Lords Sitting of 18 October 1966

Preamble
Reassembling after the Summer Recess, the House met at half-past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Southwark
The Lord Bridges—Took the Oath.

THE POSTAL ORDER SERVICE AND REGISTRARS-GENERAL
2.36 p.m.
VISCOUNT GOSCHEN: My Lords, on behalf of the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in his name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the Registrars-General were consulted by the Postmaster General before the latter decided to cease to issue postal orders of a value of less than one shilling.]
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, I understand that this Question arises out of the relevance of the short birth certificates for which the fee charged is 9d., which now obviously cannot be secured by any postal order, the postal orders for 6d. having been withdrawn in October. My right honourable friend the Postmaster General did not consult the Registrars-General or any other user of the postal order service. The measure
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came to the notice of the Registrars-General, who are considering alternative arrangements by which registration officers can collect by post the fee for a short birth certificate.
VISCOUNT GOSCHEN: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply.

GENERAL BOR-KOMOROWSKI'S FUNERAL SERVICE
LORD RUSSELL OF LIVERPOOL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what were the reasons for the decision not to send a representative of the Government or the Armed Forces to the funeral service of General Bor-Komorowski who, as Polish C.-in-C., directed the Warsaw uprising.]
THE MINISTER OF DEFENCE FOR THE ROYAL AIR FORCE (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, Her Majesty's Government honour the memory of General Bor-Komorowski's distinguished service to the Allies. Official attendance at a privately arranged funeral is not customary, but at the memorial service for General Bor-Komorowski on October 20 the Ministry of Defence and the British Armed Forces will be represented by Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Slessor and other officers.
LORD RUSSELL OF LIVERPOOL: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer to my Question.

PARLIAMENTARY RIGHTS OF PEERS IN THE CIVIL SERVICE
2.38 p.m.
LORD NAPIER: 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—

(a) why it is that Peers of Parliament who are civil servants may not take part in debate nor vote in your Lordships' House, whereas Peers who hold Commissions in the Armed Forces are permitted so to do—both categories, of course, being in the Service of the Crown;

(b) whether they would agree that the relevant Treasury ruling (Estacode Ka 46) which restricts the freedom of speech of Peers who are civil servants is too restrictive, and if they will now cause this whole matter to be reviewed.]

THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE EARL OF LONGFORD): My Lords, all the civil servants are required to maintain a proper reserve in matters not only of Party political but also of general public controversy so that their impartialityis beyond suspicion. The Civil Service rule governing the Parliamentary conduct of Peers who are civil servants, though generally understood for many years before, was formalised in 1928. It reads as follows, and now I am quoting the rule of 1928:
"Civil servants who are Peers or Peeresses of Parliament may attend in their place in the House of Lords when their official duties permit, but may not take part in debate or vote until they have resigned or retired." (Estacode Ka 46).
All members of the Armed Forces are similarly subject to a general rule that they should not indulge in political controversy, but on a few occasions Peers who are members of the Armed Forces have, with the permission of the Service authorities, taken part in debate in your Lordships' House. Her Majesty's Government do not agree that this rule, which has been in force under many successive Governments, is too restrictive.
LORD NAPIER: My Lords, whilst I am obliged to the noble Earl the Leader of the House for that reply, I should like, if I may, to ask him two supplementaries. Is it not a fact that no one has the right
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to debar a Peer of Parliament who is in possession of a Writ of Summons from addressing your Lordships' House, except your Lordships? Indeed, is it not the duty of a Peer summoned by the Sovereign to treat and give his counsel; and does not this restrictive ruling directly interfere with the freedom of speech of certain Peers? Might it not be that this ruling is, in effect, a breach of Parliamentary privilege, and is the Leader of the House prepared to have this matter referred to our Committee for Privileges for their opinion?
Secondly, are Her Majesty's Government aware that when the Masterman Report, which is Command 7718, was presented to Parliament in June, 1949—and this is the present authority in this field of activity—not only was there not one single Member of your Lordships' House on that Committee, but not one solitary noble Lord gave evidence before that Committee? Would it not therefore seem that the views of your Lordships at that time were not even considered?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, perhaps I can answer the second point first. It may well be, as the noble Lord says, that the Masterman Committee did not contain a noble Lord, but of course at that time it was open to noble Lords to offer their opinions. I think the fact that apparently no noble Lords took any exception to this, either before the Report was produced or afterwards, must be regarded as some indication that noble Lords accepted the general views of the Masterman Committee.
The noble Lord raises a rather more intricate point when he asks whether anyone has a right to forbid a noble Lord to come here and speak and vote. No doubt the question formulated by the noble Lord is correct, but of course a noble Lord who feels inhibited by the rules of his profession can resign from the Civil Service. That is the short answer to the noble Lord, Lord Napier.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords. I do not wish to express a view on the merits of this, but may I put to the Leader of the House the point raised by the noble Lord who asked the Question originally, whether it might not be a very good thing to put this matter to the Committee for Privileges? Being a member of that Committee, I certainly

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would not wish to express any opinion upon the matter, but I think there is here a point of considerable importance—of practical importance and of constitutional importance—and it seems to me that that is exactly what the Committee for Privileges exist for. Would the Leader of the House consider whether it might not be a good thing to refer this question to the Committee for Privileges?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: Certainly, anything that the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, asked me to consider would be considered by me with special care; that goes without saying; and after to-day I should be very happy to talk to him, or to the noble Lord, Lord Napier, or to any noble Lord who wished the matter to be discussed or considered in any way at all. But I must point out that this rule is officially of 38 years' standing. It was promulgated in the time of a Government which certainly was not a Government of my Government's complexion, so it is not an issue that brings in Party politics at all. It has been a rule which has been sustained by the wisdom of past Leaders of the House of all Parties. Therefore, one would not lightly wish to give the impression that there was any intention of changing the rule. But it is not for me to stand in the way of something going to the Committee for Privileges, and if there is a lot of feeling about it in the House I would say that I am at the disposal of noble Lords to have a preliminary discussion, at any rate, and then the House would have to decide what was done about it.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, would the noble Earl say by what authority the Civil Service decided to take away these rights from a citizen of this country?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I am not sure that the noble Lady is speaking very wisely in talking about the removal of rights. It may be that if one went back far enough one could find some precedent for the existence of these rights. I believe that in 1869 Mr. Gladstone dragged back Lord Lyons, the Ambassador in Paris, and more or less compelled him to vote for the disestablishment of the Irish Church. In a sense, that would not happen now.
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I am sure that when the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, inherited his title while he was still Ambassador, he could not have been brought back and forced to vote for the disestablishment of anything. So I think the position has changed in the last hundred years. But this rule goes back to 1928, and in practice a good deal further than that.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, I hope, if I may say so, that the noble Earl will not rest on that. I agree that this matter has nothing whatever to do with Party politics. On the other hand, it is of considerable constitutional importance, and is of interest to all of us, in all quarters of the House. It seems to me that it is exactly the kind of question, where no Party consideration is involved, which would be very properly considered by the Committee for Privileges. There, we could look at the whole position; and then, if the matter were raised again, the House, as it has so often done when it has had the Reports of its Committees before it, could express a final opinion after full consideration of the whole matter. I do hope the noble Earl the Leader of the House will very carefully consider that.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords—
THEEARL OF LONGFORD: May I just answer the noble Earl, Lord Swinton? I repeat that anything of this character raised in the House would be considered by me, but with special care if it comes from the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, in view of his almost unique services to this House. There is just one point that should be made a little clearer. If one is going to argue that the Civil Service, for which the Government of the day ultimately take the responsibility, has no right to lay down any rules at all, that of course would prevent it from laying down any rules about intervention in debates of an extremely partisan character. I should imagine that almost everybody would agree that civil servants should not take part in what are called Party debates. The issue which is of interest to a number of noble Lords is simply the question of whether they should not be allowed to take part in debates of another kind. So I think one should not talk as though the Civil Service had no rights at all in a matter of this kind, and could not make any rules whatever affecting noble Lords.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, I welcome the noble Earl's newfound conversion to traditionalism which we hope will be extended in other directions as well, but does he not consider that this difference between serving soldiers and members of the Civil Service is a complete anachronism and ridiculously invidious? Both are servants of the Crown, and surely both should receive equal treatment in and out of your Lordships' House.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I think, if I may say so, with respect, that the noble Earl is perfectly entitled to make that point, but in the traditions of this House and of our country there has been a slight difference of emphasis here, and the noble Earl will appreciate that the last thing I am doing is introducing any change.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, slightly to alter the emphasis of my noble friend Lord Napier, may I ask the Government this question? Is not the case before us one in which the Civil Service has taken upon itself a rule to impede noble Lords from the execution of the duty laid upon them by the Crown in the Writ? That is how it appears to me.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: I can only repeat to the noble Lord that in fact this rule is of very long standing; that very eminent Leaders of this House—noble Lords much more eminent than myself—have not taken that view; and that it would be a very revolutionary doctrine if the views which the noble Lord has just expressed prevailed.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, would my noble friend not agree that strict observance of the Civil Service oath should take precedence over the duties of any noble Lord to this House?
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, I think the noble Earl the Leader of the House will recognise that there seems to be quite a lot of feeling about this matter in the House. I think it is a perfectly fair point that not only are we considering the rights of individuals and the rights of individual Members of this House, but this is a matter which quite clearly touches on the public interest as well. On the whole, over the years, successive Governments have found it necessary to support this particular rule. Nevertheless,
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I think it is a fair point that, certainly under this Government, there is a certain growth in the Civil Service, and possibly the time has come to have this matter looked at again. As to whether the right answer would be to send it to the Committee for Privileges, I think that perhaps discussions could be held about that. An alternative, which I put to the noble Earl, is this. Does he think it at all possible that there could be some slight variation in the Treasury rules? If that could be considered, it might meet with the general support of the House.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I certainly cannot commit the Government this afternoon to any variation whatever, and I should be giving a false impression if I implied that some change was likely. But I should be delighted to discuss these matters with the noble Lord opposite and other noble Lords who are specially interested. The only argument of the noble Lord I cannot accept is that in some way this problem is the result of the increase of the Civil Service under the present Government. There are, in fact, two noble Lords affected by this matter: both are members of the Foreign Service, of some years' standing. I cannot attribute the responsibility for this problem to the existing Administration.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, might I press the noble Earl the Leader of the House to refer this matter to the Committee for Privileges, and to no other body, because to my mind it involves the rights of Members of the House? I suggest to the noble Earl that we should not try to debate it now. The discussion that has taken place in the last few minutes, I would suggest to him, shows the need for further detailed consideration of this problem by the Committee for Privileges.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, in view of the fact that this long debate concerns two people, might I ask my noble friend whether either has approached him and asked whether they should speak?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, one has certainly not; and one has voted in the past, with the permission of his superiors. I think it would be true to say that neither has approached me

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directly, although I have been in communication with one of them.
In reply to the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, I can only say that this problem has been before this House for many years; and all the time that he was a distinguished member of the Government it never occurred to him to refer this matter to the Committee for Privileges. I do not think that this is something that should automatically go to the Committee for Privileges. I think that some informal discussions first would help us to recognise the position.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, does the noble Earl remember that the noble and gallant Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, is a serving soldier? It would be a great loss to this House if he were never heard.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, the Service rules apparently do not apply to those who reach the highest eminence.
LORD RATHCAVAN: My Lords, could the noble Earl say who are the two Peers concerned?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I am perfectly prepared to tell the noble Lord privately—there is no secret about it; but it would perhaps be rather invidious to single them out this afternoon.
LORD NAPIER: My Lords I thank the noble Earl the Leader of the House for those detailed replies. Perhaps we could pursue the matter further.

