statements arising from Questions in another place.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, I am much obliged. I cannot ask a Question now, retrospectively.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE EARL OF LONGFORD): My Lords, I beg to move that Standing Order No. 41 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with for the purpose of enabling the remaining stages of the Consolidated Fund Bill to be taken this day.
Moved, That Standing Order No. 41 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with for the purpose of enabling the remaining stages of the Consolidated Fund Bill to be taken this day.—(The Earl of Longford.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

CONSOLIDATED FUND BILL
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Bill read 2a: Committee negatived.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been dispensed with (pursuant to Resolution), Bill read 3a, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BILL
3.34 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORT-FOLIO (LORD CHAMPION): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time. There are to be three Statements, I understand, and for the convenience of the House I have arranged that my noble friend will give me the tip when the time has arrived, and in the circumstances I will at that time sit down. I gather that this suggestion suits the Members of the Opposition Front Bench: they seem very pleased about it.
The Bill that I am presenting to the House is a somewhat technical measure, but I am the less diffident in moving the Second Reading on account of the strengthening of the House in recent years by the addition of a number of noble Lords with wide experience and knowledge of scientific affairs. The purpose of the Bill is one which I think will commend itself to the House. Its main provisions result largely from the recommendations of a distinguished Committee of Inquiry under Sir Burke Trend. One of the members of that Committee was the noble Lord, Lord Todd, to whom this House is deeply indebted for his contributions to deflates on scientific and technological matters, and particularly for his speech on the Motion on Scientific and Technological Development in December last.
The Trend Committee proposed a major reorganisation of the arrangements for Government support of civil science, and their plan was to a great extent accepted by the previous Government. The present Government have endorsed a great part of this plan, with the exception of the proposals as they affect industrial research, on which the Government have decided to create a structure, the Ministry of Technology, which they
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think more suited to deal with the present problems facing the country in this sphere than would have been the independent authority favoured by the previous Government.
The need for a reorganisation is unquestioned. The present arrangements have grown up, more or less haphazardly, over a number of years, and only with great difficulty can they be made to function effectively in modern conditions. It would be impossible to carry through, with such creaking and inadequate machinery, the modernisation of British industry and the revitalising of the economy through science and technology, which is the first need of the present day. Nor would it be effective, from the point of view of science itself, to continue the present outmoded arrangements for supporting scientific research, particularly as regards the provision of major facilities, costing vast sums of money, which are becoming more and more necessary for many branches of science.
On the scientific side, the Bill first of all recognises the continued appropriateness of the fundamental idea which has run through Government support for scientific research over the last forty years or more. This is the idea of the independent Research Council, with members of distinction in the appropriate branches of science, which is free to decide its own scientific programme within the limits of the funds that can be made available to it by the Government. This kind of organisation permits the priorities of science to be given their full value, and prevents them from being distorted by the changing needs of politics and day-to-day executive responsibilities.
In addition to the Agricultural Research Council and the Medical Research Council, both of which have fulfilled their functions with great distinction over many years, two new ones are being brought into existence, the Science Research Council—which will be concerned generally with support for university research—and the Natural Environment Research Council, which will be concerned with research in the earth sciences and ecology. These four Research Councils will be under the aegis of the Secretary of State for Education and Science, and he will allocate resources to them on the advice of his new Council for Scientific Policy under the chairmanship of Sir Harrie Massey,

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which is to have its first meeting to-morrow.
The reorganisation will entail the disappearance of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, which has since 1919 borne, with notable success, the main burden of support for special research projects at universities and in industrial research. The time has come when the continued expansion of research on both the scientific and the industrial fronts must be given separate vehicles unless it is to be gravely hampered, and most of the activities of the D.S.I.R. will be divided between the Science Research Council and the Ministry of Technology, about which I will say a few words in a moment.
The Science Research Council will take over the present responsibilities of the D.S.I.R. for giving research grants to universities and post-graduate training awards. Grants for the support of applied as well as pure science in universities are to be the responsibility of the Science Research Council, although the Ministry of Technology will undoubtedly want, on occasion, to meet its own particular needs with university work, which it would normally do by placing contracts.
The Council will also be responsible for certain facilities which provide services for university scientists. It will take over the National Institute for Research in Nuclear Science, the Royal Greenwich Observatory, the Royal Observatory at Edinburgh, the D.S.I.R. Radio Research Station and the responsibility for supervising the scientific Space Research programme. It will also, in consultation with the Department of Education and Science and the Foreign Office, have primary responsibility for the conduct of United Kingdom participation in international research bodies, such as the European Organisation for Nuclear Research and the European Space Research Organisation. The chairmanship of this new Council, unlike that of the Agricultural and Medical Research Councils, will be held by a distinguished scientist as a full-time post, and, as has already been announced, the first Chairman will be Sir Harry Melville, at present Secretary of the D.S.I.R. The names of the other members of the Council are being announced later to-day.
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The Natural Environment Research Council is being formed to bring together a group of related sciences, some of which suffer from very inadequate arrangements and division of responsibility at present. It will be responsible for the earth sciences—that is, geology, seismology, geo-magnetism, physical oceanography and other disciplines—and the ecological sciences: those concerned with living beings and their environment both on land and in the water, and including freshwater and marine biology, nature conservation and other sciences. The new Council will take over responsibility for the Nature Conservancy, the Geological Survey and the National Institute of Oceanography. It will also assume financial and policy responsibility for the research now carried out by the Meteorological Office in seismology and geo-magnetism and will co-ordinate research in meteorology generally with that carried out by the Meteorological Office. The Council will work through subordinate committees responsible for each of the main activities concerned, and based, where appropriate, on the body now responsible for the field in question. There will be consultation with the Minister of Land and Natural Resources, the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales and other interested Ministers, on appointments to the Council and, where appropriate, on arrangements for its work.
I am happy to announce that Sir Graham Sutton, the Director-General of the Meteorological Office, has accepted the invitation of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science to be Chairman of the Natural Environment Research Council. Sir Graham Sutton, through his wide experience of the earth sciences, is exceptionally fitted to guide the setting up of the new Council, and we are fortunate that he will preside over it in its opening phase. The major part of Sir Graham Sutton's time will continue to be devoted to his responsibilities as Director-General of the Meteorological Office. A Secretary of the new Research Council will be appointed who will be a scientist with the appropriate qualifications. It will fall to the Secretary to organise the staff and make the necessary administrative arrangements. In order to allow time for

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this to be done, and for necessary consultation with the existing authorities, my right honourable friend has decided that the Natural Environment Research Council will not be formally constituted until June. The Science Research Council, for which the nucleus of a staff already exists in the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, will be formed on 1st April.
Meanwhile, the activities of the component organisations of N.E.R.C. will continue without interruptions. The National Oceanographic Council and the Nature Conservancy will continue in being, and the Fisheries Advisory Committee of the Development Commission will continue with its present work. On the dissolution of the D.S.I.R. the responsibility for making research grants to universities and post-graduate training awards, in the N.E.R.C.'s field of interest, will be taken over temporarily by the Science Research Council, which will have the benefit of the advice of the present D.S.I.R. committees concerned with this field; while the responsibility for the Geological Survey and Museum will be taken over temporarily by the Department of Education and Science. From the beginning of the new financial year, however, all these activities will be financed, until N.E.R.C. comes into existence, directly by the Secretary of State, who will be advised by the respective authorities now responsible in each of the fields concerned. Appropriate provision will be made in Estimates for this purpose.
The Bill provides also for the setting up, if it is found to be desirable, of additional Research Councils in the future. Although the Research Councils are traditionally established by Charter under the Royal Prerogative—a matter which is of considerable importance to scientific opinion, as emphasising the scientific independence of these bodies—Parliament must of course be given proper opportunity to examine the general purpose of bodies for which public money is to be provided (as public funds are to be provided to the Research Councils, through the Secretary of State, under the provisions of this Bill).
My Lords, this appears to be an appropriate moment for me to break off in order that the Statements may be made.

COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION
3.47 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, with your permission, I should like to bring to your Lordships' notice an Answer which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary made in another place in reply to Questions about Commonwealth immigration. I will use his own words:
"The Government has taken steps to initiate Commonwealth discussions to review the whole question of Commonwealth immigration. In the meantime, there is evidence that under the existing control evasion on a considerable scale is taking place. I cannot estimate at all closely how many have gained admission and settled who should not; but I do not think their number during the last two years can be less than 10, 000. It is therefore necessary to make stricter use of the existing powers of control, and for this purpose fresh instructions are being issued to immigration officers.
"The fresh instructions will require immigration officers, before allowing entry, to subject to the fullest scrutiny, in whatever cases they judge to be necessary, the intention and bona fides of Commonwealth citizens seeking entry as visitors or students, as well as the authenticity of their travel documents; and to make a fuller use of their power to impose conditions specifying the period for which a Commonwealth citizen is admitted as a student or visitor.
"Secondly, there is evidence that evasion is taking place by those who claim to be entitled to enter as dependants under Section 2 of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, 1962, and immigration officers will examine with greater thoroughness than hitherto has been thought necessary the identity and the validity of the claims of persons who seek entry under Section 2. Except where very special grounds exist, I am also reviewing the present practice of admitting as a matter of discretion children under 16 coming here to join close relatives resident in this country who are not their parents.
"Thirdly, we shall, where practicable, be reinforcing the staffs in posts overseas by assigning to them experienced immigration officers to assist in

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dealing with applications for entry certificates.
"When persons charged with having evaded the control, or having failed to comply with conditions of entry imposed upon them, are prosecuted and convicted, and the court in consequence makes a deportation recommendation, effect will of course be given to such recommendations unless there are very strong reasons for making a special exception.
"We shall have to wait to see how effective these measures are when in operation before deciding whether any further steps are necessary, and we shall also be in touch with other Commonwealth Governments."
3.50 p.m.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for repeating Answers given in another place by his right honourable friend to Questions, the content of which I have not seen, asked in that House. The noble Lord has made a most serious statement. The announcement that not fewer than 10, 000 illegal immigrants are in this country shows the existence of a serious situation and the need to strengthen the controls and to take further steps to prevent the evasion which is now occurring.
I have a few questions to ask upon which I should like information. In the first place, does the noble Lord consider that there is any real possibility of tracing, prosecuting and returning more than a very small percentage indeed of those 10, 000 illegal immigrants? Is not the real difficulty that of tracing them once they have come to this country? In the latter part of the Statement the noble Lord referred to cases in which persons are found to have evaded the control or where, having failed to comply with conditions of entry, they are prosecuted and convicted and a recommendation for deportation is made. Can the noble Lord say whether, up to now, that has happened in more than a very few cases? Can he give an indication of the number of cases which may be brought before the courts for such breaches in the future? I should think that the number is likely to be small.
Would the noble Lord confirm what 1 think is implicit in this Statement, that there is to be no change of policy with
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regard to the Home Office in varying recommendations for deportation made by the courts on convictions for criminal offences? What the Statement does not deal with is the limits on those to be admitted. As we have, apparently, within these shores some 10, 000 illegal immigrants—10, 000 more than the number which it was thought this country could properly absorb—is that going to be taken into account in fixing the limits for the future, or are the limits to remain unaltered? That is a question with which the Statement does not deal. It is a very relevant question.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble and learned Viscount for the generous support he gave at the beginning of his remarks for the policy which has been adopted by the Government. If it was not clear from the Statement which I made, may I mention that the figure of 10, 000 of those we regard as having evaded the controls and entered, is taken over a period of two years? With regard to the other questions, I will answer them to the best of my ability; I hope he will forgive me if the answers are not necessarily in the same order as his questions.
It is not the intention of the Home Office to make any present change with regard to the arrangement for deportation of those persons who are convicted. With reference to the question about the 10, 000 illegal immigrants (as the noble Viscount described them) over the last two years, I should think it unlikely that any substantial proportion of them could be traced. It might well prove difficult also to establish that there was any reason for deportation, because they might not necessarily have committed any offence.
With regard to the question of the numbers who have been admitted subject to conditions in recent years, the noble Viscount was right in thinking that the number was indeed small. Up to the end of 1964 those who were so admitted numbered only 251—that is, those who had been admitted and who were not later relieved of the conditions imposed on their entry. So that is 251 from the beginning of our taking records up to the end of last year. Of that number 25 were still within their permitted period of stay, and 140 had gone home. Of the remaining 86 seven had been deported and two

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made the subject of recommendations for deportation which were still under consideration. The remaining 77 had not been traced. They are the exact figures, and, as I have said, he was right in thinking that the numbers were small.
As to the question of tracing immigrants if they have evaded controls, or if they have come in with a false statement, or, in the case of students, if they have not behaved as they said they would when they were admitted, it is extremely difficult to trace them because they are absorbed into communities. Often when the police have attempted to trace them they have found it extremely difficult to do so. I am not sure that I have answered every one of the questions.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, may I remind the noble Lord that I asked the very important question: is the fact that we have now in this country 10, 000 more immigrants than we wanted to admit—10, 000 more than it was thought this country could safely absorb—being taken into account in fixing the limits of admission for the future? Having regard to that fact, is any variation of limit being made for the future? The Statement is entirely silent about that. One further question relates to students and visitors. Is there not some evasion with regard to the holders of what are called work vouchers, as in the case of a person wrongly holding a voucher which really belongs to somebody else?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, with regard to the first part of the noble Viscount's further question, which I agree is important, I would say that it is quite obvious that an unplanned-for entry of 10, 000 must, to some extent, exacerbate an already difficult situation. Although we must relate that 10, 000 to a total of some 800, 000 plus, it must be taken into consideration. But the question of the future level of vouchers is in fact a matter for the Government as a whole and not solely a matter for my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. Therefore, I cannot answer directly on that point, but if the noble Viscount wishes to put down a Question on the subject I will do my best to answer him.
With regard to; he vouchers—and I think the noble Viscount had in mind
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the "A" and "B" vouchers which, substantially speaking, are the only kind now being issued—if somebody were to come in on a voucher who was not the person to whom the voucher was allocated he would not be included in our crude evasion figure because he would already be allowed for, although I am not disputing that he would be an evader. Similarly, if anyone came in on a forged voucher he might not be counted in our crude evasion figure; but we do not have reason to think there is a substantial amount of successful evasion in this way.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, could my noble friend say whether the ports of the Irish Republic are a channel for illegal or irregular immigration to this country? If so, can he say whether his right honourable friend is looking into that aspect of the matter?
LORD STONHAM: That aspect of the matter has been under continuous review, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, will agree that it was under review during his administration. But, substantially speaking, control of immigration from Ireland was not considered a practical possibility. We have no means of knowing whether any immigrants from other parts of the Commonwealth come in through Ireland; but we do not believe there is a substantial number who come in by that route.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: I am not sure that we are both on the same point. I was not on the matter of the immigration of citizens of the Irish Republic, who I know are in an exceptional category. But if it is the case that ports of the Irish Republic are being used for irregular and illegal immigration, could not the Home Secretary make representations to the Government of the Irish Republic with a view to this being checked and prevented?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I will certainly refer my noble friend's suggestion to my right honourable friend. But since there is no control of that kind at the Irish Border it would seem, from immediately looking at the matter, that it would be extremely difficult to find a means of discriminating, when they simply come over freely.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, is it not a fact that, in practice, if somebody comes from Ireland who is obviously not an Irishman, inquiries are then made at the port of entry?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, the position may well be as the noble Lord said. But it would be difficult to define exactly "someone who is obviously not an Irishman."
LORD REA: My Lords, I am not proposing to ask the Minister any further questions and to disturb him in that way, because this is a very complicated matter and we should like to have a little time to think it over and digest it. But may I offer from these Liberal Benches our general support and our encouragement to the noble Lord and to Her Majesty's Government in any humane and common-sense measures which they seek to solve this very difficult and delicate problem?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am thankful to the noble Lord the Leader of the Liberal Party, not for the first time, for his most generous support, for which we are very grateful.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, I wonder if, on the first part of his Statement, I may ask my noble friend whether the white Commonwealth is to be included in these consultations, and, if so, if it is with a view to getting its help to relieve us of our burden as far as other parts of the Commonwealth are concerned. Also, may I support my noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth in asking whether it would be possible for the Republic of Ireland to be included in these consultations, not only with regard to illegal entry but with regard to the immigration of people of the Irish Republic. Finally, may I ask my noble friend whether he would agree with me that the questions which have been put by the noble Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, have been rather tougher than the line of the then Government during the passage of the 1962 Act?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, my Statement, of course, referred to the whole question of Commonwealth immigration. It therefore referred alike to what I might call the "old" Commonwealth and the "new" Commonwealth countries, all of whom, quite naturally, have been already, and will be continually, brought into these consultations. Whether the old Common-
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wealth countries can make a contribution to the general problem, as I hope they will, remains to be seen. With regard to the question of the Irish Republic, we have of course debated this matter during the passage of the Bill and on a number of other occasions, and I do not think it would serve any useful purpose if I restated the arguments now.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, could my noble friend satisfy my curiosity? How many women dependants can a man from a Moslem country claim?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am afraid that that, like marriage and the common cold, is going to remain one of the great unsolved problems of the world. I do not know that I can go further than to say that until now we have admitted the fiancé e of an immigrant here, and we have admitted a Common Law wife. But I do not know of any cases where we have admitted more than one wife for one man—at least, otherwise than by accident.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, following the reference by the Leader of the Liberal Party to the complexity of this subject, which obviously will have to be discussed at greater length on another occasion, I wonder if I may ask the Minister whether, for the assistance of your Lordships, it would be possible to publish a comparative study of the immigration restrictions existing in the various Commonwealth countries at the present time. We could then compare our existing legislation with legislation operating in other Commonwealth countries to-day.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, that, of course, is not a matter for my right honourable friend. But I will see that notice is taken of the noble Lord's suggestion in the proper quarter.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether, in view of the very large number of illegal immigrants that this Statement reveals, the security aspects of this matter are being studied?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I do not quite know what my noble friend means by "security aspects", but I can assure him that, despite what we have said about strengthening the effectiveness

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of the control by immigration officers, I have learned enough in my brief experience at the Home Office to pay a very sincere tribute to the efficiency of the immigration officers in this matter. I do not think that there is any real danger that people who could be regarded as security risks are likely to find it easier to gain admission, nor indeed have done in the past.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, in order to tighten up the immigration authorities' organisation, will Her Majesty's Government see that a number of ex-British Indian policemen and/or ex-British Indian I.C.S. men are employed in that Department as advisers, because the Englishman is not capable of understanding the Oriental mind unless he has lived in the East for many years?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I will certainly see that notice is taken of that suggestion. But my view so far is that it is not advice that we lack; it is the means to control effectively and completely what is a very difficult and always delicate situation.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, as it seems so difficult to keep people out, is there not a strong argument for letting them in?
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, from the questions asked, I think it is fairly clear that the House may desire an opportunity of considering and debating this Statement and the whole question of controls. Therefore I do not propose to put any further questions to the noble Lord now; nor do I propose to raise any controversial questions about the attitude of respective Parties during the passage of the Act to which the noble Lord, Lord Royle, referred.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Viscount for his restraint in this matter The question of a debate is, of course, a matter for the usual channels. I can only say that personally I should welcome it.

