Lords Sitting of 5 April 1967

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Ripon.
The Earl of Essex—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

SOUTH-WEST AFRICA
2.36 p.m.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will instruct their representative at the United Nations to correct the unfortunate impression created by his implication that administration of South-West Africa by any Government other than that of South Africa is possible, and so guide the United Nations towards recognition of the economic realities existing in the area, and also improve relations between this country and South Africa, which his previous intervention has endangered.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (LORD CHALFONT): No, my Lords, and I do not accept the assumptions in the Question.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, in view of the amount of movement taking place in the Chamber I could not hear the noble Lord's Answer. I wonder whether he would kindly repeat it.
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, of course I shall be delighted to do so. The Answer was: No, my Lords, and I do not accept the assumptions in the Question.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for the brevity of his Answer, may I ask him this further question? Since it appears impossible for the Committee to reach agreement, would
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it not be helpful if the United Kingdom representative at the United Nations were requested to emphasise, in the interests of our trade with South Africa, which is one of our largest customers, the futility of this impracticable assignment?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, the ad hoc Committee discussing the possibility of alternative administrations is due to report to a special Session of the General Assembly later this month. Therefore it would be wrong to anticipate what that report will be and the attitude of Her Majesty's Government. I think I should say, too, that most noble Lords in this House will agree that we should not compromise with our principles on this matter for reasons of trade or any other reason.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, whether one of the principles to which he, and perhaps others in the House, might adhere is that a good way to make friends and influence people is to understand their point of view, if you want them to understand yours? Does he not think it a fact that the attitude of Her Majesty's Government, expressed in New York and in this Parliament, towards South Africa is inimical and unfriendly, and that perhaps the best way to encourage a point of view widely held in this country would be to recognise that South Africa is at present moving, however slowly, along an agreeable line? If he thinks this a good principle, would he suggest to any Minister who makes a speech in New York or in Parliament that he should not go out of his way to assault, attack and denigrate this best friend of Britain, but, on the other hand—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Speech!
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: —should recognise that there is much that is good and friendly in South Africa?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I would point out in the first place that the view expressed by Her Majesty's Government's representative in New York, the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, is a view which is unanimously shared by the General Assembly. Indeed, most delegates at the United Nations went much further than Lord Caradon in their criticism of the South African Government. In regard

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to the matter of understanding other people's points of view, the view of Her Majesty's Government that South Africa has forfeited the right to administer the mandate is based on South Africa's own statements and actions; namely, the disavowal of obligations under the mandate, and in particular the refusal of the South African Government to accept the principle of international accountability.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that my noble friend Lord Caradon has twice said in New York that there is no way of enforcing a change of administration in South West Africa except by a general blockade, or possibly even a war? In view of that fact, is it consistent for him to hold out hopes that a change can be made?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, that is a very free rendering of Lord Caradon's remarks at the United Nations. However, I would say, as I have said before, that the ad hoc Committee are considering these matters—and Her Majesty's Government agree that any alternative administration is going to be extremely difficult to find and to formulate—and I suggest that we should await the report of the ad hoc Committee to the United Nations.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, could the noble Lord clarify this point? Since the Government have stated that the supply of arms to South Africa, which could bring much money to this country, is to be sacrificed to our idealism and other principles regarding the United Nations, how does this square with the supply of arms to countries such as Saudi Arabia which are in the firing line area at the moment, with our troops and civilians involved?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, we should all agree that that is well wide of the original Question. If the noble Lord will put down a Question on the arms trade, I, of all people, shall be pleased to answer it.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I think a question from this side of the House might be in order. While recognising all the difficulties of applying the decisions which the United Nations has reached may I ask my noble friend this question? In view of the fact that not
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only the Parties in this country but nearly all the world take one view upon the issue of apartheid, may I have an assurance from Her Majesty's Government that they will persist in every possible measure to end this system in South Africa, which is a betrayal of all the principles of belonging to the human family?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I should like to say that the interventions of my noble friend on these subjects are always constructive. I should also like to say, as I pointed out before, that the view which has been expressed by my noble friend Lord Caradon in the United Nations is one which is unanimously shared by the General Assembly of the United Nations, and supported by Her Majesty's Government.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have talked about principles to which we are all agreed. I do not know of any principles to which we are all agreed. But I would ask them whether to insist on the full enactment of unyielding principles has not been shown by history to be the one way to lead in the end to religious wars, which, of all wars, are the bitterest and cruellest?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I must protest that I did not suggest there were any principles to which we all subscribed. What I suggested was that I think we all agree that we should not wish to compromise our principles for reasons of trade; and I stick by that remark. So far as the noble Lord's comment is concerned, I agree with him that bigotry can lead to wars and to conflicts. But this is not a question of bigotry; this is a question of standing by a principle which we believe to be of fundamental importance.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, may I ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have ever known a bigot who thought he was a bigot?
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, may I ask Her Majesty's Government whether they would agree, as I imagine they would, that in answering a question like this the major consideration must be: What is the best thing for the welfare of the people of South West Africa? May I also ask this supplementary question,

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in view of the answer given? It may be that the Assembly in New York is unanimous, but surely Her Majesty's Government, before being anxious to go in with the majority, would consider whether that unanimity was based upon racial prejudice or, perhaps, political prejudice, with a complete ignorance of what is best for the welfare of South West Africa.
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, of course the welfare and what is best for the people of South West Africa must be at the front of our minds in deciding this agonising problem. But although Her Majesty's Government have said that the legal position, as we see it, is that South Africa has forfeited the right to administer the mandate, this does not impose upon us the obligation to suggest or formulate alternative methods. This is being done by an ad hoc Committee of which we are not a member. We did not become a member of it because we considered its terms of reference too restrictive. I think, therefore, that we should await the report of that Committee to the United Nations.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, can the noble Lord explain what he means by "the legal position"?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I said earlier that we believed that South Africa had forfeited the right to administer this mandate. We believe that the right has been legally forfeited by the actions and statements of the South African Government.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: Why "legally"?
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, when the Committee has reported, will the noble Lord be able to say whether Her Majesty's Government still believe that an alternative to the administration of South Africa is a possibility?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, the noble Lord will be perfectly aware that I cannot answer a question based upon that sort of hypothesis. Until the Committee has reported it would be quite wrong to anticipate its report or the Government's attitude towards it.

WEST IRIAN: INDONESIAN ATTACKS INQUIRY
2.46 p.m.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when a representative of the United Nations Secretary-General last visited West Irian under Article XVI of the West Irian Agreement; whether any investigation has been carried out by such a representative, or by any one else in the United Nations Secretariat, of the allegation by West Irian Congressman Silas Papare that the Indonesian Air Force has attacked West Irian tribal villages killing 1,000 villagers; and whether, if no investigation has taken place, then Her Majesty's Government, as a Permanent Member of the Security Council, will use their influence to ensure that such an investigation is carried out by an official of the United Nations Secretariat without delay.]
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, Mr. Rolz-Bennett, an Under-Secretary in the United Nations Secretariat, visited West Irian in 1964. There has been no subsequent visit by a representative of the Secretary-General under the provisions of Article XVI of the West Irian Agreement. While I am not aware of any investigation carried out by any official in the United Nations Secretariat specifically into the allegation by Congressman Papare, I understand that since Indonesia's resumption of participation in the United Nations, consultations between the Secretary-General and the Indonesian Government about West Irian have been renewed and are still continuing. Her Majesty's Government have complete confidence in the Secretary-General's awareness of his obligations with respect to the Agreement of 1962.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, is it not perfectly scandalous that for three years no representative of the United Nations Secretariat has gone to see the position of these most unfortunate people who are undoubtedly being oppressed by the Indonesians? Is the noble Lord aware that

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the Indonesian Foreign Secretary, Mr. Malik, has admitted that tribesmen have been killed by Indonesian forces? The only thing he has denied is that as many as 1,000 have been killed. When are Her Majesty's Government going to do their duty, as a Permanent Member of the Security Council, to see that an official goes to Indonesia and finds out what is happening to these poor people in West Irian?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, of course I can understand the noble Lord's deep concern about these matters. But the main reason why there has been such a long period without a visit of any representative of the Secretary-General is that, as the noble Lord will know, Indonesia withdrew for some time from participation in the United Nations, and this created insuperable difficulties. But I am glad to say that the new Administration under General Suharto has already given evidence of a desire to meet Indonesia's international obligations, and I see no reason to doubt the new Government's willingness to co-operate with the Secretary-General in implementing the Agreement. So far as Her Majesty's Government's position is concerned, we are, of course, members of the Security Council. The Secretary-General has full competence to bring a matter of this sort to the notice of the Security Council, where we shall, if this is done, play a full part.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, is this good enough when the British Government, with other Governments, are the employers of the Secretary-General? Should they not initiate action; not just wait for the Secretary-General to report? In view of the allegation that 1.000 villagers have been killed by Indonesian forces, is it not quite time that someone went out very quickly, whether invited or not?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I cannot accept that this is a matter in which Her Majesty's Government should take an initiative. It is entirely for the Secretary-General to determine what reports he needs on the situation in West Irian.
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The main parties to this Agreement, as the noble Lord will know, are the Government of Indonesia and the Government of the Netherlands, and the Secretary-General has, as I say, full competence to bring any threat to international peace or security to the attention of the Security Council. I really must insist that this is not a matter in which I should prejudge the result of any action or any investigation the Secretary-General may undertake.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether the United Nations have formally renounced any intention of ever holding a referendum in West Irian?
LORD CHALFONT: No, my Lords; certainly no such renunciation has been made. As the noble Earl will know, we have until 1969 to see a plebiscite in West Irian, and no such renunciation has been made or, so far as I know, is contemplated.
LORD GRIMSTON OF WESTBURY: My Lords, is this not another example of how very selective the United Nations are about where they make complaints, and also that the occasions on which they make complaints are governed almost entirely by political considerations?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, we all know how easy it is to criticise the United Nations. I think I should be failing in my duty if I did not point out that the policy of Her Majesty's Government, while recognising any weaknesses there are in the United Nations Organisation and its methods, is to support it with all the strength at our command.

GOVERNMENT STATEMENTS
THE MINISTER WITHOUT FORTFOLIO (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, at a convenient moment after half past three, my noble friend Lord Winterbottom will be making a Statement on Development Areas Regional Employment Premium, and I shall be making a Statement on Bristol Siddeley Engines Limited.

LAND USE IN SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS AND RURAL AREAS
2.52 p.m.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL THE DUKE OF ATHOLL rose to draw attention to the problems of land use in the Highlands and the rural areas of Scotland; and to move for Papers. The noble Duke said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I put this Motion down in very wide terms because I thought it would be useful if we had a debate at this time on rural Scotland; and, although I see that the list of speakers is headed, "Debate on the Highlands", in fact my Motion covers not only the Highlands but also the Borders and Galloway. I am delighted to see that my noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood is to speak on behalf of the Borders, and that my noble friend Lord Sinclair is to make his maiden speech extolling the virtues of Galloway—a speech to which we all look forward.
Since we last debated Scotland there have been several developments. The first that I must list is the start of the operations of the Highland Development Board; the second is the publication of the report of the Cairngorm Technical Group; and the third is the publication of the Countryside (Scotland) Bill, which appeared just before Easter. Other factors which have affected the rural areas of Scotland possibly more than any other part of the country have been the imposition of S.E.T., the disastrous slump last year in the price of store lambs and store cattle, and the removal of investment allowances for forestry and hotels. And while I am mentioning forestry, another factor has been the lack of buoyancy in timber prices. I will deal with all these points in more detail later, but first I should like to make a few general remarks.
These factors have all had, to put it mildly, an unfortunate effect on rural Scotland, as they have hit particularly hard at the three major industries on which we depend for so much of our income—agriculture, forestry and the tourist trade. Before I go any further, perhaps I ought to try to define exactly how big rural Scotland is, what its area is, and what extent of the land mass of Great Britain it covers. The whole of Scotland has an area of 30,405 square
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miles, and of this I suppose it is fair to count four-fifths of it as still being fairly rural. So we are talking about an area of about 25,000 square miles. The total area of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland, is 94,207 square miles, so rural Scotland covers over a quarter of the total area of the whole of the United Kingdom. I hope this will convince noble Lords from England and Wales, and those from Northern Ireland who are still here, that it is quite a sizable area, and that although we may not have the richest or most valuable land in the country, it is sufficiently large that we ought to make sure that we use it in the best way possible.
Of this land, at the moment about 1,780 square miles are planted with trees. Of this area, approximately two-thirds are Forestry Commission plantation and one-third private owners. In addition, the Forestry Commission has about another 300 square miles which it proposes planting in the near future. This will give a total area under timber of just under 2,100 square miles, or about 8 per cent. of rural Scotland. Deer forests cover 4,700 square miles, as near as I can ascertain, which is about 19 per cent. of rural Scotland; and the remaining 73 per cent. is covered by a mixture of grouse moors, hill-sheep farming and more intensive lowland farming, as well as, obviously, a small area which is covered by roads, buildings and things like that, with which I will not concern myself. As can be seen, at the moment by far and away the greatest part of Scotland is used for farming of one sort or another, and I think it is extremely important that we make sure that this land is being used in the best and most efficient way possible. Therefore, I shall try to suggest ways in which we might use this land more efficiently, and how we can encourage this to come about.
The problem of land use in the Highlands and Borders of Scotland has been bedevilled for many pears by the problem of depopulation. We have regarded it as a sin to allow depopulation to continue, so efforts have been made from time to time artificially to encourage people to stay in areas which are unattractive economically. This has caused the perpetuation of the crofting system, the encouragement of small farms outside the crofting counties, and in some cases rather

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uneconomic planting by the Forestry Commission which they freely and rightly admit that no private individual would be able to afford to carry out, but which they do for largely social reasons. I therefore think that we must make up our minds whether our land use in Scotland is to be dedicated entirely to being economically the most efficient, whether we are to try to give maximum employment, or whether we can find some compromise between these two extremes which might be rather better.
Before going any further, I think I should point out that if one goes for the maximum economic use of the land one may depopulate certain areas to such an extent that there would be no future in anyone providing public services at all, such things as posts, roads or anything like that, which is the only way in which we can make these areas attractive for people to live in. Therefore, while perhaps parts of the Scottish mainland and the Islands could be put to better use, we must always bear in mind that we cannot make the use so efficient that we leave absolutely no people there at all to enjoy the land.
For this reason, I think that the Highland Development Board are quite right to concentrate on growth areas. It is the way they go about it that rather worries me and, I know, worries many of my noble friends. They seem to have been remarkably bad in their publicity. For instance, an article which appeared in The Times, and which one has every reason for thinking was inspired by the Highland Development Board, said—and I am quoting from The Times of Saturday February 25:
"Here again there is a question of local status. The farming group and their womenfolk in particular are not prepared to welcome an influx of salary-earning executives who might usurp their positions of authority on local councils and committees."
Does that sort of article really do any good? Do we think that people in the Highlands are likely to welcome the work of the Development Board if the Development Board inspire statements such as that? In any case, what truth is there behind this particular statement? I think it is highly unlikely. Most people, in my opinion, are only too pleased to get off a committee if they can find someone to take their place on it, and particularly so in the case of voluntary
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committees which give one no reward at all other than the feeling that one is doing good. I should have thought it would be much better if the Highland Development Board concentrated on their job and left this sort of publicity to others.
My Lords, having said that I should like to say once again that I think they are right to concentrate on growth areas. I am sure it is essential for the Highlands of Scotland that there should be these growth areas, and I am sure that when we look at the problem of depopulation in the Highlands of Scotland we ought to look at it as a whole and not by individual parishes. Every other country with the same sort of topography as Scotland has suffered from the people tending to congregate more and more in the towns and villages and to leave the countryside free to Nature. This is not only happening in Scotland; it is a trend that, in my opinion, we cannot reverse.
I should now like to say a little more about the Highlands in a more general way. Other noble Lords are going to talk about other areas and so I feel it is only right that I should talk about the area I happen to know best. Unless minerals are found in large quantities in the Highlands, I think we can presume that the main use for the Highlands in future is going to be for agriculture, forestry and recreation. Agriculture is likely to be a diminishing industry as regards employment. The Cairngorm Report makes this perfectly clear. It is a trend which in agriculture is universal throughout the country. It is in my opinion a healthy trend. It shows that agriculture is getting more and more efficient; I am sure this is true. So I think we cannot look for increased employment in farming. But, in addition, the farmers in this area have had a hard time over the last two or three years. The price of store sheep has gone back to approximately what it was in 1948. It will not surprise noble Lords to know that labour costs have not gone back to the same extent, and neither has any other cost for that matter.
This means that it has been very difficult for any hill sheep farmer—and the majority of farmers in these parts are hill sheep farmers—to make any money at all. They really have had a very hard

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time. I should like to suggest that, rather than continuing to battle away with hill sheep on the West Coast and in such places, it might be better to encourage the farmers to give up part of their land—or even all of it where it is very small—and to use the hills for stalking deer and the low grounds for planting trees. I think this might easily be a more economic use of the land. It is hard to prove this in figures, but in places where it has been tried I think it has given more employment and the financial return will in the long run probably be better. The difficulty about showing this in figures is that it is very hard to take into account the amount of money already invested in agriculture in those areas in stock, in buildings and in the know-how of the people concerned. But I think this might be worth considering.
From the land use angle, the Government, although probably unintentionally, are encouraging this by deflating the price of store lambs and cast ewes. They did this by restricting the credit to a great extent last year and at the same time allowing cheap imports. They may, in these ways, force many farmers out of business. That will save the Government a lot in subsidies, but if they seriously believe in this policy—and I think it is a tenable policy—it is only right that they should say so, so that people can make plans and arrangements and get out of farming voluntarily if they can. The Government have shown signs that this is their attitude by the Agriculture Bill which contains some excellent provisions for the amalgamation of farms. I hope that they will continue to pursue this policy to a certain extent, although it obviously can be overdone.
My Lords, perhaps I may quote from paragraph 3.8 of the Cairngorm Report on this matter:
"It is not known to what extent the occupiers are obliged to carry on working single-handed and to what extent they prefer to do so in spite of a poor return, but an inference can be drawn from general depopulation of much of the Area that the farming livelihood does not offer enough, especially to the young."
If the Cairngorm Working Party are right in thinking this, I believe it to be a key point. I think this is a natural process and one which is going to come about any way. But I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, to try to make it as easy as possible for people to transfer
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from farming in these rather difficult areas to other activities.
There has always been a conflict between agriculture and deer when the farms and the stalking have not been in the same occupancy. This is due to the fact that there is an acute shortage of wintering ground for any animal in the Highlands of Scotland. In post-war years this has been worsened by the Forestry Commission who have fenced in enormous areas of ground for planting without thought for the poor animals whose wintering ground this previously had been. These deer—for they are largely deer, I freely admit—have had to be killed. This leaves a vacuum on the higher ground where these animals used to summer. I should have thought that this must be an appalling waste of land.
I would suggest that the Forestry Commission ought not to do this in future, but should plant smaller areas at a time and should let the deer into those of their plantations which have already reached, say, about the third thinning stage. Admittedly, the deer will do a little damage but in most cases it will be small and in overall land use it will show large dividends. I should like to say that I think the Forestry Commission are moving in this direction. They have become much less disenamoured of deer in the last few years, and I should like to give them a particular pat on the back for the way they treat their roe deer. I think they are a long way ahead of any private individual in this. Most private landowners who have roe deer on their land could learn a great deal if they were to study the methods the Forestry Commission have for controlling them.
Reverting to the conflict between agriculture and deer, I feel that the evidence shows that in many cases not only would more forestry and possibly more deer on the moderate and bad hill farms be better for land use, but it would give greater total employment. Forestry employs about one person per 120 acres. Hill sheep farming possibly employs one person per 800 ewes. It used to be 500 ewes, but it is now between 800 and 1,000 on an average. It would also have the advantage of saving the Treasury a large amount of subsidy, so they ought to be quite keen on this change of land use.
My Lords, I should now like to turn to forestry. The Government have just announced their intention of introducing legislation on compensation to tenant farmers whose farms are compulsorily acquired. I think this legislation is long overdue. The amount of money that tenant farmers have received for their farms when taken over for housing or when roads have been put through them has, in my opinion, so far been lamentably small; but I am rather worried that the Government propose extending it to apply where landlords take back land for forestry. Although nearly all agricultural leases contain a clause to the effect that the land can be repossessed for other purposes such as forestry, this is very seldom done. Where it is, it is usually done by agreement between tenant and landlord, and I think the Government proposal may have the effect of making tenants very reluctant to come to an agreement with their landlords because they may feel that if they hold out they might be able to get this extra compensation. From a forestry point of view I think that would be a pity. This is a minor point, but it is one more small irritation in the life of the forester.
I think it is universally agreed that far more land in Scotland could be planted, some without even affecting the agricultural and stalking interests to any great extent, provided that there was consultation and co-operation between the parties concerned. There is more likely to he this degree of tolerance where all three are in the same occupation. Therefore I feel that the maximum use of land is likely to be achieved by private forestry rather than by the Forestry Commission, although I am bound to admit that recently the Commission have been much more reasonable, realising that they cannot just look on forestry in isolation. None the less, I think that to get a real advantage from forestry private individuals must be given encouragement and be convinced that both political Parties want more home timber. This is absolutely vital. I do not think the Government have done that. Planting trees costs a great deal of money. Admittedly, one receives a planting grant if one's woodlands are dedicated or approved, but in very few cases does this grant start to cover the actual cost, and in many cases it covers only about one-third or one-
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quarter of the cost. Planting trees is a very long-term investment.
A recent survey of landowners with suitable planting ground revealed that when asked why they had not planted it the majority replied that they did not have enough faith in the future of forestry. I think this a very sad thing. The Government must give them this faith in the future of forestry. The Government have done the opposite so far, although they have done only one disastrous thing. They dithered so much about the position of forestry in relation to the capital gains tax that one got the impression that they were most reluctant to recognise that forestry had to be put in a special position. The Government dithered over the position of forestry in relation to the selective employment tax and it was only after a lot of pressure that they agreed to premiums being refunded as in the case of agricultural workers.
The one disastrous thing which the Government have done is to remove the investment allowances and not allow forestry the benefit of investment grants. Forestry and the hotel industry, so far as I can make out, share this doubtful distinction, and the sooner this is rectified the better. That would be one thing which would make people realise that the Government believe in private forestry and do not regard it as something which is a quite good thing to do, but not really to be encouraged, because it would be much better if the Forestry Commission did it all.
The snag about forestry, and the reason why confidence has partly been lost, is that the price of the final product has decreased by between 7·9 per cent. for felled timber and 10·3 per cent. for standing timber in the last six years; and during the same six years wages have risen by 34·9 per cent. and retail prices, according to the Retail Price Index, by 25·4 per cent. This must mean that forestry is in a much less well placed and happy position than it was six years ago, even if the situation about investment grants had not altered, which is why I think the decision is so strange. To do this to an industry when the price of the final product has actually decreased in the last six years seems to me like hitting a man who is already down.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, thinks that my noble friend Lord Dundee and I are unique in going on about this particular point, but may I read what the Scottish Woodland Owners Association Limited says in its Annual Report? This body was set up by the Government and, in its initial stages, partly financed by the Government, and at any rate has the blessing of the Government. On page 7 of the Report it states:
"In this context it seems inexplicable that Government should rule that forestry is not eligible for the Machinery and Plant Investment Grants under the Industrial Development Act 1966. In no other industry is there such a strong case for reducing the high incidence of manual labour in the various operations leading up to the supply of material for manufacturing enterprises which arc eligible for these Investment Grants."
I will quote two examples to show the way that mechanisation can reduce costs in forestry. The Scottish Woodland Owners Association Limited is buying a certain amount of machinery and making it available to its members on what are known as easy terms. One machine and a squad of three men increased an output of 30 tons to 35 tons a week, which was achieved with the use of a horse, to 67 tons per week over the 44 weeks during which the machine was used; and this included the initial period when the users were familiarising themselves with the machine. So I think that if one took the output for the next year it would be still higher. Therefore, the amount produced with the same number of men was doubled.
The other example I should like to give is the ridiculous situation created by the lost of investment allowances by a forester who wished to construct some roads. He had a large amount of work in prospect and he considered buying a suitable machine and operating it, but investment grants were not available. Nor were they available to his usual forest contractor. So he had to get the job done by a public works contractor, who enjoyed the benefit of investment grants and those extra advantages available to a firm operating within a development area. This, to me, seems absolute madness and an entirely unjust distinction between forestry and every other form of manufacturing industry.
With suitable hesitation, I now turn to the last traditional use of land in Scotland, the grouse moors. These have been subjected to some ridicule, though I do not know why, because it requires a great deal of skill and a certain amount of toughness to shoot grouse. It is a healthy sport, far more so than bathing from the Scilly Isles at the moment. It requires much discipline—usually considered a good characteristic—from those taking part, both beaters and guns. It also has the great advantage that it hardly conflicts with any of the other traditional land uses. About the only way in which it does is that on the whole the sheep farmer likes to burn heather in very large tracts, while the grouse keeper does so in nice small pieces, but this is a minor disagreement and they can usually come to some arrangement without either side feeling that they are being hard done by. But in a poor area its potentialities cannot be ignored, for it generates a lot of money and a lot of employment.
I think that I cannot do better than quote from the Report of the Cairngorm Working Party, who in paragraph 336 say:
"If the moors were thrown open to the public and little or no management undertaken, there would be small total overheads but also very few birds. The unmanaged moor would put little money into local pockets and in many cases would revert to birch forest. The land would be virtually lying idle producing very little and providing poor sport."
I think that we have become rather ashamed of what is known as the "grouse moor image"—unnecessarily so, because in the opinion of this Technical Group studying the Cairngorms that is the best way of using this sort of land, and I think that this should be recognised.
I should now like to turn to the other recreational uses of the land. Since the war pressure from other sources has increased enormously. Ski-ing, pony trekking and canoeing are all post-war developments. Hiking, rock climbing, water ski-ing and sailing have increased their number of devotees by a large percentage. All this has raised problems. It is to try to solve some of these problems that the Government have introduced the Countryside Bill. I feel that its main features and the ideas behind the Bill will have the support of virtually every noble Lord in this House. I hope

