Lords Sitting of 19 December 1966

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

PUBLICATION OF COLLIERY ACCOUNTS
2.36 p.m.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have given any general direction to the National Coal Board requiring them to publish the accounts of collieries which are being or have been closed as unprofitable; and in particular whether the accounts relating to one of these collieries—namely Duffryn Rhondda—are to be published.]
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD CHAMPION): My Lords, the Government have given no general direction to the National Coal Board about publishing the accounts of collieries, and there is no intention of publishing those of Duffryn Rhondda. The closure of individual collieries is a matter for the National Coal Board, who consider all the relevant facts, of which finance is one.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, is it not impossible for the public, who are the shareholders of the National Coal Board, to know whether the closures are justified if they do not see the accounts? Is not the sauce for the private enterprise goose also sauce for the nationalised gander?
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, I am not quite sure what was meant by the last part of the noble Lord's question. The National Coal Board are, of course,
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under an obligation, under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, to publish its accounts
"in such form…as shall conform with the best commercial standards and which shall distinguish the colliery activities and each of the main ancillary activities of the Board."
The National Coal Board have been given a certain task and it will continue to do it to the best of its ability, but it will do it in accordance with the best commercial practice.
LORD OGMORE: But, my Lords, are not the Government in the Companies Bill to-day ensuring that the best commercial practice shall entail publishing. accounts? If the Coal Board do not publish these accounts, how can the people of South Wales know whether to close down these important collieries is just, and that there is no inefficiency in the management?
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, the National Coal Board do publish accounts to a considerable extent, as I am sure the noble Lord will know. They are laid before Parliament and, of course, are debatable by Parliament. So far as the comparison with commercial undertakings is concerned, the accounts of the Board do not deal with the 450 individual pits any more than the accounts of, say, Messrs. Woolworth deal with their thousand branches separately.
LORD TAYLOR OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether it is not the case that the National Coal Board report annually on the divisional operations throughout the whole of the country?
LORD CHAMPION: Yes, my Lords. The results of their divisional workings are set out in the annual report which I have mentioned.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, with regard to the latter part of the Minister's last reply to my noble friend Lord Ogmore, is it not a fact that if one of the branches of Woolworth's does not make a profit it is not being subsidised by the taxpayer?
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, I should think the answer would be, Yes, my Lords.

GIBRALTAR
2.40 p.m.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, in view of the resolution of the United Nations Committee of 24 passed on November 17 last, that the two parties (Spain and the United Kingdom) should continue negotiations and report to the Special Committee before the 22nd Session of the General Assembly, and in view of Spain's rejection of the proposal to take the dispute over Gibraltar to the International Court, whether they would be prepared unequivocally to assure the House that the Sovereignty cannot be regarded as a matter for negotiation in view of their affirmation that the interests of the people of Gibraltar should be paramount.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS (LORD BESWICK): My Lords, Her Majesty's Government regret the Spanish Government's negative reaction to their proposal for a reference to the International Court. The Spanish reply is being studied in the light of the relevant United Nations resolutions and an answer will be given as soon as possible. Under Article 73 of the United Nations' Charter, Her Majesty's Government are obliged to recognise the principle that the interests of the people of Gibraltar are paramount, and we shall continue to hold to this in any further negotiations which may take place.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that reply. But is it not a fact that last Saturday's resolution in the Trusteeship Committee of the United Nations, which resolution was agreed to by both Britain and Spain, called upon both parties to continue negotiations, and also called upon Britain to speed the decolonisation of Gibraltar in consultation with the Government of Spain? In addition, was there not a statement, in another place on November 10 last, by the Foreign Secretary, when he said that Spain clearly wishes to grab Gibraltar against the
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wishes of those who live there, and that nobody could describe that as an act of decolonisation? In view of these facts, would the noble Lord not agree that there were certain grounds for my seeking the assurance which I sought in my original Question?
LORD BESWICK: Not quite on the basis on which the noble Lord put his Question. In fact, in the resolution to which he refers, which was adopted on Saturday night at the United Nations, there was an amendment which called upon the two parties to continue negotiations, I agree, but also to take into account the interests of the people of Gibraltar. I should have thought that that was something which would satisfy the noble Lord.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord a further question? As Spain voted for this resolution, and it included an expression of regret at the occurrence of certain acts which have prejudiced the smooth progress of the negotiations, and also in view of the proviso, to which the noble Lord referred, that the interests of the people of the territory should be taken into account, would the noble Lord not agree that there were strong reasons for which Her Majesty's Government could press strongly for an easing of the frontier restrictions?
LORD BESWICK: Certainly, my Lords. In the process of any negotiations we shall press for the removal of those restrictions.

THE COMMONWEALTH OFFICE
2.42 p.m.
LORD NAPIER AND ETTRICK: 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 it is now their intention to integrate fully the Commonwealth Office with the Foreign Office under a single Secretary of State for External Affairs; and if so, when.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I have nothing to add to the Answer given in another place on June 21 of this year by

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my right honourable friend the Prime Minister.
LORD NAPIER AND ETTRICK: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, for that reply—which does not surprise me—may I ask him two supplementaries? Would not the Government agree that there is a very real danger of an amalgamated portfolio becoming too great a responsibility for a single individual, however brilliant he maybe? And do they believe that such an integration, if it took place, would in the final event be in the best interests of the Commonwealth, bearing in mind the very special relationship that the Commonwealth holds with the United Kingdom?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am very interested in the supplementaries which the noble Lord has put, especially in view of his experience. I am myself certain that, despite what has been said by other noble Lords in this House, this question of the work-load on one Secretary of State is a very important one. As for the noble Lord's second supplementary, I think the consideration he put there was in the minds of the Plowden Committee when they said that the time was not now opportune for the unifying of the two Departments.
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, as there is no longer a Colonial Office, could the noble Lord tell us when there will cease to be a Secretary of State for the Colonies?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I should not have thought, even with all the expertise of the noble Lord, that he could make that relevant to the Question on the Order Paper.

DECIMAL CURRENCY AND POST OFFICE ACCOUNTING
2.44 p.m.
LORD REDMAYNE: 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 it is proposed that under the £—cent—½ system of decimalisation the Post Office Savings Bank should disregard the half cent for accounting
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purposes; and in respect of what other services provided by the Post Office the same practice will be followed; and further, what will be the face value of the equivalent of the 4d. postage stamp under this system.]
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, my right honourable friend has not yet decided whether the half new penny will be used for Post Office, including Savings Bank, accounting. It is too early for him to predict what postal charges will be in 1971. Their overall pattern will, as usual, be designed to meet the financial target applying at the time.
LORD REDMAYNE: My Lords, while thanking the noble Baroness for that reply, may I ask her whether she is aware that the commercial world will watch with very great interest whether the Government inflict on the Post Office the same handicaps and anomalies which are going to be inflicted on private enterprise and on commerce in respect of the differences which are going to arise between cash accounting and banking accounts? The noble Lady says that it is too early for these decisions to be made, but will the Government realise that this decision must be made within the next two or three months if the necessary preparatory work is to be done? Unless the Government are, if I may say so, rather arrogantly assuming their decision to adopt the £1 unit to be the final decision that is going to be made—
NOBLE LORDS: Question!
LORD REDMAYNE: I think I have put one, my Lords. Secondly, may I ask this? If one is to assume, as one must, that the face value of the 4d. stamp will be two new pennies (which is going to put up the cost of a 4d. stamp by 20 per cent.), what is the sense in saying in paragraph 29 of Cmnd. 3164 that the Government and the Decimal Currency Board
"will make every effort to prevent this kind of exploitation"?
Or is one to expect that we shall have one law for the Government and another for private enterprise?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I am afraid I have nothing to add to the statement I have made except one possible

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addition. The noble Lord will remember that by that time, in any case, the Post Office will of course be a separate corporation, which must influence some of the decisions taken. But I shall convey to the Minister the comments which the noble Lord has made on the need for work to begin as soon as possible.
LORD REDMAYNE: My Lords, may I put this further question to the noble Lady? Is not the question of whether the Post Office is under the Government or is a private organisation quite irrelevant? Surely, if it becomes a private organisation it will suffer the same handicaps as private industry.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE EARL OF LONGFORD): My Lords, I think there were a number of Members of the House who were beginning to feel that the noble Lord was making a series of comments rather than putting questions. I am now quite sure that he has just passed over the line.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, may I ask the Government whether there is not some evidence that, in valuing up the new currency, prices with inevitably rise? This is a very difficult point, but if a postage stamp is going to be much more expensive, this is one of the ways in which prices are hound to rise. Will the Government not reconsider this question of the 10s. versus the £1 unit?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: I am sure the noble Lady will appreciate that I can hardly make a statement of that kind, either agreeing or disagreeing. The financial factors operating when decimal currency finally comes into common use may be quite different from those of to-day. If the noble Baroness would like to put down a Question to Her Majesty's Government on those lines, she might get fuller details.
LORD RATHCAVAN: My Lords, in connection with our going over to decimal currency, can the noble Lady say whether the Government are keeping in close touch with the Government of Australia, which has recently gone over to decimal currency?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: Yes, my Lords. My right honourable friend is, of course,
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watching their experience because obviously this will be some pointer for our thinking in the future.

THE BOWEN REPORT
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, at a suitable moment after 3.30 my noble friend Lord Beswick will be making a Statement on the Bowen Report.

CARRIAGE BY AIR ACTS (APPLICATION OF PROVISIONS) ORDER 1967
2.49 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD RHODES): My Lords, I beg to move that the Carriage by Air Acts (Application of Provisions) Order 1967, a copy of which was laid before noble Lords on December 7, be approved. The Warsaw Convention of 1929 is, I believe, the most widely ratified of international conventions in the field of private law, 85 States being parties, including the United States and the U.S.S.R. It ensures a measure of international uniformity in the law governing international carriage by air, thereby removing difficult and perhaps expensive litigation as to which country's law applies. It also confers on passengers and their dependants, and on the shippers of cargo, the reversal of the burden of proving the carrier's negligence, in exchange for which the carrier enjoys a uniform limit of liability, which makes easier the arrangement of insurance. In the absence of wilful misconduct on the part of the carrier, his servants or agents, this limit is at present equivalent to some £3,000 per passenger.
The Carriage by Air Act 1932 gave effect in the United Kingdom to this Convention, and the Carriage by Air (Non-international Carriage) (United Kingdom) Order 1952, made under the provisions of that Act, applied the same limit of liability to domestic and other carriage not covered by the Convention. Under the Act and the Order, therefore, the same limit is applied to all carriage, whatever the point of departure and destination or the nationality of the passenger or shipper, and it makes no difference where the accident occurs or which airline is involved. The Hague Protocol of 1955 made a number of amendments to

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the Warsaw Convention and in particular raised the limit of liability from £3,000, which was generally agreed among the nations to have become too low, to some £6,000. It has now been ratified by 49 countries. Section 1 of the Carriage by Air Act 1961 gives effect in the United Kingdom to the Warsaw Convention as amended by the Hague Protocol, thereby enabling the Protocol to be ratified by the United Kingdom, but this section has not yet been brought into force and the Protocol has not yet been ratified by the United Kingdom.
In the meantime international discussions have begun under the auspices of the International Civil Aviation Organisation with a view to the further amendment of the Hague/Warsaw system and in particular a further possible increase in the limit of liability of £6,000, which with the passing of the years has once again come to be regarded as on the low side. It is the Government's hope that these discussions will be successful, but we recognise that several years are likely to pass before a new Convention or Protocol is drawn up, signed and ratified by a sufficient number of States. We think, therefore, that we should, without more ado, proceed to ratification of the Hague Protocol, and are planning to lodge the instrument of ratification with the Polish Government on March 3, 1967. Allowing for the 90 days that must elapse before it becomes effective, the Protocol will then be in force for the United Kingdom as from June 1 next.
On the same day the Carriage by Air Act 1932, which gave effect to the provisions of the original Warsaw Convention, will be repealed by virtue of Section 1(3) of the 1961 Act and the Carriage by Air (Non-International Carriage) Order 1952 made under it will accordingly cease to have effect. It is proposed that that Order, which, as I have said, applied the Warsaw provisions, with some exceptions and adaptations, to domestic and other carriage not governed by the Convention, should be replaced by the draft Carriage by Air Acts (Application of Provisions) Order 1967 which is proposed to be made under Section 10 of the Act of 1961, and which is now before noble Lords.
The main provisions of the draft Order are: one, it applies to domestic and
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other carriage which is not governed by either the unamended or amended Warsaw Convention, the principles of the amended Convention. As permitted by Section 10, however, a number of "exceptions, adaptations and modifications" are made: for example, the omission of the requirements as to documentation and of the restriction of the courts in which actions may be brought. A matter of more general interests, and one which I think will be particularly welcomed by noble Lords, is that the draft Order raises the carrier's limit of liability in respect of domestic carriage and other types of carriage to which it applies, to some £21,000 per passenger instead of the £6,000 which is the limit in the Hague Protocol; two, it applies the principles of the amended Convention to the carriage of air mail, with similar exceptions, adaptations and modifications; three, as a transitional provision, it applies, with the necessary modifications, those principles to the diminishing amount of carriage which will continue to be governed by the unamended Warsaw Convention, to which the United Kingdow remains a party; four, it applies the Warsaw-Hague system to gratuitous carriage by the Crown, carriage by the Crown for reward already being governed by that system; and five, as permitted by Section 10(3) of the 1961 Act it gives the Board of Trade power to exempt any class of carriage from the requirements imposed by the Order.
If the draft Order is approved and both the Order and the Hague Protocol come into effect in this country on June 1, 1967, there will then be three classes of carriage governed by their provisions: one, carriage governed by neither the amended nor the unamended Convention where the £21,000 limit willapply—for example, London-Glasgow, London-Gibraltar non-stop, and London-Istanbul non-stop since Turkey is not yet a party to either the Protocol or the unamended Warsaw Convention. The second is carriage governed by the Warsaw Convention as amended by the Hague Protocol where the £6,000 limit of liability will apply—e.g., carriage between London-Paris, since both the United Kingdom and France will then be parties to the Protocol. The third is the residual and diminishing amount of carriage still governed by the unamended Warsaw Convention where the £3,000 limit will apply

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—for example, London-Delhi, until such time as India also ratifies the Protocol, although the return journey London-Delhi-London will be governed by the Protocol. In practice, however, a great deal of this carriage will be governed by arrangements under which the major airlines have voluntarily agreed to a limit of £21,000 as an interim measure pending the further revision of the Convention.
It is a matter for regret that there will be these variations in the limits, but uniformity is not something that we can achieve by ourselves, because of the international aspects. Nevertheless, our proposals do, I believe, represent a valuable advance on the existing situation where both international and non-international carriage is subject to the same limit of £3,000; and, having regard to the interests of the ever-growing number of the public who travel by air, I am sure that noble Lords will wish to approve the Order.
Moved, That the Draft Carriage by Air Acts (Application of Provisions) Order, 1967, laid before the House on 7th December, 1966, be approved.—(Lord Rhodes.)
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, could I ask the Minister one question on this Order? I ask it as a layman not so well versed in law as are many noble and learned Lords. Under the amended Order raising the old Warsaw limit of £3,000 to £6,000, and under the new proposal for £21,000 for domestic services, is there any taking away from the citizen of his right to go to the courts and sue the operating company if he feels that there are grounds for alleging negligence on the part of the company or its servants?
LORD RHODES: My Lords, none whatever.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, I welcome What the Minister has said about the increase in the limit of liability in relation to domestic flights but I am sure he recognises that the disparity of limits, depending upon which route you fly and whether or not it is covered by the Warsaw Convention, is wholly anomalous and illogical. I should like to ask him whether Her Majesty's Government are pressing actively for that Convention to be revised with a view to
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getting some uniformity of limit more approaching that which applies to domestic users.
LORD RHODES: My Lords, I made special reference to that point towards the end of my speech when I said it is a matter for regret that there will be these variations in the limits. But uniformity is something we cannot achieve by ourselves. I can assure the noble and learned Viscount that we are doing all we can to speed this matter up.
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, I listened to what was said by my noble friend, Lord Rhodes, with a great deal of attention. I gathered that he was referring to scheduled flights on recognised air lines, but I did not gather whether or not charter flights, and particularly the growing package deals of charter flights in association with holidays abroad, are covered by this Convention.
LORD RHODES: My Lords, that is another point, but so long as it is international in content I take it that it does.
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, am I to gather that the normal passenger accepting a holiday package deal offered by a charter firm is covered by this Convention?
LORD RHODES: My Lords, I do not know, but I will let my noble friend know.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

RACIAL AND RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION BILL [H.L.]
3.3 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. It is a long, complicated and, I think important Bill, I will try to be concise, consistent with clarity, but I am sure that your Lordships' will excuse me if I begin with two personal references. The first relates to my noble friend, Lord Stonham, who is now in hospital. Normally, he would have been replying for the Government Front Bench I know that all of us are responsive to his personality and have admiration for his

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ability, and that every one of us, irrespective of Party, will hope that he has a full and an early recovery.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, Hear!
LORD BROCKWAY: My second reference is to my noble friend Lord Sorensen, who will be replying as deputy to Lord Stonham. It is not generally known that Lord Sorensen was the pioneer of legislation on the subject of racial discrimination. He introduced his Bill nearly twenty years ago; and because of that fact I am hopeful that his reply from the Front Bench will be sympathetic to this Bill.
My Lords, this Bill has very authoritative support. There are three specialist committees of the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants, of which the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury is the Chairman. One of those committees deals with employment, the second with housing and the third with legal questions and welfare matters. All those special committees have considered the terms of this Bill in detail. They have gone through it clause by clause. They have recommended certain amendments which those associated with me have been glad to accept.
All those three specialist committees of this National Committee responsible to the Prime Minister have endorsed this Bill in the form that I bring it before your Lordships' House to-day. Further than that, the National Committee have recommended to the Prime Minister and to the Home Secretary that a Bill endorsing the principles of this measure shall be brought to the Houses of Parliament. I regret very much—and I have had a letter from him expressing his sorrow—that the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury cannot be present to-day; but he has asked another representative of the Church to speak in his place.
In addition to that very substantial authority behind this Bill there is Ministerial support for an amending Bill. The Home Secretary and the Minister specially responsible for the integration of the immigrant community have both indicated—and on this I will speak later—that changes are necessary. The Chairman of the Race Relations Board has
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also indicated this. Mr. Maurice Foley, the Joint Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office, said in Manchester on September 18:
"There is mounting evidence that the Race Relations Act is inadequate."
In addition to those authoritative views of the Committee dealing with the Commonwealth immigrant and the expression of views by Ministers I was greatly heartened, as I listened to the debate in the House of Commons on Friday on the Bill introduced by Mr. Orbach (it is similar to mine, though not quite so extended because of the definition in the Long Title), by the speech from the Conservative Front Bench made by Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke. He reminded the House that Mr. Thorne croft, speaking for the Opposition when the Bill of 1965 was being considered, said that it was inadequate because it did not deal with jobs and homes, which he described as being "where the shoe pinches". Mr. Fletcher-Cooke said he had a great deal of sympathy with Mr. Orbach's Bill which sought to widen the scope. He said—and I quote his words:
"I think that the scope of the conciliation procedure may well have to be extended to jobs and homes".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 738 (No. 119), col. 942; 16/12/66.]
These are the most urgent extensions which the Bill urges.
The Bill differs from the measure which Mr. Orbach has introduced, in that it deals with religious discrimination as well as racial discrimination. May I, at this point, apologise to the House for the three typographical errors in the printing of the Bill? Religion is not mentioned in the employment section and in the definition of "discrimination", and the subjects of the Bill are transferred in the title at the end. I take full responsibility for these mistakes. There had to be speed in handing the typescript over to the Officers of the House and I had not read it as carefully as I should have done. I think that all of us would wish to pay tribute to the accuracy and speed of the Officers of this House and for the amazing way in which, during the night, official publications are printed and delivered to our homes by first post in the morning.
My Lords, I recognise that religious discrimination is comparatively rare in this country. It does sometimes take place in the case of those of the Jewish

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faith, and also with Hindus, Moslems and Sikhs. I regret very much that I am not able to propose that this Bill should extend to Northern Ireland, where there is evidence that religious discrimination is widespread. But I hope that the adoption of this Bill may be regarded as an example to Northern Ireland. Again, I am glad to quote Mr. Fletcher-Cooke.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord is not acting in accordance with our Rules in quoting a statement made in another place during the present Session, unless it was made on a point of policy by a Minister of the Crown.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. More than once he has corrected me on points on procedure in this House. I acknowledge it. Therefore, I would only say that the spokesman for the Conservative Party on the Front Bench suggested that religion undoubtedly is just as much a division as race, and expressed the hope that the question of religious discrimination would be included in any Bill.
The best evidence of the need to extend the scope of the 1965 Act is in the experience of the Race Relations Board. I have been provided with the number of complaints which have been received by that Board up to and including Friday, December 9, last. This document shows that, of the 198 complaints presented to the Board, 148 were outside the scope of the present Act. Of those 148, 66 referred to employment. And I would emphasise that number, because it is larger than all the complaints received by the Board which were legitimate under the Act. The second category of complaints relates to housing, where the number of complaints, which again I want to emphasise, was 29. The comment may be made that that number is small, but the House should remember that only three of the fourteen local committees, who are to be responsible for forwarding complaints to the Board, have yet been formed.
I should be speaking for too long if I dealt in detail with all the extensions of the scope of the Act which this Bill proposes. But there are two extensions, in addition to employment and housing, to which I wish to refer. First, all places of public resort are included, and not only those listed in the 1965 Act. The
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danger, of course, is that When one lists places legal sanction may be given to places not included in the list. I will say only that there is some evidence of discrimination in shops, offices, holiday camps and night clubs.
Secondly, the Crown, which is not at present bound by the Act, is included in this Bill. It would make Government Departments and their agencies subject to the Act. In another place on Friday, Mr. Foley indicated (I will not quote him but only paraphrase his words) that Government Departments are taking steps to apply non-discrimination. But I would urge on this House that it should also apply in all Government contracts by a clause as automatic as the present fair-wages clause.
I pass to the two principal extensions suggested in this Bill. The Bill would cover discrimination in employment, whether by employers, trade unions, labour exchanges or private agencies. The evidence is overwhelming that discrimination takes place now in the sphere of employment. I have in my hand a bundle of complaints endorsed after investigation in the City of Manchester alone. In these complaints there is instance after instance where coloured persons with good qualifications have been told that vacancies were filled, and subsequently, when non-coloured applicants applied for the same jobs, they have been given them.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, the noble Lord said that the complaints have been endorsed. Could he say by whom?—because this is rather important.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, investigation was carried out by the Campaign against Racial Discrimination and all those complaints have been forwarded to the Race Relations Board. I recognise that most coloured persons can obtain jobs, but they cannot obtain jobs appropriate to their qualifications. Indeed, one of the dangers in the present situation is that the coloured workers in Britain are becoming a second-class in the working class. There are mills in Yorkshire where white workers will no longer accept employment at night time, and all the night shifts are now carried out by Pakistani workers. A Birmingham heavy industry firm employs only coloured workers on the shop floor at £8 a week for a 50 to 60 hour week.