COMMONWEALTH PRIME MINISTERS' MEETING
4.8 p.m.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I wish to repeat a Statement which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has just made in another place It will be convenient if I use his exact words. They are as follows:
"I"—
that is, the Prime Minister—
"have been consulting other Common-wealth heads of Government about the possibility of holding a Commonwealth Prime Ministers' meeting during the summer. I am glad to be able to inform the House that there is general agreement to a meeting during the second half of June. The precise dates are to be settled later."
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, I am grateful to the Leader of the House for repeating this Statement, and am glad to hear that there is the possibility of holding a further Commonwealth Prime Ministers' meeting during the summer. I ask the noble Earl whether he is aware that on the tape to-day, at ten minutes past twelve, this information was made public. It seems to me somewhat curious, and I think this is the second such occasion. I believe that yesterday also a Statement was published in the Press before it was made in your Lordships' House. It is surely unusual to have Statements published in the Press before they are made to Parliament.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I was not aware of what the noble Viscount has just told us about the publication on the tape. I cannot comment, obviously, without looking into the matter. He will see that I have been most religious in declining to make the Statement here until ten minutes past four, in order that I should not make it before it was made by the Prime Minister. If it was already on the tape, that perhaps makes the delay even the more trying.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: Would the noble Earl perhaps look into that? Because it is really rather a farce to delay making a Statement here when it has already appeared on the tape.

EXPORT AND TECHNOLOGICAL AWARDS FOR INDUSTRY
4.11 p.m.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I wish to repeat a Statement which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has just made in another place. Perhaps, again, your Lordships will allow me to use the words of the Prime Minister. They run as follows:
"With the approval of Her Majesty the Queen, Her Majesty's Government propose to introduce appropriate arrangements for making awards to industry which would provide means of recognising outstanding achievement by particular industrial units either in increasing exports or in technological innovation. These awards would be made by the Sovereign on the advice of the Prime Minister. A scheme will be worked out under the guidance of a Committee including representatives of industry.
"I am glad to be able to inform the House that His Royal Highness the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, has consented to act as Chairman of this Committee."
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, may I thank the noble Earl the Leader of the House for repeating this Statement, and may I, on behalf of noble Lords on this side, welcome the proposal for collective recognition of collective achievements in the fields of exports and technological innovation? May I ask just two very brief questions? Does this mean any change at all in the existing system of individual recognition, where that is appropriate, whether to the head of a firm or to anybody else concerned? Secondly, may I ask the noble Earl the Leader of the House to say whether "achievement by … industrial units", the phrase he used, means achievement not only by independent firms, corporations and the like, but, in the case of big firms and big corporations, by individual units within such independent firms or corporations?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for his friendly remarks about this Statement—and I think I can satisfy him on both the points he has raised. It will still be possible for individuals
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to be recognised under the existing honours system (which I take it there is No 1ntention, therefore, of changing) for their personal contributions in either of the two fields. This will apply, as he recognises, to units, and will allow awards to be made not only to individual units of the big industrial groups but also, I may add, to sections of the nationalised industries. So I think I am replying to both the noble Lord's points in the way he wishes.
LORD REA: My Lords, I should also like, if I may, to thank the noble Earl the Leader of the House for this Statement. May I just ask him what he means by "individual units"? Will these awards be made to individual people who may not necessarily be employed in industry or commerce but may have some great contribution which is worthy of recognition? And can he say what form the awards will take? Will they be monetary awards, silver cups or what?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I cannot, I am afraid, answer the last part of the noble Lord's question, because we must leave this very exalted Committee to work out the answers to it. I do not know that I can define a unit, except to say that I take it that it means more than one person. I do not think any self-employed individual will be able to count as a unit; but I am afraid we must wait and see what the term "unit" is taken to mean.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BILL
4.15 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, after that slight interruption I have to resume my speech on the Second Reading of the Science and Technology Bill, which is now again before us. The Bill sets out in general terms the main objects of the two Research Councils now to be created, and provides a procedure whereby similar information will be given to Parliament in connection with any future proposals to create additional Research Councils. The Bill provides financial authority for the Secretary of State to meet the approved expenses of the Research Councils, and

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to support scientific research in his own Department. This provision is particularly related to the responsibilities which the Department is taking over from the D.S.I.R. in respect of scientific information. It will have a general responsibility in this field, and will administer the National Lending Library for Science and Technology. The Research Councils and the Ministry of Technology will, of course, continue to be responsible for scientific and technological information particularly related to their own fields of interest.
I now turn to those provisions of the Bill which will be concerned with the Minister of Technology and his Department. The other main purpose of the Bill is to make provision for the Minister of Technology who, as the Prime Minister has stated, has the general responsibility of guiding and stimulating a major national effort to bring advanced technology and new processes into British industry. In pursuance of this, Clause 5 of the Bill enables the Minister of Technology to expend public funds in furthering the practical application of the results of scientific research. I would say in passing, in view of certain doubts which were expressed elsewhere about the scope of Clause 5 (1) (b), which I have just quoted, that it goes no further than the power already statutorily vested in the Council of D.S.I.R.
The establishment of a Ministry of Technology symbolises the Government's determination to adopt a fresh start and a new approach, and, while intensifying the research and development effort available to it, to concentrate particularly on stimulating its applications in industry. The Minister will have many methods open to him, and many resources on which he will be able to draw, including the services of an Advisory Council on Technology with a distinguished membership. One of the members of that Council is my noble friend Lord Brown, who will this afternoon be making his maiden speech in this House, and to whose contribution I am very much looking forward. I am sure that the whole House would wish him well, both in his task on this Council and also when making his maiden speech. Among the resources 1 would, in particular, mention those elements of D.S.I.R. which will be transferred to the Ministry of Technology, the
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Atomic Energy Authority and the National Research and Development Corporation.
On the dissolution of D.S.I.R., for which, as I have said, the Bill provides, its responsibility towards industry, including most of the Research Stations, will be transferred to the Minister of Technology. Responsibility for the Atomic Energy Authority has already, by Order in Council, been taken over by the Minister of Technology. While this transfer has been effected under other powers, Clause 4 of the Bill contains provisions of relevance to it. This clause extends the research functions of the A.E.A. so that it is enabled to carry on research outside the field of atomic energy if the Minister of Technology asks it to do so.
This means that the considerable resources of skill and expertise and the facilities that have been built up in the A.E.A. can be made available, as opportunity offers, to support the Ministry of Technology's task of stimulating technological advance in industry. In view of the discussion that took place in another place on the purpose of this clause, I would assure your Lordships that there is no sinister intention behind it. The clause simply ensures that one of the country's main repositories of scientific talent and resources will be available for deployment in directions where national needs may be greatest. The third main resource available to the Minister which I mentioned is the N.R.D.C. While this is not affected by the Bill, your Lordships will wish to know that an Order in Council is being laid to-day bringing the N.R.D.C. within the Minister of Technology's responsibility. It is hoped to introduce a Bill shortly which will have the effect of increasing the Corporation's effectiveness. For the first time, these three main resources—namely, the industrial elements of the D.S.I.R., the A.E.A. and the N.R.D.C.—are being brought under one control, allowing a rational integration of the contributions each can make.
To turn from the resources to the methods being adopted by the Minister of Technology, the Government are determined to use what weapons they can to promote technological advance. One such weapon for obvious consideration

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is the Government's own enormous spending power. A review is under way to establish the feasibility of orientating purchases and contracts in directions which will aid technological progress. Included in the consideration will be purchases made by the authorities directly and indirectly financed from public funds. It is not intended at this stage that the Minister of Technology should take over the purchasing functions of other Government Departments. Subject to whatever results may emerge from the review referred to, the Minister of Technology's function will be to assist and advise his colleagues on procurement by their Departments and by the organisations within their responsibility.
Remedy must be preceded by diagnosis, and it is obvious that before he can act the Minister must have the fullest information about the technological strengths and weaknesses of those sectors of industry with which he will be chiefly concerned. To this end the Minister is setting up a number of technical appraisal teams manned by engineers, scientists and economists from within and from outside the Government Service. Their functions will be to study the performance and products of sectors of industry, identify any technological weaknesses that may be revealed and consider the ways in which these might be remedied. Among other methods are the intensified placing of development contracts with industry, possibly under the supervision of the appropriate research station, thus ensuring close cooperation between Government and industry; steps to improve the supply and status of engineers who are so crucial to accelerating technological advance; and action to ensure that in the engineering field the British Standards Institution is making the maximum contribution to the Ministry of Technology's objectives,
Finally, in this connection, I would refer to the Minister's sponsorship responsibilities for the computer, electronics, machine tool and telecommunications industries. This function of sponsorship is a further method or instrument which the Minister will deploy in his task of promoting technological advance. These are all industries whose own technological advance is basic to technological progress across the whole, or at least a large part, of the industrial and
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commercial front. These are all industries with a high technological content and it is in the most technologically advanced products that our national performance has not keep pace with the highest standards elsewhere. The term "sponsorship" is by no means a new one. Between every major industry and a Government Department there is a relationship in which issues of common interest to industry and the Government fall within an area of discussion, correspondence, and formal or informal contact. It is this relationship which is conveniently covered by the term "sponsorship". In general, sponsorship provides an arrangement whereby a Department is in a position both to take account of the needs and problems of industry in the formulation and administration of policy and to interpret Government policy to industry. It also provides a means whereby an individual industry is given a point of entry to the Government machine.
My Lords, I have given a short survey of the responsibilities, functions and plans of the Minister of Technology in support of which Clause 5 sanctions the expenditure of public funds. No one can deny that in considerable measure this country's future depends on the success with which we exploit its resources of scientific and technological skill. With the loss of our overseas investments, with the emergence of more and more countries as our competitors we must, given our lack of natural resources, exploit to the maximum these non-material resources of skill if we are to pay our way in the world. The Government believe that the proposals of this Bill will result in a more widespread and vigorous application of scientific development in British industry on which the prosperity of us all is so dependent.
The major reorganisation whose key features are embodied in this Bill will, of course, affect the work and employment of a great number of staff. Most of those concerned are civil servants, and will continue to be civil servants; but there are a number who are at present in the service of independent bodies and who will be taken over by the new Research Councils (they will not thereby become civil servants), and a number who are now civil servants who will in future be employed by the new Research Councils. As my right honourable friend said when moving the Second Reading of this Bill

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in another place, the Government are fully consulting the representatives of the staff concerned, and assurances have been given as regards their future terms of service.
As I have said, I think the general lines of this Bill are agreeable to most shades of political opinion. A reorganisation of civil science is urgently necessary; a new impetus must be given to the support and development of science and its application to our national purposes. The Bill makes possible some of the essential features of this reorganisation.
My Lords, although this Bill makes an attempt at organisational coherence and administrative symmetry, we realise that
"Brute reality is too complex to catch in any framework in which we may try to fix it"
as my noble friend, Lord Snow said, in a notable phrase, in the debate of December last. The nation can hope to secure the maximum of benefit from our expenditure on research only if everyone concerned is determined to co-operate to the full: industry with the scientist; scientist with scientist; Research Council with Research Council; Department with Department, and Minister with Minister. Otherwise, however good the framework, there is a danger of the whole thing becoming bogged down in time-wasting and exhausting demarcation disputes. We present this Bill as the best framework we have been able to devise, and I commend it to your Lordships.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Champion.)
4.28 p.m.
VISCOUNT CALDECOTE: My Lords, I am sure that we are all very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Champion, for the charming and comprehensive way in which he has presented this very important Bill to us. I would agree with a great deal of what he has said; although this is not surprising as a lot of it is Conservative policy. I would agree with the importance of the independence of the Research Councils, for instance, and welcome his statement that the Minister of Technology is going to encourage other Departments, as I understand it, to purchase their requirements from British industry and so stimulate the development of technology. I should also like to say a word of welcome to the announcement of the appointment of
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Sir Graham Sutton as the chairman of N.E.R.C. and to wish him well in his new and important duties.
I would particularly welcome the statement that the noble Lord, Lord Champion, made on the importance that the Government attach to the status of the engineer. I should like to ask him—and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Snow, will be able to say a word about this—whether the Government have in mind to take action to improve the status of the engineer in Government service. At the moment there is no doubt that his status is certainly inferior to that of the administrative civil servant.
But, in spite of this wide measure of agreement, it is our duty to examine this Bill critically, but, I hope, constructively. Before we can judge its value we must take a look at the wider landscape within which the Bill is only a part. There are many important features in this wider landscape which we can identify and with the prosperity of which we are deeply concerned. The many fields of medical knowledge under the care of the Medical Research Council are some, and the work of the Agricultural Research Council and of the new Natural Environment Research Council will become increasingly important as our island becomes more and more crowded and industrialised.
At this moment in our history, however, I believe it will be generally agreed that the feature which dominates the whole landscape, as the noble Lord, Lord Champion, agreed, is the prosperity of industry and its ability to make and sell its products in the competitive overseas markets. If this area fails to prosper, the investment required to exploit the other areas will dry up. For this reason, and because these fields do not raise any fundamental issues of policy, nor are they controversial, I intend to concentrate today on the relevance of this Bill to the needs of industry, and mainly to the proposals for dealing with the D.S.I.R. and those relating to the Ministry of Technology.
First, as regards the D.S.I.R., I think there is general agreement, in spite of the splendid work this body has done in the past, that there is a need to reallocate its functions, to combine them with those of other bodies working in a similar field—for instance, N.R.D.C.—and generally

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to bring the organisations up to date. We should agree that the Trend Committee Report made a considerable contribution towards a solution of this problem, though, in my view, the Report puts a good deal too much emphasis on the academic and scientific aspects and too little on the technological and industrial. As I said in a previous debate, the problem of effectively applying new knowledge to industry does not stop at applied research; it extends through development of new products into manufacture and marketing.
Since this spectrum, starting with education in academic institutions and finishing with marketing in industry, is so broad, it clearly cannot be handled by one Minister or Government Department. So we have to determine where a break shall be made in this very wide spectrum. I think it is unrewarding to continue the sterile discussion and arguments about the boundaries of basic and applied research. What really matters is the environment in which the work is done and the primary objective of those who do it.
The Government have recognised this by the responsibilities given to the Secretary of State for Education and Science and to the Minister of Technology. Whilst some may not agree that this is the best division, it is certainly a very possible one and one with which at this stage I would not wish to quarrel. But the acceptance of this division as a possible way of proceeding does not necessarily lead to agreement that the formation of a new Ministry of Technology is the best way of harnessing science to industry.
For let the noble Lords opposite make no mistake about it, we on this side of the House are not at all interested, as some of them appear to be, in harnessing science to Socialism, nor indeed to any political creed. We are interested only in harnessing science to industry, leading to its greater prosperity. I am glad the noble Lord opposite agrees with that. No doubt they agree that this is an important objective, but may I say that I am in some doubt whether noble Lords opposite appreciate all that is involved in a more prosperous industry. This is no mere debating point, for a proper understanding of this is fundamental to the whole issue which we are discussing—
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that is, whether the provisions of this Bill, so far as they effect the application of science and technology to industry, will have the maximum beneficial effect.
Do noble Lords opposite accept, for instance, that one important criterion of the efficiency and prosperity of industry is the profits which are made? If they do, then no doubt they will agree that one of the aims of setting up the new Ministry of Technology is to help industry to become more efficient and so make greater profits. I am glad to see that noble Lords agree. Certainly it is the objective of noble Lords on this side of the House to stimulate the use of scientific knowledge in industry to enable companies which make efficient use of it to prosper and increase their profits at the expense of those who either cannot or will not make use of scientific advances. And those who have the courage to take risks, to promote new ideas and to exploit new knowledge and sell in the highly competitive overseas markets, will need capital as well as faith and patriotism.
I am glad to see that noble Lords opposite are agreeing with my remarks. Perhaps they will also agree with me that this capital is best provided through the normal machinery of the capital market, except in very rare cases that will have to come before Parliament. This certainly is the Opposition's view. For, as has been made clear in another place, we are totally opposed to any further nationalisation of industries, or parts of industries, because experience has shown the great problems involved in the financing of nationalised industry and how unsuitable they are for trading in a competitive market, particularly the international market. We are also fully aware that the capital investment in these new industries, which is so important, will not be forthcoming unless successful companies are allowed, and indeed encouraged, to make and distribute adequate profits to attract it.
I hope that your Lordships will not think that I have strayed too far from the general provisions of the Bill. But, in my view, we cannot judge a Bill of this kind without fully appreciating the background to it. This background consists partly of the factors I have mentioned and partly of the general intentions of the Government as indicated by the various

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pronouncements made by Ministers. But I must say that much of what has been said and written gives many of us grave cause for concern, even for suspicion of some of the motives behind this Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Champion, has assured us that there is no need for this concern. But I must put to your Lordships some of the things that have been said which give us cause for concern. For instance, the Minister of Technology, Mr. Cousins, himself wrote in Tribune only last year:
"There is no reason at all why public ownership should not be put into the new and modern industries right from the word 'go'."
No reason at all—except that in our view it would be both wasteful and inefficient. He went on to express the opinion that:
"It should also be obvious that some of the industries in which the greatest progress has to be made, and where the greatest investment has to be put in, will not develop properly unless they are in public hands."
That statement, of course, is entirely unsupported by events in America, Japan and Germany, three of our leading competitors in the technological field. There is the statement, too, in the Labour Party Manifesto:
"A Labour Government will go beyond research and development and establish new industries, either by public enterprise or in partnership with private industry."
The last thing I want to do is to bring unnecessary or irrelevant Party issues into a debate in this House, but so much emphasis was given in another place to assurances—and the noble Lord, Lord Champion, gave assurances to-day—that there was nothing sinister in the Bill, and No 1ntention of achieving any further nationalisation by backdoor methods, that I felt bound to indicate to your Lordships the background to our concern. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Snow, when he replies, will be able to reassure us on these points.
Let me now turn to the main provisions of the Bill. First, as I said earlier, I very much doubt whether the setting up of an entirely new Ministry of Technology for the purpose of stimulating the use of scientific knowledge in industry was either necessary or desirable. I believe that this purpose could very well have been achieved in other ways, by appointing a Minister of State, with suitably qualified staff either within the Department of Education and Science or within the Board of Trade. In view of the prime
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objective, with which we are all in agreement, of applying science to industry, and so stimulating our exports, I myself prefer the latter alternative. At the same time, other Government Departments could have had their scientific staffs strengthened, and in this way the better use of science would have been stimulated throughout the whole Government service. As it is, I believe that there is considerable danger that, by excessive concentration within the new Ministry, the reverse will occur.
My Lords, technology is not something that can be handed out: it cannot be handed out either to Government Departments or to industry. It will be of value only if the user organisation contains people who understand how to use it and appreciate its importance for the work. And judgment is also required as to how science can be applied to obtain the best value from scarce resources. Finally, there must be enthusiasm and incentive to apply scientific knowledge to the day-to-day problems; and this comes best from within the organisation which is going to use the knowledge and has a practical job to do, rather than from carrying out research. I hope that the Government will have regard to these considerations as the provisions of the Bill become effective.
With this point in mind, I would draw your Lordships' attention to Clause 4 of the Bill. Subsection (1) gives the Minister of Technology power to direct the Atomic Energy Authority to carry out research in any field—and the noble Lord, Lord Champion, referred to this. This is a vast extension of the power given to the A.E.A., and surely requires some explanation.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF TECHNOLOGY (LORD SNOW): I will give it.
VISCOUNT CALDECOTE: When pressed in another place for an example of the kind of work intended, the Government spokesmen could give only one example, that of desalinisation. In general, the Government's agreement appears to be based on the general principle that:
"The Authority has built up most valuable teams of workers and acquired equipment and to get the full use out of them it is necessary to widen the range of work which it can do."