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so, anyway. I would recommend anyone who wants to go into the country to read Schedule 2 to the Bill, which seems to me an extremely good countryside code, although I should like to add at the end of it that no one should play transistor radios or gramophones. I am rather surprised to see that this has been omitted and perhaps in Committee stage this prohibition might be added, because I do not think that other people appreciate the noise of the Beatles coming out of a radio in the wilds of Scotland. We shall no doubt have an opportunity of discussing this Bill in greater detail in future, so I will not dwell on it, except to make one or two general observations.
I am not satisfied that the compensation provisions are adequate. The danger of fire on this sort of ground is very considerable. The cost of insuring against fire is almost prohibitive and, so far as I understand it, while people will get some compensation from giving an access agreement initially they will have no right at law to get any more if they suffer damage from fire. I think that where access agreements are made the Countryside Commission ought to set up a fund from which people can be compensated if they suffer a large amount of fire damage.
The second point I would make about the Bill is that the powers of the Commission to make by-laws and appoint wardens seem to me to be insufficient. I also think that they have not been given enough teeth to stand up to the local authorities, the Highland Development Board, the Forestry Commission and even big business. It is too much of an advisory organisation, with not enough power to say what it wants where it comes up against these other Government and semi-Government bodies. A "Cow Green" could occur in Scotland, and so far as I can make out from this Bill the Countryside Commission would be powerless to stop it, however much they felt it would be a disaster. I think that we ought to give the Commission sufficient power to stop undesirable developments like Cow Green in Scotland.
I would say one further thing about access. I am disappointed that the Litter Act has not been extended to include private ground. It is one of the sad things about this country that as a nation we seem quite incapable of not
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recording our trail with a filthy mess, and it is not pleasant for other people who have to use the land to find bottles, cigarette packets, greaseproof paper and everything else strewn all over the countryside. I have a popular hiking route going through my estate, and when one goes along it in October there is hardly a stretch of five yards where one does not find a sweet paper, cigarette carton or something like that thrown down and left there. I should have thought that it was a simple matter to extend this Act to include private ground. Probably it would not do much good. People do not seem to obey the law to that extent, but it would give some form of redress if one actually succeeded in catching people throwing down paper.
Finally, I would say a few words about the use of water, both rivers and lochs. There are many pieces of water in Scotland which could provide grand trout fishing if they had a little time and money spent on them and were then preserved from the so-called sportsmen who throw everything into them bar the kitchen sink. Angling clubs all over Scotland would be prepared to do this, if their members could be sure of benefiting. This would be an easy and cheap way of improving Scotland's natural resources, it the appropriate section in the Hunter Committee's Report were brought forward for legislation. Surely the Government could do this. This, coupled with the drift net ban, are the two parts of the Hunter Report that need implementing as soon as possible, and then the Government could shilly-shally for as long as they liked over the other recommendations.
Incidentally, having set up a Committee like the Hunter Committee, I cannot understand why, when they make a full and detailed Report, the Government then have to get reactions from all the bodies who have given evidence to the Committee on what they think about the Report. There are bound to be some people who disagree with some sections of the Report. It is the same with every Report. The Hunter Committee were reasonably expert and they spent a great deal of time looking into this matter. I cannot believe that the Secretary of State is likely to arrive at better answers than they did, however long he may think about them, because he simply has not the time to

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study them to the same extent. I should have thought that once a Committee of this sort had reported it might be accepted that theirs were the best recommendations.
I would also hope that in the new Countryside Bill the Commission would have power to ban the use of speed boats, and therefore of water ski-ing, on certain lochs. I think that this is a problem which is going to get more difficult. I am sure that people appreciate peace and quiet and that there must be some pieces of water left without speed boats racketing over them every fine day in the summer. The problem of canoeing is possibly more difficult. I must admit that I am not a canoeist and do not know much about it, but I believe that the best water for canoeing tends also to be the best water for fishing, and there could be a conflict. I think some arrangement would have to be arrived at whereby people could canoe only in the middle of the day when the sun was at its height, which is the least favourable time for fishermen. I think this is a point which would need consideration in future.
I am afraid that I have been far too general in my remarks, but I am sure that other noble Lords with specialist knowledge will elaborate on many points. I know that at least three noble Lords wish to speak about the Highland Development Board, and I am sure that what they have to say will be extremely interesting. Two or three noble Lords are to speak about the Borders and Galloway.
I have tried to set out the whole scene, as I feel that this is really the duty of the mover of a Motion of this kind which covers a large amount of ground. I am sure that in the Highlands, anyway, the place of agriculture will diminish; I think this is an inescapable fact. Possibly the amount of food produced will not diminish, but the amount of employment given by agriculture will, I am sure, go down and down. At the same time, I am sure that the employment given by forestry and recreation will increase. I hope that light industry will be attracted to the Highlands, especially to the areas where there is a great deal of tourist potential. It is essential that we should get a good employment balance between male and female, and on the whole the tourist industry demands far more female
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employment than male. To achieve this balance, I think it is essential that industry should be attracted to these places.
I have tried to suggest a few ways in which I think the Government might help. I feel sure that, while they have good intentions, they are rather inclined to forget about the Highlands and the ways in which the more general laws hit this particular area. I am slightly nervous as to what their intentions are. Finally, I want to say to the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, that if he hears little praise for the Government this afternoon it is not necessarily because they are off course—although I do not think Sir Francis Chichester would be particularly proud of their course—but because it is much easier to criticise than it is to praise. I beg to move for Papers.
3.32 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCOTLAND (LORD HUGHES): My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if I follow the example which was found acceptable on a previous occasion and confine my remarks at this stage to a general policy statement, and later on, if the House so wishes, I will reply to the points which have been raised in the debate.
I should like to thank the noble Duke for the way in which he has introduced this debate, and to say that I am in complete agreement with the way in which he has done so, even though I disagree with many of the things that he has said. To introduce the subject in the comprehensive way in which he has done sets the best possible pattern for the debate, leaving it to other speakers in due course to fill in the details of particular subjects. But inevitably, covering so wide a review, and raising so many points, if I were to attempt to reply to all the points the noble Duke has raised I should have a speech which was as long as his own in the beginning, without necessarily saying any of the things which I particularly want to say. If, therefore, I appear to be replying to some of the points which the noble Duke has raised, it will be because they fall in naturally with the remarks that I wish to make: it does not mean that I shall not be dealing in due course with the rest of them.
Land, and the use of land, are subjects which evoke strong emotions and equally

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strong expressions of view in most of us. And rightly so. For if the land is our basic resource, it is an asset with extremely limited possibilities of extension and enlargement, and the use or misuse of it can be seen and understood by all. And, not unexpectedly, views about what is good or bad land use are legion. As a practical working definition of good land use, however, I think there is a good deal to be said for that adopted by the Advisory Panel on the Highlands and Islands, in their Report on Land Use; namely:
"the most effective and economic use of the land having regard to the agricultural, industrial and social possibilities and needs of the area in question".
There is, of course, a good deal of control over changes and development of land use. Planning authorities have wide statutory powers to ensure that changes of land use meet certain minimum standards, and there are special statutory provisions in relation to areas of special scenic beauty. But admittedly these are negative rather than positive powers, and they tend to be concerned with localised developments of an urban or industrial character, leaving aside the large areas of rural countryside in which the main uses are agriculture, forestry, sport or simply natural conservation, and it is with these areas that we are primarily concerned this afternoon. In regard to these wide rural stretches I would make two general points. First, we must not overlook the incentive to better and more effective land use which is provided through the various grants for agricultural development and forestry. The Hill Farming Schemes, the Farm Improvement Scheme, and the new Hill Land Improvement Scheme and assistance for development of farming in upland areas, for which provision is made in the Agriculture Bill, are examples of incentives which have changed the face of many hill and upland farms, and will, I am sure, continue to play an important part in this field. Similarly, with forestry. In addition to the extensive programmes of the Forestry Commission, the dedication and other grants for private forestry have met with considerable success.
I was rather surprised at some of the remarks which the noble Duke made about the Government's attitude to fores-
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try, in which he suggested that we had been less than encouraging: and it boiled down very much to the fact that we had not given the investment grants. But, after all, it must be remembered that we have continued to apply to forestry the especially favourable taxation principles which were applied by the previous Government. These were provisions which other industries did not have. It was because of the long-term nature of forestry that it received them. I would suggest that it is quite wrong for forestry to expect to have the sort of special consideration which it has had in the beginning, and then necessarily to have added on to that everything which may have relevance, in particular, towards short-term industrial benefits which will accrue to the country from the investment grants.
So far as the Government's encouragement to forestry generally is concerned, I do not think the Government need go on the defensive. I would remind your Lordships of some of the things said by the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, about the attitude to forestry in the past. To go no further back than 1963, it was at that time that the previous Administration announced its forestry programme for the ensuing ten years, a programme which contemplated the planting of 450,000 acres between 1964 and 1973; and in the years 1964 to 1968 there was a definite programme of 141,000 acres in Scotland—an average of slightly over 28,000 acres a year. This was the position that we inherited.
One of the first steps taken at the Scottish Office was to increase this figure as much as possible immediately in Scotland; and in June, 1965, we announced that it would be possible to increase it up to 30,000 acres as an interim measure, pending a review. The review took place almost immediately, and the following year we were able to announce that from 1969 onwards the figure would be increased to 36,000 acres a year; and the whole of this increase is taking place in the Highlands, where the figures will be up from 14,000 acres to 20,000 acres a year.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but it would be interesting if he could split up these figures, between Forestry Commission and private planting.
LORD HUGHES: I can do that, but not without access to the notes which I have left at the Box. I have the figures, and I shall be pleased to quote them in due course, when I come to reply.
The second general point which I wish to make concerns the Countryside (Scotland) Bill, to which the noble Duke referred, and which we shall be considering in due course. This Bill contains a wide range of provisions designed to ensure the preservation of the beauty of the countryside and the enhancement of the facilities for public enjoyment of the countryside, and for the establishment of a new national agency for the purpose. Local planning authorities will find their hands strengthened and they will be able to take more positive roles in this aspect of land use. At the same time the position of those owning or farming land is fully recognised in the Bill. But I must not anticipate the future consideration by the House of this measure.
As regards the Highlands and Islands I have already mentioned the Land Use Report prepared by the Highland Panel in 1964. Though one may not agree with all its conclusions, that Report provides a comprehensive picture of the land in the Highlands and Islands and how it is used. And the Report does, I think, make clear the tremendous scope and need for a positive and enlightened programme of land use improvement. The Government have, of course, already decided, as part of the increased national forestry programme, to which I have already referred, that the rate of planting by the Forestry Commission and in the Highlands and Islands will be increased from something like 14,000 acres per annum to 20,000 acres per annum by 1969. This is important. Forestry and its ancillaries and their generation and effect on service industry can lead to stability at a number of centres and make them anchor points for the population.
So far the Commission have been able to obtain the land which they require in the Highlands, and I hope that those who are in a position to do so will continue to make land available for planting as required. We recognise that afforestation may seem to be in competition for scarce land with other interests, such as hill sheep rearing and sport—and I do not minimise the value of deer and grouse
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to the Highland economy, although I would not necessarily go as far as the noble Duke went in the pointings I would give to them. However, it is vital that we secure the maximum use of the land for each potential use. It is for this reason that the Forestry Commission and the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries have been engaged, with the agreement of the owners concerned, on a series of surveys of areas, mainly in the Highlands, to assess the afforestation which may be possible without detriment to agriculture. And, as experience has shown, it is quite practicable to maintain sheep stocks in an area, although a considerable proportion of the former sheep land has been planted.
Here perhaps I should emphasise that this increase in Highland, and other, forestry development is by no means intended to be exclusive to the Forestry Commission's planting. Private forestry still has an important part to play in the Highlands and Islands, and this is reflected in the continuing grants for private planting. The noble Duke has suggested that the forestry programme might be impeded by the proposals for some additional compensation to be paid to tenant farmers whose land is taken for forestry. We shall, of course, have ample opportunity to go into all this when we come to discuss the necessary legislation; so I will confine myself to saying that I think he is being unduly pessimistic.
One stumbling block in making changes to secure the most appropriate use of land is unwillingness to disturb the man who is already there. If he is entitled to some reasonable compensation our consciences may be easier. The Forestry Commission, who are as likely to be affected by this as anyone, have said they think it right in principle that tenant farmers should receive some extra compensation when they are displaced for forestry, and they do not think that this should add very significantly to their costs. I hope that private owners will come to see this in the same way. Although I do not want to anticipate our debate on this subject, I might point out now that the proposal is that the compensation should be based on rent. Payments for poorer land taken for forestry would thus be on a rather different scale from that where more productive land

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happens to be needed for housing or other development of that type.
The special problems of the Highlands and Islands, not only in regard to land use, have of course been recognised in Statute by the establishment of the Highland Development Board, with its extensive duties and powers for development. Similarly, the particular task of developing and reorganising crofting is, primarily, the responsibility of the Crofters Commission. Since the first Report of the Highland Development Board (covering the period from its establishment on November 1, 1965 to December 31, 1966) is expected to be published at about the beginning of next month, and there will no doubt be an opportunity to discuss it fully, I do not propose to deal with the Highland position in any great detail. There are, however, one or two things that I should like to say.
It has all along been recognised that the development and improvement of land use would be one of the major responsibilities and duties of the Highland Development Board. This is inevitable, in view of the largely rural character of their area, and the dependence of much of the area on the basic industries of agriculture, forestry, fishing and tourism. Without in any way anticipating the Board's first Report, I can say that the Board, in their first year or so of office have already given considerable thought to the possibilities of land development in certain areas. In the Strath of Kildonan, in Sutherland, an agriculture/forestry survey has been carried out jointly by technical officers of the Forestry Commission and the Department of Agriculture. A similar survey is in progress in the island of Mull. Such surveys are an essential preliminary to any consideration by the Board of comprehensive development, which, of course, will also take in such things as tourism. The Board are also giving consideration, along with the Crofters Commission, to possibilities of development in certain crofting areas. These are in addition to special localised rural developments which the Board have under examination.
Since these considerations may in due course lead to formal submissions to the Secretary of State by the Board, under the Highlands and Islands Development
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(Scotland) Act, 1965, and since the Board will no doubt be referring to them in more detail in their first Report, I do no more than mention them as indicating that the whole question of land use development is very much a concern of the Highland Development Board, and will continue to be so. It may be worth noting that the Board have retained the services, on a part-time basis, of Mr. George Houston, Lecturer in Agricultural Economics at Glasgow University, to advise them on agricultural and rural matters.
As regards industrial development, studies are being undertaken into the possibility of major industrial development by private interests in the Invergordon area. For their part, in these studies the Board are examining the problems that would be involved as affecting, for example, questions of housing, water supply and so on. These are, however, exploratory studies, in which the county council are also playing a part, and depend on the outcome of the industrial feasibility studies which are being undertaken by private interests, and the formulation of any specific proposals by them. Obviously, if a major development proposal does come out of these studies, there will be important policy issues to be considered by the Government.
The noble Duke made a reference to an article in The Times. Although members of Her Majesty's Government read The Times they do not write it, and therefore we cannot accept responsibility for what appears in the article. However, I will permit myself this comment on it: that at the end of the day the Highlands and Islands Board will be judged in the Highlands by the actions taken and by the results which the Board bring about, rather than by the opinions which they express, or which may be attributed to them, whether in The Times or elsewhere.
When we talk of rural land use, we tend to think of the farming, forestry or specific recreational activities on the land. I feel it is worth emphasising, however, that land use is not something that is done for its own sake and in isolation from the people. Our rural land use policy will have failed if it does not take account of the needs and possibilities of the communities it is designed to serve

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and around which the land development takes place. A good deal of thought has been given, and is being given, to the kind of communities we want to develop in the rural areas, and to the best means of establishing and maintaining healthy economic and social conditions in them. Might I mention, in particular, the excellent work carried out by Scottish Country Industries Development Trust in providing their advisory service for small industries in rural areas? The Scottish Council of Social Service, and the local councils of social service which have been developed in a number of areas have also, for their part, made a distinctive contribution to rural development in Scotland. And behind these there is the Development Commission whose great concern and help for many aspects of rural development and welfare in Scotland are deserving of our highest praise and gratitude.
My Lords, I have touched in passing on some of the points which have been made by the noble Duke in his speech opening this debate. I look forward with interest to the speeches which are to be made, and if in due course it should be your Lordships' wish I shall be happy to endeavour to reply to further points which may be made in due course and to those points of the noble Duke upon which I have not touched up to the present.