JURORS WITH CRIMINAL RECORDS
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: 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 the plea reported in the Press of an absentee juryman that individuals known for their criminal record should not be called upon for jury service, and the reported fact that change of name may be obtained for the expenditure of £1, indicate a need for law reform.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My
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Lords, as was announced in another place on August 8, Her Majesty's Government propose to provide in the forthcoming Criminal Justice Bill for persons convicted of serious criminal offences to be disqualified from serving on juries in criminal cases. Since persons may change their name without doing so by deed poll, an increase in the fee would not help. But we propose to provide a penalty for serving on a jury when disqualified.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his Answer.

PROTECTION OF BIRDS BILL
2.55 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, may I make a short business statement? At a suitable moment after 3.30 p.m. my noble friend Lord Stonham will be making a Statement about the case of Timothy Evans. My noble friend Lord Rhodes will be making a Statement before the first item of business on the Order Paper in regard to the Government proposals on the Solus Petrol Orders of 1966. It may be for the convenience of the House if I inform your Lordships that I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Hurcomb, does not intend to proceed this afternoon with the Committee stage of the Protection of Bird, Bill.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, would the noble Lord give any indication of when the Committee stage of the Protection of Birds Bill can be taken?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, not at present. I have the belief that it may be some time next week.

SOLUS PETROL ORDERS
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD RHODES): My Lords, with permission, and for the convenience of the House, I will make a Statement about the two Motions standing in my name seeking the approval of the House for the Solus Petrol Order 1966 and the Solus Petrol (Amendment) Order, 1966. As your Lordships will be aware, your Special Orders Committee found on July 26 this year that the main Order, made in

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respect of Total Oil Products (G.B.) Ltd., was a hybrid Order and therefore subject to the petitioning procedures of your Lordships' House. The company failed to lay a Petition until August 10, 1966. The Petition was thus out of time and your Lordships' Committee has recommended that the Petition should not be received.
The procedure for hybrid Orders is not only a complex one but is invoked comparatively rarely and certainly not so often that it must be familiar to anyone who might be affected by it. The time within which the petitioners had the right to make their voices heard was fourteen sitting days from the laying of the Order. Your Lordships will remember that we labouredrather longer than usual this summer. Had we dispersed from Westminster nearer to our usual date, petitioning time would have run on into the autumn. As things were, the petitioners were thus faced with an unusual Parliamentary timetable, as well as the complexities of the hybrid procedure. My right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade and I have reflected very carefully about the consequences for the petitioners. We are in no way shaken in our conviction that the Solus Petrol Order was fully justified, and that Total must be asked to fall in line with the undertakings given by their competitors in this country. But the hybrid Orders procedure was designed to protect the rights of the individual and to enable your Lordships to be satisfied that you are not being asked to approve an Order which might appear to discriminate against the individual. My right honourable friend and I are not only satisfied about the merits of the Order; we are satisfied that there is no unjustifiable discrimination in this case. We should not, however, wish it to be argued that we have secured our case by virtue of a technicality. Therefore, having regard to the complexities of the procedure and the peculiar circumstances affecting our business before the Recess, I wish to inform your Lordships that we propose not to ask for your approval for these Orders this afternoon. They will accordingly lapse on October 20.
My noble friend the Leader of the House has asked me to stress that the action proposed must not be regarded
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as a precedent. The fourteen-day petitioning period provided for by Standing Order 216 creates some difficulty when an Order has to be approved by both Houses within 28 days of its being laid. In the case of your Lordships' House it certainly requires the Petition to be heard with expedition. I am sure the House would agree that the fourteen-day period in the Standing Order should not be breached by accepting the existing Petition against the Order, although out of time. The action proposed by the Government in regard to these two Orders is recommended because of the unusual circumstances of last August. It is the intention of my right honourable friend to make an Order to the same effect which would enable the company concerned to avail themselves of the petitioning procedure and your Lordships to hear any Petition which may be made.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes, for the Statement which he has just made and to welcome the decision he has announced, which certainly resolves an unfortunate dilemma. On the one hand there is no doubt that the Special Orders Committee were justified in refusing to consider a Petition against the Order which was out of time. There can be no doubt in my mind that unless the fourteen-day rule for the laying of Petitions is observed, the whole Affirmative Procedure, under which Orders lapse unless approved within 28 days, is undermined. I may say that the 28-day procedure is also undermined unless the Board of Trade ensures that the Order is laid the day after it is made, and not six days after, as in this case.
On the other hand, this is an Order which raises no issue of Party politics and one which it is particularly desirable the Special Orders Committee should examine and advise your Lordships whether it raises important questions of policy or principle and how far it is founded on precedent. I am sure that the suggestion which the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes, has made will commend itself to the House, because it resolves the dilemma in far the best way possible, by allowing everything to start again from the beginning; and it allows the company to re-present its Petition and to be heard. I think that the noble Lord is giving yet one more example of the fact that in this

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country we do not attach ourselves just to the letter of the law, but to fair play.
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, as the Motion on the Order Paper in my name is now redundant, may I express appreciation to my noble friend and to the Board of Trade for the action they have taken, which puts the matter on a sound basis? At the same time, for the benefit of those who in the future are likely to be associated with what might be a hybrid Bill, can he tell us exactly what constitutes a hybrid Order.
LORD RHODES: My Lords, until recently I always thought that the word "hybrid" had to do with hybrid tea roses. If I may, I will give the words of other people upon this matter which are better than mine. A hybrid Bill is
"a public Bill, whether introduced by a member of the Government or a Private Member, which affects the private interests of particular persons or corporate bodies as distinct from the private interests of all persons or bodies in the particular category to which those individuals or bodies belong."
The procedure of both Houses gives particular interests affected by a Private Bill or a hybrid Bill an opportunity to make a Petition directly to the Legislature. The House of Lords procedure, but not the House of Commons procedure, gives an opportunity in respect of hybrid Orders.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, in view of the Statement made by the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes. I hope that the House will agree that it will not be necessary for me to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, can the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes, explain one thing to me? I see in the Special Report of the Special Orders Committee the following Statement:
"If the Committee decided that there should be such further inquiry the probability is that the Special Order would have expired before the Select Committee had concluded its inquiry."
So far as I can see from the Order, at which I have only just glanced, it deals with a period of five years. Can the noble Lord give an assurance that this inquiry by the Committee, if it takes place, will be likely to be concluded before the Order expires?
LORD RHODES: My Lords, I think that the answer to that question would come better from the Chairman of Committees. He knows more about that than I do.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, perhaps I ought to add to what the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes, has said by assuring the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, that the Special Orders Committee will make every effort to hear any Petition, if a Petition is put down to the new Order, as expeditiously as possible.

LIVERPOOL CORPORATION (GENERAL POWERS) BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (RIGHTS OF THE PUBLIC) BILL [H.L.]
3.8 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD WADE: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. One of the primary objects of the Bill is to introduce an impartial procedure for investigating complaints made by people who claim to have sustained an injustice in consequence of some administrative action taken by a local authority. The expression "action" is intended to cover any action, and the term "local authority" is intended to include committees and officials of local authorities. This Bill is not an attack on local authorities, and I should like to make that quite clear at the outset. I am most anxious to encourage local government. My aim is to remove some of the grounds for criticism.
From correspondence which I have received since the First Reading of my Bill, it has become quite clear to me that there is a great variety in the type of complaints. Often people feel that they have suffered an injustice and they can find no remedy, and many letters have been sent to me from people with a very real sense of frustration. Some of the complaints have been high-lighted recently in programmes on television. There was the case of the man whose house began to fall down shortly after

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he had purchased it. Although it had been approved by the local authority inspector, the local authority did not accept any responsibility. In fact, no one would accept responsibility in that case. There have been cases concerned with various aspects of compulsory purchase. I am sure that those who arranged the television programmes to which I have referred tried to ensure that a fair hearing was given to all concerned, but I am not sure that "trial by television" is necessarily the best way to carry out an impartial and objective inquiry. The intention of Part I of my Bill is to set up an Ombudsman at regional level to investigate complaints, but before I come to discuss the details of my Bill it might be helpful to your Lordships if I were to provide some historical background.
The idea of an Ombudsman has been advocated by Liberals for a good many years, but I am anxious to approach this matter from a non-Party political angle, so far as possible. In 1961 a Committee set up by Justice, with Sir John Whyatt as Chairman, produced a Report called The Citizen and the Administration—the Redress of Grievances. The Report dealt mainly with complaints about administrative acts or decisions of Government Departments. It proposed the creation of a Parliamentary Commissioner similar to the Ombudsman in Sweden and Denmark. The Committee, relying on the experience of the Scandinavian countries, made the interesting point that not only would the functions of the Ombudsman be a help to correct abuses suffered by individual citizens; the Ombudsman might also come to be regarded as a valuable and impartial defence against unjustified attacks against individual civil servants who could not defend themselves. I think that that is quite a good point.
In an Appendix to this Report the Committee stated that they had found that the administrative processes in local government followed a similar pattern to those in the Central Government. While it was not practicable for the Whyatt Committee to indicate the volume of complaints of maladministration against local authorities, they said:
"The opinion was expressed by several persons of experience in public affairs, whose responsibility and judgment in these matters command respect, that there was probably a serious amount of maladministration in local
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government and certainly considerably more than in the Central Government Departments. It is impossible to say how far these opinions are justified, but the fact that they are held by responsible people is in itself of some significance".
Some Members of the House of Commons have estimated that 75 per cent. of the complaints which they receive are of a local nature, rather than complaints which come within the responsibility of Government Departments in Whitehall. I would say that my own experience when in the House of Commons confirms this view. It was for this reason that I decided that there was a strong case for setting up some procedure for examining complaints in the realm of local government.
I was interested in a letter in the Observer of Sunday last, written by Mr. Paul Rose, Labour Member for the Blackley Division of Manchester. He spoke out strongly in favour of an Ombudsman to investigate local government and various aspects of it. He said this:
"Far from weakening the elected representative, who has no power to call for documents and minutes, the presence of the Ombudsman in the background would provide a powerful weapon in reserve. The part-time local councillor has neither the facilities nor the power to explore injustice in depth, just as the M.P. is severely limited in his quest for justice on the part of the Government agencies."
Later, Mr. Rose said:
"Personally. I find that three-quarters of the matters dealt with at my own advice bureaux come within the province of local rather than national government, and these are decisions which intimately affect the lives of ordinary citizens in a variety of ways. I for one would welcome the creation of local or regional Ombudsmen to supplement the work of the Parliamentary Commissioner."
My Lords, that is the opinion of Mr. Rose.
Returning to the historical background, after the 1964 Election the present Government introduced a Bill to appoint a Parliamentary Commissioner to investigate complaints against Government Departments, the complaints being limited to those referred to the Commissioner by Members of Parliament. The Bill fell to the ground with the Dissolution of the last Parliament, and the subject was not mentioned in the Queen's Speech at the opening of the present