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Let me assure noble Lords opposite that I am not suggesting anything sinister in this attitude: it is just that I think it is unwise. To my mind, this is a most dangerous argument when applied to a research team working in a Gov. ernment establishment which is remote from all the day-to-day problems of competitive industry.
If these people are not needed in the A.E.A. for doing the work for which the A.E.A. was set up, surely the strength should be run down and these highly qualified engineers and scientists found jobs in industry, where they would be of far greater value to the national economy. To freeze them in a particular organisation goes against all the exhortations of the Government to move effort into the most important sectors of the economy, and for flexibility to meet the challenges of the future. And it is also, surely, an absurdly apt example of Parkinson's Law, "That work expands to occupy the men available". It sounds rather like that, and I believe that the noble Lord opposite is almost agreeing.
Perhaps there may be special cases where it is desirable for different but related work to be done in the A.E.A. But surely in such cases Parliament should be given an opportunity to debate and to pass judgment on the proposals, particularly in a case like this, where the Minister of Technology is being given power virtually to alter an existing Act of Parliament, the Atomic Energy Authority Act, 1954. On Second Reading in another place the Government undertook to consider this point, but I cannot see any evidence that they did so seriously, nor can I see any valid argument against the Amendment proposed requiring the approval of Parliament for the Minister's directions. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Snow, will be able to deal fully with this matter when he replies.
There is another much more detailed point connected with the Atomic Energy Authority: it concerns the pension position of those staff who are transferred from the employment of the A.E.A. to the National Institute for Research in Nuclear Science, which under the provisions of this Bill will come under the new Science Research Council. As I
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understand the position in Schedule 3, the staff so transferred will be able to remain within the pension scheme of the A.E.A., but any new staff who come into the National Institute for Research in Nuclear Science will have to come under the normal Civil Service pension scheme.
If I understand it correctly, the A.E.A. scheme is considerably more flexible than the normal Civil Service scheme, and enables staff to transfer between universities, industry and the Institute with greater ease and without the problems of their pension. It therefore seems to be a very bad step, and against the policy which the Government have advocated, of flexibility and having people moving about to meet the new demands, to make this provision and so prevent the staff of the N.I.R.N.S. from remaining in the pension scheme of the A.E.A., whether they are existing staff or newly joined staff. This matter was considered in another place, but the Government apparently felt that the Amendment there proposed led to some undesirable features and could not be accepted. I hope that the matter can be given further careful consideration, because I do not think it has been considered sufficiently up to date.
Turning now to Clause 5, subsection (1) gives wide power to the Minister concerned to give financial support to the carrying out and supporting of scientific research—and this point also was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Champion. But it is not at all clear what precisely this subsection means. I do not think there can be any argument but that it gives very wide power to the Minister. It would, so far as I can see, allow him to manufacture, and even to sell, and to do that on a subsidised basis if he wished to do so. Since action under this clause would often be taken in the normal course of business, it would be unreasonable to suggest that this should be a matter to bring before Parliament on each occasion. But surely there should be some restriction on this authority.
This takes us back, to some extent, to the earlier point that I made: that we are genuinely concerned about some of the motives behind some of the clauses in the Bill. Would it not be possible to devise a suitable Amendment that would restrict the authority within reasonable

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limits, without affecting the intention which we understand is behind this provision, and which the noble Lord, Lord Champion, explained earlier? An Amendment to cover this point was resisted in another place, on the grounds that it was too restricting. I would ask noble Lords opposite to have another look at this and perhaps bring forward an Amendment on the Committee stage. I think it will be agreed that reaction in the country to further nationalisation proposals, by whatever means, is not very favourable, and I am sure noble Lords opposite would not wish to incur any further unpopularity. We do not want them, therefore, to be tempted to slip in nationalisation of any kind by the back door. We should not like them to be exposed to that temptation, and I hope that noble Lords opposite will give careful consideration to the point which I have raised.
I have tried to show that we have no quarrel with the main objectives of this Bill. We welcome wholeheartedly the aim to improve the administrative arrangements for Government support of scientific research, in the widest sense, and to stimulate a greater and more effective application of scientific knowledge in industry. All this is common ground, and much of the Bill is inherited from the previous Government. But we are mystified and gravely concerned, as I have mentioned, at some of the detailed provisions in the Bill.
We should like to know much more about what the Government intend to do when this Bill becomes law. The noble Lord, Lord Snow, mentioned on an earlier occasion that they were doing a lot of listening in his Ministry, and he gave us some hope that we should have an early statement. I hope that he will be able to give us at least part of the statement to-day on how the Government intend to carry out the provisions of this Bill. Have they yet decided, for instance, how they will handle the complicated matters of space research, which are at the moment in the hands of so many different Government Departments? We should also like to be sure that action will not be limited to some of the physical action which has been suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, "a kick in the backside", or that advocated by the Minister of Technology himself of "shaking the machine tool industry".
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So far as this Bill is concerned, we ask the Government to show their intentions clearly, not only by verbal assurances but by bringing forward Amendments to clarify the points that we have made, and so remove misunderstandings and suspicion which mar what we believe to be an otherwise useful Bill. Finally, we want to know for certain whether this Bill is one of the first cousins of a nationalisation measure, or whether it is to be a pure-white snowdrop heralding the spring of advancing science.
4.50 p.m.
LORD BROWN: My Lords, on the occasion of this, my maiden speech, I crave your Lordships' indulgence for what I have to say. I am nervous of the occasion, because of the high standard of debate achieved in this House; but I am heartened because, in spite of some of what I have heard this afternoon, I still think the Bill, which is concerned with the relation between science and technology, is no partisan issue. It is my hope, therefore, that what I have to say may prove acceptable to your Lordships.
I support this Bill because it shows the determination of Her Majesty's Government to forge a closer union between science and technology—for this union of the two is nothing less than the interaction between theory and its practical application. It is when theory is tested in practice, and practical affairs are ordered on scientific principles, that the enduring enrichment of knowledge and of our material prosperity are both assured.
But in giving support to the Bill I desire to draw the attention of this House to the threat that exists, and, indeed, has existed for more than a hundred years, to this wedding of science and technology. Science is now regarded, I think, in our universities as a more or less respectable branch of learning, but the same cannot yet be said of its technological partner. For example, as your Lordships surely know, the output of graduate mechanical engineers fell by over 600 from 1960 to 1962. The number of graduate production engineers—and I emphasise the word "graduate"—passing out from our universities and our colleges of advanced technology in 1964 was a mere 64—no

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more. The White Paper, Cmnd. 2146, comments as follows:
"The number of technologists who qualified from all sources in 1961 was about 340 less than previously estimated, and the number qualifying in 1964 is likely to be 2,050 less than estimated … The reduction is likely to be particularly marked in the case of mechanical engineers."
One of the disastrous effects of this growing shortage of engineers is that the majority of posts in industry concerned with manufacturing method are filled with those who have not had the benefit of a university education. It is in this respect that we differ so markedly from our European competitors. It is easy to see why this gap exists. Production technology is one of the most applied of the disciplines. Important sections of our society still look down upon a man who employs his hands in using his mind, Our schoolmasters believe in the basic disciplines, and bias their pupils towards them. Our universities give low status to applied science, and industry too complacently tolerates the results. The same White Paper from which I have already quoted has this to say:
"This kind of intellectual discrimination against engineering is notably absent in European countries."
In 1945, plans were made to expand the number of scientists and technologists, but the professional humanists were once again successful, as they have been so often in the past, in arguing that the non-science departments in universities should be expanded to the same extent—not because more Arts graduates were necessarily required, but for the sanctimony of preserving the balance of the universities, whatever that phrase may really mean. Science and technology were to be kept in the same straitjacket as they were in before the war.
In 1956, the Ministry of Education, led by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, stepped into the picture, realising that the universities could not be expected to have that understanding of the national need that would strengthen their will to educate technologists in the required numbers. Ten technical colleges were taken over and became what are popularly known as Cats (colleges of advanced technology). Despite pressure from the universities which temporarily deprived these Cats not only of the title of "University" but
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also of the right to award degrees, or to appoint professors, progress was nevertheless quickly made. These colleges are to-day producing graduate technologists of a new kind who are of the very highest importance to industry. In 1963-64 their total student population had risen to something over 11, 000, of whom 8,700 were taking sandwich courses in some form of applied technology.
Up to the publication of the Robbins Report, the Cats were, unlike the universities, directly responsible to the Ministry of Education. But in accordance with the recommendations of that Report, they have since become responsible to the University Grants Committee. Now this move seems to have been the signal for a change in the pattern of behaviour of these Cats. I think the move contains within it the seeds of what might be an educational disaster; for it now seems clear that within three to five years seven of these Cats will have largely ceased to use the sandwich type of education, in which there are alternating periods of college teaching and practical experience. Under the pressure of this change of circumstances, these Cats are changing their attitude to their original educational objectives. This in spite of growing approbation from a wide section of industry about the results of these sandwich courses. Indeed, the D.S.I.R. Report on Engineering Design, sometimes referred to as the Feilden Report, has this to say:
"Our consideration of the various types of engineering education offered in this country and abroad has led us to conclude that what is known in Britain as the sandwich course is the most suitable preparation for a career as a professional engineering designer."
This predicted desertion of the sandwich course method indicates a drift away from science-linked technology towards the more basic science subjects at a time when our country needs a much higher proportion of technologists.
It was assumed that the U.G.C. would continue the policy of the Ministry of Education by giving due priority to the building up of these colleges which in most cases are still very much in an embryo stage. Apparently, however, this is not to be. There is little evidence in the recent mode of allocation of the sum of £33 million for new building space in 1966-67 by the U.G.C. that such priority has been given to technology. For example, in the case of Brunei, a college

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with which I must declare my association as chairman of the governing body, building plans for 1966-67 to cost £½ million had been discussed previously with the Ministry of Education, but the grant from the U.G.C., instead of £1½ million, has become £620, 000.
It would seem, as in years gone by, that all available arguments, however flimsy, are seized upon as a means of avoiding change in the traditional pattern of universities. For example, the existence of 1,000 vacant places for science and technology in our universities and Cats was used as an argument against the giving of adequate priority to further expansion in this area. Superficially, I think this made a sound and very good reason; but I put it to the House that it is a most dangerous argument. The current shortage of young people who desire to study technological science is a very serious national problem. There is a shortage of those who desire to do so. But this must be solved, and of that there is no question. Somehow technological work must be given higher status in the eyes of our society so that our youngsters are attracted by this sort of career. Technological universities cannot be developed quickly, but choice of careers by young men can change, or be influenced to change, overnight. When this change occurs, as it must and will, we shall again be short of places if we have not already provided the necessary facilities.
Our position in these matters relative to the U.S.A., Germany and Russia is not to-day a favourable one, but this is not a situation which has arrived upon us recently. It has been growing upon us for a century and I want to take, and I hope your Lordships will allow me, a brief look at this long history of neglect, in order to put the issue into somewhat sharper focus. Professor R. V. Jones of Aberdeen University, in a paper published in the Bulletin of the Institute of Physics, in April, 1962, has described this process with great clarity, and I propose to summarise his comments:
"First it has to be observed that it was the vigorous interaction of science and technology, and not science alone, which led to economic progress in the 19th century. For example, the first vacuum pumps were made by Von Guericke, who was stimulated by his failure to pump water to the top floor of his house. These pumps, developed by Boyle, led to the study of the behaviour of gases. Joule, of kinetic theory fame, was a brewer. James
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Watt was an instrument maker who became technician to the University of Glasgow. He formed a friendship with Black, then a lecturer, Black, stimulated by the Scottish distillers, originated the concepts of specific and latent heat."
In other words, during this period we had a brilliant band of technologists, Brunei among them, who without Government assistance built up our greatness to the peak of the 1851 Exhibition, at which we won nearly all the premier awards in most of the classes. These men—Watt was foremost among them, and I am happy to claim him as a fellow townsman of Greenock—literally provided the motive power for the Industrial Revolution and contributed more than anything else to Britain's recovery after the loss of America; and this is indeed a thought for us, my Lords, in this House to-day. Already, however, there were signs that we were lagging behind the Continent in technical education. The Ecole Polytechnique had been founded in Paris in 1794, and the Technische Hochschule in Berlin in 1799, and these were to form a pattern of education in applied technology in Europe which we have not been able to achieve in this country.
My Lords, the general complacency received a great shock in 1867 when Professor Playfair of Edinburgh University returned from the Paris Exhibition with the news that, out of 90 classes of goods exhibited there, Britain had achieved awards in fewer than a dozen. In his letter to The Times of May, 1867, he says:
"So far as I can gather by conversation the one cause on which there was most unanimity of conviction is that France, Prussia, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland possess good systems of industrial education for the masters and managers of factories and that England possesses none."
Later, in 1873, he wrote:
"… new professions are arising but for these our old universities make no provisions."
Playfair and others forced a Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction in 1871, and another on Technical Instruction in 1881, and much development was indeed stimulated. The Central Technical College, now Imperial College, was opened in 1884. Plans had been prepared to make it a full technical university, but, as in the case of the Cats eight years ago, the Government on that occasion refused co-operation and it did not become a university for many years.

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Technical colleges were started all over Britain; new university colleges with technological departments and bias were established in Newcastle, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Nottingham and Sheffield. Yet, despite the stimulus, technological education still failed to catch fire.
My Lords, where do we stand to-day? We have, rightly, given up our Empire, but by so doing we have lost our chief sources of raw materials and our easy markets. Now our standard of living is, as other noble Lords have pointed out, dependent upon our ability to equal and to surpass the technological advances of others. This Bill, with its emphasis on the union of science and technology, is a contribution to that end. But is it enough? It deals administratively with the deep-rooted problem of our failure to grasp the vital importance of technological and manufacturing activities in our society. We still suffer from the same impediments as those encountered in the last century, and these impediments are deeply embedded in the universities. Over the last hundred years they have failed to keep up with the times, to change sufficiently rapidly to meet the reasonable needs of the society which supports them.
How has this happened? Much of the answer to this question is to be found in the structure of our university system. Here we will find that the nation has abdicated; has given up its right, in the name of a false interpretation of academic freedom, to set any policy, however broad, within which it wishes our universities to teach. Let us first look at how society sets its policy in financing the universities—the function of the U.G.C. itself. The chairman of this body, in describing its function to a meeting of the chairmen and principals of the colleges of advanced technology last year, likened it to a "septic tank" whose function it was to decontaminate the flow of money from the Treasury to the universities. I think that description is, in fact, accurate.
Is it a state of affairs which is tolerable? I would suggest not. For whereas it admirably serves the continuing need of established academic activities, it does not allow for those major changes in the directions which require the active participation of society itself. Thus, apart
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from a small proportion of the financial grants by the Government to the universities which are specially earmarked, the universities are autonomous bodies. In our zeal to maintain academic freedom, we have invited the unfortunate consequences which Professor Jones has so ably described. We have confused individual academic freedom, which is a thing we must protect with our lives if necessary, with institutional academic freedom, which is a very different kettle of fish. By so doing we have sacrificed the authority to decide how many students we train in different disciplines.
It might be argued that the problem is not a serious one since most universities have councils with lay members in a majority and that the existence of these councils is protection against the dangers inherent in academic control. The Robbins Report comments as follows on the functions of these university councils:
"It is no part of their function to interfere in the business of internal academic organisation".
And again, later, the Robbins Report says:
"Decisions about, for example, the size of the university and of individual faculties are approved by council usually with very little discussion, on the recommendations of senate … such policy-making is thus essentially in the hands of the senior academic staff."
It might be argued that the Vice-Chancellor, who is appointed by the council, in most cases would normally be invested with the necessary authority to shape the policy of the university along viable lines. Unfortunately, it is unusual for Vice-Chancellors to have any defined authority, and again the Robbins Report has this to say:
"His is a rôle which, probably fortunately, is seldom precisely spelt out in written constitutions."
As I read that, I wondered—fortunately for whom? The Provost of King's College, Cambridge, told the Franks Committee recently—and I quote from a recent issue of the Guardian:
"It was extremely difficult to ask a great university to abolish its own powers of individual self-government but these powers prevented long-term planning. Adversely affected interests could get together to vote schemes down and it was generally difficult to get agreement on detailed schemes."
If, then, neither the Government nor the University Grants Committee nor the councils of the universities, nor the Vice-Chancellors, can decide on change, we