DEVELOPMENT AREAS: EMPLOYMENT PREMIUMS SCHEME
3.52 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF PUBLIC BUILDING AND WORKS (LORD WINTERBOTTOM): My Lords, with the permission of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement which my right honourable friend, the First Secretary and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, has just made in another place. I will use his own words:
"In the course of the Government's consideration of the problems of the development areas and the studies carried out by the Treasury, the D.E.A. and other Departments concerned with the system of selective employment payments, a proposal has been de-
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veloped for the payment of a regional employment premium to those categories of manufacturing establishments in development areas which already attract premia under the Selective Employment Payments Act. This proposal has been set out in a memorandum which was issued this morning on behalf of the Government by the Department of Economic Affairs and the Treasury. Copies are available in the Vote Office.
"The memorandum was also given initial consideration by the National Economic Development Council at its meeting this morning and will be considered more fully at its meeting in May. I have also arranged with the Chairmen for it to be considered by the Regional Economic Planning Councils in England and my right honourable friends the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales will make similar arrangements for consultation on it with their Economic Councils.
"I wish to make it clear that the public presentation of this proposal is an initiative to which the Government attach great importance, because of the high priority which they give to a reduction of the disparity in unemployment levels between the development areas and the rest of Britain and to the achievement of the maximum rate of economic growth consistent with the maintenance of the stability and balance of the economy both internally and externally.
"The view is frequently expressed by the C.B.I., the T.U.C. and other bodies that the opinion of informed and interested parties should be sought and publicly discussed while policy is still in a formative stage. The Government has much sympathy with this view and it is in this spirit that it puts forward this proposal for full consultation and public discussion. Following this consultation and discussion the Government will decide whether or not to submit a proposal for legislation to Parliament."
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord for repeating this Statement by the First Secretary in another place. I can say immediately that of course we welcome the idea of instituting discussions with those concerned

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before inflicting another crazy tax proposal upon this country, as was done last year with S.E.T. We also, of course, welcome the intention of giving help, in so far as it is possible, to the development areas and areas of high unemployment. But do these particular proposals not imply a further grave distortion of the economy? Is it wise to give further subsidies to manufacturing industries only in areas of this kind, where they are basically uncompetitive, while doing nothing whatever to relieve the burden that has been placed upon the service industries, and particularly the tourist industry, which has been dealt blow after blow by this Government, with serious damage in the areas it is now the Government's intention to try to help, such as Wales, Scotland and the South West? At first glance it would appear that instead of reducing the anomalies of S.E.T. they are now to be extended. Has the Government no alternative proposals for helping the development areas which are not open to these grave objections?
LORD WADE: My Lords, I also should like to thank the noble Lord for repeating the Statement. While I welcome any recognition by Her Majesty's Government of the serious disparity in the level of employment between development areas and the rest of the country, does not the publication of this proposal, as I think the noble Lord has said, imply the continuation of S.E.T., which in my view ought to be scrapped? Is the noble Lord aware that some areas, such as parts of Scotland and Wales and the West Country, are very largely dependent on tourism, and this proposal will accentuate not only the differentiation but also the anomalies which arise from S.E.T.? Surely this proposal is not nearly radical enough to deal with this whole problem of the relationship between taxation and regional development.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, referred to crazy proposals. It seems from the figures that we have seen recently of our balance of payments that if our policies are crazy they are at least successful. There is a problem we have to face, and that is that there is constantly, even under the measures of the present Administration, a much higher rate, in fact a double rate, of unemployment in the manufacturing industries in the de-
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velopment areas, and these proposals, which this House I am certain will have an opportunity to debate, are designed to combat this continuing disadvantage of the development areas. In spite of its imperfections, I should have thought the noble Lord, Lord Wade, and the Liberal Party as a whole, with their strong emphasis on regionalism, would welcome the great help which this measure will give to the development areas which in the main lie around the fringes of the country, and that is why we recommend them.
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, is the noble Lord seriously suggesting that the improvement in our balance of payments is due to the imposition of S.E.T.? If that is his view he is the only person in this House who holds it. Secondly, of course we recognise that there is the necessity for helping the development areas. All we are asking is whether extension of the anomalies of S.E.T. is the right way to do it.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I never suggested that all our problems can be solved by any one facet of our policy, but S.E.T. is one facet of a successful policy. There may be other modifications of that tax to meet the anomalies, but that is not the subject we are discussing.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether it would not be more sensible to reduce taxation rather than increase subsidies?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, in point of fact what we are talking about is increased repayments. That is the subject under discussion—not increased taxation.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, the noble Lord seems to be putting it forward as a cure for unemployment. Would he not think again? Can it be right to subsidise wages, even in development areas, when we ought to be encouraging manufacturers to use less labour and greater efficiency in each job? This may well come back on the heads of everybody by subsidising labour at a time when we should not do it. I hope the noble Lord will take seriously these criticisms of S.E.T. It is a crazy, wasteful-of-manpower and everything

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else, tax system. Even the Ministry of Labour are paying over £1 million in S.E.T., and they are administering the repayment programme.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, is it not a fact that the people employed in manufacturing industry in this country represent only about two-fifths of the whole employment of the country? Therefore, how can you reduce the disparity between the development areas and others if you confine this refund purely to manufacturing industry? You must extend it to service industries.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: Unfortunately, however much one admires the agriculture industry, the growth in the wealth of society as a whole has arisen from the increased output of manufacturing industry, and it is necessary to use our manufacturing resources to the maximum extent. If we have unused resources in the development areas, the only way in which we can combat the magnetic draw of the South and Midlands is to adopt some form of subsidy to manufacturing industry in the peripheral areas. That is one way of combating the drift to the South.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, if the noble Lord would attract service industries to the North and away from the South he would achieve exactly the same object.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, will my noble friend please bear in mind that if he takes anything away from industry the Opposition say that he is wrong, and if he proposes to give something to industry, equally they say he is wrong. So if he follows his own inclinations probably he will be right.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend.

LAND USE IN SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS AND RURAL AREAS
4.2 p.m.
Debate resumed.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, perhaps we might now return to the debate which the noble Duke has opened. I should like to draw attention to the fact that his Motion refers to:
"land use in the Highlands and the rural areas of Scotland,"
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and this gives me an excuse, which I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, will appreciate, to talk about the Borders, since this, like many other parts of Scotland is a rural area, though it does not happen to be in the Highlands. However, I hope he will not object to my taking part in this debate and dealing with this matter. My noble friend Lord Drumalbyn is going to speak later. Perhaps I might draw the noble Lord's attention, during the course of my not too long remarks, to the Border area which is one, I think he will agree, of equal importance to the Highland area.
Curiously enough, we in the Border are suffering from some of the disadvantages of the Highland area. We have a depopulation rate which is greater than that of the Highlands. I was looking at extracts from the Border Development Plan, from the Government White Paper, and I noticed that in the Border areas, the Eastern and Western regions, our rate of depopulation rises to 10·1 per cent., whereas in the Highland Development counties it is only 5·3 per cent., and the total for Scotland is 4·9 per cent. So depopulation is a considerable problem in the Border area.
We in that area also have a shortage of labour in some of our more important industries, in particular hosiery and tweed making. We are greatly in need of more female labour. This makes for the problem that, if we are going to get more female labour, we also need more male-employing industry in this area. I do not forget, too, that, in spite of the fact that hosiery and the tweed industry employ a great number of people in the Border area, agricultural development in the agriculture and forestry industries still employs many more people than any other single industry in that area. Therefore one has to look at agriculture and forestry together as an extremely important part of the development of the area.
The noble Lord opposite is such a splendid replier on all types and kinds of questions put to him on the subject of Scotland, that I should like here to throw him a little bouquet, and to say that certainly the sheep-rearing industry, which as your Lordships may know I represent, are much more pleased over the Price Review arrangements this year than we have been for a long time. We are to get a considerable amount of help

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for an industry which in the last two or three years has been going so rapidly downhill as to cause a number of people either to give up or find themselves in the bankruptcy court. We are grateful that this position has been recognised, and that the sheep industry is to receive a considerable amount of help. Some of my friends who are arable farmers complain bitterly about this. They say that we have been favourably dealt with, and they unfavourably dealt with. I leave that criticism for the noble Lord to answer. Certainly the hill men have had a good chance in this Review.
Clearly, the need for all agricultural production is to have an assured market. What I always feel about the White Papers, about the discussions that we have on agriculture, about the National Plans that are put before us by the Government, is that they do not realise that the new methods of production in agriculture—the new machinery, the new fertilisers and the new feedingstuffs—have absolutely revolutionised this industry. When they say that we have to increase production, they put a target so low that, with little effort, we can beat it. If we beat that target, we are then in the difficult position of not being able to sell our produce because there is an overproduction or an under-consumption, whatever you like to call it, and once again we are in "Queer Street".
I would always ask this Government, and indeed any Government, to make up their minds how much imported food they intend to buy, and how much they want to have home produced. If they make up their minds on this point, and say to the home producer, "You must produce X amount of mutton and lamb, and other agricultural produce", we can do it, because of the revolution in the methods of agricultural production, and the increase which it is possible for us to bring about. But the key to the prosperity of agriculture in this country is where our markets are and, at the end of the day what prices we get.
What is criticised in the Agricultural Price Review is that although help has been given to sections of the industry which are, and have been, much in debt and badly "under the weather" in recent years, the price paid for the end product has altered little—a penny on mutton,
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and I think 10s. on beef; yet at the end of the day this is what controls the price of the produce. This is the criticism which has been made of the Price Review: that it does not look to the end product in the way that it should. However, so far as the Borders are concerned, we are grateful for the fact that our particular type of industry; namely, the sheep-rearing, stock-rearing and cattle-rearing industry, has been given considerable help in this current Price Review.
The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, spoke about forestry. He spoke of forestry working closely with agriculture. I am not going to speak about forestry, because on my own farm I live next door and march with one of the biggest forests in the country. The forest that I march with is in Scotland—Wauchope Forest—but it runs straight over into Kielder Forest, which is one of the largest in the north of England, and indeed in the whole country. One can run agriculture and forestry together. That is perfectly possible. But there are some snags, and I should like to draw the attention of the noble Lord to the snags in this matter.
In these vast forests there are great numbers of roedeer which are supposed to be kept down by Forestry Commission keepers, but owing to the size of the forests the numbers of deer are so large that it is difficult indeed for the keepers to kill a sufficient number. These deer do a great deal of harm to neighbouring farms, such as mine and others. They eat the young trees, they consume the crops, and do tremendous damage. I am for ever complaining about this, and the Forestry Commission people are very agreeable and nice people and do their best to keep them down. Equally, although we hunt and kill a considerable number of foxes, there are still thousands of acres of trees where foxes breed. In the spring time they come out and eat the lambs, and this is a grave disadvantage to anybody farming as near to Forestry Commission areas as many of us have to farm. Although as a hunting person I do not agree with shooting foxes, they have to be kept down in these forestry areas, otherwise one suffers greatly at lambing time. These are two of the disadvantages of trying to farm right next door to an enormous extent of trees and forest.

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In the Border area two committees have been appointed to develop the area, and I have one or two questions I should like to put in relation to them. One committee is called the Border Development Committee, which is presided over by a distinguished industrialist from one of the great firms of hosiery manufacturers, Pringle of Scotland. He is an admirable choice as chairman, but I must point out that this committee, which exists in an area employing large numbers of women in industry has not one single woman among the 23 men on the committee.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Shame!
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: I have drawn the noble Lord's attention to this before, but there is still not one single woman. I have suggested that the noble Lord might appoint a good trade union woman to the committee, since there are thousands of women in the hosiery industry who are members of trade unions; or that he might appoint someone who is knowledgeable on the subject of technical training, education and so on. I have had little response to my suggestions to him, and I hope that he will look at this matter again.
Although hosiery is one of the main Border activities, agriculture is equally important, and I would stress that there is not a single member of the Border National Farmers' Union on this Committee, and only one agricultural representative—and he comes from Northumberland. I do not want to denigrate the farmers of Northumberland; they are splendid fellows. But I live on the other side of the Border, and the noble Lord knows that this is a very big difference. The frontier we guard between the Borders and the North of England is traditionally a place of much fighting and so on, and although we do not fight now we occasionally have some argument. I suggest that we should see whether or not there should be a representative of the farming industry in the Borders appointed to this Development Committee.
We have another committee, which is presided over by a professor, Professor Johnson-Marshall. He has a small team who are making a survey of the Borders. I am told that this will take
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two years. In the meantime, those of us who serve on the county council have already been asked to take a major planning decision about developing a new town or a big conurbation near the town of Galashiels, in the Tweed Valley. I objected, and said so on the county council; and others agreed with me that we should have to take this decision without knowing in the least what the full plan for the Borders was going to be. Professor Johnson-Marshall's committee has not reported yet and will not, as I have said, report for about two years. This scheme which we are asked to approve meant changing the original planning scheme which was passed by the Secretary of State some five or six years ago and which included areas of scenic beauty which have been mentioned in this debate. Many of us thought that this was a very satisfactory plan. However, we have now voted for the alteration of this plan—I was very reluctant to do so—with the result that we are now taking an area of scenic beauty in order to build 1,000 houses. I agree that we must do something about the depopulation of the Borders, which is the reason why I was persuaded not to oppose the plan.
But I should have thought that we might first have been given a total picture in order that we should know what we were being asked to do and so that we could see what future was proposed for the whole area. The Border Development Plan is something which will cover the whole area of the Border, not just one county, and we should have liked to be given some idea of how the new plan is going to fit in. We were assured by the Scottish Development Department, whose officials came down and met us, that Professor Johnson-Marshall approved their proposals. However, it all seemed to me very much of a mix-up—a mix-up of authorities. Originally, the county council had a plan for the whole area which was approved. Then along came the Scottish Development Department with a different idea, which we were asked to approve. Then we are told there is to be another committee and that Professor Johnson-Marshall is to make another plan, which will not be ready for two years, and then we shall have to fit all the developments into it. At the end of the day, where do the county councils come in?

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I find this all very confusing from the point of view of local government. I have been a member for nearly thirty years of our local council, and I have always believed that the object of local government and local authorities was to work for and develop the area over which they, as democratically elected representatives, have jurisdiction. I know that there are many noble Lords opposite who are strong supporters of local government. The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, himself was a higly successful and excellent Lord Provost of Dundee, and there are many other Members on the Government Benches who strongly support local government. Why, therefore, must we have these ad hoc groups put over the top of us—I am now talking as a county councilor—and given authority, when we are the people with whom elected authority resides but who have to toe the line when it comes down to our being presented with plans? I do not know what Lord Hughes feels about this, but I suggest to him that it is not right to undermine or overrule the authority of local authorities by appointing ad hoc bodies when local authorities would be well able to do the job, if asked. Other noble Lords will be talking about the Highland Development Board, about which I know only what I read in the newspapers, but I do not care for the idea of democratically elected members of local government handing over authority to either the Scottish Development Department from St. Andrew's House or to ad hoc bodies appointed by the Secretary of State.
I should like now to come to another point in relation to development of the Borders—and this again is a nail I have hammered hard—the question of transport. We have an important road transport set-up in the Borders. I would not suggest that it is adequate, but it is being improved all the time. We also have a railway, which is the subject of considerable controversy at present with the nationalised Railway Transport Board. At one point we were told that it was to be done away with. Then the Minister of Transport said that that was not so, and that a scheme was to be brought forward which would give us the plans for the railway transport of the country. That scheme was brought forward, and we all have that little map which shows the main line transport.
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I was distinctly worried to see that the Waverley line, which is the line which links the Borders with Edinburgh, on the one hand, and with Carlisle, the South and London, on the other hand, is shown merely as a ghostly grey line (not one of those nice, dark black lines which mean that the lines are to be permanent), which according to the rubric on the map means that it is still under dispute.
I would beg the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, to use all the influence he can to try to keep the railway in the Border area, because if we do not, and if we are to bring 25,000 people into this area, we shall have only the roads. The state of the roads at present is quite good, but they are not motorways or anything of that kind. In any case, the roads pass over great hills and boundaries such as Carter Bar and Soutra Hill, which are under snow for a considerable part of the winter, and this makes the railway an absolutely vital link. So I beg the noble Lord. Lord Hughes, with his influence—and I am sure that he has influence with the Ministry of Transport—to speak up for the Border railway as part of the Border development.
My request to the Minister is that he will give me some assurance that county councils will not be overruled by ad hoc non-elected bodies, nor by the Scottish Development Department, and that taking action over and above the heads of the county councils will never happen again. That happened once and we toed the line, but I cannot promise that on another occasion I shall be so accommodating. I ask the Minister to assure me that we shall develop the elected bodies and allow them to exercise their proper functions; that the rural areas shall be developed in the best way possible, which in the opinion of the Border area would still be the development of agriculture and forestry in the first instance. The towns should be developed in conjunction with these industries, and we should have urban development around urban areas, and not urban development breaking in a large way into agricultural areas. Also, it is important that the Forestry Commission and agriculture work very closely together, as they do, but there are difficulties in connection with forestry and agriculture which cannot be overlooked.

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I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, pay a tribute to the work of the Scottish Council of Social Service in the rural areas. I have had a long association with this body and it does a splendid job of work. It was very encouraging to hear the noble Lord say nice things about it. Also, when the Countryside Bill comes forward I hope that it will take into account the amenities and beauties of the Border area, in the same way as other areas. We are most anxious to see development in the Borders, and we do not want to hamper it in any way. We think that consultation with local authorities is the best way to get the good will of the people, rather than using these ad hoc bodies, which is apparently one of the ways in which the present Government think they will develop Scotland. I am afraid that I do not agree with them.

BRISTOL SIDDELEY ENGINES, LTD.: OVERCHARGE INQUIRY
4.25 p.m.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, with permission I should like to repeat a Statement which has been made in the other place by my honourable friend the Minister of State at the Ministry of Technology about Bristol Siddeley Engines, Limited. Perhaps I may preface my remarks by saying that this is, in a sense, partly a personal Statement to another place, but since it contains matters of policy which will be of interest to your Lordships I propose, with permission, to repeat it here.
My honourable friend said:
"I should like first to deal"—
and this is the personal part—
with the events of March 25. Following the newspaper reports and comments that appeared after my previous Statement in the House I telephoned my officials from Cornwall on Easter Saturday, advising them to answer Press inquiries with such information about the background to this case as was already available in the Department. I added one political comment which I said could go out, from me, if required. My instructions
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were misunderstood, and following a whole series of telephone calls between officials working from their homes or holiday addresses this background information, together with my own comment, was, in error, issued as a Statement by me. As drafted it did not, and could not, have my authority, and it was withdrawn as soon as this was understood.
"It has been brought to my attention that some of the words in the Statement that was issued erroneously are open to misinterpretation. I should like to make it clear that the Company did not put a figure to the amount of the over-charging when first reporting it in December, 1964. Nor at any time later did they suggest that it was only a few hundred thousand pounds. This was the impression formed by officials at the end of 1964, and the full extent of the sums involved only became apparent after the most detailed investigations later.
"I should also like to make it clear that there was no contradiction between my criticism of the Company for its original over-charging and double-charging and the fact that the senior directors behaved with correctness in reporting the matter and throughout my dealings with them about the repayment. The long delay in negotiating this repayment, which I reported to the House, arose in part from the fact that it was not until February of this year that we were able to obtain from them the full information that we required on the actual costs incurred.
"Nor is there any truth whatsoever in the allegation that my right honourable friend the Member for Sheffield Park who preceded me as Minister of Aviation, gave any sort of an undertaking to the firm that if a prompt and full payment was made the Government would moderate its comments in the subsequent announcement to Parliament.
"With regard to the case itself, which raises important matters of public interest, my right honourable friend"—
that is, the Minister of Technology—
"has decided to institute a full and independent inquiry. The terms

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of reference of this inquiry and the names of those who will conduct it will be announced shortly.
"I think the House will wish to have some background information with which of course the inquiry will be concerned.
"For the years 1959–60 to 1962–63 fixed prices were agreed with Bristol Siddeley Engines for engine overhaul contracts and repair of spares contracts for, amongst others, Sapphire and Viper engines. These prices were based on quotations made by the firm and were agreed by the Department. By the middle of 1964 the Ferranti case had come to light and as a result instructions had been issued by the Department that prices should not be fixed solely on the basis of estimates of work which had already been done and on which it was to be expected that actual cost information was available. In relation to the 1963–64 and 1964–65 contracts the Department therefore asked for figures of actual hours worked and materials used on the earlier contracts, but we had not obtained the firm's agreement by the end of 1964. In December of that year the firm drew attention to the fact that the quotations given for Sapphire and Viper engines for 1963–64 and 1964–65 were too high by a considerable margin and would be reduced. This was the first indication which the Department had that excess profits might have been made in earlier years.
"In February, 1965, the revised quotations were received from the firm and showed considerable reductions, in some cases of the order of 50 per cent., on the previous quotations. A detailed examination was then launched by the Department into the pricing of engine overhaul contracts with special reference to Sapphire and Viper engines and as a result a report was produced in December, 1965, based on the actual costs of certain work done in 1964–65 which were made available to us by the firm. This showed that there had been over-estimation of the costs of overhaul and also revealed for the first time that there had been double-charging in respect of the stripping and rebuilding of certain assemblies which, although covered in the specification and price for the
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engine overhaul contract had been charged to the repair of spares contract. I should here make it clear that this double-charging arose through errors in the operation of the firm's procedures and from the time of its discovery the firm has been willing to make restitution in full.
"As regards the over-estimation of price, negotiations with the firm continued until February, 1967, with a view first to obtaining details of the firm's actual costs from 1959 onwards and secondly to agree what a reasonable level of retained profit should be. I would remind the House that these were fixed-price contracts. The firm had quoted prices and the Department, after an examination—in the outcome clearly an ineffctive one—had accepted them and it was clear to the Department that a legal claim could not be pursued. Nevertheless, the negotiations led the firm to offer a refund. In February, 1967, we obtained separate cost figures for Sapphire and Viper engines on the one hand and the remaining engine overhaul and repair at the Coventry and Bristol factories on the other. This disclosed for the first time that there had been excess profits on the overhaul of other engines. On the basis of the figures a refund was agreed at £3·96 million including repayment of double-charging of about £500,000.
"As for the future, I must make it clear—once again—that the Government require equality of information, including post costing in contracts of this kind."
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, for repeating that Statement, and may I say first of all how greatly I welcome the decision of the Government to have an independent Inquiry. I am quite sure that that is right. There must be absolutely no suggestion of concealment on either side. I take it—perhaps the noble Lord will confirm this—that this will not in any sense be a departmental Inquiry, but that its members will come from outside the Department.
I think most of the points of substance raised by the latter half of the Statement can well await the results of the Inquiry, but with regard to the first part of the