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I think the greatest evidence of the inability of coloured workers to obtain employment according to their qualifications is shown in the survey which has been carried out at Southall by a number of students who have lived with the immigrant community. They have detailed case histories of 150 Indian graduates. Of these, 88 per cent. are in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. It is estimated that two-thirds of the Indian graduates in Southall have teaching qualifications. I recognise that Indian qualifications sometimes are not as high as those upon which we insist in this country. I would urge, in view of the shortage of teachers, that opportunities should be given to them to have courses of training. I commend the experiment which has been carried out by the Bradford education authority, where they are giving those from Commonwealth countries with qualifications the opportunity to become efficient for teaching in this country.
The worst feature of discrimination in employment is among the school leavers. The Home Secretary said on October 11, not in another place, that the danger in job discrimination comes with the second generation. He warned that school leavers may work up the kind of resentments that are rife in America. Again, I recognise that most coloured school leavers now obtain jobs, but emphatically not in accordance with their ability.
The Minister, Mr. Foley, said three years ago (and the number has grown since) that sons of coloured immigrants who had been educated for several years in Britain could not find openings as apprentices, and daughters, though fully qualified as shorthand typists, could not obtain office jobs. This is borne out by the Report of the Commonwealth Immigrants Advisory Council and by the Report of the Inner London Education Committee. Many of these school leavers were born in this country; they have become adjusted to our way of life; they are as British as we are British, and to allow discrimination to take place in their employment is a denial of the principle of human equality in which all Members of this House believe.
The second important extension of the scope of this Bill is that discrimination is made unlawful in the sale and lease of
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housing accommodation, in the advertising of the same, and in covenants restricting the sale or letting of any interests in land or housing. Again, the evidence is so extensive it is difficult for me to select. I know of three instances relating to senior members of the staffs of Embassies and High Commissions in London. Their solicitors had arranged for the lease of accommodation, but when the estate agents found that they were coloured, the fulfilment of the contract was refused. I will satisfy myself with quoting from the Milner Holland Report on Housing in Greater London. It says:
"There is, we find, a marked degree of reluctance among private landlords to let to coloured tenants, and where these lettings occur the rents arc in general higher."
The Committee said that higher negotiating fees are charged to coloured people; and they cite cases where registration fees of 10 to 15 guineas were charged for finding accommodation consisting of one shabby room, and charges as high as £50 even when no results followed.
I recognise that we must be careful not to invade personal rights in this matter, as, for instance, where a woman takes lodgers into her home. The Bill does not apply to any dwelling where the person letting the accommodation shares any part of the premises, except for the purpose of access. It does not affect any tenants who share with a landlady or landlord facilities for cooking, eating, toilets or washing. The letting must be of entirely separate accommodation.
I should like to sum up on these two extensions to housing and employment by quoting a speech by Mr. Bonham Carter, the Chairman of the Race Relations Board, last Saturday in Chicago, after investigating American methods. He used these words:
"I am now convinced that, whilst legislation cannot in itself provide the equal opportunity we must be seeking, it is none the less an essential prerequisite in tackling the problems of discrimination. Those problems undoubtedly face us today in terms of both housing and jobs, and they are likely to become more and more intractable unless we take action in time."
My Lords, we are asking the House to pass the Second Reading of this Bill to encourage the Government to take action.
There are other provisions to which I will only briefly refer. The Bill applies

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to discrimination in credits, hire-purchase, mortgages and insurance; and again I have with me many instances of discrimination in these spheres. It applies to clubs, except where the membership of those clubs is specifically limited. I want to say at once that I am not sure that we have the wording of this clause right to express the differentiation, and I shall be happy to consider Amendments if this Bill reaches a Committee stage.
The second main feature of this Bill is to change the structure of the administration under the Race Relations Act. It is now generally recognised that further powers must be given within the structure of the administration if it is to be effective. The Home Secretary said on October 11:
"They"—
that is the conciliation committees—
"find that the very process of conciliation, which is central to the whole idea, is hindered by the lack of powers to compel alleged discriminators to talk to the local committees."
This Bill is not so radical as the Home Secretary; it does not propose any extension of powers of the local committees. The task of the local committees is to seek conciliation, and in my view the temper in which they endeavoured, by persuasion, to reach a settlement would be prejudiced if they were given any compulsory powers.
We propose that enlarged powers should be given to the Race Relations Board so that they can investigate complaints which the local committees have not been able to settle. To do that, in our view they should have power to subpoena witnesses, to take evidence on oath and require the production of relevant documentary and statistical evidence. If a complaint is upheld under the Bill, the Board would be entitled to make orders to the discriminator requiring him not to contravene the terms of the Bill, and to pay any damages for loss to the victim of the discrimination. An appeal would be allowed from those orders to the High Court. The Board's orders would he registered in the county court, and in the event of any breach by the discriminator the Board could bring proceedings to enforce the order as an order of the court. To enable the Board to fulfil their enlarged responsibilities, their membership under the Bill would be
1846
increased from three to eight, including one legally qualified member.
In his speech on Friday, it appeared as though Mr. Fletcher-Cooke thought the Bill would give the Board, or others, the power of criminal sanctions. This is not so. In the case of any breach of an order by the Race Relations Board, which would be passed on to the county court, the county court would not have authority under criminal law, but it would have the power to ask that the order be obeyed, and if it were not obeyed the ordinary procedure of contempt of court would follow. There is no proposal for appeal to criminal court.
Finally, there are provisions regarding incitement. Under the Bill the promotion of contempt is added to the incitement of hatred. Contempt can be more dire in its consequences than hatred. One can hate an equal; contempt implies inferiority, the extreme denial of the principle of human equality. Secondly, the Director of Public Prosecutions, as well as the Attorney General, is authorised to prosecute in a case passed on by the Race Relations Board. Thirdly, club and private associations are prohibited from publishing and distributing, even among their own members, material which contravenes the Bill. This issue was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, in the case of the Viking Club. Those of us who support the Bill take the view that the distribution of material inciting religious or racial hatred, or contempt, is poisonous. If any club or association were distributing drugs among its members, they could come within the law. In our view, this propaganda is as disastrous to the spiritual life of our community as the distribution of drugs would be to its physical life.
We have resisted pressure to include religion in this section of the Bill. We have done so because we want to maintan the fullest liberties of freedom of speech consistent with social welfare. Religion is a matter of choice. It is within the realm of opinion. To be a member of a particular race is a matter of creation. It is decided by birth, and no one can choose his parentage.
I have tried to explain clearly the provisions of the Bill, and to justify them. In the background there is the fundamental issue of the equal value of all

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persons, irrespective of their race and colour, or their religious opinion. This nation is proud of its democratic toleration and its dedication to liberty, which deep down is based on that spiritual concept. We have an Act on the Statute Book which embodies these principles, and the purpose of this Bill is to advance it to fulfilment. We are not wedded to the letter of the Bill. Your Lordships may amend it if you please, but I beg you to preserve its spirit. Giving a Second Reading to this measure which I have tried to present to this House will encourage the Government to conclude the task to which they have put their hand. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Brockway.)
3.38 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I am sure we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, for the clarity with which he has put the case for this Bill and, if I may say so, the moderation with which he has put it. But I am afraid that I am going to say that I hope the Bill will not go any further this afternoon. I will not go into great detail about the Bill—in fact, when I have finished, I hope that I shall have a vote of thanks from the House for the brevity of my speech. There are fifteen speakers on the list, and other noble Lords will no doubt go into details and raise matters which they think are wrong in the Bill.
My objections to the Bill are these. The principal Act, the Race Relations Act, which is in force now, has been passed only a year, and it has been operating for only a few months. As the Government described it when it was in your Lordships' House as a Bill, it is experimental. There is a good deal that is not yet known about its working and, as the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, said, it is not yet working fully. There are, as I think noble Lords said, three conciliation committees out of the fourteen which are to be set up. So there is limited experience as to how the Bill is in fact working. There are various ways going on of which I understand Her Majesty's Government want to know the results. There have been certain accusations—I have no idea whether true or untrue—against certain of the conciliation committees. I take it that they are
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probably teething troubles. They, too, ought to be sorted out. This really does not seem to me to be a moment to try—I am not being insulting but I cannot think of the right word—to "mess about" with the principal Act, particularly by a Private Member's Bill, because Her Majesty's Government have said that, as soon as they have the necessary information, if they find it is necessary to introduce new legislation, they will do so.
I do not think I can do better than quote to the House—and this being a Minister's statement I may quote it—a couple of paragraphs from a speech made by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department in the other place on December 16. He said this:
"If we are to effect change we must make sure that we find the right solution, and if it be shown that additional legislation is required we must be careful to see that we introduce practical legislation, which will provide real remedies and which is not open to easy evasion."
This is the important part of his speech:
"To do this we need more factual information than is now available. We welcome the survey which is now being conducted by P.E.P. on behalf of the Race Relations Board and the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 733 (No. 119), col. 936; 16/12/66.]
That Bill, as your Lordships know, was eventually withdrawn and from reading the Report of the debate it seems that it was withdrawn for the same reasons that I am asking your Lordships this afternoon not to give this Bill a Second Reading. It is too early and if the present legislation is found, after more experience, not to be satisfactory, it should be altered by the Government. Those are my main reasons for suggesting that we should not go further this afternoon with a Private Member's Bill.
I have said that I am not going into great detail. When I thought there might be only two or three speakers I had quite a lot to say about this Bill, but I shall refrain in view of the length of the list of speakers. I will make only one or two brief remarks, in the first place with regard to certain things said by the noble Lord, Lord Brockway. The noble Lord mentioned clubs. Much of this Bill, as it is drafted, in my view not only goes too far but is unenforceable. In fact, as the Bill is drawn, any private club will have

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taken away from it the right not to admit people to the club regardless of the grounds. In other words, if it wants to say, "We do not want people from Central Africa"—I shall use that phrase as an example—"in our private club", the committee will not be allowed to take up that stand although it is a private club. So in spite of what the noble Lord said, I think that part of the Bill goes too far.
The noble Lord also talked about complaints. He gave us certain figures regarding the number of complaints, but he did not go far enough if he was going to give numbers; he did not say how many of those complaints were found to be genuine. I interrupted him, for which I again apologise, when he said that certain complaints had been endorsed. I hoped he would say whether it was done either by the Race Relations Board or by the conciliation committees, but in fact they appear to have been endorsed by a body which might have an interest in endorsing them.
I now want to refer to a couple of points in the details of the Bill itself. The first is a matter of principle, which one can talk about on Second Reading. It appears in Clause 2(i) of the Bill. In the principal Act the offence was to "practise discrimination", and Her Majesty's Government, when introducing the Bill, took great care to explain why they chose this wording. They were particularly anxious that an isolated case of a man losing his temper or behaving stupidly should not cause a prosecution, but a course of conduct should cause a prosecution, and in my view they rightly made a strong point about this. This Bill seeks to reverse the position so that any isolated act of discrimination will be liable to prosecution. As to paragraph (iii) of the same clause, the Government were anxious to stipulate with some exactitude the places where discrimination should not be practised. This Bill seeks to go very much further, and the reason I object to this particular paragraph is that I believe it is unenforceable in this form.
I was going to say something about Clause 3 (1A) which deals with employment. I know other noble Lords will be dealing with that, and also in particular with Clause 3 (1F) which deals with insurance. I dislike both these clauses,
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but my principal objection to them is that they are completely and absolutely unenforceable in their new form. I do not want to say anything else, except that I should like to go back to where I started and say that it is much too early to try to amend the principal Act and I think it should be done by the Government when they have the information. It may be that I have it wrong and that Her Majesty's Government want this Bill, in which case I hope they will explain to us in some detail why. If, of course, they do not want this Bill, then they will tell us so.

ADEN: DETENTION OF TERRORISTS
3.47 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, with permission, I should like to repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary in another place. His words were:
"The House will recall that towards the end of October I appointed Mr. Roderic Bowen, Q.C., a distinguished former Member and Deputy Speaker of this House, to go to Aden as my personal representative to examine the procedures for the arrest, interrogation and detention of persons suspected of terrorist activities there. Mr. Bowen was in Aden from October 27 to November 8 and submitted his report to me on November 14. I have arranged for the report to be published in full as a White Paper and for copies to be placed to-day in the Library of the House.
"Honourable Members will see that I have included in the White Paper an Introduction describing the sombre background of the security situation in Aden. It was against this background that I decided I should reassure myself directly that the necessary special procedures in Aden were being carried out in the best way and that those responsible for them would be protected as well as is possible from uninformed or malicious criticism. I have also added a note on the action already taken to carry out Mr. Bowen's recommendations.
"As I have already told the House, Mr. Bowen has submitted a most valuable report and I take this occasion to

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thank him publicly for having carried out his task so expeditiously and so thoroughly. I am happy to say that, after receiving the High Commissioner's comments on Mr. Bowen's recommendations, I have been able to accept them almost in their entirety and the High Commissioner is now putting them into effect.
"Among Mr. Bowen's recommendations are a number for dealing with complaints by detainees in the future and these recommendations have generally been accepted. Mr. Bowen did not investigate specific allegations of cruelty to prisoners but he has criticised the handling by the Aden Administration of some such allegations in the past. I must emphasise here that his criticism relates to a short period in the past and centres on the activities of three interrogators at that time employed in the Interrogation Centre and the control exercised over their activities. Investigations into these allegations will now be pursued to a conclusion. While these investigations take place I think it right that nothing should be said publicly to prejudice the position of any persons who may be implicated, before they have had an opportunity of giving their own account of what took place to the appropriate authorities.
"We must remember that in Aden to-day, as Mr. Bowen says in his report,
'the life and limb of the population as a whole are in constant danger from the indiscriminate throwing of hand-grenades and other activities.'
"I was therefore glad to see that Mr. Bowen gained the general impression that the military personnel and the police, upon whom falls the main strain of protecting the population and dealing with the terrorists, were discharging their onerous duties with great restraint. I well understand the difficulties to which they are subjected in doing this, and I should like to take this opportunity of expressing my admiration for the way in which all those concerned in the preservation of order in Aden, both civil and military, are carrying out their duties."
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for repeating that Statement of the Foreign
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Secretary in another place. I should like straight away to associate all those on these Benches with the remarks in which he paid a tribute to the way in which the civil and military authorities in Aden are carrying out the task of trying to preserve law and order in extremely difficult circumstances. This is, I imagine, quite a long report and we have not yet had an opportunity of studying it. The noble Lord said that Mr. Bowen's recommendations were generally acceptable: is it indicated in the White Paper which of the recommendations are not acceptable to the High Commissioner and to the Government? Finally, I think it is very important that the further investigation should take place as speedily as possible. May we take it that every effort will be made to get out a report on the past allegations? Because until that report is out I fear that there will be a certain amount of uninformed and malicious criticism of the authorities in Aden.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am grateful for what the noble Lord has said about the men who are carrying out a very difficult task in Aden. It is made clear in the report which of the recommendations the Foreign Secretary felt he could not accept, and why. As for the latter part of the noble Lord's remarks, I would say that the investigation has already been started, and naturally it will be to the advantage of everyone that a conclusion should be reached as quickly as possible. I ought to add, however, that it cannot be expected that the report of this further investigation will be out in the very near future, simply because of the difficulty of contacting some of the individuals concerned.
There is one other point I would add with regard to the work being done out there by the British Servicemen and some of the civilians. I say it all the more feelingly because I have seen what is being done. I refer to the way in which some British Servicemen and civilians out in the desert have voluntarily been helping the Arabs in such work as boring for water. That work is something, I regret to say, which has not received the publicity it deserves.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I should like to express the confidence of my noble friends and myself in the civil and military authorities in Aden, who, as we all

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know, have been carrying out and are carrying out a most disagreeable task. With the noble Lord and his right honourable friend I would say how glad I am that Mr. Bowen found that the military personnel and the police have discharged their onerous duties with great restraint. I should not have expected them to do anything else. But there is one point which has been made by Mr. Bowen, and this possibly was the cause of the whole trouble, or much of the trouble. He found, I gather, that there was failure to deal expeditiously and adequately with the allegations of cruelty at the interrogation centre. I would ask the noble Lord Whether Her Majesty's Government will see that if there is any future allegation of cruelty it will be dealt with at once, so that no doubt will be left in anyone's mind that there is no foundation for the allegation if that is the case.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, there are two matters here which are really separate. One is the point made by Mr. Bowen that where attention had been called to certain complaints in the past, action had not been taken upon them at the time and the Foreign Secretary has invited the High Commissioner to inquire into this. There is also another aspect, investigations into alleged cruelty, which are being carried out by other authorities. That will of necessity take a long time.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I ask whether copies of this report and the further report will be sent to the United Nations mission which is to visit Aden and Southern Arabia?
LORD BESWICK: I am not sure whether they will be sent to them, but certainly the reports will be freely available.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I did not quite understand the noble Lord's reply to my question. Is it the fact that these matters to which Mr. Bowen referred will be dealt with in the future without delay? He said that there was considerable delay in dealing with them.
LORD BESWICK: Yes. I am sorry if I did not quite understand what the noble Lord said. There were some criticisms of delay in dealing with allegations in the past, and the Foreign Secretary has invited the High Commis-
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sioner to explain or inquire into the reason for that delay. As to the future, the changes that have been made will ensure that if there were criticisms or any complaint by individuals about alleged ill-treatment, they would come to light at once and there would be an immediate inquiry.

RACIAL AND RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION BILL [H.L.]
3.57 p.m.
Debate on Second Reading resumed.
TILE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER: My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, referred to the absence of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury and the presence of a representative of the Church this afternoon in his place, I think I should make it clear that I do not stand here as the mouthpiece of the most reverend Primate, who in fact has no idea what I am going to say. I completed preparations for my speech on my lunch-time train. I say that lest there should be misunderstanding.
I welcome the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, in introducing this Bill. Whether or not this is a propitious moment for promoting further legislation in the sphere of race relations, or whether it would be wiser to allow a further period of experience in the operation of the present Act, I do not regard myself as competent to judge. It is, however, clear to me that if the admirable intentions of Her Majesty's Government in introducing the Race Relations Act 1965 are to be adequately fulfilled, certain limitations must sooner or later be remedied. And I would go on to say that if the fundamental principles inspiring the present Act are sound, as I believe they are, then a wider application of those principles is demanded.
I begin by saying a few words about the present Act and its limitations. First, by introducing the Race Relations Act Her Majesty's Government recognised that it could and should promote equal treatment of all citizens, regardless of race. The limitations of the Act, however, prevent it from promoting equal treatment in areas where discrimination is most prevalent; for example, as we

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have been reminded by the noble Lord, in the fields of housing, employment and credit facilities. Secondly, the Act prohibits discrimination on racial grounds only and does not cover discrimination on grounds of religion. In this way it creates a possible loophole for those who might claim that they are ready to serve coloured people but are not ready to serve Hindus, Moslems or Sikhs. Thirdly, by giving an exclusive definition of "places of public resort" the Act prevents the Race Relations Board from tackling many cases which are submitted to it. The present definition does not include, for example, shops, offices and other places which have already been mentioned by the noble Lord.
Fourthly, the powers of the Board and of the local conciliation committees are severely limited, as we have been reminded. The Board itself has no powers except to transmit to the Attorney General reports received from local conciliation committees. It is the local committee which considers and inquires into complaints and tries to settle difficulties. But, equally, the local committees themselves have no power. There is nothing that either the Board or the conciliation committees can do to obtain evidence from anyone who is unwilling to discuss a complaint with them. This is a severe limitation and must hamper the work of the Attorney General in enforcing the Act. Furthermore, the present procedure of working is prolonged and cumbersome. The Bill now introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, is, in my judgment, to be welcomed, in that it seeks to remove these limitations and to extend legislation to cover wider fields.
Certain points in support of the Bill are, I think, worthy of particular mention. I begin by mentioning to your Lordships that legislation in Canada and the United States has been shown to be workable, flexible and effective. Between 1945 and 1962 the New York State Commission for Human Rights, which operates the New York State laws against discrimination, received 9,240 complaints. Of those, 39·1 per cent. were adjusted by conciliation; 1·1 per cent. were settled by consent after a hearing; 47·9 per cent. were considered unjustified, due to lack of any probable cause for complaint; 9·1 percent.
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were not dealt with, as they did not fall within the jurisdiction of the Commission, and 2·8 per cent. were withdrawn. In Massachusetts and Ontario similar figures are, I understand, available.
Then, legislation is a preventive as well as a cure. Legistlation now would prevent discriminatory practices from hardening into accepted procedures. This is particularly important for the second generation of the immigrants now leaving school and trying to get work suitable for their qualifications. We are indeed grateful to the noble Lord for the emphasis he has placed upon this aspect and on the urgency of this need. As the Home Secretary also said in a speech on October 10:
"It is essential to deal with racial problems before they assume such a magnitude that they become, if not insoluble, then capable of solution only at immense cost and effort, and over a period of time."
There is also serious need to expand the areas of public resort covered by the present Act. Any limitation can be interpreted by those who wish to discriminate as being permission to do so in areas other than those covered by the Act. The new Bill attempts to meet this need by removing these limitations and by expanding the areas of public resort covered by legislation.
A fear has been expressed that extension of the legislation would provide protection for one group of the community and thus create a privileged class. It would, I think, be more accurate to say that at present there is a double standard of citizenship being applied by employers, estate agents and others, which results in inequality of treatment and inequality of opportunity. The purpose of the proposed legislation is to remove such inequality. Critics of the proposals have expressed concern that legislation in the fields of housing and employment would lead to an over-rigid interpretation of the law. It should be emphasised, therefore, that the whole basis of the present proposals in the present Act is conciliation, not punishment. The idea, as I see it, is to settle differences and to prevent recurrence of discrimination; and conciliation implies flexibility.
I would add that the Bill, as we have been reminded, would make it unlawful to discriminate not merely, as at present,

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on grounds of race, colour, ethnic or national origins, but also on grounds of religion. The reasons for this amendment are three-fold: to ensure that members of the Jewish community are protected as a religious, rather than as a racial group; to ensure that there is no longer a loophole in the law for people to assert that they discriminate because others are Hindus, Moslems or Sikhs, rather than because they are coloured; and thirdly, because religious discrimination is as unjustified in principle as racial discrimination.
The Bill proposes an extension of the powers of the Race Relations Board. This is crucial if the Board is to be an effective instrument against discrimination. We have been informed that the Bill would enable the Board to subpœna witnesses to give evidence and to make recommendations for enforcement of the Act. This is an important provision, for without additional powers the Board cannot be fully effective. By introducing the Race Relations Act the Government recognised that legislation has a role in promoting equality of citizenship. As I understand them, the intention of the new proposals is to adjust the legislation so that this role, already accepted, may be more effectively fulfilled.
I do not intend to examine the details of the Bill, or, as I have already indicated, to pass judgment as to whether this is the wise moment to proceed with further legislation. I content myself with stating my own sincerely held conviction that the principles underlying the Race Relations Act 1965, and the present proposals for its amendment, are fundamentally sound, and are such as ought to receive the wholehearted support of those who desire that the way of life in our country should continue to be ordered in accordance with Christian principles and should provide equality of opportunity for all persons, regardless of race, colour or religion.
4.7 p.m.
LORD SOPER: My Lords, my first words can well be a corollary to what has already been said so eloquently by the previous speaker. I wish to commend this Bill on the ground that there is widespread need to reduce, if not eliminate, the kind of discrimination about which the Bill is concerned, and to express my confidence that the additions and amendments to the already
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existing Bill in another place are necessary in the light of the magnitude and danger of this whole problem.
As a professing Christian, I need not remind myself, or surely remind this House, that racial and religious discrimination is entirely opposite to the spirit of the One about whom many of us are professionally and fervently thinking during this particular Christmas week. I am up to my eyes, as are many other ministers, in carols and Christmas parcels and Christmas trees. I make no apology for that, because it brings home to me the more clearly that racial discrimination and religious discrimination is an evil thing, and is all the more evil because so much of it is concealed and ought to be brought to light. For that reason, I have done a little trawling in the squalid waters of the National Socialist publication. It may be of interest—I think it should be, if I may say so—to your Lordships to see something of the quality of the material that you can dredge up in this particular cesspool, which can, at least, I think, be included quite properly under Clause 8, the clause which includes "contempt", if indeed it finds no place in other parts of the Bill.
This publication states:
"Every manifestation of human culture, every product of art, science and technical skill, which we see before our eyes today, is almost exclusively the product of the Aryan creative power. This very fact fully justifies the conclusion that it was the Aryan alone who founded a superior type of humanity; therefore he represents the archetype of what we understand by the term: Man. It is our business to instil into the hearts and brains of the youth entrusted to us the racial instincts and the understanding of the racial idea. Our programme is to arouse general indignation against the maleficent enemy"—
that is the Jew—
"and the real author of all our sufferings."
"The first proposal in the policy of the National Socialist Movement is to deport all Jews and coloured people already resident here."
It may well be argued that this is not only a squalid but an insignificant movement. I should regard that with considerable dubiety. I believe that it has a purchase upon adolescent and impressionable minds, and my own feeling, for what it is worth, is that this process is not becoming less, but in large measure or in appreciable measure becoming more, serious. Therefore, I need not delay your Lordships to remind you that