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are again in the hands of the senates of universities and the great networks of committees which these senates proliferate. Durham University, I know, two or three years ago had 70 such committees. This is the nub of the matter to which I wish to direct the attention of the House. Vital decisions about our system of education are being made or not made by interested parties, and J am using the term "interested parties" in the strictly legal sense. We have placed the senates of our universities in a grossly unfair position. They are in the position of syndicalists, and that is a position which precludes them from adopting that breadth of outlook which the nation now demands.
I therefore advocate the study by an appropriate body, perhaps under the aegis of the Ministry of Education and Science, of the organisational structure of universities and their relationships to central Government with a view to the introduction of such changes as will render them more quickly responsive to national economic priorities. Such a study would be a logical extension of the principle underlying the Bill before the House: the principle that Her Majesty's Government must be concerned in the whole field of science and technology. Because I strongly endorse this principle I, therefore, support the Bill.
5.15 p.m.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Brown, on the clarity of his maiden speech and his plea for the union of science and technology. The noble Lord is obviously a man who can apply his mind with equal skill both through his hands and through his tongue. He has indubitably proved by his speech how he has benefited from the discipline of a technological education. I would differ from him somewhat in his criticism of the governing bodies of the universities. He rather regarded us all as of the Oxford and Cambridge constitution. I would remind the noble Lord that the four ancient Scottish universities are governed by courts of about 20 to 25 members, of whom about half are academics and the rest are more—shall we say?—practical or technological persons. I would congratulate the noble Lord on his chairmanship of Brunnel College and wish him well in his chair-
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manship of the Advisory Council on Technology.
This Bill is a piece of useful administrative tidying up. The Committee of the Privy Council is an excellent device for fostering a new development, since it gives that degree of flexibility in administration which is essential to a new enterprise. The device has worked well with the Medical Research Council and with the Agricultural Research Council and, so far as I am competent to judge, it has been as successful with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. In this connection, I would support the points which were so clearly made by the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, and which derived from his great practical experience in these matters.
In view of the increasing importance of research, both scientific and technological research, as the basis for the material prosperity of the nation—or perhaps I should more correctly say, in view of the fact that we now more fully recognise the fundamental importance of such research—there is good reason for bringing together these diverse councils and agencies under two administrative umbrellas which can better explain and justify their actions than could the somewhat amorphous office of the Lord President of the Council. Increasing recognition of the importance of these Councils must mean increasing interest in their activities. Public interest in research work, while a good thing, has its dangers, since the public cannot be expected to be able to evaluate long-term research projects, and these are the very ones which will contribute the most to the ultimate wealth of the nation.
But bringing these under the control of a conventional Government Department is not without some danger. The noble Lord, Lord Champion, referred to the civil servants. This is especially so with a new Government Department into which there is always a danger that some of the less brilliant civil servants may conveniently be shunted. There is also the proclivity of certain civil servants themselves to attempt to control in some measure the direction of research. The same sort of thing is liable also to happen to the politician, but here the likelihood is not so great. The politician is usually in closer touch with reality and is usually without any personal aspiration to be considered as a scientific expert.

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There is, however, great temptation to both politician and civil servant, the more so to the civil servant, to use certain of the findings of research to further a preconceived policy and to gloss over equally important results which are not in accord with that policy. These dangers must be resisted, for if the political and Civil Service heads in combination preen themselves on their scientific knowledge, then great harm will certainly result. Accordingly. I would congratulate the Government on appointing as chairmen of two of the Councils such eminent scientists as Sir Harry Melville and Sir Graham Sutton.
Another danger is that of another Government Department office being located in London and drawing an ever tighter rein on the research prosecuted in the peripheries of the nation. It is to the everlasting credit of the Medical Research Council and of the Agricultural Research Council that the scientific activities they have supported and have sponsored are well distributed throughout the land. This is in no small measure due to their direction by scientists who have shown considerable administrative ability. The same cannot so confidently be said for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, though it would be unfair to condemn them. Their development at East Kilbride in Lanarkshire has fully justified what was regarded some twelve years ago as a somewhat hazardous adventure. We need much more of this kind of thing. Might I suggest that in the same way as Government Departments consult the Royal Society of London, so, as regards problems in Scotland, there should be similar discussion with the President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and also consultation with the Scottish Council for Development and Research?
Such technological research has been well described as the infrastructure of industrial expansion. At present too much of that infrastructure is in the South-East of England and too little in the North. The noble Lord, Lord Brown, has referred to the technological development of 150 years ago in Scotland, and especially in Greenock. There is no reason why that should not be brought back into life again with adequate opportunities for technological research in
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Scotland. In view of this and of the anticipated scarcity of office accommodation in and around London, is it ridiculous to suggest that this new Ministry of Technology should itself give the lead in this matter by getting itself located elsewhere—possibly in Manchester or even in Newcastle-upon-Tyne?
There is one last point I should wish to make—namely, that our universities, given the opportunities, have great capacity for research and experiment. When I say "universities" I mean universities and the technical colleges which are so rapidly becoming universities. They have great capacity for research, either in the seclusion of the university laboratories or, better still, in conjunction with specific industries and firms in their neighbourhood which are anxious to cooperate.
It is appreciated that the Research Councils must establish great institutes and that these may devour the greater part of the money available for research. Most of these great institutes—one thinks immediately of the Medical Research Council at Mill Hill and the Agricultural Research Council Institute at Aberdeen, the Rowett Institute—have fully justified their existence. But the wind of scientific genius blows waywardly, and those who are responsible for selecting the scientific staffs of these great institutes occasionally miss some genius who finds a job in a university; and, perhaps more occasionally, they also make a mistake and take on to the permanent establishment certain scientists who flowered some years ago when, on graduation, they achieved First-Class Honours and failed to develop further thereafter.
I would therefore conclude by making a plea that the possibilities of more research work being done at the universities should be ever to the forefront of the new Ministry. In the past, there has been much success in scientific discovery by the adoption of the sound military principle of "reinforcing success". I hope that this will be cardinal in the policy of the new Ministry. Anyhow, there is satisfaction in knowing that this plea for the encouragement of research at the universities falls on the receptive ears of the noble Lord, Lord Snow. Upon him falls the responsibility of shaping the course of this new enterprise, and I hope that his successors

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will be equally enlightened as to the part that the universities can play. I am sure we all wish him well in this venture.
5.25 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, when I came here this afternoon I had not intended to take part in this debate on the Bill which is before the House, because I have expressed my views on these problems in earlier debates, and it seemed to me that this was a Bill of a rather technical character, the objective of which is really to rearrange the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and other great organisations of that kind which provide the generalship in relation to scientific work in this country. These proposals have received the approval of the House, and certainly I am wholeheartedly in support of them.
What has brought me to my feet is the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Brown, which I found most interesting and quite stimulating, although I am afraid I disagree with a great deal of it. In effect, the noble Lord blames the universities of this country for the shortage of technologists. He made a forthright attack upon them. As one who has spent most of his working life in the service of a great university, I am naturally taken aback to some extent when I hear made an attack of this kind. I think it is right and proper that anyone who takes the view that the universities are in fact to blame should express his views about this matter.
I am quite sure, from my close knowledge of the organising bodies in the universities, the senates and the Vice-Chancellors and o: hers, that there is no body which would welcome more a really impartial investigation into the part which the university has been playing of recent years in regard to this problem of science and technology. There is no doubt at all—the noble Lord, Lord Snow, has emphasised this, as have many others—that recent figures of entrants into the technology departments in the universities, and indeed into the Cats, have been most disappointing, and it is quite natural that people like the noble Lord, Lord Brown, should look round for the causes of this. I think this is a really important exercise, because we have to find the cause of it if we are to keep our heads above water, I think he is making a mistake when he puts the blame on the universities. They
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are providing these places, but the boys and girls are not taking them up. It seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse to say that it is the fault of the universities. The places are there. They are not being taken up. The boys and girls make up their minds as to what they are going to do, before they come to the universities. It may well be that Lord Champion is right in saying that it is because of the influence of the teachers. I think that is an important element which needs to be looked into: that it is the schools rather than the universities. I am not sure that that is the whole secret, or even the most important element in the situation, but certainly it is a matter which must be looked at.
The failure of girls to go into this work is more evident in this country, I think, than in any other of the great industrial countries. Certainly, it is much more evident here than in the U.S.S.R. Anybody who has spent even a short time in the U.S.S.R. must have been struck by the great enthusiasm of women engineers and women technologists in that country, and by the way the Russians are able to take advantage of the fact that their women are receiving education and progressing in this way. There is no difficulty in finding places for women in the technological departments of our universities and in the Cats. The point is that they just do not apply; and we must find out why that is. Is it not the atmosphere of society, rather than what happens in the university, that provides the answer? I would be prepared to lay a bet with Lord Brown that he will find much more readiness in the universities than up and down the country to have both the girls and the boys joining in the work of the science and technological departments of the universities.
I should like to repeat a question which I put to the representative who spoke on these matters in the previous Government, and which I mentioned in the speech I made in this House just before Christmas. I expressed the hope that, as we now had a Labour Government, I should have an answer to my question; but the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, who was speaking on that occasion ignored the question, just as much as Lord Hailsham (as he then was) had ignored me in the past. This point has come into the debate this afternoon.

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One important consideration is the fact that the leaders of industry are not themselves technologists. Such men are rare, apart from those to be found in our outstanding business organisations, such as I.C.I., English Electric and one or two other companies. It is rare indeed to find a man with technological training and a science degree in the ranks of management in our industrial concerns. This is one of the most important reasons why many of our best young men who have technological or science degrees do not feel tempted to go into industry.
It has been pointed out that in this country engineers are not so highly regarded as they are in Germany, France, the U.S.S.R. and the United States. Why is this so? I feel that it is because, with the few exceptions I have mentioned, they are not welcomed into the managements of the great industrial concerns. If my noble friend Lord Snow meets the sort of young men that I meet, he must have found that they are frequently very frustrated. Often they are taken into industry because it has become the custom to employ a certain number of technologists, otherwise the firm might lose face with the industry round the corner. This means that these young men are unable to pull their weight. I am informed that the turnover in research establishments is astonishing. I have made this point before, but have never received an answer to it.
Do the Government know what is going on in this respect? Does Lord Snow know the turnover in a big research department of industry? We must find out why these young men are throwing up their jobs and going round from one department of industry to another, looking for somewhere where they will get a real chance to do a job—for that is what the want. I do not think that this difficulty is to be laid at the door of the universities. The malaise is much wider indeed; and until we find the cause of the malaise, and put it right, we shall not make that progress in industrial development which all of us realise is absolutely essential to the future of this country.
5.33 p.m.
LORD SAYE AND SELE: My Lords, I should like to add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Brown, on his
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maiden speech, and especially on the clarity and interest of his remarks on the day-to-day history of science which he gave us. I felt that that, at least, was not above my head. Before his speech, I felt that the House was listening to a "closed shop" affair and a "closed shop" debate. I wrote down on a scrap of paper a few letters of which I thought some of the technologists would be able afterwards to tell me the meaning. I will read them out. They were: M.R.C., A.R.C., C.S.I.R., L.R.D.C., A.E.A., U.G.C. I shall take them home with me, and possibly my wife will be able to help me But it is difficult for anybody who is not a technologist and who is not up in these matters to understand, even in this House, what all these initials mean. In fact, of course, I do know what they mean, but the organisations referred to are certainly not easy to identify.
I would not agree with Lord Brown in his criticism of the universities. I myself was not in one, but I live close to one and therefore meet a lot of the people in it. I find that they are very much looking for some movement forward. After all, at Oxford there is a suggestion that girls should come into one of the colleges. I do not think that it will be carried, but it is evidence of movement to the front. I would point out that the technical colleges in our part of the world—and I speak only for one county—are progressing in a most remarkable way. They are increasing in numbers, and the expense is going up hand over fist. I believe that in a few years' time those colleges will turn out the people required for the technological task.
5.37 p.m.
LORD SNOW: My Lords, we must adjourn just before six o'clock, so you will probably be relieved to hear that I do not propose to speak for any longer than the time which remains between now and then. Fortunately, there is no need for me to do so for, apart from the fact that the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, occasionally trailed his political coat, there is not to-day a great deal of argument on either side of the House.
I think your Lordships would like me to express our congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Brown, upon a most

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interesting maiden speech, with a good deal of which most of us would agree and with some of which we shall probably slightly disagree. He reminded me of one of my favourite stories of 19th-century Cambridge, for the history of university reform has not been one of singular and staggering success, or, at least, of singular and staggering good sense on all sides. The proposal was that the Cavendish Laboratory should be established—not, to most of us, anything which would seem very revolutionary; but in 19th century Cambridge this was regarded as almost worse than abolishing the University altogether. The Master of Sidney Sussex College delivered himself of the following phrase:
"Englishmen are Englishmen and Prussians are Prussians, and this will be so until the end of the world."
This was his most convincing argument against the foundation of the Cavendish Laboratory. And I am afraid that to do anything with institutions of a university nature without causing either intolerable friction, on the one side, or loss to society, on the other, is going to take all our wits.
This is not our main concern at the moment, but it is a very important concern with which the Department of Education and Science is wresting every day of its life, and about which most sensible and responsible people are becoming increasingly concerned. I think the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, realises that he is preaching to the converted when he suggests that we ought to use all the influence we have to bring research contracts to universities. That is absolutely accepted. If I may add just one word of gloss on that, I am not the former Rector of St. Andrew's for nothing, and I should like to see much more of this go to Scotland.
However, what are we really talking about to-day? Obviously, technological education is a vital part of all this. But it is only one part in the major task, which, quite simply, is ensuring that we can revive this country's industries. I entirely agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, in his Dr. Jekyll mood, that in fact it is absolutely important here to be as hard-headed and practical as we can make ourselves. This is our intention. We genuinely believe in tech-
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nology, and technology is our best hope of practical economic salvation. This we believe. We are being as empirical about the matter as we possibly can. The noble Viscount, I think, is not quite so empirical because his normal good sense is sometimes distorted by the force of his political fervour. It is very important to be empirical on both sides of the House, because suspicion begets suspicion and we shall not do any good unless both sides approach this problem as free as possible from any ideological preconceptions; and remember, my Lords, that Conservatives can have ideological preconceptions, too. It is an illusion to think that ideology belongs on only one side of this House.
Therefore, we decided to be practical. It was with that intention that we instituted the Ministry of Technology. It seemed to us the best method—not necessarily the only method—by which we could inject our faith in technology into the whole of the national system. There could, of course, be other methods, but particular times often require their particular administrative and organisational forms. In 1940 it was almost certainly right to have the Ministry of Aircraft Production, not only for practical reasons, but in order to point to the whole society what had to be done. In just the same way, we felt, after thinking of all kinds of alternatives, with technology so underrated in our economy, with all the problems that the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, has mentioned, that it was vital to make it absolutely clear that we stood by technology as a major concern.
I do not believe that this would, in fact, have been achieved by having a Minister of State in another Government Department. The noble Viscount should know that a Minister of Cabinet rank can carry the imperators of technology with very much greater force than any junior Minister. This fact was weighed up. It could have been done in several different ways, but we felt that we had to have a Minister of Cabinet rank and a Department concerned with the spreading of technology wherever technology was necessary. Of course, we know that technology does not exist by itself. It is only living where it can be got into the users' hands. Of course that is true. But this was a cold and considered decision. There could have been other possible

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solutions, but looking back over the last three months I am increasingly certain that it was the right one. I wish I could give noble Lords one important indication why I am almost certain that it was the right one, but that I shall have to reserve for my memoirs.
Therefore, my Lords, I suggest that we leave this particular discussion of whether or not the Ministry of Technology should have been set up. I think the discussion has now gone as far as is useful. The Ministry has been set up and we have got to live with it, and I suspect that any further discussion on this is quite unprofitable. With your Lordships' permission then, I should like to deal with certain detailed points which I think I can cope with fairly quickly.
The noble Viscount, speaking as Dr. Jekyll, was, in fact, concerned about the status of engineers, and here I am glad to welcome all that he said. He knows that I have shared his concern for many years. It is vital that we should be able to give engineers that professional standing and social respect which they have in most advanced societies; which they have all over Western Europe, in the Soviet Union and in the United States. This we must do. In fact, one of our first tasks was to set up what is called, in the horrible jargon of the trade, a study group, to think of all the possible causes of this relative lack of respect for engineers in our country, and the kind of methods which we could use to improve the situation. One of the difficulties was pointed out by the nobie Lord, Lord Chorley. I am afraid that I cannot give him any comfort, except to say that we all know that certain industries, or parts of industry, are not good at using the technologists which they get.
It is not easy to deal with this kind of personal problem. There is no perfect way of using engineers and scientists, and it is only the best firms which make a really good shot at it. But we believe that the use of engineers can be radically improved if we devote a certain amount of analytical thought to the matter, and if we try to spread into parts of industry not used to the employment of real professionals the kind of skills which advanced industries already know something, though not enough, about. This I believe we can do fairly fast. The remainder of the methods which we are
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trying to think of to improve the status of engineers I need not detain your Lordships about for long. Pay is obviously one factor in certain parts of the professional world, and there is also social recognition. All this is being studied.
VISCOUNT CALDECOTE: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, could he answer the specific question whether particular attention is being directed to the status of the engineer in the Civil Service?
LORD SNOW: My Lords, that is part of the survey. I should perhaps be going further than I ought if I said "particular attention", but it is part of the survey. The noble Viscount, in his Hyde mood, made some remarks about profits. Of course, we want industry to make profits. What kind of people does he think we are? The only important thing is that the national wealth should be increased. After we have increased the national wealth, it is perfectly reasonable for the entire country to decide how that wealth should be distributed. But, of course, we must first get the wealth.
I should have thought that this was a case where suspicion had run away with the noble Viscount, as in one or two of his subsidiary points, for in fact any empirically minded men are concerned with the fact that this country is not only doing fairly badly but is getting rapidly worse. This we cannot face. We see no reason why we should not make a fairly rapid recovery, but unless we do then everyone here knows that we are in for serious trouble; and there probably comes a point where the position is irreversible. We are not anywhere like that yet, but here we have to abolish suspicions, to be empirical, and to see that the wealth is made. As I say, the arguments as to distribution can come later. The first thing is to increase the national wealth.
In the course of his Hyde exercise, the noble Viscount was very worried about the Atomic Energy Authority, and about certain extremely innocent provisions which have been put at their request into this Bill. I have exactly five minutes left, and I think I can just manage to deal with this. This is very simple. The Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell, and various other of its research laboratories, have some of the best and the most