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Parliament. I gained the impression that there was little or no prospect of such a Bill being brought forward in this Session, but I came to the conclusion that even if a Government Bill setting up a Parliamentary Commissioner were to be re-introduced it would be necessary to go ahead with this Bill of my own. It is no easy matter to draft a Private Member's Bill and those who have experience of this will no doubt sympathise with me in this respect. I have tried to avoid some of the obvious pitfalls, but I hope that the Bill will be judged on its merits rather than on technicalities.
When I obtained the First Reading of my Bill on July 6 of this year, I was still uncertain as to whether the Government intended to proceed with the appointment of a Parliamentary Commissioner. Subsequently, however, the Government Bill, which is now before another place, was published, and on August 4, somewhat to my surprise, I heard the announcement—that was before the Government Bill had received a Second Reading in another place—that Sir Edmund Compton had been appointed the first Parliamentary Commissioner. I think that is an excellent appointment and do not question it for one moment. When the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack made the announcement on August 4, I asked this question:
"May I ask the Lord Chancellor whether the proposed functions of the Parliamentary Commissioner will include dealing with complaints relating to local authorities, many of the complaints being of that nature?"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 276 (No. 49), col. 1477; 4/8/66.]
The noble and learned Lord replied as follows:
"…it is not proposed that complaints against local authorities shall be included. The Bill has been published. There is a Schedule which contains a list of all the Government Departments who must be covered and a provision whereby by an Order the Schedule can be enlarged. Your Lordships will be aware that this is the first time that there has been an Ombudsman in a country with a population of a size anything like this. We must prevent him from being overwhelmed to start with."(col. 1480.)
I entirely agree that Sir Edmund Compton's task should not be made more difficult by an excess of work at the outset, and I have this very much in mind.
In reply to other questions which noble Lords put to him on August 4, the noble and learned Lord confirmed that complaints could be sent to Sir Edmund
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Compton only by Members of the House of Commons. If some member of the public believes that he has suffered an injustice and decides to write to a Member of this House and there appears to be a case for investigation, the Member of this House will have to write to a Member of the House of Commons and ask him to be good enough to pass the complaint on to Sir Edmund Compton. This is a somewhat unusual procedure, but no doubt this is a matter which can be discussed when the Government Bill comes before this House.
Whatever the channel of communication may be, it is clear that complaints of a local nature will not be considered by the Parliamentary Ombudsman, since such complaints are at present excluded by the definition in the Schedule. This creates a real dilemma for those who wish to see something done about complaints relating to local authorities, local government committees and their officials. I do not think that anyone wishes to overwhelm Sir Edmund Compton with a flood of complaints. It may well be contended that it would be a mistake to add to the list at the present stage, and for this reason it may be argued that any amendments to increase the list in the Schedule should be resisted. As a consequence, it might be years before anything is done about complaints of a local nature.
On the other hand, if the Schedule were expanded, it might complicate unduly the work of the Parliamentary Ombudsman. He would not be able to deal directly with these local complaints. He would have to employ deputies in various parts of the country to undertake inquiries on his behalf. He would have to adopt, I think, the following procedure. A complainant would write to a Member of Parliament. The Member of Parliament would write to Sir Edmund Compton. Some local deputy Ombudsman would be asked to act on his behalf. The deputy would make the inquiry and report back to Sir Edmund Compton, who would report to the Member of Parliament, who would then report back to the complainant. It seems to me that this would be a very roundabout procedure.
My aim is to try to short-circuit this. I am inclined to agree with the leading article in The Times this morning which

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suggests that the procedure as proposed in the Government's Bill might make investigation of local complaints rather more difficult. I have come to the conclusion that there is a strong case for setting up regional Ombudsmen. Obviously, there must be some coordination between any such persons and the Parliamentary Commissioner. At the least there must be consultation, and it may well be that some closer link could be laid down. We have not yet had an opportunity of considering the Government's Bill in this House, and it has not yet passed through any of its stages in the House of Commons, although, by coincidence, the Second Reading of the Parliamentary Commissioner Bill is taking place in the Commons to-day. However, I wish to make it clear that I am against any unnecessary duplication or overlapping of duties.
I now come to the detailed provisions of the Bill, which I will deal with as briefly as possible. I do not care very much for the expression "Regional Commissioner for Administration". It has a somewhat authoritarian sound, whereas the purpose of the Ombudsman is to look sympathetically into complaints and, if a real injustice exists, to try to bring about a remedy. But the title is not important; it is the functions that really matter. I suggest that there should be one Commissioner for each of the economic planning regions. My only reason for choosing these particular regions is that they are the only regions, so far as I am aware, that are defined by Statute. Maybe some other boundaries might be more appropriate. That is a subject on which I should welcome constructive criticism at Committee stage—and I hope that we shall reach Committee stage.
As to staff, I do not consider that there need be any very large staff. I envisage the appointment of one person as Commissioner, with a couple of secretaries, and two persons to act as investigators, who would call on the person making the complaint, make a courtesy call on the local town clerk and perform any other necessary duties, at the request of the Commissioner, with a view to ascertaining whether there is substance in the complaint.
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The Whyatt Report referred to the suggestion that local authorities should appoint a "complaints officer". The Committee expressed the view that this suggestion was worthy of further study. I think this is quite a good idea, but, unfortunately, the local authorities where the need is greatest tend to be the least willing to appoint a complaints officer. I think that any attempt by Parliament to compel local authorities to appoint an official as a complaints officer would fail. To be successful, this must be carried out voluntarily. But where a complaints officer was appointed, this might lessen the work of the Ombudsman, which would be all to the good. On the other hand, a complaints officer could never have the powers available to an Ombudsman, since a complaints officer would be an official employed by the council. Much of the work expected of a complaints officer could, in fact, be done by a conscientious local councillor. Perhaps it is fair to say that I am not overlooking the valuable services rendered by citizens' advice bureaux. But they also lack the powers which are sometimes necessary in order to get to the bottom of a complaint.
Clause 3 of my Bill defines the kind of matters which would be subject to investigation. It excludes cases where there is a right of appeal or reference to a tribunal or where there is a right of action at law. In such cases, the Ombudsman would be limited to informing the complainant of his rights, save in very special circumstances referred to in the proviso to Clause 3(2).
It may be asked whether the regional Ombudsman would be overwhelmed with trivial complaints. I do not think that this will necessarily be so. If my Bill becomes law, I suggest that the following procedure would have to be followed by anyone who thought that he had suffered an injustice. First of all, he would have to find out the address to which to write. This would he made available at every local post office. He would then have to set out his complaint in writing and send with it a postal order for 5s. This is not a large amount, but I do not wish to prevent anyone from making use of this remedy by imposing a larger fee. I believe that if anyone was prepared to go to the trouble of writing out what was worrying him, finding out

21
the address to which to write and getting a postal order for 5s., it is probable that his feeling of injustice was genuine. The conditions I have outlined would help to cut out trivial complaints. I do not think anyone would go to all this trouble unless he felt that he had a genuine grievance.
Clause 4 provides that the Ombudsman must give notice of a complaint to the clerk of the local authority concerned, and he must allow the authority an opportunity to reply. It also provides that the Ombudsman may, if he deems it appropriate, refer a complaint to the Council on Tribunals. Clause 5 gives the Ombudsman the power to call for documents, and Clause 6 provides that he shall send a report to the Minister, and also to the clerk of the local authority to which the complaint refers, when he has made an investigation. As to ultimate sanctions, he would in the last resort be entitled to publish a report, and, if he thought fit, apply to the High Court by way of Case Stated. I do not expect that this power would often be used, but it might be very valuable. Clause 7 provides that, except for the purposes of making a report as provided for in this Bill, any information gained would be treated as confidential.
That is a broad outline of the provisions in Part I of the Bill. I think it would remedy something that is lacking in the Government's proposals. Having quoted already a Labour M.P., may I call in aid a view expressed in a report entitled Let right be done, published in January of this year by the Inns of Court Conservative Association. The first paragraph on page 12 reads as follows:
"Perhaps the greatest initial deficiency in the system of a Parliamentary Commissioner is that it is clearly not envisaged that he would cover cases of maladministration in local government. Yet it is in this field that many people think that there is the greatest need. We consider that any real solution must be applicable to a wider field than merely central Government Departments."
For those who accept this view, the only question is whether to attempt to amend the Government Bill or to deal with the matter by a separate Bill. I have chosen the latter course. While I look forward with interest to the report of the debate in the Commons on the Parliamentary Commissioner Bill, I do not think it will alter my view that a separate procedure
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is required for complaints relating to a local authority.
I have an additional reason for advocating a separate Bill. I think this would be an appropriate occasion for introducing one or two other reforms. These are set out in Part II of my Bill. There is a fairly widespread feeling that too much is done in secrecy. Some local authorities try to overcome this by inviting the Press and the public not only to full meetings of the council, but also to meetings of committees, except where they are dealing with confidential matters which might be an embarrassment to the individuals concerned. But not all councils are so enlightened. The Press can sometimes be very helpful. The Whyatt Report states that the influence of the Press may be considerable. In one of the county boroughs covered by their survey, the Whyatt Committee found that it was the practice of the Press to attend all meetings of the council and practically all meetings of its committees. As a result, there was a well-informed public opinion which helped to prevent wrong decisions and to remedy them when they occurred. I wish that this was more widely practised.
The object of Clause 8 of my Bill is to tip the scales in favour of the Press and the general public. At the present time, the Press and the public cannot be present at a meeting of a committee unless a special resolution is passed. By virtue of the clause which I have proposed, it would be the other way round. There would be a right of access unless there was a specific resolution excluding the Press and the public. This would still give the right to a local authority committee to meet in private if it thought it desirable, but the normal practice would be to allow the public and the Press to be present. In some cases, where all members of the council belong to one Party, there is a tendency for decisions to be made either at the Party caucus or in committee, while the decisions taken in a meeting of the full council provide only a rubber stamp for the decisions taken beforehand. Clause 8 of my Bill would go a little way towards overcoming this.
Clauses 9 to 12 deal with the declaration of pecuniary interests and the keeping of the record book of such declarations, and the making of this book available to inspection by electors. These clauses could no doubt be discussed in greater detail in Committee. I do not

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believe that there is much corruption in local government in this country, but there is considerable suspicion of corruption.
The Bill introduces at least three proposals: the first is to set up a procedure for dealing with complaints at a regional local level; secondly, an attempt to ensure that there is less secrecy in local government and, thirdly, an alteration in the law relating to declarations of interest. In other words, I am fostering at least three babies. Some of your Lordships may have reservations about certain aspects of the Bill, but I sincerely hope that you will not go so far as to throw out all three babies with the bath water.
To return finally to the main theme, if and when the Government Bill setting up a Parliamentary Commissioner reaches this House, we shall be in a better position to consider whether there is likely to be any overlapping. I think that can be managed. On the other hand, if my Bill were to be put on one side, I fear that the whole subject of complaints of a local nature would be placed very far down the list of priorities, and that it might be many years before anything were done about it. I am hoping, therefore, that this Bill will pass through all its stages in this House, with such Amendments as your Lordships think fit. I hope that it will be considered by the House of Commons, and that in due course it will reach the Statute Book.
I have received a large number of complaints, but I have not quoted from any of them. I am anxious to overcome injustice; I do not want to create an injustice by quoting cases without having investigated them. I do not want to do an injustice to those against whom complaints are made. It is clear that an impartial investigation is needed. I am convinced of this, and with that conviction I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Wade.)
3.32 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, it is with regret that I must say that I oppose this Bill in principle and in detail. I say "with regret", because, as some of your Lordships know, my natural inclination is to oppose Government Bills, particularly Bills from the
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present Government, but I am always inclined, if I can, to support Private Members' Bills. But not, I am afraid, in this case. What does this Bill do? It seeks to set up a new body of officials. They are not called officials, they are called Regional Commissioners for Administration. But in fact, they would be officials. The first question we have to ask ourselves is this: Are these officials really necessary? I think it is up to the noble Lord, Lord Wade, to prove that they are necessary. He has not gone any way at all to showing the necessity for them, except on the ground that some people will always consider that they are suffering from an injustice. But before your Lordships agree to this new body being set up, I think we ought to know how large the problem is, and the noble Lord has given us no indication of that whatsoever.
I would remind your Lordships—and the noble Lord has made this quite clear—that in this Bill we are not dealing with illegal actions by a council or its officials. We are dealing with something which is called maladministration, whatever that may mean in this connection. I should have thought that maladministration was usually a matter of opinion as to whether things were being well administered or not. But there is no definition in the Bill. This seems tome to be a great lack in the Bill, even if your Lordships accept it, because the Commissioners will not know how wide they can go in their findings, or with what subjects they are to deal, and it is likely that the Commissioners will take different views in different parts of the country.
What is the present procedure? What happens now, not when something illegal is being done, but when somebody thinks he is being hard done by as a result of some action by an official or a council? What usually happens is this. In the first instance, he either goes or writes to the town hall, and he gets an answer, verbal or otherwise, from an official. My experience is that, by and large, officials do all they can to explain matters; they are helpful, particularly if somebody goes to see them, and they do their best. I quite agree that there may be cases—indeed there are cases—when the official is so bound up in a particular scheme, so much in favour of a particular council scheme, that he may perhaps not give