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from the professional standpoint of one who believes in the Christian faith everything should be done to reduce the kind of evil of which racial discrimination is a characteristic part.
I should like to refer a little more particularly to the religious issue, because it fills a gap which was absent from the other Bill. I do not know whether it is proper for me to refer to matters which pertain to Northern Ireland, but I believe that what we do in this place will have some marked and, I hope, immediate effect on what is a most dangerous situation over there. I have some knowledge of the Reverend Ian Paisley, who calls himself "Doctor Ian Paisley"—the "Doctor" is a self-inflicted wound—and I can, from my own knowledge of his behaviour, say a good deal about the kind of hatred and the kind of religious vindictiveness created. Not long ago I was involved in a rather injudicious place—that is, a horse fair at Ballymena—in an open-air debate with the Reverend Ian Paisley. In the course of the afternoon he threw at me a Bible and a rosary, which I felt was an expression of the œcumenical movement. Those of your Lordships who have any knowledge, at first or even second hand, of the kind of wicked and evil vindictiveness that is generated in this particular Northern Ireland situation will be most anxious that it should not cross the St. George's Channel, and all the more anxious to do anything we can in this place to make it impossible for such incidents and conditions to prevail in these Islands.
There is a very peremptory reason why religion should be included. It has already been stated by the right reverend Prelate who has just spoken, and I will repeat it. It is that there may be some cause for alarm and perturbation among our Jewish friends that unless religion is included those who practice such discrimination may escape the net. It is therefore the more necessary—if I may be presumptuous enough to speak on their behalf—that we should safeguard them from any increasing and recurrent exhibition of the kind of thing from which they have suffered for so long.
I would refer your Lordships to the extension in Clause 8 under "Incitement" to what is called the promotion of
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contempt. I would mention a very public place with which I am not unacquainted. When I began to speak forty years ago in Hyde Park—and it is exactly forty years ago that I began to speak there—so far as I remember the only non-Aryan or non-white speaker was the immortal Mr. Saklatvala. I took the precaution on the last few Sundays of making a roundup of the speakers. I am not talking of those who are in a chronic state of "public utterance" to whom very few people listen at all; I am talking of those who at least can command some kind of audience. Is it within your Lordships' knowledge that three Sundays ago, at five minutes to three o'clock, there were six speakers, five of whom were coloured? On the Sunday afterwards there were four speakers, three of them coloured. Last Sunday there were five speakers, four of them coloured. I levelled up the score a bit until four-thirty, but at four-thirty it was still true that the larger number of speakers in this forum were coloured.
This might be considered to be inconsequential were it not for the fact that a new situation is arising, which I regard with great perturbation. Perhaps 40 per cent. of the habitués of Hyde Park on Sunday are now coloured, and there is a very large increase in contempt and the incitement of contempt. It would not be within my province to suggest that there is going to be racial rioting in Hyde Park, but unless something is done to reduce the kind of contempt which now flows, both from white and from coloured speakers, I, for one, am quite sure that sooner or later there will be some kind of undesirable disturbance, and maybe protracted disturbance, in that public place. It is for that reason I am the more concerned that incitement to contempt shall be included. I believe that the inclusion of a provision merely against incitement to hatred, as has been so clearly stated by my noble friend Lord Brockway, is not a sufficient guarantee that there will be a reasonable chance of maintaining free speech within the ambit of the fellowship of controversy.
It is not for me to go any further than has already been traversed by previous speakers into the fields of housing and employment, except to say this. I dare say all your Lordships will have in your minds a general feeling of unease that

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indeed there is racial discrimination in these fields. Your Lordships may not be as satisfied as my noble friend was as to the prominence of particular instances, but when particular instances can be adduced they should be presented. There came before the Methodist Conference a month or two ago irrefrangible evidence of racial discrimination in the matter of housing. It was in Brixton, where a protracted effort was made to find accommodation for a Jamacan minister and his wife who had come to Brixton in order to minister to fellow Jamacans. No accommodation was forthcoming—no accommodation whatsoever, a flat, or a house, in the whole of Brixton, until one day they found the possibility of a flat in Brixton. But when it was known that they were coloured, that flat offer was withdrawn, and, so far as I know, those two, who were to minister to their fellow citizens in Brixton, had to find accommodation elsewhere. This is a particular and precise piece of evidence. I give it, not that it can be adduced in general terms, but because when we talk of this particular field of racial discrimination some of us have first-hand evidence to back up what we have to say.
The problem of housing is probably more acute and complicated than almost any other. It would be unwise to assume that by any such Bill as the one now before your Lordships this particular problem could be solved. I am sure that the problem of housing, where racial discrimination is involved, has a great deal to do with the fundamental question of education and citizenship. Some months ago I was in the North Carolina city of Durham, where there is very little problem of inter-racial housing, because in Durham, unlike so many other cities of the South, there has been free and equal educational opportunities for black and white. It was an astonishing discovery to find to what extent housing is linked with a social consciousness, a freedom of access to the social and intellectual opportunities which hitherto have been there only for the white boy and girl, and how many of the emergent and exacerbating causes of discrimination and unhappiness have been removed.
What can be done is to act in the spirit of this Bill, in order to include within these categories such opportunities as we may have of making our case known and
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of declaring our intent. It is in that spirit that I believe this Bill has much to commend it. I make no apology for thinking that it is not an inappropriate time, when so many of us are singing "God rest ye merry, Gentlemen", that we should think of gentlemen who are black, white, yellow and brown and to whom we ought to offer that Christian comfort.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, before the noble Lord fully resumes his seat, I wonder whether he will enlighten me. Would he say under what clause, apart from Clause 7, he thinks his references to religious discrimination and prejudice would be covered?
LORD SOPER: My Lords, I believe that the question of religious discrimination is particularly apposite in our relationship to our friends the Jews. I wish the Bill could include Northern Ireland, when I should have a good deal more to say. But it may be of interest to my noble friend if I say that I have in my possession a letter under the signature of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Perhaps I may read it to your Lordships, as I think the appropriate paragraph may be of some help.
"We should very much like to see the introduction of 'religion' so as to avoid the doubts which exist as to whether or not Jews are covered in any of the existing categories of 'colour, race, or ethnic, or national origins'."
4.22 p.m.
LORD ELTON: My Lords, both of the last two speakers have used the word "Christianity", and I very much hope that they are not intending to tell us that there is any sort of Christian duty to support the present passage of this Bill which, whatever its intentions, seems to me to have all too little relation to real life. I am sure none of us can help respecting the intentions of the noble Lord who sponsors this Bill, or of the Bill itself. But, if we are going to talk about religion, I am reminded all too much of the good intentions (and good intentions by no means always produce good results) of the Puritans in 1655, when those eminently worthy gentlemen determined to eradicate vice and enforce virtue by the simple process of treating any conduct of which they disapproved as a criminal offence. Needless to say, the Puritans did not succeed in eradicating vice or in establishing virtue. What they

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did succeed in doing was very greatly to inflame the tensions already present within the nation; and I am very much afraid that that would be the result of this Bill if it were passed in its present form and at this moment.
I am very much afraid also that this is only the second of a long succession of Bills of this nature, progressively severer in form, with which Parliament is likely to be faced over the next ten, twenty or thirty years. This much might have been foreseen as soon as the immigrants, who, if they had arrived in their thousands, or even in their tens of thousands, would have been welcome as the flowers in spring, began to arrive in their hundreds of thousands, thereby ensuring the future growth of a multiracial State. For your true multiracial State is inevitably tormented by racial tensions, and inevitably driven on to ever severer enforcements of criminal sanctions and ever greater suppressions of freedom, in order to protect the rights and privileges of minority groups.
The truth, which we should always remember when we are faced with a Bill of this kind, is surely that what a minority group needs most—and, in fact, in a very real sense all it needs—is the good will of the majority. Now you can produce good will by conciliation; by example, by education. But what you cannot do is to produce good will by legislation. What you are much more likely to do by legislation is to produce ill-will.
Until a year or two ago "discrimination" was a word of high praise. According to my dictionary, it means "noticing a difference", and the discriminating person was a person who was generally respected. Even to-day, when "discrimination" has been turned into an ugly word, it is pretty obvious that there are an infinity of varied types of discrimination, which shade off into each other by infinitesimal stages until they become virtually indistinguishable, and of which, though some are reprehensible, some are neutral, some unavoidable, and some positively salutary. I can foresee infinite confusion over the elusive boundary line between the various types of discrimination: confusion in the Race Relations Board itself, and confusion in those local racial organi-
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sations which are said to be busily distributing complaint cards and encouraging immigrants to fill them up—a process which in itself is not likely to lead to good will.
To reduce the sort of problem which I should have thought was bound to arise to its very simplest elements—a mere reductio ad absurdum—suppose that two persons apply to the same employer for the same job. Let us say that one is an Englishman and one a Pakistani, and suppose that the employer rejects the Pakistani and says, in effect: "So long as I can get an Englishman I will never take a Pakistani." Obviously, he is liable to prosecution because he is discriminating on ethnic grounds. But suppose, on the contrary, he takes the Pakistani and says, "Well, I have studied recent legislation, and I know which side my bread is buttered on; I will never take an Englishman so long as I can get a Pakistani." Surely in that case he is also discriminating on ethnic grounds and is equally liable to prosecution, though whether he would in fact be prosecuted I do not know.
Then, of course, there are all the myriad examples of unavoidable discrimination. If I may give just one from my own countryside, which must be repeated ad infinitum and on a much larger scale in the urban areas, I have a neighbour who is manager of a small bakery in the neighbouring country town. There he employs a considerable number of Pakistanis, and his report on them is one which could no doubt be duplicated from scores of factories up and down the country. He says that at home they live in great squalor and overcrowding, riding rough-shod over our housing laws and regulations, but that in the factory they are most admirable workmen, avid for overtime, sending home every penny they can afford. He says that he would very much have liked to promote one of them, but he did not dare to do it because if he had done so his white employees would have walked out on him. For some while he attempted a sort of compromise, by secretly paying the man extra; but he has had to give up even that for fear of the possible repercussions. Of course, that sort of incident will recur on a large scale all over the country.
To take one other very simple incident from my own countryside, which again,

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in much more enlarged and embittered forms must be reproducing itself all over the country, not long ago in a certain village there were two houses which nestled up against the wall of the village church. They were both for sale or to let, and the owners were devoted members of the village congregation who were very anxious to let or sell them to tenants or purchasers who would join the village congregation. If they had heard of potential purchasers of an alien faith, I feel pretty sure they would have said to their agent, "Please, no Asians; we do not want Moslems, Buddhists, Sikhs or Hindus." That would seem to me to be a perfectly reasonable attitude to take, though I suppose that under this Bill it would be actionable.
But it is the provisions with regard to incitement which seem to me in this Bill, as in the last, to be full of the greater dangers. For we have to remember, in respect of legislation of this kind, that to the simple dweller in the back street in an area of dense immigration, who has had to watch helplessly while his neighbourhood has been reduced to the condition of an early Victorian slum, and who is therefore feeling apprehensive and resentful, legislation of this kind inevitably appears much more formidable and far-reaching than its actual provisions warrant. For example, to take what is perhaps a rather absurd example, but a perfectly true one, I know a woman who the week before last went into the local chemist's and asked for a dye. The assistant said, "What colour?", and she replied, "Nigger brown". The assistant said, "You could be put in 'jug' for that remark".
My Lords, what has this clause in the Bill really resulted in so far? The first prosecution by the Attorney General under the section in the original Act was of the unfortunate Christopher Britton. Christopher Britton, as many of your Lordships may remember, was a boy of 17 with a record of mental instability who broke two windows in the house of his local M.P. and affixed a notice to the door with the words, "No blacks wanted here"—an offence, one would have thought, which for a boy with a record of mental instability, could have been sufficiently met by, let us say, fining him £5 and telling him to behave himself in the future. What in fact happened to
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the wretched boy was that he was sent to Wormwood Scrubs to await a place in Borstal. I do not know what his latest history is, but on November 22 he had already been 34 days in Wormwood Scrubs, associating with the more sophisticated wrongdoers to be found there, and was expecting to wait for a further four weeks before finding a place in Borstal. That is the kind of ferocious consequence that this type of legislation can produce.
Once again, we ought to remember that legislation cannot create good will but can create ill-will Our people are kindly and tolerant. If we set them an example, if we educate them, and if we work the conciliation boards as they should be worked, we shall do far better than if we send feeble-minded boys to Wormwood Scrubs. After the Act of Union the Scots poured into Britain and they were extremely unpopular for a while.
LORD BOOTHBY: Not for long.
LORD ELTON: Dr. Johnson, and even Charles Lamb, the gentle Elia, both uttered remarks which might have brought them within the provisions of the present Bill.
"Sir, it is not to be lamented that Old England is lost, but rather that the Scots have found it",
was typical Johnsonese; while it was actually Charles Lamb, the gentle Elia, who said:
"I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair".
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, I must interrupt my noble friend for a moment. The English owe everything to the Scots. Without the Scots, the English would be sunk.
LORD ELTON: That is more or less the point I was endeavouring to make. What I was just going to say was that, in spite of these somewhat rough beginnings, the Scots and the English settled down together very soon in amity, to their great mutual benefit. Surely that process would not have been much assisted if Dr. Johnson had been imprisoned for two years, or Elia had been fined £1,000. I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, will take the advice which I rather think may be given from his Front Bench, and will postpone his Bill for the present; but if

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it does come to a Division I hope that your Lordships will not support it.
4.34 p.m.
LORD RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, as one of the Scots who was not discriminated against, I want to support the Bill proposed by my noble friend Lord Brockway. I believe, and sincerely believe, that the amendments to the 1965 Act are necessary; that the Race Relations Board has to be reinforced for its purpose; and that, in spite of what the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has said, it should be an offence not only to stir up hatred but also to promote contempt of any section of the public on racial grounds. I know, as the noble Lord has emphasised, that you cannot remove prejudices nor change attitudes merely by Act of Parliament; but, my Lords, you can quarantine prejudice, as you can a pestilential disease, so that its virus does not infect others. I know that you cannot, by Statute, make me like someone I do not like, but you can make sure that I do not persecute him or incite others to persecute him. An Act of Parliament spelling out duties, socially enforceable, can safeguard the rights of others and create a climate of tolerance which might even reconcile the English to the Scots more quickly than has happened since the Act of Union.
My concern is with international relations and with the world, which has now become a neighbourhood—a neighbourhood where what happens in Smeth-wick or Selma, in Notting Hill, London, or in Montgomery, Alabama, reverberates everywhere. The attitudes which we adopt here are the stuff of foreign policy. Our domestic behaviour must not belie our protestations. We have a coloured, racial and religious minority in this country, but we are a white minority in a world in which the majority are coloured—a global multiracial society in which we have to contrive to get along with people whom we no longer dominate and with whom we have to share the resources of a small planet. Our enlightened self-interest, apart from our common decency, therefore demands that we engender good will by our example and our deeds. Let us get our record of race relations straight because it will determine, and must determine, our international relations.
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My Lords, I want to make this country honest. I spend a great deal of my time in international conferences and in the United Nations bodies. I very much prefer not to be a hypocrite. This country is pledged to the principles and institutions of the United Nations, as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister so constantly reminds us. As a country, we are committed to Human Rights Year, which in 1968 will mark the twentieth anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. If the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, wants any reason for some urgency in dealing with this, I would remind him of that—that in two years' time we are committed as a country to the defence and justification of human rights. That Declaration declares:
"Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."
And Article 7 of the Declaration of Human Rights says:
"All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All arc entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and"—
I emphasise this—
"against any incitement to such discrimination".
We know that discrimination and incitement to discrimination do exist and are practised in this country, and without the statutory powers called for in this Bill the Race Relations Board, the Archbishop of Canterbury's National Committee on Commonwealth Immigrants and the Under-Secretary responsible for Race Relations cannot be effective in removing the worst abuses—because I am sure your Lordships will not deceive yourselves into thinking that moral sanctions or persuasion which might influence misguided people would have any effect at all on the red-necks of race hatred. Unless Parliament reinforces the Declaration by domestic legislation, our support for Human Rights Year is merely sanctimonious.
We have other international commitments. We have ratified the UNESCO Convention—and a convention has the status of a treaty—against discrimination in education. This calls for any measures

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that are necessary to guarantee that there is no discrimination in the admission of pupils to educational institutions, that there is equality of opportunity and treatment in schools and that we promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups. I think we have tried through the Department of Education and Science to fulfil this obligation. At least we have stated it and, as it were, regulated it by circular in June last year. We, as a country, have ratified the International Labour Organisation Convention on Migration for Employment. Article 3 binds all concurring Governments to take all necessary steps against misleading propaganda relating to immigration, and Article 6 binds the Governments to apply to the immigrants lawfully within their territory treatment no less favourable than that which is applied to their own nationals; and this includes the rights of membership of trade unions, the enjoyment of collective bargaining and accommodation.
The United Kingdom has not ratified, although most member States have, the I.L.O. Convention on discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. Member States undertake to pursue national policies designed to promote equality of opportunity and treatment, regardless of race, colour, religion and so on, and to enact such legislation as is necessary to ensure this. The recommendation which accompanies this Convention wants agencies established by law to ensure that there is no discrimination.
Another I.L.O. Convention which Britain has ratified, and therefore is treaty bound to apply, demands a policy to ensure that there is freedom of choice in employment and the fullest opportunity for each worker to qualify for, and to use his skills and endowments in, a job in which he is well suited, irrespective of race, colour, religion, et cetera. There is the overriding United Nations Convention adopted by resolution of the General Assembly a year ago. The Convention covers social rights, including rights of employment, rights to join trade unions, rights to housing, social services, education and cultural activities. It demands right of access to any place or service intended for use by the general public, such as transport, hotels, restaurants, cafés, theatres and
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parks—the kind of rights this Bill is prepared to safeguard. It calls upon Governments to institute legislation against racial discrimination which in any way diminishes any of those rights.
My Lords, there was a time when as a nation we could afford to ignore world opinion, to ignore even the reproach of "Perfidious Albion". To-day we have to practise what we preach or be denounced as hypocrites and lose our authority in the councils of the world. Where we ratify conventions we have to abide by them. Often, as in the case of the I.L.O. Convention on discrimination in employment, we have had to admit that we cannot ratify because discrimination does exist. We have had to to admit it; we have had to admit that discrimination in this country exists, at least in sex and colour, and that the Government had no powers to counter this and therefore could not ratify. This Bill, proposed by my noble friend Lord Brockway, would give the Government the powers which would enable them to enter into this I.L.O. Convention with at least this much authority. My noble friend Lord Brockway pointed out the problem of school leavers. I would remind your Lordships that the school leavers are not immigrants; they are now British; they are children of these islands. We must accept them and do our utmost by them. If by any reason of race, colour and creed we discriminate against them, we are not fulfilling our duty.
My Lords, I am at this moment worried. If there is to be unemployment this winter we are liable to see an upsurge of racial resentment. In full employment immigrants can have the jobs that other people do not want, but if jobs are scarce then the whites—to use that pejorative term—look for the jobs that the coloured people already have and then there can be trouble. Colour just accentuates it. One recalls Glasgow in the 1920s when it was the Irish with the label "Catholic". The Irish came as potato-lifters and never went back—as everyone can read in the books of Patrick McGill. They took jobs as navvies and scavengers which the Scotsmen did not want. That was all right when skilled tradesmen did not want to be navvies and scavengers; but when they were jobless, they did—and the "Scurvy Papists" were in those jobs; so we had

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bitterness, violence and gang wars. I speak with some knowledge and, indeed, with a great deal of perturbation about that because at that time I happened to be a crime reporter in Glasgow. Those days are gone we hope; and the religious wars have been ritualised in the Celtic and Rangers matches. But now, all over the country, there are hundreds of thousands of workers identifiable by their complexions; and without some protection, hatred and contempt can be fomented.
My Lords, I have noticed in my brief sojourn in your Lordships' House a predilection for Edmund Burke. May I remind you of his "sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour which felt a stain as though it were a wound"? I hope that we shall never be anæthetised against that sense of wound and against that sense of stain, and that we shall honour our obligations to our fellow men, regardless of race, Or colour or creed—and honour them in practice as well as in professed principle. I ask your Lordships to support this Bill.
4.48 p.m.
LORD REAY: My Lords, this subject of discrimination seems to me to be one essentially suitable for legislation, and for a tougher and more comprehensive legislation than we have at the present moment. I suggest that more would be lost than gained by following the cautious recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Derwent. The effects of discrimination seem to me to be cruel, wasteful, dangerous, irresponsible and unnecessary. The cruelty of causing gratuitous indignity to a large community of people seems to me to be self-evident. Discrimination tends to be wasteful because it results in increasing the number of persons relegated to jobs below their trained capacity for reasons that are irrelevant. It is dangerous because, over time, it will provide risk of an embittered attempt at violent redress by this under-privileged minority, as we have seen happen in the U.S.A.
In an age in which there are awful disparities of national wealth and in which the various nations of the world are becoming increasingly embittered in their international race relations, it seems to me to be irresponsible that this country should not go out of its way to provide
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some measure of racial harmony at home. It is particularly so when there are a great number of coloured students leaving this country each year, highly educated and highly qualified, with their lessons in political tolerance behind them, to return to their own underdeveloped countries. It seems to be unnecessary because the current tendency towards increasing discrimination—which I am convinced exists—seems to be still legislatively controllable.
I think one ought also to remember that this Government have accepted what small numbers of immigrants they have electorally decided they could afford to accept into this country, on the assumption that they were to be full citizens of this country with full political rights and, by implication, with full economic opportunities. They are not helots. And in those circumstances it seems clear that a failure to institute adequate legislation would be at once dangerous and immoral.
This is a question which is particularly important at the present time. In the first place—and this has been pointed out—there are coloured people in this country, leaving school and about to leave school, who will have had the same education as their white colleagues. They will have been imbued already with precisely the same culture. In other words, their qualifications in every possible respect will be equal to those of anyone else in this country leaving school at the same time. As they apply for jobs—the evidence indicates that this has happened in a great number of cases already—they will almost certainly find that it is markedly more difficult for them to get the job for which they are suited than it is for their white colleagues whose training has been similar. I would say that this has probably not yet become the general pattern in this country.
I think that racial discrimination tends to start as a perfectly natural competition for limited domestic resources in housing, employment and that sort of thing, and the resentment grows at an intrusion of foreigners into this highly competitive situation. After all, one saw something fairly similar in the case of the resentment against Italian miners in Yorkshire some years ago. I think this is aggravated again by a natural, and perfectly obvious, tendency for coloured