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highly-powered scientific research teams in the world. In the course of their work on atomic energy projects, certain other things tend to get thrown up, just by chance. For instance, they have to be extremely skilled at certain sorts of minor instrumentation, microscopic instrumentation. They get interested in desalination through atomic power plants, and they get interested in desalination through other methods. This is what, again in this horrible jargon, is called "fall-out"—something that happens as an accidental result of what you are doing.
The Atomic Energy Authority, the day we took office, asked to see us and said, "This could be commercially very valuable, because we can carry some of these projects quite a long way, using such skills as we have got and such people as we have got, and in fact it would be wasteful if you did not use these assembled, working teams." Again we agree, but, of course, in general we wish to distribute the talent which is concentrated in some of these establishments into industry. But it is absurd not to use working teams—happy, having good things to make which can be of commercial profit. It is quite absurd to break their morale and not use them if they wish so to be used.
VISCOUNT CALDECOTE: My Lords, I do not want to interrupt the noble Lord because I know he is short of time, but the point I was trying to make was that these people and these skills could be better used in industry for exports. The question is, not whether they can do useful and interesting work and enjoy it, but whether they can make the most contribution to exports in a Government establishment or in industry—and our view is that it would be in industry.
LORD SNOW: That, I am afraid, is a matter on which there is a real division of opinion. The Atomic Energy people themselves are quite convinced they are better used in carrying these things through to an early stage of development. Nobody thinks they are going to make these things: they are going to carry them through to what is prototype development. They have already carried certain projects so far so that we can see our way to a substantial commercial profit when they are finally "farmed out"—and on this the professional advice was unanimous.
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The second and very tedious thing, I am afraid, for most of your Lordships, is the status of the scientists at N.I.R.N.S.—another of those words which the noble Lord, Lord Saye and Sele, objects to, and very reasonably so: I hate to speak this language. This is irrelevant, but it has not been taken lightly. The problem is simply this: the people at N.I.R.N.S. come under a Science Research Council. Those already in employment carry on with their existing pension rights, and so on. The new entrants, it has been decided by the Department of Education and Science, should come in on the same terms as people going to other Research Councils. Either way, you get it wrong. If you bring them in on the same terms as in other Research Councils, they are on slightly different pension arrangements from their older colleagues in N.I.R.N.S.: on the other hand, if you bring them in at the same rate as their older colleagues in N.I.R.N.S., they are on different terms from those of identical people employed by other Research Councils.
This has been threshed out, to my certain knowledge, twice by the last Secretary of State for Education and Science, and once by the new incumbent, my right honourable friend Mr. Crosland. We are distressed that this dilemma should have arisen, but, nevertheless, we feel that this decision, for the moment, at least, is the right one. But I can throw out one ray of hope. We are at the moment seriously looking into the whole pension system of the Civil Service, these para-Civil Service organisations, universities and industry in order to produce the maximum mobility between all these four, and we therefore believe that probably this will not be such a serious problem in, perhaps, a year's time.
I think, my Lords, I shall now have to sit down, as we must adjourn for the Royal Commission.
House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

ROYAL COMMISSION
6.0 p.m.
The following Bill received the Royal Assent:
Consolidated Fund.
House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BILL
6.15 p.m.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

SUPERANNUATION (AMENDMENT) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read la, and to be printed.

REMUNERATION OF TEACHERS BILL
6.16 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 Merthyr in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Committees to consider remuneration of teachers]:
LORD COLYTON LORD COLYTON moved to leave out subsection (3) and to insert instead:
" (3) The Secretary of State shall determine the bodies to which paragraph (b) of subsection (1) of this section applies which are to be represented on each committee constituted under this section, and the number of persons by whom any such body is to be so represented.
(4) The bodies to which paragraph (c) of subsection (1) of this section applies are as set out in the Schedule to this Act and the Secretary of State shall determine the number of persons by whom any such body is to be represented.
(5) If the Secretary of State considers it appropriate after consulting the Committee mentioned in this section or if he shall receive representations from any of the bodies mentioned in the Schedule to this Act he may by Order made by statutory instrument and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament

(a) add any new body to those already set out in the said Schedule and determine the number of persons by whom any such body shall be represented.

(b) vary the number of persons by whom any body mentioned in the said Schedule
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shall be represented or revoke the representation of any such body."

The noble Lord said: In moving this Amendment, I venture to suggest that we might at the same time discuss the new Schedule proposed to be inserted after Clause 9. As your Lordships are aware, the Remuneration of Teachers Bill is a most important measure, designed to introduce a number of improvements into the old Burnham negotiating system. The Bill was welcomed in all parts of another place on its introduction, and it was welcomed in your Lordships' House on Second Reading—with the exception of Clause 1 (3), on which there was some criticism.
The object of this Amendment and of the new Schedule, which of course have no Party political character at all, is to remedy a serious defect which found its way into the Bill at a very late stage, and the implications of which, I venture to suggest, were not fully appreciated in another place when the Amendments were accepted. I refer to the arbitrary power given to the Secretary of State by Clause 1 (3), not only to determine which bodies are to be represented on every committee but also to vary or revoke the representation on the committee.
Under Section 89 of the Education Act, 1944, the then Minister of Education was given the power to approve the relevant committees consisting of persons appointed by the bodies representing the local education authorities and teachers respectively. It has been stated that this section gave the Minister power not only to approve the appointment of representatives of the teachers, but also to revoke such appointments. Whether this be so or not, the fact remains that no Minister or Secretary of State for Education has ever, until now, sought either to exercise, or even to claim, these powers.
When the present Bill was introduced in November, Clause 1 (3) of the Bill, as it then stood, provided that all committees should be approved by the Secretary of State as appearing to him to represent teachers or particular descriptions of teachers, but again it contained no provision for revocation. The latter provision, as I have already said, was introduced in another place in a series of Amendments put forward on Report stage.
The express insertion of a power to revoke the membership of the committee of one or more of the teachers associations has caused a great deal of anxiety, particularly in the National Association of Schoolmasters, with its 35, 000 members. The noble Lord, Lord Bowden, in his speech on Second Reading on January 21, expressed the view that it must be possible for the Secretary of State, in the long run, to determine not only the numbers, but also the method by which membership of a committee could be denied to a body which ceased to have a substantial number of members. I feel bound to accept the view that some provision of this sort must be made for revocation or for the removal of teachers' associations from the committees. If, for example, an association were to be merged with another, or were to be dissolved or to go bankrupt, there must be some provision for removing that association from the committees. At the same time, I think there is the strongest possible objection to leaving this action to be taken arbitrarily by the Secretary of State, as the Bill at present does, by his own executive act alone.
The Minister of State, replying for the Government in another place on the Report stage on December 22, said that it would be wrong to think that there was any great issue of principle involved. I submit that there is an important principle here, and for one very good reason. Whatever may have been the position of the 1944 Act in regard to the Minister's powers of revocation, the position is now entirely changed by the fact that he is himself for the first time to be represented on the negotiating committee on the employers' side. If the Secretary of State were therefore to be allowed by his sole executive act to remove one of the associations representing the teachers from the committee, it would put him in the position of being both plaintiff and judge in his own cause. It would also, I suggest, be contrary to basic trade union principles that one of the employers' representatives should, by his own act, be able to remove one of the employees' associations from the negotiating body. This is also, I suggest, contrary to the provisions of the International Labour Organisation Conventions, 87, Article 3, and 98, Article 2, both of which forbid interference by workers'
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and employers' organisations with each other's agents or members.
If, however, we accept that some power of altering or revoking membership of the committee on the teachers' side has to be embodied in the Act, some means must be found of doing so without contravening these principles to which I have just referred. It would have been possible, I suppose, to provide for the submission of the matter to arbitration, as in the case of disagreement over the remuneration of teachers. But this, in my view, would have been both unsuitable and inconvenient. The best way of solving the problem, therefore, appears to be to leave the power in the hands of the Secretary of State but to require that any addition, alteration or revocation made by him should be effected only by a statutory instrument, and then with the approval of a resolution of each House of Parliament. In this way the interests of the teachers' associations would be fully safeguarded: Parliament would have the last word. This is a solution which I have embodied in my Amendment, and I hope that it may commend itself to your Lordships.
I should like to emphasise that this Amendment makes no attempt to deal with the controversial question of the numbers of representatives of the teachers' associations on the various committees, a matter on which, nevertheless, the National Association of Schoolmasters hold strong views. The Secretary of State has sought to reach agreement between the various teachers' associations with regard to numbers of their representatives, and, having failed to reach agreement, has decided that in order to speed up the introduction of the new machinery the number of representatives and the bodies they represent should be left as at present. For this reason, I have included in the Schedule proposed under these Amendments a list of teachers' associations at present represented on the committees. We have to start from some basis. At the same time, the question of numbers will no doubt be one for early discussion between the Secretary of State and the various bodies concerned soon after the new machinery enters into force.
I have given much thought to the drafting of these Amendments, and I have taken the opportunity to consult a number of sources closely concerned in this

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matter. I very much hope that the form in which the Amendments have finally been drafted will commend itself, not only to the teachers' associations, but also to this Committee of your Lordships' House and to the Secretary of State, and that the Government may feel able to accept them.
Apart from all other considerations, I feel that there are important issues involved here which should be referred back to the other place for consideration before the final decision is taken, since—and I should like to emphasise this point—they were never at any time discussed at any stage of the proceedings in the other place in relation to the factors to which I have referred this evening. The controversial issues to which this subsection has given rise have all arisen since the Bill was passed in another place. I regard it as of the utmost importance that before the measure finally becomes law the elected representatives of the people should have an opportunity of reviewing the matter further. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 25, leave out subsection (3) and insert the said subsections.—(Lord Colyton.)
LORD AMULREE: I have listened carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Colyton, has said, and I think he has put forward a very reasoned case for this Amendment. I do not want to take up a great deal of your Lordships' time in repeating what the noble Lord has said, and I rise merely to express the hope that the noble Lord who is to reply for the Government will give the Amendment favourable consideration and will approve it.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: I was glad to support the noble Lord, Lord Colyton, in this Amendment. The National Association of Schoolmasters feel very genuine alarm and concern at their present position under the Bill now before the Committee. They are the second largest of the professional unions and represent a particular point of view, that of the male schoolmaster, They are not always in agreement with the National Union of Teachers and they have had something of a struggle to obtain a proper recognition for their point of view. It occurs to me that had
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they been a body representing the particular interest of women teachers we should have had a very strong case indeed. There would have been appeals to our chivalry and for the principles of sex equality. But chivalry bears a double-edged sword, and sex equality is still equal. I feel that your Lordships will be moved by the plea of this Union, which now asks for your Lordships' protection from dangers which may be unreal but which they feel to be very real indeed.
6.30 p.m.
LORD BOWLES: May I commence my speech by offering to your Lordships an apology from my noble friend Lord Bowden, who is away and has not been able to get back for the Committee stage of this Bill? When we debated this Bill on Second Reading two weeks ago, the noble Lord, Lord Colyton, gave it a general welcome, but went on to give notice in a most reasonable way of his intention to move an Amendment such as the one he has now tabled jointly with the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, and has explained to us this evening. On that earlier occasion he also referred very kindly to my maiden speech in your Lordships' House and to our service together in another place. I am grateful to him for his courtesy and his care in all this, and I shall do my best to continue the debate on that level.
Before I come to the more technical aspects of the Amendment, there are a few more general matters that I should like to bring to your Lordships' attention because I believe them to be very relevant. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, who was persuaded by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Colyton, will listen to the arguments against, because they are rather important. I feel that a good deal of emotion has been injected into this matter. The noble Lord, Lord Colyton, said just now that there was criticism in another place at the Report stage. I have no record of that, and I do not know whether he has. It has all been stirred up since the New Year started.
First—and I make no apology for repeating this, although my noble friend Lord Bowden has already stressed it—the Secretary of State has no desire whatever to dictate to the teachers, or to the local authority associations, how they

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should be represented on the negotiating committees to be established under this Bill. That was made clear to the teachers when my right honourable friend who is now the Foreign Secretary first met them in this connection within a few weeks of taking office, and it stands. But we must recognise that the different associations may fail to agree among themselves—and your Lordships know that on this occasion the teachers' associations have failed to agree—and we must provide in that event for someone to take the necessary decisions if negotiations are not to be frustrated before they have even begun. As the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said in our debate on Second Reading [Official Report, Vol. 262 (No. 30), col. 1035, January 21, 1965]:
"the Minister is the only person who can do so"—
but he does so with the utmost reluctance, and not through any lust for power.
Next I should like to take up some of the points made at Second Reading by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, particularly those in which he quoted criticisms which he made of the manner in which Clause 1 was amended at Report stage in another place. This is relevant to our present business, for the Amendments now before your Lordships—and we are taking them together; I quite agree with the noble Lord, Lord Colyton, that both his Amendments should be considered together—are in a sense in response to those Amendments in another place. The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, was good enough to say that the charge against the Government appeared to be one of "a little inept handling" rather than of bad faith, but if your Lordships will allow me to devote a few minutes to this aspect of the matter I shall show that even the minor charge is groundless.
The criticisms start from the premise that the Government Amendments to Clause 1 were designed to give the Secretary of State a new and not previously intended power to vary the composition of a negotiating committee at any time after its initial establishment under the Bill. But, in his speech introducing the Bill on Second Reading in another place on November 20 last, the Secretary of State said plainly:
"I said that there would be two sides or panels, a teachers' panel and a management panel … The actual form of that panel, and, indeed, of the teachers' panel, is left
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nominally in Clause 1 to the discretion of the Secretary of State.'—[Official Report, Commons, Vol. 702 (No. 17), col. 788.]
I really find it hard to believe, from those words and from the form of Clause 1 as it stood at that time, that the Secretary of State intended, and that the interested associations intended or understood, that the negotiating committees would have to stand immutable for all time as he first determined them because he would have no subsequent power to vary them. Any association that took that view and acquiesced in it would have precluded any hope of increasing their own representation if their strength within the teaching profession increased in future, yet no one raised the point in debate. I think the only possible conclusion is that all concerned took for granted that Clause 1 enabled the Secretary of State not only to determine the composition of the committees initially, but also to vary their composition subsequently.
As your Lordships will recall from my speech here a fortnight ago, one of the local authority associations subsequently queried whether, as drafted, the Bill did in fact give the Secretary of State power to vary his initial determination of the composition of a negotiating committee, and suggested that the power to amend should be written explicitly into the clause. That was the difference. I am not quite certain, but I have some little feeling in the back of my mind that the draftsman does not think it has made any difference at all. The words added, I think, were "or revoke". Evidently that association was in no doubt as to the intention. The Secretary of State, on legal advice, tabled the Amendments necessary to clarify the point beyond doubt. It has been said, and was said by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, in his second argument, that he did so at the last minute. This rather suggests that all the time this has been a trick by the Secretary of State in another place, and I resent that suggestion. The fact is that he did so at the very earliest opportunity. The local authority association's query was received on the same day, December 1, that Clause 1 was discussed, amended and ordered to stand part of the Bill in Standing Committee. Nothing could then be done until the Report stage; and the necessary Amendments were accordingly tabled on December 15 and discussed and adopted on

