Lords Sitting of 20 February 1967

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayer—Read by the Lord Bishop of Bristol.

UNIVERSITY COURSES IN AGRICULTURE
2.35 p.m.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, in view of a recent communication by the University Grants Committee to certain universities suggesting that they should withdraw their degree courses in agriculture, whether they will state how many degree courses in agriculture they wish to see maintained in the universities of this country, and what is their policy with regard to advanced level teaching in agriculture.]
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, first degree courses in agricultural subjects are provided at seven universities in England, at the University of Wales, in Aberystwyth and Bangor, at three universities in Scotland and at Queen's University, Belfast—a total of 13 university institutions. In the academic year 1965–66 there were 2,471 undergraduate students of agriculture (including forestry) and 562 post-graduates; and I understand that there is no intention of reducing these total numbers. In the light of the Bosanquet Report on the Demand for Agricultural Graduates and of their own investigation, the University Grants Committee have suggested that rationalisation of university provision for agriculture would lead to fewer but stronger schools, with benefit both to the education of students and to research. It is the policy of the Government to regard matters of this kind as coming within the province of the University Grants Committee.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, may I thank the noble
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Baroness for her informative Answer to my Question? I thank her for reassuring me about the general numbers of graduates from agricultural departments, but may I ask her whether there is truth in the rumour that approaches by the U.G.C. have in fact been made to the Universities of Leeds, Glasgow and Cambridge? May I further ask the noble Baroness whether she is aware that especially Leeds and Cambridge have agricultural departments of outstanding value? In view of the need for greater technological skills in agriculture, would the noble Baroness please have a further look at this to see whether it would not be wiser to expand the existing courses rather than to contract them in order to enlarge others? Would it not be better to expand them all? Is there not scope for that?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his supplementary questions. I will certainly obtain replies for him. Obviously I have no specific figures before me now which will either confirm or deny the first of his supplementary questions, but he will know, I am sure, that the factors taken into account in making decisions of this kind really lie within the province of the University Grants Committee. However, I shall certainly follow this up and let the noble Lord have further information on the questions he has raised.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her further reply, but may I ask her whether, in the further considerations that are given to this matter, she would ask that the University Grants Committee should consult some of the leaders of the agricultural industry as well as of the educational world, in order to make sure that we get the right result?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I will certainly do that, bearing in mind, as the noble Lord has put it, that of course it will have to be a request rather than a directive.
LORD PEDDIE: My Lords, could my noble friend give any indication as to the number of overseas students attending degree courses in agriculture in this country?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I have not that figure available at the moment, but I shall be happy to let my noble friend have it.

STUDLEY AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE
2.39 p.m.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government to state their policy with regard to the future of Studley Agricultural College, Warwickshire.]
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science has reluctantly decided that the present deficiency grant paid to the Studley College must be withdrawn, and the existing courses will cease in 1969. He has reached this decision after reviewing the provision for agricultural education at this level in the light particularly of the recent Report of the Advisory Committee on Agricultural Education, and has come to the conclusion that the needs can be more effectively and economically met at other institutions. Among other factors, he has taken into account the substantial capital expenditure which would be necessary if Studley were to continue as an agricultural college.
I wish to emphasise that this decision in no way reflects on the achievement of Studley and the way in which the College has been conducted by the governing body and the staff. The Governors have been told that the Department will give them all possible assistance in finding a satisfactory alternative sphere of future activity for the College, and in dealing with the problems which will arise in the transitional period.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, may I thank the noble Baroness for her Answer about Studley College, and ask her whether her heart is not rent by being the Government's mouthpiece for the abolition of this most admirable girls' agricultural college? Is the noble Baroness aware that the Pilkington Committee's advice on agricultural education was not all that strong against single-sex colleges; and that, although I recognise that, ideally, a mixed-sex college is best, more often
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than not it is not possible to get enough girls in a men's college? Is she further aware that, if the number of girls is small, since at this tender age they do not have the same spirit and independence as the noble Baroness they are sometimes overwhelmed by the male student body? Would she not agree that the advice of the Pilkington Committee is the ideal, but that in the meantime we should have the practical advantage of a college which is most valuable to the agricultural world? Would the noble Baroness be so kind as to have another look at this matter?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, the noble Lord has, of course, very cleverly put his finger on the fact that, as a leader of a women's organisation, I, too, have received some pleas on this behalf. Amazingly enough, as a feminist I am not entirely "sold" on the idea that one must necessarily have single-sex anything. Unfortunately, I think, the argument that 5 women among 95 men puts the women at a disadvantage has been used all too frequently in the past. In fact, I think 5 women are often quite equal to 95 men. However, I think the considerations here have been almost wholly related to the large amount of capital expenditure which would be involved, and that the sex angle of this matter, although I am sure it will naturally come into one's thinking, as this is an all-women's College, is quite beside the point. I would assure the noble Lord—because I appreciate the depth of his feelings, and those of many others—that I will go back to my right honourable friend to see whether we can talk about this without giving any promise or commitment.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, may I thank the noble Baroness for that sympathetic answer? May I ask her, in looking at the capital cost involved in bringing this College up to the state of full equipment that we should all like, whether that will be carefully considered against the alternative of building a completely new college (which I see Mr. Goronwy Roberts said was to be built at Aberyst with) which must cost very much more? Here is a College which for 70 years has been giving wonderful education to many girls and is most valuable to the industry. It has a full waiting list. Would the noble

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Baroness please ask her right honourable friend in another place to look much more carefully at this matter?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, the noble Lord is most persuasive; but I feel sure that he is relating unrelated facts. I do not think the new college at Aberystwith is in any way allied to the disappearance of Studley.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, will the noble Lady, if this College is to be closed, see that the Government ensure that there are places for girls in the other colleges; otherwise the men may take all the places themselves?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, the noble Baroness can rest assured that in that connection I would certainly be at one with her—and I am probably in the right place to help. I know that it will reassure her to know that the vast majority of colleges—I should like to say all of them—have places for women.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lady whether there will be any difficulty, if this College is closed, in absorbing the staff who, naturally, are anxious about what is to happen?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: Yes, my Lords, I can assure the noble Baroness that this is a point on which the Department feel they can probably best help the authorities at Studley. In any case the future of the College, although it may not continue in the same way, is another matter. But the Department is much concerned about assisting on that level particularly.
BARONESS BROOKE OF YSTRADFELLTE: My Lords, would the noble Baroness be good enough to represent in the appropriate quarters that those members of the staff who up to now have taught only girls may find it rather difficult when, in other teaching posts, they may have to teach men as well? It may not be so easy for them to adapt themselves to that form of education.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: Yes, my Lords, I will certainly make that point; although I am not wholly assured that it is a valid one, because, in my experience I found it much easier to teach boys than girls. There may be some Freudian explanation.

PROPOSED THIRD LONDON AIRPORT
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: 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 are aware of the growing concern felt over their lack of decision on a third London airport, and how soon they expect to announce this decision.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (LORD KENNET): My Lords, the Government are fully aware of the urgency of a decision on a third London Airport. A statement will be made as soon as possible.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that reply, may I ask whether he is aware that it has been estimated that unless a third London Airport can be in operation by the early 1970s, air traffic coming to this country may be forced to be turned away for lack of facilities?
LORD KENNET: Yes, my Lords, the Government are perfectly aware of what will happen if a third London Airport is not set up in good time; but the choice of where the airport should be placed is intensely complicated, and a wide spectrum of considerations have to be taken into account. The matter is being considered as fast as is compatible with the reasonable confidence that we are going to get the right answer.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, the noble Lord is talking about setting up "in good time". Is it not a fact that the good time has almost gone?
LORD KENNET: No, my Lords the Government feel that the present two airports, and their accessories, can handle the traffic for a little longer.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, would the noble Lord confirm that if Stansted is not chosen for the third airport a further lengthy public inquiry will have to be held before a new site can be announced?
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I could neither confirm that, nor say that it would not be necessary?
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, would my noble friend bear in mind that there is very strong feeling among many people in Essex against setting up the airport at. Stansted? Does he realise that it would be a mistake to hasten too rapidly and thereby rule out full consideration of alternative sites?
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, is the noble Lord further aware that the view just expressed has a good deal of support in all quarters of this House?
LORD KENNET: My Lords, the inconvenience to the inhabitants of any part of the country from setting up a new airport is one of the factors which must be taken into account whatever site is chosen; and it is being taken into account at the moment.
LORD ERROLL OF HALE: My Lords, would it not now be much better to set up to a third international airport in the North of England, rather than make all those who live North of the Trent come to London?
LORD KENNET: My Lords, there are already in the northern part of the country airports which can handle international traffic. The possibility of not having a new international airport at all near London is also being examined, along with the others. But I think I should not be indiscreet if I said that it did not look a very good bet.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: My Lords, could the first London Airport be completed before the third is started?

THE CIVIL SERVICES: RECRUITING FROM ARMED FORCES
2.49 p.m.
LORD FARINGDON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the difficulty of recruiting suitable men for the civilian uniformed services (Police, Fire Services, et cetera) they will consider the possibility of obtaining additional personnel from among members of the
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Armed Forces who are redundant or completing their terms of service; and to this end in order to make engagement in such services more attractive, whether they will consider the possibility of allowing length of service in the Armed Forces to be taken into account when calculating entitlement to pension.]
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, ex-Service men with the necessary qualifications are eligible to join the civilian uniformed services and are welcome recruits. The superannuation schemes in the Police and Fire Services, for example, provide for half-pay pension at age 50 or above, after twenty-five years' police or fire service, and a pension equal to two-thirds of pay after thirty years. For those who are unable to complete twenty-five years' service before pension able age there are arrangements for short-service pensions which are very favourable to late entrants, including those my noble friend has in mind. Her Majesty's Government consider that they offer a sufficient inducement.
LORD FARINGDON: My Lords, I thank my noble friend very much for his very helpful Answer. On the other hand, is it not a fact that all the civilian uniformed services, the Police, the Prison Service and the Fire Service, are undermanned? If they are so undermanned, might it not be worth while considering additional attractions, in order to get the men needed? Is my noble friend not aware that those men who have completed a period of service in a disciplined service are particularly valuable for the uniformed civilian services? Cannot he reconsider the situation and add to its effectiveness?
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that there is some shortage in the three civilian uniformed services to which he referred. The Police Advisory Board Working Party on Manpower recently considered recruitment to the Police Service and recommended an age-limit concession to attract ex-Service men. Their recommendation that ex-Service men should be eligible to join the police up to the age of 40, instead of to the normal upper age limit of 30, has been endorsed by the Police Advisory Board and accepted by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, and a

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regulation to give effect to it will be laid before the House soon. The concession will also apply to former merchant seamen. In order to encourage the recruitment of Regular members of the Armed Forces into the Fire Service, the Fire Service (Appointments and Promotion) Regulations already provide that, whereas the normal age limit for entry into the service of a whole-time member is 31, persons who have completed a fixed period of service in the Regular Armed Forces of the Crown are permitted to join up to the age of 35 years.
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, is not the suggestion of my noble friend particularly worthy of consideration by a Government who are pledged to transferable pensions outside the public service?
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend.
LORD FARINGDON: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his reply, which is very full and helpful. I wonder whether he can tell me the percentage of men who, on finishing their period in the Armed Forces, in fact go into one of these civilian services?
LORD BOWLES: No, my Lords, I am afraid I cannot tell my noble friend that. I am not certain that everyone who has been in uniform for about 22 years would wish to put on another uniform. It is just one of those things: some people like being in unform, and some do not.
VISCOUNT MOUNTGARRET: My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, has made a very interesting point. I would ask the Government to bear in mind that the possibility of recruiting men for the Forces as a whole might well suffer very badly unless they can produce come form of inducement to people to join the civilian uniformed services, which are very short of manpower. The advertisements which the Ministry of Defence seem to produce are far—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order!
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE EARL OF LONGFORD): My Lords, perhaps I ought to point out to the noble Viscount that he should put his remarks in the form of a question.
VISCOUNT MOUNTGARRET: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, and apologise to your Lordships. I wish to support the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, and ask whether the Government would be prepared to give the Question serious consideration, for I feel that the terms offered to men joining the services at the moment are not sufficiently attractive to encourage recruitment.
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, I told the House that my right honourable friend has set up an inquiry and that some of the recommendations of that inquiry to encourage further recruitment are being set in force very soon by Order in Council.

FUTURE BUSINESS: THE PARKES CASE
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of your Lordships if I inform you that the Unstarred Question in the name of the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, which is down to be asked to-morrow, Tuesday, will be taken on Wednesday, February 22.