25
quite enough attention to the complaint. That can happen.
What happens in such a case? Supposing the man goes away still with his sense of injustice, as a rule he then goes to his local councillor. My experience of local councillors is that they are only too willing and anxious to help somebody who may be going to vote for them at some future election: it is the sort of thing for which they are always on the look out. It may be that in some cases the councillor he goes to see is interested in a particular council scheme, and the man still thinks he has not got justice. Then, as the noble Lord, Lord Wade, said, the next stage is, of course, very common: the man writes or goes to see his M.P. And those of your Lordships who, unlike myself, have been in another place know how much of your time has been taken up with dealing with questions of this sort. Subsequently, with a sense of injustice still burning because the M.P. happens to agree, after his inquiries, with the official and the councillor, the man then goes to the newspapers, usually his local newspaper. If all these four find that there has been no injustice, is it likely that a Commissioner will find that there has been? I simply cannot see the point of these Commissioners, and it has not been explained to me.
The second question at this particular moment of time is very important. Who is going to pay? The Commissioner must essentially be a man of considerable ability, learning, and so on, and he will not work for nothing. There will be a high salary—there is bound to be If he is a lawyer he will probably want an adviser on local government on his staff. If he is not a lawyer he will probably want a legal adviser. He will want offices, which are pretty expensive these days. He will want a secretarial staff, and to our cost we know that however small a staff is when it starts, it grows and grows. Somebody has to pay for this. As the Commissioners would be appointed by an Order in Council, I take it that the wretched taxpayer would be meeting the Bill. It is not quite clear, but I imagine that he is the man who would be paying, just at the moment when the last thing one wants to do is to put any more expense on to his shoulders.
We then come to what the Commissioner is going to do. The first thing
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he will do is to have an investigation. Investigations cost money. He may want professional witnesses in front of him; he may want other witnesses in front of him—he probably will. The local council will undoubtedly want somebody to represent them on the investigation. Who is going to pay for this? I take it that, in so far as the Commissioner will ask for witnesses who have to be paid, the taxpayer will pay. In so far as the local council want to be represented the ratepayer will pay. Ratepayers are also taxpayers, so they will both be "soaked" at this moment when we are all worried about the amount ratepayers have to pay.
We then come to Clause 4. If a Commissioner is not satisfied with his investigation, he can refer it to the Council on Tribunals. Somebody has to pay for this. There will be a mass of paper; the Council on Tribunals may want evidence, maybe professional evidence, and somebody has to pay for that. If all that does not satisfy the Commissioner, we then come to the really big money—an application to the High Court. I imagine that will have to be paid for, if the Commissioner is successful perhaps by the taxpayer, if he is unsuccessful perhaps by the ratepayer.
What is the High Court going to decide? We are not dealing with illegalities here; we are dealing with a man who has a sense of injustice and we are going to ask it to make an Order to put the injustice right. But supposing the council and the officials have acted within their powers, what is the High Court going to do except to say that the local authority has acted within the powers given to it by Parliament? Of course, if something illegal has been done that will doubtless come up by a different route some time before.
May I just go back to one small point on Clause 5? I raise it now because we are dealing with what the Commissioner has to do. Clause 5 says that the
"Commissioner may require any Minister, officer…or any other person…able to furnish information or produce documents relevant to the investigation to furnish such information or produce any such document."
We are working without precedent in this matter. As I understand the position—I may be wrong, but doubtless I shall be corrected if I am—if the Minister, in the public interest, pleads before the High

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Court that the public interest does not allow him to produce documents in accordance with the precedent and with certain Acts of Parliament, the Minister may withhold that information or those documents. Here, as I read this clause, no Minister, even in the public interest, is going to be allowed to withhold anything. I cannot believe that is right. I hope I am wrong in my reading of it, but if I am not then, of course, that would be a Committee point.
A NOBLE LORD: Hear, hear!
LORD DERWENT: Though it would be a matter of considerable importance.
Then we come to Part II of the Bill. About this I shall only say that it has nothing to do with Part I; it is really a separate Bill and I do not intend to discuss it. Briefly, this Bill sets up a new body of officials who, in my opinion, are entirely unnecessary, and we have not been shown anything to the contrary. It sets up new organisations in various parts of the country; it will be a burden on the taxpayer and the ratepayer, at this particular moment when he is carrying about all he can and nothing further should be put on his shoulders. I think the Bill, particularly at this moment, is ill-conceived. I have no idea what view Her Majesty's Government take of this Bill, but my advice to your Lordships is not to give it a Second Reading.

THE CASE OF TIMOTHY EVANS
3.43 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My Lords, I hope it will meet your Lordships' convenience if, with your permission, I bring to your notice a Statement which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has made in another place about Mr. Justice Brabin's Report on the case of Timothy Evans. I will use my right honourable friend's own words.
"I am sure the House would wish me to express our thanks to Mr. Justice Brabin for the painstaking and thorough way in which he conducted the Inquiry into this case and for the comprehensive nature of his Report.
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Mr. Justice Brabin's conclusion, as the House will be aware, is that it is now impossible to establish the truth beyond doubt but that it is more probable than not that Evans did not kill his daughter, for whose murder he was tried, convicted and executed. In all the circumstances I do not think it would he right to allow Evans' conviction to stand. I have therefore decided that the proper course is to recommend to Her Majesty that She should grant a Free Pardon, and I am glad to be able to tell the House that The Queen has approved my recommendation and that the Free Pardon was signed this morning.
"This case has no precedent and will, I hope and believe, have no successor."
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I have not really much comment to make about this Statement, except perhaps on the last sentence:
"This case has no precedent and will, I hope and believe, have no successor."
With that we all agree. However, I think that the Report itself and even this Statement raise the question of whether it is worth while, years after the event, to go on having a series of inquiries when witnesses are dead or cannot be found. I will not say more than that because I have nothing adverse to say about the Statement as such.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends and myself, I should like to say how much we welcome this Statement and how glad we are, first, that the Government recommended as they did to Her Majesty and, secondly, that Her Majesty has been pleased to approve the recommendation and that a Free Pardon has been signed in the case of Timothy John Evans.
In answer to the previous speaker, may I say that in my opinion it was absolutely necessary to have this investigation. There was a great feeling that injustice had been done to this poor man, and I am very glad indeed that the inquiry was held. We on these Benches are all delighted with the action taken by the Government in this matter.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, for what he has said, speaking

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on his own behalf and that of his noble friends. At this stage I would prefer not to commenton what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, except to say that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, that this matter was of great and paramount importance to Mrs. Probert, the mother of Timothy Evans, and to a great many people in this country, and above all it was of great importance to justice.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, could the Minister confirm that a Free Pardon is not a pardon in the ordinary sense in which we use the word nowadays but is in fact a total exoneration and places the person inexactly the same position as if he had never been accused of committing the offence? In these circumstances, is it not a great pity that we go on clinging to this outdated expression "Free Pardon", which can give to the man in the street the feeling that this man has committed an offence and has been forgiven, and should we not replace this expression with some other suitable expression which makes manifest that what has happened is the granting not of a pardon but of a total exoneration?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I can confirm that the effect of a Free Pardon is to expunge a conviction, and in this case is an admission by the State that Evans was wrongly put to death.
With regard to the further matter raised by the noble Lord, I would submit that this is another and much wider matter, which certainly merits consideration and which I will bring to the notice of my right honourable friend.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (RIGHTS OF THE PUBLIC) BILL [H.L.]
3.49 p.m.
Debate on Second Reading resumed.
LORD ILFORD: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wade, proposed the Second Reading of this Bill with all the persuasive eloquence which we are accustomed to expect from him. I was very much relieved to hear him say that one of the purposes of the Bill is to remove criticism from the local authorities. I hope that sentiment will spread among
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members of the Liberal Party, but I trust that your Lordships will not allow yourselves to be persuaded to give this Bill a Second Reading.
In the first place I submit to your Lordships that this Bill is really premature. Your Lordships will recall that there are at present a Royal Commission and two Committees of a rather special character investigating different aspects of local government. We have been rather unfortunate in our experience of these investigations into local government since the war. There have, in fact, been no fewer than seven inquiries of different kinds into local government since the end of the war. Only one of these inquiries has produced any result. Two were wound up before they had completed their task and one was laid aside before it had even begun. I am sure that in those circumstances your Lordships will not desire to do anything which may prejudice the three inquiries which are at present proceeding. It was rather surprising, I think, that the noble Lord made no reference to these inquiries. He said once or twice that these are matters worthy of investigation, but he made no mention of the fact that a very extensive and comprehensive investigation into all these matters is at present taking place, because the matters with which this Bill deals are all matters which must necessarily come within the purview of these three inquiries.
The Royal Commission is to report upon every aspect of local government outside London. It has the widest terms of reference, which must include most of the matters, if not all the matters, which are dealt with in this Bill. The two Committees are perhaps of even greater significance. Those two Committees are Committees, as I said a moment ago, of a rather special character. Their character is peculiar for this reason: that they are really joint Committees of the Associations of local authorities and the Minister. They were set up at the request of the Associations and have been conducting their investigations for about two years; before very long both those special Committees are likely to make their reports, and I understand that when the reports are received they are likely to be published. So the fact is that these matters are at present receiving a very considerable measure of investigation at the

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hands of these special bodies which have been set up for that very purpose.
These Committees, as I said, are really joint Committees of the Minister and the local authority Associations. Sir John Maude is the chairman of one of the Committees. His Committee is to consider
"in the light of modern conditions how local government might best continue to attract and retain people, both elected representatives and principal officers, of the calibre necessary to ensure its maximum effectiveness."
That, surely, would include all the matters which are dealt with in Clauses 8 and 11 of the Bill. The record of a member's present interests, which is now restricted to his fellow members of the council, will under the proposals in the Bill be made available to any ratepayer who is prepared to pay a shilling for it, and this extended disclosure of a member's private affairs beyond any point which seems necessary is certainly a matter which Sir John Maude and his Committee will have to consider in the light of the evidence which will be given before them.
The second Committee are presided over by Sir George Mallaby. They are required to consider
"the existing methods of recruiting local government officers and of using them and what changes might help local authorities to get the best possible service and help their officers to give it."
This Bill proposes to extend to local government officers a much stricter rule about the declaration of interest, both to the members of the council and to the general public, who are brought into this for the first time, than has been thought necessary before or, indeed, is, I believe, thought necessary in the Civil Service. There has been no evidence that what was considered sufficient when the Local Government Act 1933 was passed has for some reason since then become insufficient. We have heard no suggestion that in some way local government officers are becoming more concerned with contracts or matters which have to be disclosed to their councils. We have heard nothing really to suggest that there is any reason why they should disclose to the members of their council anything more than their interest. But it may be that one of these Committees will think otherwise. Until they do think otherwise I
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consider your Lordships ought to leave the law as it is.
I come now to the main proposal of the Bill. It is quite true that the White Paper describing the functions of the Commissioner for Administration—that seems to have been the title that has been selected for him—envisaged that his functions might be extended in the light of experience to other public authorities. The White Paper makes it clear that the intention is that the Government should first collect experience from the activities of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration before the system is extended to local government. I should have thought that was a wise and sensible procedure. It may well be that the experience of the Commissioner for Administration will show that such an extension is not necessary, or it may be that his experience will show that his functions should be extended in that way. But whatever the result may be, it seems to me that it is premature now to alter the law on a matter which will so soon come to be based upon practical experience.
The White Paper describes the proposed functions of the Commissioner for Administration and further envisages that the Commissioner's jurisdiction might be extended to cover complaints against local authorities. That is not what this Bill does. The Bill contemplates that there shall be set up in each regional planning area a separate Commissioner. That means that there will be appointed eight Commissioners for Administration to deal with England and Wales, and ten if you include Scotland and Northern Ireland. I would submit to your Lordships that it is most essential that if the principle of investigation by a Commissioner is considered necessary in local government, the Parliamentary Commissioner's office should be a single office administering functions uniformly in all parts of the country. It is very necessary that his decisions and his treatment of his responsibilities, which is to some extent a new form of administration, should at least be uniform and consistent in each of the regional planning areas of the country.
The noble Lord seemed to me to be optimistic about the demands of staff which the setting up of these eight Commissioners is likely to involve. I am