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December 22. I can find nothing sinister in that.
Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, put it to your Lordships that the Government failed to mention to the representatives of the National Association of Schoolmasters that they were about to table these Amendments. Nor, for that matter, did they tell any other of the interested parties except, as a necessary courtesy, the local authority association which had raised the point in the first place. That is the measure of the small importance of the Amendments. It happened by coincidence—as a stage in an entirely different sequence of events—that the Secretary of State received a deputation from the National Association of Schoolmasters to discuss the size of their representation on the negotiating committee on the same day, December 15, on which the Amendments were tabled. In that meeting the Secretary of State confirmed to the Association his intention to leave the present composition (which gives the Association two representatives) unchanged during the forthcoming negotiation, since he saw no other way of getting the negotiation started quickly. But he assured them (and subsequently confirmed in a letter to all the associations) that the question could be reopened after the conclusion of that negotiation.
Here I should like to repeat to your Lordships, as a new Secretary of State has now succeeded to that post, that my right honourable friend has reached no determination as to how the teachers' panel should necessarily be composed in later years, and will be ready to consider any representations made to him once the first negotiation has been completed. The Association were naturally disappointed to be offered only two seats at once, but they welcomed the assurance I have quoted. Even at that stage—when the possibility of changing the composition of the negotiating committee at some future date was explicitly under discussion—no one questioned the obvious implication that the Secretary of State must have power to make the kind of change that they were envisaging. It is hardly surprising that it did not occur to the Secretary of State either to mention that he was taking steps to clarify beyond doubt the very power that
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the Association were taking for granted and from which they hoped to benefit.
I submit that the criticisms made of the Government on this matter in the early weeks of this year—because that is when they started—were without foundation, and I hope that controversy is now ended. But I thought it necessary, both in response to what the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, said in our debate here on Second Reading and in fairness to my right honourable friend who was the Secretary of State at the time of these events, to give your Lordships the facts that I have just outlined. Now I must turn more closely to the Amendments themselves.
Noble Lords who do not have the resources of Government at their disposal are always in some difficulty in drafting Amendments—as those of us who have taken part in active politics for many years, particularly in matters as complex as this, know—and I should like to compliment the noble Lord, Lord Colyton, and the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, on the skill with which they have conveyed their intentions to your Lordships. They will not, I am sure, be surprised to learn that certain defects have been detected in their drafting. But I am equally sure that they would prefer me to deal with their intentions, rather than their drafting, and that is what I propose to do. I always used to do that in the old days, and thought that Ministers taking little drafting points were avoiding the main issues; and that I do not intend to do to-day.
In broad terms, the Amendment would oblige the Secretary of State to seek the approval of Parliament, by Affirmative Resolution in each House, for changes that he proposed to make in the representation of teachers on the negotiating committees to be established under the Bill. There are, of course, no established principles by which to determine when this Affirmative Resolution procedure should be employed and when the Negative Resolution procedure should be employed. This is for Parliament to decide in each case, but I submit that the proposal to apply it here seems wholly disproportionate. I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Colyton, mentioned anything about Affirmative Resolutions in his speech—
LORD COLYTON: Yes I did.
LORD BOWLES: I must have missed it. I must have been taking down notes on something else which, to my mind, was wrong.
What I was about to say was that Orders changing the representation of teachers would have no effect upon the general law or the freedom or rights of the public at large, but would be of the very narrowest application. Moreover, an Order subject to the Affirmative Resolution procedure can have no effect until time has been found in both Houses of Parliament to consider and vote upon it. This means that even non-contentious changes might be delayed for very long periods, particularly if Parliament were in Recess.
The Affirmative Resolution procedure seems particularly inappropriate as a means of making alterations to a Schedule which specifies teachers' associations by name. Since trade unions may disappear or become insignificant, or may amalgamate with others, or simply change their names, the procedure for amending any Schedule specifying them, if this had to be done, ought surely to be kept as simple as possible and not go through this paraphernalia of Affirmative Resolution procedure in both Houses of Parliament. This is a point which I feel should be brought out very emphatically.
Next, your Lordships will observe that the Amendments deal only with the representation of teachers and make no parallel provision relating to the representation of the local authority associations and other bodies to which paragraph (b) of Clause 1 (1) applies. I can see no evident reason why the bodies which represent the employers of the teachers and the interests of the management of the schools should be given any less protection, if protection is thought to be necessary, than is proposed for the teachers' associations.
Moreover, the degree of protection offered to the teachers' associations by the Amendments is incomplete. I hope your Lordships will see why. The Amendments would enable Parliament to veto the Secretary of State's intention to add a new body to the Schedule, to remove a body from a committee, or to change the numerical representation of a body after the initial determination. But the Secretary of State could still, without
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reference to Parliament, exclude any body named in the Schedule from any committee at the initial determination. Moreover, Parliamentary control provided by the Amendments would be entirely negative: to veto the Secretary of State's intended action in certain circumstances, but never to impose upon him the action Parliament considered desirable. Thus, the Secretary of State would still be free to decline to add any body either to the Schedule or to a committee, to decline to remove a body from a committee or to decline to vary a body's numerical representation, and the Amendments would be of no assistance to those who disagreed with him.
I submit to your Lordships that these Amendments are mistaken in their suggestion that Ministers have to be made accountable to Parliament by requiring their administrative action to be carried out through statutory instruments made subject to Parliamentary procedure, After all, most of the changes to be made in the constitution of these committees in the future will be of a routine and non-contentious nature; and it is unnecessary and inappropriate to provide a Parliamentary procedure to govern such changes. Parliament's critical faculty should not be blunted by such use, but rather reserved for the exceptional case that may raise important and controversial questions. In those circumstances, whether or not a statutory instrument is involved, occasion will always be found to oblige Ministers whose actions are raising doubts in the minds of Members of Parliament to explain and justify themselves through Question, Answer and debate. Moreover, because it is as effective against a Minister's failure to act as against his intended action, this more general, constitutional accountability of Ministers to Parliament is much more complete than any proposed in the Amendments.
The noble Lord, Lord Colyton, referred to the slightly altered situation where the Minister is now a member of a negotiating committee and I think I ought to try to deal with the argument. The argument that control by Parliamentary Resolution of the composition of the negotiating committee is all the more necessary when the Secretary of State is himself a party to the negotiation, since he might otherwise use his power over its composition to diminish

1315
or exclude an awkward opponent, cannot be accepted. It is not unusual for Ministers to be required to act impartially in one capacity in matters in which, in another capacity or at a different stage, they must take an active part. Parliament assumes that Ministers will act fairly in such circumstances, and any Minister who incurred the suspicion that his impartiality was being affected by his departmental interest would be called to account in Parliament very quickly indeed.
During the Second Reading debate the noble Lord, Lord Colyton, suggested that Clause 1 of the Bill, as it stands, contravenes certain Conventions of the International Labour Organisation. I have now been able to consider this point and am satisfied that there is no substance in it. Even if there were, the Amendments would hardly repair the defect, for an interference by the Secretary of State in the teachers' affairs would still be an interference even when supported by Parliamentary Resolutions. The noble Lord suggested that subsection (3) of Clause 1 of the Bill contravenes Convention 87, Article 3, and Convention 98, Article 4, of the International Labour Organisation. As I have said, having considered this point I am satisfied that there is no substance in it—another bad argument that the noble Lord has used.
The first Convention deals with freedom of association and protection of the right to organise, and Article 3 safeguards both the rights of workers and employers' organisations to draw up their constitutions and rules, to elect their representatives in full freedom, to organise their administration and activities and to formulate their programmes. It also requires public authorities to refrain from any interference with the exercise of these rights. The Bill leaves unaffected the rights in question of the organisations, representing both teachers and employers, and there is therefore No 1nfringement of the Article. Convention 98, Article 4, requires that appropriate measures shall be taken to encourage and promote the full development and utilisation of machinery for voluntary negotiation with a view to the regulation of terms and conditions of employment by collective agreement. It applies, however, only when such measures are necessary, and as the purpose of the machinery to be
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established under the Bill is to settle the terms and conditions of employment of teachers, the Article has no application: no further measures are necessary to achieve the purpose of the Article. Certainly there is no contravention of it.
Several features of this Bill and of the arrangements already announced for its administration demonstrate that the Secretary of State is entering the new machinery in a co-operative and not a dictatorial frame of mind. He is accepting a statutory obligation to implement agreed settlements and arbitrated settlements, subject only to the overriding decision of Parliament. Noble Lords will remember that if the economic state of the nation makes impossible or undesirable the implementation of the award, then Parliament overrides the Minister. He is accepting a minority position within the joint management side. I believe that the significance of these features has been understood and appreciated both in your Lordships' House and beyond.
There are other sectors of the machinery where someone has to act decisively if the proceedings are not to be frustrated, and it has been thought right to vest this power in the Secretary of State. Clause 3 of the Bill, for example, empowers the Secretary of State, after consultation, to make arrangements under which matters on which a negotiating committee has disagreed can be referred to arbitration; and your Lordships are not, I think, challenging this, although it is surely of greater importance than the matters affected by the Amendments. No case has been made out for subjecting the Secretary of State's responsibility and judgment in the matter of the composition of the teachers' panels to any more explicit control than Parliament already constitutionally exercises over the whole field of its administration.
An argument is often used to justify the continued existence of your Lordships' House, and that is that it is a good revising Chamber which improves Bills sent from the other place. To pass these Amendments would spoil a good Bill and could tarnish your Lordships' reputation for wise revision. I therefore oppose the Amendments on behalf of the Government and invite the noble Lord, Lord Colyton and the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, to withdraw their Amendments.
6.51 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE: My noble friend Lord Colyton moved this Amendment with his usual persuasive charm, and the National Association of Schoolmasters I think deserve congratulation on the way in which they have kept us informed of their case. But, much as I dislike disagreeing with my noble friend, I find myself unable to support his Amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Bowles, has made a powerful case against it, and I do not think I need go into any great detail. We believe that it is better that the Bill remain as it is, as it only spells out the situation that has existed for many years in the past. Under the previous arrangements the Secretary of State had the power to determine which bodies should be represented on the old Burnham Committee and to vary those bodies or the number of people representing them. It was, I think, most unfortunate that at a very late stage in the proceedings in another place the Secretary of State introduced the Amendment that spelt out these powers in greater detail, although it did not seem to be otherwise necessary and it has caused a great deal of alarm. Up till then the Minister's powers had not been in dispute. I think we should remember also that it is only because the teachers' organisations are unable to agree among themselves that the Secretary of State has to wield these powers. He would obviously prefer that they should make up their own minds, but in view of the fact that they cannot, or will not, he has to assume this responsibility.
It is because he is ultimately responsible for the working of the whole of the system for the remuneration of teachers that we believe that the responsibility should be finally left with him, and to hedge this responsibility around with the provision of an Affirmative Resolution of each House is to introduce unnecessary complications. This type of Parliamentary procedure is suitable for use only on rare occasions, and I do not believe this is one. The noble Lord, Lord Bowles made some very powerful arguments against it. Moreover, any Minister's decision can always be challenged in Parliament, and no doubt were he to use in an arbitrary or unfair way the power he has under this Bill, his actions would very soon be questioned. To sum up, we
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believe that the powers of the Secretary of State should be left as they are in the Bill and that his decisions should not be subject to the Affirmative Resolution procedure, as suggested in this Amendment. I hope that after the arguments that have been heard from both sides of the House my noble friend will withdraw his Amendment; but if he will not, I hope your Lordships will not accept it.
LORD COLYTON: I have listened with great care to all the noble Lord, Lord Bowles, has said in reply to my arguments. I am not satisfied that he has really answered the cardinal point of the argument, which is that the Secretary of State's position now is entirely different from what it was under the 1944 Act, when those previous powers did or did not exist. I am not satisfied with the answer given to me by the Minister. He has sought to explain that the Secretary of State's general accountability to Parliament should be sufficient to cover the anxieties of the member bodies of the teacher associations. I am not satisfied that is so. He also sought to suggest, as did my noble friend Lord Aberdare, that the Affirmative Procedure was unduly cumbrous for a matter of this sort. That is perhaps possible.
The Minister made a number of points some of them of a rather technical character, in regard to the Amendments, which I should have to study with greater care and to which I do not feel able to reply at this moment. He also made an important point, which was that there was no provision in my Amendments to deal with the position of the employers' association. The reason I do not think that is necessary is that the Secretary of State is himself one of the employers; he is there in the position of an employer and I do not think that the employers' association need any protection from him. I am thinking in my Amendment of the employees.
LORD BOWLES: The noble Lord will of course remember that the Minister is in a minority of the employing panel on the negotiating committee, and therefore it is rather relevant.
LORD COLYTON: I quite understand, What I would suggest and what I propose to do is this: I think at this hour of the evening, with a rather thin House,

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it would perhaps not be the best thing to press this matter to a Division now. What I should like to do is to look at the matter again and to read the Minister's speech. In redrafting the Amendments for presentation at Report stage, I should certainly be willing, if it would help the Government, to drop the proposal for the Affirmative Resolution procedure in favour of the Negative Resolution procedure, which, of course, as the noble Lord will be aware, has been used in cases of this sort: it was used in the Education (Scotland) Bill, 1946, which prescribed the scales of teachers' salaries and which laid down that these were to be fixed by regulation for which the annulment procedure could be applied in both Houses of Parliament. If he will look at that Bill he will see that this kind of procedure has been used in this sort of case before.
I would propose to introduce the Negative Resolution procedure into the further Amendments and to move them again on Report stage, when I hope we shall have a fuller House, and I would propose to press them to a Division. I believe this is a matter which the other place should consider; they have not considered this new point at all. I think it is a matter which should go back to the other place to give them a chance of ruling on it again. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clauses 2 to 8 agreed to.
Clause 9 [Short title, citation, construction and extent]:
6.59 p.m.
LORD BOWLES LORD BOWLES moved to leave out subsection (2) and insert—
" (2) The Education Acts 1944 to 1964 and this Act may be cited together as the Education Acts 1944 to 1965."
The noble Lord said: I beg to move this Amendment. This Amendment and the following one are minor ones which do not in any way affect the substantive provisions of the Bill. They are necessary because the Bill was passed through the House of Commons last year, 1964, and it is now 1965, and the formal provisions as to its being one of the series of Education Acts and as to its construction as one of those Acts are in a form
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which was suitable in 1964 but is no longer suitable in 1965.
Perhaps I may talk about the next Amendment, and I will move it formally. The first Amendment has the effect of enabling the Bill and all the previous Education Acts to be referred to together in a short and convenient form. The exact wording of the subsection was necessary in 1964 because the Education Act, 1964, had already been passed during that year. The second Amendment, which I shall move in a moment, is consequential on the first and omits words which have now become unnecessary. It is probably unnecessary to inform your Lordships that it is not necessary to have the date changed because it is done automatically by the printers when the House orders the Bill to be printed for the last time. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 29, leave out subsection (2) and insert the said new subsection.—(Lord Bowles.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD BOWLES: I beg to move this Amendment formally.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 31, leave out from ("with") to second ("the") in line 32.—(Lord Bowles.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 9, as amended, agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with Amendments.

BACKING OF WARRANTS (REPUBLIC OF IRELAND) BILL [H.L.]
7.3 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 Stonham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The Lord Merthyr in the Chair.] Clauses 1 to 4 agreed to.
Clause 5 [Remand]:
LORD STONHAM LORD STONHAM moved, after subsection (3), to insert:
" ( ) If, in breach of a recognisance taken from him under this section, a person fails to surrender as aforesaid, the court by which

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he was remanded may, without prejudice to the enforcement of the recognisance, issue a warrant in the prescribed form for his arrest; and on his arrest under the warrant subsection (3) of this section shall apply as if he had surrendered to the officer in charge of the police station specified in the recognisance, but that officer shall not release him as provided by that subsection unless he is satisfied that it is proper to do so.
A warrant issued under this subSection 1n any part of the United Kingdom shall be treated for the purposes of any enactment or rule of law relating to warrants of arrest as if it were a warrant for the arrest of a person charged with an offence committed in that part."
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 1 on the Marshalled List. Clause 5 of the Bill provides for remands in custody and the granting of bail. Unfortunately, it makes no provision for the arrest of persons who "jump" their bail, and the purpose of this Amendment is to repair that not insignificant omission. We seek to provide specific authority for the apprehension of a person who, having been remanded on bail under the provisions of subsection (1) (b) of the clause, fails to surrender in accordance with the conditions on which the bail was granted; and we also seek to make it clear that the normal rules applying for the discharge of warrants for arrest apply to one issued under this subsection. The proposed new subsection therefore provides that where a person fails to surrender to his bail, the court by which he was remanded may issue a warrant for his arrest; that when he is arrested, the period of remand shall be deemed to have terminated; and that a warrant so issued shall be treated as if it were a warrant relating to a criminal offence committed in the United Kingdom.
This provision is necessary since, although Section 97 of the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952, provides that a magistrates' court may issue a warrant for the arrest of any person charged with or convicted of an offence who fails to appear before the court after having been remanded on bail to do so, it seems that this power does not apply in certain circumstances of failure to surrender, following a remand on bail granted by a magistrates' court under this Bill—for example, where the remand has been intended as the precursor, not of the further appearance before the court, but of delivery to a convenient point of
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departure from the United Kingdom into the custody of a member of the Garda Sí ochána.
In the circumstances, therefore, it was thought right to provide a specific power of arrest in the case of a person who fails to surrender in accordance with the conditions of bail granted under the provisions of this Bill. At the same time, we think it necessary to make it clear that the normal rules applying to the discharge of warrants for arrest apply to warrants issued under this subsection. I hope that with this explanation the need for this Amendment will be even more clear to the Committee than it is to me, and that your Lordships will accept the Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 44, at end insert the said subsection.—(Lord Stonham.)
LORD DERWENT: I regret not having pointed out the omission to the noble Lord before he discovered it himself.
LORD STONHAM: Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord that I regret even more that he did not discover the omission when he was responsible for this Bill.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD STONHAMmoved, at the beginning of subsection (4), to insert "The foregoing provisions of". The noble Lord said: Amendments Nos. 2 and 3 are on the same point and, with your Lordships' agreement, I will therefore discuss them together. These Amendments modify the original subsection (4), which provided that this clause should not apply in Scotland, as it has now been decided that it is necessary to make provision in Scotland for remands in custody or on bail under the terms of the Bill.
I should like to make two apologies, one for the absence of my noble friend Lord Hughes, who would be moving the Amendments but for the fact that he is away on other urgent business, and the other for the fact that, having only one-quarter pretension to Scottish ancestry, I have to move it in his stead. But this is no brash incursion into the affairs of Scotland. As your Lordships may remember, when noble Lords of my Party were on the other side of the House there was a period when we had no active Scottish Peer. In those days I

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ventured somewhat into the Scottish field, and I hope, therefore, that you will forgive this further incursion.
The proposed paragraph (a) of Amendment No. 3 is the Scottish counterpart of subsections (1) and (2) of Clause 5. It makes provision for a sheriff court to remand, either in custody or on bail, a person whom it has ordered to be returned to the Irish Republic, or who has been brought up under a provisional warrant. A person remanded in custody may be committed to prison or to legalised police cells. In the case of the person arrested under an endorsed warrant under Clause 2 (1), it shall be a condition of bail that the person must give himself up to the officer in charge of a specified police station at a certain time, notice of which will be handed to him by the officer or someone acting on his behalf. The time mentioned in the notice must not be more than 24 hours before the time when the period of remand is likely, in the opinion of the officer in charge of the station, to end. Paragraph (b) of Amendment No. 3 is the Scottish counterpart of subsection (3) of Clause 5. It provides that if a person has surrendered, and it then appears that the period of remand will be unexpectedly delayed, the officer to whom he has surrendered may continue the bail on the conditions already applied; that is to say, he surrenders again at a stated time.
Paragraph (c) of the third Amendment is the Scottish equivalent of the new subsection. It makes provision that when a person remanded on bail fails to surrender to the police at the stated time, either on the first occasion or on any subsequent occasion, where the bail has been continued, the court granting bail may order forfeiture of the bail and issue a warrant for his arrest, and such a warrant falls to be treated as if it were a warrant of arrest on a criminal charge.
As your Lordships will have noticed, there are two minor differences between the Scottish provisions which we now propose to put in this Bill and those for England and Wales. In the first place, there is no such provision as is contained in the English part of the clause about committal on remand to the custody of a police officer. This is never the practice in Scotland, as I am sure the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, will be aware,
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where remand is either on bail or in custody in prison. Arrangements are made by court officials, or the prison staff, to enable a person who has been granted bail to make the necessary arrangements to try to obtain the security required by the court. Secondly, the requirement to surrender to the police on the service of a notice is restricted to remands under Clause 2 (1). It does not apply in the case of a short period of remand such as is provided for under the provisional warrant procedure, where surrender will be to the court. This is because in Scotland the grant of a discretion to the police is not considered to be of such practical value, in the case of short periods of remand, as to justify a departure from normal Scottish practice in this matter. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 45, at end insert:
("The foregoing provisions of".)—(Lord Stonham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD STONHAM: I beg to move Amendment No. 3.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 45, at end insert:
(", but the following provisions shall apply—

(a) where under section 2 (1) or section 4 (3) of this Act a court has power to remand a person, the court may remand him either in custody or on bail, and if remanded on bail under the said section 2 (1) it shall be made a condition of the bail bond that the person remanded shall surrender to the officer in charge of a specified police station at the time mentioned in a notice in writing to be served on him by or on behalf of that officer, but the time mentioned in a notice so served shall not be more than twenty-four hours before the time at which it appears to that officer that the period of remand is likely to end;

(b) where it appears to the officer to whom a person surrenders as aforesaid that the end of the period of remand under the said section 2 (1) will be unexpectedly delayed he shall release that person on continued bail conditioned as provided in the foregoing paragraph;

(c) if a person remanded on bail fails to comply with the terms of the bail bond, the bail may be forfeited and the court which remanded him may grant warrant for his arrest, and a warrant so granted shall be treated for the purposes of any enactment or rule of law relating to warrants of arrest as if it were a warrant for the arrest of a person charged with an offence."—(Lord Stonham.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 5, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clauses and Schedule agreed to.
House resumed.
Bill reported, with Amendments.