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immigrants to congregate, in this unfamiliar and at times rather hostile climate, into the same areas; and by doing so they tend obviously to crowd these areas and make competition yet more severe. I think that the novelty and the danger of this particular division between the indigenous and the alien competitors lies in the fact that each is easily and immediately distinguishable from the other to the eye.
Once a community has begun to resent the intrusion in this competitive situation, other commercial competitors—shopkeepers, landlords, employers, hotel owners—less from any prejudice of their own than from a cautious sensibility of what they fear may be the prejudices of their white customers, start themselves to discriminate. I think that out of this grows a collection of assumptions and fears which become reciprocated, and there occurs a bitter and potentially explosive resentment. Although I do not think this has become, as I said, a pattern in this country, it undoubtedly exists now in its simplified final form of naked racial discrimination. It is perfectly easy for any noble Lord who doubts this to check it for himself. He should go to one of those boards recommending accommodation for sale posted up in various parts of London, and there he will see, in a very high percentage of cases, a small, but perfectly prominent legend, saying, "No coloureds wanted", or, "Only Europeans wanted". This is a perfectly blatant and perfectly clear form of naked racial discrimination, against which, I am glad to see, there is a provision in this Bill.
The present legislation seems to me inadequate on two principal grounds. In the first place, a law which insists on racial equality in the pub and in the public dining room, but declines to require it where a man's accommodation or employment is concerned, reflects, I should have thought, a bewildering view of the priorities of life.
Secondly, I would criticise the procedure in the legislation as it now exists. The Board is unable to compel evidence; it is unable to subpœna witnesses. Moreover, if it approaches any person against whom a charge has been brought, that person is perfectly entitled to have nothing
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further to do with the question; not to answer it and to decline to take any part in the investigation of the Board at all. This again is something which this Bill seeks to remedy, and I think it is possibly relevant—and certainly more indicative of the limited powers of the Board than the limited degree of discrimination in this country—that only two cases have been referred to the Attorney General, in neither of which has a prosecution been initiated.
My Lords, the present Bill retains the provisions for conciliation, and I am quite sure that this is correct. In the first place, what would tend to happen under a stronger anti-discrimination law, I think, is that the commercial position would be equalised; that is to say, if one hotel owner or one shopkeeper knew perfectly well that he stood to gain nothing over his rivals by discriminating, the general tendency for him to do so, or the impetus for him to do so, would be removed. I think also that people tend to be conformist, and if they were told that something like this is against the law they would stand to win too little by defying it. Thirdly, there is the quite astonishingly impressive evidence of what has happened in the United States. Figures were given by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester, who quoted a figure of 30 per cent. But of the actual cases that remained within the jurisdiction of the law, or where it was decided there was a case to answer at all, over 90 per cent. were settled by conciliation.
My Lords, there are one or two respects in which I would tend to take issue with the Bill. I am not entirely happy—and the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, did not give his reasons why it should have been included or be part of the Bill—that there should be no provision for appeal against an order issued by the Board.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, the Bill includes a right to appeal to the Appeal Court.
LORD REAY: My Lords, do I understand, then, that this right to appeal means that the ordinary law courts could investigate the justification of the Board in having originally made an order? Is that correct?
LORD BROCKWAY: Most certainly.
LORD REAY: In that case I entirely withdraw that objection.
I think that, for once, I would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, on an issue, in that I believe that clubs ought not to be included. Certainly there is a provision for the exception of bona fide clubs. It seems to me that clubs exist to permit the congregation of people for irrational reasons and to this extent ought to fall into the same sort of categories as private domestic servants—for which, again, the Bill makes exception—and cases of accommodation where facilities within a house are shared between landlord and tenant. This seems to be something which it would be quite easy to do; and although, clearly, there would be certain difficulties over borderline cases, these could be dealt with later.
So far as the question of religion is concerned, there has been a certain amount of confusion, I think, between noble Lords about precisely what the Bill attempts to do. It seemed to me that the ground of religion was to be reinserted in an earlier clause from which, by accident, it had been omitted. I appreciate the point that what you could get is a sort of redescription in religious terms of what is basically a racial reason for discrimination, and it seems to me right on these grounds that something of the same sort should be included.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord, more for the sake of someone on the Front Bench than for his sake? I indicated in my speech that, through an omission, religion had not been applied to employment and to the definition of "discrimination"; but that it would not be included in the incitement clauses.
LORD REAY: My Lords, I am quite well aware of that: it is clear from the Bill. I understood that in the proposed new Section 1J (which appears in Clause 3 of this Bill) it had, by accident, been omitted. I am pleased to hear that it has not been included in the provision for incitement. It would seem to me a very sorry day for intellectual liberties and for our chances of legislative progress if it became illegal to promote contempt of religious dogmas. In any case, race seems certainly by far the most important question with which the Bill concerns itself.
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The problem will not be solved, a solution will not even be helped, and the danger of domestic discord will accumulate, unless the present law is strengthened. I see no reason why this should not be painlessly successful in providing the prerequisite for a racially undiscriminating society. If, however, this opportunity is evaded by the Government, for reasons of political cowardice, because they are intimidated by the illiberal forces of the trade unions or the C.B.I., or those sections of the electorate which have already been infected—and it may here be worth pointing out that electorate resistance will tend to harden with the years unless something is done—then an inexpensive way of avoiding a great deal of misery and danger will have been shamefully lost.
5.1 p.m.
LORD ARCHIBALD: My Lords, first of all, I would thank my noble friend Lord Brockway for having introduced this Bill and congratulate him on having done so at such a seasonable time. I will not follow the noble Lord who has just sat down in his ultra-political references, which I think were most misguided. There is only one statement in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, with which I agreed, and that was that the problem is intensified with the number of immigrants who come into this country. The point is an obvious one, but I think that it has to be made; because the greater the number of immigrants, the greater the problem of integration.
When the noble Lord made that point, I was reminded of the time, two or more years ago, when I was in one of our former Colonies, now a well-developed independent country, where I talked with people about their attitude to our immigration laws. I talked with a leading member of the Government, whose attitude was that Britain had the right to impose any restriction on immigration necessary for Britain's interest—to stop immigration altogether or limit it, provided that there was no discrimination on grounds of colour. I talked with the Leader of the Opposition, who used almost exactly the same words. I talked with a Member of Parliament and with a local mayor, and both of them, too, said the same thing.

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I thought that these four men showed an understanding, a tolerance, of our problems which we should do well to display with regard to the immigrants whom we have permitted to come into this country. A week or two after I came back from that visit, I was in a factory not fifteen miles from your Lordships' House and saw on the notice board that workers were required in various categories. Underneath were the words, "No coloureds". I thought then how little we showed of understanding and tolerance compared with those four public men in one of our former Colonies.
I want to depart to some extent from the line of the discussion we have had so far this afternoon, because this problem of integration and legislation against discrimination is not peculiar to this country. It occurs in many other countries. And the International Labour Office has instituted a series of studies of this problem of discrimination, and of legal action for its elimination. The first study was carried out, not surprisingly, in the United States of America, where the problem is probably even more acute than it is here. In the I.L.O. Journal of March of this year there is a report on the situation in the United States. Its emphasis is with regard to fair employment practices.
I know (and my noble friend Lord Brockway will probably rebuke me for this) that what in the U.S. study are called "public accommodations"—that is, schools, restaurants, hotels, public transport and private and public housing—are extremely important, but to my mind the most important thing of all is fair employment practice. If a man has the same chance as any other man of getting the kind of job for which he is fitted, then the probability is that these other things will to some extent fall into place. But if he cannot get a job, it does not really matter whether he has the right to go into a restaurant or public house or not, because he will not have a penny in his pocket to spend there.
I am not going to weary your Lordships with all the actions that have been taken in this field in the United States. It starts with Presidential Executive Orders, something for which we in this country have no exact equivalent. There have been many of these Orders from
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about 1946 up to date. There has been fair employment practice legislation in most of the States. And these have culminated in the Civil Rights Act 1964, probably one of the most important and romantic pieces of legislation that the U.S. Congress has carried into effect. It would be an over-simplification to say that the Civil Rights Act is based on conference, conciliation and persuasion, but these, fundamentally, are the line of approach to the problem of discrimination and its elimination. All the evidence in the U.S.A. is that conciliation and persuasion are completely ineffective unless behind them there are the sanctions of legal authority for those who can be neither persuaded nor conciliated.
Let me give the House one or two examples of how the system works in the U.S.A.—and I would say that the examples I am giving are the results of conference, conciliation and persuasion, and not the results of legal action. In 1952, there was an aircraft factory on Long Island which was looked at by the appropriate board. It had over 11,000 workers and only 247 Negroes. As the result of the processes of persuasion and conciliation, by 1959, seven years later, 7 to 8 per cent. of the then total employed were Negroes: and at all levels; not all at the most menial level. In Detroit, Michigan, a taxicab company employed no Negroes at all. The process of complaint was made, and consideration was given to this by the appropriate board. As a result, within a year there were 300 Negroes employed, out of a total employment of 1,200. In the department stores (and I think that this American term is quite well understood here now) the situation in 1948 was that one store had only six Negroes in its employment. By 1958, as the result of conciliation, persuasion, and so on, there were 200.
The point I want to emphasise—and this is the justification for my noble friend's Bill—is that conference, conciliation and persuasion are effective only if they are backed by legal sanctions. That is why my noble friend's Bill is important. The approach to this whole problem must be, in the first place, the approach of voluntary conciliatory action; but that action must be backed by legal action, to be taken, only if and

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when necessary. In other words, there must be teeth. I think that the Bill provides the teeth, and I hope your Lordships' House will give it a Second Reading.
5.12 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, in rising to make a few comments on this Bill, may I say at once that I agree with the objections already voiced by the noble Lords, Lord Elton and Lord Derwent. To me, they seem completely convincing. I shall try to confine the few remarks I have to make strictly to the principle that I think demands that we should refuse a Second Reading to this Bill. I do not intend to yield to any temptation to stray over the field of the details of race relations. The Race Relations Act 1965 is, as has been said, barely a year old, and any attempt to extend its scope seems to me indefensibly premature. One may legitimately urge that the Act of 1965 should be given a reasonable time to reveal whether or not it is inadequate, and whether so drastic a reconstruction as is contemplated by this Bill is justified by the proved inadequacy of present legislation and by its own intrinsic merits.
I think that the process of trying to change psychological prejudice by Act of Parliament—in short, by making the exercise of innate personal prejudice or personal rights of choice a crime—is a violation of the liberty of the individual which cannot be justified by any alleged public interest. Both racial and religious discrimination, as we all know, are difficult subjects, and they cannot be cured or profitably dealt with by legislative force. I very much doubt whether public opinion in this country is in favour of the restriction on choice embodied in this Bill.
I listened intently to the speech of the noble sponsor of the Bill, and I do not for a moment doubt his sincerity of purpose. But I very much question his judgment and the timing of this effort to force public acquiescence in the views that he takes. If I may say so, he seems to me to be a political homœopath, and apparently believes that intolerance can be cured by doses of the same thing—"a hair of the dog that bit him", in more vulgar parlance. For this Bill aims to
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carry the principles of the 1965 Act to a point where deeply felt racial and religious differences of outlook are to be treated with penal severity. You cannot (I should have thought that there was no necessity to make such a statement as this) make people good according to your own personal views of what is good by Act of Parliament; nor can you inflict upon the community your own views with the severity of the law of the Medes and Persians.
In my view, for instance, this Bill is the acme of intolerance and an attempt to cure intolerance by heavy doses of the same thing. I am not an uncompromising defender of intolerance, and certainly not when what appears to be intolerance is carried to lengths that endanger law and order. But, equally, I am not a political homœopath, and I believe in leaving private choice as wide a scope as reasonably can be given to it without trespassing on the legitimate sphere of public legislation.
If I may say so with respect, this Bill enshrines public interference with private rights. I appreciate that many men are inspired with the urge to regulate an erring world on their own lines, feeling, as Shakespeare said:
"The time is out of joint. Oh, cursed spite That ever I was born to set it right!"
Men arise from time to time with a Messianic megalomania and aim to stereotype human nature in a mould of their own making even to the eclipse of common sense. They may be ahead of their time, or just dreamers striving to make dreams come true, or perhaps merely bigots. In fact, one has to have patience and rely on the modifying force of education and social understanding. It is no use being like Kipling's missionary, who first of all knocked a man down and then led him up to grace, which is what this Bill is trying to do.
I believe in the value of civic education and in giving a fair deal to immigrants; of course I do. But I also believe that the natives of my own country have a few rights left which they ought to be allowed to enjoy. I am reminded of the remark of Oliver Goldsmith, who said:
"A virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarcely worth the sentinel."
That is how I feel about this sort of subject. You cannot enforce a principle

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like this by penal legislation. So I am not in favour of this kind of political forced feeding. As I see it, you cannot cure imponderables like personal prejudices and predilections with the sledgehammer of penal sanctions. If we continue on this course, the time is not far distant when the only people in this country who will find there is no place for the four freedoms are the natives of this land. I therefore submit that the Bill should not receive a Second Reading, and that the issue should await the greater knowledge of the working of the present Act.
5.21 p.m.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, I should like to join with my noble friend who has just sat down in entirely recognising the sincerity and motives of the noble Lord who is sponsoring this Bill. Everybody recognises him as an entirely sincere man and one who wishes well for others. But I must also join with my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Elton, in saying that I do not think this is the way to achieve what he is trying to do. Many noble Lords have said that legislation is the way in which to introduce a greater consideration for others. But, my Lords, I do not think it is. As the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said, the more we are told that we must think one way, the more we shall most certainly think in the opposite direction. The Englishman is a very independent animal, and when he is told that he must think one thing he will most certainly think the other, whether he makes it public or not.
The motive behind the Bill, the prevention of the victimisation of any particular section of the community, is absolutely sound and good, but I do not think this is the way to achieve it. In his opening speech the noble Lord mentioned the mounting evidence to show that the Race Relations Act is inadequate. If it is, surely that is evidence that one cannot work by legislation. I was most interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Elton, put before your Lordships a case of which I had been thinking on my way here. It is the case of an employer who had two men set before him, one coloured and one white, with probably similar qualifications. The noble Lord pointed out what might happen if he chose one or other of them on grounds of colour. But I would point out another
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thing. Suppose the employer has no feelings whatsoever about colour. Suppose he is entirely willing to employ a coloured man or a white man, and suppose he chooses purely from the point of view of the man's qualifications and his fitness for the job. If he chooses the coloured man, of course no questions will be asked. A white man has simply lost, and he has no method of suing the employer for discrimination. But if the employer chooses the white man, the coloured man has that right, and if the case comes before a judge who is to say what was actually the motive in the employer's mind?
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I interrupt for one moment? If the noble Lord will read the Bill, he will find that if the white man is excluded he has just as much right to complain as the coloured man.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, I do not think that any white man in his senses would imagine that he was being excluded on the grounds of colour. I do not think that would arise. The point is that this gives the coloured man a definite privilege over the white man.
LORD BROCKWAY: No.
LORD SOMERS: Even if the motive is only that of colour, we must remember that we are only human beings and that there are some excuses for it. I know that perhaps some people may not be very adaptable and, as I have said, discrimination purely on grounds of colour is a bad thing. But one must remember that with the enormous number of immigrants streaming into this country there has come a considerable proportion—I will not say even the majority—of those whose civilisation and social and moral standards are very low. Any race can produce people of this sort, and we produce plenty of them ourselves. You have only to go into certain parts of London to see that or travel on the Underground, as I do very frequently.
LORD SIMEY: My Lords, may I ask whether the noble Lord is making special reference to the coloured people employed on the Underground, or to the travellers on the Underground, because there are large numbers of Barbadians employed there, and I deeply resent any aspersion on them.
LORD SOMERS: I am making no reference to colour whatsoever; I am merely saying that any race, either coloured or white, can produce people of a very low standard of civilisation. It is the unfortunate fact that some people who have had the misfortune to live close to these groups of coloured people have come to take that as being the standard. They do not perhaps realise that the coloured races produce also men of very high civilisation, and very fine men indeed, of great responsibility. On the other hand, I think one must give to the individuals of our country, our own natives, the right to choose whether they wish to open their premises to a coloured man or not. This is still our own country, although it is rapidly becoming less so. I believe that to introduce legislation which will definitely give rights to the coloured man which it does not give to the white man would be the very gravest mistake, and I sincerely hope that the noble Lord will not force the Bill to a Second Reading.
5.27 p.m.
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: My Lords, may I, with your Lordships' permission mention a couple of reminiscences? First of all, in 1942, in Australia, during the long summer holidays—and it is very hot where I was—we had staying with us a Burmese boy. He was a very nice boy by the name of Reggie Ohn Kya. In that hot weather we used to go out at 4.30 in the morning and get all our work done before the heat of the day, and then come back. One day when I had come back from shaving and my wife was in the kitchen cooking, a rather stupid woman arrived at the backdoor and explained that she had stalled her car at the entrance. My wife, frying pan in hand, listened to her woes. She was mainly concerned with the fact that she had left the sprinkler on in her garden and it was a crime to do so after 9 o'clock. My wife shouted to the Burmese boy, "Reggie", and he answered, "Yes Ma'am". He came and stood behind her, and the woman took a pace to the rear. Then my wife said, "Go and tell Dad to help this lady to start her car". The woman took one more look at my wife, who is comparatively white, another look at Reggie, comparatively brown, let out a scream and fled! I think there is a moral in that particular story.
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May I mention another one? In 1962, back in this country there was a Ghanaian student at Seale Hayne college who was going through a difficult time trying, to find accommodation for his wife and child. The professor there said the student could not stay unless he could put his affairs in order. It came to my notice and my wife and I looked after his child for six months. Everything would have been fine and dandy had it not been for the rather usual intrusion of the Press, who, without permission and against special pleading (it was an agency), sold the story, with the photographs, to the Daily Mail. Then of course there followed headlines in that paper: "Baby Bongo moves into a stately home", and all that sort of thing.
The point I am trying to make is that once that had happened it let loose a whole flood of prejudices. Quite apart from the fact that the unfortunate student (who I am glad to say is now an important official in the Ministry of Agriculture in Ghana) was pestered, we also were pestered. There were some nice, sloppy, sentimental letters, and some the reverse. This is one of many, but the sort of thing one received was this:
"Sir, all you are doing is to seek cheap publicity for"
this, that and the other—"degraded British", "hypocricy", "mongrel breeding", all that sort of thing with which I am sure your Lordships are quite au fait.
The point is that a lot of this sort of thing is going around. One of the best paragraphs here says
"Colonel indeed; you are only fit to be that in some African tribe of cannibals who mutilate and eat our white children and rape our women",
and then the writer goes on to accuse me of sharing my bed with all sorts of what he refers to as "lice-ridden" some things. I mention those points purely to show that one has had some minor experience of what some of these things mean. However, I do not believe that this malaise should be dealt with by legislation. To my mind, this is a case of tolerance against prejudice and fear, and I think that should be dealt with not by law but by education and example.
We all have prejudices. I was speaking to a Member of another place the other day (not an Opposition member, in case

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anyone might think it was) and he told me that he was always plagued by a subconscious "thing" about gypsies. I asked him why, and he said he had been examining his conscience and it was because his nannie, when he was a boy, had always said to him, "You be good; otherwise the gypsies will get you". That is one example of the sort of prejudice one has. Why should any of these things be dealt with by law? It is only a matter of time. I admit that I have some prejudices. Your Lordships will remember that just after the last war there were some rather brutal murders in Palestine by extremist gangs. I happened to be a British soldier out there and a certain Mr. Ben Hecht was reported as saying that he had a song in his heart every time a British soldier was bumped-off. Now until the cows come home no Bill passed by Parliament will stop me from having a prejudice against Mr. Ben Hecht. The effect of the Scots on Dr. Johnson has already been referred to.
Another thing I cannot understand is why everybody seems to be so touchy nowadays. When I am in Australia—and I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, would bear me out if he were here—I am introduced regularly as a "Pommie bastard" and my American relatives refer to me as their "God-dammed Limey liability". When I am in South Africa it is something about an unmentionable Rue Kneck, and in China it is unprintable in both senses of the word. This particular Ghanaian friend of mine had the name of Martin Ohemeng and he was one of the nicest chaps I have ever met—and I mean that in the Christian sense of the word—but when he telephoned me on one occasion and I did not recognise his voice he said, "Oh, this is the Black Irishman", because he thought his name sounded somewhat Irish. What I am getting at is that there is a lot of super-touchiness going around and the sooner we forget it and get on with overcoming the problem by education and example, the better.
On the question of religious persecution I come from a family which, by law, was excluded from your Lordships' House from the passing of the Test Act until 1829. But did the passing of the emancipation Act in 1829 make any
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difference to what people felt inside? No, it allowed us to come here, but that is all. I had a great-uncle who, as a major, was awarded the V.C. in the Crimea. A few years later he became a Major-General in the Aldershot Command and we still have a letter from him to his wife, saying, "Don't worry; you will not have to do any entertaining; nobody will entertain us". That was thirty years after the passing of the Act.
What people feel inside them will not be altered by this or any other Bill. I should not mind a bit of religious intolerance towards me if only the people who showed the intolerance really believed something themselves. The scientific humanists who seem to run our permissive society to-day think anyone who believes anything is rather a peculiar oddity. We all know what unfortunate or unpleasant people inverted snobs are, and I think we are in danger of being inflicted by a lot of inverted racialists—those people who complain bitterly that the greatest insult they can be offered is to be regarded as a racialist, and yet the whole time go around accusing other people of being racialists, and probably have never had any dealings in their private capacity with a person of a different view or colour.
To sum up, although I fully sympathise with the motives of the noble Lord who is introducing this Bill I am against it, because I do not believe men's minds and thoughts should, or can, be governed by laws. I think it would be much better if we could remove the causes of these things. The fear of losing your job, your position, your home or your women, or the possibility of getting a home: it will be much better if we concentrate on those rather than on unenforceable Bills.
I think also many of my friends who have a different colour from us really do not respect us any more because of the attitudes of some people who, let us face it, strike me as being rather humiliating and crawling, as if they were going around always with a kind of super-guilt complex. I think people of another colour would rather be treated man to man, which I think would happen with the majority of people in this country if they were left alone. Lastly, I am against this Bill because I cannot see where the

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trend is going, unless it is back to Cromwell and all the controls over men's minds. I remember when I was a prisoner of war there was a very earnest young man who, when we were having a semi-religious argument, told me he had only one religion. I asked him what it was and he said it was the "religion of Socialism". If we go on like this we may have the noble Lord, in a few years' time, introducing a Bill to say we must not do anything to bring the religion of Socialism into disrespect. With respect, I think that when that sort of thing happens the brain drain will be complete.
5.40 p.m.
LORD STRANGE: My Lords, this is a racial Bill and I must declare I am a chunk of Norman, a chunk of Saxon, a bit of Viking—not the Viking Club—a touch of Dutch, a streak of Shamrock, a quake of Scot. I must also declare that my original name was Lest range, meaning the stranger or foreigner, so I am not sure whose side I am speaking on, but I think it will work out that I am speaking on my own.
Some years ago I was in America, and was struck by the fact that in the South they had rather Victorian adequate arrangements for travellers; they had ladies' waiting rooms and gentlemen's waiting rooms and gentlemen's smoking rooms, but of course their use was translated into their own idiom—black women, white women, black men, white men, and so on. I was on a small river boat going across an estuary, which is called a river in America, and I got completely confused. I found I was in "white women" and bolted out, and then I was in "black men" and I bolted out of there, and found I was in "black women", and I gave up. All this racial stuff is very confusing when you are not used to it. At that time in America there were hotels with no Jews and other hotels with no gentiles, and I believe, though I did not see it, there were others with no gentiles and no "kikes". There was a colony of Swedes up in the North who did not speak any English at all, or any American at all. There were these terrifying shanty towns where Africans were cooped up under corrugated roofs and broken down motor cars, and nobody seemed to realise or do anything about it at all. Worse—I
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think it was worse—was the position of the Costa Ricans. It was not known how many there were. They spoke no known language and wrote no known language, and were breeding as fast as it was possible for human beings to breed. Above all this there was the fear of a witch-hunt going on against the Communists.
I was very generously treated in America, but I could not help feeling a great deal of relief when I got back to the country I knew. My hall porter had just adopted a piccaninny for no very good reason I could discover, and he was very pleased about it. The B.B.C., radio and television, were filled with lampoonists such as Britain has always had, good cartoonists, who were running down everything we consider sacred, even our Prime Ministers and your Lordships' House, but they were very witty and amusing and everybody was laughing at them. It was a non-union which had no Communist in it, which the ordinary people describe as a "Commy". The British people were exactly the same as they had always been. They were completely unmoved by all this. They were solid, with their feet on the ground, taking it all in their stride.
In the 'eighties and 'nineties of the last century there was havoc over Europe as your Lordships will remember. It was a very poor procession if somebody did not lob a home-made bomb into it. The President of the United States was assassinated. There were strikes and lock-outs and beating ups, and the Secret Service and private detectives were everywhere. Yet Herr Karl Marx could come to this country and live in complete comfort in Bloomsbury, and write his book and have it published, and have a decent funeral in Highgate. In the 1914–18 war I think the casualty list proved for ever that we are not a class country. The same thing happened in the Battle of Britain. When something really happens the British people wake up. They are completely united; they will see anything right through to the end.
I do not know why these ancient ancestors of mine came to this country. I am jolly sure they were not asked, and I am certain they did not come for the climate. People have been coming ever since, the Huguenots from France, and others from every other place. But the one thing I