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Statement I imagine that the passage about the conflicting Statements is intended to be an apology. I hope I am not wrong in that. I think we may leave the rather unusual behaviour of Mr. Stonehouse to Members of another place. At any rate, it now transpires that the first Statement was right and that most of the second Statement was wrong. There is one question which I should like to ask the noble Lord, and it is this. May we have an assurance that the Government will give instructions that when statements go out from Ministries which are non-attributable and are for background information only, they should not contain contentious Party political propaganda, as was the case in the matter under discussion? It seems to me that if this were done it would stop at once what might be the beginning of a most pernicious practice.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, like my noble Leader, I am extremely glad that there is to be this impartial Inquiry. I should like to have an assurance that it will be well within the competence of that Committee of Inquiry to consider whether one satisfactory way of preventing this sort of unhappy affair developing would be that which we found so extraordinarily successful when I was Minister for Air—what we called a "target" or "bogey" price, plus a share in savings. Of course machines were very much simpler in those days, as the Minister knows. At the same time, we were operating in an entirely unknown element, in that firms had to make machines which they had never made before, and they had no idea what the cost was going to be.
We laid down two very definite principles. The first was that we never made a time and line contract, but where it was unknown what the cost was going to be an estimate was made of what was a reasonable amount to allow, say 7½ per cent. If you thought that the price ought to be about £15,000, you then said that 7½ per cent. of that was so much. If on costing it turned out that it cost more then, of course, the out-of-pocket expenses of the firm had to be paid; but they did not get an increased commission on that extra amount. They got 7½ per cent. on the target price, on the £15,000, but even if it cost £30,000 they received
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only the same profit as they would have received if it had cost £15,000.
The other principle was that, having arrived at a fair knowledge of the sort of price for which a machine or an engine could be made, it was agreed that you started with a "bogey" price. Then if it could be done more cheaply there was a saving in which both the firm and the Government shared. The result was great efficiency, a considerable saving to the Government, and a larger profit to the firm where they made a genuine and effective economy. All I ask is that it should be well within the competence of the Committee of Inquiry to consider this, and I am sure the Minister would gladly agree with that.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, I do not wish to comment on the personal statement of the Minister in another place, but I should like from these Benches to welcome the Inquiry. I would ask only two questions. First of all, will the terms of reference of the Inquiry be wide enough to lay down clear rules of conduct for the relationship between the firm and Departments for future Government contracts? Secondly, is it not a fact that the second Lang Report of February, 1965, recommended equality of information as a principle; and will the Government say why this recommendation was not implemented?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I appreciate the reception which noble Lords have given to this Statement. In regard to the one possibly slightly contentious part of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, I would say that it was certainly not my honourable friend's intention to put out a contentious Party political statement (if that is the correct term) on an unattributable basis. I think that I will not go into this very vexed question of attributable and unattributable Statements, on which many views are held.
First of all, as to the nature of the Inquiry, I can certainly assure noble Lords that it will be conducted by outsiders, and although I do not know what the composition of the Committee will be, it is certainly the intention that it shall be under the chairmanship of an impartial individual. In that sense, it will be comparable to the Lang Inquiry; and its Report will be published. Since the noble Lord, Lord Byers, referred to the Lang Report, perhaps I may say that

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while it is certainly true that the Lang Report recommended equality of information, it did not go the whole way—and the Lang Committee were speaking then about production contracts—in regard to post-costing. I must say in fairness that, although the Government attach great importance to this, it is not a matter which this Government or the previous Government, or any other Government, could simply impose by will. It is a matter—and I am sure this is to everybody's advantage—that should be negotiated within industry. I should prefer not to say very much on it, because I am sure that we are more likely to arrive at a satisfactory solution if it is conducted on a friendly basis.
I listened with the greatest interest to what the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, had to say. No-one knows more about this subject, and although his experience may relate to an earlier age, knowing the immense (and I would say on the whole unappreciated) contribution he made to this country's defences, I would naturally heed his views. This question of target costing is an interesting one. I shall not be drawn beyond saying that this will be noted. Obviously the Inquiry will be wide enough, but it will not itself be in a position to lay down the rules. Ultimately, the Government will have to negotiate these within industry.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, all the plans to which I referred were agreed with industry and were welcomed by industry.
LORD SHACKLETON: It is a complicated subject and I do not doubt the Report will throw further light on it. Meanwhile the Government have made their position clear in regard to the desirability of equality of information, and I welcome the support of the noble Lord, Lord Byers, for that. I hope I have dealt with all the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington.
VISCOUNT STUART OF FINDHORN: My Lords, may I just mention something on this subject, of which I have some recent knowledge? I am a little worried about it. I never dare to disagree with my noble friend Lord Swinton—I am too frightened, for he is always right. But he was building up for war and had to get the flying machines made. He was
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really working on what was called in my time "the cost-plus system".
THE EARL OF SWINTON: I was not doing so.
VISCOUNT STUART OF FINDHORN: If you say that you will pay the firm the cost of producing whatever it may be, flying machines or roads or bridges, plus 7½ per cent., there is no incentive to keep down the cost. That was all that worried me. I beg my noble friend's pardon if I misinterpreted him.
LORD SHACKLETON: I think we ought not to be drawn further. I did not think that the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, was advocating a purely cost-plus system.

LAND USE IN SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS AND RURAL AREAS
4.43 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD SINCLAIR: My Lords, in rising to address your Lordships' House I do so with considerable trepidation, but I am fortified by the knowledge that your Lordships show great indulgence to those speaking for the first time. The few remarks that I want to make concern the South-West of Scotland, Galloway, and in particular the county that I know best of all, the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright.
One must go back some 35 years to realise the great change which has come over the landscape. Up to that time, it was one of open heathery hill land and glens supporting a predominantly farming community. Then came two changes almost simultaneously: water conservation, in the form of the harnessing by the Galloway Water Power Company of the water flowing into Loch Ken and out into the Solway—one of the first major engineering feats for hydro-electric power in Scotland; and secondly, forestry. When these two attractions first came they were, quite understandably, not well received. The concrete barrages and power stations, and the pylons straddling the countryside, were looked upon as eyesores; and the demand for the transfer of even the poorer highlands to forestry was not yet understood.
I am not suggesting that this transformation in the landscape was peculiar to

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the South-West and to Galloway. The same sort of thing was going on in the Highlands and in other parts of Scotland. But I think it is interesting to note the extent of the afforestation in the Stewartry as compared with that in the counties of the Highlands. From figures published some three years ago by the Advisory Panel on the Highlands and Islands it was shown that out of an acreage of 574,000, which is the total acreage of the Stewartry, 100,000 acres were down to trees; that is to say, 16 per cent. of the total acreage. This compares with its nearest rival in the Highlands, the County of Argyll, which had 9·8 per cent. of its total acreage under trees. I know that agriculture has prospered through the advent of forestry, but I hope very much that in the South-West the pendulum will not swing too much in favour of this one industry, to the possible eclipse of the hill farmer. There is room, and need, for both these industries, provided that sufficient support is given to the farmer to carry on on land which is suitable for his use.
Nearly a fortnight ago in another place some rather disturbing figures were given concerning the high rate of unemployment in parts of the South-West, and also the serious drift from the land. I believe that the Scottish Economic Plan forecast that another 2,000-odd jobs will be lost to agriculture in the South-West within the next ten years. It is urgent that some industries should be brought into selected areas in the South-West in order to retain the population—but, I hope, without altering the character of the countryside. I suppose it is only human nature that when new industries or new activities are brought into rural areas there will be some Doubting Thomases. But one industry which I am sure will play an increasingly important role in the economy of the South-West is the tourist industry. Compared to the Highlands, Galloway is still undiscovered. Very little encouragement has been given to the tourist to come and visit this forgotten child whose only railway has been taken from it.
But, my Lords, Galloway has a great deal to offer. It has an ancient and romantic, if perhaps turbulent, history. It has many miles of unspoilt coastline, very varied in character. It has a large hinterland of lochs and rivers and forests, including the Glen Tool National Forest.
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It has a kind and temperate climate. Moreover, it is geographically placed closer to the urban districts to the South than most of the other parts of Scotland, and it has an international airport on its doorstep. All these factors may seem to be, not unimportant, though taken for granted by those who live there; but they add up to a considerable attraction for tourists. To cope with and control this industry, when it comes, as I am sure it must, it is essential that we should realise the intensity of the demand which the industry will make, and that we provide facilities, and plan them well in advance.
4.50 p.m.
LORD LOVAT: My Lords, I think that noble Lords on both sides of the House would wish to join with me in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Sinclair, on his maiden speech. He delivered it in the manner of an experienced and tried veteran in debate, and I hope that he will ornament your Lordship's House on many future occasions. I should like to congratulate and to thank the noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl, for introducing this debate. As he said himself, it covers such a vast range of subjects that it is difficult for any one person to touch on all of them, or indeed to deal with one in its entirety. Various speakers have made points which I think are of primary importance and I am glad to he talking now fairly late in the debate.
My chief subject will be the Highlands and Islands Development Board and its problems; but, referring to what has been said by other speakers, I should like to make the point, as a Highlander, that while we are all agreed about the importance of growing timber, we are faced with a marketing problem which is becoming ever more acute. I know very little about Government policy but what I do know about afforestation is that this country is still importing something like 95 per cent. of its timber requirements, and surely that must be wrong. We are all encouraged to grow timber, and this is done privately and through the Forestry Commission which takes up the bulk of what is a commodity of national importance. But the fact remains that the traditional markets, especially for conifers, are rapidly petering out. The pitwood which supported the mines is being replaced by tubular scaffolding; railway sleepers,

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once made of Scots firs, are now made of concrete, and wagon bottoms are now made of metal sheeting instead of oak or larch. All these things give rise to problems which are, I fear, rapidly becoming unsurmountable in the more remote areas.
It was very much hoped that the big pulp mill at Fort William would play a useful and very important role in the Highland economy and provide a means for disposing of the thinnings from the vast woodland area. There have been teething problems at Fort William and I think that only the Forestry Commission has been able to send the kind of timber that is required. There is no certainty that this timber will be required to meet the needs of private individuals in 1968, and in any case the mill takes only 20 per cent. of the timber in the area which has to be disposed of. While travelling down from Scotland on the train last night I heard, to my great regret, that a useful subsidiary company in Inverness, known as Bonnerwoods, which dealt with thinnings can no longer continue in production. This is a serious state of affairs and I hope that the Government will not overlook the fact that we require an end product policy in the timber business.
My Lords, I do not think that agricuture has been fully touched on in the debate so far. Nobody has mentioned the problem of the Common Market. Up in Scotland, we are living on the fringe of the fringe. We in the Highlands have the problem of disposing of our store cattle and sheep. There are no available wintering grounds where these animals might be held and fattened. I have continually urged that land reclamation should be given attention by the Government, but invariably my proposals have fallen on deaf ears. There seems a vast amount of land in Scotland, in some of the estuaries and firths, notably the Beauly estuary, the Firth of Solway, Cromarty Firth, and even river areas like the Spey Valley, which flood badly every year, so that 10,000 acres or more are under water, and good land where sheep and lambs could be fattened is becoming empty wastes of saline marshland and peat bogs and covered with rushes.
Not only would the alluvial soil of the estuary grow great crops of timothy hay,
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but with a little ingenuity it would be possible to put up a canning factory, which would be the equivalent of an Argentine frigeretica, to deal with the glut of animals that pass through the market every year in the North. As your Lordships will be well aware, we have a harsh and indeed a relentless climate. We have to sell cheap in the autumn because we cannot carry through the winter, and we have to buy dear when we turn to the South to import hay and fodder. As was said by my spritely and far from venerable great aunt, the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, farmers could produce more and more if, like the timber merchants, they were given an incentive and could command a full-time market and sell the end product with a chance of success.
I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, on the Government's Price Review. It is the only compliment which I can pay him, because I think that the handling of the flooding in the Highlands this winter was most inept; indeed, the matter was bungled. In the Beauly Cona Valley and the Spey Valley on December 17 something like £300,000 worth of damage was caused to river banks alone. That is the only compensation that the Secretary of State for Scotland sees fit to pay, and it does not take into consideration the loss of livestock and fencing and the loss and damage to the fertility which has been built up on these lands during the course of years.
My Lords, if I may, I will turn to a more pressing and immediate problem, that of the Highlands and Islands Development Board, which I must frankly tell you is causing the gravest concern in the northern counties. I will start by giving a very brief analysis of the work done by the Board up to the present time. It has been in existence for only about 18 months. I should like to quote from a speech made by the Chairman in the early days of its inception, a speech which we were delighted to hear and one which every Highlander welcomed in its phrasing. This is what was said:
"Nothing can be done in the Highlands unless the Highland people are with us, and to be with us they must know what is being done. Everything we do should be as open as possible."

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That was said in August, 1965. I should like to divide the general proposition of what has happened into two equal spaces of time, a first period of seven months followed by a second period of seven months making fourteen months in all.
As I say, the Board was welcomed by everyone because we felt it would provide the answer to a good many problems. There is no question at all that its grant and loan schemes have been of immense benefit to the Highlands, and I cannot sufficiently praise that policy of grants and loans to small organisations or individuals. By grants and loans I mean cheap money rates for things like building fishing boats for the Western fish trade, refrigeration for storing fish, financial help for small hotels and even for market gardening in the Islands along the Gulf Stream, and all the other things for which money is required in a small way. Everything the Board did in the early stages was extremely welcome.
But some 10 months later—to be exact, on August 18, 1966—an article appeared in the Economist which caused considerable surprise. I expect that noble Lords have read it. It announced that a linear city was to be built on the shores of the Moray Firth, extending from the small Royal Burgh of Nairn in the East Inverness to North-West up to Ross-shire, and back by Dingwall to Invergordon, with the Black Isle in the centre of the area. It suggested a way of life which was not compatible with the traditionally accepted ways to which the Highlanders are accustomed and which the vast majority wish to preserve—in other words, the local industries which have been spoken of this afternoon: forestry, agriculture, tourism and fishing. Suddenly and without much warning, after six months of doing excellent work, it became apparent that the Board had slightly changed their attitude of mind. The loss of a man like Mr. William Logan was a disaster at this time. He was the only Highlander on the Board, with the exception of Mr. Rollo, the Vice-Chairman, whom I cannot praise highly enough for his work in Highland farming. There are few businessmen or men of practical experience in handling Highlanders on the Board.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, would the noble Lord permit me to interrupt? Surely he is not suggesting that Mr. Robertson is not also a Highlander?
LORD LOVAT: My Lords, he comes from Aberdeen; he is not a Highlander. He has no right to wear his kilt, either.
About the end of the year certain rather unattractive words began to be heard, such as "brain-child", "linear city", "chemical complex", "master-plan", "oil research", and "heavy industry"—all things of which we in the Highlands are perhaps woefully unfamiliar, but it was clear that the Development Board, or certain of its members, were up to the neck in it. This was apparent from the frequent visits to the United States and the absence of members of the Board at times when they were badly needed so far as local government was concerned. I speak here with a certain authority. There were also rumours of self-interest and financial assistance to certain members of the Board who had the necessary insight or foresight or farsight into what was going to happen in the new linear town of Invergordon.
I should like to quote from an article in The Times which the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, said is no longer the mouthpiece of the Government. Perhaps it is not, but, none the less, it is written with the respect of the whole country behind it and does not, I hope, state anything particularly inaccurate. This inspired article, already quoted from, is well known to have been supplied by the Development Board. It is called, "The £150 million Highland fling" and in the article a member of the Board, Mr. Smith, is quoted as having said at a Board meeting in December that if this whale—the heavy industrial development at Invergordon—was successfully landed the rest of the Board's work would pale into insignificance. That is a very remarkable statement. The importance of the Board, as I see it, is in giving work to the Crofter Counties and to the communities who live therein. I should like the noble Lord to bear that in mind when he comes to make an answer to me at the end of the debate.
I was delighted to hear that the noble Lord is not prepared to talk at length on this subject, because I can assure the House that there will have to be an awful lot of talking done on this subject in the

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very near future. When the noble Lord says that the Board's Report is not likely to be available before the end of next month, I would suggest that it should be expedited, because a year is well past, what is going on now may not be available for publication in next year's Report, and the alarm and despondency in Scotland concerns something which is happening at the very present time.
I have said that there have been a lot of hard words. I hope that they have been exaggerated. Nobody likes comments of the kind that are flying about to-day—"Invercadco", "dollar directorships" and "chimpanzee tea parties". I do not think that this ever happens in a quiet and civilised community unless there is real cause for anxiety and alarm. The Press does not become hostile without a good reason, and local government does not become critical without a good reason. I must refer to the original words I read from that Press cutting. It all stems from lack of consultation at all levels.
The lesson, I think, is fairly clear. Highlanders are difficult people. Any boffins who step up from the South across the Highland Line must be prepared to realise that we have our strengths and our weaknesses. We can be led by precept and example, but we cannot be directed, and we certainly cannot be directed by people we know very little about. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, knows the story of the MacNeil of Barra who, when asked by Noah to come into the Ark, replied that he had a boat of his own. Lord Leverhulme made exactly the same mistake. We have long memories in the Highlands. I think that Professor Robert Grieve, the Chairman of the Board, showed his ignorance of this when he proposed a kind of Billy Butlin holiday camp cum-caravan site on the graves of the MacDonalds who were massacred in Glencoe. I should hope that the noble Duke, the Duke of Argyll, was in his seat. Perhaps, for the first time the Clan Campbell and the Clan MacDonald might have united in refusing to accept a situation which would be intolerable to both.
We have before us a proposal for a giant chemical complex, for which the British taxpayer and presumably the Government are pledging pound for pound £50 million, although I understand that
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it involves rather more than £50 million—and the only people who have really talked about it (and they are not businessmen) are members of the Board, some of whom are impressively motivated by self-interest. This, surely, is a matter which another place must discuss as to exactly what is going on. I am absolutely amazed that the Government did not themselves go into this in depth before it was announced that Occidental Petroleums were on the point of signing a big deal to set up an enormous industrial growth in the Highlands.
We as Highlanders are keenly sensitive on this point, quite apart from our way of life; and in my opinion, and in the opinion of a great many others, there may be people putting money into this venture. If it is an unsound venture, the Government are entirely to blame. I will be told if I am wrong; and I hope that I am. But farms have been bought and have been handed back, because the Development Board have acted prematurely. This is a fantastic state of affairs, and it has done a great deal of harm to the Board. It is also known that there is a smaller company, and land has been bought by that small company all round the area in anticipation of what was going to be done. This, too, has done the Board a great deal of harm. I feel that this must be threshed out at a high level.
There are three questions which I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, and then I will make certain recommendations before I sit down. The first question is this. If Occidental Petroleum do not come to Eastern Ross, who will repay the Government money and, I would say, the taxpayers' money, spent by the Development Board on behalf of Invergordon Chemical Enterprises?—or, in other words, a part-time member of the Development Board, who has spared neither time nor expense in engaging consultants and surveyors to survey the area since the time he parted company with the Invergordon Distillery. Secondly, will the Government reveal what the Highlands and Islands Development Board is costing the country? I ask this advisedly, because the Highland Fund, which is administered at a cost of £2,000 to £3,000, is giving out £60,000 to £65,000 a year in grants, which is quite remarkable. Thirdly, I would ask whether the

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Development Board claim that they have created 1,200 jobs in the Highlands since they took up office. Frankly, I question this figure. I do not think, with all due respect to the Development Board, that if somebody sets up a small business in the North he need not necessarily have done so of his own accord.
I feel strongly about this situation, and I am sure that it will be debated shortly in another place. I should like to see a man of public stature taking over the Board, and I can think of nobody better than Mr. Jo Grimond, who is immensely admired in the North, and who has had experience of handling positions which are beyond the powers of the present organisation, which I think should be reshuffled, and possibly dismissed.
5.15 p.m.
LORD RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, I rise to speak in defence of the Highland Development Board. I have no interest in that Board, nor in any aspect of it, except as a Scotsman who, like many other Scotsmen, feels deep concern at the denudation of the Highlands and its depopulation. It is very nice, extremely romatic and wistful, if I may say so, to talk in the terms which have been used to-day about what could be done to maintain the way of life in the Highlands. But there is also a way of death in the Highlands, and we have seen the Highlands gradually and steadily depopulated. We have seen generations leave, never to go back. We have seen 45,000 people emigrate from Scotland this year. Therefore, we have somehow to restore the North of our country and to encourage development in the Highlands.
With all respect to what has been said to-day about grouse shooting and deer stalking, or even forestry and agriculture, I do not think you will make the North of Scotland meaningful until you have some systematic development. The systematic development, in the terms used by the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, may be an intrusion into the way of life of the Highlands. All I can say is that at the moment the Highlands need a tourniquet, and if the tourniquet takes the form of a linear town on the Moray Firth, I am all for it.
I cannot understand why it is that, with the concern which has been shown
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and argued by noble Lords on both sides of the House, and the agitations in Scotland, we are anticipating something which, so far as I know, has not been declared. If I may say so without disrespect to my country, we have had a great deal of mean talk; and the mean talk has grown and now amounts to a public scandal. This mean talk has embraced people for whom I have the greatest possible respect, such as Professor Robert Grieve. He is a man of intense integrity, great foresight and expert knowledge. I yield to no one in my admiration for Mr. Jo Grimond, but if the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, was a reflection on the present Chairman, then I deplore it.
The next thing I want to say is that I am not aware that anything has been put out to contract. I am not aware that the Government have been committed, publicly or privately, to anything. What amazes me, as an ex-journalist, is to realise that noble Lords are attributing to that noble journal The Times the practise of accepting hand-outs. I think this is something which The Times might take up with the Press Council. It is a great reflection on the integrity of its editorial policy. It is suggested that The Times actually printed something which was planted on it by interested parties in the Highland Development Board. I hope that The Times will pursue this.
I wish to say that until we have the imagination, the foresight and the technological development—and I use that word advisedly—we will not restore to the Highlands or maintain in the Highlands the people for whom we are here expressing concern.
5.18 p.m.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sinclair, on his maiden speech, which I am sure we all enjoyed. I should also like to thank the noble Duke for introducing this Motion. I am not going to say a great deal about the Highland Development Board, but I should like to follow for a moment the noble Lord who spoke last. When we debated the Highland Development Board in this House I was under the impression, as my noble friend Lord Lovat said, that the Board were going to help the crofting

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communities and the smaller type of farmer and hotel-keeper in the Highlands. I have never visualised the Highland Development Board growing into a vast industrial organisation, because I understand that they are confined to a certain expenditure every year. If they are to back such a vast industrial undertaking as is envisaged at Invergordon there is surely a danger that they will get out of their depth, and of course the poor old taxpayer will have to "cough up".
The other point I should like to make regarding the Highland Development Board is that if they are going to embark on these great industrial undertakings they ought to have on their board the best business brains obtainable. I have the greatest regard for Professor Grieve. I have met him personally, and he is a most charming person; but I should like to see him surrounded by really astute business brains if the Board are to go into such a vast undertaking as is now envisaged.
Having said that I should like to turn for a moment to agriculture. Of course agriculture is the greatest industry in the Highlands, but, as I have said in previous debates in this House, and as I think the noble Duke said, there is very little hope of agriculture ever increasing the number of people employed in the Highlands. In fact the reverse is liable to take place. The total acreage of the Highlands—and when I speak of "the Highlands" I refer, of course, to the seven counties—is 9 million acres, of which 8¼ million acres are said to be under agriculture. But on quite a large percentage of that acreage deer are running with the sheep. In Sir Solly Zuckerman's Report (and I have the highest regard for him as a great expert in these matters), which was published four or five years ago, it was envisaged that 100,000 acres were immediately available for reclamation—though probably "reclamation" is not the right word to use, because when one speaks of "reclamation" one presumably means the reclaiming of land from the sea. Probably "land improvement" is a better term.
I sometimes go to fish on the Island of Lewis, and I have seen there quite a few thousand acres where the land
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has been improved by liming and draining and re-seeding; in other words, the summer grazing has been improved. But the trouble in the Highlands with regard to agriculture has never been a lack of summer grazing: in fact they have always had too much summer grazing for their stock. Although I am all for improving summer grazing if the funds for this purpose are unlimited, I personally would far rather see the land improved to produce winter keep. But to do that is an extremely expensive operation. It requires heavy machinery, deep drainage and deep ploughing. It is an extremely technical and expensive process, beyond the means of the average private individual. There may be a few private individuals who can undertake such great capital expenditure, but they are very few. So the conclusion I come to is that if these 100,000 acres are to be reclaimed they should be reclaimed properly, for cropping at the expense of the State in order to improve the winter keep problem in the Highlands.
The great problem, the great weakness, of the Highlands, as I have always seen it, is the dependence of agriculture on sheep. If only the Highland agricultural economy could become more dependent on cattle it would be much better. But, clearly, it can become more dependent on cattle only if it is possible to grow the winter feed. Cattle are far better for grazing than sheep.
I should like to see the Government embark on schemes of reclamation of land for the crofting communities. They have done some of this, I admit, but I should like to see them doing it on a big scale. It cannot be done very much on the hills, but there are large areas of flat peat bog which can be reclaimed. While I am on the subject of the reclaiming of peat bogs, I may say that I have been in Scandinavia once or twice, and I mentioned this subject in your Lordships House a few years ago. In Scandinavia, and particularly in Sweden, if they are going to reclaim a large peat bog and drain it they do it by means of explosives. They have a long line with explosives every few yards. They light the fuse, and there is a great explosion, and one then has a deep drain. That method appears to work extremely well, and I have often wondered whether we could not try it in this country.