GENERAL RATE BILL [H.L.]
2.55 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time. Your Lordships may remember that this is a Bill consolidating the whole of our Statute Law in the field of rating and valuation going back some 366 years. It repeals, in whole or in part, 35 existing Acts (13 of them wholly), and it will, I am sure, be of great assistance to all those concerned with the law in this field. We are particularly grateful to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills for having dealt with this Bill so expeditiously. If all goes well, the Bill should be in force by April 1, which is much the most convenient time of the year in this field of the law. I beg to move.
Moved. That the Bill be now read 3a,—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

EXPORT GUARANTEES BILL
2.57 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD WALSTON): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The purpose of the Bill is to extend the ability of the Export Credits Guarantee Department to assist exporters by insuring them against credit risks. The existing Acts under which the Department is authorised to operate lay down a limit to the total liabilities which the Department may assume at any time. In recent years there has been a considerable increase in exports and a considerable growth in the proportion of exports insured with E.C.G.D. The Department, therefore, would, in the absence of the present Bill, soon reach a position where it would be obliged to turn away business which otherwise it would consider to be sound, because it had no money with which to cover its liabilities.
Before dealing with the separate clauses of the Bill there are a few general points I should like to make. First, and most important, there is no question of altering the basis on which E.C.G.D. conducts its business. It will be expected, as it is expected and as it does now, to operate on a self-supporting basis, subject to the proviso that it must give the fullest possible assistance it can to the whole of the British export trade. It will continue to apply exactly the same criteria to the business offered to it, and this Bill does not in any way seek to extend its powers, other than to extend the volume of business it may transact. The type of business remains the same.
Secondly, the Export Credits Guarantee Department at present shows in its accounts a surplus of some £60 million in respect of operations under Section 1 of the main Act, and of some £19 million in respect of operations under Section 2. Later on I will explain to your Lordships, for the benefit of those who do not know already, the differences between Section 1 and Section 2. These two figures make it perfectly clear that the business has in the past been prudently run and that any mere extension of the volume of
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insurance is unlikely to result in any financial misfortune. On the other hand, we must remember that E.C.G.D. is not intended to be a profit-making organisation. When one remembers that this surplus has been accumulated over a period of very nearly forty years of operation, I think one would agree that the management of E.C.G.D. has been highly successful and deserves a great deal of credit for avoiding, on the one hand, loss from its business and, on the other hand, the accumulation of an undue surplus.
The third point I should like to make is that although Parliament has set these limits as a measure of control on the Department's activities, it has never obliged the Department to turn business away or intended that it should do so. A long series of amending Acts, similar to the Bill which is now before the House, has provided from time to time for elbow room for a further few years' expansion. Having given your Lordships these assurances and this brief description of the purpose of the Bill, may I say this: because I know that your Lordships would wish to allow a successful trading Department to continue its valuable help to exporters with no foreseeable loss of public funds, and because I know that the Bill has received, on the whole, a kind reception in another place, I am confident in commending this Bill to your Lordships.
Now I should like to turn to the technicalities of the Bill. As I have already mentioned, the Department carries out two classes of insurance, under Section 1 or Section 2 of the basic Act, the Export Guarantees Act of 1949. These two kinds of business are more commonly known and perhaps can be better described as commercial business and national interest business. The former, transacted under Section 1, is business on which the Department has consulted, and in practice has always followed the advice of, the Advisory Council. The Advisory Council is an independent Council of eminent bankers and business men, appointed by the President of the Board of Trade, with the duty of advising the Department as to which business they regard as insurable by sound business standards.
The second kind of business, transacted under Section 2 of the original Act, is

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business which does not carry the recommendation of the Advisory Council and which in fact has never been referred to the Advisory Council, but which the Government are satisfied should be transacted in the national interest. Broadly speaking, the main uses of this section are to maintain a foothold in markets where the prospects are not good enough to justify cover on commercial grounds, to provide forms of cover which are experimental and to cover cases where the risks are heavily concentrated on certain large projects. It is clear that this business, lacking the endorsement of the Council, must be marginally more risky. Nevertheless, the E.C.G.D. still recognise an obligation to underwrite soundly and to balance its books, and up to the present it can be claimed that it has succeeded. As I have already told your Lordships, there is a surplus on Section 2 operations of some £19 million.
Let me now come to the detailed provisions of the present Bill. The Bill proposes to increase the maximum permitted liabilities under Section 1 from £1,500 million, as it is at present, to £2,400 million. When the present limit was set in 1964, Section 1 business was growing at a rate of approximately £100 million annually, and the Act then passed allowed for five years of growth at that rate, although it is fair to add that at that time, as some of your Lordships will remember, it was foreseen that this rate might well increase. I am glad to be able to tell your Lordships that this is exactly what has happened, and in the past two years, greatly helped no doubt by the numerous improvements and cheapening of the Department's facilities during the tenure of the present Government, it has been growing at an annual rate of around £170 million, in place of the foreseen £100 million. The result of this is that the limit is being reached much sooner than the five years originally envisaged. At January 31, 1967, liabilities under Section 1 stood at £1,399·5 million and when account is taken of moral commitments on business still being negotiated—business totalling £44 million—your Lordships will appreciate that if no action is taken the ceiling will very soon be reached. This we must not allow to happen, because we cannot envisage E.C.G.D.'s being forced to turn sound business away.
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In looking at the figure by which the limit should be increased, the Government have felt that it should aim at a further five years' elbow room on the basis of present growth. If we find that we are mistaken and that growth increases still more rapidly, we shall have no embarrassment whatsoever in coming back to your Lordships' House with an other Bill after a shorter period than the five years. What we have to do is to strike a balance between dispensing with effective control, on the one hand, and, on the other, burdening Parliament with too frequent legislation. I think your Lordships will agree that a five-year target is about right, even though we may find that we have to come back more often.
As to the business under Section 2, there is no imminent problem here at all. Current liabilities and potential commitments stood at £888 million on January 31, 1967, and the rate of in crease is expected to be about £125 million a year. There is therefore plenty of room under the limit for some time to come, but not for five years, on the basis of our estimates of existing growth. In order to avoid the likelihood of a "leapfrog" Bill, when we should have to come to Parliament because we were right up to the limit under Section 2 although we still had plenty of room under Section 1, we propose to increase the limit of liabilities under Section 2 from £1,300 million to £1,500 million.
I hope your Lordships will agree that this is a simple and straightforward Bill which deserves your support. I should add that debates on similar E.C.G.D. Bills have in the past afforded an opportunity, which does not come too often, for a broader discussion of the work of this somewhat technical but altogether vital Department. There are many services and inducements offered to the British exporter, many of these by Her Majesty' Government. Take any of them away and the exporter would be that much less effective. But if we were to remove E.C.G.D. facilities a great volume of exporting would not be undertaken at all on credit terms, and if it were not offered on credit terms there is no doubt at all that much of it would be lost to competitors who did offer credit.

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It is vital, therefore, in the competitive world of to-day, that our exporters should have the best possible service of credit insurance that we can give them. It is not often that one finds something which has halved in price over the last ten years. It is still rarer to find that quality has been improved during that period. But that is the record of the E.C.G.D. In this field I would claim that our exporters are at least as well served as any of their overseas competitors—and that, I think, in many cases may be an understatement. I hope there may be several noble Lords this after noon who will wish to discuss aspects of the general work of the Department, and I shall certainly listen with the greatest attention to what may be said. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Walston.)
3.10 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, first, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Walston, for his explanation of this Bill and to make clear from the start that, far from having any objection to the Bill, we welcome it. The Bill reflects the growth in the liabilities which the Department is called upon to assume. That growth is, in the main, a matter for satisfaction and represents the increasing success of the Department in performing a very useful service for our exporters. I say "in the main", merely because there has been a declining value in money, and this is a tendency which continues. But, as a result of this success in persuading an increasing proportion of our exporters to buy cover for the whole of their exports on short-term credit, the Department, as the noble Lord has said, has been able to offer them lower rates and to increase the proportion of both buyer risk and market risk covered. I do not think the noble Lord would wish it to be said that these reductions in rates have taken place only during the period of office of the Labour Government, although this might have been understood from one of his remarks. The House will know very well that rates have been reduced from time to time. They were reduced substantially twice in 1933, for example, and they have been reduced twice since then.
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The review of rates for specific guarantees on individual contracts for the export of capital goods was carried out at the instance of Mr. Maudling and resulted in substantial reductions in 1961, and there were further lesser reductions in 1963 and 1965. As the noble Lord said, new forms of cover are introduced from time to time, the most notable, perhaps, being the small exporters policy and the financial guarantees to banks lending to overseas buyers, which were also introduced in 1961. The growth over the past twenty years in the proportion of total exports covered by the Department from 8 per cent. to 27 per cent. is a remarkable testimony to the wisdom of the Advisory Council and the skill and salesmanship of the Department.
The requirement in the 1949 Act limiting the total of liabilities that may be incurred by the Department means that from time to time Parliament is given an opportunity to take a look at the working of the system when a Bill is introduced to increase the maximum of liabilities, whether it covers insurance under Section 1 or insurance cover afforded in the national interest under Section 2. The requirement gives the Government the opportunity of telling Parliament of developments and trends, and Parliament an opportunity of expressing to the Government not only congratulations to the Department on its achievements, but any doubts and anxieties that Parliament may feel, and of making suggestions for the future.
To some extent, the need for the Government to tell Parliament about developments when introducing these periodic Bills is reduced by the admirable booklet on E.C.G.D. services, first issued under the Conservative Government, and reprinted in 1966. The Board of Trade also recently published a handbook for exporters on credit insurance. It appears from the form of the booklet, called "E.C.G.D.", that it is intended to reissue parts of it yearly—that is, Part IV—the blue section of the book, dealing with facilities, and the pink section giving the composition of the Export Guarantees Advisory Council and statistics about the Department's operations. Useful as these documents are, it seems to me odd that the 1949 Act does not require the publication of an annual report giving the

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financial results of the previous year's operations and an account of changes in policy in the scope of business that the Department is prepared to undertake, and in the terms and conditions on which it is willing to undertake it. The Act, I think, merely requires a quarterly return to be made by the Board of Trade of the aggregate of guarantees under Sections 1 and 2 of the Act during the previous quarter.
I would ask the Government, in view of the enormous increase in the scope of the activities of the Department, whether they would consider the issue of an annual return with acounts annexed to it. After all, the E.C.G.D. is essentially a business undertaking, even though it is a Government institution; and in addition, of course, its activities result in placing the taxpayer atrisk—a risk which is all the more difficult to quantify because it is so hard to predict the future antics of Governments in interfering with international trade.
Since the E.C.G.D. is essentially a business undertaking, the question has been raised from time to time whether it should continue to be a Government Department. The question was considered by the Niemeyer Committee in 1929 and by the Speed Committee in 1958. Both recommended that it should, for three main reasons: first, because public money was at stake; secondly, because it was, to some extent, an instrument of national economic policy; and, thirdly, because it depended to some extent on information from Government sources. But time has gone by, and things are changing. In particular—a point which the noble Lord did not mention—I understand that responsibility for overseas assistance loans has now largely, if not wholly, been assumed by the Ministry of Overseas Development.
The main obstacle to turning the Department into an independent Corporation lay in the fact that part of the business done consisted in giving insurance cover, not on a strictly commercial basis, but on some test of encouraging trade or providing economic assistance in the national interest under Sections2 and 3. Section 3, it appears, is now a dead letter, so far as E.C.G.D. is concerned, and I understand also that part of Section 2 now comes under the Minis-
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try of Overseas Development or is operated by them. Yet the opportunity has not been taken to tidy up the statutory position in this Bill. I would ask the noble Lord to say whether any tidying up is necessary, or whether things are satisfactory as they stand.
That leaves Section 2, under which cover is said to fall, broadly, into two categories: first of all, guarantees of credit on exports to dubious markets which the Advisory Council consider offer too uncertain a prospect to justify cover under normal commercial tests—that is, that the risk is really uninsurable; and, secondly, selective cover such as that given under financial guarantees and the small exporter policy (I think the noble Lord described them as experimental forms) where the Department considers that the risk is heavily weighted against it.
I venture to question whether small exporter policies really come into these categories at all. They are, after all, in the nature of special introductory terms, applied with the object of encouraging the policy holder to become a regular customer on standard commercial terms. Secondly, it is not clear that most risks which the Advisory Council consider too uncertain to justify cover under Section 1 are necessarily uninsurable at commercial rates; and, in so far as they are uninsurable, it is doubtful whether exporters should be encouraged to deal with such markets at all, except for strategic reasons. They may wish to, but it is doubtful whether they should be encouraged to do so. Certainly the results of business under Section 2 do not suggest that there is any essential difference in the nature of business from Section 1. No doubt the risks are greater—the credit is longer, cover is given on the individual transaction and not only all the exports of the exporter, and so on. But a balance on these transactions, which the noble Lord mentioned, of £19 million has accumulated all the same. So insuring credit on these cannot be all that uncommercial.
The fact is that it is open to doubt whether it is really in the national interest in the present state of our balance of payments, to give long-term credit to countries that are perfectly capable of financing their own development. With the long-term tendency of money to