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think it is important to realise is that in this debate speakers over and over again talk about coloured workers and coloured people, blacks. These people are British. When they are in this country they are British; they are not Pakistanis any more, they are British. We have laws for the British. They must obey our laws. Those laws are carefully made; we live under them and we have lived under them for centuries and they have evolved through centuries. We must never think of them as anything else but British.
This system would have worked all right, but unfortunately, as your Lordships know, we have had too large an intake recently into this country. I am very anxious—I expect we all are—that they should have time to adapt themselves and soak into the British way of life. I feel this Bill is very ill advised at the present moment. We are facing very large troubles. I should not like to describe what is going to happen if unemployment rises to astronomical figures. It is not the moment to stir up all this racial stuff, as in America. Leave it alone. I am sure the British Government are very carefully considering a Bill on these lines. With all due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, I trust his Bill never sees—if any daylight comes through these stained glass windows—the light of to-morrow.
5.47 p.m.
LORD GIFFORD: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Brockway has asked me to wind up the debate, and he will speak very briefly after my noble friend Lord Sorensen. I hope that I shall be able to answer the various points that have been raised, and if I do not I hope that noble Lords will interrupt me. The case for this Bill rests on three propositions: first, that discrimination in the areas covered by this Bill is wrong and cannot be condoned; secondly, that there is evidence that it is being practised, and will go on being practised, on a very wide scale; thirdly, most important of all, that legislation on the lines proposed by this Bill is an appropriate weapon in the armoury which society can dispose of to stop it.
Bearing in mind the opposition which has come from the last four speakers, I think it is important to realise that there has been complete agreement on the first proposition. There cannot be many Bills which come before your Lordships' House
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where there is complete agreement on the objects. This is quite a different subject from immigration control, on which a number of widely differing views have been expressed, in all parts of the House. I think it is perfectly consistent for someone to hold the views of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on immigration control, and yet hold my views on this Bill, because we are talking about citizens of this country, as the noble Lord, Lord Strange, said; and it is quite unjustifiable, and wrong, for those citizens to be denied equal treatment and equal opportunity on the grounds of colour or race alone.
I think there is also a very large measure of agreement on the second proposition, the evidence of discrimination. Many examples have been given, and I should like to add only one of my own, which concerns a friend of mine who was looking for a flat. She went to a large flat agency which was thought to operate some kind of colour bar. The point of my story is that this friend has a strong West Indian accent but a very lightly coloured face. She went in and she asked for a flat. The girl looked at her and listened to her and said, "I think so. I am not quite sure". Eventually she had to go and ask someone else, and eventually again had to come out with a personal question, "Excuse me, where do you come from?" They were absolutely flummoxed. That is a lighthearted story, but it shows quite a serious situation.
Nor can I agree that the problem is likely to get better if we do nothing about it; on the contrary, I am quite sure that it will get worse—not because the white citizens of this country will get more illiberal, but because the numbers of coloured people competing for jobs on equal terms with the white population is increasing. Until now the great majority of immigrants to this country have been subjected to what is regrettable, but what one may call justifiable discrimination. Their English is bad; their qualifications are not the same, they are unused to the English way of life. But in the future there will be an increasing number of coloured people, particularly school-leavers who, as has been pointed out in this debate, are as English as any noble Lord in this House. I cannot disagree more with the noble Lord, Lord Somers, when he claims that someone whose family has been here a long

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time can claim to be more English than someone who has recently arrived.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord for a second, I am surprised, then, that he has taken his seat in this House, because that arises simply from the fact that his family has been in this country a little longer than others.
LORD GIFFORD: And I am sorry for the principle that means I am here; I do not approve of it at all. But, to revert to what I was saying, it is estimated that by 1975 one in six school-leavers will be coloured. It is these people for whom we are legislating. These are the people whom this legislation is designed to protect. To me, the most startling stories of discrimination are those which concern them.
I think the question, and the only question, which has divided opinion in this House is whether we can tackle by legislation in general, and by this Bill in particular, the problems which we know exist. I should like to deal first with one argument—though I must say that I do not feel it to be an argument at all; namely, that you cannot abolish prejudice by legislation, prejudice being an attitude of mind. Of course you cannot. You can no more abolish prejudice than you can abolish other attitudes of mind which lead to reckless driving, breaches of contract, fraud, indecent assaults or any other kind of anti-social behaviour which is sanctioned by the civil or criminal law. Discrimination on the grounds of race and religion is a form of antisocial behaviour. What legislation can do is to provide a remedy for the victim which this Bill does; to deter, and if necessary sanction, the wrongdoer, which this Bill does; and to guide and educate public opinion. In this latter field I believe that this Bill can do enormous service. There are many people who, as the noble Lord, Lord Reay, pointed out, practice discrimination, not because of their own prejudices but because of what they conceive to be the prejudices of other people. If this Bill becomes law, those people will have an excuse for doing the right thing. They will be able to say to anybody who objects, "I am sorry but it is the law, you know". It will become respectable not to discriminate.
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If your Lordships have followed me so far I hope you will agree that a prima facie case has been made out for this Bill. It has been said by many noble Lords that it will have adverse effects which outweigh its advantages. The most serious of them was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, and by the noble Lord, Lord Strange, that the Bill will increase racial feeling and not diminish it; that it will defeat its own object. Although the noble Lord is not in his place at the moment I think what he meant was that there will be a number of unfounded complaints made by people with a grudge or a chip on their shoulder, and that the ill-feeling which these complaints will arouse will bring the law into contempt. I would sympathise with this objection if the victims, or the so-called victims, of discrimination were enabled to rush to the civil courts, or even the criminal courts, for redress. But this is not the case. The complainant must go to the local conciliation committee, who will investigate the matter quietly and without fuss. If it appears that the complaint is without any foundation, the committee will report to the Board accordingly, and the Board is empowered to convene a hearing only if it is satisfied that a prima facie case has been made out.
I am sure that noble Lords will agree that this kind of procedure will effectively stop vexatious complainants from causing any trouble. I think it will also stop the trouble which the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, foresaw when he talked about an isolated incident. If there is an isolated incident of discrimination, the local conciliation officer will have no difficulty in going round and talking to the people concerned, perhaps extracting an apology from the man who discriminated and an assurance that he will not do it again; and the matter will all be forgotten.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt again, but I think the noble Lord is mixing up the present Act and this new Bill. Under the present Act, of course, nothing would happen, because the man concerned would not be practising discrimination. Under this new Bill he would in fact be discriminating and committing an offence. I do not know on what grounds the noble Lord says that no action could be taken.
LORD GIFFORD: He would be discriminating, I agree, but the complaint, surely, would be quite easily conciliated.
I turn now to the argument raised by the noble Lord, Lord Somers, among others, that this Bill will create a privilege class of coloured people. I find this difficult to understand. The Bill is not the Black Muslims' Charter. Take the case that Lord Somers raised, of the employer who rejects the coloured applicant because his qualifications are not as good; and assume that the coloured applicant complains and says that it was a case of discrimination. Again the conciliation procedure will be made to function: the officer will go round, and he will no doubt see the other coloured people who are working in the factory. He will listen to the reasons why the employer thought the qualifications were not so good, and he will have no difficulty at all in establishing that no case of discrimination has been made out.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, I think the noble Lord is rather over-simplifying this matter. Supposing there were no other coloured workers in the factory, and supposing, too, that the employer in question was rather tending to defend himself, which is not unusual in such cases, how is the judge to know? I think the noble Lord must be endowed with remarkable gifts of mind-reading if he can tell what is in other people's minds.
LORD GIFFORD: My Lords, I will deal with the noble Lord's point a little later, if I may. I was thinking at this particular moment of the man who, according to the noble Lord, had no prejudice at all, and I was assuming that there would be evidence in the nature of his employees to establish that without difficulty. But I will take up the noble Lord's other point in a moment. The noble Lord's point is really that of enforcement, a matter which has been mentioned by a number of opponents of this Bill. They say that it is not enforceable, that it cannot be proved. I believe that discrimination can be proved, in exactly the same way as any other wrongful act in which the state of a man's mind is an essential factor, by the surrounding circumstances. Your Lordships may know the dictum of Chief Justice Bowen, that "the state of a man's mind is as much a question of fact as the state of
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his digestion". There are countless crimes and wrongs in which exactly that, the state of a man's mind, has to be established.
There will be some cases where the discrimination will be open and apparent; there will be others where the excuse of the neighbours or the customers will be given; there will be others where some vague generalisation will be put forward. These cases can be easily established. But there are others (and I agree that they are the most difficult) in which an employer says, perhaps: "I turned down this applicant because he was not suitable, but I have no prejudice". If he says that then the Board has to discover whether this reason is a genuine reason or only a pretext. For instance, there was a case in the U.S.A. where a large airline turned down a prospective air hostess, who was coloured, because her hips were too large. The local Civil Rights Commission went round; they measured the hips of the applicant, they measured the hips of a sample of air hostesses in the fleet, and they soon found that her hips were not too large. Not all cases, perhaps, would be quite so simple as that. Even so, from the practice which is in operation at the factory, from the surrounding circumstances, discrimination can be proved in exactly the same way as fraud can be proved.
I should like to refer briefly to two specific objections which were put forward. One related to clubs. I can see that many noble Lords were worried possibly at the invasion of White's or Boodle's by large numbers of coloured people. The promoters of this Bill were thinking of clubs which were hardly "clubs" at all. They were thinking of night clubs, working men's clubs, golf clubs, tennis clubs. I can see that there may be difficulties. This is obviously a point which needs to be looked at in Committee, and I feel that possibly we can formulate, as my noble friend has said, a definition of "club" or even perhaps (although I should not like it) exclude "club".
I want to refer now to incitement and to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Elton. I have some sympathy with what he said about the Britton case, which I think was a bad case. There are many good arguments to be put forward on

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behalf of this particular provision, and in particular the extension which it brings in to cover the Viking Club and other such organisations which have been mentioned in the House to-day. But again it is only an insignificant part of the Bill, because incidents involving incitement are insignificant when compared to the instances of discrimination. In voting upon this Bill, if we vote tonight, we should be thinking about discrimination and the appropriate remedies for it, not about incitement.
Lastly, I come to the main argument put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent: that we are debating this Bill too soon after the 1965 Act. First of all, we believe that it was the wrong Act, and that that Act should have gone as far as this Bill goes. Secondly, the noble Lord said that the committees were not fully established—and that is true. But the three which are established cover the whole country. I think the best answer to the noble Lord's argument is given by the endorsement of the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants, about which my noble friend has told your Lordships, and by the remarks of Mr. Mark Bonham-Carter, which provide as good a summary of the case for this Bill as can be imagined.
My Lords, if we shelve legislation now we shall be allowing attitudes and patterns of discrimination to harden. This would be a tragedy. We shall be faced with an American-type situation in which, as the Home Secretary has said, the trends will be almost impossible to reverse. I believe that this country can, and must, show that it offers equality, equal treatment and equal opportunity, to black and white alike. I have tried to show that legislation can be effective in helping to bring this about. I consider that there is no better forum than your Lordships' House in which to have a full discussion of this human problem. For these reasons I urge your Lordships' support of this Bill.
6.5 p.m.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, I apologise to my noble friend Lord Gifford that I have not allowed him to wind up as he indicated. I also apologise to your Lordships for the fact that I am speaking at all, as my name does not appear on the list of speakers. I probably would
1896
not have been drawn to my feet had it not been for the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Elton and Lord Milverton. What they had to say this afternoon disturbed me immensely. With regard to the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, and his criticism of Lord Brockway's idealism, I would say, with deep respect to the noble Lord, that I am always mystified how a noble Lord who has been a Governor of any of our territories in colonial days can take the line he does in these debates. It is something I cannot understand.
I would remind him that three weeks ago he and I, together with other noble Lords, participated in the Barbados Independence celebrations. Could there be a better example than that small island that a multiracial society can exist in happiness? Therefore, I cannot for the life of me understand why the noble Lord should have any doubts about the success of a multiracial society in this country. Yet everything he says seems to contradict the possibility of a multiracial society. I am deeply concerned indeed that a point of view so representative of past centuries should still exist in your Lordships' House in one or two places.
With regard to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, we have, of course, heard him often on these subjects; he has heard me often on these subjects. We take entirely opposite points of view. He has claimed again this afternoon that we can get over these problems by a spirit of good will. I would not be supporting my noble friend Lord Brockway this afternoon if I felt we could overcome these difficulties just purely and simply by hoping that good will will come.
A number of years ago my friend Mr. Nigel Fisher, M.P., and I formed the British Caribbean Association. By coincidence, we formed it at a time when the Notting Hill troubles were beginning. We found this problem on our shoulders. Since then we have had an organisation which has consisted in its executive and council work of 50 per cent. English people and the rest Commonwealth immigrants. We have gone on with great success. But this organisation, since the passing of the 1965 Act, right down to this day, has been inundated with complaints which this Bill would put right. Every week instances of where discrimination has been apparent pour into the Association. Therefore, I am merely

1897
suggesting that it is quite ridiculous to hope in this day, particularly with the number of coloured people we have in our country, that by good will for very many years to come we might overcome this problem. I do not believe it. I believe, therefore, that the time has come when there has to be extended legislation because the idea of good will has failed.
The main purpose of this legislation will be prevention. I believe that if this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament people will not risk the form of discrimination dealt with in the Bill. I believe they will make quite sure that they do not offend against the principles and ideals which have been so very well expressed in many parts of the House during the course of this debate. I do not want to say more. It is because that good will has not succeeded that I believe it is now necessary to proceed to an extension of legislation to cover the points with which the Bill deals.
LORD SIMEY: My Lords, may I make two brief but most important points? The first point is that most of this debate has been developed in terms of immigrants, more immigrants, immigrants not aware of our way of life. I come from the North-West of England, from Liverpool, where our coloured fellow citizens are nearly all locally-born. They have been educated in our schools, they speak the common language of Liverpool, but because of their colour they are given unskilled jobs. They are the first to become unemployed in a slump, they have the worst accommodation, the worst social services, and the worst neighbourhood to live in. We are creating a Harlem and we are creating a group of sub-standard fellow citizens.
That situation is about to become universal in this country. What now applies to Liverpool, and has obtained for some sixty years in increasing degree, will shortly apply to all the big cities in England. And may God help us if we lose equality of citizenship with people merely because they are coloured! Where is the process to stop? We are at our wits' end to know how to deal with this problem. We have tried every way we can think of, including the recent Act, and we have got nowhere. There is no sign that we shall get anywhere. There is no sign that we can educate, that we can
1898
rely upon good will and upon bettering our knowledge of the problem. We want urgently a better means of dealing with the problem, which is what this Bill seems to give us a chance of, and we ask your Lordships most energetically to give us a chance.
My second point is a brief one. My first point was simply on the matter of colour; I forbear using the word "race" because the whole thing is entirely bogus from start to finish. The second problem on Merseyside, and in our district, is religion. A certain number of our people, mainly in Manchester, are Sikhs. They are religious people. We welcome them to live beside us and to fight with us so long as there is a war. There was no complaint whatsoever in our Army about living and fighting with Sikhs in the last war, and allowing them to wear turbans. But as soon as they become members of bus crews the trouble starts. That is absolutely abhorrent to me. As a Christian I must demand the right of members of religious minorities to practise their professed religions. I have the deepest respect and admiration for the Sikhs, and I ask your Lordships to pass this Bill in order that we shall wipeout this shameful disgrace.
6.16 p.m.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate lasting for over three hours, and I do not mind confessing that I am most grateful that at last I have to wind up after a procession of speakers, although the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, will have a few words to say after I have finished. First of all, may I express my appreciation of all the contributions which have been made of varying points of view and from both sides of the House? To some extent, arguments have been answered by other sneakers who take the contrary point of view. Nevertheless, I think that running through the debate as a whole there has been a consensus of opinion to which I shall refer again in a moment or two.
Meanwhile, may I join with the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, in his opening expression of sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. I have sympathy with myself as well, because I have to take his place and had he been here that would not have been necessary. But, certainly from the moment when many of us heard that he was stricken with infirmity and

1899
was seriously ill, we were seized with great anxiety and a fervent hope and prayer that he would speedily recover. It is very heartening to know that steady progress is now being made, and I hope very earnestly indeed that we shall have further reports in the very near future of his speedy return to good health, with the prospect therefore of his once again speaking from this Box.
My situation this evening is certainly somewhat ironical, and the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, referred to this in his second sentence. It is quite true that some years ago—I did not think it was as many as almost twenty years ago—I had the opportunity of introducing a Bill along these lines in another place. It did not get very far, because I was not called on the particular Friday when the Bill was down for debate. Nevertheless, it was an initiative, and I am most grateful that later the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, took the substance of that Bill and added to it, and with his characteristic energy has pursued it through the years. But it is somewhat in the nature of a poacher turned gamekeeper that I am here to-night to inform the noble Lord of the advice of the Government regarding his Bill; but for the moment that advice shall be shrouded in mystery which will therefore make everyone curious to know exactly what it is.
If the House does not mind a brief personal reminiscence, I would say it is strange that the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, and I through the whole of our lives have been interested in much the same issues, though not necessarily in the same way. To think that he and I are here related in this strange juxtaposition is certainly very curious. It almost makes me think that we are reincarnated non-identical twins, with the accent on the non-identical. Be that as it may, there is certainly deep appreciation of his devotion to this purpose, and the Government are entirely sympathetic both with the intention of his Bill and with his motives and expressions, which were also voiced by other noble Lords supporting the Bill.
We all know, of course, that a similar Bill—not entirely identical, but similar—was introduced in another place only last Friday, and that the mover of that felt it wise, in the end, having had an exten-
1900
sive and useful debate, to withdraw the Bill. I do not know whether the noble Lord feels the same wisdom—we have yet to see. But I would exhort him to consider very carefully doing that, as perhaps, in all the circumstances, the best thing that can be done in advancement of the purpose he has in mind.
I quite agree that many of the proposals in this Bill are logical and consistent in their extension of principles already accepted in the Race Relations Act 1965; and to that extent, too, I can appreciate the reasons why he has brought this matter to our attention—so that we realise there is still a very grave need for further action to be taken at an appropriate time. The word "discrimination", of course, is in itself quite an innocent one. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Elton, who had done as I have done—that is, looked up the dictionary to find the etymological meaning of the word. To "discriminate" means merely, "to note the difference between one thing and another", which in itself is quite innocent. Therefore, I would myself distinguish between natural, innocent discrimination, such as we all practise, on the one hand, and that which is, on the other, quite uncivilised, by calling the latter "uncivilised discrimination".
Here, I would just touch on a few remarks made by Lord Royle, and others, in regard to good will. Always there is this difficult problem confronting legislators, and others, as to how far they should go in trying to encourage good conduct by legislation—by, if you like, coercion—and how far they should rely purely upon guidance, inspiration, education and persuasion. Really, my Lords, I would submit there is no necessary antithesis between the encouragement of good will, on the one hand, and legislation, on the other. Surely all beneficial legislation embodies the principle of good will to the citizens as a whole. Every good Act of Parliament, I would submit, is the embodiment of an aspiration to a better society. To that extent there is no distinction in essence between the diffusion of good will generally and the encouragement of it specifically through an Act of Parliament.
But I agree, of course, that there are limits. There are limits both ways. There are limits to reliance upon the diffusion

1901
of good w ill and limits, also, on what can be done in trying to enforce, if not good will then good behaviour upon citizens. Here, therefore, I must make it quite clear that the Government, considering this matter, believe it to be highly desirable to determine, in the light of experience that is still continuing, what in due course may need improvement in the present statutory machinery dealing with race relations, and then to take whatever other action may be necessary. That is the Government's position. Perhaps I may anticipate later remarks by saying now that in these circumstances—feeling, indeed, that the noble Lord has stimulated all our minds, and has already warned us that there is a great deal of evidence which has accumulated to show that there is need for further action—I hope he will now leave it to the Government to ponder upon these matters.
Moreover, I think we have to remember that the Race Relations Board set up under the 1965 Act has been operating only since last April, and it is customary to give a little longer time than that before trying to assess the results of such an investigation. It is surely a little too early to assess its working. Moreover, we hope to receive a report from the survey that P.E.P. is undertaking. And might I explain, for the benefit of those who may not know what the initials "P.E.P." mean, that they do not mean merely that which we all require in this House and elsewhere, but "Political and Economic Planning." They have undertaken, on behalf of the Government—or, rather, on behalf of the Race Relations Board—an investigation into the whole of this field; and that, together with the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants, to which reference has already been made, in respect of the nature and extent of racial discrimination in Britain, will surely produce factual evidence (it has been and is being secured now) which will fortify the Government in whatever action they feel should be taken some months ahead.
I feel very strongly (and I assure your Lordships that I feel this personally, and not merely as a Devil's advocate) that until further evidence is available, further evidence than has yet been obtained, it would be unwise and imprudent to make any firm decision. I say this while expressing, as I have already said, great
1902
appreciation not only of the motives of the noble Lord and others but also of the many facts which he has brought to our attention. There is much to cause us disquiet. We have all, I am sure, in one way or the other, had experience of gross unfairness and injustice which, at least from a moral criterion, Christian or otherwise, no-one can support or endorse. Here, one knows, of course, that moral patterns vary enormously, and I am not therefore suggesting that anybody who does not accept this particular criterion which I personally accept is immoral; it merely means that his morality is different. That is why I deliberately select the words I use to indicate a moral criterion which is in accordance with, I think, the feeling of most noble Lords in this House, even though others may not subscribe to it, or may desire to qualify it quite drastically.
All the contributions of noble Lords, whether they subscribe to the implicit moral criterion by which some of us approach these matters or otherwise, have made invaluable contributions which will be most carefully considered. But, again, I am sure we shall all agree that any new measures dealing with a serious social and ethical problem should be fortified by careful and detailed consideration of what is appropriate and practicable, and will effectually serve the purpose which we endorse. There are complexities in this matter, and even dangers; and these must be appreciated, not just brushed on one side. It is always well, I think, for all of us who have strong convictions on one side to try to understand the convictions of those who oppose our own convictions. By so doing we are better informed, and sometimes we can build abridge where otherwise there would be merely a yawning vacuum or abyss. It would be wrong, of course, to exaggerate these dangers and these complexities. Nevertheless, I submit that they demand and require of us the obligation of constant, earnest attention, lest otherwise the difficulties increase, and even provoke reactions that may confuse the basic issue.
Before I touch on those contingencies, may I be permitted observations of a more general character, though I hope relevant to the nature of both the existing Act and this Bill? The question that arises with all of us, and has arisen one

1903
way or the other this evening, is: why should there have been urgent need for legislation on this matter of racial discrimination? We know that the evil exists—at least, some of us believe it to be an evil; others, perhaps, do not think so—either passively or flagrantly. We also believe that, while Acts of Parliament can certainly do much that is substantial to check racial prejudice and to prevent its gross expression, they cannot of themselves erase the fact of prejudice from human minds. That I think, is agreed. Only education and enlightenment, and a convergence of moral assessments, can do that. This, of course, includes the nourishment of a moral conscience that makes racial prejudice utterly repugnant to human decency.
But, again, we have to ask ourselves this question, platitudinous though it may be: what are the roots of this evil? Psychologists have probed deeply into the subject, and have provided their own assessments from time to time. A few appear to accept the fact of racial prejudice as a natural fact that cannot be reasoned away; and a few sociologists and politicians have appeared to rear on that alleged ineradicable basis a social structure of permanent racial separation. Again one must understand that, either openly or secretly, many accept that and say that it is a law based on nature that there shall be this severe and permanent separation of different communities. Thus the existing Act and the proposals of the noble Lord have more than a national significance. They are a challenge to our thinking, a challenge to our moral values; and, more than that, they are involved in the whole world-wide problem of racial relationships within our human community. Such a debate as is taking place to-day is being listened to, so to speak, representatively, by those in South Africa, Rhodesia and many other parts of the world.
Most of the human race, we must remind ourselves—as I think another noble Lord reminded us—consists of so-called coloured peoples, although "coloured" is a most misleading term, because those of European or Caucasian stock are themselves coloured. We here in this House this afternoon are coloured. The pigmentation of the human race ranges from pallid to pink, and from persistent or tem-
1904
porary sun-tan, such as the advertisers of holiday resorts or bottles of skin varnish extol, to the aggressively ruddy and choleric. I believe that we are all coloured, from fair to swarthy, but many of the fair minority, unfortunately, presume their own lighter hue to be a valid criterion by which they relegate the less fair or the swarthy to an inferior status. That is an assumption that exists in this country even among those who do not tolerate the worst excesses of discrimination. They still have the assumption that this purely accidental fact of pigmentation indicates an intrinsic inferiority. Of course, it is true that in other parts of the world this assumption does not exist.
Some years ago I addressed both Houses of the Venezuelan Parliament and saw their elected representatives of every shade of colour from ivory white, on the one hand, to the most sable black, on the other. There are other parts of the world where this extraordinary reaction to colour does not exist as it does in some parts of this country and in some parts of the world. Of course, pigmentation is not the only prejudicial factor; for generally associated with this are differences of ethnic culture including religion—and here I would say, in passing, that I do not entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, or some other noble Lord who suggested that, while one cannot help the colour of one's skin or its ethnic significance, one is responsible for one's religion. The great majority of Hindus are born into the Hindu faith as part of their being; the great majority of Moslems in the Moslem world—or, for that matter, Christians—surely are born into a community where the religion is part of its fabric, part of their being. To that extent people are not, by intellectual conviction, Moslems, Hindus, Christians or Jews. Religion is to that extent a communal characteristic. Let that be by the way. I would merely say that, because of these different factors—whether they be cultural, religious, moral or economic—there are reactions evoked of fear between one human community and another. That fear, I would submit, is quite natural; but it can be exploited and aggravated either by those of primitive identification with their own familiar community or, more deliberately, by those with a sophisticated and distorted mentality.