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With regard to the other subjects concerning land use, I have already mentioned agriculture; and there are also afforestation and tourism. I do not want to say much about afforestation, because I have spoken about it at length before; but I should like to make one or two short remarks. It is true that the trouble with large areas of the Highlands is the fact that lack of fertility has been caused during the last 700 or 800 years by deforestation, and the trouble is that so much of the land has been deforested and has so deteriorated that to plant trees on it is not now viable. This is a very real problem. In some ways, I suppose, it would be possible to restore the fertility, but it would take a long time; it would take hundreds of years if the natural regeneration were allowed to take place. It would be completely wasteful, of course, and it would take, as I say, far too long.
I have always been a strong advocate of forestry, but my complaint regarding the Forestry Commission (and I have often said this before) is that they are inclined always to go for the best hill farming land. It is a great pity. The noble Duke mentioned an idea which to some extent I favour. On the very marginal hill farms, perhaps some of the hill farmers who cannot make ends meet under the new Agriculture Bill might be induced to leave their farms. The lower slopes would then be re-afforested, and the higher slopes would go over to sport and deer. In some ways, perhaps, such a proposal is anti-social—I do not know. But it would mean employing more people: certainly not many people are employed with sheep rearing. I think the noble Duke mentioned one shepherd with 1,000 ewes. Worked out in acreage, that means one man to 4,000 acres; whereas under forestry there is one man to every 120 acres.
The great attraction of forestry, as I see it, from the social point of view is that it can produce more closely knit communities. You can have these forestry villages. If a man is working in timber, he can be 20 miles from his work, but if he is a shepherd he must be on his ground, and therefore has to be in a lonely glen by himself with his family. This does not apply to forestry.
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I am pleased to see in the Secretary of State's report of planned expansion for 1965–70 that the Forestry Commission are to increase their planting to 20,000 acres. That is all very good, but I hope that they will not force people to plant on the best farmland. I am thinking also of the island where I have an estate, the Isle of Mull, where we have some quite good land down by the shore. Forestry is a long-term project, and I quite agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, when he said that, from the marketing point of view in the last few years, it has become rather worrying that the price has gone down; that the demand for pit props and railway sleepers is going. Of course, we have high hopes of the Fort William pulp mill. But if you take my island (I must not call it "my" island: the Isle of Mull), even when these forests mature the transport difficulties will be very great. Because of the smallness of the roads and the bridges, they cannot take very big loads.
I should now like to turn to the question of tourism, because I was rather interested to read this Countryside (Scotland) Bill. I should like something explained. It was first brought up in the plans for the Scottish economy, on page 140. I read this paragraph as meaning that there is going to be control of access, control of the public on the Islands and the Highlands. If that is so, I am very pleasantly surprised by Her Majesty's Government. I am quite sure they do not mean that. But in Part II of the Countryside (Scotland) Bill I see this statement:
"This Part of the Bill empowers local planning authorities and the Secretary of State to make access agreements and orders, or to acquire land in order to secure public access to open country…"
I was always under the impression that under the Access to Mountains Act the public had free access over all the Highlands. Certainly on my estate they go everywhere, to the great detriment, in the last two or three years, of the wild life. I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, replies, he will enlarge further on what is in the Government's mind regarding that matter.
The giant growth of tourism—and I am all for tourism—can be a tremendous boon to the Highlands. We are supposed to have had 100,000 tourists in the Isle of Mull last summer. Three or four

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years ago we probably had 10,000. One can therefore see the great growth in the tourist trade, and I am all for that. The only point is that if this great growth is to increase, it will have to be controlled somehow on the hills if we are to have any wild life at all. In "wild life", of course, I include the much-maligned grouse and salmon and stag, which bring in such a very big revenue to the Highlands. I would point out that when the Government buy areas of Highlands, as, for instance, the Isle of Rhum, they are very particular who goes on to the island. I hope that in the future tourists on the hills can be directed to rights of way, bridle paths and the like. But they will have to be controlled somehow.
I was rather amused to read in the Daily Telegraph travel page of April 1—which is of course April Fool's Day, but I presume it was quite serious—of the extensive tourist developments scheduled for the Isle of Islay. The writer of the article spoke about the hundreds of chalets and houses, of hotels and restaurants and, if you please, English type pubs. Why "English type pubs"? Why not Highland pubs? But after speaking about that he went on to say that the great attraction was going to be the utter tranquility. He also spoke about the thirty or so deserted sandy beaches "where you will have only a seagull as your companion", and about 200 different species of birds which ornithologists could study. The answer is that if this great invasion is not controlled, the tourist will not have tranquility and there will be not 200 different species of birds, but probably only 20. I hope that the Government bear in mind that if the Highlands are to become, as they should, what I would call the lungs of the harassed people from the "rat-race" of the South and Midlands of England, we shall have to be more careful not to spoil the natural beauty of environment.
Time is going on, so I shall speak no longer. There are one or two other things I should like to have spoken on, but probably they do not come under the heading of land usage. I refer to fish farming and oyster beds. A few years ago I was interested to read a book on the Highlands by Dr. Darling, who is a great authority on this subject, in which he said that there were no oysters round
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the shores of the Western Islands of Scotland. In fact he made a mistake, because we have excellent oysters there. I am quite sure that if a scheme for the farming of oysters was entered into, it would be another sideline to go with the new hotels which the Highland Development Board are to construct.
I should like to end by saying that I hope the Highland Development Board overcomes its troubles regarding the adverse criticism. It had the good wishes of everybody in the Highlands at its commencement and it would be a thousand pities if it blotted its copybook. I sincerely hope that these rumours are ill-founded, and that everything will end happily.
5.45 p.m.
THE EARL OF CROMARTIE: My Lords, we are most grateful to my noble friend the Duke of Atholl for giving us this opportunity to discuss some vital matters that have arisen of late. I, too, should like to congratulate Lord Sinclair on his excellent maiden speech, and I hope that we shall hear from him again.
Coming from the centre of this whirlpool, I have been asked to comment on the Highlands and Islands Development Board and the cross-currents of controversy which have resulted from their actions in recent months. I would remind noble Lords that I was from the start an enthusiastic supporter of this idea of forming some such body, as were the majority in the Highlands and Islands, and I am still convinced that an authority of this nature is essential for the Highlands. To leave such a place as Invergordon derelict would be not only wasteful but wrong. After the Firth of Forth, Cromarty Firth is the finest anchorage and deep-water haven on the Eastern seaboard of Scotland, and ever since the closure of the Admiralty installations most of us who live in Ross and Cromarty have longed for some Government action which would revitalise this area. Whether a largely American-controlled petro-chemical complex is the right answer, I do not know. But I do know that a similar major enterprise, a chemical complex at Lacq, situated in the South-West of France, an area with much the same difficulties as our own, gives little employment; and once the initial public works stage was over it

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required few workers, of whom 75 per cent. came from the Northern industrial areas.
To revert to the Highlands and Islands Board, there is a short, but rather peculiar entry—like most of the entries in The Times when they choose to write about these things—about the provision of electricity at a price which is so small as in fact to be impossible. It is just three lines. They talk in terms of an unlimited and regular power supply at one-third of a penny a unit. I understand that that figure was supplied to The Times by the Board. If so, it is a rather extraordinary statement, because most of us living up there have a certain knowledge of the workings of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board. In fact, in 1902 my own family started the first hydro-electric scheme up there, and. frankly, I rather doubt that figure.
I have no intention of going into the personalities of the Board, a number of whom I have known for many years; but I think that some collective criticism is justified, even though theirs may not be the ultimate blame. First of all, most of us who live and work in the Highlands deprecated the Party politics element which at times entered the scene. The Board, and all its members, should have been above this on all occasions. Secondly, after the tragic death of Willie Logan there were many who considered the Board to be quite unrepresentative of the Celtic Highlands as a whole, and the Celtic Hebridean Islands, the one exception being the member who for many years had operated the Highland Fund to the great benefit of the Highlands and Islands. Thirdly, there appeared to be much unnecessary secrecy, reinforced by the evident unwillingness of the Chairman—perhaps because they did not always agree with all the actions of the Board—even to speak to those who, in one way or another, had worked for the Highlands all their lives. Most of us in your Lordship's House have blasted the Press from time to time, but in my humble opinion the papers, especially the Express, never did a better job than when they started to investigate a very unhappy situation, although I regret that we must exclude The Times from this praise which did nothing to lighten our
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darkness but rather seemed further to cloud the issue.
Perhaps the blame for this sorry state of affairs must be laid fairly and squarely on the broad shoulders of the Secretary of State for Scotland, who never seemed to have his finger on the pulse of events in the Highlands; but maybe it is too much to expect one man to carry the complex affairs of all Scotland and all the Ministries on his shoulders, however broad they may be. It is doubtful whether a superman could fulfil this post adequately, and we have had no supermen for many years, with the exception of Tom Johnston, and for this there were two main reasons: The government of Scotland was far less complex than it is to-day and Tom Johnston had his priorities right. Scotland came first, with a capital "S", and next came his Party loyalties. I will not enlarge on this, but there are several possible reforms which would be an improvement on the present outdated system.
Briefly, I should like to end by stressing the vital importance of proper and consistent planning of land use. But there is still a lack of co-ordination between the agricultural and forestry interests. All around us we can see the bad and wasteful use of land. The countryside must be planned for the conservation of soil, water and beauty by those specially trained for this purpose. Too often the so-called experts do not know the difference between a "tup" and a "stirk", which is not surprising as so often these experts come from urban backgrounds and are trained to an urban outlook, their idea of what is fitting being a second-rate Manhattan or a subtopian blight of bijoux residences. I hope that one day we in the North will get a university at Inverness, which might go far in helping to keep the Highlands safe as a home for Highlanders.
5.53 p.m.
LORD BURTON: My Lords, I also should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sinclair. I felt particularly sorry for him that while he was waiting to make his speech there were two Statements and a change of speakers, so I have no doubt that his anxiety was considerably increased. In spite of that, he made an extremely interesting speech. I should also like to thank the noble Duke for making this debate possible.

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On the Second Reading of the Bill setting up the Highland Development Board I fear that I caused considerable embarrassment on both sides of the House. I know that the contents of my speech were not very agreeable. However, it now seems that what I forecast then, however unpalatable, has indeed come to pass, quicker even than I anticipated. The "explosion" has been far greater than was ever thought probable, and it has not done the Highlands any good. I said then that if the Board was to exist we should try to make it work. If it is to work, it must be inexorably tied up with land use and not industrial intrigue.
There are certain fundamentals for making the Highland Development Board work. For a start, I hope that the Secretary of State has now appreciated that it is necessary to appoint the best men for the job and not just political supporters. I think there is only one man on the Board whose politics are not well known in the Highlands. Further, I think that the Board member who is most respected by the public was involved in the theft of the Stone of Destiny.
LORD HUGHES: I did not catch the end of that sentence.
LORD BURTON: I said that the Board member who is most respected was involved in the theft of the Stone of Destiny.
LORD HUGHES: I would not say that it is necessarily because of that.
LORD BURTON: No; but if you are going to put people on a Board you want to look a little into their background. The remainder are mainly, to say the least, Left wing in their politics. If the Board is to be put right, we need further changes and new blood. But after his first failures, can we be sure that Mr. Ross will pick the right personnel now? I should like to draw attention to an excellent man in the shape of Mr. Reay Clarke from Edderton who has offered himself. I gather he is not a Tory, so perhaps he may be acceptable, but he would be an excellent man to have on the Board. Secondly we need men who know and love the land. By force of circumstances, far too many of our present-day planners are urban dwellers and urban-minded. This is all right for the towns, but the Highlands and Islands are rural areas. To try to hide
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the incompetence of the Board certain people have been accused of trying to destroy the Board. Why should they try to destroy the Board if it is doing good? It is not doing what it was hoped it would do, and the Highlanders are losing confidence in it.
My Lords, we have heard stories of witch hunts. I must assure the Government that in the Highlands we stopped hunting witches many years ago. The Secretary of State has denied seeing certain documents which were said to be circulating with information said to have been leaked by Mr. Durham. If he did not know of this information, surely he was sadly out of touch with the Highlands, where it has been common knowledge for many months. If he is so out of touch, surely the Highlands are entitled to have a Minister, as the noble Earl has said—perhaps a special Minister—who knows more of what is going on in the far North. At any rate, surely Mr. Durham is following a Socialist example; there have been other "leaks" in higher places. We have all seen the growth of the Scottish National Party. This is not a good thing, as it stems from an unhappy atmosphere. It is brought about by the feeling in Scotland of being cut off; the difficulty of getting the real picture through to our administrators. In the Highlands things are even worse, for we are thin on the ground, and behind the Cairngorm "curtain" the Highlands are as frightened of being governed from the central belt of Scotland as they are of mistakes which could come from London. When the Secretary of State announced that he does not know what is going on, it is easy to understand the anxiety.
The Highland Development Board could do much to get through to the Administration the Highland requirements, but already they are becoming bogged down. Could we be told how many personnel they already employ. Should I not be right in saying that they comprise about one-twentieth of the total of new jobs allegedly provided by the Board? How many of these have been bribed away with our money from their existing jobs in the Highlands, and how many more is it intended to employ? We rightly do not know to whom grants and loans have been given, but one or two known ones cause some surprise. I think it was fair that it should not be

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entirely the public to whom they should lend money. I do not think the Highland Fund divulges exactly to whom it gives money. I feel that the Board should work very much on the same basis. I know of one which is a certain non-starter; the proprietors are usually in their pyjamas at 11 o'clock in the morning. Surely such a Board should study fully all the implications before wading in.
There must be many reports on the Highlands in cubby holes in St. Andrew's House. How many of these have been studied by the Board? There is a vast conglomeration of work in county planning officers' departments, but very little of this has been used; and there has been little consultation with planning officers. Instead of using existing information, a firm of consultants has been engaged, at vast expense, to secure information which is already available. Board members will openly admit that they do not know anything about a great many land use problems. It is a matter of great concern that they are laying down policy when they have only a small section of the picture. To show how the human hand can change the face of our land, it may be of interest to your Lordships to know that in the 1719 Jacobite rising at the Battle of Glenshiel, the right flank of the Jacobite forces was driven in by the mortars setting the heather on fire. Anyone who knows these cold, wet, grassy slopes at the present time will have difficulty in believing this. It is also said that a Spanish soldier on that particular day died of heat stroke in this Wester Ross area. So there has been a marked change, and I think this should be a lesson when we look to the future.
I think that certainly the most important thing we have to get sorted out in the Highlands is the infrastrucure. This is what requires investment. Efficient use of land for most purposes needs assets, better transport facilities. But what do we get? A cut of over £1 million in the Scottish roads budget, and no improvement in the Perth-Inverness road for yet another year. Some of us are wondering whether there is a general policy to keep our communications bad so that the administration is less trouble from the North. The noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, referred to a tourniquet. My
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Lords, there is no greater tourniquet in the Highlands than stagnation in this A.9, Fife to Inverness road. I have been told by Highland Development Board personnel that if there were more people living in the Highlands the infrastructure would follow. If ever there was a case of putting the cart before the horse, this is an example. Does one build a house when there is someone living in it and then start looking round for water, drainage and access to it? That is apparently what is intended by the Board.
It has been interesting to watch the views of various bodies in the Highlands since the Board was set up. All started full of hope and good will, as my noble friend Lord Lovat has said and, I think, the noble Earl. The N.F.U. quickly became disillusioned. I may say that they were extremely pleased to hear that George Houston was to be on the Board to advise. That is fairly recent. There was only John Robertson who pretended to know anything about agriculture on the Board, and he started talking about vast increases in forestry; and there was talk of neglect of agriculture and of the agricultural population declining, and that it was not worth bothering to boost agriculture. Shortly afterwards, a good many foresters became disillusioned, and it became apparent that no one on the Board knew much about that subject at all, and the emphasis swung to tourism. Then there was talk of five hotels to be built with public moneys, where there was little hope of their paying their way, and the advertisement for American advisers on tourism. Then the tourist industry also turned sour.
The landowners quickly gave up. They asked for a market survey on venison, and were told that it was already too expensive a commodity and that the Board wanted it cheaper so that it could be put into tins. It is not a matter of hounding individual members. The position is as I stated on Second Reading of the Development Bill—and here I differ from the noble Earl. This is not the right way to develop the Highlands. Give the money which is available to other existing agencies and we will get an investment from progress. If the county councils had a fraction of the money available to the Board, I am sure that we should get progress.

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Before turning to other subjects, I must just refer, perhaps wrongly, to a rumour in the North. It is said that there are so many secret documents in the Development Board's palace that they are thinking of setting up a new tourist attraction by having an official Changing of the Guard ceremony in Inverness. My Lords, what can be done to make the best use of our land? I must once more emphasise, please watch the urban planner. If there is to be a reasonable balance struck, and the urban dwellers are to use the countryside as a lung for the industrial belt, then the man who is making his living from the country must be given reasonable protection. If one was to light a fire in a Glasgow City garden one can imagine the outcry. Why, then, should the city dwellers be allowed to light fires in the country woods? There obviously must be a proper balance, and to secure it, whether one likes what he has to say or not, one must take heed of what the rural dweller needs, for he is the guardian of our heritage—the land. His political lobby is not as big as the urban lobby, and therefore he needs greater consideration. I feel that he gets it in your Lordships' House, but unfortunately we do not have all the necessary powers.
Not only in the Highlands but throughout the whole country the best agricultural ground is being used for building houses, factories, hotels, petrol stations, and so on; I believe that 50,000 acres of agricultural ground is being gobbled up for this purpose every year. In the Highlands we have far too little of this good ground, and therefore every acre is the more valuable. Now there is talk of the linear city which would consume nearly all the good arable land in the Highlands. With all the poor land in the seven crofter counties, can this be good planning? At Invergordon there is some of the very best land in the country, and this is threatened when only two miles away there is suitable rough ground. At Invergordon there are acres of mud flats at low tide awaiting reclamation. If there is to be an oil complex, why cannot these be used for it? At Aviemore the scarce arable land in the Spey Valley is being quickly swallowed up. If food is required great care must be taken.
There is talk of increasing the Highland planting programme, but no one seems to
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know how much land is available for this purpose. Some years ago that terrible Green Book, Land Use in the Highlands and Islands, told us that there was about 1 million acres. Whether or not that was right, there were a good many other things that were wrong. How much of that has now gone? Though, of course, the Cairngorms area lies largely outwith the crofting counties, the Report shows that from just under 1 million acres, 100,000 should be planted. If this is taken as an average for the crofting counties, it might be that there are still about 900,000 acres which should be planted.
One has to decide how quickly one should plant this area if one is to have balanced forests in the area. At the planned rate of 20,000 acres of State, and the current 5,500 private, planting per year—I believe the noble Lord asked this question, and I would say that 5,300 acres were planted last year by private owners—all would be planted in 35 to 40 years. However, the planting of over 25,000 acres a year will depend upon the labour available. Foresters are not easy to get even at the present time. If we are to have industry with big wages they may be even harder to secure, and it will probably necessitate higher forestry wages. Good luck to the forestry workers, but if they are to secure higher wages, then higher timber prices must follow, and who is to buy the wood? Can our timber efficiency increase at such a speed that we shall be able economically to grow timber? There has just recently been this case of one of the few outlets of our timber, a chipboard factory in Inverness, closing down. This is a great loss, and I only hope that some alternative market will be found for the timber being grown.
Labour will also depend upon housing. Who is to build the Forestry Commission workers' houses? The Commission have been stopped building. If the local authorities are to build for the Commission, are the local authorities to build for other people, such as British Railways? Are they to build for the private enterprise projects at Aviemore? If every industry is to have houses built for it, what about existing growing industries? My forestry is growing. I need 12 new houses. Are the county councils going to build houses for me? I doubt it, but where do you draw the line? There is no policy decision, and I think one must be made. My