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decline in value, we are lucky if we get back two-thirds of the value in purchasing power of capital goods sold on 15 years' credit. I readily concede that there may be particular circumstances where it is desirable to give employment to industries in this country which are temporarily short of work, especially when the reason for lack of orders is directly due to Government policy, as is the case with the steel plant producers at the present time. In such cases, not only the credit insurance but at least part of the credit could, in my view, properly be provided by the Government.
It so happens that the market in which there is the best immediate prospect of getting orders is precisely the one which caused the E.C.G.D. the heaviest losses it has ever had to suffer. It is plainly in the national interest that we should continue to have a steel plant production industry in this country, but it does not follow that the E.C.G.D. should be called on to carry overseas risk on that domestic result. Whatever guarantees are necessary should surely be provided under Section 5, or in some other way, but not at the expense of other insurers with E.C.G.D., as it has to be, of course, if E.C.G.D. is overall to balance. If that kind of risk is excluded, then the only remaining objection to turning the E.C.G.D. into a corporation seems to be access to Government information. This is one I find hard to understand. Exporters are constantly seeking, and obtaining, information from Government sources, quite apart from E.C.G.D. Why should not an insurance corporation, set up by the Government, have access to Government information in the same way?
Considerable as have been the achievements of E.C.G.D., the Department has not been free from criticism; of course it has not. In referring to some points of criticism I do not mean in any way to detract from its achievements, but it may be that some of the criticisms have some substance and that they might be less likely to arise if E.C.G.D. were not a Department of Government. The main criticism—this is the recurrent one—has always been that because of the rigidity of the Department's methods export orders are sometimes lost. For example, the Department insists that the whole of an exporter's regular short-term result
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business should be insured with E.C.G.D. under a comprehensive policy which may allow for more than six month's credit if it has an extended terms endorsement. In other words, it is all or nothing. But it is not quite all. For E.C.G.D. may refuse to give cover on what it regards as a bad risk. The exporter himself may be satisfied with his customer's credit and the prospects of the market; and he may turn out to have been quite right. But meantime he may have lost the order. The Department says, rather blandly, I thought, in its booklet that the exporter can of course proceed at his own risk. But it is a bit hard to compel the insured to cover exports on which the risk is infinitesimal and then to refuse him cover on risks which are somewhat greater than average.
Sometimes an order is lost if it is not accepted forthwith. The Department says that nearly 70 per cent. of applications for buyer approval are cleared within 48 hours. That is very commendable, but it means that over 30 percent. take longer. Then, again, for some markets E.C.G.D. rations the amount of cover it is prepared to give. Once the quota is filled the exporter must carry the risk himself or lose the order. I would suggest that it might be better at least to give the exporter the chance of obtaining cover at an enhanced price. Another oddity is that there seems to be no way of getting insurance cover to enable the exporter to recover the value of the goods from a defaulting buyer; yet E.C.G.D. may refuse to pay a claim if the exporter has not taken court action when the Department thinks he should have done. I suggest that this is a point which might well be worth looking at to see whether cover cannot also be given for the expenses of the court action.
My Lords, for all its faults (and it is bound to have some) E.C.G.D. is rightly acclaimed as giving as good cover as the noble Lord said, as having as good export credit guarantee arrangements as any organisation in the world—and I would say it has the best. Yet it may well be that it could be still better if it were a corporation instead of a Department. In my view, it is fundamentally wrong that the flow of trade should be determined by Government Departments. By all means let Governments give aid to each other, but let them leave trade

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to the traders, except where trade is with Communist countries and where it is often necessary for Government to come in. By all means let the Government give help, but not direction.
Besides, there is something odd in a Government Department doing as the noble Lord said and following the decisions of an Advisory Council. The Advisory Council could easily be converted in to the board of the corporation, and it would be much better, because the decisions would then be the decisions of the board. It seems not just odd, but wrong, that the balances which ought to form the reserves are snaffled and spent by the Treasury. It is quite impossible for a body of men to weigh the marginal value of giving or with holding cover properly unless in the long run they are responsible for meeting the claims which may result. That is why a commercial board should decide on commercial cover and leave the Treasury to decide what it is worth to the nation to back certain contracts on exceptional terms. Speaking personally, I envisage the time when one export credit guarantee corporation will serve a whole group of nations. It would help in that direction if we had a corporation rather than a Department giving commercial cover; and we should not be the first. All I am suggesting is that, in view of the changes that have taken, and are taking, place, including the dangerous growth in economic nationalism, it would be worth while considering once again whether we should not get export credit insurance on a sound business footing in this country.
I should like to conclude by asking three questions. First of all, what has been the response to the introductory facilities offered to the small exporter? How many policies have been taken out? In how many cases have those who started in that way gone on to take out the ordinary comprehensive policy for short-term credit cover? Secondly, the 1966 booklet said that up to a year ago 37 financial guarantees of loan and interest, amounting to just under £300 million, had been given to banks lending to overseas buyers of British capital goods, and that 55 more cases involving just over £300 million were under negotiation. I believe that in 1964 only 8 or 10 guarantees were given. Can the noble Lord
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say what the state of play was at the end of last year, or at some later date, and what progress has been made with the 55 cases, what new projects have come along since last February, and how many have been clinched?
Lastly, why is it that the largest area of complaint, or at any rate the most vociferous area of complaint, continues to be that for big capital projects where British suppliers are unable to offer as good credit terms as some of their rivals? It is all very well for E.C.G.D. to say in their booklet that they are wholly prepared—and these are their words—to put British exporters on level terms with foreign competitors. The problem is to convince the Department and the Treasury about the terms which foreign rivals are offering. In these matters it cannot be a question of documentary proof; that can seldom be obtained. It is a matter of the feel of negotiations. In cases where large and important con tracts are being negotiated, is there really any alternative to E.C.G.D. sending a representative as one of the negotiating team and actually getting the feel of the negotiations?
In this particular field we are dealing generally with clashes of national interest. If the Government really believe that it is in the national interest that a particular British firm should get a particular contract, then the Government must be prepared at least to see that the contract is not lost because the Treasury insists quite unrealistically on documentary proof, and even then cannot make up its mind in time whether the contract is worth getting. If the Government really want the contract to be won, it simply is no good E.C.G.D. insisting in advance on approving the terms to be offered a foreign buyer and insisting on the seller sticking to those terms. Much more latitude should be given to negotiating teams to go up to a certain limit, and beyond that limit the Department and the Treasury should be prepared to match what the negotiators honestly believe to be the credit terms offered by their rivals. It may not be susceptible of proof.
I would suggest the blunt fact is that for most contracts there is a limit (which only the Government can judge) beyond which it is not worth while matching a foreign rival's terms. After all, the longer

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the credit, the greater the strain on the balance of payments. But I would suggest that there are a few contracts which in the national interest should be won even if the terms are most exceptional. In other words, I suspect that the E.C.G.D. exaggerate when they say they are wholly prepared to put British exporters on level terms with foreign competitors. They should have added, "up to a point". What I should like them to say is that in some cases they are determined to make dead sure that, so far as lies in the power of E.C.G.D., the British exporter is on level terms with all corners. A much more positive approach on the part of E.C.G.D. is needed when getting the order that really matters—in terms of employment and the best use of resources at home. With those comments I should like again to extend a general welcome to the Bill.
3.33 p.m.
LORD RHODES: My Lords, before making any comments I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn whether his suggestion that E.C.G.D. should be converted into a public corporation is part of the Conservative Party's policy for the future?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, the answer is, No. I suggested that it should be looked into again.
LORD RHODES: I thank the noble Lord. My Lords, we shall have to be careful about this matter. Apart from the quite good arguments that have been put forward in favour of a public corporation, it is a fact that E.C.G.D. has, without any question whatever, won its spurs, and it is salutary to think that from time to time when a Government Department successfully runs its business people are disposed to criticise it in the hope that at some future time they may be able to hand it over to somebody else to make something out of it. When I heard these remarks my mind went back to the time in the other place when this sort of comment was made about the nationalised road transport industry, which was a highly lucrative section of the whole transport industry; and, of course, it was restored to private enterprise when the Conservative Party came into power. With several of the things said by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, I agree heartily, and I will come to them in the course of
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my remarks. First, I want to say that I think the Department has been well run. It has had its share of praise and we need not overdo it. Sir John Hogg and his Committee have been extremely good; and so, may I say, has the Director, Sir Anthony Percival, and I was delighted to see that he had been honoured in the last Honours List.
I should like to deal with one aspect that has been continually coming to my notice in the last year or two, and that is the restricted liability for certain markets. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, mentioned the information that was available to E.C.G.D. as a Government Department; how the Report says that there are 140,000 reports on foreign buyers; that information is extracted from sources all over the world (from the Press and otherwise);that the Department also sends its own missions overseas to get information. Here, may I suggest that one such mission should be sent forthwith to South-East Asia, including Indonesia, because I think it is most necessary. On this information, markets are classified and premiums are assessed on the basis of the classification. In some cases, as a result of the information that is disclosed, and so the overall liability which the E.C.G.D. can accept is restricted.
On one or two occasions I have met with complaints that there was not a fair distribution of the available cover among rival exporters. In each case the truth was that the approach was made too late, when the available cover was exhausted. Businessmen cannot expect E.C.G.D. to keep cover in reserve for business which may never come along. I say that because of the cases which have come to my attention. I can assure British businessmen that E.C.G.D. goes to enormous trouble to see that efficient use is made of available cover and that every exporter gets a fair crack of the whip. We may in the future have to revise our thinking and our attitude to this question. In a previous debate in this House I drew attention to the way the Japanese Government had entered into a so-called loan agreement with a country in South-East Asia. In fact the so-called agreement was nothing more than setting a limit to credit against firm orders, but it was heralded in the local Press as being a magnificent gesture by the Japanese. May I ask the Minister (he need not answer to-day; he

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can let me know later, before the next stage of the Bill), what prevents us from doing precisely the same? What prevents .us from making arrangements between E.C.G.D. and selected foreign Governments?
I now come to the question that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, about long-term credit. I do not think this matter is receiving the attention it needs, and people do not realise the dangers inherent in the situation. Since the war, we have turned from a cash to a credit situation—and long credit at that. On page 15 of the Report, where it discusses the arrangements under Section 2 it says that the Department's major function of providing export credit insurance has now largely been assumed by the Ministry of Overseas Development for Section 2 and Section 3. It appears to me that economic assistance loans, which are mentioned in the same paragraph, are out of date now, and it would seem as though we had better be thinking of tidying up this part of the Act, so that we know where we are in terms of long-term credit. Would it not be better if they were separated from Section 2 figures altogether? May I ask whether it is anticipated that any more economic assistance loans will be made under Section 2?
On page 66 of the Report there is a Table and I should like to draw attention to something on it. In the last two columns there is, under "National Interest Insurance (Section 2)", at the bottom, for March 31, 1966, in the second column from the end £54·3 millions, and in the last column £366·8 millions, making a total of £421 million, which was the figure the Minister in another place gave in the context of his speech. It is also in the text of this particular Report. Also figures were given by the Minister of State showing that the actual liabilities are £728 million and there are further contingent liabilities of £136 million, making £850 million in all. So the increase during the last twelve months or less has been £430 million. How much is long-term and how much is short-term credit here? If it is anticipated that financial guarantees will increase by £100 million a year, what is the remainder? And all this is without the benefit of the expert advice of the Advisory Council.
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The question might be asked whether it matters if these items rocket. I think it does; I believe it is rather a serious matter. The answers to my query can be found in the Report itself, Paragraph 3, Page 23, and it is worth looking at. The Report says:
"The Government is concerned about the terms upon which goods are sold for export because those terms can affect Britain's balance of payments".
Lower down it quotes the words of the Committee on the Working of the Monetary System, the Radcliffe Committee, when it says:
"In considering whether and how strictly to limit the length of credit which United Kingdom exporters can offer, the Government has to weigh on the one hand these risks of extending longer credit and on the other hand the immediate and long-term consequences of the loss of business which will result if United Kingdom exporters are outbid in credit terms by their competitors."
I would also draw attention to the last paragraph on page 26, where it states that a previous President of the Board of Trade, in 1961, when the financial guarantees for long-term credit were introduced, said:
"Quite apart from the need to apply this new technique only where it is truly appropriate, there are of course severe limitations to the amount of long-term credit which the United Kingdom can afford to give at the present time, and we must remember that these new financial guarantees form only one of several channels by which such commitments are loaded upon our shorter-term balance-of-payments position."
The noble Lord, Lord Archibald, when he asked a question here last week was absolutely within the confines of this particular problem; in fact he was on the mark. It is an important aspect, and it is bedevilled by the various interpretations of aid. The Japanese, for instance, call their reparations aid, when they are adding it up, so that they can present an impressive figure to the world. We have our difficulties with it, too, and especially now that responsibility for aid has been taken over by the Department of Overseas Development. What are we doing about this? It seems to me that all this business of long-term credit has got into a state of anarchy.
When a country like Japan can go to the Philippines and say: "All right; we will build a cement works for you; we will give you credit for ten years at 5½ per cent.; we will give you credit for