1905
Your Lordships will forgive me for dwelling on this; but I know very well that there are those theologians and others who argue that there is a natural law, apart from a Divine Law, which can make certain things intrinsically evil. I do not accept that. I say it is natural for one community to fear another whose characteristics are unlike its own. National prejudice can be fused with racial animus, although not necessarily so; for national enmity to another nation can be ephemeral, according to national State political policies, economic exigencies or the psychological concomitant of war. Our own variable attitude to Germany and France respectively could illustrate this. Just behind the Throne, noble Lords will remember, there is a large mural painting of Blucher and Wellington shaking hands at that time when Germany and England were allies against the "infamous French"—who are, of course, recumbent on the ground at the feet of the conquerors. That has passed. I mention it merely to illustrate how in the course of time the bitter enmity and hostility to a particular nation can pass away.
But racial prejudice, I think, can go deeper and last longer than ephemeral national hostility or prejudice. Moreover, it can operate within a particular nation, as it did most woefully and tragically with Germany in the persecution of the Jews in the last war. However, anti-Semitism has operated elsewhere and exists in the United Kingdom. In this, as with other forms of antipathy, it is a defensive fear of the impact of differences that issues in aversion, discrimination, virulent hostility and, sometimes, in vicious persecution. It is precisely because of this that I welcome the attempt of the noble Lord and of all others to try to educate legislatively the people of the country into the realisation that differences should be welcomed. Instead of being accepted as a source of conflict, they should be welcomed as adding to the richness of our national life and as showing that differences and diversities can exist within a national harmony.
In the few, moments that I have remaining I will turn to the Bill. May I say that we should bear in mind the fact that communal protectiveness is very strong with many sections of our com-
1906
munity who are not themselves evilly disposed, as soon as they feel that their particular rights or privileges or standard of life need protection against those Philistines or vandals who would blindly tear them down—not necessarily through base intention but through ignorance. To understand that, we must understand why there is a fear as much in the working class as in any other section of the community of miscegenation, of intermarriage between different communities, because they believe that would cause a deterioration of their particular community and its values. We must understand this, even though biologically and anthropologically the assumption of some people that there is some deep biological difference between different sections of the community is quite absurd and spurious. Nevertheless, we have objectively to recognise that, however irrational and morally reprehensible the several kinds of community prejudice may be, they not only exist but can persist despite prohibitive legislative measures designed to eradicate or diminish the social evil.
I am sure that my noble friend Lord Brockway fully appreciates this; and also that in our eagerness to take strong action we must be careful not to implement our conviction in a manner that could stimulate emotional resistance and evasion and thus frustrate our good intentions. Oil may be appropriate for pouring on troubled waters but not for putting out fires. Unfortunately community distinctiveness can become deliberately aggravated until its victims become obsessed to the point when they react automatically to casual stimuli and lose customary restraints. They can be so conditioned as to be impervious to reason and moral obligation.
Not irrelevant to this, may I cite an unhappy experience I had myself some years ago when two young men came, separately, to my house. One was a South African national, the other a Nigerian. I have know them for many years; I admired them; indeed, they were my young friends. But as soon as they arrived coincidentally in my home, I could sense a freezing apprehensiveness on the part at least of one of them, and before many minutes had gone by, possibly preceded by an exchange of words which I did not hear, they were almost

1907
at each other's throats. It was a lamentable experience; and, of course, my home not being adapted to such pugilistic encounters, I am glad that it did not proceed too far. But it was a revelation of the latent ferocity of racial animus. These two otherwise excellent young men, when together in a certain situation, reacted automatically in a mood of almost murderous hostility.
I mention this, my Lords, only to apply it to the Bill—many of you may say, "And about time too!" Imagine, instead of these two young men just being temporary guests in my home, that one was a landlord and the other a prospective tenant; that one was applying for a room—shall we say?—in the house of the landlord. Under the law, it could be said, and rightly so, "You must not declare that there shall be discrimination against the Nigerian because he is black", and therefore no advertisement would appear to that effect. But with what consequential result? I submit that it is possible for the landlord to advertise his room to let, invite the applicant to attend at a certain time and then to give some spurious, evasive excuse for not granting him the tenancy, an excuse which it would be impossible to refute. And even if he accepted the tenant, one has to appreciate the state of tension and conflict that would exist in this situation. I am not saying that therefore nothing should be done; I am saying that we have to bear this in mind and realise that in some circumstances, though theoretically it may be desirable to coerce and compel, and sometimes it may be necessary in truth, nevertheless, there are emotional and psychological feelings which we should do well to bear in mind and they should counsel us to be cautious.
In his Bill the noble Lord proposes greatly to extend the provisions of the existing Act in many respects. Incidentally, I note an indication in the Title that he proposed to deal with religious discrimination, but I have looked through the clauses very carefully and, so far as I can see, except for Clause 6 there is no clause which deals precisely with this particular matter. It may be that on second thoughts it was discovered that there were very great difficulties in this respect and I can appreciate that as well; because once you start bringing in the matter of religious discrimination, you
1908
begin to tread on very dangerous ground. It might well mean, in course of time, that the satirists on television and other brash young men would find themselves in danger of being prosecuted for satirising religion or bringing it into contempt. It might, indeed, mean that all those humanists, or others, who satirise or criticise some of the more archaic elements of any particular faith would themselves be liable to prosecution as bringing that faith into derision or into contempt. I do not know; I simply say that there is this danger.
My Lords, there are certain clubs to which reference has been made, and their members undoubtedly indulge in distasteful discriminatory practices. But it is the essence of a club to be selective in its membership, and even with the proviso which the noble Lord has written into his Bill, it would be very difficult to deal with undesirable practices at some clubs without imposing unfair restrictions on the freedom of the many genuine clubs established for a wide variety of purposes. Reference has also been made to trade unions. Here, again, I assume that the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has been in consultation with the trade unions, for although I know that trade union officials have exercised a very beneficial influence over some of their members who may be infected by racial prejudices, nevertheless any attempt to try to deal with these tendencies still further requires consultation among those who are responsible for the great unions of our land.
There is much else that I could say. I am sure that already many are saying, "Please don't", and I will not. I will conclude by saying once again that we appreciate the attitude of the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, the plea he has made and the facts that he has brought to our attention; and, indeed, also those which have been brought to our attention by other noble Lords. But we ask that the existing Act and the Race Relations Board shall be given a reasonable time to accumulate experience upon which we can rest our determination to do something even better than has been done so far. It does not mean that nothing is being done meanwhile. We will continue to use our influence as a Government in every possible way, within the legislative and administrative machinery already at our disposal, to support and encourage all those who are devoting

1909
their time and energy most splendidly to combating any manifestation of racial discrimination as a cancerous growth in the body politic.
My Lords, I do not know what the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, intends to do, but I would say as I sit down that I hope most earnestly that he will feel that the debate has been more than worth while. All the contributions to it will be heeded by the Government most carefully. I hope he will then withdraw his Bill. If, on the other hand, he does not do so, most reluctantly I must advise the House to oppose a Second Reading.
6.46 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, we have had a long and I think a useful debate. I do not propose to enter into the controversy on the merits of the Bill; I propose only to make a comment on the advice which my noble friend Lord Sorensen has given. I think I am right in saying that at the beginning of his speech the noble Lord urged that the Bill should be withdrawn on the ground that the Government are considering the surveys that have been carried out and will introduce a Bill later if, in their view, those surveys justify that measure. On that ground the noble Lord, Lord Sorensen, asks me to withdraw the Bill. As my noble friend says, our association has been very close. But I am afraid that on this occasion I cannot accept the advice which he has given.
I cannot accept it for three reasons. The first is that it will be next October before the new Session of Parliament begins and before the new measure which he contemplates can be introduced. Between now and October will be a period for the formation of public opinion, and it seems to me very desirable that this House should give some leadership to that public opinion by agreeing to the Second Reading of this Bill. I am looking at this matter in quite a practical way. I appreciate that if the Bill obtains a Second Reading to-night it will be very difficult, in view of the programme of the Government, and indeed in view of other Bills which are before Committees and before this House, to give facilities for this Bill to
to have a Committee stage. I recognise that in a practical way. But I say to your Lordships that if that is the case, there is a greater importance in our now declaring in favour of the principles of this Bill which have been supported from nearly all quarters of the House.
The second point I wish to make is this. This House is proud of a certain independence and liberty. In recent weeks we have demonstrated a liberal attitude on many issues which, I think, is ahead even of the attitude in the House of Commons. This is one of those deep moral issues. I believe that this House would be fulfilling its recent record of liberality on moral issues if to-night it were to give a Second Reading to this Bill.
The third reason why I would urge this House to accept this Bill to-night is that this is not a matter for the decision of either Front Bench of this House. This is a Private Member's Bill. It is a free vote. It is one of those occasions when individual Members of this House can, without Governmental or Party pressures, express their own convictions. I was just a little surprised when my noble friend, who has known me over the years, appealed to me to leave this to a Government. I do not believe that we ought to leave matters like this to a Government. I believe tremendously that, particularly in the Houses of Parliament, democracy involves that on every possible occasion—and this is one—when there is a free vote Members should declare their convictions and vote accordingly. I believe that to carry the Second Reading to-night will be an encouragement to all those—and I know they are in the Government itself—who wish to see a Bill on these lines carried. On these grounds, I am afraid that I cannot accept my noble friend's advice to withdraw the Bill, and if the Second Reading of the Bill is challenged I have no other course than to take the matter to a Division.
6.53 p.m.
On Question, Whether the Bill be now read 2a?
Their Lordships divided: Contents 23; Not-contents, 60.

CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Arran, E.

Chorley, L.

Airedale, L.

Asquith of Yarnbury, Bs.

Collison, L.

Archibald, L.

Brockway, L.

Faringdon, L.

Gifford, L. [Teller.]

Ritchie-Calder, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Listowel, E.

Royle, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Mitchison, L.

Simey, L.

Truro, Bp.

Popplewell, L.

Southwark, Bp.

Winchester, Bp.

Reay, L. [Teller.]

Stocks, Bs.

NOT-CONTENTS

Auckland, L.

Elliot of Harwood, Bs.

Milverton, L. [Teller.]

Audley, Bs.

Elton, L.

Monson, L.

Barnby, L.

Emmet of Amberley, Bs.

Mowbray & Stourton, L.

Beswick, L.

Erroll of Hale, L.

Moyne, L.

Bowles, L.

Falkland, V.

Newall, L.

Bridgeman, V.

Fortescue, E.

Phillips, Bs.

Brooke of Cumnor, L.

Gardiner, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Rhodes, L.

Brooke of Ystradfellte, Bs.

Greenway, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Brown, L.

Hall, V.

Sandford, L.

Burden, L.

Hawke, L.

Shepherd, L.

Champion, L.

Henderson, L.

Sherfield, L.

Clifford of Chudleigh, L.

Hilton of Upton, L.

Somers, L.

Colville of Culross, V.

Iddesleigh, E.

Sorensen, L.

Conesford, L. [Teller.]

Kilmany, L.

Stradbroke, E.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Kinnoull, E.

Strang, L.

Daventry, V.

Leatherland, L.

Strange, L.

Derwent, L.

Lindgren, L.

Teynham, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

McCorquodale of Newton, L.

Vivian, L.

Eccles, V.

Margadale, L.

Winterbottom, L.

Effingham, E.

Merrivale, L.

Ypres, E.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

FILMS BILL
7.3 p.m.
House in Committee (according to Order).
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment: Report received.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of December 13):
LORD RHODES: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time. Before letting it go, I should like to thank your Lordships for your cooperation in helping this Bill through. Subject to the minor Amendments that I outlined during the Second Reading, the effect of the Bill is to prolong existing legislation for three years, so as to enable the Government to carry out, in the light of the Report of the Monopolies Commission on Supply Bills, a review of films policy and legislation.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Lord Rhodes.)
On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed.

COMPANIES BILL
7.4 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 Brown.)
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL in the Chair.]
Clause 25 [Directors' service contracts, or memorandums thereof, to be open to inspection at company's registered office]:
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved to add to the clause:
"( ) For the purposes of this section the expression "contract of service" shall not include a contract expiring or determinable by the company without payment of compensation within a period not exceeding twelve months, and where a director is serving a company on terms contained exclusively in the company's Articles of Association and not otherwise he shall be deemed not to have a contract of service with the company.
( ) Nothing in this section shall apply to a private company or to any other company none of whose shares or debentures are for the time being dealt in or quoted on a prescribed stock exchange or to a company which is the wholly owned subsidiary of another."
The noble Lord said: Dealing with this clause, which requires directors' service contracts or memoranda about them to be open to inspection at the company's

1913
registered office, we have put down this Amendment in order to make certain exceptions. I would accept that shareholders probably ought to know more about directors' service contracts, and therefore we agree with the intention of this clause. However, it is questionable whether the clause does not go too far, as it requires all contracts, whether written or verbal, whether, as I understand it, for one week or ten years, and whatever the pay involved may be, to be disclosed, and, in particular, it does not discriminate between public and private companies.
One important purpose of the clause is to enable shareholders to work out what it might cost the company in damages to remove a director before the expiry of his contract. In that case, there would be little point in requiring disclosure of contracts with a short time to run of, say, a year or so, and certainly those with less than a year to run, where those contracts could be terminated by notice within that period and without any payment of damages. A high proportion of directors, and particularly non-proprietary directors, in groups of public companies are working under a contract of one year or less, and no useful purpose will be served by compelling wholly-owned subsidiary companies to disclose this information, as it will already be known to the only shareholder, which is the parent company.
The peculiar position of private companies does not seem to have been taken into account. Many thousands of directors of family companies do not work under a contract of service, for the simple reason that they are their own employers. In a director-controlled company the directors' remuneration is often fixed at the year end according to the available profits, and not by any formal contract. Where the directors and the shareholders are one and the same people, or even where the directors as a body own the majority of the equity shares, there is clearly no point in requiring disclosure of any contract of service. We therefore think that the clause should not apply to what are at present exempt private companies—to private companies, that is, or to unquoted companies.
For those members of the public, including the Press, who want to find out what a director of a good company earns,
1914
the solution will be simple. The purchase of one share for perhaps less than £1 will entitle the holder to inspect that director's contract of service. In this light, one is left wondering whether the Government believe that only telling the public the number of directors falling into rising bands of remuneration is as much as is good for them. I think, on reflection, the Government will see that this clause is rather too comprehensive and goes too wide. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 21, line 7, at end insert the said subsections.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD RHODES: I think we can take this Amendment in three parts, the first ending "not exceeding twelve months", the next one at the end of that paragraph, "service with the company", and lastly "wholly owned subsidiary of another". I should like to ask the noble Lord whether he is arguing that in the case of directors serving a company on terms contained exclusively in the company's articles of association, as mentioned in the second part of the first paragraph, it is unnecessary to make the contract itself available. If he can tell me that, I can shorten the reply and speed up business.
LORD DRUMALBYN: That is so.
LORD RHODES: The first part of this Amendment seeks to exclude from the requirements of Clause 25 directors' service contracts expiring within a year or determinable by the company within a year without its having to pay compensation. One of the reasons for making information available to members about directors' service contracts is that if a director has a service contract over a long period, with no adequate provision for its termination or revision, the company may be put to great expense if it wishes to get rid of the director. I am aware of the Stock Exchange requirements in this regard.
May I reduce the time that I spend on this point? Since the objects of that part of the Amendment up to the words "twelve months" are in line with the general purpose of the clause, may I say that we will accept that part in principle, and see that the intentions are carried out. Moreover, we have been assured by the noble Lord, that since the information is in the articles of association

1915
and available to all, it is unnecessary to make the contract itself available. I do not think his wording is quite right, but we will consider whether anything can be done before the next stage.
With regard to the third part of the Amendment, beginning "Nothing in this section shall apply" I must tell the noble Lord that we cannot agree to this. Private companies have shareholders who are not relatives (that was said by the noble Lord), and it is clearly of interest to the shareholders to have information about directors' contracts of service, since they give some indication of what it would cost the company to dismiss a director. I should have thought that the noble Lord, with his knowledge of Company Law, would have wanted this included. Another thing that could come out of it is whether any part of the company's future earnings was likely to be absorbed by an increased remuneration for directors. I can assure the noble Lord that it is sometimes very difficult to get to know anything, even in a private company. So we believe there are no grounds for making a distinction between public and private companies, so far as disclosure of directors' service contracts to members is concerned. Having conceded in principle the first part of this Amendment, and having undertaken to consider the second part, I am afraid that I must ask the Committee to turn down the third part.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am grateful to the noble Lord for the way in which he has dealt with this Amendment. I am grateful to him for accepting the first of the three parts and agreeing to consider the second. With regard to the third part, I think there is substance in what he has said. It is undoubtedly the case that not enough information is available to some of the shareholders in private companies, and what the noble Lord has said has convinced me, at any rate, that the shareholders should be able to see the register. I take it, however, that this will relate only to the shareholders. The Bill is drafted in terms that the register should be open to the inspection of any member of the company without charge. Since this is, of course, a private company, with limited shareholders, and the shares are not available to the public, it
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seems to me that he has answered this point. I notice that the noble Lord nods assent to what I am saying, and I therefore ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 25 agreed to.
Clause 26 agreed to.
Clause 27 [Rules for giving effect to Section 26(1)]:
LORD DRUMALBYN: This Amendment deals with a very simple point. It is to ensure that where a director, for example, is given a proxy, he should not be considered to have an interest resulting there from. That is the whole point of this Amendment. I think the Government probably agree that this is right. I am not quite certain whether it is already covered in the Bill, but it does not appear to be, and perhaps it is as well to make it explicit. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 25, line 7, at end insert—
("( ) In determining whether a person is interested or deemed to be interested in shares or debentures there shall be disregarded any entitlement to exercise or control the exercise of any right or voting power being an entitlement which arises solely by reason of such person's being the proxy of another.")—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
THE MINISTER OF STATE, BOARDOF TRADE (LORD BROWN): We are grateful to the noble Lord for his Amendment, which is helpful. We accept it in principle but we should like to have another look at the wording. If the noble Lord will withdraw the Amendment, we will certainly accept it in principle and include the same or slightly different wording.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am much obliged to the noble Lord, and beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 27 agreed to.
Clause 28 [Provisions for securing that information furnished under Section 26, and certain other information about directors' interests, is recorded and made available]:
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (8), to leave out "or other person". The noble Lord said: This

1917
Amendment is to leave out the words "or other person" in subsection (8) which says:
"Any member of the company or other person may require a copy of the said register, or of any part thereof, on payment of sixpence, or such less sum as the company may prescribe, for every hundred words or fractional part thereof required to be copied."
This is virtually in identical terms to Section 113 of the Companies Act with regard to the inspection of the register and index. The substance of this is not quite on a par with the inspection of the register or index. We are here dealing with the obligation of a director to notify interests of his shares or debentures in the company or associated companies. This applies so far as public companies are concerned, but does it not go rather too far so far as private companies are concerned? Here again we are dealing with shares which under Section 28 (1) of the Act cannot be transferred outside a restricted number, because by definition a private company means a company which by its articles restricts the right to transfer its shares, and prohibits any invitation to the public to subscribe for any shares or debentures of the company.
I should have thought that in taking this direct from Section 113 the Government have gone a little far, and that is why I propose to leave out the words "or other person". I should be grateful if the Government could indicate what they have in mind in going so much wider than I should have thought was necessary. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 27, line 13, leave out ("or other person").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD BROWN: I do not want to spend too much time reiterating comments that I made on previous clauses, but may I say briefly that we are anxious to take the bold step of having one class of limited company, and to follow this through. That is one basis of argument. I wonder whether, without taking up immediately the words of the noble Lord, I could embark upon another line of argument which is rather different? I should like, if I may, to take into my remarks not only Amendment 32, but Amendments Nos. 33, 38 and 39. The noble Lord will see why in a moment.
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Amendment No. 32 limits the right of receiving a copy of the register of directors' holdings to members. Amendment No. 38 applies the same restriction—that is the limitation of the right of receiving a copy of the register of those with a 10 per cent. interest—to members, excluding the public. Amendment No. 33 proposes an increase in charge for supplying a copy of the directors' register, and Amendment No. 39 proposes the same increase for the cost of supplying a copy of the register of those members of the company holding 10 per cent. or over.
We concede that there may be at times a rather indiscriminate use of this right on the part of non-members of the company to apply for a copy of either of these two registers, and we are prepared to increase substantially the amount of the charge which a company is entitled to make for supplying a copy of either of these registers to members of the company or to members of the public. We are not prepared to go quite so far as the 2s. 6d. for a hundred words which is suggested by the noble Lord in his Amendments and which compares with the current charge of 6d. per hundred words. We have not quite finished our consideration of what would be an appropriate figure, but it would be a substantial increase.
I am wondering whether it would be possible to cut down the debate on this matter in view of the fact that there is partial agreement between us. If this argument does not suffice, I shall have to rise again to support the case with some further argument, but for the moment I will rest my case there.
LORD HAWKE: I think the noble Lord has argued in the only way he can, having regard to the fact that the Government are prisoners in their initial blunder in trying to treat private companies in all respects in the same way as public companies in whose shares the general public are interested. This particular clause seems to me to be quite indefensible and iniquitous. It is what might be called a "Nosey Parker's charter". Staff reporters on the local paper will apparently be able to go and have a look at the register and then write chatty little articles on who owns what in a particular town. It will be a quite unwarrantable intrusion into privacy, but