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own view is that the Commission should be allowed to start building again.
There is another wastage. There is a new form of fishing in the inshore waters in the Beauly Firth called pair trawling. This is mainly for sprats, but if there are a certain number of herrings in the trawl net then they have to be dumped. This is a most appalling waste of fish, and I feel that, as has happened in the Clyde, this fishing should be stopped in these inshore waters.
LORD LOVAT: My Lords, if I may interrupt, is the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, listening to what is being said? It is extremely important.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I do not see any reason why the noble Lord should assume that, although I have spent the whole afternoon here, I am not listening to what is being said. I think that that is a most uncalled for remark.
LORD BURTON: My Lords, I have had great kindness from the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, in the past and he was probably preparing to answer a previous query which I had raised. However, this pair trawling must be stopped. There is a precedent; for it has been stopped in the Clyde. It must be stopped in these Highland waters, also, because the herring fishing industry is quite a useful industry and it will shortly be ruined. I have taken up this matter with the Highlands Development Board and have had no answer. I have taken it up with the Herring Industry Board, who say that it must continue. But I hope that this matter will be very carefully looked at, because we are killing our heritage.
In addition to losing all the herring, we shall find that in thirty or forty years' time the arable land will have been built upon by petrol complexes and the like, and the middle regions will be planted with trees. So what is going to happen to the high ground? There will be no wintering, so no sheep; and with people swarming over the hills there will be no deer either. So, unless great care is taken, there will be no food production from the Highlands. For all these reasons, we must look very carefully to the future.
Meanwhile, perhaps I may make one plea for the present. We should be
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allowed to put cattle into the woodlands—State as well as private—as soon as the trees are old enough; that is, at about twenty years. A forest can raise the temperature by as much as 15 to 20 degrees, so that on cold days, even if a wood does not have much feeding, a great deal of food can be saved by having a warmer climate within it.
My noble friend the Duke of Atholl has mentioned litter. This morning I walked through Covent Garden; and what a fantastic mess it was! Apparently, when people come for their holidays they think they can treat the countryside in exactly the same way. But the country does not have a swarm of sweepers constantly behind people, and it costs money to collect litter. I do not entirely agree with my noble friend that the best solution is to change the law. I am quite convinced—and I have given this problem a great deal of thought—that education must start in schools. We must get the point over to the children by education. This is very much the case in Denmark, where they are very conscious of the problem. There, if you throw down a bit of litter the person next to you will immediately jump upon you. It would be very nice if we could get that kind of feeling in this country.
I should like to say a final word on the Cairngorms Report. It has made an extremely good attempt at integration. The planners have consulted and heeded all the interested parties, or all they could think of. Mr. Evans, as Chairman, has obviously done a very good job, and I can see many facets which have obviously come from Mr. Calder, our Inverness Planning Officer, so I should like to take this opportunity of thanking them. One does, however, wonder how much value there is in these Reports, for in many respects this one is already out of date; and if bodies like the Highlands Development Board are not going to look at them, as it appears has happened with other documents, what is the point of them?
It is scarcely surprising that there are one or two points in this Report which I do not like. There is a fascinating map showing how few areas of Scotland are more than five miles from a public road, yet there is a top priority proposal to run a main road through the biggest of

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these areas. In my view this would be a great pity, for it would bring one of the few remaining areas within the orbit of the motor car. I feel that this cannot be the correct priority. I think that in due course it will be time for a road to run through there, but I would put in a plea that the A.9 should come before it.
6.14 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, may I for a few moments trespass on your indulgence? As a Sassenach living South of the Border I do this with some trepidation, and I hope that I shall not be regarded as a transgressor, for I realise that the way of transgressors is hard. But there is one point which I thought might be mentioned, and which may unintentionally have been omitted. I listened to the whole of the speech of the noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl, and when he came to that part of his remarks relating to the recreational facilities which the Highlands of Scotland afforded, I thought he might mention this point and I was disappointed that he did not.
As I say, I am a Sassenach and I know very little about Scotland. My only knowledge of it is as a tourist. But may I say that in that part of Scotland north of Inverness I think your Lordships from Scotland have a bit of the Paradise of Britain, which is worth talking about and crowing about. I rise because of two very interesting articles in the Guardian a few weeks ago, respecting a piece of territory north of Inverness. I was filled with some fears and apprehension that it might be spoiled, and its attractiveness denied to many of the tourists from South of the Border. I refer to that lovely bit of territory known as Glen Affric and Glen Cannich.
What troubled me, reading those two articles and the editorial comment in the Guardian, was that it was hinted (I do not know whether there is any substance in the report, and it may be that my noble friend who is to reply will be able to make some comment upon it) that there was likely to be an intrusion of these lovely glens for military training. Coming from a part not quite so lovely, but equally important—the land of Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest—I had some experience of this both during the war and for a number of years after, and I
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trust that the apprehensions of the Guardian have no foundation. I hope that my noble friend will be able to give an assurance that this lovely part of Britain, with its attractiveness and its flora and fauna, will not, as a result of military training operations, be denied to many thousands of tourists from South of the Border.
6.18 p.m.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sinclair, on his speech. Not only was it very acceptable to the House, but this debate would have been very incomplete without some reference to the South-West, to the rich and very beautiful country of Galloway.
We have been talking a good deal about the Highlands. It is curious how little has been said about crofting. I think this is right. For nearly a hundred years we have tried to support crofting, and I think we now realise that the future of the Highlands does not lie in crofting. Crofting is a way of living, but it is not necessarily a livelihood. So we have to look to other things; and, frankly, anyone who does not look to other things must regard the Highlands as somewhere to be fossilised. That I do not believe we want. There are many other things, such as forestry. I was very glad to see how sensitive the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, was about forestry, and I can assure him that we will keep him sensitive, so far as it lies in our power to do so.
I should like to make two points on which I want information. The first is with regard to the Cairngorms Report, to which the noble Lord, Lord Burton, referred. I agree that it is an admirable Report, covering a most interesting range of subjects, including ornithology, botany, geology, farming, population, communications and a variety of other matters. In the introduction, the Secretary of State very properly says:
"No other area in Britain can offer more dramatic opportunities for all-the-year round out-of-door recreation than the Cairngorms".
That is splendid. But then he goes on to say:
"I commend it for study".
Is that all that this Report is for? Can the noble Lord really not suggest that this is more than a subject for study? Surely something is to come out of it. I know,

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of course, that there is a big sum involved; that it envisages an eventual expenditure of some £35 million. But that is spread over 10, 20 or perhaps 25 years. Can we have no indication that a beginning is going to be made on some of the recommendations? I am going to talk for a moment or two on the subject of winter sports—and here I declare an interest. I am President of the National Ski Federation of Great Britain. My Lords, this is something which is not new. To my knowledge, it has been developing over 35 years in Scotland. At the present time there are some 5,000 beds in the Spey Valley alone, and the advent of winter sports means that they are open both winter and summer—a matter of very great economic importance to the hotel industry. It is something which is of some considerable size. In the Scottish clubs alone there are 10,000 members taking part. There are probably an additional 20,000 actually taking part in winter sports who are not members; and I dare say there are 5,000 or 10,000 individuals coming from elsewhere. That makes a total number of somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 people taking part each year. This is of not inconsiderable importance, not only to the balance of payments as such but in offering a wide opportunity of physical recreation, which all of us are so anxious to encourage, on our own hills. In fact, I may say that never have so many people known the hills of Scotland in winter as do so at the present time. Not only this, but there are (and I have this information from those who are there) some 3,000 children receiving instruction in schools in Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Central Belt. That was the figure two years ago, and it may well be that the number is double that to-day.
This in itself is adding a great deal to the economy and variety of Highland life. Ski-ing is not simply a narrow thing. It extends not only to hotels but to retail shops and to transport, and, indeed, brings a new way of life into the whole area. I ask the noble Lord to believe that this is something which is already big and expanding steadily. What we have to-day is the position that there are hills with snow on them, and hotels and facilities for visitors; but the access is so bad that they practically cannot get there. That is the
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position which we have reached to-day. Indeed, British Railways may well suffer from over-advertised opportunities for winter sports in Scotland, not because they are not there but because the access roads are so bad that people cannot get there. I was told that last week-end the access road was closed absolutely at 12 o'clock in the morning because the congestion was such that people could not get on it. This is silly. Let us face it: it is absolutely silly that people should be in this position.
What I am asking the noble Lord is: Can we not have an undertaking that some of these things will be carried out? They do not involve a great deal. It is chiefly a question of access roads. Roads are difficult because they are public; there is no private organisation which can run them. The Inverness County Council, I know, is not in a strong position: there are rating difficulties. This is something on which, frankly, I think the Government could help through the Development Board. I am not going to say that the Development Board are not sympathetic towards this; I think they are in many ways. But I suggest that there is something which could be pressed on, and I am going to ask the noble Lord to look at this and see if the position can be helped. I refer particularly to the Aviemore—Cairngorm Road, and to the improvement of the A.93, over the Spital of Glenshee. There are a number of other points I could mention, but those are the two which are of the utmost importance. Unless something is done, this expanding and developing industry may well be throttled at birth, or at least at much too early a stage. This is something upon which it is well worth expending money.
I am not going to say very much about the Highland Development Board. I criticised it when it was established. I said that its powers were too undefined, and I said that its responsibility was fused between the Secretary of State and itself. But we all wished it well, and I still wish it well. I am sure the Secretary of State was perfectly correct in accepting a resignation—whether he accepted it or whether he compelled it I do not know—from the Board. We all wish it every good fortune; but I think we ought to know more about it.
A great deal has been said about the development at Invergordon. I am not

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necessarily opposed to that. It may be a very good thing. I believe that in Europe to-day there are only about three or four ports which can take some of these big tankers. I believe that Invergordon can, though I have not checked the depth of water there. This could be a matter of some importance. It would clearly be a port or a development with export potentialities. Has the noble Lord considered whether this could be a free port, like Shannon, in Ireland? These free ports have been developed in different parts of the world.
The noble Lord said that what we do about it would be a matter of policy when it came up. What people are afraid of is that this would be an American monopoly—a monopoly run purely by Americans. This idea cannot possibly be accepted. We have heard all sorts of stories about Government guarantees. My own guess is that the report that this will be an American monopoly is completely untrue; but I think the noble Lord should say so. I think he should tell us what is true and what is not.
LORD HUGHES: I will.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: I am delighted. We want to know how far it has gone. We certainly do not discourage adventurous Americans, no matter who they are, from putting their money into Scotland. We have benefited a great deal from them over the last 150 years, may I say—and we still welcome them. But let us know what is happening. Suspicion has been created, and it must be dissipated. Otherwise, the future value of the Board will be greatly diminished.
6.28 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, as we come towards the end of the debate I should like to begin by congratulating my noble friend the Duke of Atholl very much indeed on having made it possible, and not least on the excellent speech he has made. I should like also to apologise to him for having missed the first few minutes of his speech. I am not quite certain whether he knew exactly what he was starting to-day, but he certainly gave the debate a very good "kick-off". I should also like to congratulate, as others have done, the noble Lord, Lord Sinclair, on an excellent and
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most charming maiden speech. He based it, as maiden speeches should be based, on the land he loves and knows best, and for that reason it was all the more effective. He also filled a gap—a geographical gap. We heard a great deal about the Highlands, and we heard a speech about the Borders; but of course there is other land in use in Scotland.
I do not want to take up time by going over ground that has already been covered as regards the Highlands and, not least, the Highland Development Board. The Board has had its difficulties. I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, say that he is going to answer the questions which have been put. May I caution him on one thing, if he will allow me and if I may take the liberty? Will be avoid any moral indignation in his reply, because we really want to get the facts completely straight and, so far as possible, non-Party as opposed to ex parte.
LORD HUGHES: I can assure the noble Lord that I will not be worried by anything that has been said—for instance, the remark to which I took exception. I wished my words to be so carefully weighed that I prepared them in advance.
LORD DRUMALBYN: The noble Lord must have been very clairvoyant to know all the questions he was going to be asked.
LORD HUGHES: Some of the rumours circulate South of Inverness as well.
LORD DRUMALBYN: We look forward to the noble Lord's reply on the Highland Development Board. For my part I shall leave it at that. I do not intend to add to what has been said, except to say one thing. When you are envisaging great changes I think it is necessary to prepare the way for them carefully. It is easy to criticise in matters of this description, but when suggestions are made that some of the most prized land in the Highlands is to be occupied by what is described as a "linear city", containing the entire existing population of the Highlands, people are apt to be rather alarmed about it. I do not want to appear to read them any lectures, but I hope that the Board will at least have learned one lesson in this respect: that is, that the need to proceed from step

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to step and to take everybody with you as you go is very important in these matters.
I should like to refer next to the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Mansfield, and to hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, on this occasion will be able to give a reply. I should like to say how grateful we are to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Mansfield, for having intervened in this debate. One thing that struck me very much in the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, was her remark that we do not really take very kindly—I paraphrase what she said—to the supplanting of elected authorities by nominated bodies which overrule them. We understand the circumstances in the Highlands. I well remember the debates we had on the Highlands, but I do not believe it would be right to carry the solution—it may be only a temporary solution—for the Highlands into other parts of the country where there are nominated bodies overriding and overruling elected bodies. This is a matter of great principle, and I think that the Government should pay attention to it.
I should like to refer also to the closing note in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sinclair. He said, "Plan well in advance". Wherever land is involved this is of the greatest importance. It takes an immensely long time to plan land use. To start with it takes a long time to find out the facts on which to make the plans, and then it takes a long time to carry out those plans. Planning must be based on facts; you must first find out the facts. We are coming to realise this—I do not think anyone can be blamed for not doing so earlier—through the development of techniques that has taken place over the years. I was interested to hear of the survey that has been carried out at Kildonan and is being carried out in Mull, and of the survey that has been done privately in the Cairngorms. One is intended for Ross-shire, but it has not yet got off the ground for lack of funds. That survey will be useful, too. There is a survey by the Forestry Commission to which the noble Lord referred to decide on the use of land as between forestry and agriculture. This has been going on for some considerable time. I should like to ask the noble Lord whether
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he can tell us in what way this information will be made available. Will it be made available little by little as the areas are covered? Will it be published? Of course, that leaves a tremendous lot of country which is not yet surveyed.
In many ways this debate is taking place at an awkward time. We are awaiting the Report of the Highland Development Board and the Report of the Crofters Commission. A great deal of what we have discussed is more or less in cold storage because of the existence of the Royal Commission on Local Government. All these are great difficulties but in a way it affords a good opportunity for carrying out these surveys in the meantime so that we can be ready with the information on which the plans have to be based. For example, I noted in the one Report that has come out recently, the Report of the Scottish Development Department—and I should like to congratulate them on getting their Report out so quickly this year—that a great deal of discussion has been going on as to the need of local authorities of land for housing, first of all the land they need for housing their own people, and then land that can be made available for reception housing as well. In a country where good farming land is scarce, and particularly in certain parts of it, it is always of the greatest importance that good farming land should not unnecessarily be taken up for housing. There seems to be an absence of reference to this in the remarks made in the Report. I hope that, side by side with the discussion of housing needs, there will be the most careful consideration of how to provide those needs without taking up farming land.
There is one area which has not been mentioned, the area that I myself represented, Dumfries-shire. In my remarks I can perhaps join this with the whole of the South-West. This is an area in which the development envisaged in plan for expansion, the Government Plan for 1965–70, was more or less postponed for a decade or so. Here again, this affords a magnificent opportunity for getting the groundwork really right.
One thing I should like to add to what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Sinclair, is that in the Highlands one has for long had a crofter counties road programme. Perhaps the expenditure on this programme is not going fast enough.

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It is still at a level of £2 million, at which it was running several years ago; and still more than one-third of the total amount of roads is yet to be constructed. It has been going on for a long time, and it could probably be quickened up. In the South-West, in Galloway, which is losing population so fast, and where the cost of building roads in relation to the rates is so great, I wonder whether consideration could be given to some kind of parallel arrangement to the crofter counties programme. It is a beautiful area; it is very accessible and relatively unspoiled, almost the most unspoilt area over the Border.
That brings me to the future of the South-West and to the Solway Barrage. Three Reports have been published, one on the Morecambe Barrage, one on the Solway Barrage and one on the Morecambe and Solway Barrages. Two points of particular interest are made here to which I should like to refer. The joint Report concludes:
"The Scottish Office point out that a feasibility study of the Solway scheme may well be required in the light of a programme for large-scale growth in the area."
The other point is that it will be 10 or 11 years from the time that that feasibility study is commissioned to the time when even the first stage of water is made available from the Solway Barrage; not to mention the communications that may be provided across the barrage itself. Again this indicates the necessity to make preparations in very good time. I should like to emphasise that point.
This brings me to one other very difficult point in a Scottish debate—and the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, has referred to it. It relates to what I think is called the Development Committee. In the South-East, part of England comes within its purview.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I think it is the Border Development Committee.
LORD DRUMALBYN: The Border Development Committee; I thank the noble Lord. If the Solway Barrage scheme goes ahead, very difficult problems will arise from having two separate legal systems involved, and all the rest of it. It is a matter which I think is just as difficult as the problem of the Common Market and it needs particular study at
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the present time. I shall not say any more about it now, but I invite the Government to bend their minds to considering the development of this area, which will surely come.
My Lords, I do not think that there is much more I wish to contribute to a debate which has covered a very wide range. There is one other subject to which I should like to refer and it was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Lovat. It is the erosion of our land by water. It is a striking fact that for a long period of years England has had river conservation. There have been river boards in England and we in Scotland have not got them. Over the years floods in Scotland have increased in intensity and frequency. Much of the land has gone back because of the flooding, and periodically an enormous expense is involved in restoring land. There is the whole question of reclaiming land which was at one time in use and provided a livelihood to thousands of people. Can we continue to afford not to have that land in use? In the past, land reclamation was regarded as a community task. One can see from the remains of river banks, which were built no doubt by hand, that the whole community turned out to perform this task in days gone by, much as they do comparable work in India to-day. It was a communal task. Now, with the great decline in the population and with the coming of mechanised aids, the whole situation has changed and it has become a much wider responsibility; indeed, it is a national responsibility.
I think that recommendations were made about this matter in Scotland fifteen or sixteen years ago and it is time they were taken out of the pigeon-hole. I know that they often have been, and I know that they were taken out when I was at the Scottish Office. They should be thrust forcibly under the nose of the Treasury, because here the Treasury is the "nigger in the woodpile". The proposals could not be carried out without the provision of considerable financial aid; and, let us face it, because of the nature of the country more aid would be required than would be necessary in England. Because of that, the Treasury has always shied away from the problem; but the Treasury must have another look at this matter. I look to the Highland Board to prevail on the Treasury to do so. If any body were able to get funds from the Treasury,

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surely it would be the Highland Board. Surely this is one task, if not the greatest task, which the Board has to perform. Unless there is a prosperous agriculture there will not be a sound basic economy for the Highlands. Although the number of people who will be occupied in agriculture in the Highlands in future will diminish—this is widely accepted, as was said by my noble friend Lord Selkirk—the basis of the Highland economy will still be forestry, agriculture and tourism. We hope to see more and more the development of manufactures which now employ a mere 10 per cent. of the total labour force. One wonders what good the announcement made by the Government to-day will be to the Highlands in that respect.
I hope that the Highland Board will be able to get off the ground. I hope that with the explanations that the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, is going to give to-day the Board will be given a chance to get on with its work. If that should prove to be an outcome, on that count alone the debate will have proved well worth while. But the debate has been notable for the range which it has covered and the depths of the points which have been dealt with. I hope it will prove of value and that the Government will take due note of what has been said.
6.45 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I agree with the closing remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, that this has been a notable debate and, on the whole, has proved well worth while. I hope it will be a help to the Highlands and other rural areas of Scotland, as well as to the Government when they tackle the problems of these areas. I have a fairly lengthy task before me if I am to reply even to those points which are completely relevant to the subject on which the noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl, spoke. The points made were not always relevant, although I will admit that nothing has been raised in the debate which does not have a bearing on the areas concerned. It will be obvious, even to those who have raised some of the subjects, that with the Highlands and Islands Board's first Annual Report to be published within a few weeks, there will be an opportunity properly to discuss all
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aspects of the work of the Board, and not only those aspects which properly could be considered in relation to the subject of land use. I would remind the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, that I said the Report would be published probably at the beginning of next month and not, as he quoted me as saying, at the end of next month; although, with the way in which these things go, the noble Lord may turn out to be right. In any event it will be in a matter of weeks rather than otherwise.
Some of the subjects were appropriate to be discussed to-day and, as I say, I shall speak about them. But first I should like to join those who have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Sinclair, on his maiden speech. It had all the qualities that we have been told ought to be in a maiden speech: it was brief, it was pleasant to listen to and (this is something which cannot always be said of a maiden speech) it was completely relevant. It contained a point which had not been raised by anyone else. That is therefore my excuse for making an answer to the noble Lord the first part of my speech. The noble Lord referred to the percentage of the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright which was under trees—16 per cent.—and, if I remember rightly, or if I noted it rightly, he compared that with the figure of 9 per cent. in Argyll, the highest in any of the Highland crofting counties. The noble Lord expressed the hope that the pendulum would not swing too far against agriculture. I can assure him that it is the intention of the Government that this should not happen. The best use of land will not be accomplished if we permit too small or too large an amount of land to be devoted to tree planting.
The important thing is that land should be used in the best way and that no use, whether it be agriculture, forestry, housing or industry, should be regarded as having a prior claim. The priority must be the best use of the land, and that will apply in Galloway as elsewhere. Perhaps I am also persuaded to answer the noble Lord first because he touched on something on which I am exceedingly keen: the exploration of the tourist potential of the South West, of Galloway. I was privileged to be at the opening of