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quite sure that if the noble Lord had had any experience of the administration of a Government Department that is particularly prone to receive comments and complaints which call for reply he would be much less optimistic about the numbers of staff that would be required for the purpose in these Regional Commissioners' offices. Of course, if the functions of the Parliamentary Commissioner are to be extended to local government, he will require additional staff. He will require Deputy Commissioners. But an important factor is surely this: that the decisions given in different parts of the country by these Commissioners should be uniform and should be subject to the general overall supervision of the central Commissioner in London.
I come now to what seems to me to be a serious, and important, difference between what this Bill proposes and the functions of the Commissioner for Administration. The Commissioner for Administration must, and indeed can, act only in response to the invitation of a Member of Parliament. I think that is a wise restriction, not only in the interests of the Commissioner for Administration but in the interests of Members of Parliament. I think that if it had been otherwise it would to some extent have denigrated from the position and responsibilities of Members of another place. I am glad to see that the requests for action by the Commissioner are to reach him through that channel.
If it is necessary in the case of the Parliamentary Commissioner, it will be equally desirable that some limitation should be put upon these requests if the system is extended to local government. I would think that at least it should be a condition for the Commissioner's taking action that the complaint should have reached him through an elected representative on the local council. What is proposed here is quite different. Here the Commissioner may act upon the request of any member of the public who is prepared to reduce his complaint into writing. That goes much further than anything which has hitherto been considered to be necessary. I am quite sure that these requests for investigation in local government matters should be made to the Commissioner through the elected members of the council, as the requests for action by the Parliamen-
34
tary Commissioner must be made through Members of another place.
For all these reasons, I hope that your Lordships will come to the conclusion that the various matters with which this Bill deals, whatever substance there may be in them, or whatever substance there may not be in some of them, could best be considered by those bodies which are at present engaged in investigating them with the advantage of hearing evidence and of contact with those who are most intimately concerned, two advantages which your Lordships have not got.
4.5 p.m.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, because I like him so much, I am sorry I have to join in the expressions of opposition to the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Wade, and particularly when it comes from another side of the House. It may well be that, having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, and the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, your Lordships will think that, even in opposition to this Bill, there is little else left to be said, and it may be that my function for just a minute or two is to dot the i's and cross the t's, I having had, like so many of your Lordships, local government experience. I feel that the suggestions of the Bill are completely impractical, and I believe they are unnecessary.
I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, refer to the Royal Commission on Local Authorities which has now been established, presided over by Sir John Maude. It seems to me that if suggestions of this kind were necessary to be made at this moment in regard to the local authorities, the noble Lord, Lord Wade, might have seized the opportunity of the existence of the Royal Commission to submit first written and, maybe, later oral evidence along the lines of the suggestions which he now advances. We might thereby have avoided occupying time on this matter in a busy Parliamentary programme.
Obviously, the most important part of the Bill is the first part. So far as local authorities are concerned, I do not believe there are complaints which are of the serious level of complaints which are made in a national sense and concern Parliament. So, while it may be necessary—and I believe it is—that there should be a Ombudsman so far as Parliamentary matters are concerned, the

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necessity does not arise in anything like the same degree in regard to local authority work. Like so many of your Lordships, I have served for many years in another place, and it seems to me that the local councillor is a much more accessible man to the mass of the constituents than any Member of Parliament could possibly be. Invariably he lives in the city or town where he serves, and in many cases he lives in the ward he represents. Anyone having a serious complaint about anything that has happened in the local authority can, with the greatest of ease, go to his local councillor, and in most cases can obtain redress at that point. We all know that local authority officers are always available to ratepayers. They listen to them and give them decent explanations in regard to the problems which may be facing them.
Last of all, but most important, the local press can always publicise any detailed complaints at great length, if it is a question of a national problem or complaint. The national press cannot give a great deal of space to an individual complaint by some taxpayer or ratepayer, but we all know how columns of the local press are every week devoted to this kind of question and give it publicity which is never possible in the national sphere. Because of that, I feel that the necessity does not exist for the establishment of what the noble Lord calls a Regional Commissioner for Administration. That side of the Bill has been dealt with very adequately by the two noble Lords who have preceded me.
May I say one or two words on the other two points which are the main items of the Bill? In regard to the question of the public and the Press attending committees of local councils, this, to me, sounds absurd. Any of us who have had experience of them know full well how informal committees of local authorities are, the cross-talk that goes on, the interruption of one manor woman by another. While this may be good and gets to the heart of the matter eventually, what sort of view could it leave in the mind of people, ratepayers of the borough, who see this kind of thing going on? After all, the last safeguard is that every corporation committee reports to the council, at which members of the public and Press can be present.
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The noble Lord, Lord Wade, suggested that there was some element of "rubber stamp" in these bodies. Has the noble Lord ever been in a local authority council meeting? They do not give me the impression of "rubber stamps" either from what I read in the Press or when I see them in action. We were certainly not "rubber stamps" in my day on local authorities, and I am quite sure that all the discussions which take place in the various committees of the corporation, and all the complaints, are brought to light before the whole of the council. I should be very chary indeed about throwing open the committees of every local authority to the Press and the public. I feel there is a danger here which we have to avoid.
I come to my last point, and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Wade, will be glad that somebody can offer a little sympathy in the matter of local authority officials being placed in the some position as elected representatives on the question of declaring a financial interest. I think he really has a point here. I believe that a local authority official should prove his integrity just as much as any elected councillor should prove his integrity. It is not for me to give illustrations—and I would not dare to do so—relating to a time many years ago when I had certain suspicions about the activities of certain chief officials. It may be that they could not be proved, but for all that there was something there. I have always felt that there was something to be said for putting officials in exactly the same position as councillors in the matter of declaring a financial interest, but this in itself would not justify a Parliamentary Bill.
It might well be that people with great knowledge and experience (perhaps this could be done through by-laws) could do something about this matter in individual corporations, but we do not want to bring the whole machinery of Parliamentary procedure to bear simply in order to make council officials declare a financial interest in regard to some of the work or contracts of local councils. This is a very unimportant side of the matter which does not justify a Parliamentary Bill. So I join with the noble Lords, Lord Derwent and Lord Ilford, in feeling that this would be somewhat impracticable, that it would

37
be unnecessary to attempt it—and would it be fair to say to the noble Lord that, in view of all the Parliamentary work which faces us before October, 1967, he has not a very strong chance of getting this Bill through?
In my view, it is a good thing that the noble Lord has given us the opportunity to air matters of this sort in this one debate, but the fact is that there has been no previous study of this idea of appointing such a Commissioner as is proposed in the Bill. To my knowledge this is the only occasion on which there has been a debate on this proposal. I wonder, for example, to what extent the local authorities have been consulted about it. All these things being true, I join with the two noble Lords who have preceded me in hoping that your Lordships will fail to give a Second Reading to this Bill.
4.15 p.m.
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, I share to the full my noble friend Lord Royle's liking and respect for the noble Lord, Lord Wade, and I hope that the noble Lord will not feel that I am coming in only to hit a man when he is down, because I am rather afraid that he is down. One might put one's objection to this Bill on two questions of principle. The first is that the object, as I see it, of having local government and local authorities is to give scope for the exercise of a local discretion in local matters. A very good example of this is the matter of housing. When I sat in another place I used to receive countless letters about housing. I had a form which I sent back in almost every case pointing out that there was inevitably a discretion in dealing with housing applications and that, as a matter of both law and common sense, the discretion did not rest with me but with the members of the local authority which alone had the requisite knowledge to deal with competing claims.
Many people who fail to get a council house think it is due to maladministration, but somebody has to come to the decision. Everybody has the right to grouse, but in very few of those cases, if any, over a number of years did I find anything that an impartial person could have called maladministration. There were differences of opinion, there were differences of policy, and perhaps
38
differences of judgment too; but if you put a local council and local councillors in the position of having to exercise discretion, and if you do it deliberately as we do by Statute, then you must leave them to do it. If you want an improvement, then it must be considered among the sort of questions which are being considered by the Royal Commission which is at the moment looking into the whole structure of local government. It cannot be done just by putting in a single person to investigate what is said to be maladministration. That is the key word in this Bill.
The second question of principle—and I am trying to be as brief as possible—is that local government is not an isolated thing; it is part of the whole structure of government in this country. In carrying out the main functions of local government, and in the main matters over which any Member of the other House gets complaints, you find arising again and again questions of the partnership between central and local government, sometimes between one organ of local government and another. There is a delicate balance in education, and people whose children are sent to what they think is the wrong school often raise a pretty fruity grouse about it, if I may put it that way. That is not a matter of maladministration; it is a question that often raises deep questions of policy.
A third question which local authorities have to deal with so often is planning in one form or another. That is most obviously a case where there is a function for the local authority and a function, too, for the Minister of the day; and the success of planning and the policy of planning must depend on those two things going together more or less hand in hand. There are times when one or other of the bodies concerned—the local authority or the Minister—has to dig its toes in. Local authorities do dig their toes in sometimes, not always successfully but they may do it and they do do it.
When one comes to the question of a grouse about planning, I think one must remember one or two things. The first is that the planning machinery provides for appeals to the Minister for, if need be, having the matter taken out of the hands of the local authority and put, even in the first instance, in the Minister's hands. Similarly in education, the policy,

39
the educational plan, has to be approved by the Minister and its execution on many points, under the Education Act, depends on ministerial action in the first instance, or on an appeal to the Minister in other cases. A balance of that sort is not something which can be examined and looked into for maladministration by an independent official—it is too delicate—and if one has cases where there is not what the French would call an abuse of power but an excess of power, then, indeed, the courts are open and they are used.
It seems to me, therefore, that the trouble about this Bill is that it cloaks an undue interference with the local discretion of the councillor, and an undue interference with the balance that necessarily exists between local government and local authorities on the one hand and the Government of the day on the other. Therefore, I am sorry to say that I think this Bill is radically wrong. There are numerous Committee points. There are points, too, on Part II of the Bill. But as a concept I believe it to be fundamentally in error, and while no one would say that local government or any government in this country is necessarily perfect, this is not the way to remedy the grievances of the subject.
After all, local authorities are elected bodies, and the difference between a complaint against a Government Department and a complaint against the local authority is that you can go to the councillor in the one case and get a very effective remedy; in the other, owing to the complexity of the tasks of central Government, it may be more difficult. I see the case for the Ombudsman. I think it is right that he should proceed through elected Members of Parliament, and I find no parallel channel through which a regional Ombudsman could proceed if he were instituted by this Bill. I am sorry about it. I rather dislike differing from the noble Lord, Lord Wade. He really puts his case so well; so many of his views and feelings one naturally shares. But there we are, and I do not think we ought to accept this Bill.
4.24 p.m.
THE EARL OF GAINSBOROUGH: My Lords, I need not detain your Lordships for more than a few minutes, particularly in view of what has already
40
been said about the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Wade. But speaking from the point of view of someone who has been concerned with rural local government for a number of years, I have not found that such a procedure is necessary or desirable. I need not go into further detail, because a lot of noble Lords have spoken and it does not seem very likely, unless a large number of backwoodsmen appear from one side or the other, that the noble Lord would get a majority if he pressed his Bill to a Division. But I sympathise with his object in raising the matter, because I know that his sense of justice is very high.
So far as the admission of the public to committees is concerned, the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960 has considerably improved the position here. Members of the public have more rights now than they used to have, and the Press can attend meetings where there is a committee of the whole council. Therefore, it does not seem that the public are in any way prevented from making their voices heard, either through the Press or by asking their own councillor.
With respect, I would agree with what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Royle, who has greater experience than I have in local government and other matters. I was going to say a lot of the things which he has said, because my own experience supports them. However, I feel there is some point in the matter of the pecuniary interest of officers, which is raised at the end of the Bill, although it does not seem that this is the right vehicle for getting these reforms, if they are needed, through Parliament. It seems that it would be better to wait until there is an opportunity of doing so when we have heard the result of the inquiries which the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, has spoken about. Being a member of one of those bodies that he mentioned, I know that very soon a large amount of evidence and paper is going to be thrust into everybody's desk on the matter of the administration of local authorities.
Furthermore, of course, it would slightly prejudge the issue if we agreed to accept a regional Ombudsman, because we do not yet know about this. Many of us hope we shall not have regional local government, because in any case that would hardly be local government at all. If there are going to be inquiries