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three years for nothing at all, and we will supply the capital to run the place"—if that is not getting to the point of overseas investment in a different form from the one we have known already, what is? And this is happening throughout the world. E.C.G.D. has to listen to scores of pleas for long-term credit when in point of fact they cannot be substantiated; but when they are they are definitely matched by E.C.G.D. But this does not make the long-term position any easier.
There is an organisation of which we are members, which is known as the Berne Union. There are 26 members of that Union and the membership is broken down into three parts. They have agreed on the basis of a five-year period of credit. But if there are only 26 members and individual members from member countries are part of the 26, I should like to know who are the members of the Berne Union and whether all the Western countries who are exporters of capital goods are members of it. What I do know is that the Japanese are not members, and they are most active in an area of the world we are a long distance from and in which we have tremendous difficulty in keeping our end up—I mean the Far East. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Erroll of Hale, who so successfully led a mission to the Far East from the London Chamber of Commerce in November, is here, and I am certain that he could corroborate what I say: that the Japanese have turned the situation of long-term credit into a state of anarchy. I am suggesting that the Government should, without delay, call a conference of Western countries who are "with it" in terms of the kind of capital goods they export. They should do it at once. Get them together, Bring Japan in. Give them a special invitation. Knowing the mood of a number of the Western countries concerned, we should have a far better response than some people might think. I believe a successful issue could come from this, and I recommend the Government to inaugurate it without delay. The Bill should be accepted. It is necessary, and I wish it well.
3.51 p.m.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I wish just briefly to support what the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes, has said. There will always be competition in credit, and in
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the old days the United Kingdom was considered one of the countries, if not the leading country, which at the Berne Union and elsewhere tried to prevent this competition from getting out of hand. It is a difficult thing to do. But I am bound to say, looking at this Bill, and considering the way in which the total of our guarantees has been rising so sharply, particularly in the last two years (and, as I understand it, within that total the longer-term credit has risen as sharply as the shorter-term credit), that it may be that we are losing our grip, losing our position as the country which did try to put the brake on. This I think would be most serious, because if one looks at international trade as a whole there is certainly a point beyond which it is absurd to export goods on credit when you are not going to get the money back. Somebody has to set the tone. Somebody has to have the character to say, "I am not going to go on in this rat race for lengthening credit, improving terms and all the rest of it."
I am a little worried both by the Bill and by what one learns from the way in which our export credit is being conducted. It may be, for instance, that in regard to the exceedingly good export figures which have just been published, and which rejoice us all, the proportion of that record total which has been sold on credit is larger than ever before. I should think that is true. This situation cannot go on. There must be a point at which it is not worth extending credit for exports, and I hope that the Government have that firmly in mind.
Here, I think I must disagree with my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn. I went through this business in deciding whether the E.C.G.D. should cease to be a public corporation, and I am quite sure that it ought to continue to be a public corporation. The main reason that swayed me then, and would sway me now, is precisely the international character of the credit race. When you have the Export-Import Bank in the United States with the United States Government behind it, Hermes (I think the name is) with the German Government right behind that, and the other great governmental institutions for assisting exporters with credit, we must, I think, concentrate our credit machinery in one place to have the power to answer

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back, and, I hope, to lead these other people.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, would my noble friend allow me to intervene? That is precisely what I was suggesting; that E.C.G.D. should be a public corporation and cease to be a Department of Government; that it should be like Hermes and so on.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I misled my noble friend, and I apologise. By "public corporation" I meant the kind of structure that we have now. After all, we had an excellent gentleman from the Bank of England as Director. He was followed by Mr., now Sir, Anthony Percival. I think that the running of the Department cannot be assessed as anything but pretty good, and it would be difficult to do it if it were split up into different areas of credit. Be that as it may, the overriding reason why, in my view, this must remain really strictly under the Board of Trade is precisely because diplomacy, international affairs, enter into this matter so much. If the noble Lord could give me some sort of assurance that things are not getting out of hand in quantity and length of credit, I should be most grateful.
3.56 p.m.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I am most grateful to the three noble Lords who have spoken, all of them with such great knowledge and experience, far more than I myself have. They have asked me many questions which I shall try to answer, though they will not expect me to go through all of them one by one. Perhaps I should deal first of all with what is really the most important point raised by all three noble Lords, and finally by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, that of the credit race. It is something of which we are, of course, very much aware. Anybody can export anything, provided that he does not want to be paid for it. Our problem is to export our own goods and to get paid for them sufficiently quickly to make it worth while.
We have a constant battle, as all noble Lords who were connected in one way or another with the Board of Trade know well, between, on the one hand, the exporters who come along and say, "We have responded to your urgings. We have
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got this contract to sell this vast number of aeroplanes, or these ploughs, or tractors, or what-have-you; and now you refuse to give us sufficiently long credit to get the order because country A, country B or country C is beating us to it". That is what happens on the one side, On the other side, we have the Treasury, quite properly, saying to us, "What is the point of selling all these things? It looks very well on paper, but you are not getting any money for them until 10 years hence, when not only will it be worth less, but in any case we need it to-day, or if not to-day, at least tomorrow" We have to hold the balance. Whether or not we hold it absolutely perfectly, I cannot say. I think that, on the whole, we are now making, and have in the past been making, a good show of it.
As the noble Viscount said, in the early days we took the initiative of, in his words, putting the brake on this credit race. We are still quite active in this, with the Berne Union and with Japan, who, although not a member, is co-operating through O.E.C.D. and privately. In bilateral exchanges between Japan and ourselves there is a considerable co-operation in this matter and, like him, I can say that increasingly the exporting countries have come to realise that a credit race does nobody any good at all. Of course there are always certain private companies—large companies, at that—who go off on their own and are sometimes able to obtain extremely successful credit facilities of their own without recourse to Government—or, perhaps I might say, in a somewhat devious manner through semi-governmental sources. We do our best to discourage that, and we do at times—as I know from personal experience, and as Lord Drumalbyn mentioned—get complaints from our own exporters and manufacturers about our slowness, about the fact that sometimes we are not quick enough in giving an answer as to what we can do.
The reason why we cannot give an answer immediately is because they are asking us to grant credit terms which are longer than those we have agreed with the other credit givers of the world. In order to maintain this co-operation between all of us as exporters, we must go and talk to them and tell them what

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we are doing, in accordance with under takings we have given. That, of course, takes time, sometimes a matter of weeks, which is very irksome for the would-be exporter. But it is purely a matter of using one's own judgment and exercising that judgment, not only in the interests of exports, but also in the interests of getting the money into the country at the time we want it.
Balanced with that must be the ever-present question: if we fail to get this order, are we going to let a competitor into a market which previously has been ours so that we shall never get replacement orders? Is it perhaps better to take this order to-day, even at rather unattractive credit terms, so that we either maintain our place in an existing market or open up a new market for future benefit? Those are all basically commercial judgments of which we are well aware, and matters which we do our best, consistent with our obligations as international credit-givers, to look at realistically.
There is one point that I should like to make to the noble Viscount, as well as to other noble Lords. Fundamentally, when we talk of giving credit it is the commercial undertaking itself which gives the credit. All E.C.G.D. does is to underwrite the risk inherent in that credit. Therefore, this commercial judgment must rest with the supplying firms themselves. If they feel that it is in their business interest to grant credit for ten years for a particular product, that is their own commercial judgment; and presumably they adjust their price to take account of the fact that they are not going to get paid in full until the end of ten years in a somewhat devalued currency. It is not for the Board of Trade or E.C.G.D. to make the initial judgment. It is for the E.C.G.D. to decide whether it is prepared to under write that risk for an exceptionally long period.
I should like now to come to some of the points which were raised. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, asked whether there could be an issue of annual returns and accounts. In fact, there is something very close to that which I think should satisfy the noble Lord. Although we are under no statutory obligation to publish accounts, we in fact announce the preliminary results of each
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financial year shortly after its close; and at the same time there is a Press notice issued which comments on any interesting developments which may have taken place during the year. Then, when the final accounts are made up, they are published in the Blue Book in a purely commercial form each year, usually in December, headed Trading Accounts of Government Departments. I hope that that provides the noble Lord with what he wants in the way of information. In regard to overseas assistance, it is true that at present all cases under Section 3 have moved over to the Ministry of Overseas Development, and there will be no more activities in E.C.G.D. on that score at all.
The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, also suggested that there should be some tidying up in this matter. I would suggest that the organisation is a pretty tidy one, and that it works fairly well. I do not say that it is absolutely perfect, and continuously there are some small "loose ends" which are being made more efficient and more effective. But I do not think any large-scale operation is needed, other than the question whether the whole of E.C.G.D. should be turned over to private insurance or a public corporation, or whatever it may be. I would in the first place remind your Lordships that there is no obligation upon exporters to use E.C.G.D. at all. They are perfectly at liberty to go to their own banks, their own merchant houses, to Lloyds underwriters, or anybody they like to insure this risk if they want to. The fact that they do not want to, and the fact that they find it more advantageous to go to E.C.G.D., surely makes it abundantly clear that the services offered to them by E.C.G.D. are more satisfactory to them than those which can be offered by existing insurance undertakings. Therefore, I would submit that that disposes of the argument that it ought to be handed over to private enterprise.
I do not think that that is precisely what the noble Lord meant, and I do not want to misrepresent him; but some people have put this view forward. I think what he was suggesting is a change in nomenclature, but not a change in function at all. We all agree that they must be an organisation which has Government backing, which has access to Government information, which has the services and the experience of private enterprise, bankers and businessmen, and

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which runs with the maximum degree of autonomy consistent with our position in the credit-giving world, the Berne Union and the other things I have mentioned.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, may I intervene to say that I would not regard this as a change in nomenclature so much as a change in responsibility. It seems extremely odd that the excellent advisers should always have their advice taken—that they should in effect be running the show—and yet that they have not the final responsibility for in fact running it.
LORD RHODES: My Lords, may I point out that this is not the case. They do not run the show. The civil servants run it under their very admirable Director. The Advisory Council advises, and in regard to a large slice of the business they do not come into it at all. It goes from the Treasury, through the officials at E.C.G.D., and that is it.
LORD DRUMALBYN: According to the official records, on 94 percent. of business the Department follows the Council's decision.
LORD RHODES: Yes; it is, of course, bound to follow the Council's decision, because up until recently 94 percent. has been under Section 1, and all of Section 1 comes under the jurisdiction of the Council.
LORD WALSTON: Be that as it may, while I am far from being against change (and I am always prepared to have change if it is for the better), I cannot see that, where an organisation combines the expertise of private enterprise and of bureaucracy—the Treasury, the banks, the insurance companies, Government Departments, our overseas missions—and does so to the satisfaction of private enterprise, as is shown by the fact that it prefers to go to E.C.G.D. instead of to other private insurance, a prima facie case is made out for change.
I should like to mention two other things. One is the overriding responsibility of government to prevent the credit race getting out of hand. If we handed it over to private enterprise in any form, or relinquished ultimate control of it, it would be impossible for the Government to step in and say, "You will not give ten years' credit here because the Japan-
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ese and the Americans are only giving eight years." Therefore, we have to retain that control. Above all, I would remind the noble Lord that the Speed Committee, which inquired into this matter less than ten years ago, reported against it. I think there is no point, when we have had an expert and well-qualified committee making a report within a relatively short time, in reopening the matter as soon as this. That does not mean to say that I have a completely closed mind on the subject, and that we might not have another inquiry into it in, perhaps, five years' time, when conditions may have changed. It is at the moment working extremely well. The experts who have looked into it have said that it should continue as it is, and I think that is sound reason for continuing as we are at present.
The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, also mentioned the heavy losses which have taken place. I am sure he understands this well, but I would make the general point which some people do not appreciate sufficiently. When claims are paid out by E.C.G.D. to insurers that is not necessarily a loss, any more than when you have an unfortunate motorcar accident and go to your insurance company, although it is not your fault they will pay out the claim to you. That is not a loss to them, because they have hopes of recovering it from the man who has caused the damage. In fact, it is confidently expected on very sound grounds, and not only on past experience, although that comes into it, that virtually all the transfer claims which have been paid out in the last year or two will be recovered in full and with interest. So these should not be regarded as losses but rather as claims met quickly, which will over a period of time be recovered.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but of course the losses to which I was referring are losses which were incurred about 15 years ago.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I beg the noble Lord's pardon for that. But I have no regrets at having made this point clear, for the sake of other noble Lords who are not so well informed.
There is a point which was raised partly by my noble friend Lord Rhodes and partly by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, on the question of economic