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the Aviemore Centre by Sir Hugh Fraser in the autumn. I know that not everybody has the same view about the buildings that have been put up there. I admit that my own family is divided, and my wife's view is probably much nearer that of noble Lords than mine. But something worthwhile has been done at Aviemore.
I came away with the idea firmly planted in my mind that it should be possible to do something similar elsewhere in Scotland, though not necessarily as a winter sports project; and it was put into my mind that we could make this massive use of tourist potential in the South-West. I am glad to be able to say that the Scottish Tourist Board have the potentiality of this area very much in mind. Together with the University of Strathclyde, they are about to mount a study of the tourist potential of Galloway, on which they propose to spend some £10,000. The Board's contribution to this will be undertaken as part of a three-year research programme, for which they have received a grant of £75,000 from the Exchequer. I am sure the noble Lord will be pleased to hear that. I am sorry that I cannot undertake that any subsequent speech he may make will receive the same sort of immediate dividend as his maiden speech has received.
Turning to the speech made by the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, I was afraid at the opening of her remarks that somehow she was going to get her grain drier into this debate again. I was reminded by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, that, if Queen Victoria was known as the Grandmother of Kings, Lady Elliot of Harwood, notwithstanding her appearance, appears to be the Great-aunt of Peers. I have lost count of the number of noble Lords, some of them looking older than the noble Lady, who have got up and proceeded to say that she is their great-aunt. However, she did not talk in a great-aunt way about her area of Scotland.
The noble Lady said that depopulation there is greater than in the Highlands. I shall come back to that. She expressed pleasure at the help given in the Price Review to the sheep industry. She said that some other farmers had said that it was not fair, and that they were not doing so well as the sheep farmers. It
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reminded me of the time I was in the Borders, two years ago, when so much cereal was being grown that it was said, "Three white crops and then a winter cruise." I doubt whether the sheep industry will be able to say "Three lamb crops and then a fortnight at the Aviemore Ski Centre." But it is satisfactory that some help should be given to this section of the industry, which has been so sorely tried, particularly in the last twelve months. I cannot guarantee, nor could any Minister of any Government, that all sections of the agricultural industry will be satisfied in any one Price Review. If that should ever come about, then, to quote words which were used from the Opposition Front Bench in relation to a statement made this afternoon, "We shall really have crazy taxation."
I looked at the face of the noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl, when the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, was talking about roedeer. Who am I to decide who was right, the noble Baroness or the noble Duke? When the noble Baroness talked about shooting foxes, the looks of horror in some of the faces opposite made me realise that in these matters the debate had reached a field into which I should not venture.
The noble Lady raised the question of the membership of these bodies. The mills of God grind slowly; and Government Departments even more slowly. All I can say is that if she keeps on asking me about this, one of these days she will get the answer she wants, particularly about getting a woman on the Board. I have told her in the past, though obviously she has not accepted my answer, that although there may not be any representative of the S.N.F.U., there are farmers on the Board and we do not say to them that they must go to meetings wearing their county council hats and must not think as farmers. We find it, in fact, much easier to do it the other way—for them to think as farmers and forget the county council.
Coming to the noble Baroness's main point about the Galashiels population and the undermining of the local authority, I think that unintentionally she was unfair to the Development Department. We did not override the county council. There has been a change in Government attitude to the Borders. This brings me back to the subject of depopulation. The previous

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Administration did not accept depopulation as a factor in giving grants to development areas. The present Secretary of State has for long urged that depopulation was concealed unemployment and that it ought to be as valid a factor as heavy unemployment, and that was particularly so in the South because depopulation in the Borders was even greater than in the Highlands.
Having accepted that this was to be part of the Government's activity, we had to abandon the planning which had been approved five years before and which had been related to a situation in which it was expected that every Census would show fewer people living in the area than the Census before. That meant a change of use. The only way that population can be increased appreciably and quickly in the Borders is by importing people, by getting people to come back to the area. This is a point which the noble Baroness herself made in relation to the knitwear and woollen industries, which are crying out for female labour and which are having to set up branches in other parts of the country because the men who go elsewhere to find jobs take their wives and daughters with them.
The only way to keep these industries prosperous is to have male-employing industries brought into the area. That can be done in two ways. We can seek to set up small industries in individual communities, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, knows, the Hydro-Electricity Board have tried hard to do this in the Highlands, and there is no more difficult or slower task. The difficulty about getting industries to come to an area is that they do not have a choice of labour, and the difficulty of getting labour to come into an area is that they do not have a choice of job. In the Borders, it is possible, by concentrating in the first instance on a particular area, to create an industrial development to which people can travel from existing communities. After that initial industrial development, people may well be prepared to set up individual factories, and they will get workers to come to them because there will be alternative jobs within a few miles.
But in Scotland we have to get away from the idea that everybody will be provided with a job on his doorstep. If the
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people who leave the Borders in order to go to Birmingham or London are prepared to accept it as part of the ordinary way of life that they will spend three-quarters of an hour travelling to work in the morning, and will then spend three-quarters of an hour travelling back at night, they have to be prepared to do some travelling as part of the price of staying in the pleasanter circumstances of the Borders. That will be possible only if we improve the infrastructure; and nobody knows better than the noble Baroness that the roads run the wrong way. It is all right if you want to go North or South, but when you want to go East or West it is not so easy.
For all these reasons, it was necessary to change the Development Plan; but nobody imposed it on the County Council. It would be wrong to suggest that they jumped at any change of this magnitude with enthusiasm. They are just as cautious as people in other parts of the country. But if they had not approved the Development Plan, the Secretary of State's proposal in the area would have been frustrated. The proposal had to be approved, in the first instance, by the County Council.
I do not think I should apologise for spending so much time on the Borders, because in these Scottish debates the Borders have not had much opportunity in the past, and there is change taking place there which is worth referring to. But it means an import of population into the Borders of some 25,000 people. This can be done only by a complete re-thinking on the matter. There have been studies commissioned by the Secretary of State, through the University of Edinburgh, to see what is the best way of doing this. When these studies are available, the first people who will be made aware of them, after the Secretary of State, are the local authorities whose plans will be affected by them. But there will be no question of imposing anything. We in the Scottish Office know that if you want a job done easily the best way is to get the local authority on your side. If you want to make difficulties, you start by fighting with the local authority. I have been long enough on the local authority side to know that there is no future in attempting to do the job the hard way.

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On the question of the railway line, I do not think the noble Lady will expect me to say anything particularly helpful. I can offer her my sympathetic interest, and she can read as much or as little into that as she likes. Perhaps she will read more into it than is safe for me as Minister. I would say that all the points, including the social implications of the proposal to close this line, are presently before the Scottish Economic Planning Council, and the views of the Council will be taken into full reckoning before the Minister of Transport makes her decision. I hope that the noble Baroness will be kind enough not to press me further than that. I think perhaps I have been unwise in going as far as I have gone.
I did not reply to all the points made by the noble Duke in his opening remarks, and do not intend to; but there are one or two which I think I should answer. He asked for a breakdown of figures as between the Forestry Commission and private planting. The noble Lord, Lord Burton, quoted the figure for the crofting counties almost exactly, if I heard him aright: I think he said 5,300 acres. The figure that I have been given for private planting in 1966 in the crofting counties is the slightly more favourable figure of 5,700 acres; and I would not call the noble Lord wrong for 400 acres.
It was suggested by the noble Duke that the Government should make it easier for farmers who are likely to leave agriculture for other industries. This is one of the purposes of the grant provisions of the Agriculture Bill. The grants and annuities which will be payable will encourage this sort of thing. But this is only if it will lead to the creation of viable units. There is no point in paying somebody to give up a unit which is not viable merely to create another unit which is bigger yet still not a viable unit.
The final point that I wish to make to the noble Duke is on his presumption, if that is not putting it too strongly, that the best thing to be done with the Western part of the Highlands is to leave it to trees and deer. I cannot see that it is right at this stage—and I hope it never will be right—to accept that this is the only viable solution for the Western Highlands.
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On the matter of the Hunter Committee, having had the committee spend so much time in arriving at their conclusions, the noble Duke said: "Why consult all these bodies over again? They have given their evidence". Those noble Lords on this side of the House who are Ministers, and noble Lords on the other side who have been Ministers, know that if you have to legislate on so controversial a subject as the Hunter Committee Report there is a considerable advantage in trying to find what is the greatest possible measure of agreement which can be accomplished. That may well mean, in some cases, not the whole of Hunter, but the modification of Hunter. But at the end of the day, the decision must be taken by the Secretary of State as to the form of the legislation, and part of that may well be legislation which is less palatable to some people than to others. But this is not the sort of subject on which Parliament is going to find time to legislate every other year. What we do here may well be the solution for Scotland for many years ahead. In that connection, I submit to your Lordships that time spent in trying to get the greatest possible measure of agreement will prove to be time well spent. I hope that we shall never in the Highlands, of all places, operate on the basis that speed is preferable to accuracy—not that many Governments are in danger of being accused of moving too speedily.
The noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, spoke about "his" island, and then he disclaimed responsibility. He also hoped that the people would not be forced to plant trees on the best land. I think I can paraphrase what I read of what is being done. The Forestry Commission are carrying out a survey on Mull at the present time. This has created a certain amount of erroneous fear on the part of the people there. The idea has got around that the Forestry Commission have been given, as it were, first choice on the island; that they will select what they want and then the rest will be made available to other people. That is not the case.
Somebody has to make a start, and it seemed to be reasonable—this has happened in other places—that we should look, from the Forestry Commission's point of view, first of all at the land which they consider is unsuitable for planting,

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where they cannot get results in planting trees on it; secondly, at the land which they reject as being too good agricultural land for them to be able to justify their planting proposals, and, thirdly, at the land which they wish to plant. Consultations then take place with the other parties—for instance, the Department of Agriculture—and the Forestry Commission have to discuss with them that part of the land which they consider is suitable; and I can assure noble Lords that the Department is a strong protagonist in favour of the agricultural use of land. They do not say "agriculture in every circumstance", but they do have the primary object of conserving good agricutural land for agricultural purposes.
When all this is done, if the Commission are to acquire land for forestry it will be after this consultation has taken place and agreement has been reached; and, as I think at least two noble Lords opposite know, if there is a disagreement between the Department and the Commission as to whether land should be acquired the matter goes to a Minister for adjudication. I should think both noble Lords have been involved in such adjudications in the past, as I have been. So the survey will produce a fair examination of the best use of land, and I would remind noble Lords that the Highlands and Islands Development Board are involved in this, and they have no preconceived ideas in favour of forestry, agriculture or other purposes.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord for one moment? In the Islands the Forestry Commission have already planted some of the best hill land, so in some respects the question of the survey is a little late in the day.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I can talk only about the situation as it is. It may be that this is one on which noble Lords opposite have adjudicated at some time in the past. I have no reason to believe that they were involved at all. I just cannot exclude the possibility. But there will still be arguments. There will be a decision on land that is to be used for forestry, and there will be people who will argue that this is the best agricultural land to be found anywhere on the face of the globe. If a man does not want trees
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he will find merits in his land which he did not see when he was buying it.
I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, has left—
THE EARL OF CROMARTIE: My Lords, I can tell the noble Lord that unfortunately my noble friend Lord Lovat had to leave in order to catch a train.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I was afraid that might be the position. I am sorry, because it rather restricts me in what I might say. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, advised me to take a certain course of action—
LORD BURTON: My Lords, may I just say that my noble friend Lord Lovat asked me to take notes of what the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, said?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I do not know how good the noble Lord's shorthand is, but I would suggest that if it is not perfect he would do better to rely on Hansard. Even although he will have to wait a day longer, it will all be there for him to read; and I have no doubt at all that we shall hear more about it when we discuss the Highlands and Islands Development Board's Annual Report.
Of all the speeches that were made in gation, the bulk of it in private hands. was that made by the noble Lord, Lord Lovat. I do not think it was a fair speech; I do not think it will be helpful to the Highlands, and I certainly do not think it will be helpful to the Highlands and Islands Development Board. The noble Lord repeated almost every rumour and innuendo which has been circulating, and he doubted the accuracy of some of the statements which had been made. For example, he referred to the fact that the Highlands and Islands Development Board were reputed to have said that they had brought 1,200 jobs to the area. He doubted very much whether that was the case, and then he expressed the hope that he was wrong. If he did not know, why should he start off on the basis that the Board were putting out false information? It could not be anything other than that. If the Board said a particular thing and it was wrong, they are the people who know the right answers in the first instance, and it was virtually an accusation of the circulation of false information.

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In the first instance, the Board have never said that they brought 1,200 jobs to the Highlands. But the way in which this was put, and its relation to fact, is an example of the way in which distorted stories are going about the area—just as for many years the same thing was said about the Hydro-Electric Board. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, if he is a grateful man, ought to go down on his knees at night and thank God that the Government set up the Highland Board, which has taken a tremendous weight of criticism off his shoulders, because the Hydro-Electric Board used to get it all, whereas now they get it only after there has been a flood.
What are the facts with relation to the 1,200 jobs? I said I would give the facts, and here they are. Up to March 31, 1967, the Board had approved 267 projects. They have offered loan assistance of £962,177; they have offered grant assistance of £197,978. These two figures total £1,158,000-odd. The amount which has been paid out so far is £619,765. The number of jobs estimated to accrue from that grant and loan assistance is 1,285. In total, this is equivalent to one big industry being located in the Highlands. It is approaching in employment the value of the pulp mill. However, when the previous Government said they had approved the pulp mill and made the necessary legislative arrangements, and said that there were expected to be a certain number of jobs accruing from it, no one understood from that statement that the Government of the day were claiming that at any given point in time they had already reached that figure.
The indications are that the estimates there are being confirmed. Obviously, when there is a proposal spread over 267 different projects there is a possibility of big percentage differences in what is achieved. If a man says he is going to employ four people and in fact he employs only three, the figures are 25 per cent. out; but it does not follow that they will be 25 per cent. out over the whole lot, because somebody else who says he is going to employ four people may in fact employ five. The merit of these proposals for the Highlands—and this will always be an important part of the Highland Board's work—is that this is where the maximum amount of the employment will come, in the spreading of
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employment in small packets over the area.
Now I will come to the point which has caused so much concern. Not only rumour, but certain newspapers, predicted that the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, was going to do this and to say that. They might have been proved wrong, but I had my notes prepared on the assumption that in this case he might raise some of the things which the Scotsman said he would raise. I wish to weigh these words carefully, because they are important, so I will read what I prepared with great care in advance.
The noble Lord, Lord Lovat, referred to the proposal which has been the subject of considerable public comment, to develop a major petro-chemical industry at Invergordon and to the consequences such a development would have on land use in the area. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has already made a Statement in another place, on March 23, which noble Lords may have read. I should like to repeat what my right honourable friend made clear then: that what is involved is a major industrial project which is under consideration by the private interests concerned. They have commissioned certain feasibility and marketing studies in order to enable them to make up their minds whether, from their point of view, the project is worth pursuing further. The project could be of great value to Highland Development, and to help in its consideration the Highland Development Board and the County Council are also examining certain aspects of infrastructure which such a major industrial development might entail.
It has been made abundantly clear on several occasions that the whole matter is still at the stage of study and investigation, the bulk of it in private hands. Until the studies being undertaken by the private company concerned have been completed, decisions reached by them, and formal propositions made by them to the Government and fully considered by the proper Departments, there can be no question whatever of any commitment or undertaking by the Government.
Naturally any formal proposals put by the company to Government Departments would be considered in the light of all the circumstances, in which land

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use would obviously take its place, and those affected by the proposed development would have a right to make representations and be heard. It is not possible—nor would it be proper—even to attempt to anticipate the consideration which would have to be given by the Government to any specific proposal involving an industrial development of the magnitude which seems to be indicated.
Having said that, I wish to go on to say this. This project may come to nothing or it may become a live issue—I do not know and I doubt very much whether the Occidental Petroleum Company know what it is going to be. Obviously it is something which has possibilities from their point of view or they would not have embarked on the expenditure. But we do not know what the outcome will be, and I am sorry that because of the fears which have been expressed it should have been made the occasion of a wholesale attack on the Board and, almost without exception, its members. Willie Logan escaped attack because he died. John Rollo escaped attack because his record in the Highland Fund places him beyond attack, but the others have been subjected to a campaign of vilification in the Highlands which the Highlands will regret as they realise that they have been unfair to people who have been trying to help them.
When the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, spoke about only Highlanders, and I asked about John Robertson, it was a matter of regret to me that some noble Lords opposite laughed when he said, "He is not a Highlander; he comes from Aberdeen." This is part of the trouble of the Highlands. One of the things which was said to me before the Board was set up was, "I hope you do not make the mistake of assuming that the only people able to help the Highlands are those born there". I do not know Mr. Robertson; I have never met him. At least he farms in a crofting area. He has shown it is possible for a crofter to make a living in doing things other than crofting by showing a spirit of liveliness in the area. I do not know where he came from. I do know this: that there are noble Lords, perhaps even on these Benches—certainly there would be if these Benches were as full as they were, say, during the Steel debate or the Land
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Commission debate—who would claim to be real Highlanders but who may well have been born in a London nursing home and who may have spent more years of their lives in schools in England than Robertson ever did in Aberdeen; but it does not make them any less Highlanders. This, I think, is part of the thing from which the Highlands suffer: that it should be regarded as a subject for laughter that Mr. Robertson came from Aberdeen.
LORD BURTON: My Lords I do not want to associate myself with the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, on this point, but Mr. Robertson is very far from a crofter he is a very large farmer.
LORD HUGHES: Yes, and it is surprising how often this happens. He did very active work in his membership of the Crofters Commission. This was where he first came to notice. Two nominations for new membership of the Board have already been made; the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, nominated Mr. Jo Grimond, and the noble Lord, Lord Burton, nominated someone else whose name I forget, but I will get it from Hansard in due course. I would remind noble Lords that there is only one list in existence longer than the list of those who have been nominated for membership of the Highland Board and that is the list of those who have nominated themselves for Life Peerages. Having regard to the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, received my remark about Mr. Robertson, I found it interesting that he nominated Mr. Grimond, because, after all, if I am not mistaken, Mr. Grimond's origins are in my home town of Dundee, which has even less claim to be in the Highlands than Aberdeen has; but I should not wish to suggest that because of that Mr. Grimond would not make a good member of the Board, although I am not seconding his nomination at this stage. Perhaps I have said enough on that subject to indicate that there have been many assumptions made in the Highlands, made in this House by noble Lords and made by the Press about the commitments of the Government in relation to a petrochemical project, and those assumptions at this stage are without justification.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord could give an assurance that if any progress

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were made in this direction he would try to keep the House informed about it. It is obviously a matter with which a great many people are concerned.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I could not give a firm assurance on a matter of that kind without consulting my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, but it seems to me, speaking off the cuff that if there were the slightest prospect of a project of this kind going ahead, having regard to the magnitude of the proposal it is exceedingly doubtful that anything could be done without both Houses of Parliament being made aware of it in the first instance. This project runs into many millions of pounds and makes the pulp mill seem a remarkably cheap project by comparison. I think I am reasonably safe in giving that assurance.
There were specific questions which the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, asked, but none of those have any relation to land use in the Highlands. They are very relevant to the affairs of the Highland Board. I do not propose to answer them because I do not wish to turn this into a discussion of the Highland Board's affairs, and I do not feel any guilt in that, because I know that all noble Lords will have a very early opportunity of discussing these aspects. But there was one subject to which the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, referred which had not to do with the Highland Board and which I should like to answer. He spoke about the question of improvement. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, referred to this also, and particularly in the aspect of land erosion. In the Agriculture Bill a number of measures are being taken which will benefit agriculture in the Highlands, and chief among them, perhaps, is the Highland land improvement scheme which will provide 50 per cent. grants for improvements to increase productivity on hill land. This will cover land reclamation, re-seeding, regeneration of grazing, clearance of bracken and other obstructions to cultivation, fencing, shelter belts, roads, and the provision of simple shelters for cattle and sheep. The noble Lord will notice that there does not arise in all that list the question of reclaiming land from the sea or from the river.
I will, with his permission, look at that aspect. I greatly doubt whether it is intended to cover it. But I was interested
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in what he and the noble Lord, Lord Lovat, had to say on this subject. I will certainly undertake to have this matter explored. I was going to say that I would write to them, but I do not think that is the best way, because this is something that has interested more people than them. I have not the slightest doubt that there will be an opportunity in the not too distant future. It would be no more irrelevant to the debate than the affairs of the Highlands and Islands Board if I were to interpolate something on the subject of this erosion. So I will take an early opportunity of replying to it.
The noble Lord, Lord Burton, asked for a number of details. He will forgive me if I include them under the category that they are appropriate to a discussion of the Board's affairs rather than to land use: the number of people they employ, the cost of it, and so on. This is something he will probably be able to find out for himself, and he can get up and congratulate or castigate the Government, as appears suitable to him. It would not surprise me if it is the former.
The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Mansfield, referred to the intrusion into Glen Affric for military training. This is essentially a defence matter, as he will appreciate, but there was some publicity given to it, not only in the Guardian but in the Scottish Press, and I am glad to be able to say that there was misapprehension about it. The information we were given at the Scottish Office was that the Army do not in fact intend to use Glen Affric in any really different way from the way in which it has been used for military training in the past. What has taken place, and has led to the misunderstanding, has been a difference in the procedure which was adopted.
This year the Ministry of Defence made a general approach to the Scottish Landowners' Federation for the use of the area, instead of, as in earlier years, the approaches being made by individual Army units to individual landowners. This created the impression that there was to be a mass descent by the Army on the area. In fact, that is not the position. Apart from this procedural matter, the only difference is that this year there will be a certain number of Regular Army units taking part in the training in addition to the Territorial units, whereas in past years it has been