41
into local injustices, it is much better for them to be made through the local medium because, certainly in the country districts, most people know who their councillor is and have access to the officials, whereas in a wide area or under central Government, of course, the ordinary man does not have such easy access to officials or to his Member of Parliament. For these reasons, therefore, I am afraid I also must join the numerous noble Lords who have said they are against this Bill's being given a Second Reading.
4.27 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, I had intended to speak on this Bill and there were one or two points that I wanted to make. They were that the Bill is premature, unnecessary and administratively unjustifiable, expensive and also cumbrous in its provisions. But the five noble Lords who have spoken have already made these points so comprehensively and so convincingly that there is no need for me to detain your Lordships by trying to make them all over again, and I would not wish to do so. I fully appreciate the assurance of the noble Lord, Lord Wade, that he had the highest opinion of local authorities in this country, and I am sure that that was a sincere and genuine feeling. But, actually and fundamentally, it seems to me that the provisions of this Bill are derogatory to local authorities, and for that reason, and for reasons which the noble Lord has just given, it would be a great pity in any way to discourage what I think is generally admitted to be, on the whole, a body of very able and public-spirited people who are doing a job extremely well.
On Part II, I should just like to say that I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Royle, about this matter of Committees. I may not know as much as previous speakers about local government in this country, but I do know quite a lot about administration in various countries, including a little in this one, and the idea that the public should have unrestricted access to committee meetings does not to me make administrative sense or even seem a possibility. That is all I wish to say, except that, with due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Wade, I regard this Bill as unsound in principle and in
42
practice and I hope that it will not be given a Second Reading.
4.30 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (LORD KENNET): My Lords, we have had an interesting discussion on the three not very closely related proposals which are put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Wade, in his Bill. As a matter of fact, the Government are not as convinced that the proposals in themselves are mistaken as is the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, speaking from the Opposition Front Bench. In point of fact, there is very little, if anything, in the Bill which the Government think would be wrong. No, my Lords: our difficulty with it is one of timing—purely and simply that. Perhaps I may take the parts of the Bill in turn. I am afraid I shall have to repeat some points which have been made by noble Lords around the House, and especially by the noble Lord, Lord Ilford.
On the question of regional Ombudsmen, Commissioners of Administration, the Government's view is that the first thing to do is to get the Parliamentary Commissioner—in other words, the National Ombudsman; in other words, Sir Edmund Compton—off the ground and running' and to let that system operate for a certain amount of time until we see how it works, and to find out how one can fit an Ombudsman into a nation such as ours at all, before going on to the question of whether or not there might be more like him at regional or local level. I should like to remind the House of what was said by the original White Paper on the Parliamentary Commissioner. The White Paper [Cmnd. 2767, paragraph 17] said:
"In due course, it may be desirable to consider extending the powers of the Commissioner to deal with complaints of the private citizen against the administrative actions of other public authorities. But, first, we intend to seek experience of the Commissioner in the field of relationships between the citizen and central Government."
The Government believe that we should stand by that proposed timetable.
There is also the question that all the time that we are discussing these matters the Royal Commission on Local Government are sitting, and they will be

43
examining the relations between the public and local authorities with as much thoroughness as they will examine all the other questions which fall within their remit. We do not want to prejudge what findings they may come up with by any further action at this point.
Perhaps I might jump Clause 8 for the moment, keeping that until later, and continue on the clauses of Lord Wade's Bill, beginning with Clause 9, about the declaration of interest by members and officers. Once again we know of no special objection to doing what the Bill proposes should be done, but it would cut across certain conversations which my right honourable friend the Minister is having at this moment with the local authority associations on this very point—that is, the question whether the present provisions for the declaration of interest of elected members and of officers are adequate and, if not, what changes should be made. I think I should inform the House that this problem is proving to be rather more intractable than we expected it to be before we began these conversations. There are ramifications, legal and structural, which, to be perfectly frank, had not entered our heads, and I do not think they had entered the heads of the local authority associations, either. These things are prolonging the talks. They will, of course, come to an end, but at the moment we are reluctant to accept any piecemeal solution in an Act of Parliament which might make it impossible to come to what might he a better solution after these talks have been concluded.
I turn finally to Clause 8, which deals with the admission of the public to committee meetings. As I understand it, the effect of this clause would be not to admit the public perforce to all committee meetings, but to say that they could come in unless the authority ruled that they should be kept out. That is the reverse of the present procedure, where they are kept out unless the authority says they should come in. It would also put all committee meetings in the position of full council meetings, and of meetings of committees consisting of the full council, where the public is at present admitted. Really, the Government have no objection to this whatever—we see many advantages in it—but I am informed that there might
44
be a physical difficulty. Many council premises have not been improved, enlarged or modernised, not only since the war but since the original provisions began operating. There is going to be a physical difficulty in letting the public into many of the committee rooms and many of the buildings, and there is actually a danger of the disruption of council business by the sheer physical presence of people. Many authorities might have this physical difficulty—we do not know—and once again the Government would be reluctant to impose astatutory duty upon them before this has been examined. So, in conclusion, I should like to ask my noble friend Lord Wade if, having heard the debate and the sentiments of the House, he would withdraw his Bill; and, if he could not find it in himself to do that, to advise the House to vote against it.
4.35 p.m.
LORD WADE: My Lords, I am very much obliged to noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I have listened with great interest to all the comments that have been made. I admit that some of the comments have been somewhat critical of the Bill, but I am not at all deterred. When introducing any reform one must expect a considerable amount of cold water at the outset. The noble Lord, Lord Derwent, rather criticised me for not having produced examples. I was endeavouring to be as fair as possible. I did not want to abuse the privileges of this House by retailing a number of heartrending cases without having had the opportunity of investigating them thoroughly myself and of being quite satisfied that there was not some other side of which I had not heard. That was my reason for not producing all the evidence that the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, would have wished.
However, I feel somewhat forced now to give an example, so may I give one which is within my own knowledge? This is of a small local charity which found it necessary to close down and move. They were therefore very anxious to sell their property. There were difficulties about selling, because it was thought that the local authority would want the property. There was a question of change of user. At any rate, an application was made for change of user, and eventually this was turned down. The charity was then

45
advised that the proper course to take was to serve a notice to purchase on the local authority—that is, under Part VIII of the Town and Country Planning Act 1962. The effect of that is to say to the local authority, "If you will not let us sell to anybody else, buy it yourself and we will negotiate a figure". The local authority then came along and said, "If you will withdraw your notice to purchase, we will negotiate voluntarily and then we will purchase". There were prolonged negotiations, and eventually a price was agreed. Finally, in March of this year, the local authority said, "We have decided not to go ahead with the purchase". Altogether two years had elapsed. The property had deteriorated very greatly, and it was a very unfortunate loss to the charity concerned. I put that forward only because I feel I was challenged to give one example. I think there is a prima facie case for some kind of investigation.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but what could a Commissioner have done about that? That is the point I was making: I did not want actual cases.
LORD WADE: I do not think—and this is the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison—that there is a right of appeal on that particular point. I do not think there is any appeal procedure in such a case. But if it was found that there was a number of cases like this and the Commissioner—if you like, with the approval of the Parliamentary Commissioner; I would not object to consultation on that matter—were to publish a report, I think it would probably stop that kind of injustice, if there is an injustice.
There have been many detailed points, and obviously I must not attempt to answer all of them because I do not wish to take up the time of the House. I think the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, questioned the possible expense: but achieving justice does involve some expense, and trying to make it clear to people that justice is done involves some expense. It is often said that asking Questions in this House and in another place (particularly in another place, where many matters of local interest are raised) costs quite a lot. I am not at all sure that the expense involved in going through a regional Ombudsman
46
would not be less than the expense of the procedure of asking Questions in the House.
The noble Lord, Lord Ilford, who of course speaks with great authority on these matters, referred to the various Committees that are sitting. I am aware of those. My only reason for not referring to those Committees was because I thought I had spoken long enough as it was. I do not think the ground is fully covered by the Committees that are sitting. The noble Lord also said that this reform was premature. Of course, whenever you suggest a reform you are told that it is premature, impracticable and all the rest of it.
The noble Lord, Lord Royle, suggested that it was impracticable; he asked why my recommendations were not referred to the Maude Committee. In fact, they have been referred to the Maude Committee; that is the answer. I am doubtful whether the proposals I put forward will be covered by the terms of reference of the Committee. He questioned my words about "rubber stamp" decisions by a council in full. May I give an example? I want to make it clear that it occurred some years ago, before the 1960 Act. The council concerned were wholly members of one Party, except for one Independent. This one Independent member was not allowed to sit on any Committee of any importance; all decisions were made in secret in committees, by the Party caucus. He was frustrated all the time and felt that alone he could not play any useful part in the council. This is the kind of case I have in mind.
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, I was in that happy position, being the single member of the opposition, on a county council. I had a glorious time without any responsibility.
LORD WADE: My Lords, I am glad to hear of the noble Lord's success.
I am obliged to the noble Earl, Lord Gains borough, for his support, as far as it goes, though I gather it does not go far enough. So far as access to the committees is concerned—andthis was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Milverton—I have made it clear that this is not unrestricted access. The burden of proof would be on the committee to show that the Press should not be present. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, in winding up,

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said that it was a matter of timing. What I fear is that if we do not do anything about local authority complaints, nothing will be done for years. I think there is a stronger case for tackling local authority complaints than those at the Parliamentary level. That, I think, is the real point. Of course, there are detailed points which it is right to consider
Resolved in the negative, and Motion for the Second Reading disagreed to accordingly.

MISREPRESENTATION BILL [H.L.]
4.55 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.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
but what your Lordships are being asked to decide is whether this Bill is worthy of being considered in Committee. I hope that it is.
4.44 p.m.
On Question, Whether the Bill be now read 2a,
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 9; Not-Contents, 111.

CONTENTS

Airedale, L. [Teller.]

Meston, L.

Sinha, L.

Asquith of Yarnbury, Bs.

Moynihan L.

Swaythling, L.

Henley, L.

Ogmore, L.

Wade, L. [Teller.]

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdeen and Temair, M.

Fortescue, E.

Mowbray & Stourton, L.

Fraser of North Cape, L.

Newall, L.

Addison, V.

Fulton, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Gainsborough, E.

Oakshott, L.

Ailwyn L.

Gardiner, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Pargiter, L.

Albemarle, E.

Glasgow, E.

Peddie L.

Alport, L.

Goschen, V.

Phillips, Bs.

Ampthill, L.

Greenway, L.

Ritchie-Calder, L.

Archibald, L.

Grenfell L.

Royle, L.

Arwyn, L.

Gridley, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Ashbourne, L.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

St. Davids, V.

Atholl D.