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aid. I have already said that those cases, which formerly came under Section 3, are now handed over to the Ministry of Overseas Development. But the Section 3 powers, which also allow for the financing of credits guaranteed under either Section 1 or Section 2, will remain on the Statute Book in case of need. There is no point in taking them off. It is unlikely that they will be needed, but they may come in useful at some stage. Section 2 will continue to be used for giving cover in the national interest for risks not acceptable to the Advisory Council. This has always been an important part of Section 2 and accounted—and I think this is one of the figures which my noble friend quoted—for approximately £465 million out of total Section 2 liabilities of £64 million at the end of January, 1967. This part of Section 2 includes the financial guarantees for long-term credits, which is an import ant part of the E.C.G.D. service to British exports. So Section 2 will still remain a vital instrument of cover, even after the transfer of aid responsibility to the Ministry of Overseas Development, and that is why we are asking for this increase in Section 2 loans.
May I now deal with the specific questions which were put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn? He asked, first of all, what had been the response to the offer to small exporters and how many policies had been issued. Up to the present time, approximately 2,000 policies have been issued, but what the future result of those will be remains to be seen. It is a little too early to say. The noble Lord's second question was about financial guarantees. He said that 37 had been issued up to a year ago and 55 were in negotiation, involving another £300 million. At January 31, 1967,there were 52 guarantees actually issued, involving a total loan value plus interest of £338 million, and in addition a further 61 cases, involving a total contract value of £332 million, which had been approved in principle, were in various stages of negotiation.
Then his final question, which covered a fairly long and interesting list, was concerning the problems of capital projects. I think he said that most of the vociferous complaints against the E.C.G.D. came from people and companies involved in big capital projects,
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where we are said to be not competing with other people, and I believe he asked whether we could not send out people from the E.C.G.D. as part of a negotiating team. The E.C.G.D. does, in fact, do just that. It sends out officials to assist exporters, when needed and when asked for, in negotiations for financial-guarantee loans for long-term development projects. In fact, so far as financial guarantees are concerned, we decide our own terms and do not ask for information about what foreign competitors are giving. The matching policy, of course, applies to the smaller projects, and I have dealt with that already.
We have our actual, positive policy of sticking to the five-year limit or whatever it may be, depending on the case, but we have reached agreement with all the main countries. That is positive in itself, and we take the lead in that. But if evidence is brought to us that others are offering better terms, we are always prepared to match them. But I would warn the noble Lord—as I am sure he knows well—that no firm is very happy at losing a contract because of its own high cost or incompetence or unsuitability, and it is always much more anxious, if it possibly can, to say, "We lost this contract because we were not able to offer the same facilities as other people." That is sometimes the case, but very often, when one investigates rather more closely many of the cases which one hears about, they turn out to be nothing to do with the actual credit terms, but concerned solely with the suitability of the goods or the services which have been offered.
I hope I have dealt with the majority of the questions which have been asked. I thank noble Lords who have taken part for their very well-informed and helpful questions and comments. I also thank them for their support of this Bill, and for the kind words which they have said—wholly deserved, and with which I also associate myself—for the staff of the E.C.G.D., from the very top to the very bottom. I have travelled the world in my previous incarnation going to many countries and meeting many British businessmen and others during those travels. Although there are always some who will complain about the failure of co-operation and all the rest of it, almost universally I found good words being said for the E.C.G.D. and compliments for the

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improvement and the increase in fluidity and flexibility which is there. So I am grateful to noble Lords, and I hope they will continue to support this Bill and what it stands for.
On Question, Bill read 2a;Committee negatived.

REFRESHMENT HOUSES BILL [H.L.]
4.18 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time. During 22 years' service in another place, I was responsible for introducing a good many Government Bills, but only once did I venture to introduce a Private Member's Bill. That was a modest Bill to amend the Refreshment Houses Acts 1860 and 1964, and for purposes connected therewith. In the Party sense that Bill was quite uncontroversial; it had the backing of Members of different Parties, and I think it might well have reached the Statute Book had it not been killed by the Dissolution—for all this happened just a year ago. I am now seeking support for the same Bill in new surroundings. Whatever the future of the Bill, I hardly think it will meet exactly the same fate as the last one—I almost wish it could!
Your Lordships might well think that refreshment houses were places where you could go and get a drink, but they are not—not in the normal sense of getting a drink. Refreshment houses are defined in an old law passed 107 years ago as:
"All houses, rooms, shops or buildings kept open for public refreshment, resort and entertainment at any time between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., not being licensed for the sale of beer, cider, wine or spirits."
This Bill therefore has nothing to do with hotels or pubs. The refreshment houses with which this Bill is concerned are cafés, coffee bars and the like.
Similarly, there is no overlap between this Bill and the admirable Bill introduced by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Parker of Waddington, a fortnight ago, to which the House gave a unanimous and, I think, enthusiastic Second Reading, because that Bill was concerned
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with private places of entertainment— clubs, and the like—whereas the places with which my Bill is concerned are by definition open to the public. I can confidently say that the ordinary café or catering establishment is totally unaffected by this Bill. The Bill applies only to those which stay open after 10 o'clock at night. There are many late-night or all-night cafés which are admirable places, and this Bill will cause them no inconvenience at all. It will affect only those places which are giving rise to disturbance in the middle of the night, and are preventing the neighbours from getting a quiet night's sleep.
Complaints about this sort of thing are cropping up from more and more towns in different parts of the country, where a certain type of late-night coffee bar is thronged with noisy teenagers; and the present law has been found powerless to stop such disturbance in the early hours of the morning when people and their children are trying to sleep. During the last year or so that I was Member for Hampstead I started to receive vehement and continuing complaints from many of my constituents about the noise and nuisance caused locally by several coffee bars of this sort. There seems to me to be nothing against keeping one of these places open until the early hours of the morning if it is situated in a busy traffic road where there will be noise all night anyhow; but when it is situated in an otherwise quiet area, where the people who live there have hitherto had a reasonable chance of sleeping undisturbed at night, the nuisance can become intolerable.
Some of these coffee bars attract teenagers who may come from miles around, with their cars, motor-bikes or scooters. When the place gets full towards mid-night, they tend to congregate on the pavements outside. I used to get complaints about blocking the pavements, about shouting obscene remarks at unoffending passers-by, and about fouling the neighbourhood in various nasty ways. Then, when the place finally closes clown in the early hours of the morning, when public transport has of course stopped, the noise often reaches its peak, with the shouting of goodbyes, the slamming of car doors, the revving up of engines and the popping of noisy exhausts. For people to enjoy themselves is one thing, but to

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show absolutely no consideration for all the people who are trying to sleep in the houses or flats round about is quite another. And it goes on night after night, though usually it is worst on Friday and Saturday nights. The number of Members of another place from different Parties who came to me a year ago and offered support to my earlier Bill because of the complaints that were raining in on them in their own constituencies made me realise how widely this kind of nuisance was spreading.
My Lords, it seems to many of us that in these days planning permission is needed for almost everything, and it is somewhat strange that no planning permission is required to convert an ordinary shop, which closes every evening at 5.30 or 6 o'clock, into a coffee bar which stays open all night. This is something which I wish the Government would tackle; I wish they would amend the General Development Order under the Town and Country Planning Act accordingly. This could stop late-night coffee bars from being opened up at all in the sort of premises and the sort of neighbourhood where they are inherently likely to be a nuisance; but, of course, it would not deal with coffee bars that are there already. My Bill does.
In what had previously been a quiet neighbourhood in my former constituency there were at one time three of these late-night coffee bars open within half a mile. They gave themselves sultry names, like "El Sahara" That, I remember, was one. I will not mention the others, because I do not want to advertise them. Things got too hot for "El Sahara" in other ways, and it closed down. I had one person after another from these neighbourhoods coming to see me or writing angrily to me, begging me to do something to get the noise stopped so that they and their children could be sure of getting some sleep. Even in this past fortnight, since this present Bill was published, I have had fresh letters from former constituents of mine wishing me luck with it. During some nights in Hampstead up to half of all the available police in the area were out responding to complaints about those three coffee bars, and trying to deal with them.
The people who complained simply would not believe that there was no law effective to put a real stop to all the
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disturbance in the early hours of the morning; but neither the Public Health Act, nor the Noise Abatement Act, nor good rule and government by-laws have anywhere proved to be effective in practice. For one thing, the existing legislation mainly covers what goes on inside the premises: the mischief with which the complainants are mostly concerned is what goes on in the street outside. I asked one victim whether he had thought of invoking the Noise Abatement Act. He pointed out to me that a complainant under the Noise Abatement Act had to give his name and address, which meant that he would certainly get stones through his windows at night from some of the types who were causing the trouble. So I tried to see what strengthening of the law would help these neighbourhoods—and, indeed, would help the police, whose interests we also should consider—and I believe that the proposals in this Bill are the best way to establish sensible safe guards for a neighbourhood without in any way inconveniencing well-run cafés or coffee bars which are open late at night but give rise to no trouble at all.
The present law on the subject, which is the Refreshment Houses Act, 1860—a long time ago—says that anyone who wishes to keep a catering establishment or refreshment house open after 10 o'clock at night must obtain an annual licence from the local authority. It is obtainable on demand, just like a dog licence. It costs, now, a guinea a year. The weakness which my Bill seeks to remedy is that when, under that Act, a local authority issues a licence to a catering establishment to stay open late, it has no power to fix any closing hour. By paying a guinea a year anyone wishing to open a refreshment house can get a licence authorising him to stay open after 10 o'clock and until any time he likes; and that is how this trouble arises. Of course, if these places sold alcohol they would be subject to closing times; but they do not. In the alcoholic sense, they are dry, although some of them almost certainly provide opportunities for peddling drugs. But that is a different matter.
My Lords, Clause 1 of my Bill will empower a local authority, as licensing authority, when it issues a licence, to attach a condition imposing a closing hour, which I suggest should be not earlier than 11 o'clock, because, after all, these places can remain open until 10 p.m.

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in any event without needing a licence. I have reason to believe that a good many local authorities who are besieged with complaints from the neighbourhood about some of these late night coffee bars would welcome a power to stipulate a closing hour at 11 p.m., midnight, 12.30 a.m., 1 a.m. or later, whatever it may be, according to local feelings and needs. Your Lordships will see that under my Bill the authority, before doing this, must satisfy itself that it is desirable so to do in order to avoid disturbance to residents of the neighbourhood and to preserve reasonable enjoyment of the amenities of the neighbourhood.
The penalty for an offence is to be the same as the penalty for other offences under the Refreshment Houses Acts, which was in fact revised by Parliament less than three years ago. As a safeguard against arbitrary action by local authorities, Clause 2 of the Bill provides for a right of appeal to the magistrates' courts. Clause 3 attracts the power which is already given under the Refreshment Houses Acts in respect of certain offences for the court, if it sees fit, to disqualify the person convicted from running a refreshment house in future. This is a reserve safeguard against persistent and deliberate offenders. Clause 4 confines the operation of the Bill to England and Wales. Scotland is excluded because Parliament in 1860 provided that the original Refreshment Houses Act should not apply to Scotland. I confess that I do not know why. I can only assume that nobody in Scotland in 1860 thought it worth while to keep a refreshment place open after 10 o'clock at night unless it sold whisky.
I can give the assurance that there are many towns and cities in England where the new powers to be granted by this Bill will be welcomed. If Amendments are suggested in Committee for improving it, I shall be glad to consider them. I hope that the Government will consider favourably my plea that one of the freedoms we should defend in Parliament is the freedom of the citizen to sleep at night without the continued repetition of purely selfish disturbance from people in the street outside, and that your Lordships will give this Bill a Second Reading and start it on its way. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Brooke of Cumnor.)
4.33 p.m.
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, I think it might be for the convenience of the House if I spoke on behalf of the Government, and that other noble Lords who, like the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, wish to speak would not mind if I went first and they followed. I should like to congratulate the noble Lord on reintroducing his Bill in these different surroundings. I hope it will not be stopped for the same reason; namely, the lapsing through dissolution of Parliament for a General Election.
As the noble Lord himself said, the object of the Bill is to deal with the problem of noise outside late-night coffee bars, a nuisance which is said to have been on the increase in recent years. There have been representations to the Government from some Members of Parliament—mainly representing London constituencies; although we have heard the noble Lord refer to the fact that this is now extending outside the London area, a fact which the Home Office will be pleased to take into account. The local authorities also have been complaining, individually and through the Association of Municipal Corporations, that there is a need for legislation on this matter. It might be thought that the problem could be adequately dealt with under local by-laws, or under existing legislation on noise-abatement, or, as the noble Lord himself suggested, by altering the law relating to town and country planning. The noble Lord made the request that the Government should consider this so as to make it necessary for planning permission to be obtained before an existing shop can become a coffee bar. This suggestion for amendment of the law has been resisted as inappropriate, as it would merely add to the already heavy burden of dealing with planning permission by bringing under control every proposal for such a change when comparatively few of these lead to any trouble at all.
It is true that planning permission is required for the use of premises as coffee bars if they have not already been used as a shop; and this would apply in any new building for use as a coffee bar. It would not usually be right, on planning merits, to permit such a development in