INTEREST RATES FOR HOUSING
7.15 p.m.
LORD WAKEFIELD OF KENDAL LORD WAKEFIELD OF KENDAL rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what is the policy for lowering interest rates for housing and when it will be introduced. The: noble Lord said: My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to state my reasons for asking this Question of Her Majesty's Government, and to express the hope that we may have a full statement on this important subject. Also, I hope that the Government will no longer delay positive action in implementing the written and verbal promises made before and during the General Election. Indeed, interest rates for housing was a major issue at the last Election. Many people voted Socialist because they thought that, if returned to power, the Socialists would carry out the undertakings which they gave to reduce interest rates for housing immediately as a matter of priority. I would go so far as to say that that power was obtained on the strength of such pledges by the Socialist Party. Now that power has been obtained, failure to implement quickly the undertakings given would be a very grave breach of faith because the promises made were unconditional. In such circumstances no excuse of any kind is admissible.
It was therefore with surprise and regret that I read recently that the Chancellor of the Exchequer blamed the building society movement for raising their interest rates to borrowers. I am a director of a building society, and I cannot do better than read to your Lordships a letter received by my society last week from a shareholder who had asked for his money back. This is what the letter said:
"Thank you for your prompt handling of this and all the other dealings I have had with you. I hope that ore day I shall be able to join you again. My sympathy to you in the face of this idiotic attack by the Chancellor."
That letter is to the point and, I suggest, admirably summarises what more than
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2½ million borrowers and nearly 6 million shareholders and depositors in the building society movement are thinking.
They are quite right in thinking that this attack was idiotic, for these simple reasons. As your Lordships well know, building societies borrow short and lend long—which seems to me to be quite the wrong way round, but somehow or other it works. Another strange thing is that shareholders and depositors seem to be quite willing to see their money become worth less and less, since there is no equity in a building society, as your Lordships well know, while the people who use this loan money to buy their homes find their bricks and mortar, in money terms, becoming worth more and more.
There is, however, a limit beyond which those who lend their money to building societies will not go. That limit was being rapidly reached towards the end of last year; and indeed was reached with some societies in January, when withdrawals exceeded deposits. In spite of the security and other advantages of having their savings with a building society, if other forms of saving become more advantageous because of better interest rates, then, quite naturally, people not only do not lend their money to building societies but also withdraw it and place it elsewhere. The result is that not only do building societies not have the money available to lend out on mortgage to would-be borrowers but, unless they take remedial action, since borrowing is short and lending long, in a few weeks they can quite easily become very short indeed of cash; and their liquidity ratios could disappear, just as quickly as foreign money disappeared from this country when the Socialists started on their vigorous campaign of magnifying an unsatisfactory balance of payments into an unrecognisable crisis.
The Chancellor took steps, some of which were of a most peculiar and doubtful kind, to try to correct the balance-of-payments position and also to attempt to stop the outflow of cash from this country caused by lack of confidence by the world in Socialist policies. He was quite right to take action. But if it was right for him to take urgent action, why should it be wrong for the building societies to take similar action for a similar purpose?
The societies deeply regretted the necessity to raise interest rates to borrowers. It was forced on them by the Government as a direct result of the Socialist policy of increasing costs and raising interest rates. The increasing tax burden to bear is aggravated by the decision to increase the standard rate of income tax next April. This will automatically increase the composite rate of tax, which is a heavy burden for building societies. The societies should have taken action and put up their rates at the end of November or early December. In this latter month the net receipts were the worst for three years. The building societies should not have waited until the New Year before putting up their rates. They waited until the middle of January, to try to help the Government to stabilise prices. All they got was an ungracious kick in the pants for their public-spirited action. My Lords, they deserved sympathetic thanks, not unjustified criticism.
I was quite horrified at the suggestion of the Chancellor that the societies should apparently sit still and do nothing while their reserves disappeared and their trustee status became endangered through lack of an adequate reserve ratio. That would be an idiotic suggestion from any normal person, but surely an unforgivable one from a Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Chancellor has criticised the societies for putting up their rate of interest, on the grounds that they have done so only because the bank rate has gone up. Furthermore, he has said, as has the Minister of Housing and Local Government in another place, that he expects interest rates to come down immediately the bank rate comes down. Of course the bank rate does affect building society rates in the long term, but not necessarily immediately. In this connection, it is interesting to note that in the last eight years, while the bank rate has changed twenty times, building society interest rate has changed only five times, including the recent change.
The building societies, I can quite confidently say, will reduce their rates just as soon as they can; and this will not necessarily be when the bank rate is reduced. Any reduction in rates will be considered when the inflow of deposit money exceeds the outflow of mortgage money. At that stage, by lowering mort-
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gage rates the demand for mortgage money will presumably increase, and as interest rates to depositors might be lowered at the same time, the inflow of money might also be likely to lessen. Equilibrium should then be more or less restored. I should be grateful to noble Lords opposite, if they would kindly explain all this to the Chancellor and to the Minister of Housing and Local Government, as they really do not seem to understand how building societies operate. Perhaps the Chancellor might understand the position better if he were told that the building societies faced an urgent balance-of-payments problem, not unlike another balance-of-payments problem of which he has some experience.
There is, of course, no reason at ail why the promises made by the Socialist Party before and during the Election to reduce interest rates should not be implemented at once. This could be done by relief of income tax and profits tax on a building society's surplus. If this were done, then mortgage rates could be reduced by a quarter per cent. However, judging by what was said at the General Election, something far more substantial than this was envisaged. Again, my Lords, there need be no difficulty. If there were remission of the composite rate of income tax as well, then approximately a further 1¾ per cent. reduction in the mortgage rate could be made: that is to say, instead of the present 6¾ per cent. it would be 4¾ per cent., and on favourable occasions might be as low as 4 per cent. or less. We could then get fairly close to Mr. Brown's 3 per cent.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has said that in the next Finance Bill there is going to be a corporation tax as well as a wide capital gains tax. There is no reason at all why the Government should not now, this evening, announce that in the next Finance Bill they are going to implement their General Election promises by abolishing taxation for building societies, thus bringing down housing interest rates for borrowers by 2 per cent. I say this because the Prime Minister and his colleagues pledged themselves quickly to reduce, not to raise, interest rates for housing. At Wembley on September 12 last year the Prime Minister said:
"I would mobilise the country's resources to provide homes without regard to private interest or private profit. The housing

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problem must be tackled like a war-time operation."
I end the quotation., but observe that that is to say with speed, not procrastination. Again, in his Election address the Prime Minister said:
"100 per cent. mortgages, lower interest rates and cheaper legal charges will help those who wish to buy."
By those words he made it abundantly clear that to reduce interest rates for housing would be the first priority for the Government in the first 100 days.
His deputy, Mr. George Brown, said in his Election address that
"there would be special low interest rates for house purchases by intending owner-occupiers, or local authorities will halt the soaring costs of homes".
In the light of this pledge, why is it, then, that a number of local authorities are abandoning their mortgage schemes and raising their rates of interest? For example, the Socialist-controlled council in Birmingham have raised the rates for new mortgages to 6¾ per cent. and existing mortgages will go up to 6¾ per cent. in April. The 100 per cent. mortgage scheme has been abandoned. The London County Council have raised the rate for new mortgages to 7¼ per cent. Compare these Socialist-controlled local authorities' actions with what the Prime Minister promised before the Election in a television broadcast. This is what the Prime Minister said:
"We shall also encourage popular schemes such as that in Birmingham, where the Labour council are building houses for sale and are giving 100 per cent. mortgages with low interest rates."
That, of course, was the position in the good old days, when there was a Conservative Government in office.
We see, then, that the 100 dynamic days that this country has suffered under Socialism have resulted in exactly the opposite of what the Prime Minister promised. It is not only what the Prime Minister promised; it is what 16 other members of his Cabinet promised as well. They said that a Labour Government would introduce preferential rates for home buyers. I should like to ask the noble Lord opposite who is to reply to this debate: when is this urgent war-time operation going to lake place? When is the Chancellor of the Exchequer going to implement his Election address, in which he stated that
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"would-be home owners would be aided by favourable interest rates"?
The Socialist Chief Whip in another place was quite specific in his Election address when he said that
"a Labour Government would make it easier to buy a home of your own by making the full purchase price available at a lower rate of interest".
He went on to say:
"We shall also keep down rents of council houses by making money available to the council at a lower rate of interest".
Why was this not done with Birmingham and the London County Council? There is no foreign balance-of-payments problem involved here.
In view of the way in which the Government are now trying to get out of their promises and pledges, I think that I cannot do better than conclude with further quotations from the Prime Minister in speeches he made last year, before the Election, in Stevenage and Swansea. At the former place, he said:
"We shall cheapen the cost of housing by our interest rate policy".
At the latter place, he said:
"If we had to use short-term interest rates to staunch any flow of short-term capital so as to safeguard our sterling area reserve, we should take special care by the use of the two-tier interest rate structure we have proposed to ensure that local authorities get capital for housing, at rates which represent the power of the Government to borrow".
Why, then, has no action been taken along these lines? To indicate the kind of rates envisaged by the Government, Mr. George Brown said at Derby on September 26:
"What we have in mind "—
that is, as regards interest rates for home buyers—
"is something around 3 per cent.".
Finally, in the 1964 Election Manifesto, The New Britain, the Socialist Party said this:
"Labour is ready. Poised to swing its plans into instant operation. Impatient to apply the New Thinking that will end the chaos and sterility".
The Government have not taken the promised urgent action to lower interest rates for housing, my Lords, but they have certainly created chaos in financial circles and foreign trade. Already the Socialist Party are guilty of reaching power by issuing a false prospectus. If company directors issue a

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false prospectus, the Director of Public Prosecutions is quickly after them, and rightly so. In the case of the Socialist Party, it will not be the Director of Public Prosecutions who will be after them for fraud and a particularly cruel kind of deceit; it will be public opinion, and with every justification. Already at Leyton and Nuneaton the writing is on the wall. The red lights are focusing their beams on the broken pledges and shattered promises of these first inglorious one hundred days of the guilty men. I again ask my Question: What is the policy for lowering interest rates for housing, and when will that policy be introduced?
7.34 p.m.
LORD WADE: My Lords, I would ask for the customary and traditional indulgence of this House, more especially as it is a rather late hour. A fortnight ago the noble Lord, Lord Bowles, in a maiden speech in this Chamber, mentioned that when he made his maiden speech in another place the Members of that other place were in fact sitting in this Chamber. Your Lordships had graciously allowed this Chamber to be used by the Members of the other place until their Chamber was rebuilt. I find myself in a similar position.
I made my maiden speech in another place fifteen years ago, during a debate on the coal industry. The Labour Government were in power at that time, with a very slender overall majority. I remember the occasion well, not only because I made my maiden speech but also because it fell to my lot, speaking on behalf of myself and my colleagues, to warn the Government that they would be faced with a very close and critical Division at the end of the day. Evidently my warning was not heeded, because when the debate concluded and the Division took place the Government Whips were taken by surprise, and the Government were defeated. Perhaps it was not surprising that my words passed unheeded, for who would expect a mere newcomer, making his maiden speech, to say anything that would affect the life of the Government? Some political commentators say that the Government never fully recovered from the shock. So much for my first maiden speech. But, in recollecting the incidents that followed it, I am not suggesting that
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the modest comments which I wish to contribute to this short debate to-night are likely to have any such far-reaching consequences.
This subject is nevertheless important, and I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Wakefield of Kendal, has provided an opportunity for it to be discussed. A high bank rate has many repercussions throughout the economy, and it is bound to affect housing finance and mortgage rates. It affects them in many different ways. It affects firms supplying the building industry; it affects adversely the cost of providing working capital for those engaged in the building industry; and, of course, it affects the cost of new loans raised by local authorities.
At the present time some smaller local authorities are in serious difficulties. The L.C.C. have raised a very large loan at 6¾ -per cent., and they are charging 7¼ per cent. to home buyers. Now some smaller local authorities who have loans falling in cannot offer less than that, but have to offer 7 per cent.; and I understand that some of them have already ceased to grant any loans to would-be home buyers. It is true that they have some concessions from the Public Works Loan Board, up to 20 per cent. of their needs, but this is very much less than what is required—and this is one of the indirect consequences of a high bank rate. The promise to do something about this next Session is not very much comfort for them.
I would agree that there is no easy solution to this problem. It has been suggested that there should be a two-tier system, to which I think the noble Lord, Lord Wakefield of Kendal, referred—that is to say, some borrowers would be granted more favourable rates of interest whilst others would have to pay the full rate. Some categories of borrowers would have a beneficial rate of interest; others would not. Frankly, I have very great doubt as to whether this would work fairly, and I think it would probably lead to more anomalies than would be removed. It would be extremely difficult to draw the line. For example, I am sure there are many who wish to help young married couples who are buying their homes, and it has been suggested that something should be done to make the rate of interest on mortgages

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less for these young married couples who are buying their homes. Where does one draw the line? How does one define a young married couple, and when does a couple become a not-quite-so-young married couple? Again, what would one do about a second marriage? It is really impossible to find a satisfactory definition.
Then, to turn to a wider sphere, it is sometimes suggested that sums raised by local authorities for housing to let should be treated favourably so far as interest is concerned, but not funds required for loans to those who are buying their homes. I find it difficult to justify this in principle, and I think equally difficult is it to justify the distinction between loans made by local authorities to people buying their homes and loans made by building societies.
The noble Lord, Lord Wakefield of Kendal, has already referred to the problems of the building societies, and I should like to express a few words on that subject since the building societies have been brought into the political arena. I have No 1nterest to declare, although I am an honorary Vice-President of the Building Societies' Association, and I am, of course, interested in those 2½ million borrowers who depend on the building societies. I do not think there should be any discrimination against them.
I would say that the criticism made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer against the building societies was somewhat unfair. It is often said that the best defence is to attack; but I should have thought that in this case the attack was misdirected; it would have been more to the point to have criticised the last Administration for failing to remove some of the taxation anomalies which adversely affect the building societies, particularly in keeping up their reserves. To return to the criticisms of the building societies. It is not always appreciated by the public that the amount charged by the building society must depend on the amount it has to pay to those who invest in it; and the amount available to home buyers is dependent upon the amount the building societies can attract from investors. If the prevailing rate is high, then inevitably the building society rates charged to the borrowers must go up.
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Furthermore, they must be continually raising new money. I will quote from a statement which was made by the Building Societies' Association on the 27th January of this year:
"During 1964 … there was a steady fall in the amount of new money coming to building societies. Part of the mortgage demand was met by running down liquid assets, but this could not continue indefinitely."
I will also quote, if I may, from the Economist of January 23:
"After the increase in bank rate, even the biggest societies experienced a sharp fall in their inflow of savings."
I have other quotations which will show that the fall in the margin was becoming a serious one. This is not just an academic point, because it will lead to rationing of mortgages. To use words from the same article in the Economist of January 23, it is likely to lead to:
"an arbitrary, unfair and restrictionist rationing of mortgages for new would-be house buyers".
I know something of the problems of young people in search of mortgages. Consider the case of the young people living with their in-laws. They seek a house; they find a house and they are fortunately in the position to put down a small deposit; they apply for a mortgage and it is turned down—not because they were unsuitable people to buy their own home, but because mortgages are rationed. The rationing of mortgages can be as great a hardship as high interest rates. It is no answer to say that there is a demand for mortgages; the need is for availability of funds as well. It has been contended that the building societies could have waited before putting up their rates the last time. I do not think so. It has been argued that when the corporation tax comes into effect they will be treated more leniently; but that tax will not come into effect until 1966-67. What is needed is action now.
My Lords, I should like to be constructive. As far as local government finance for housing is concerned, it is an extremely complex subject, and I should be trespassing on the time of your Lordships' House if I were to go into details. I think that more help should be given to the smaller authority, either through the Public Works Loan Board or by the local authorities banding together to raise funds on a regional basis,