Hankey, L.

St. Helens, L.

Attlee, E.

Harlech, L.

St. Oswald L.

Blackford, L.

Hawke, L.

Sandford, L.

Blyton, L.

Henderson, L.

Sandys, L.

Bowles, L.

Hilton of Upton L.

Segal, L.

Braye, L.

Hughes, L.

Shepherd, L.

Brooke of Cumnor, L.

Ilford, L.

Silkin, L.

Brooke of Ystradfellte Bs.

Inglewood, L.

Somers, L.

Burden, L.

Kennet, L.

Sorensen L.

Champion, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Spencer, E.

Chorley, L.

Kilmuir, E.

Stocks, Bs.

Citrine, L.

Latham L.

Stonham, L.

Clwyd, L.

Leatherland, L.

Stow Hill, L.

Collison, L.

Lindgren, L. [Teller.]

Strang, L.

Colville of Culross, V. [Teller.]

Long, V.

Strange of Knokin, Bs.

Conesford L.

Longford, E. (L. Privy Seal)

Strathcarron L.

Cooper of Stockton Heath, L.

Maelor, L.

Summerskill, Bs.

Crook, L.

Mansfield, E.

Swanborough, Bs.

Daventry, V.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Swinton, E.

Denham, L.

Merrivale, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Derwent, L.

Mersey, V.

Twining, L.

Effingham, E.

Milverton, L.

Vivian, L.

Emmet of Amberley Bs.

Mitchison, L.

Walpole L.

Erroll of Hale, L.

Molson, L.

Wedgwood, L.

Falkland, V.

Monsell, V.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Falmouth, V.

Morris of Kenwood L.

Williamson, L.

Forster of Harraby, L.

Morrison, L.

On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Removal of certain bars to rescission for innocent misrepresentation]:
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER)THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER) moved to leave out subsection (2). The noble and learned Lord said: As it is now some months since the Bill

49
was before your Lordships' House, perhaps I might, in moving this Amendment, remind your Lordships that the Bill arises because our law when a man is induced to enter into a contract by a misrepresentation has long been thought to be unsatisfactory in three ways. In the first place, he has a right to rescind the contract before the contract is executed, but not after; and as you do not usually discover that the representation was a misrepresentation until after execution, this is not much good. Secondly, although you have a right to damages, you have such a right only if you can prove that the misrepresentation was made fraudulently. There is always a heavy onus on anybody who seeks to prove fraud; and, of course, you do not know what was in the mind of the vendor, or the other party to the contract, at the time he made the representation. Thirdly, anybody can contract out of his liabilities in these respects.
Your Lordships approved on Second Reading a principle of the Bill which would give effect to a change of the law in this sphere, but two or three points have remained over, and the subject matter of this Amendment which is to delete subsection (2) of Clause 1 arises in this way. The Law Reform Committee on whose Report the Bill, in substance, is based, thought that contracts relating to land should be excluded from the changes to be made in the law, except in the case of short leases. Accordingly when, in the last Parliament, this Bill was introduced in another place, it contained the provision, subsection (2) of Clause 1, which would exclude contracts
"for the creation or transfer of an interest in land"
except leases for not more than three years.
When the Bill was in Committee in another place, strong objections to this were expressed—not at all, of course, on Party lines, because this is not a subject which has anything to do with Party politics, but from both sides of the Committee equally. It was said, in the first place, that the damage a man might suffer if he was induced to enter into a contract for the sale or transfer of interest in land by a misrepresentation was likely to be more, rather than less, than in the case of a contract relating to a chattel; therefore there was no
50
good reason for this exception. In consequence, the Government accepted an Amendment in Committee in another place deleting this provision, though they intimated that on Report they might have something further to say about it. In fact, the Dissolution then took place.
When the Government reconsidered the matter with a view to reintroducing the Bill in this House in the present Parliament, advice was taken from the Law Society and from bodies like the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and they were in favour of retaining this exception. Therefore, when the Bill was reintroduced as it is before your Lordships, this exception relating to land was retained, and that is why at the moment it still appears as subsection (2) of Clause 1. In moving the Second Reading I explained these matters to your Lordships, and said that the subsection had been put back, partly on the advice which had been received from the bodies to which I have referred, partly so that, being in the Bill, it would not necessarily be a matter of argument. Though I felt very much in two minds myself, I said that I should be largely guided by the views which were then expressed by your Lordships.
On the Second Reading the noble and learned Lord, Lord Upjohn, was in favour of retaining the subsection. He said:
"After all, contracts affecting land are in a very special class of their own. The solicitor investigates the title, and the surveyor inspects the property and any adjoining properties which he thinks fit.…So many contracts of sale are married up with the sale or purchase of some other houses. Mortgages are almost invariably taken on some new property. I think, to use the words of Lord Jenkins' Report, that if you rescind where there has been a passing of a legal title you might set up a chain reaction. But, of course, I agree entirely that leases for under three years should be subject to what will be the new general rule; that is, they may be rescinded for innocent misrepresentation. The truth of the matter is that tenancies of that description are frequently entered into without legal advice, no proper surveys are made, and therefore the oral representations of the intending landlord play a far greater part in inducing the contract than they do in the bigger trans. actions."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 274 (No. 13), col. 944: 17/5/66.]
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, took a different view. He said:
"First of all, I would suggest that Clause 1(2) should come out. It seems to me that

51
if a person makes a misrepresentation, even in the case of a sale of land or the grant of a tenancy for four or five years, and somebody is misled by it and is induced to enter into a contract which he would not otherwise have done, one should be able to set it aside, so long as the person comes along in time before other people are prejudiced. The Common Law has always done this in regard to chattels. It should now apply also to sales of land, and I consider that there should not be that exception in subsection (2)."—[Col. 941.]
The noble Lord, Lord Wilberforce, took the same view. He said:
"I am rather with those who would be in favour of deleting from the Bill the existing subsection (2) of Clause 1 on the simple ground that misrepresentations as to houses or bungalows are just as common, and just as damaging to purchasers, as are misrepresentations about other goods. One does not see at first sight why buyers of motor cars are more liable to be duped or are more in need of protection than buyers of bungalows.
It is perhaps rather significant to remember that the case which, far more than Seddon's case, gives rise to the difficulty in the existing law (the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor referred to it: a case about drains, decided in 1911) is itself a case about the sale of a house. So the problem does exist in relation to houses. One would think it needs to be solved, and I do not see any difficulty in solving it in the way already suggested—namely, by giving a right of rescission where rescission can be carried out without interfering with third party rights. Of course, in some cases that will not be possible, though in others it will. But, on the face of it, I do not see any reason for differentiating between sales of land and other sales.—[Col. 949.]
The conclusion to which the Government have come is that this subsection ought to be deleted, mainly on these grounds. First of all, the exception within the exception is very difficult to defend logically, the exception being contracts relating to the transfer of land, and the exception within it being leases of more than three years. It is difficult logically to see why, if you ought to have a right, when you are induced by misrepresentation, to deal with a 2½-year lease, the law ought to be quite different if it is a 3½-year lease; and there is no real logical place at which one can draw a line. Secondly, and mainly, there is the reason that it has always been part of our law of misrepresentation, and still will be, that a contract cannot be rescinded if the parties cannot be restored to the position in which they were originally, and that it is also part of our law that
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there cannot be rescission if the rights of third parties have come in question. Nothing in the Bill alters that situation.
It is true that there will be many cases relating to interests in land where there is some chain reaction, where it is impossible to put the parties back to the position which they were in before or where the rights of third parties have been interposed. In those cases, there will not be rescission. But the point which nobody, to my mind, has ever answered, although I drew attention to it on Second Reading as being the strongest argument of those who wished to delete this subsection, is that the mere fact that the cases may not be many in this field, to which the new law will apply, does not seem to be a good reason for excluding the new law in those cases, whether they be few or not, to which it would apply. It is for these reasons that I would ask the Committee to agree to the deletion of this subsection, and I beg to move accordingly.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 14, leave out subsection (2).—(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I think that noble Lords on this side of the House will welcome the proposal that the noble and learned Lord has made to leave out subsection (2) of Clause 1. We would also thank him for what I know has been a prolonged series of negotiations and discussions behind the scenes, in which the noble and learned Lord has probably found a great deal of help and succour from the speeches made by noble Lords on the Second Reading of this Bill. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord will be able to tell us that he has considered all the points, some of them extraordinarily subtle and complicated, raised by noble Lords in that debate. In particular, I recall the question of the technical difficulties arising from the merger of contracts, if the exception as to land were removed, as is now proposed. I hope that the noble and learned Lord is satisfied that no difficulties are going to arise from that.
Having said that, I would add that I am sure it is right to do as the noble and learned Lord has suggested. As he has said, the alternative remedy in Clause 2(2) may in many cases be the one which is used—that is, of damages in lieu of rescission. But I could never under-

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stand why, when that remedy, instead of rescission, was going to be available in case of everything else, it should be denied in the case of land. The only remedy apparent in the Bill until this Amendment is made was the one in tort under subsection (1) of Clause 2, which is subject to the special defence set out at the end of that subsection. I think that it is much more satisfactory to deal with it as the noble and learned Lord has suggested. I do not believe that there will be any unfairness. I believe that the courts will be thoroughly capable of deciding when rescission is suitable and when damages are a more convenient alternative. In those circumstances, I would advise the Committee to accept this Amendment.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am grateful to the noble Viscount for what he has said, and I gladly acknowledge the help which I have received from noble and learned Lords, not only by reason of what they said on Second Reading but also by reason of the advantages I have had in discussing these matters with them since.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 2 [Damages for misrepresentation]:
5.8 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved in subsection (2), after "court", to insert, "or arbitrator". The noble and learned Lord said: I beg to move the second Amendment standing in my name. This is a short point. There is some doubt as to what the powers of the arbitrator in this field may be, although from the observations made by a majority of noble and learned Members of this House in a case called Heyman v. Darwins Ltd., in 1942, it would seem that arbitrators probably can deal with this matter. If they can, the law which is to be applied by an arbitrator obviously ought to be the same as the law applied by a Judge. The simple purpose of this Amendment is to make provision for arbitrators to have the power of awarding damages as well as, and on the same terms as, they would be awarded by a court.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 9, after ("court") insert ("or arbitrator").—(The Lord Chancellor).
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I think that this Amendment is clearly right, also, and we welcome it from this side.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 2, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 3:
Avoidance of certain provisions excluding liability for misrepresentation
3.— (1) Subject to subsection (2) of this section, if any agreement (whether made before or after the commencement of this Act) contains a provision which would exclude or restrict—

(a) any liability to which a party to a contract may be subject by reason of any misrepresentation made by him before the contract was made; or

(b) any remedy available to another party to the contract by reason of such misrepresentation;

that provision shall be void if the liability to which it relates is one arising under section 2(1) of this Act, and shall in any other case be of no effect unless it is proved that the person making the misrepresentation had reasonable ground to believe and did believe up to the time the contract was made that the facts represented were true.
(2) Where any terms of a contract have been arrived at in negotiations between the parties and—

(a) the terms so arrived at expressly provide for matters of any description; and

(b) the contract confines the liability of any party with respect to matters of that description to those so provided for;

subsection (1) of this section shall not affect any agreement, whether or not contained in that contract, so far as it relates to any misrepresentation with respect to matters of that description.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved, at the beginning of subsection (1), to leave out "Subject to subsection (2) of this section,". The noble and learned Lord said: With your Lordships' permission, perhaps I may also take Amendment No. 4 with this, because they are linked Amendments. This raises the other question which was much debated before your Lordships on Second Reading as to exclusion clauses. Here, your Lordships may remember, the Committee had reported recommending in favour of a clause which would prevent anyone from contracting out of the provisions of the new law. As I told your Lordships on Second Reading, after that the Confederation of British Industry said: "Of course, we do not object to a provision that you cannot contract out so far as ordinary