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a residential area if it were thought likely to be disturbing to the amenities of residents. Conditions limiting the opening hours could be imposed on planning permission, like those on closing hours; but this would not of itself prevent rowdiness or bad behaviour in the streets while the coffee bar was open. Planning powers cannot control the kind of people who patronise a coffee bar, the means by which they come to it or their behaviour either inside or outside it. The use of the powers of the Planning Acts to secure the discontinuance of a lawful use involves the payment of compensation which might easily be considerable.
Experience has shown that this is not always the case, and local residents are sometimes unable effectively to ensure for themselves freedom from interference from the noise naturally generated outside late-night coffee-bars. I can see that people who live in close proximity to such an establishment may find their sleep disturbed and that, if this goes on night after night, the effect on their health and happiness can be substantial.
I do not think, however, that we should over-estimate the size of the problem or over-emphasise the evil which the Bill aims to overcome. There is clearly nothing inherently wrong in the fact that enterprising café proprietors should provide a service to their customers late at night, or in the fact that some members of the public choose to go out, in their motor cars or on foot, late at night to drink coffee, cocoa or fruit squash. Many of us may think it preferable that motorists should drink coffee late at night at a café rather than intoxicating liquor at a restaurant or club. Difficulty arises only when these cafés are situated in the middle of a residential area so that a clash of interest arises between those who want to be quiet in their own houses and those who want to enjoy themselves outside. Those noble Lords who have served in the Armed Forces at any time, or have stayed in a Scottish hotel on Burns Night, will recognise the conflict between those who want to sleep and those who do not as one inherent in the human situation. The problem here is a local one, and the noble Lord recognises this in proposing that the licensing authority (who would have local knowledge of the needs of the area) should be the authority empowered to
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impose a closing hour (not earlier than 11 o'clock) for refreshment houses licensed by it.
The matter is not one on which the Government have so far thought it right to legislate, or one which they would regard as meriting high legislative priority. We feel no need to come down heavily either in favour of the Bill or against it. Noble Lords may think that it could be a useful measure to deal with a limited (if to some people irritating) problem, and the Government will watch its progress with interest. They will wish to examine its provisions with care to ensure that they do not contain an unacceptable threat to the liberty of the people to enjoy themselves in the way they choose.
4.40 p.m.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, will have an easy passage for this Bill, because I am sure it seeks to remedy a very serious nuisance. I would apologise to him for not being here when he opened his speech for the Second Reading; but I mistook what was going on. The only criticism I should like to make, very briefly, is of Clause 1(2), where one of the penalties is imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months. I take it that I am criticising the principal Act, but I should like to take the opportunity once more of expressing my disagreement with inflicting prison sentences for conduct which may not be in the least contrary to the normal moral standards of the people of this country. I always feel that it is a great pity to send a man to prison for something which is purely a civil offence. I should not mind seeing the fine increased, if necessary—after all, £200 a night might be a considerable penalty and quite a sufficient deterrent—but I should very much like to see imprisonment for offences of this sort cut out of our legislation, if it is possible to do so.
4.42 p.m.
LORD ST. HELENS: My Lords, I should like to apologise to my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor for not having been here when he started his speech. Indeed, I had not intended to speak on this Bill at all but, like my noble friend, in the past I represented a London constituency, and I found that he was voicing many of the problems that

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arose within my own constituency. I found it very disturbing not to be able to afford any redress to my constituents when they came to the advice bureau and complained, perfectly reasonably, about noise and disturbances in their neighbourhood. In my constituency there were two main complaints. Many overseas visitors came into my constituency, including many Jamaicans and, quite reasonably, they started their own clubs. There was nothing wrong with the clubs—no drinks were sold or anything like that—but they developed into very rowdy places because the Jamaicans play rather noisy instruments and like to sing at the top of their voices, and that disturbed the neighbourhood very much indeed.
The other complaint about which I frequently heard was with regard to motor-cyclists. On Friday or Saturday nights anything up to twenty young men, riding high-powered motor-cycles, would roar down the street and stop at a perfectly respectable café. They would have a few cups of coffee, and every now and then one would go out with his motor-cycle and do a "ton-up" and then come back. It might be at midnight, or even after, that they would all roar away again. This was most disturbing to the residents in the street, but I found that one could do nothing about it. If a resident rang the police station during the time when there was a loud disturbance, and it was possible for a policeman to come and hear the disturbance, a complaint might go forward, but this was practically never the case.
My Lords, people who were proud of their neighbourhood, in which they had lived for a long time, and which they regarded as a decent and quiet neighbourhood, would suddenly find that, after a coffee bar had been opened there the whole tone of the neighbourhood had altered. Instead of it being a quiet back street, where elderly people could live peacefully, along would come the motor-cyclists and the whole atmosphere of the neighbourhood would change. I suppose that legally there is little that one can do about it, but it is extremely hard luck on people who live there. It was extremely frustrating to a Member of Parliament not to be able to do anything to help these people under the present
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law. For that reason, I wish my noble friend the greatest possible success with the passage of his Bill.
4.45 p.m.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, I had not intended to speak on this Bill at all, but I must say that I have a little sympathy with it on one point only, and that is in respect of noise. It seems to me that if motor-cycles had silencers fitted, or if the motor-cyclists did not make a noise, this Bill would not be necessary. I do not believe that there are many cafes in really residential quarters which are open all night. Even in Hampstead, where I live, the cafes are in the main street. I do not frequent them, and I do not know how much noise is made outside them, but I think there is a need for young people to have places where there is no alcoholic drink to be obtained; where there is coffee and food, and where they can congregate and enjoy themselves. We all know that we have problems with our young people; they are full of vitality. It seems to me that to shut these places at 11 o'clock at night would be completely unrealistic.
We do not want to have a kill-joy city. Most other big cities have cafés which stay open all night, and when we go abroad, either to New York, Paris or to cities in Germany most of us enjoy visiting the places which are open very late at night. I believe that 11 o'clock is too early to close. If there are licensing powers given to local authorities, they might be used to refuse a licence for cafes to be run in the centres of residential neighbourhoods, but I do not think that we should try to stop people from having cafes in the main streets of suburbs. So I feel rather tepid about the Bill, and I do not feel that I can give it my wholehearted support.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, may I say that while I entirely sympathise with her about motor-cycle silencers, may I point out that there is one piece of mechanism to which we cannot fit a silencer, and that is the human voice. As she says, our young people are full of vitality. One has only to listen to them to know that.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, but I think we are a bit squeamish about the noise

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that young people make. We have to learn to live with a certain amount of this noise. We cannot repress the young people, and we do not repress them. We really have to concentrate on the important things, like drug-taking, and I do not think we ought to fuss so much about noise.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, must it be we who make all the sacrifices?
4.48 p.m.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Somers, say that it is a pity we cannot apply silencers to the human voice. How much happier our politics would be if that could be done! I suppose that on about 999 public issues out of every 1,000 I should agree wholeheartedly with my noble friend Lady Gaitskell, but I am afraid that on this issue I do not. There is no comparison between these high-street coffee bars which have sprung up in so many of our towns and suburbs and the cafés that we know in Germany or Paris, or on the Riviera. They are an entirely different kind of establishment. Some years ago, when these coffee bars started to open, I saw a glimmer of hope in them. As a licensing justice of many years standing, I thought how nice it would be if young people were able to spend their evenings in coffee bars rather than in public-houses. But a long experience as a magistrate has taught me that visits to many of these coffee bars do far more harm to young people, and the neighbours all around, than visits to public-houses, with their stricter measures of control, ever did.
When I find the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, urging that we should rivet the shackles of control on private enterprise I immediately prick up my ears and get interested. I get doubly interested when I recall that it is not so many years ago that the noble Lord's Party fought an Election on the slogan, "Set the people free!" Undoubtedly this measure will deprive a large number of people of their freedom. It would deprive café proprietors and quite a large number of people of their freedom. But freedom, I think, is something relative. On the one hand we have to weigh the freedom we are taking from the coffee bars, and on the other hand the additional freedom we are proposing to give
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to the residents round and about who are now pestered and awakened in the middle of the night by all kinds of disturbances. Although the Bill is open to slight improvement, I feel that, on the whole, this is a worthwhile measure of reform. I was glad to hear the noble Lord explain that the Bill deals solely with cafés, coffee bars and refreshment houses, in the old-fashioned sense of the law, and not with what I believe are called "clip joints", "strip joints" and establishments of that kind, of which I have no knowledge whatsoever.
I have been a magistrate for over twenty years, and frequently I have had before me cases of disturbances arising out of visits to coffee bars, especially at turning-out time at three or four in the morning. It is then we find this noisy "revving-up" of motor-cycles, this fighting and shouting and swearing, so that neighbours cannot fail to be wakened. We find pitched battles, just like cup finals, when the habitués of a coffee bar in one town pay a visit, in a convoy of cars and motor-cycles, to a coffee bar in the next town, challenge the customers to come out and fight and set about them with motor-car starting handles and iron bars. I had before me one case in which a young fellow was found outside a coffee bar at midnight with a baseball stick in his car. That is a cudgel-like instrument quite capable of inflicting a nasty bruise if used in a certain manner. His explanation was that he had this baseball club in his car because he was going out to have some baseball practice. We decided, after weighing up the evidence on both sides, that it was hardly likely that he would want to play baseball at one o'clock in the morning.
My Lords, I do not want to see these places closed. I do not object to their staying open until midnight, because even people of our age do not go to bed before midnight, with television to watch; but after midnight residents are likely to be awakened, disturbed and frightened. I have known stones to be thrown through bedroom windows, and that is certainly likely to frighten people.
I should like here to enter a minor proviso. It was my lot for forty years to work on newspapers, and for a time my office was near Covent Garden. There the cafés stay open all night, and

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they are a boon to early morning market porters and late-night journalists on their way home. I sincerely hope that this Bill will not be used to try to close down places like these, which are performing a useful public service. At three or four in the morning, after putting the last edition to bed, and with a long walk home to face, because transport is not available at that time, it is very nice, on a cold and frosty morning, to go into one of these cafés and have a hot cup of coffee before setting out on the journey.
I am heartily in favour of the principle in the Bill, while thinking that there may be some minor points that might be adjusted. For example, I agree that this is not the kind of offence for which we ought to create a new penalty of imprisonment. The whole of our ideas on punishment are moving in the direction of sending as few people to prison as possible. This is not an offence against personal morality, and it is not dishonesty. It would be a grave mistake if we did not have in the Bill provision for fining people instead of imprisonment. Like the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, I have had experience in local government. I know that, on the whole, local authorities exercise their powers and discretions wisely and well, but sometimes they can make mistakes. They might do so in attaching conditions to the issue of one of these refreshment house licences, and therefore I am pleased to see the provision of the right of appeal to magistrates. With those few rambling remarks, I would say that I am in favour of the Bill.
4.56 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND: My Lords, I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, moving the Second Reading of this Bill, and in general I am in agreement with it. I have some knowledge of this problem, not so much in London and other big cities, but in the seaside resorts in Sussex, both in and out of season. In recent years a good many disturbances have been caused in some of these resorts by small but menacing bands of hooligans. The proprietors of these places have three months of our English summer in which to make their livelihood, and I am thinking of the reputation which they can get out of season. There are also the residents in
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the shopping and trading areas of these resorts. Many of the shopkeepers live above their shops, with their families, and they need protection from hooligans who make a lot of noise and sometimes throw bricks through their windows.
I understand that this is a discretionary Bill and that there will be no mandatory closing of coffee bars after 11 o'clock at night. Heaven preserves us from legislation such as that! It seems to me that the Bill should give local licensing authorities powers to inquire much more carefully into the bona fides of those seeking to open new establishments, to make sure that they have respectable backgrounds. I have had some experience of coffee bars late at night and, by and large, they are well conducted places. As in so many other matters, it is the odd few who cause the trouble. As regards penalties, I would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Leather land. Imprisonment, except as the very last resort, may well be the wrong punishment. A heavy fine may be the answer.
I also agree with the noble Lord that midnight might be a better closing time than 11 o'clock, particularly in the Provinces and at the seaside, where theatres and cinemas may not finish be fore 11 o'clock. Young people like to go in for a last thing at night cup of coffee, and I do not think it would be right to deprive them of that; otherwise they may get up to worse mischief. Given these provisos, a Bill of this kind is certainly necessary. In Committee a few small Amendments—for instance, as regards the time limits—might be worth consideration.
5.0 p.m.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Leather land, began his speech by introducing, I thought, an unexpected whiff of Party politics in this debate, I think a word or two should be said from these Benches. I am sure that noble Lords on these Benches wish this Bill well. I was a little surprised at the picture painted by the Government spokesman, who seemed anxious, in support of the Government's neutrality, to paint a picture of the scales being kept absolutely even between those who wanted to sleep and those who wanted to enjoy themselves. I should have thought that, considering the very late hours of the night and the early hours of the morning