1919
the Government, having made their initial blunder, obviously have to carry it through. I cannot see what else they can do, unless they are prepared to have a different category in some respects for private companies.
VISCOUNT BRIDGEMAN: I wonder whether the noble Lord has thought of differential charges as between members of the company and members of the public?
LORD DRUMALBYN: May I revert to the substance of this question? I think I made it clear that I put down the Amendment because I thought there was a real distinction between holdings in public companies, which have to be on the register and which can be made available, and holdings in private companies, and changes therein. I think the noble Lord really ought to make some comment on this because there is a distinction between a private company which, under its articles, has its right to transfer shares restricted and none of the shares is available to the public, and a company in which all the shares are registered and the public can inspect the register. I should have thought it was essentially a private matter how the shares were distributed. We are not objecting in any way—indeed we could not object—to the actual amount of the capital being disclosed, including the paid-up capital, but the way in which it is distributed seems to be a different matter, and that is why I made this distinction.
I do not pretend that my Amendment is perfect, but I put it down in order to draw attention to this point. Having done so, if the noble Lord, Lord Brown, does not want to give a full explanation tonight we shall understand and perhaps I could put down an Amendment on the next occasion, but I will leave it to him now to say whether he would prefer me to do that, or whether lie is able briefly to give an answer to the point.
7.26 p.m.
LORD BROWN: I am quite happy about giving the answer to-night. I was hoping the Amendment would be withdrawn in view of the fact that we have gone some way towards meeting it by indicating that we propose to increase the charges. We are really dealing with something which might be described as a clash of philosophies over this matter. The
1920
noble Lords on the opposite Benches are using the words "private company" to denote both companies whose shares are not transferrable and also undertakings carried on by individual persons, and it is nobody's business what they do. The clash of philosophy I think arises from the fact that on this side of the Committee we do not think we can really regard businesses—and in particular many of the major businesses which are, in the noble Lord's sense of the word "private"—as private affairs. They are part of the economy; they use labour, they use resources, they use services; they are responsible for exporting and they are not really "private" in the ordinary sense of that word. To limit the right of knowing a great deal about these companies to those who are shareholders would, in our opinion, be wrong in principle.
This is one of the reasons why we have sought to create one class of limited company. We are opposed to exempting substantial companies which happen to be private in the limited sense of the word "private" from disclosure of their affairs to the public; and although we do not want to expose them too much to the person who merely wants to be a nuisance, we think that a member of the public should have this right.
I want to make a comment on the proposal that there should be differential charges: one charge to members of the company for copies of the register and perhaps a higher one to members of the public. I think that would complicate the matter and if we introduced substantially higher charges it would limit the use to which this could be put responsibly. I hope the Amendment will be withdrawn in the light of our attempt to concede at least part of the noble Lord's Amendment.
LORD HAWKE: The noble Lord thinks that this information should be available to the public. For what purpose? I can see that information about the shares of a public company where the shares are widely held is of importance and interest to the general public, but the case we have in mind is possibly that of the local garage. What profits it any man to know who holds the shares and in what proportion? It is of no interest to the creditor because it is a limited liability company. He has no recourse to the shareholder. Nothing but simple curiosity

1921
would be satisfied, and I feel there would be a great deal of intrusion into privacy.
LORD DRUMALBYNI am sorry to have to return to this subject. I am left wondering where this argument really ends. One can understand that where a great factory or great enterprise is involved the public has an interest in knowing who has the say in the decisions that are made. The argument that the noble Lord has put forward is that here the resources of the nation are being used, resources of manpower, material resources, and so forth, and therefore this is a matter of public interest. Surely the same could be argued of bank accounts. The money one puts in there is used by the banks and used presumably for financing this and that in the national interest, and before very long you get to the disclosure of bank accounts as well. Where are we going to stop? Is there to be no privacy at all?
I do not propose to pursue this argument. I am grateful to the noble Lord for having gone as far as he has in saying he will meet this more general point, which really is a matter of pure cost. It seemed to me wrong that a company should be put to a loss in providing this information, and therefore it seemed to me sensible the charge should come nearer the cost of providing the information. It was not a question so much of stopping people from getting the information; it was of imposing on the person asking for the information the duty of paying something more like the appropriate cost. But this is quite a different matter from the major question of principle involved here. I do not propose to pursue it any further, but I think it is a matter we may revert to at the next stage. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question: Whether Clause 28 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD BARNBY: Would the noble Lord give a little explanation of subsection (9)? Its meaning is rather peculiar. As he is well aware, at many company meetings where there has been adequate profit and a dividend has been paid a skilful chairman can dispose of the business of the meeting in a very few minutes. This suggests that if there were
1922
by chance a shareholder who wished to have information, which he is rightly entitled to have, he is able to get that only "during the continuance of the meeting". It would seem logical that the wording should suggest that a certain period, however few minutes, after that would be available for any shareholder who wished for information. The wording appears to give the opportunity for a company which wished to suppress information to withdraw the facilities which the subsection is aimed to give.
LORD BROWN: I think the matter is covered already in the present Act. If questions are asked at a general meeting about directors' shareholdings or share dealings it is useful if the register is at the meeting and accessible to anybody who wants to consult it. Provision to that effect is made in Section 195(7) of the present Act and it is repeated in this subsection.
Clause 28 agreed to.
Clause 29 [Obligation of persons to notify company of acquisition, changes in amounts of, and disposal of shares in the company carrying unrestricted voting rights]:
LORD BROWN: This is a drafting Amendment to correct an accidental omission; it makes no change of substance whatever. Clause 27 contains rules for determining the meaning to be given to references to a person's being interested in shares for the purposes of Clause 26. Clause 27(7), (9) and (10) state that certain interests are to be disregarded. Clause 29(4) was to apply the rules in Clause 27 to Clause 29, which itself requires the disclosure of substantial interests in the voting shares of quoted companies, subject to the interests set out in Clause 27(7), (9) and (10) being disregarded. The reference to Clause 27(7) was accidentally omitted, and it is inserted by this Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 29, line 35, after ("subsections") insert ("(7)").—(Lord Brown.)
LORD BROWN: This again is a purely drafting Amendment to remove an incorrect reference to debentures in Clause 29(4)(c), and makes no change of substance. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 30, line 2, leave out ("or debentures").—(Lord Brown.)
LORD BROWN: This is another drafting Amendment to clarify Clause 29(7), and makes no change of substance whatever. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 31, line 27, after ("director" insert ("of the company").—(Lord Brown.)
On Question, Whether Clause 29, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
VISCOUNT ECCLES: I should like to ask a question on this clause, the purpose of which seems to be to warn a company if somebody acquires 10 per cent. of its shares, presumably for the purpose of going on and taking over the company. What is the philosophy behind protecting the managers from someone who goes to the market and uses the market in the perfectly normal way to buy shares in a company which he considers—I am assuming he is a man who wants to take it over—he could run better if he were in charge? Why should inefficient managers be protected against somebody doing that? That is my first question.
Assuming that the noble Lord can satisfy me that it is important that anybody who buys 10 per cent. of the shares in a company must declare that interest, I consider the clause is very badly drafted. All the man has to do is to buy 9 per cent. of the shares for himself, 9 per cent, for his wife, and 9 per cent. for say, his brother, or anybody else. He can easily get control of the company in exactly the way he does now. What is the point of limiting it to 10 per cent. and limiting it to one man? It seems to me that we need a little explanation of what the noble Lord himself called his philosophy in regard to this clause.
LORD BROWN: There is a long history of attempts, starting I think with the Cohen Committee, though it may have been earlier, to deal with the situation created by the convenience of nominee holdings, and the other side of that penny: the disadvantage that some people using nominee holdings and other forms of anonymity can get into significant positions in companies without its
1924
being known. The object of disclosure of 10 per cent. holdings is not to protect the company from take-over bids and so on; it is to disclose. It may indeed help those who wish to take over a company which is inefficient to do so. It cuts equally both ways. It discloses information.
I am not going to pretend that the clause is ideal. But, of course, there are difficulties in dealing with the situation where one wants at the same time the convenience of nominee shareholdings and the right of the individual not to have to declare the totality of all his shareholding, on the one hand, and the secrecy which would allow some people to operate in a way in which we should not wish them to operate (and I stress that) and to obtain a situation from which they could manipulate the affairs of the company. These two things clash, and the clause is an attempt to force disclosure by those who are getting into the power positions among shareholders in companies. I think it would be proper to say that consideration is now being given to the possibility of including within the clause spouses and children, to try to close the gap to which the noble Viscount has referred. But the philisophy behind this is simply that of trying to overcome some of the unfortunate effects of a convenient procedure with nominee shareholders and other types of anonymous shareholders. We are, so to speak, dealing with two requirements which clash somewhat.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: I am sorry, but I still cannot see what is wrong in somebody acquiring shares in a company through the market. A market is there for the purpose of allowing people to buy what is on offer. Why should purchasers then have to put it in their own names? I think it is going to protect the manager who would otherwise find—and perhaps a good thing, too!—that somebody with greater initiative is able to turn him out. I am afraid I do not agree with the noble Lord that it cuts both ways. I think it will cut one way only.
LORD BROWN: I do not really understand the point the noble Viscount is making. Nobody suggests for a moment that there is anything improper in people buying shares in a company on the market. That is what puzzles me somewhat.

1925
I cannot see how disclosure of information is going to be a protection for anybody. I do not follow the argument that, because one discloses the ownership of 10 per cent., and over, of the shares of a particular class in the company, one is thereby protecting the managers of the company. It seems to me that, by disclosing who holds the key among the shareholders, one might equally be making it easier for somebody who wishes to bid for these shares to approach the persons who hold the percentages and make their offer. I do not want to argue that it is easier; I am merely balancing the noble Viscount's argument by saying that it seems quite obviously to cut both ways, and to say that it prejudices the thing in one direction or the other does not ring a bell with me at all.
LORD DRUMALBYN: May I ask one simple question here? Does the expression "person" in subsection (1) include the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation?
LORD BROWN: I should require notice of that question. I will try to give the noble Lord an answer as soon as possible.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am much obliged.
Clause 29, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 30 agreed to.
Clause 31 [Limited companies may be re-registered as unlimited]:
On Question, Whether Clause 31 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD DRUMALBYN: May I ask one small question here? Clause 31 concerns limited companies which may be reregistered as unlimited, and subsection (3)(a) says—
"The documents referred to…are—
(a) the prescribed form of assent to the company's being registered as unlimited subscribed by or on behalf of all the members of the company."
I am a little concerned about the words "or on behalf of". As I mentioned on Second Reading, it seems to me extremely important that everybody concerned, all the shareholders, should know of this intention to change and to re-register a company as unlimited, because in that
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event each of them will be incurring unlimited liability, and one would want to be certain that "on behalf of" means that they have given their consent, and that it is with their authority that the application is being made.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): I entirely agree with everything the noble Lord has said. Of course the documents in paragraphs (a) and (b) of subsection (3) are most important, precisely because the conversion may impose heavy liabilities on individual shareholders. Therefore it is essential to see that either it is "subscribed by…all the members of the company "as individuals, or "on behalf of"—and strictly on behalf of"—by somebody who really is authorised to do so. I will keep the point in mind, but there is no difference of opinion between us.
Clause 31 agreed to.
Clause 32 [Unlimited companies may be re-registered as limited]:
7.46 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved in subsection (2)(b)(ii), after "with respect to the" to insert
"substance and form of the".
The noble and learned Lord said: I beg to move this Amendment standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Brown. It puts right a pure omission. If a limited company is to become unlimited, or an unlimited company to become limited, its documentation, mainly of course the memorandum of association and the articles, ought to be both in substance and in form as they would have been if the company had started life in that capacity. That is why the Committee may see in Clause 31(2)(a)(i):
"if it is to have a share capital, are requisite to bring it, both in substance and in form, into conformity with the requirements imposed by the principal Act with respect to the substance and form of the memorandum of a company"
and so on. That is repeated twice again in paragraph (b)(i).
Then one comes to Clause 32, which, two lines from the bottom of page 35, reads:
"both in substance and in form, into conformity with the requirements of the principal Act with respect to the substance and form of the memorandum and articles…".

1927
Then, in sub-paragraph (ii) it says:
"if the company is to be limited by shares, provide for the making of such alterations in its memorandum as are requisite to bring it, both in substance and in form, into conformity with the requirements of the principal Act with respect to"—
and then it should say "the substance and form of the memorandum". This has been left out by mistake. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 36, line 12, at end insert ("substance and form of the").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
Clause 32, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 33 agreed to.
Clause 34 [Exemption, in certain cases, of unlimited companies from requirements of section 127 of the principal Act]:
On Question, Whether Clause 34 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD HAWKE: On a point of order, are we not inserting six stars after Clause 33?
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): That indicates that the Amendment has gone.
Clause 34 agreed to.
Clause 35 agreed to.
Clause 36 [Exemption from obligation to print certain resolutions and agreements]:
On Question, Whether Clause 36 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD DRUMALBYN: There is a small point on this clause. It says:
"no company need forward to the registrar of companies a printed copy of a resolution or agreement to which that section applies, if instead it forwards a copy in some other form approved by the registrar."
May I ask what the words "approved by the registrar" mean? Do they mean a particular or a general approval? And how will the registrar signify his approval? Is it in each particular case, or is it a general approval?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: As I understand it, it is the practice of the Registrar to accept documents reproduced by electrostatic photography such as the Rank Xerox process which he
1928
regards as printing. There are some other processes—for example, spirit duplicating—which he is prepared to accept from exempt private companies under Section 143. Some amendment to Section 143 is in any event necessary, since the proviso would cease to have any meaning with the abolition of the status of exempt private company. Clause 36, in effect, allows all companies, not merely those which were formerly exempt private companies, to forward to the Registrar copies of resolutions or agreements reproduced otherwise than by printing provided that the form of reproduction is acceptable to the Registrar.
The clause is consistent with paragraphs 493 and 495(j) of the Jenkins Report which deal generally with the form of documents delivered to the Registrar. Paragraph 493 points out that the form in which, under the Act of 1948, documents must be delivered to the Registrar varies, and suggests that there should be substituted for separate and inconsistent rules one uniform rule requiring all documents delivered to the Registrar to be legible and durable but not necessarily printed. The need to limit the size of the Bill is the reason for not giving effect to the whole of the Jenkins recommendation about the reproduction of documents. In substance, the Registrar will accept whatever is legible and durable. We live in times when methods of reproduction are changing fairly often.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am much obliged to the noble and learned Lord. I take it from what he says that the Registrar will not, in fact, publish indications of the forms which he is prepared to accept, but that so long as a document is legible he will accept it.
TIIE LORD CHANCELLOR: So long as it is legible and durable.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am much obliged.
Clause 36 agreed to.
Clause 37 [Exemptions from prohibition imposed by Section 434 of the principal Act of formation of partnerships with more than twenty members]:
On Question, Whether Clause 37 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD DRUMALBYN: We welcome this clause, but there is a small point which arises on it relating to the stating of business names. As the law now stands, as I understand it, the names of all the partners have to be shown on the letterhead. I believe that this requirement is frequently not complied with, but it seems to be the law. If one is going to have many more than twenty partners, one is going to have them strung right down one side of the notepaper. I was wondering if the Government have considered the effect in this small way of this clause on the law and practice in this matter.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: So far as I know, this point has not received consideration. It has always been thought to be important that the names should be there, unless they are trading under some other name, following the provisions of the Business Names Act. One is familiar, in the case of American partnerships, with all the names, however many there are, usually being shown on the notepaper. But I will certainly see that the point is borne in mind.
Clause 37 agreed to.
7.54 p.m.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD moved, after Clause 37, to insert the following new clause:
Prohibition of registration of companies by undersirable names
". For section 17 of the principal Act (which prohibits the registration of companies by undesirable names) there shall be substituted the following section:—
'17.—(1) No company shall be registered by a name which in the opinion of the Board of Trade is likely to mislead the public as to the nature of the goods or services offered or is in any other respect undesirable.
(2) Where a company is registered with a name which is subsequently used in a manner which in the opinion of the Board of Trade is likely to mislead the public, the Board of Trade may direct that such a company discontinues use of such a name forthwith and on failure to comply with this direction the company shall be liable to a fine not exceeding five pounds for every day during which the default continues.'"
The noble Baroness said: I rise to move Amendment No. 41, but before I do so I would draw the Committee's attention to the fact that there are three Amendments put down in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Peddie, and myself.
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I should not like it to be thought that he has joined me, or I have joined him. We are as your Lordships know, members of the Consumer Council, and it is for that reason that these Amendments have been put down. I shall move the first one and Lord Peddie will move the other two.
In introducing Amendment No. 41A. I should like to make one or two comments about all three Amendments. We believe that there is a common purpose in them all. British Company Law has never made it a prime concern to safeguard the interests of the consuming public, and the ancestry of the Companies Acts has been the need to protect the interests of investors and of traders one in relation to another. Yet recent events have emphasised a longstanding need to protect consumers of goods and users of services within the framework of company legislation. I am referring not only to the recent failures of insurance companies, but also to those public and private companies which go into liquidation leaving consumers with defective goods or goods which carry an obligation for maintenance by the manufacturer; or companies providing services who are no longer able to fulfil their obligations for uncompleted contracts.
While the Companies Acts give shareholders and creditors the machinery of investigation and the right to claim benefits on liquidation, the consumer is left without spares for his refrigerator, without servicing arrangements for which he has paid and with a commodity which for these reasons is much reduced in value as an asset. In the field of providers of services, such as the installers of central heating, house improvement contractors and decorators, there is no remedy for defective work done by a company in liquidation—it is a company made of straw. It is for these reasons that the consumer should be given a much stronger position in company legislation, and those consumer bodies who are now recognised as a force in the land should be given wider and better facilities to institute the investigations of companies and company directors.
Section 17 of the present Companies Act gives the Board of Trade very wide powers to refuse a company permission to use an undesirable name. Despite

1931
these powers, many companies are registered and operate with names which are misleading. In this Amendment I seek to spell out the criteria that should be used by the Board of Trade in deciding whether or not to permit a name. It may not be generally recognised that possession of a pretentious or otherwise misleading name may be a valuable asset to a dishonest company and that an imposing title can be used as an instrument of deception or fraud. The value of a misleading title is too well recognised by the dishonest trader. An example of the kind of thing that can mislead the public is the institution known as the National College of Health Limited which is not in fact a recognised teaching establishment but a commercial institution offering postal medical diagnoses of certain serious conditions. There are many other misleading company names and business names. It is to be hoped that in deciding whether or not to permit an imposing title the Registrar would apply the same standards to businesses not covered by companies legislation as he applied to companies which come within the Companies Acts.
In this Amendment we suggest that the Board should be given power to withdraw a title when this is being used as an instrument of deception. An example of this is the organisation which calls itself Purchaser Advice Bureau; this organisation provides no competent advice service to purchasers but uses its high-sounding name to obtain subscriptions in a dishonest way from traders. When evidence of this sort comes to the notice of the Board of Trade they should be able to order that the title be discontinued. The Board of Trade explained their policy in relation to Section 17 of the Companies Act to the Jenkins Committee in terms which indicated that they had considerable sympathy with the views I express here. There is a reference here to paragraph 448 of the Jenkins Report. I know that the Amendment we propose would strengthen the Board of Trade's position vis-à-vis the dishonest trader. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 37, insert the said new clause.—(Baroness Elliot of Harwood.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: It may he for the convenience of the Committee if we
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also discuss the next Amendment, which stands in my name. I find myself in considerable sympathy with the noble Lady's Amendment, but frankly I prefer my own, which covers very much the same point. This stems from a Jenkins recommendation in paragraph 456(a) which says that
"the Board of Trade should be empowered to direct a company to change its name at any time if the name has become misleading in such a manner that it is likely to cause harm to the public. There should be a right of appeal to the Court."
My Amendment seeks to provide that right of appeal, which I personally think is important. It may be that the drafting of my Amendment is not consistent with a right of appeal, but in that case I think the Amendment should be redrafted to provide for such an appeal.
For example, if the obligation was laid on the Board of Trade to notify the company of the respect in which the name has become misleading or gives a false or misleading indication of the activities of the company or the nature of the goods or services offered, it would then be an appealable ground. So a company which received a direction to discontinue its name on these grounds would be able to appeal against the grounds given. One of the reasons why I prefer my own Amendment is that I designed it to fit in more closely with the Consumer Protection Bill which we hope to see again before very long.
There are really two points here. First of all, there is the type of case to which the noble Lady was referring, where a company has taken a name and used it in a misleading fashion. I am not quite certain whether or not some of the organisations to which she was referring were companies. Some of them seemed to me to have been business names, and of course they would not be caught, so far as I can see, by either of our Amendments, which deal merely with company names.
The other side of it is the case of a company which registers a name, when I would suggest the use of the name is not so much a matter to be called in question. My noble friend's Amendment refers to:
"a company…registered with a name which is subsequently used in a manner which in the opinion of the Board of Trade is likely to mislead the public".