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sales and contracts are concerned"—because very often these clauses are in small print on the back, people do not read them, and they do not understand them if they do read them—"but there may be cases, for example between very large business contractors, perhaps for the erection of some plant abroad, where all the terms of the contract are carefully negotiated by the solicitors for these large firms and a liability is deliberately excluded as a quid pro quo of some other kind. Therefore, if you are going to exclude contracting out, some provision ought to be made for a case of that character.
As I told your Lordships on Second Reading, the Government had accepted that this was desirable, if it were possible, and so in Clause 3(2) one finds the words
"Where any terms of a contract have been arrived at in negotiation with the parties"—
the contracting out was to be allowed; and the idea of this wording was to cover the sort of case which the Confederation of British Industry had in mind. But it was much criticised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid, on Second Reading, who said: "How can you decide whether the terms of a contract have been arrived at in negotiation? What exactly does 'negotiation' mean? Does it cover oral conversation in a shop, or what?".
Since then the Government have given careful thought to this problem, which is a very real one. Lord Reid himself, in a case before your Lordships' House this year, had expressed what I think may be our general view on exemption clauses. What he said was:
"Exemption clauses differ greatly in many respects. Probably the most objectionable are found in the complex standard conditions which are now so common. In the ordinary way the customer has no time to read them, and, if he did read them, he would probably not understand them. If he did understand and object to any of them, he would generally be told that he could take it or leave it. If he then went to another supplier, the result would be the same. Freedom to contract must surely imply some choice or room for bargaining. At the other extreme is the case where parties are bargaining on terms of equality and a stringent exemption clause is accepted for a quid pro quo or other good reason; but this rule appears to treat all cases alike."
When one applies one's mind to this situation, which has always been some-
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thing of a problem, one feels that it is quite wrong that a person can be sold something and get a thing called a guarantee—and sometimes it looks very fine, with the scroll—whereas lawyers know that its sole object is that part where it says:
"and this guarantee is in place of any other warranty implied by law or otherwise."
The real effect is simply that if you go into a shop and make plain what you want and what you want it for, it is already the law, without anything more being said, that it must be reasonably fit for the purpose for which it is supplied. And that is only right. But if there is a guarantee of the kind I have mentioned, all it really does is to take away much more than it gives.
On the other hand, there are cases in which the parties are big companies and are at arms' length from one another. Our law is still theoretically based on there being freedom of contract. Originally, no doubt, that was so, and the solicitors for both parties, in red ink, green ink and yellow ink, really negotiated the terms of the contract. But we live in days in which it is no good saying to the Gas Board: "We like your gas, but we do not like your standard terms of contract". They will say: "We are sorry, but that is the way we do business. You will have to lump it." There is no way of defining the circumstances which divide the two kinds of case to which I refer.
That is why the Amendment which is now proposed, in trying to classify the sort of circumstances to which the Confederation of British Industry refers, would leave it to the Judge. So this Amendment would now read as follows:
"If any agreement (whether made before of after the commencement of this Act) contains a provision which would exclude or restrict—

(a) any liability to which a party to a contract may be subject by reason of any misrepresentation made by him before the contract was made; or

(b) any remedy available to another party to the contract by reason of such a misrepresentation;

that provision shall be of no effect except to the extent (if any) that in any proceedings arising out of the contract, the court or arbitrator may allow reliance on it as being fair and reasonable in the circumstances of the case."
Prima facie, contracting out will not be allowed, and will not be allowed unless the Judge is satisfied that in all the cir-

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cumstances of the case it would be fair and reasonable to allow it.
I have always thought that any legal system ought to make the best of its good points, and I have always thought that the best thing about our legal system is the quality of the Judges. That being so, this is a very sensible way of dealing with a point of this kind. The Amendment has satisfied the noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid; it is approved by the Law Commission; it is approved by the Confederation of British Industry, and I hope it may be approved by your Lordships. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 20, leave out from beginning to ("if").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
5.18 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I suppose that the first reaction to this Amendment is its breathtaking simplicity. It must be a very rare thing in an Act of Parliament which is attempting to deal with a set of circumstances as complicated as those which will crop up in the application of Clause 3 of the Bill that, in these days at any rate, we should risk leaving it so extraordinarily indefinable and entirely to the good sense of the Judges. I am sure that this is a worthwhile experiment. I am reinforced in my courage in this respect, first of all by the fact that I think it was suggested by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid—and doubtless that suggestion would be based upon the wide jurisdiction in matters of this sort that Scots Law gives to the Courts of Session there—and secondly, by the fact that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has told us of all the others who have now approved of it.
I would make only one point about this. As I understood the course of the debate on Second Reading, this deals with a small part only of the general subject of contracting out, and the question of liabilities of this sort and indeed the whole matter is at present before the Law Commission. I do not know at what stage any results may come from their consideration, because the matter is a difficult one, but I should think that this experiment (and I believe it is an experiment) might provide some useful information in the course of decided cases at all levels—and arbitrations, too, because
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they are covered—which would give a line on the way in which a provision of this type might work. If it is successful, it may well be that this is the prototype for other legislation dealing with a much wider field of contracting out. Therefore, perhaps there is an advantage in putting it in this Bill, which is exactly the opposite to what was being said on Second Reading. There is an advantage in trying it out in this rather narrower field in this Bill so that we may see and learn by experience whether or not it is after all the universal solution. At any rate, considering the appalling difficulties of trying to cope with the diverse circumstances in which this sort of case will arise, I am sure that it is a worthwhile thing to do.
I am particularly glad that it has been chosen, because not only did I hear on Second Reading debate about the particular difficulties raised by the C.B.I., but I believe there are markets of great importance in this country which are entirely governed by various restrictions which would previously have been made untenable by the terms of this Bill, and without which I believe the market simply would not work at all. Some dismay was beginning to be felt as to whether the whole basis of the transactions which went on in those spheres was going to be undermined. Now I believe there will he an escape for them if they can show to the satisfaction of the court that the restrictions upon which they have always relied, and still rely, are in fact worthwhile and justifiable. Therefore, I believe that their particular apprehensions may be removed. I welcome this. I hope very much that it will work, and I think it is very brave of the noble and learned Lord to introduce it to Parliament.
5.22 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: I should like to join the noble Viscount who has just resumed his seat in welcoming this alteration in the Bill. I have given a good deal of thought to Clause 3, and I am satisfied that this is a great improvement on the clause as it originally stood. I am glad that the noble and learned Lord has told the Committee that it has been agreed with the Law Commission. I know that a great deal of work lies behind that laconic statement, and I am glad indeed that it has been decided to

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leave this matter to the discretion of the judge who is trying the case.
On so many occasions, when attempts have been made in Parliament to leave matters to the discretion of the judge, it has been objected that the law ought to be firm and certain and that one ought not to rely on judicial discretion. It has always seemed to me, especially in the light not only of the legal but of the business ability which is shown by our judges in dealing with matters of this kind which are largely of a commercial or quasi commercial character, that we could do a great deal more on these lines. We are now living in a very different community from the one which existed say a hundred years ago, when rules could be simple, clear and rigid without very much danger.
Therefore I welcome this particular aspect of this clause and hope that it will be a forerunner of other occasions when it will be decided to leave matters of this complexity to the discretion of the judge who has heard all the evidence and who is trying the case.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I beg to move this Amendment, which is purely consequential.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 28, leave out from beginning to end of line 43 and insert ("that provision shall be of no effect except to the extent (if any) that, in any proceedings arising out of the contract, the court or arbitrator may allow reliance on it as being fair and reasonable in the circumstances of the case").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 3, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD CHORLEY: I do not propose to move the Amendment which stands in my name, but I should like to take a few minutes of your Lordships' time in explaining how I came to put it down, and why I am not proposing to move it. As the noble and learned Lord has explained, this clause deals with exclusion clauses in contracts, and it was very much debated on Second Reading. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid, in a powerful speech, which carried my full agreement—not that that matters very much—pointed out that this is really a small part of a much larger problem.
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This is a problem which the Law Commission, only recently appointed, decided to tackle courageously and very properly at this early stage in their career. The noble and learned Lord indicated that he thought it would be much better to leave it to the Law Commission to consider, in the context of their much wider research and investigation. In this he was, I thought, strongly supported by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce. So we had these two important expressions of opinion.
I think it is very important that, when we have set up a Law Commission to deal with matters of this sort, we should be careful before we impinge on what they are doing. Some years ago we set up a Royal Commission under the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, on criminal problems. The Commission were given very wide terms of reference, collected a great deal of evidence, and sat on many occasions. During this time a number of Bills impinging on what they were doing were introduced in Parliament, and eventually the Commission were wound up. I do not know how true this is, but it was stated in responsible quarters in the Press that one of the reasons why a substantial proportion of the personnel handed in their resignations was that it was a waste of their time to make these researches and give all this work to the problem, while it was being, so to speak, encroached upon by small Bills dealing with sections of the subject, unrelated to each other, and unrelated to some extent to the general problem, which were being brought before Parliament—not always going through but sometimes going through when the Government sponsored them.
It seems to me that that is an important lesson and one which is relevant in the circumstances of this case. When the noble Lord, Lord Cohen of Brighton, shortly after this Bill was introduced here, introduced another Bill dealing with an analogous problem, the noble and learned Lord himself made the point with that persuasive eloquence that we all expect from him, that it would be a mistake, however good the noble Lord's Bill was, for us to take it because it was in the direct line of the country which the Law Commission were exploring and dealing with. That seemed to me to be very important indeed.

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While I was thinking about this, rumours began to spread in parts which are frequented by lawyers that the Law Commission not only had not been consulted about this, but did not like it because it would interfere with their work, and it was even said that one of their members intended to resign. I do not propose to say a name, but a name was in fact mentioned. This seemed to me to be an unfortunate rumour, as we expected this matter to come up before long. Incidentally, I do not think there is any truth in this, from inquiries I made afterwards. But it seemed to me that the noble and learned Lord should be able to deny that anything of the sort had happened, and to inform Parliament that he was in discussion about this matter with the Law Commission. He has in fact told us that not only has he been in consultation with them (one deduces that from what he said) but that this is the result of this consultation, and it is obviously a considerable improvement over the earlier proposal.
I would not suggest for a moment that the fact that the Law Commission are dealing with something is an insuperable reason why a Bill should not be passed through Parliament. That would lead to a hold-up which law reformers would be sorry to see. There may be all sorts of cases where it is perfectly possible, without interfering with their work in any way, provided Parliamentary time can be found, to get a much-needed reform carried through Parliament. But it ought to be done in consultation with them, and they should have the opportunity of commenting upon it and of indicating whether they think what is proposed falls into the general programme and is in the line of progress in regard to legal reform, because we are entrusting a tremendous and most responsible task to the Law Commission. I am glad to know that in the end this happened in
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connection with this particular clause, and obviously in those circumstances not only do I not wish to see the clause deleted but, as I explained in a short interjection before the matter was put from the Chair, I am heartily in favour of it.
That is all I need say, except that I want to stress the importance of going ahead in co-operation with the Law Commission, and there being no question at all of any possibility of its being said that they are in disagreement with anything which has been done; or, if it is so said, it should be brought out and the whole thing explained so that we know where we are.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, for having put down his Amendment in order to give me the opportunity to deal with the rumour which he told me existed. There is no foundation at all for this rumour. I have been in close consultation with the Law Commission on this Amendment, and they have told me it is in line with their general thinking on the whole subject of exclusion clauses, and the Amendment in this form will not embarrass them in their work in any way at all. I am grateful to my noble friend for giving me an opportunity to make that clear.
Clause 3, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported, with Amendments.

PROTECTION OF BIRDS BILL [H.L.]
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD CHAMPION): My Lords, as was explained earlier in the Sitting, it is not proposed to proceed with the Committee stage of this Bill to-day. It will be set down for a subsequent day.