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that we are considering in this Bill, the interests of those who seek to sleep should prevail over those who seek to enjoy themselves, particularly when one bears in mind that many of those who are seeking to sleep at midnight or at one o'clock in the morning are people who are going to have to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning to get to their place of work probably by 8 o'clock. If the Government would bear this thought in mind, and perhaps throw an ounce or two into the scales on the side of those who are seeking to sleep, and let those who wish to enjoy themselves do so a little earlier in the evening, I am sure it would greatly assist the passage of this Bill.
5.2 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I wish to say only a word or two. I am glad that the Government are going to consider this Bill before giving it endorsement, because two aspects have to be balanced. I think we are all entirely sympathetic with those who live in residential areas and whose night hours may be disturbed by noise, both of the human voice and of motor bicycles. I live in a quiet street, and my wife and I should both resent it. But we have to balance with this the fact of the lives of young people to-day. Many of us in this House belong to the older generation, and some of us belong to the oldest generation; but we have to appreciate that there is a great gulf in the habit of living between large numbers of the younger generation to-day and those of us who have grown up amidst different habits and customs of life. I believe it would he quite wrong for this House not to recognise that changed custom of life which is so strong among our younger generation.
I have been into a coffee bar late at night only when I have been travelling home by car from a distant meeting. I believe it is quite wrong to indict coffee bars as a whole in the manner of some of the more extreme speeches which have been made in this debate. I have been extraordinarily interested, because there young people have been gathered taking their coffee and engaging in conversation and in fun. I rarely found, when I visited them, the great amount of noise to which reference has been made in the debate. I believe that we have to recognise that a change is taking place in our society between the habits of the older genera-
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tion, who have lived rather stuffy and sometimes snobbish lives, where we have not even known the next door neighbour and where our privacy has been of a kind that we have been cut off from the community around us. We have to recognise that we now have a generation of younger people who are seeking much more association in their lives and in the enjoyment of their lives than those of us who were reared in circumstances of the older generation. I have known young people in London who have even sought to go to the areas where West Indians are living, because they could there have their late parties and their singing and dancing without interfering with the privacy and quietness of their own residential neighbourhoods.
I would urge upon the Government that when they are looking at this Bill they should think of it in terms not only of the privacy and quietude of those who live in residential neighbourhoods, but of providing some opportunities for this outlet of the younger generation, at least in streets which, though distant from those residential neighbourhoods, are within a reasonable distance. We are aware of the dangers which the younger generation is facing; we are terribly aware of the dangers to them, particularly of the drug habit. But if we are going to deal with those dangers we must, at least, allow for outlets for their new habits of life, their new desires for enjoyment, and provide for those facilities which will be some safeguard against more dangerous customs into which they may fall.
I hope that the Government will look at this Bill and balance those two views: first, of the privacy and quietude of those who live in residential areas, but also of the opportunities for the younger generation to enjoy the new habits of life which are theirs and which, though they may not be our habits, we have to recognise as a part of the society in which we live.
5.9 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, will grant it to me that I made perfectly clear that the majority of cafés and coffee bars will be in no way touched by this Bill; and I entirely agree with him and other noble Lords that many cafés and coffee bars are admirable places, performing a real social service.
LORD BROCKWAY: I was not referring to the noble Lord.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: Indeed, in my opinion no local authority could exercise its powers under this Bill to seek to fix a closing hour unless it had received positive complaints about what was going on in the neighbourhood, because, unless it could show that it had received such complaints, I fail to see how it could possibly convince the court on appeal that it had been justified in reaching its decision. The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, spoke, I thought, as though a residential area meant always a place where there were big houses in large gardens. The people who, in my experience, are affected by the noise and disturbance from these places are mostly people living in flats, ranging from working class to middle class, with no gardens at all, right on the road and therefore in no way protected from the disturbance.
I am indeed grateful to the large number of noble Lords who have shown an interest, in almost every case a friendly interest, in this small Bill of mine. I was particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, for what he said. In reply to his point about prison sentences, let me point out that I was simply transferring into this Bill the same penalties which already exist in the Refreshment Houses Acts. Those penalties were in fact reviewed and approved by Parliament as recently as 1964, and I think it would have been impertinent for me to have put in my own system of penalties, seeking to superimpose it. I hope that your Lordships would agree that, whatever the case against short prison sentences of this sort, for which I have a great deal of sympathy, it would be wrong to confuse the courts by having different sentences for this offence as compared with other not dissimilar offences arising under the 1960 and 1964 Acts.
I was specially grateful to my noble friend Lord St. Helens. He spoke from London experience, as I did, and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bowles, that most of the complaints at first came from London. Now they are coming from coastal towns, as my noble friend Lord Auckland said, but it is spreading elsewhere. The latest complaints I heard came in fact from Salisbury, which is a
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city of a very different character. I agree with almost every word the noble Lord, Lord Leather land, kindly said about this Bill, and I think he gave the answer which I should have sought to give to the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell. I certainly would not allow anybody to challenge my claim to understand the social value of all kinds of entertainment for young people, both boys and girls. But I thought the noble Baroness was inclined to suppose that this Bill would lead to all coffee bars and cafés being closed at 11 o'clock. That certainly is not my intention, as I explained earlier. Unless there were complaints, there could be no closing hour imposed at all. I put 11 p.m. as the earliest closing hour there could be because I had to put some figure in; and I would ask the noble Baroness and my noble friend Lord Auckland to bear in mind that the time when the establishment closes is not the time when the noise stops. It is the time when a lot of the noise begins, and, generally speaking, it will be at least half-an hour from the official closing time before the street and neighbourhood are quiet.
I myself have a great deal of sympathy with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, that in the early hours of the morning the interests of those who desire to sleep should prevail over the majority of other factors. But it is a matter of balance, and it seems to me that the local authority should in the first instance be allowed to try to strike the right balance, and if it is thought to have struck it wrong, the local magistrates' court is the ideal body to strike a final balance.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, suggested that these places generally existed in busy main streets. I do not want to give the addresses of the three Hampstead coffee bars which I had in mind, for obvious reasons, but if I tell her afterwards the streets in which they are or were, I think she will agree with me that none of them was in any of the big traffic streets of that borough.
The final issue is, I think, this. All legislation is to some extent an interference with freedom. We are a freedom loving country, and anybody who has occupied the office of Home Secretary cannot fail to be aware that it is the

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duty of those in authority to be constantly seeking to strike a balance between liberty and order, between freedom and the rule of law. But we have to put on certain restrictions ultimately in the interests of freedom. It is a clear interference with the individual's freedom that he is now liable to be charged with committing a criminal offence if he is found in a public place possessing an offensive weapon. But Parliament not so many years ago legislated to make that a criminal offence, simply because the use of offensive weapons in public places was becoming an intolerable interference with other people's freedom to walk about unharmed and unassailed. And so with this Bill. The last thing I should wish would be that my Bill were misused by local authorities to try to clamp down an early closing hour on all coffee bars in the neighbourhood, even when they gave rise to no complaint at all. I believe the Bill contains sufficient protection against that.
But I would most strongly urge upon your Lordships' House that this is not a negligible trouble. It is obviously localised, although I think it is spreading throughout the country. To those who suffer from it, it is far from negligible, and when the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, sought to establish a distinction between the older generation who are out of sympathy with the young, and the young who should be given freedom to enjoy themselves, I could not help thinking of two parents who came to me to complain of one of these places, their principal complaint being that their children went tired-eyed to school in the morning because it was almost impossible for them to get any sleep between half-past eleven and 2 o'clock. So I think the noble Lord himself will agree that there is something well worth while looking at in this Bill. My hope is that it will eventually reach the Statute Book in a form which will preserve the maximum freedom for everyone.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

THE EASTER ACT
5.18 p.m.
LORD MERTHYR LORD MERTHYR rose to ask Her Majesty's Government upon what date it is intended to bring into force the Easter Act 1928. The noble Lord said: My Lords, as I have a bad cold I must apologise for the condition of my voice. On January 17 of this year I asked a similar Question in your Lordships' House, and I ask this Question to-day because I was dissatisfied with the Answer. I found it an unsatisfactory reply. There is nothing personal in this criticism, but I regret to say that the noble Lord, Lord Bowles, who answered my Question, and who I think will answer again to-day introduced to a slight degree a Party political matter. When I said that the Bill had been passed and received the Royal Assent 39 years ago, he chided me by saying that of course a Conservative Government could be expected to do this sort of thing. I hope the House will agree that this has nothing to do with Party politics. In fact, if we are to apportion the blame for the inordinate delay in this Bill's coming into force, I will try to help the House by saying that it seems to me that the Conservative Party must be accounted 28/39ths to blame, the Labour Party 11/39ths to blame; and, my Lords, as for the Liberal Party, their record is spotless, pure and unsullied.
The Act of 1928 contains only two sections. The first is the operative one, which fixes Easter day as the day following the second Saturday in April. Your Lordships may ask why that day was chosen. I understand that there are two reasons, but the right reverend Prelate will, I hope, correct me if I am wrong. First, that day is the average of all the several dates which now can be Easter Sunday, and, secondly, I understand that it is the Sunday following the actual anniversary of the first Easter Day. The second Section is the one which states when the Act is to come into force. It is to come into force by two provisos operating: the first is that there is to be an Order in Council laid before both Houses of Parliament for Affirmative approval. I have no quarrel whatever with that, and all I want is that it should be done.
The second proviso contains the words which have really caused all the bother. It says:
"…regard shall be had to any opinion officially expressed by any Church or other Christian body."
Those are the words, and your Lordships will know that there is not one word in the whole of the Act about securing the agreement of the Churches. I have no objection to that proviso either—all I say is, please carry out these two provisos. That is all I am asking for, but Her Majesty's Government—and I charge them with this—following many other Governments, have read into the Act something which is not there. They have imagined words to be in the Act which cannot be found, and I say that no Government have any right to do this. To have regard to opinions expressed is a task which could easily be completed in 39 months, let alone 39 years, which it has taken so far.
On December 8, 1965, I asked Her Majesty's Government in this House how many opinions officially expressed had so far been received, and the noble Lord, Lord Bowles, said "None". As a matter of fact he said, "None in this present Parliament", which was not quite what I had asked him, if I may say so, but I think it is safe to say that the answer is none, ever, in all those years. If I am wrong I shall be corrected.
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord to repeat that question? I am afraid that I did not quite hear it, as I was trying to look up some information.
LORD MERTHYR: My Lords, I was just saying that when I asked how many opinions "officially expressed" had been received in 1965 since 1928, the noble Lord said "None", meaning "None by this Government". But nobody has ever told me of any received by any other Government, so I think it is probably safe to say "None ever". However, if I am wrong, I shall be corrected.
Then the noble Lord said to me, "Wait one more year". Fair enough, my Lords! That is not very much in 40 years. But that was 14 months ago. So one year has now expired, and I am still waiting.
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The noble Lord, Lord Bowles, agreed with me that there is not a word in this Act about securing anybody's agreement, of Churches or otherwise; and he then made a very profound statement, if I may respectfully say so. He said—and he is quite right; and I entirely agree:
"So all the Churches seem to agree pro vided that the other Churches agree."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8/12/65, col. 293.]
So, my Lords, we go round and round and round. I want to know—and that is why I am here to-day—who will break this vicious circle? Why will nobody take any action in this matter? Parliament—and this is rather unusual—has taken its action. So often private Members come to your Lordships' House and plead that Parliament should pass a Bill. I am not doing that to-day: Parliament has already done it. I want some action to be taken on the Act. Suppose, if I may for a minute or two, that agreement among the Churches had been necessary under the Act—and I should be the first to agree with most people who would think it desirable. Supposing it was necessary, may I then answer that by telling your Lordships a little of the history of this matter?
On February 17, 1928, the honourable Member for Oxford City, the late Captain Bourne (and I expect a number of your Lordships will remember him) introduced in the House of Commons a Private Member's Bill to fix Easter. That Bill is now the Easter Act 1928. There were some opposition noises, if I may so put it, from both sides of the House. A Motion for the rejection of the Bill was moved and seconded, but was later withdrawn, without a vote, because, I suppose, the opposition were then satisfied. The Bill was supported by His Majesty's Government (as it then was) and the spokesman for the Government was the Home Secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, who ended his speech by saying this—and I would ask your Lordships to note his words:
"If the House of Commons passes the Bill, I shall regared is as a direction on their part to get to work with the negotiations, and I shall do it with the feeling that I have the House of commons behind me".
The Bill was passed without a Division, and I do not know whether he began the negotiations. What I am asking is whether the Home Secretary of to-day has completed the negotiations.