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entirely Territorials. But it does not envisage an increase or a change in the usage to which the area has been subject in the past and which, so far as I know, has not created any complaint.
I come now to the points raised by the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk. This brings me almost to the end of my reply, which I am afraid has been over long. My only apology is that when noble Lords take the trouble to come down so far for a debate on Scottish affairs, and raise points which are of importance, it always seems to me to be unfair if the Minister selects only a few of the speeches and says, "I will write to the rest of you". If my English colleagues and the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, who is sitting waiting, patiently or impatiently, for the next item, will forgive me, I still have a little, but not a great deal more. time to take up.
The noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, referred to the Cairngorms Report. He quoted the words of the Secretary of State commending this for study. He said, somewhat vehemently, "Is it only for study?" Well, I hope not. But it is not for the Scottish Office in the first instance to take the initiative. In the first instance, it is a matter for study by the local authorities concerned. I would remind the noble Earl—I think this will be of some comfort to him—that the most successful project at Aviemore did not arise because of what the Scottish Office did. It arose because of local initiative—in the first place, initiative not even of the local authority, but of some private individuals.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: None the less, may I put this to the noble Lord? Roads are not a subject of local initiative.
LORD HUGHES: I am coming to that.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: And the roads are not being used a great deal by people who pay rates in Inverness. That is really the problem, I think.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I will come to the question of roads. I should be disappointed if those who are interested in this area do not take the sort of action which has led to the Aviemore project reaching the success it has; and they certainly will not be dis-
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couraged by the Scottish Office in considering it. But having regard to what the noble Baroness said, if the Scottish Office does not watch itself it will be told, not by the noble Baroness, but by somebody else in the area, that it is dictating to the local authorities what they should do. There is a right way to go about these things. Sometimes, if the local authorities are not moving as fast as they can, there can be a little gentle prodding. But it must be their pigeon in the first instance, and at least in this case they have close to them the evidence that a project of this kind can be successfully mounted.
The noble Earl went on to speak of the value of winter sports. I agree with him. I have already referred to my visit to Aviemore. One of the things which I was told there—this is almost incredible, but it is absolutely true—is that at the time I was there a party of young people had in the previous four weeks been coming up by car from London. They left London on Friday night. They took it in turns to drive, and they motored all night, getting up to the ski centre sometime on the Saturday morning. They skied on Saturday, they ski-ed on Sunday, and then in turn they spent Sunday night driving back to London. I do not know whether their employers got any value out of them on the Monday, but they had done this for four weeks. This is an indication of what this area can offer to winter sports enthusiasts, that people will go to all that bother to take advantage of it. I am at one with the noble Earl in wishing to give every encouragement to this sort of thing. My next subject will be roads.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, my point is this. These people can get up to Aviemore, and they know they can get there. But perhaps they cannot get from Aviemore up to the Cairngorm Hill at all. Next week I am going up to the British Championships which for the first time are being held in this country; on every previous occasion they have been held in the Alps. I know I can get to Aviemore. But in certain circumstances. I am not certain whether I can get through Aviemore actually on the hill to see the ski-ing at all. This is the problem, and I think the Scottish Office should do something more than prodding.
LORD HUGHES: Fortunately, the Scottish Office is doing more than prodding. This is the position about road access in the ski-ing area. I think perhaps I should read the whole of this from my notes. In the late 1950's Inverness County Council, as highway authority, decided to improve the then private road from Coylum Bridge to Glenmore Lodge, to extend it to the foot of the ski slopes at Coire Cas, and to add it to the county list of highways. The road was built at a cost of £48,000. The Government made a 50 per cent. grant towards the net cost: that is, £30,000, after allowing for contributions totalling £18,000 from local hoteliers, the Forestry Commission, the Scottish Council for Physical Recreation, and the Edinburgh University Ski Club. The work was completed in the autumn of 1960. Since then there has been such an increase in traffic between Aviemore and Coire Cas that the county council, with the promise of further Government grant, has decided to provide the whole length of road from Aviemore to Coire Cas with an 18-foot carriageway. Noble Lords further South may think that this is not much, but an 18-ft. carriageway is a lot of road up that way. This improvement, which provides for a new bridge over the Spey and the main Inverness railway and for an improved junction with the trunk road A.9 at Aviemore, is estimated to cost £450,000, of which £270,000 will be met by Exchequer grant.
The work is being undertaken in three stages: the Coylum Bridge to Glenmore Lodge section, on which work is virtually complete; the Glenmore Lodge to Coire Cas section, where constructional work is in progress and is expected to be completed by the end of 1967; and the Aviemore to Coylum Bridge section, where preparatory work has been held up because of difficulties with land acquisition. It is not unknown for Highland lairds to be "sweird" to part with their land—that may be the case. But there are difficulties, which may be legal difficulties; or it may just be that somebody does not want to sell. I do not know. But this is the information which I am given. Some progress towards solving these difficulties has been made, but if the remaining objections to the County Council's compulsory purchase order are not withdrawn a public inquiry will have to be held. On the main approach to the
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area—trunk road A.9—improvements designed to assist traffic from Perth and the South are in the approved road programme. Priority among these is being given to removing the bottlenecks South of Pitlochry. Perhaps it has not moved as fast as the noble Earl would have liked. I would not wish to say that it has moved as fast as I should like; but at least it has reached the stage where a considerable volume of work has been done and the whole of it is accepted for completion. Simply because of the very difficult portion between Aviemore and Coylum Bridge there must be great difficulties, and I hope that they will not prove too troublesome.
LORD BURTON: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, was not altogether right in blaming the local landlord. I know there was some objection earlier on that he was not very happy about the amenities, but the big delay was that the local councillor insisted on having it referred back in the summer, and consequently it was not possible to complete the road before winter descended on the contractors.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I did not place the responsibility on the landowner in particular. I must apologise to the Hansard writer for using a word with which he was not familiar, when I said that it was not unknown—and I will now translate—for Highland lairds—landlords—to be unwilling to part with their land, although I did not know whether that was the case. There could be many legal difficulties, but the fact remains that they are not yet resolved, and there may yet have to be a public inquiry which must inevitably hold up matters. Sooner or later, however, the last part of the road will be constructed.
I think that I have covered most of the points—in fact I hope nearly all of the points—to which I should reply in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, concluded by tying up the loose ends. He re-emphasised points to which he wished to direct my attention in particular. I am very grateful to him for doing so, because at least one of the points to which I have referred I should perhaps have omitted if he had not reminded me about it. I apologise to your Lordships for the extreme length of my reply. In particular, I must apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inch-rye. At least he has a remedy in his

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hands, for I have to wait until he finishes, since I shall be replying to him a little later. I thank your Lordships for taking part in this debate, and I renew my thanks to the noble Duke for having initiated it.
7.45 p.m.
TIIE DUKE OF ATHOLL: My Lords, I think the time factor saves my making a detailed reply, even if I wished to do so. I expect to disagree with some of the things the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, says. That is why I have the honour to look at him full face and not at the back of his head. I disagreed fundamentally with one of the things which one of my noble friends said; and that was that details of loans and grants from the Highland Development Board should not be available to the public. I think that it is essential if the public are to have confidence in the Highland Development Board that we should know where public money is going. I am sure that this is the whole trouble about the present fuss about the petro-chemical works at Invergordon.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I am sure the noble Duke does not expect the Board of Trade to make these figures available in relation to the very much larger sums which they disburse.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: I think that the Board of Trade disburse these sums only to companies and not to private individuals.
LORD HUGHES: No.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: I thought that they had to appear in company accounts so that one could see them in that way.
LORD HUGHES: It may be a company, or a partnership, or an individual.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: Then I apologise to the noble Lord, but I still think that these loans should be public. I personally should be proud to get a loan from the Highland Development Board; but unfortunately I am outside the area. But if I did get one I should certainly not mind anyone knowing. I hope—and I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, is with me on this—that the whole of the West Coast will not one day be trees up to 1,200 feet and deer
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thereafter. This would be a disaster. I was suggesting that there probably were places where it might be a better land use if it were trees and deer, rather than sheep.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this debate, except for the first 40 minutes, for which I apologise. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part. It has been extremely interesting, well worth while, and has raised a number of fascinating points. I should particularly like to thank my noble friend Lord Sinclair for a maiden speech which I thought was impeccable in every way. I hope that he will follow it up frequently. I admire the bravery of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Mansfield, as being the only non-Scot to take part in the debate. If the Tourist Board need a publicist down in England, they ought to employ the noble Lord part-time when he is not busy in this House. After all, he could usually give them Fridays, and even occasional Mondays; and I believe they would find it well worth while.
Last, but not least, I would thank the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, who has made not one speech but two. He has answered the majority of our points. There were some which were reasonably clear, in that they were within the purview of the debate on land use, but which he has not yet answered. I have no doubt that in these cases he will write and tell us the answer. I quite agree with the noble Lord that there were some which were well outside the terms of the Motion. With these few words, and since we all suffer from enough paper in our lives, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

FUGITIVE OFFENDERS BILL
Brought from Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

SALMON FISHING OFF GREENLAND
7.49 p.m.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what progress has been made during the past year, and what is the present position, in the negotiations with the Danish Government with a view to ascertaining the

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effects on stocks of Atlantic salmon from the heavy increase of netting around the Greenland coast; and whether any agreement for limitation within Greenland's territorial waters is in prospect. The noble Lord said: My Lords, it is I who feel that I owe an apology to the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, for asking this Question at this late hour after his most comprehensive winding up. He just about made the hour—I was watching carefully—giving him, say, three or four minutes for interruptions. Even so, it was a Parliamentary performance of no mean attainment.
I feel, on the other hand, that there is no need to apologise for asking this question. There is no need to remind your Lordships of the importance to the United Kingdom, and indeed to many other countries in the world, of the preservation of salmon. There is no need to remind your Lordships of the great value commercially to employment, to tourism and to sport for many thousands of people. There is no need to remind the House of the harsh dangers the poor salmon have to face from disease and from attacks of mankind with nets, traps and other lures. Equally, there is no need to remind your Lordships of the serious position that has arisen since it has been found that at certain times of the year salmon go around Greenland, and that the intense netting there is a grave menace. Finally, there is no need to remind your Lordships of the growth of the catch from Greenland: in 1957, 2 metric tons of salmon, and in 1964, 1,400 metric tons.
In 1965, it is true, the catch fell, due to the improvement in white fish prices; but I am told that in 1966 there was something like a 60 per cent. increase over 1965, and the figure may well equal that of 1964. Now there is every sign that within and without territorial waters efforts and techniques for catching salmon will improve. For instance, there is the case of one drift-netting ship, called "Bakur", which in 1966 alone took 70 tons of fish—21,000 fish; and this is undoubtedly going to stimulate the arrival of other drift-net ships.
The United States Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, on February 9, 1967, forecast increased research into fixed nets within the territorial waters in the direction of fixed floating traps and trolling traps. I cite that only to show that the
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menace is an increasing one at the present time, and my Question to the Minister is really a continuation of the Question and debate in your Lordships' House on July 5 last year. Then the noble Lord, the Minister, who was good enough to reply, accepted the case, I think, that there was a menace and a need for limitation. The noble Lord said that, with Danish and Greenland co-operation, investigation was going on by scientists to prove by tagging the damage to salmon. The Minister agreed, I think, that only by international action can the menace be reduced. I agree with all that, except that the damage to stocks is grave and continuous during this period of long-term research by scientists. And now—I speak quite frankly—there are indications that the Greenlanders are embarking on full-scale exploitation of these salmon fisheries.
Let us not delude ourselves that the Danish Government are likely to be able to check such a policy if pursued by Greenland. Since 1953 Greenland has been a Province. It has a Legislature of its own, called the Provincial Council, which has powers that are not likely to be challenged by the Danish Government. Having said that, I would add that I do not blame the Greenlanders. They have only one river of their own, and nature's riches from elsewhere have given them employment; have given them a higher standard of life than they have ever had before; have given them commercial plants for freezing and processing. Why, the Greenlanders ask, should they limit their exploitation in order to safeguard the interests of Canada, to the West, and of the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries, to the East? Indeed, it was recently said by some Greenlanders, "Oh, it is your fish coming to eat our food!" I admit that that is an extreme attitude, but it has been said, as I think the noble Lord probably knows.
To say to the Greenlanders, "You are killing the goose that lays the golden egg" will, I believe, carry little conviction if they are asked to sacrifice their livelihood in order to let the goose continue to lay golden eggs in nests in the United Kingdom, in Scandinavia or in North America. Thus, with a full realisation that only by international action within and without territorial waters around Greenland can the menace be

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limited, I nevertheless understand the Greenlanders' viewpoint, and I believe that we are really shadow-boxing unless vie have a new approach to this problem.
In a very few moments, I should like to outline what I believe is the possibility of a new approach. It is to concede to the Greenlanders a position to the extent of saying that, if we ask for a limitation in the interests of valuable preservation, we must range ourselves along with Greenland in accepting a total limitation of salmon taken out of the sea by ourselves. My Lords, it is what I would call the "new deal". My suggested start for the new deal is this. All interested countries, on both sides of the Atlantic, including Greenland and Denmark, and not waiting for the scientists' long-term results, should try now to meet and agree on the totals of fish to be extracted by each party from the sea within all the territorial waters. Secondly, they should try to negotiate some total at about the 1965 levels (it is not for me to say what the levels should be, but somewhere about the 1965 levels), which would give Greenland a fine position. Then they should press for prohibition of drift netting in all international waters outside territorial waters.
I accept, of course, that there will be many political and administrative problems, collectively and individually, in what I call the "new deal". I also accept that there would have to be rough justice in this country and elsewhere as between nets and rods. But, in conclusion, I do believe that, unless something like this is done by a new approach of conceding Greenland's position, and international acceptance of limitation, we shall get nowhere in the present talks, and salmon may become an ever rarer fish, heading for final extinction.
7.59 p.m.
LORD RATHCAVAN: My Lords, I should like to say a few words in support of my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye, who has always taken such a great interest in this question of salmon fishing. I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, whether he can say what was the result of a meeting which, I think, took place in Canada two years ago to discuss this whole question, where there were representatives of people connected with salmon fishing both from this
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side of the Atlantic and from the other. For all time it has been a mystery where the salmon went when they left the fresh waters of the rivers to go into the sea, to remain there for one or two years before they came back to spawn. Can the noble Lord say whether the scientists have established that this part of the sea near Greenland is really the place where the bulk of the salmon go from Europe and from North America, or is it only a place where some of them go? But whether it is the one or the other, there can be no doubt whatever that my noble friend is right when he says that this is an extraordinarily serious menace to the salmon fisheries.
There is one other question which I should like to ask the noble Lord. I think there have been a certain number of fish caught off Greenland which have been tagged in some of the rivers in this country, and probably in Canada as well. Can he say whether that is the case and, if so, does it show that of the fish caught off Greenland by the fishermen there a great number have come from the rivers in Europe and from the British islands?
8.2 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I think it is almost two years since the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, first raised this subject and we debated this matter. He performed a service then in directing your Lordships' attention to the fishery for Atlantic salmon which has developed off the coast of Greenland. He does so again, and I am glad to have this opportunity to report to your Lordships on the action which has been taken since we debated the matter in 1965 and on the further steps which are in prospect. What I have to say will, I think, answer both of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rathcavan.
First, may I very briefly recapitulate? It is now five or six years since it became apparent that the fishery off Greenland was expanding very rapidly. It did so from a catch that was negligible in 1957 to a peak of some 1,400 metric tons in 1964, or more than the total Scottish salmon catch in the same year. This caused great concern in Britain, because although we had very little definite information about the sea life of salmon bred in British waters there was a belief that their feeding grounds were somewhere off Greenland; and this belief

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was strengthened in 1964 when we had evidence of the recapture in Greenland waters of five salmon tagged in Scotland. But the position remained obscure. We did not know the answers to two vital questions: what proportion of the salmon leaving Britain did, in fact, go to Greenland for part of their sea life; and what proportion of those which did so would normally return to our own waters and be available to our industry. Yet this was precisely the kind of information we needed before we could make any assessment of the likely effect of the new Greenland fishery on our own salmon stocks.
This was the position when we debated the matter in July, 1965, when I stressed to your Lordships that to secure regulatory measures international agreement was necessary, and that to secure this agreement we needed scientific evidence about the state of the stocks and the need to protect them. Since then we have been trying by all means open to us to obtain scientific information, and in this quest I am happy to say that we have received the fullest and most cordial co-operation from the Danes themselves. In 1965 we sent a team of scientists from Scotland to work with Danish scientists at Greenland. Their main object was to catch and tag salmon there in the hope of finding out whether the salmon found off Greenland return to their native waters and, if so, to which rivers. A total of 223 salmon were tagged in 1965.
This work was intensified in 1966, when scientists from Scotland, England and Denmark spent several weeks at Greenland engaged on tagging and other investigations, including taking samples of the catches for size and age and also studying the blood groups and parasites of the fish to try to find a direct means of determining from which areas the individual salmon had come. A total of 728 salmon were tagged in the course of this work. Again, the scientists had full co-operation from the Danish authorities, who provided interpreters and two fully-manned research vessels. In addition to this work in Greenland waters we took steps to secure a marked increase in the number of smolts tagged as they left this country. Last year, therefore, saw an upsurge in activity as it were, at both ends of the problem: many more smolts were tagged in the United Kingdom
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to provide information about their destinations in the sea; and many more adult salmon were tagged at Greenland so that we might see what proportion of the fish found there returned to our waters.
What results have we achieved from this work? Of all the smolts and kelts tagged in Scotland between 1961 and 1965, a total of some 68,000, the number recaptured in Scottish waters has been 1,732. In addition 32 have been taken off Greenland. More particularly, of the 12,500 tagged in Scotland in 1965, eleven were recaptured off Greenland last year. The corresponding figures for smolts tagged in England and Wales were six recaptured at Greenland out of 6,000 tagged, while we know also that 102 tagged Canadian smolts were recaptured out of 62,500 liberated.
Although these figures make it certain that at least some of our salmon do go to Greenland, it would clearly be unwise to draw any general conclusions from them. The situation is similar when one considers what happens to salmon tagged at Greenland. Of the 223 tagged there by the scientists in 1965 only one has been recaptured—at Newfoundland. Similarly, of the much larger number tagged last year, only one has so far been recovered, this time in the River Tweed. This is an important development, for hitherto there has been no evidence that fish have come from Greenland to Scottish rivers. We now know that this does happen and, in consequence, the value of the scientific investigations is plain: but clearly it would be wrong to base major conclusions on the evidence of a single fish.
As yet, therefore, we cannot say definitely what proportion of the fish which are being captured at Greenland are fish which would not in any event have returned to our shores but would have figured among the 90 per cent. or so which leave us as smolts and never return. For if it transpires that most of the fish taken at Greenland must be counted in this 90 per cent. loss, then the development of the Greenland fishery will not be at the expense of our stocks. It will take some time to obtain the answer to this question. For it we must await further results from the increased tagging done last year and from future work.
I have given these details to show some of the difficulties in carrying out our investigations and in establishing on a

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scientific basis the need for international conservation measures. This is not to say that no discussions have taken place. As I informed your Lordships in 1965, when we approached the Danish authorities about limiting the Greenland fishery while investigations were being carried out, they did not feel able to accede to this request, since they considered that there was only a slight probability that the fishery, even though substantially increased, would have any appreciable impact on European or American stocks of salmon. We have therefore had, of necessity, to concentrate our efforts on scientific work, in which, as I have said, the Danes have willingly co-operated.
In this connection—and this is the other point to which the noble Lord, Lord Rathcavan, referred—a joint working party has been set up by two of the main international bodies concerned, the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries, and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. This working party met in Madrid in May of last year and again in Copenhagen in October. They have since completed a report, but because they do not have some of the crucial information needed they have not been able to come to definite conclusions on the main issues. They have, however, made recommendations for the intensification of research, and have defined in more detail the investigations which could help to throw more light on the problem.
In passing, may I say that in due course we expect to receive a number of copies of this report, and if the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, and the noble Lord, Lord Rathcavan, would like the opportunity of having a look at it I shall be glad to arrange for it to be made available to them. Whether I can give it to them to keep, or whether they will merely get it to read, I do not know, because I am not aware how many copies will be available. But at least I think I can offer them the chance of looking at it.
It is of course disappointing that the Danish authorities have not seen their way to introduce a positive limitation on the fishery, but in view of what the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, has said about the position of the Greenlanders, while we may regret their action, or their lack of action, we can understand it. As
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he said, although the position improved in 1965 in that it fell from 1,400 tons to 857 tons, it is a matter which must be of concern to noble Lords that in 1966 the position worsened; and as we understand it the catch in 1966 was 1,292 tons—not so very far short of the peak in 1964.
I might add—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, referred to this—that the lower figure of 1965 did not mean that the salmon were less abundant off the Greenland coast that year. It was simply that it was paying them better to fish for what they prefer to fish for, which is cod. It was the poor cod fishing in 1964 which sent them on the track of salmon in the numbers in which they went. I may say that when I was in Denmark last year I was appalled to be told that the Greenlanders did not regard salmon fishing as a normal exploit at all. They may of course be changing their minds as a result of experience in recent years, but originally if they caught a salmon the only useful purpose to which they conceived it could be put was for it to be cut up and used as bait to catch cod. Obviously, they were not doing that with 1,292 tons last year.
My Lords, I have given a full account of the work which has been done and which is on hand. I cannot claim that negotiations with the Danish Government are in train, or that there is any prospect of securing either an international agreement for a general limitation on the fishery for Atlantic salmon or a specific and direct agreement relative to Greenland's territorial waters. Because of the great significance of the fishery for Greenland's economy, and the many unknowns and imponderables, we must be on firmer ground in regard to scientific evidence than we yet are if we are to have any prospect of establishing the need for limitation. The picture I present, therefore, is one of increased scientific investigation, evaluation and discussion, aimed at producing this scientific basis. That our efforts have not been successful will not surprise any of your Lordships who know the enormous difficulties and problems involved in this region, where there are such gaps in our basic knowledge. But I assure your Lordships that we will develop and intensify this work still further, fully conscious of the important issues involved, and of the need

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to avert any possible threat to this important natural resource of ours.
The noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, referred to drift netting outside of territorial waters. This is a matter which is occasioning concern to the Canadian Government. The noble Lord has probably seen—and I cannot refer to this at any length—that the Canadians are to attempt to get a prohibition on salmon fishing on the high seas in the area for which the North-West Atlantic Council are responsible. Having said that, he would not expect me to commit Her Majesty's Government to any course of action, because it would be quite wrong if we created the impression that we went to a council meeting of this kind to hear the evidence as put forward, and at the same time demonstrated that we had made up our minds in advance what we were going to do about it. But we shall be very interested in what evidence the Canadian have to offer, because it may well be that the menace of deep-sea extraterritorial fishing for salmon will prove in due course an even greater menace than the fishing in inshore waters.
Having said that, I should like to assure the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, that I am very interested in the new approach which he has suggested. I shall certainly be happy to discuss this with my colleague at the Scottish Office who now has responsibility for these matters, and with his officials. I will certainly see that this suggestion is conveyed to them. It is not completely new, because we tried a limitation before, but without success. However, this is a variation of it. It is not asking somebody else to do
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something for our benefit: it is a proposal which implies that we also are prepared to share in the sacrifice. My first reaction is that it is a proposal which is well worthy of consideration, and I certainly will put it before my colleague. In the long run, our conservation proposals, as has been the case with all these things in the past, must rest on persuading the other people concerned that it is in everybody's interest that something of this kind should be done; and this inevitably is a lengthy process because it must be based on evidence. If the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, should prove to be a practical one, it could at least offer some hope of relief until a permanent solution becomes possible.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: My Lords, before the noble Lord finishes, may I ask him whether a copy of the report of the two bodies to which he referred, when it eventually appears, could be put in the Library? Because I think other noble Lords besides my two noble friends might be interested in reading it. I know that I should.
LORD HUGHES: If it is possible to do so I will arrange for that to be done. As I understand the position in the past, it is that these reports have been made available only to the Governments concerned. I should not like to get into too great difficulties about it; but provided it does not present any international problem I shall be very happy to arrange for that to be done.
House adjourned at nineteen minutes past eight o'clock.