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It would seem to me that it was more the relationship between the name and the activities of the organisation which had to be examined, and in that way I think my Amendment would be preferable. An Amendment along these lines would be desirable, and of course it is a fact that this is one of the improvements which was recommended by Jenkins. I quite appreciate that such an Amendment would not cover all the Jenkins recommendations, because we are not able to deal with the business names aspect. Nevertheless, it seems to me that we should go as far as we can. I would commend the idea and initiative of my noble friend, and hope that the Government will be able to do something along these lines.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Section 17 of the principal Act states that
"No company shall be registered by a name which in the opinion of the Board of Trade is undesirable."
The word "undesirable" is used in the widest possible context. The Board of Trade explained in their evidence to the Jenkins Committee that, in general, they considered a name to be undesirable on any one of five grounds—namely, one, falsely suggestive of Royal patronage or connection with the Government or with a local authority; two, falsely suggestive of connection with foreign Governments, three, pretentious or otherwise falsely indicative of the nature of the company; four, calculated to lead to confusion by being identical with a registered trademark which is not the property of the company; five, calculated to lead to confusion by resembling too closely the name of an existing company.
The first subsection of the new clause proposed by the noble Baroness would give the Board of Trade the same power as they have at present, but would mention specifically one, and only one, of the grounds on which the Board of Trade might form the opinion that a name is undesirable. In the Government's view, therefore, the proposed change is unnecessary and seems to them undesirable as it would give undue prominence to the particular ground mentioned.
Under Section 18(2) of the principal Act, the Board of Trade have a limited power to direct a company to change the name by which it is registered. The
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direction must be made within six months of the date on which the company was registered in the name it is required to change. The ground of the change must be that the name is too like that of another company which was registered before the company whose name is to be changed was registered.
Subsection (2) of the new clause would give the Board of Trade a new power: that of directing at any time that a company should forthwith cease to use its name, on the ground that it is using it in a manner likely to mislead the public. But the subsection in the terms proposed would be unworkable, because a company cannot be left without a name which it can use. It is true that the alterations in the subsequent Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, go rather further. But as to both there is, of course, the additional point that the whole question of names is one which my right honourable friend proposes to have considered in the second Bill. I do not know whether the noble Lord would like me to address myself to his further Amendment at this stage or to leave it until it is called.
Loan DRUMALBYN: I suggest it is dealt with now.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Of course, the same argument applies to both. This is a subject matter which is not covered at all by the present Bill, and the Minister proposes to consider and to deal with the whole question of names when we come to the second Bill.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am grateful for what the noble and learned Lord has said, but it seems to me that it would be desirable to deal with this matter in this Bill. Of course, the difficulty about knowing whether a name is desirable or undesirable when it is registered is that the Memorandum goes exceedingly wide, and at the time of registration it is not known exactly what a company is going to do. It may do one of a great many things, but if the name which has been chosen proves to have been chosen with the object of misleading it would be right to direct that the name be changed as soon as that is discovered.
As to whether it is desirable to wait for further legislation, one never knows when opportunities for legislating on Company Law may arise. I think it is

1935
eighteen or nineteen years since we had the last Companies Bill, which came nineteen years after the previous one. It seems to me that where a matter does not appear to present any great difficulty and does not involve any consequential amendments in other legislation, such as the noble Lord, Lord Brown, referred to on an earlier Amendment in connection with no par value shares, it might well be desirable to amend the Bill if the Amendment can be relatively easily framed. If we could deal with this matter now, I should have thought it better to do so. I know the noble and learned Lord did not want to waste the time of the Committee by going into detail on my Amendment. But I should have thought that the prospect of more company legislation was not sufficiently imminent to lead us to attach very great weight to the argument which he adduced.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his answer to me. I am quite willing to withdraw my Amendment in favour of that of the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, since the noble and learned Lord has pointed out that mine falls short in one or two ways, whereas the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, is better. I should like to put in a plea to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, for an Amendment on these lines, because, like him, I believe that a bird in the hand is better than waiting for several years for another in the bush.
I think this is an important matter affecting a lot of people. We are continually hearing of names which mislead the public, and although the Board of Trade has five grounds for action under the existing Act, these Amendments contain one or two points which are not covered. I would beg the noble and learned Lord, if he can, to look at this again to see whether or not something can be done to protect the consumer on this particular matter, which is quite an urgent one.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.10 p.m.
LORD PEDDIE LORD PEDDIE moved, after Clause 37, to insert the following new clause:
Application for investigation of company's affairs.
". For subsection (1) of section 164 of the principal Act (which provides for the inves-
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tigation of a company's affairs on the application of its members to the Board of Trade) there shall be substituted the following subsection:—
'164.—(1) The Board of Trade may appoint one or more competent inspectors to investigate the affairs of a company and to report thereon in such a manner as the Board direct—

(a) in the case of a company having share capital—

(i) on the application either of not less than two hundred members or of members holding not less than one-tenth of the shares issued;

(ii) on application by a member or members of the public whose interests are materially affected by the activities of that company or by the Consumer Council or by any body representing the interests of consumers or users of goods or services supplied by that company;

(b) in the case of a company not having a share capital—

(i) on the application of not less than one-fifth in number of the persons on the company's register of members;

(ii) on application by a member or members of the public whose interests are materially affected by the activities of that company or by the Consumer Council or by any body representing the interests of consumers or users of goods or services supplied by that company.'"

The noble Lord said: I rise to move this Amendment, which stands in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, and myself. It seeks to extend the power of the Board of Trade to appoint inspectors to investigate the affairs of a company so that consumers as well as shareholders may apply for an investigation under Section 164. I have already, I think, during the Second Reading debate on this Bill, outlined the damage that can be sustained by consumers when a company gets into difficulties. All your Lordships will be aware of the case of two years ago when the Rolls Razor Company collapsed and left a large number of households with completely useless service agreements for washing machines. The owners of those which developed defects found considerable difficulty in obtaining spare parts.
I want to point out that this does not apply merely to large-scale public companies, but applies equally to private companies in the consumer field. It is true that the abolition of exempt private companies will increase the safeguards in this respect; but, quite frankly, it is not enough. Time and time again the Consumer Council has had knowledge of

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impending liquidations in the case of private companies but has had no real means of starting timely investigations to protect consumers. Some of these crashes have certainly been the result of normal commercial hazards which every company has to face, but far too many have been caused by an intention deliberately to perpetrate short-term and lucrative frauds. It is for this reason that I feel certain that the consumer should have the same rights to apply to the Board of Trade—and I emphasise the words, "to apply to the Board of Trade"—for an investigation as those who have a direct financial interest in the company. In pressing this Amendment, we feel that it will give certain rights to the consumer which are in the best interests of all. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 37, insert the said new clause.—(Lord Peddie.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: I think there is a good deal to be said for this approach, for the reason that those who have, let us say, purchased some goods, some consumer durables, or something of that kind, are not themselves organised. They are not in a position to bring an action, or to take proceedings in any form; and, generally, the value of the goods they have acquired is not enough to warrant their taking action individually. Therefore, the Jenkins comment that it is open to a consumer to defend himself in this way is perhaps not appropriate.
I am not sure whether this Amendment is drafted in a form that the Government will be prepared to accept, although I think the idea should commend itself to the Government. Perhaps something along the lines of
"an application by a body which appears to the Board of Trade to represent the interests of a substantial number of consumers or users of goods or services supplied by that company"
might meet the case. Certainly the Consumer Council has been set up purposely to make representations to the Government on any lines which may reflect the interests of consumers, and I should not have thought that this could be considered to be outside the scope of its remit. I think that the words I have suggested would bring in at any rate the Consumer Council, and might also bring in other bodies. I do not think it necessary to be precise about it, but certainly
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one would want a definition that would include the Consumer Council.
8.14 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I do not know whether your Lordships' Committee appreciate that this Amendment simply repeats the whole of the existing version of Section 164(1) of the principal Act, with the addition of paragraphs (a)(ii) and (b)(ii), which state that the Board of Trade may appoint inspectors
"on application by a member or members of the public whose interests are materially affected by the activities of that company, or by the Consumer Council",
and so on. Section 165(b) of the Act states that the Board of Trade may appoint inspectors to investigate the affairs of a company
"if it appears to the Board that there are circumstances suggesting…that its business is being conducted with intent to defraud its creditors or the creditors of any other person or otherwise for a fraudulent or unlawful purpose or in a manner oppressive of any part of its members or that it was formed for any fraudulent or unlawful purpose;…"
The Act as it stands, therefore, enables the Board of Trade to appoint inspectors if they are satisfied that the circumstances mentioned in Section 165(b) exist, and they might be so satisfied after considering information sent to them by a member or members of the public, by the Consumer Council or by a body representing the interests of consumers. In the Government's view, therefore, the Amendment is unnecessary unless it be held that Section 164, which makes no mention of circumstances suggesting fraud or the carrying on of business for an unlawful purpose, permits an appointment on a ground which is not covered by the purposes mentioned in Section 165. It should be noted that subsection (2) of Section 164 states:
"The application shall be supported by such evidence as the Board of Trade may require for the purpose of showing that the applicants have good reason for requiring the investigation…"
I am afraid that I am unable to accept the Amendment, because it is unnecessary, since any application which the Consumer Council might make successfully under the proposed new clause they can make already, under Section 165(b) of the principal Act.
I should add that here again, of course, this whole question of investigation was

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one intended to be covered by the second Bill. I appreciate what has been said about a bird in hand, and I know the argument which has been advanced on behalf of the Government in relation to other clauses—about not wanting to accept an Amendment because it goes outside the scope of this Bill, and had been reserved for the second Bill. But noble Lords opposite have had great political experience, and they know the political facts of life. It must have been, I suppose, when they came back in 1951 that they had a great deal more to do than could be done, obviously, in the first Session; and all Governments have this difficulty of choice, and of deciding what they regard as of priority. Perhaps I may explain this point a little further, because I said on Second Reading that the Government would welcome any Amendments which were designed to improve the existing Bill but not, I hoped, to extend it. I was taken to task by one or two of your Lordships for saying that, and therefore perhaps the Committee will forgive me if, even at this hour, I explain what I had in mind.
When the Government came back to power in 1964, they had rents and housing Bill but not, I hoped, to extend it. I but even then they managed to include a consumer protection Bill, which we had all wanted, and a company law reform Bill with some 45 clauses. Then, as your Lordships know, in March there was, if I remember rightly, a rather small majority, and it was thought that it might be more satisfactory, having seen what a Labour Government were like for eighteen months, that the country should say whether it wanted them to go on or whether it wanted a return to a Conservative Government.
Then, again, in April the Government had the same problem to consider. Although this was to be a rather longer Session than usual, there was still this very difficult question of priority. For obvious reasons, the setting up of the Land Commission was politically a "must"; and, while I should not mention four-letter words in your Lordships' Committee, I suppose I may properly mention five-letter words, and one of them is "steel". Again, for a good many reasons, including the fact that this major industry
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must know what its future is to be, that obviously had to be taken in the first year. These are two major Bills.
But, as noble Lords may remember, owing to the Recesses, the Saturdays and Sundays, there are only 160 Parliamentary days in the year; and, of course, the pressure is not here but in the House of Commons. Six days have to be given to the Debate on the Address; that leaves 154. The Finance Bill and the Budget take up 16 days; that leaves 138. All Governments have to allow from 25 to 30 days for contingencies. Things are always happening which necessitate Bills which are not foreseen; and I have put down 27 days for this because I have ascertained that in no year during the last eight years have contingencies ever occupied less than 25 days. That reduces the Government's days for legislation to 111. There are 26 days to which Private Members are entitled; that reduces the number of Government days to 85. But the Supply and Consolidated Fund, the days when the Opposition take over Parliament, amount to 32; thus it is that in the ordinary session there are only 53 days which the Government have to get all their legislation through.
This time, apart from the Land Commission Bill and the Steel Bill, there are considerations affecting a number of Bills. The Parliamentary Commissioner was mentioned in the Queen's Speech as long ago as October, 1964; that matter could not be left over again. With crime as it is, the time had arrived for a major Criminal Justice Bill. Then the economic position was not the strongest that the country has ever been in; and there were essential measures dealing with that: Building Control, Industrial Development, and the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation. Then there was the Ministry of Social Security and, of course, the Finance Act and Export Guarantees and many others. There are also the ones that cannot be avoided; they may not be long but all have to be allowed for: Guyana Independence, Singapore, Malawi, the Lesotho Independence Bill, the Botswana Independence Bill. Then, with the increased activity of certain bodies, they needed more capital; they cannot be allowed to run out of money. The New Towns Bill was simply a question of more money, the Public Works Loans Bill, Post

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Office (Borrowing Powers) Bill, the Films Bill. There were others from which you cannot escape: the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill; and the whole of the redevelopment of New Street Station in Birmingham would have come to a standstill without the Post Office Subway Bill.
In a Session of this kind it was impossible, unfortunately, to include a Bill either for consumer protection or for Company Law reform. Of course, if a Minister is prepared to start a Bill in the House of Lords—it still has to go through the Commons—this is, perhaps, something of a help. Here was a Minister who was prepared to start his Bill in your Lordships' House. But something had happened meanwhile. What used to be a Bill of 45 clauses now became a Bill of 87 clauses—quite impossible in this Session's programme, it might be said, to allow for a Bill of this size. Surely, when one bears these things in mind, one can understand a Government's saying, in effect, "Well, if you are prepared to start it in the House of Lords, on the clear understanding that it is not going to build up to anything more than 87 sections, we could just take it."
It would be unfortunate—would it not?—for all of us who are concerned for law reform (and, apart from directors' remunerations and political contributions, this is all lawyers' law reform; there is nothing Party political in it) if so much were added to the Bill in this House that the Government might have to consider whether or not they could carry it on any further. We want to encourage Ministers to start Bills in this House. So there are really two perfectly good common-sense reasons for the Government's saying: "Oh, that is going to be in the second Bill." The first is that there is only a limited amount, after all, which any Minister or Department can do; and, while the Board of Trade always has a very wide sphere of activity, in view of the events of the last two years it has had enormously more placed on its plate than ever before. It has had to see the whole of the distribution of industry, the local employment Acts, the Industrial Development Act, the establishment of the Cotton Industry Development Council, the recent acquisition of all responsibilities previously exercised by the
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Minister of Civil Aviation, B.E.A.., B.O.A.C., the Films Bill, the Hire-Purchase Acts, monopolies and restrictive practices, company fraud, a considerable share of the work caused by the Prices and Incomes Bill, Import Surcharge, GATT, EFTA, relations with the British National Export Council, the Queen's Award for Industry, and so on. Exports, after all, are a success story. I am sure that my right honourable friend would not wish to suggest that it is all due to him. Primarily it is due to the way in which British manufacturers and exporters have tackled the problem. I venture to suggest that those concerned with exports and industry have never been so much helped as by this Government—and with all this my right honourable friend and his Department have had to cope. On company law reform, he had already, by the introduction of the first Bill in February, covered a great many of the recommendations of the Jenkins Committee and, in substance, all the disclosure ones. Since then, he has gone further and has added a very large number of things which, of course, were not in the first Bill. That is why this Bill is about double the size of the first Bill.
The second reason is that there is always a limit to what a Government can allow for what. Whatever Government arc in power, there are complaints from all quarters of this House that not enough Bills are started in this House. This, I apprehend, is because most Ministers are in another place and every Minister likes to introduce his own Bills in his own place. In the case of a Labour Government, I suppose that they may be rather more reluctant to start a Bill in a Chamber where they have no majority; but I suggest that we ought to encourage them to do so. We do not want Ministers to say, "I am not going to start my Bill in the Lords. Look what they did to the Company Law Bill".
For all these reasons it is, I suggest, sensible—and I hope ultimately your Lordships will take that view—to point out that the Minister has every intention in the lifetime of this Parliament of having a second Company Law Bill. I know that he is most anxious to do so; but I hope we shall not so treat this Bill by expanding it. After all, a thing like the shares of no par value is a major

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thing. If we so expand it, the Government may have to reconsider whether, after all, they can go further with the Bill beyond this House. That is an additional reason why I feel that this Amendment cannot be accepted.
LORD PEDDIE: I must thank my noble and learned friend for that exceedingly detailed reply; but I am at a loss to understand whether it was the second part which was the basis for non-acceptance of my Amendment or whether it was the first part, which related more closely to the Amendment itself. Do I understand from the comments made by my noble and learned friend that under existing legislation bodies such as the Consumer Council would have full right, and indeed responsibility, to make representations to the Board of Trade for the purpose of setting up such an investigation? If that be so, if the answer be Yes—and I assume it is—I would beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD DRUMALBYN: That is conditional. Will the noble and learned Lord answer?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: That is so.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Before the noble Lord withdraws his Amendment, may I make one further point? One recognises the general point about introducing Bills in this House. We certainly want to see them introduced here, and we do not want to take action which will have the effect in future of discouraging the Government from introducing Bills in this House. At the same time, may I suggest that we should have a little sense of proportion in this matter? If there are already 87 clauses in a Bill, it would not seem to matter very much whether the number is increased to 90 or so. I think it would be extremely discouraging to your Lordships if we were to be told that the sole condition on which Bills were introduced here was that we should not be allowed to make helpful suggestions for further provisions in them. I hope that that is not what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor meant.
So far as another place is concerned, I should not have thought that it would make very much difference there whether
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they received a Bill containing 87 or 90 clauses. As for the question of introducing a Bill in another place, had it been introduced there I have no doubt that we should also have wanted to expand the contents of the Bill and so I do not think it makes any difference either way. I quite see that there are always limits to these things. On the other hand, I hope that the Government will not seek to restrict too closely what can go into the Bill. So long as a reasonable sense of proportion is kept in this matter I hope that we shall all be satisfied. In this case it is true that the Jenkins Committee recommended that Clauses 164 and 165 should be merged into one and be redrafted. This is not what this Amendment seeks to do, and indeed we shall be quite content to await the next Companies Bill to see that redrafting, especially as in any case I understand that Section 165(b) is the section of the 1948 Act under which the Board of Trade normally proceeds in investigations.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.33 p.m.
LORD PEDDIE LORD PEDDIE moved, after Clause 37, to insert the following new clause:
Amendment of section 188 of principal Act
".Section 188(1) of the Principal Act (which provides for the restraint of fraudulent persons from managing companies) shall be amended by the insertion, after sub-paragraph (ii) of paragraph (b), of the following sub-paragraph:—
'(iii) has shown himself, when acting as a director of any company or when otherwise concerned in their management, to have acted in an improper, reckless or incompetent manner in relation to the company's affairs'."
The noble Lord said: I hope, in the light of the comments made by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, that this Amendment will be considered as being a reasonable one which would add to the strength of the Bill. Section 188 of the principal Act deals with the power to restrain fraudulent persons from managing companies, and where a director has been guilty of fraud against the creditors of his company, or where he has been guilty of any fraud in relation to the company, the court may disqualify him from holding company directorships for five years. Noble Lords will certainly have noted that the kind of fraud envisaged here is fraud against the company, or the shareholders, or the creditors. Nothing is said of the damage

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done to consumers unable to formulate such a claim.
It is interesting to note that the Report of the Jenkins Committee recommended, in paragraph 85(b), that such extension should be made, and this Amendment is based upon that recommendation. This extension to the power of the court to disqualify should now be made, an extension which will incorporate the consumers' claims.
The Consumer Council, to which I have already referred, has a considerable list of individuals who involve themselves in short-term private companies and operate with fundamental fraudulent intentions. When one company go broke they may escape with complete impunity and then spring up again on the board of a new concern, or perhaps under the guise of the name of a "shell" company which they have purchased. The abolition of exempt private companies will certainly go some way towards keeping tabs on these people but, in my opinion, not far enough. The Consumer Council has had a number of instances where a fraudulent intention preceded liquidation, but they found that both the Board of Trade and the appropriate Fraud Squad were quite unable to act until it was too late.
An extreme example of this type of thing was the franchise racket operated by a man calling himself Mr. Holland—he had other names, too—who was active in the affairs of more than twenty companies, selling rights in respect of non-existent coin-dispensing machines and launderette washing machines. The Consumer Council knew of the impending liquidation months before it happened, but were unable to persuade the authorities to take any action. We feel that this Amendment will deal with this situation and we hope that the Government feel able to accept it. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 37, insert the said new clause.—(Lord Peddie.)
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: In order to save the next Amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, from being ruled out by this Amendment, I will now call it.
8.39 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I have suggested that the words in this Amendment to the Amendment be added because there were in the recommendation to paragraph 85(b), to which the noble Lord, Lord Peddie, referred, three proposals one of which is reflected in the Amendment which he has just moved. I thought it would be worth while to add the other two which equally form part of the recommendation of the Jenkins Committee in this case.
Amendment to the Amendment moved—
At end insert the following sub-paragraphs:
("'(iv) has been convicted on indictment of any offence involving fraud or dishonesty whether in connexion with a company or not;
(v) has been persistently in default in complying with the provisions of the Companies Acts 1948 to 1966.'").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: As to Amendment No. 41D, I can only repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has already pointed out. There were three recommendations, and the Amendment would cover only one of them. If one is to deal with them at all, it would seem better to deal with all three. The Amendment to Amendment 41D would cover all three, but I am afraid that I can give only the same answer as before. This is part of the matter which my right honourable friend will consider when he comes to his second Bill.
There are other recommendations concerned with the situation arising from fraud and improvidence on the part of directors. There is a recommendation that the power under Section 270 to order the public examination of directors of insolvent companies should be extended, and that the penalties for fraudulent trading provided by Section 332 should apply, whether or not the facts are discovered in the course of winding up; and also a suggestion that Section 333 should provide a summary procedure to deal with actionable negligence by directors. All these proposals in this field were made by the Jenkins Committee, and the subject remains accordingly for consideration in the preparation of the further Bill. In view of

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that I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, will agree to withdraw his Amendment and my noble friend, Lord Peddie, his.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: May I just say one word? I listened with great interest to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, and we sympathise very much with the enormous amount of work which he and his colleagues have in their lives at the present time. But I feel a little depressed by the thought that legislation in existence, which the Lord Chancellor has mentioned to us, does not stop the kind of fraud and the kind of bad and wicked things which happen and which get into the Press. One or two have been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Peddie, and there are others which could have been mentioned. If legislation is being passed but does not stop these things, surely it cannot be very good. It may well be that we have to go on putting up with this situation, but when we are producing a Bill which we hope is going to be of great benefit to many people, to allow these loopholes to continue to exist because they apparently cannot be stopped up now is a trifle depressing.
I am not speaking, as the noble and learned Lord will realise, in any Party political spirit, since this is a matter about which both my noble friend Lord Peddie and I are deeply concerned. We hoped that we might have had something in the present Bill which would deal with these matters. Perhaps in the next Session or in the Session after we shall have another Bill and we shall welcome it, but meantime Rolls Razors and others will go on just the same and it is apparently not possible to stop them. I should have thought that this was a matter of some urgency, and in spite of the noble and learned Lord's tour d'horizon, I should have thought it possible to stop up a few of the holes. Otherwise these wretched people will get away with it and we shall continue to have these sad stories which I am sure the noble and learned Lord, as a lawyer, regrets just as much as any of us.
LORD DRUMALBYN: In a sense what is being suggested in this Amendment is much along the lines of what is suggested in Clause 28 in regard to insurance com-
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panies. If we can legislate now without undue trouble to prevent the public from being defrauded, I should have thought that it would be well to do so. I think this is a more immediate way of protecting the public than the other points to which the noble and learned Lord referred. By the same token, it is one the omission of which would be more likely to attract criticism both here and in another place.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: This is only part of a number of different recommendations, all in the field of fraud. I appreciate very much what the noble Baroness and the noble Lord have said, but in relation to this first year I do not think we could have blamed the Government if they had said, "We could have a Company Bill so long as it was restricted to 45 clauses, as was the Bill introduced in February. If there was any chance of its becoming an 80-clause Bill, we simply could not have found the Parliamentary time". They did not do that, but accepted the 80-clause Bill. I am only apprehensive that if we push them too far, they might reconsider whether they have sufficient time to go through with it. From the commonsense point of view, we might do better to leave it as it is.
LORD DRUMALBYN: In that case, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment to the Amendment.
Amendment to the Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD PEDDIE: I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clauses 38 to 40 agreed to.
Clause 41 [Interpretation of Part I, and application of provisions of the principal Act]:
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved, after subsection (2), to insert:
"( ) A person shall not be deemed to be within the meaning of any provision of this Part of this Act a person in accordance with whose directions or instructions the directors of a company are accustomed to act by reason only that the directors of the company act on advice given by him in a professional capacity".
The noble and learned Lord said: This Amendment remedies an omission.

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The Companies Act 1948 and the Bill require that for certain purposes—for example, under Clauses 24(2), 26(11) and 28(12)—a person in accordance with whose directions or instructions the directors of a company are accustomed to act shall be deemed to be a director even though he does not himself hold the office of director. Section 455(2) of the Companies Act 1948 makes an exception for those, like solicitors and accountants, who are giving purely professional advice to the directors on which they are accustomed to act. A similar exception should have been made in the Bill but was omitted. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 41, line 19, at end insert the said subsection.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: We very much welcome this Amendment. It is not quite true to say that it was omitted entirely from the Bill, because it appears in Part Il dealing with insurance. It is now to be applied to Part I. I know that it is
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very much welcomed by the professions and I am sure we all agree to it.
Clause 41, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 42 [Commencement of, and exercise of powers to make regulations under, certain provisions of Part I]:
On Question, Whether Clause 42 shall stand part of the Bill?
Loan DRUMALBYN: I wonder whether it would be possible to simplify the drafting of this clause. I myself got caught on this point. I think that the words "both inclusive" are unnecessary and it would be much better not to have them at all.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: May we consider that and perhaps return to it at a later stage of the Bill?
Clause 42 agreed to.
House resumed.
House adjourned at thirteen minutes before nine o'clock.