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I think that would be a good idea. In that way, they would be in a better position to compete with the larger concerns like the L.C.C.
So far as the building societies are concerned there is a comparatively simple change that could be made. As the noble Lord, Lord Wakefield of Kendal, pointed out, the building societies suffer tax in a number of different ways. They pay the composite rate in respect of the savings of those who invest in the societies; in addition, they pay both income tax and profits tax on their surpluses. This is not strictly profit: there are no ordinary shareholders to whom such profits could be paid if there were any. The surplus is used for building up reserves and for advancing further mortgages and, perhaps, reducing interest rates.
Therefore, I would abolish income tax and profits tax on the surplus, and in due course when the corporation tax comes into effect I would not apply it to the building societies. The result would be some reduction in rates, and it would lessen the danger of the rationing of mortgages. I believe that if the last Administration had done this, it is probable that the present increase in mortgage rates which has aroused so much controversy would not have been necessary. Surely, if we wish to expand our house building programme, then the least we should do is to avoid rationing of mortgages, and we should make available as much money as possible.
Those are just a few practical suggestions; but I think there remain two basic truths. The first is that the introduction of a high bank rate has far-reaching consequences throughout the economy. This argument about the building societies only confuses the issue. Secondly, if special relief is to be granted—certainly anything that would bring interest rates down to the region of 3 per cent. when the ruling rate is 6 per cent. or 7 per cent.—it would involve a very large subsidy; and here I think I must disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Wakefield of Kendal. I calculate that to bring down by subsidy the rate of interest from 6 per cent. to 3 per cent. for all home buyers, both from building societies and local authorities, would cost something in the region of at least £150 million a year, which would have to be
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paid by the general body of taxpayers. I think it would cost something between £150 million and £175 million a year.
In view of this, it is important to introduce an element of realism, and the public should know what is involved. The late Lord Samuel, who preceded my noble friend Lord Rea as Leader of the Liberal Party in your Lordships' House, once said that in politics the best way to play your hand is to lay your cards face upwards on the table. Well, in politics it is often very tempting not to follow that sound advice. But in dealing with the complex subject of interest rates, which is not fully understood by the general public, it behoves one to be as frank and open as possible and to strive to tell the public the truth.
7.46 p.m.
LORD MESTON: My Lords, I understand that this is the first occasion on which the noble Lord, Lord Wade, has addressed this House. I know it is my wish and, I think, the wish of us all to congratulate him on an excellent speech. I hope that on many occasions we shall hear his most relevant and material remarks. Speaking for myself, I shall deal with this question of rates of interest entirely on a mathematical basis. I am not suggesting for a moment that the human element should be eliminated: but unfortunately the human element is also concerned with mathematics.
Let me get straight to the point and deal with the building societies. I hope your Lordships will pardon me if I say something abundantly obvious. It is that the building societies cannot lend money until they have first obtained it from the general public. The public want the best return for their money and, therefore, the rate of interest offered by the building societies must compare favourably with that from other sources of investment. In this connection, the prevailing bank rate is, in my opinion, of immediate importance. If the bank rate is 7 per cent., then the building societies find themselves compelled to pay investors something in the region of 4 per cent., free of tax, in order to induce them to invest money in the building societies. My Lords, is that the truth, or not?—no one answers!
The building society, having raised the necessary money, is then in a position to lend it to persons who wish to acquire

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houses. Allowing for the most economic administration, the building society will find it necessary to charge its borrowers a rate of interest in the region of 7 per cent. Is that correct or not correct?—no one answers! The building society is not allowed to make what is commonly known as a profit, but is allowed to have a surplus of revenue above expenditure and may allocate such surplus to reserve. I consider it is absolutely essential that the building society should build up strong reserves. In my view, the collapse of a building society, even a small building society, is a national disaster, like the collapse of some big banking institution. Therefore, the building up of strong reserves by the building societies is a national requirement.
I should like the noble Lord who is going to reply on behalf of the Government, and who, I understand, is a Senior Wrangler, to tell me precisely at what rate of interest the Government and local authorities propose to raise money from the public and, having raised the money, at what rate per cent. they propose it should be lent to persons who wish to acquire a house. Let us have the figures, not adumbrations from the platform to a large crowd of people. I never speak to a large crowd; they never wait for me. If there is going to be a loss on every transaction, let us know precisely what that loss is, always making a fair allowance for administrative expenses. Then I hope that the noble Lord will go on to tell me who will discharge the loss. People often say, "The Government will pay." But "The Government", whichever political Party happen to be in power, never has a farthing: it is the taxpayers who produce the money. Sometimes people say that the local authorities will pay. But the local authorities have not a farthing. All they have is the money they obtain from the rates. So I want to know, if there is going to be a loss on the Government scheme, how much it is likely to be, who is going to pay and how the money is going to be found. Let us have the figures, exactly and precisely, and no ancillary adumbrations.
7.53 p.m.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I think we should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wakefield of Kendal, for introducing this important subject and giving
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us an opportunity of discussing it, albeit briefly. I am not so sure about the pleasure of noble Lords opposite, because they may find themselves in an awkward position, but certainly it is a great pleasure to Members on these Benches and, if I may say so, on the Liberal Benches to have had this opportunity. It has also given us an opportunity of hearing the noble Lord, Lord Wade, make a most interesting maiden speech. I am sure we can congratulate the Liberal Party on their acquisition and ourselves on finding somebody who can talk with the knowledge the noble Lord has displayed, and we shall look forward to hearing him, perhaps on other subjects, on which I feel sure he will be equally well informed.
If I may say so without appearing to be presumptuous, I liked the way in which the noble Lord addressed himself in a straightforward and simple manner to the Government Benches. I feel sure that the noble Lord who is to reply and, even more, his right honourable friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government, will have to pay careful attention to what the noble Lord, Lord Wade said, when it comes to considering the lower interest rate and the complications in the economy in general. I am rather sorry for the noble Lord who is to reply, because whatever he is going to tell us is bound to contradict either the Prime Minister or a good number of Cabinet Ministers. I shall show that that is so.
Let me remind your Lordships of the background of this matter. In the months preceding the General Election, it was generally understood, from the speeches of important members of the Labour Party, that there would be a reduced rate for mortgage interest and even for local housing authority borrowing. When pressed on this matter in the summer, Mr. Wilson said, in a letter to the Building Societies Association, who wanted to know where they stood, that Labour was not proposing to introduce through the public sector some special or discriminatory form of subsidised loans for house purchase. Furthermore, in a speech at roughly the same time at Leeds, Mr. Wilson said that the Labour Government would revert to Public Works Loan Board financing for essential local authority needs and that the financing

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would be at a reasonable rate of interest which reflected the power of the Government to borrow. That is a far different matter from 3 per cent. interest rates for potential home owners and local housing authorities.
In spite of what Mr. Wilson said at that stage, the Labour Manifesto stated clearly that:
"Labour will introduce a policy of lower interest rates for housing. This policy of specially favourable rates will apply to both intending owner-occupiers and local authorities building homes to rent."
The Manifesto added:
"Labour will further help the owner-occupier by providing 100 per cent. mortgages through local councils."
The First Secretary, as he now is, Mr. George Brown, made great play with this during the Election, as my noble friend said. It hit the headlines, and I have no doubt that many votes went to the Labour Party by this promise of 3 per cent. interest. Yet immediately the Election was finished and the Labour Party scraped home by a nose, we did not hear another word about it. In the Queen's Speech it was not mentioned at all. Perhaps by that time the Prime Minister's more reasonable and sounder economic views had predominated, and therefore this did not find a place in the Queen's Speech.
Why has it to be resurrected in this way now? Because of the results at Leyton and Nuneaton. Immediately after the by-elections, the Minister of Housing stated at a Press conference that he thought the voters in these constituencies had felt let down by the failure of the Labour Government to follow their policy on this point and that he was preparing legislation for the next Session to fulfil their promise.
Which is it to be? Is this promise to be fulfilled for electioneering purposes—not the past but the future—or are the Party opposite going to stick by the words of the Prime Minister? Is the Minister of Housing going to pay attention to what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Wade, and by my noble friend Lord Wakefield of Kendal, about the effect of the bank rate and the essential requirements of the building societies? We must know. And if we are going to have this lower rate of interest, since this is a matter that is
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very difficult for the public to understand, it must be explained thoroughly.
If we are to have a low rate of interest for potential home owners the Government will have to explain why such people will benefit and why home owners who are already paying higher rates of interest will not be able to benefit from it. The Government will have to explain how it is that the houses for which they propose to charge a lower interest rate will cost more than they do now. Because there is a limit to the number of houses which can be built—we are all agreed on that—and if the Labour Party fulfil their promise to build a greater number of local authority houses for renting, then the present rate of house building for home ownership will be reduced. We are going to get, at one and the same time, lower interest rates increasing the demand and a lesser number of new houses diminishing the supply; so obviously the price of houses on which people will be paying a lower rate of interest will go up. Is it an advantage to pay a lower interest on an article which costs much more? That will have to be explained.
If this interest rate is going to be below the Public Works Loan Board rate for local authority housing, that will form a subsidy. Is it going to be an indiscriminate housing subsidy to all local authorities or only to those who need it? That is an important point. It is of no use for the Government just to say: "In order to fulfil our Election promise, on which we have had second thoughts"—and perhaps rightly so—"we are now going to implement it in the next Session." They must explain why they did not implement it first of all. And, now that they have changed their mind again, they must explain what effect that is going to have on everybody. These matters must be explained thoroughly. As I have said, the noble Lord opposite has a difficult Question to answer, and we look forward to seeing how he will be able to answer on behalf of his right honourable friend, not to mention, indirectly, on behalf of his other right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the foolishness of whose remarks have been demonstrated very clearly by other noble Lords who have spoken this evening.
8.1 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES (LORD MITCHISON): My Lords, I think one might bear in mind two things: first, the hour, and, secondly, that one should not have too much of anything. If I were to try to answer every single rhetorical question that has been asked of me this evening, your Lordships would indeed be kept late. No answer was expected.
May I, however, first of all fulfil one personally very agreeable duty? I have known the noble Lord, Lord Wade, for many years. I have listened to him make speeches in another place about many matters, including, I may say, building societies, and I have always felt that those speeches reflected several things which I valued. I felt it again to-day. The first is that he does know what he is talking about, or finds out beforehand what it is he has to know. Secondly, the noble Lord makes up his own mind within the proper limits of Liberalism—such as they may be. Thirdly, I have never heard him make a speech that was intended to be anything but constructive, by way of suggestions, such as the one we heard to-night. I assure the noble Lord—we have known one another for a long time—that it is an agreeable personal pleasure to be able to say to him a few of the kind things I have always felt about him, and to express the conventional and in this case very real hope that he will come and do the same thing here as I have heard him do elsewhere. I am sure that in saying this I speak for the whole House.
I will not attempt to answer in detail a good many points raised because, if I may say so, this is a rather ridiculous sort of Question. This is a Question on behalf of—I was not sure whether it was the Tory Party or the building societies:
"To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the policy for lowering interest rates for housing, and when it will be introduced."
Every speaker who has spoken proceeded to explain what he thought the policy was, and either he was talking about something he did not know or he had no need for further information. I am going to answer the substance of what has been put.
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There is a question here, and a really serious one, of what the country can afford at any given moment. I begin, therefore, by taking the last two sentences of the speech made by the Leader of the Liberal Party on Tuesday last in another place. He said this:
"Britain cannot afford to return to the 1964 type of Conservative Government. The Conservatives know this, and they know full well that if they went to the country now under the leadership of last autumn they would be beaten, and, this time, beaten squarely."—[Official Report, Commons, Vol. 705 (No. 48), col. 948, February 2, 1965.]
I agree.
I come from that to consider for a moment what has been happening about interest rates for housing. The history of it—and I have to go back a little way—is that while the Labour Government were in office after the war there were low rates, around 3 per cent. When the Tories got back, in 1951, they proceeded gradually, and I think deliberately, to raise interest rates and, therefore, to put up, necessarily in their view, the rates of interest charged to local authorities for housing advances and, accordingly, the rents which local authorities themselves had to charge. Anyone who looks through the history of the New Towns during this period will find how large an element that deliberate increase by the Tory Party of interest rates has been in hindering the proper and full development of the New Towns. I do not say it has been a fatal hindrance; but a hindrance it certainly has been.
This is the Party which comes to us to-day to complain about interest rates at the moment. Let us see what "at the moment" means. Various quotations were made—and I must say that none of them seemed to me to be inconsistent with another if one took them in their context and noted what they were really about—from what was said by my right honourable friends at various times. One speaker very kindly quoted what seems to me to be the relevant document in this, and that is the Labour Party's policy statement in the matter. I will quote it, too.
"Labour will introduce a policy of lower interest rates for housing. It is impossible to say now what changes will be required in the general interest rate structure of the market. But because of its great importance to the family housing should be treated as a separate case deserving specially favourable borrowing rates.

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This policy of specially favourable rates will apply both to intending owner-occupiers and to local authorities building houses to let."
The statement then deals with the much more difficult case of people who already have mortgages at a very high rate—I do not think that, for the moment, I am concerned with that. But not one jot or tittle of that policy that I have just read out has been abandoned.
How does one satisfy the Tory Party? They raised a Motion in another place on Tuesday last complaining of the hasty action of the Government, and to-day we had Lord and almost vituperative complaints about the Government's failure to move fast enough on this point. I think the suggestion that we were too hasty was fully and adequately answered by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, who invited the Tory Party in another place to say what it was they found hasty. So far as I can see from the course of the debate, he never received an answer to the question. Was it this? Was it that? Or what was it? Now, to-day, I am supposed to explain—and I shall find little difficulty in doing so—why the full purport of the policy which was promised, and is still promised, has been delayed.
I cannot think that any noble Lord opposite is really ignorant of the reason. Are they not aware that there really has been a financial crisis? Do they think, as did the noble Lord, Lord Wakefield of Kendal, that it was an invented one, trumped up from some minor difficulty about the balance of payments? Just look at the figures that were given the other day. Just look at the figures of the balance of trade, slipping steadily from bad to worse over quarters. Just look at the figures of the total amount of foreign indebtedness. Just look at the figures that demonstrate quite clearly that something which had to be done at the very last moment in October should certainly have been done in July and, in my view, a great deal earlier than that. The fact of the matter, my Lords, is that, having themselves bared the cupboard and postponed the Election for Party political reasons, they brought on a financial crisis in this country and now refuse to recognise its existence and its effect on this very matter of interest rates for housing.
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This kind of nonsense is dangerous nonsense. Some people will believe it, as they believed the Leader of the Opposition when he went round the country explaining that its economic position had never been better. The then Prime Minister spoke with the authority of his position and his knowledge, and that sort of remark ought never, in my view—and I do not hesitate to say it—to be made by the Leader of a responsible political Party in the circumstances in which it was made.
We have had to-day from the opposite Benches what I call a nice, vigorous, tackle. I am still running, and I still have the ball, though I must say that the noble Lord did his best, and if words could have done it he would have brought me down easily. But there is rather more than that in this subject, and I must say that I am rather shocked to hear anybody, whether it is in the interests of the building societies or the Tory Party, talking in this way about the interest rates on housing, about breaches of Election speeches and the rest of it, when the fault lies, as I see it, entirely with the outgoing Government. It is they who caused the trouble which involved the postponement of these pledges.
There is another point I want to make. These pledges by their nature—and I read them out on purpose—are not things which can be done rapidly, and no promise has ever been made that they would be done rapidly. Indeed, the contrary has been said time and time again, and the extraordinary suggestion that this should have priority in the first one hundred days was one of the more extravagant efforts (I hope the noble Lord will not mind the word) that we had in the opening speech. Well, there was one obvious priority for the first hundred days. We had through this House the other day two emergency measures: one of them was to protect tenants in certain circumstances, and the other was to bring what is now admitted to have been, as I understand it, an overdue increase to pensioners. That we could not fulfil that at once was bad enough, and that was because of the position in which we found ourselves, a position for which, I repeat, those who earlier postponed the Election and had neglected the matter year after year are, as I see it, entirely responsible.

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It is fantastic, is it not, to suggest that housing interest rates, however important they are, should have priority over those two measures.
I do not want to go into a whole list of matters, but I think on the true view of the body politic my right honourable friend the First Secretary of State was perfectly right in giving an urgent priority for steps to arrive at the incomes policy which the previous Government had blessed in theory and damned in practice. One can argue about this—it is getting a very long way from the Question. I should, however, before I sit down, like to point out one or two small things. One is this. Building societies are, of course, extremely useful in our society. They perform a valuable function and no one—no sensible person, at any rate—would for a moment seek to underrate their importance. But the passion not to be taxed seems to arise in the most improbable places before every Budget. I think it should occasionally be controlled, and though I know building societies have a serious case in this matter, I am sure they will not expect me—and those who spoke on their behalf to-day will not expect me—when replying for my right honourable friend, the Minister of Housing and Local Government, to anticipate the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Budget. That would really be a political cartwheel of an order that is rarely, if ever, attempted, and I am not going to try. That is one point.
The second is about the local authorities. Something has been done. It was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Wade, in his maiden speech. What has been done in effect is to allow the smaller authorities—and he properly had particular regard for them—to get rather more at favourable rates from the Public Works Loan Board. It is perfectly true that all rates are high because the bank rate is high. These things hang together, and I should very much like the noble Lord who asked the question to-day to take the Radcliffe Report on the Monetary System and read solidly through it. He would find it fascinating. It contains a good deal about the subjects which he was considering to-day. Building societies, the local authorities in their housing operations, and the other
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organs of our monetary system, do in fact go together. They are part of one whole; perhaps not completely thought out, nor clearly thought out, but they interact one on another.
It is impossible to put the Government of the day in a position where they have to raise the bank rate and, at the same time, expect them to deal with the very difficult question of the rates of interest for housing loans. We are going to carry out those promises, and we are going to carry out one more. It has been so often repeated that I have no hesitation whatever in repeating it again. We are going to look thoroughly and carefully at the relation between central and local finance. I am sure it needs a review, and the noble Lord, Lord Meston (who explained to me his reasons for leaving), put to me some problems which would have required not merely mathematics but a bit of prophecy, too. Therefore, I am afraid I cannot answer his particular conundrums, ambiguously or otherwise. I would say this about it. It seems to me that that relation between central and local finance is one of immense importance, and not merely from the financial point of view. For on it depends the proper balance between the requirements of the central Government in matters which affect local authorities and the independence of the local authorities, which I hope we all value highly, and which certainly over the years they have well deserved. That balance I hope we shall strike.
My Lords, I hope I have not taken up too long, and I hope I have not been too violent. But I must say that I really get a bit sick when the Tory Party get up here and say that the Government in the first hundred days have not lowered the interest rates on housing, and that therefore they have done something wrong. I should just like to remind them of one little thing before I sit down. What was the thing they did in their first hundred days in 1951? They brought in an earth-shaking measure. The Labour Government had provided for publicly owned pubs in New Towns. They cancelled that, and handed them back to the brewers.
House adjourned at twenty minutes past eight o'clock.