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Then the Bill came to the really progressive House of Parliament, and here there was no opposition whatsoever. Again it was passed through all its stages without a Division, in this House as in the Commons. Five of your Lordships took part in the debate, and all five supported the Bill. It was introduced, appropriately enough, into your Lordships' House by the then Captain of the Yeoman of the Guard, speaking in his personal capacity, because, although he was a member of the Government, he spoke independently owing to the fact that he had taken such a deep and personal interest in the Bill. I hope very much that if we ever get to the stage of fixing Easter, the major part of the credit will be given to the late Lore Desborogh He said that there was.
"no religious objection raised on behalf of any of the Churches."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2/7/28 col. 796.]
A League of Nations Committee had sent questions to forty countries. The answers were unanimously in favour.
Then Lord Desborough made a striking statement, to which I would draw the attention of the right reverend Prelate. He said that a meeting of 250 Anglican Bishops gave the Bill unanimous approval. We are well used to the harmony and concord on the Bishops' Benches of this House, but to get 250 of them to agree with one voice to a measure of this kind was an achievement which I much admire.
The next speaker was a well-known representative of the Roman Catholic Church, the late Lord Fitzalan of Derwent. He said (col. 801):
…I believe the authorities of my own Church will certainly acquiesce in and approve of the proposal, provided it is made quite clear that it is the general wish of other countries as a Whole".
Then followed, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the Secretary of State for India, speaking from the Government Front Bench. He was not a man who minced words or used ambiguous phrases, as I think the present Lord Chancellor might agree when I remind him that he was none other than the late noble and learned Earl, Lord Birkenhead. He said (col. 801–2):
…the Government are entirely in favour of the proposals contained in this Bill…there is an immense potential advantage in
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it, both nationally and internationally…it must be long since there has been a consensus of opinion so remarkable, in so many countries, and among so many sections of opinion in those countries…We should be resisting a change of the utmost advantage if we were not to do the best we could to forward these proposals."
And finally the piece I like best:
"Too long…has this reform been delayed".
That was in 1928. I come here to-day to echo the words of the noble and learned Earl the ex-Lord Chancellor.
Next came the official Opposition speaker. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Parmoor, said (col. 804):
"…on every ground of convenience it is obviously preferable that we should have a fixed Easter."
And finally the representative of the right reverend Prelates, the Bishop of Southwark, whom many of your Lordships will remember as later Bishop of Winchester and Archbishop of York, Dr. Garbett, supported the Bill. He was speaking on behalf of the most reverend Primate, I think it was Dr. Randall Davidson, who could not be here for the Second Reading but did come for the Committee stage, moved a minor Amendment and said he entirely agreed with the Bill. There were no other speakers. The Bill was passed without a Division, without any opposition. What would all those people have said who heard the Royal Assent given to that Bill in August, 1928, if they had been told that forty years later nothing whatever would have been done about it?
I repeat that there are no religious objections to this Bill. I ask what other objections there can be. In order to check my statement that there were no religious objections I went, about ten years ago, to see the Apostolic Delegate at Wimbledon and asked him whether he could help me to get the opinion of the Roman Catholic Church. He was most helpful and friendly about it and told me that this was entirely a matter for the Vatican Council; and I, being very simple-minded, jumped at that and said, "That is fine. How can I get the opinion of the Vatican Council? I will try and ask them". He smiled and said, "Yes, of course you can"; and he said, "You see, the last meeting of the Vatican Council was in 1870 and the next is not yet fixed".

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But the next has now been not only fixed but held. The next meeting of the Vatican Council was a very short time ago, and that body passed a document which I have here, through the courtesy of the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, who I do not think is here to-day. They passed a document called A Declaration of the Second Vatican Council on Revision of the Calendar, and, translated into terms of the voting in your Lordships' House, this was passed as follows: Contents, 2,058;Not-contents, 9. And this is what that very large majority said:
"The Sacred Council would not object if the Feast of Easter were assigned to a particular Sunday of the Gregorian Calendar, provided that others whom it may concern, especially the brethren who are not in communion with the Holy See, are agreed on this matter."
So I come back to where I began. Everyone is waiting for everyone else. If I may say so in the presence of more than one ex-Home Secretary—or perhaps not now, but there were a minute or two ago—and without being in the least rude to the representatives of the Home Office, even the Home Office have now had time to consider this matter and try to find out the answers. They have now had time "to get to work on the negotiations", to go back to the words of Sir William Joynson-Hicks, in 1928.
What, then, do I want to-day? All I am asking is that Her Majesty's present Government, no matter what Party it belongs to, shall carry this Act into force by causing to be laid before the House an Order in Council for its approval or otherwise, and then to bring the Act into force in accordance with the Act itself.
5.36 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF BRISTOL: My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will forgive me for intervening in this debate without due notice. It was by a misunderstanding that my name was not down, for I think that some information about a decision in the Church Assembly of the Church of England may be relevant to some of the points, at any rate, which the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, has made.
This is an intensely complicated subject. I well remember having an Eastern Orthodox friend staying with us who took my children to an Eastern Orthodox Easter Service. Finding five or six weeks difference in date from our own, my
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children asked me why, and I did my best to explain the differences between the Julian and the Gregorian Calendars, and the rest of the laborious calculations that have been used over the centuries, only to be floored, as one so often is, by the simple question, "Well, who is right?". And I am still wondering. The subject has been intermittently discussed in this country for the last 1,003 years, when it was fairly decisively settled at the Synod of Whitby, but obviously not quite decisively.
The point which I think is relevant to to-day's discussion is that not so very long ago the Church of England quite clearly expressed its mind in Church Assembly, in a resolution which was moved in a debate on February 14 last year by the Archbishop of York. He moved:
"That this Assembly would welcome the introduction of a fixed date for Easter, preferably on the Sunday following the second Saturday in April".
The context of that discussion was explained by another of the speakers in the debate: that the British Council of Churches had taken the initiative, after the Resolution of the Vatican Council to which reference has just been made, to get this subject moving again on the international plane. The British Council of Churches had approached the World Council of Churches asking them to re-open discussions with the Vatican, and to conduct an inquiry amongst their own200 member Churches, Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox, throughout the world.
Obviously the greatest difficulty in the international sphere comes from the difference still observed in wide areas of orthodoxy in the calculation of their calendar. But the present position is that the World Council of Churches is in process of conducting an inquiry throughout its membership, asking them which of the following solutions would be most agreeable: (a) fixing Easter on the Sunday following the second Saturday in April, according to the Gregorian Calendar; or, (b) a solution based on the Resolution of the Council of Nicea—that is to say, the Sunday which follows next after the first full moon of Spring; or (c) Easter to be fixed on the Sunday after the Jewish Passover. Which just illustrates how many ways you could solve this problem.

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In the meanwhile, the Archbishop of York and other speakers in the debate in the Church of England were anxious that the whole process should not be held up indefinitely by any one Church refusing to declare its own position. And so, in spite of some amendments which would have asked the Church of England to take no decision until wider agreement had been reached (the amendments were defeated), the Resolution which I have read, suggesting that the Assembly—that is to say, the Church Assembly—would welcome the introduction of a fixed Easter, was accepted on the ground that hereby at least the Church of England could declare its own mind, while at the same time being party to wider negotiations which are going on on an international scale through the World Council of Churches.
5.41 p.m.
LORD AIREDALE: The noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, paid the Liberal Party a magnificent compliment. I should like to say just one or two words. We have enjoyed during most of this month the sort of weather that people go, in February, to the South of France to enjoy. March looks much like coming in like a lamb, and I rather think it is almost certain that this year March will go out like a lion. Sunday, March 26, will be Easter Sunday. It will be about as early in the year as Easter can possibly be, and the people will be absolutely miserable. They will be spending Easter in conditions which Fleet Street editors describe as "blizzard conditions". Incidentally, I cannot think that any Fleet Street editor has ever been in a real blizzard, because, if he had been, he would not describe severe snowstorms in the South of England in that way. At all events, the people will be most miserable. But good may come of it. I hope they will rise up and say, "Why on earth do we not celebrate Easter at a civilised time of the year? Why on earth did we not listen to the late Lord Desborough? And why on earth are we not now listening to the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr?".
5.43 p.m.
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord. Lord Merthyr, for raising this matter once again. With his usual sense of humour, he accused me of introducing Party politics into the
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Questions and Answers we indulged in on January 17. He said (column 4 of the OFFICIAL REPORT for that day):
"My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that that is exactly what Her Majesty's Government did do, nearly 40 years ago?";
and I replied:
"My Lords, the noble Lord will remember what Government that was."
Obviously he was not too angry with me, because he went on to say how much the Tory Party were responsible in the last forty years for not doing anything, how the Labour Party was guilty of not doing anything, and how completely blameless was the Liberal Party, as the noble Lord, the junior Leader of the Liberal Party, was quick to point out.
The noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, is a most impatient person, because we have just heard from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter that the matter has been under consideration now for 1003 years. I knew it was about a thousand years, but I did not know it was exactly 1003. However, the position is that we are pressing on. As the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, rightly reminded us, what is now the 1928 Act was a Private Member's Bill introduced by Captain Bourne, who was the Conservative Member for Oxford City. It is clear from the debate on that Bill (the noble Lord has quoted some of the speeches; I have been through them, but obviously have not time to refer to them all) that it was not seriously contemplated by anyone that the Act would be brought into operation unless and until the general agreement of the Christian Churches had been obtained.
The Home Secretary of the day was, as he said, Sir William Joynson-Hicks. He is the esteemed father of the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford, and he said, speaking on Second Reading in another place on February 17, 1928, at col. 1137 of the Commons OFFICIAL REPORT:
"I for one would have no part or lot what ever in attempting to 'fix'—I use my noble friend's expression"—
his noble friend was the Lord Hugh Cecil—
"the date of Easter if it were not absolutely certain that it would be entirely approved by the ecclesiastical authorities in this country and in other countries concerned, and indeed, unless the change was made with the full assent of the ecclesiastical authorities."

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Those were the words of the then Home Secretary. The noble Lord referred to his speech, but he did not quote that, which would not have helped his case much. This was the view of the Government in 1928; and I think this is the answer to the Question which the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, put to me on January 17. He pointed out, quite correctly, that the Act required merely that before an Order was made bringing it into force regard should be had to any opinion Officially expressed by any Church or other Christian body; and he asked me if I did not agree that if Parliament had desired in 1928 that the agreement of the Churches should be obtained it would have said so. It was not, I believe, envisaged that we should necessarily await complete agreement between all the Churches.
In 1951, in a debate initiated by the noble Lord himself, the most reverend Primate, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, said that he detected in the 1928 debates that the reason the provision was put in the form in which it appears in the Act was so that if any of the great denominations were unwilling to make the change great regard would be paid to their objection, but that if some small sect objected it would be possible to proceed without their consent. He went on to say that the Church of England regarded this condition of general consent as quite advisable, and that he would not be prepared to give any continued support to the Easter Act unless that condition was fulfilled. This, I think, has always been the attitude of the Church of England.
I had a word last week with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter, who also joined in the exchanges that we had on the last occasion. He questioned me on January 17, and seemed, to imply some criticism and impatience. He said that he was sorry he could not come today, but I am sure he will not mind my answering his apparent criticism now. He seemed to show some impatience of the delay in reaching a decision on this matter, and your Lordships may recall that in the debate which we had on this subject on July 24, 1962, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter himself reaffirmed the view that there should be general agreement among the Churches before the Act came into
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force. He said—and I quote from column 981 of Hansard of July 24, 1962:
"But what we do feel very strongly is that we would not be prepared to agree to a fixed Easter in isolation from other Churches of the West."
He went on to say (col. 982):
"It would be indeed unfortunate if here in England some of us Christians observed Easter on one day and others on another."
These comments show that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter was concerned primarily with securing the agreement of the Churches in this country. In his questions to me on January 17, he said that the Church of England had agreed and the Vatican Council had agreed, and he appeared to suggest that little more was needed, since it was unlikely that there would ever be universal agreement throughout all the Churches.
But, my Lords, the matter is surely not as simple as that. Following the approach from the World Council of Churches just referred to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol, the Standing Committee, under the chairmanship of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, which considered the case for a fixed Easter reported in January last year as follows:
"There would seem to be no ecclesiastical objection in the Church of England to a fixed Easter. It would seem advisable to express the hope that all Churches would agree to the same date (preferably the Sunday after the second Saturday in April). If all Churches were not in agreement, the question should be considered again in the light of the opinions expressed throughout Christendom."
This followed a declaration by the Second Vatican Council that
"The Sacred Council would not object it the Feast of Easter were assigned to a particular Sunday of the Gregorian Calendar, pro vided that others whom it may concern, especially the brethren who are not in communion with the Holy See, are agreed on this matter."
That is what the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, rightly, though rather picturesquely, referred to as "the vicious circle". If all the other Churches agree to break this "vicious circle", I assure him that we will try to assist in doing so. These two declarations show that, while the Church of England and the Vatican Council have, as the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Exeter, indicated, agreed in principle to a fixed Easter, their

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agreement is conditional on agreement being reached with the other Christian Churches.
In our brief debate on January 17 I informed the House that by August last year 74 out of the 221 Churches to whom the World Council of Churches had addressed a questionnaire had sent in their replies. The noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, could not resist asking whether it was the intention of the Government, when it had taken forty years to get those replies from seventy churches, to wait another forty years. The House will recall that it was only in February, 1964, that the then Home Secretary (now the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor) announced in another place that he would institute consultations with the Churches in this country as to the possibility of agreement being reached among them. It was as a result of this approach that the British Council of Churches later in that year invited the World Council to consider the matter, and the Executive Committee of the World Council agreed in July, 1965, to send out a questionnaire to all the member Churches. My latest inquiries have shown that about one half of the member Churches have now replied—not just 74 out of the 221, but about half. The British Council of Churches met in Windsor last week, and when I asked whether they had any further information than that which I had in my possession, that was their reply—about half had replied. So it is getting on. It appears that there have been another fifty replies in the last week since our earlier discussions on this matter.
Those who have replied are unanimous in their desire to have a fixed Easter, and the great majority favour the adoption of the date in April for which the 1928 Act provides. There is reason to hope that when a meeting of the Central Committee of the World Council takes place in August this year the views of all the important member Churches will be known. In our earlier discussions I asked the noble Lord whether he could not wait a year, because I knew that this questionnaire was to be sent out. I was not to know that it was going to take quite so long, so T do not think he can accuse me of trying to mislead him or put him off. When the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches meets in August, we hope that by then all the
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important member Churches will have given their views. I am sure the House agrees that we cannot carry the matter further at the present. Good progress has been made. We must await the out come of the meeting of the World Council, and consider in the light of that what action we should then take.

THE ANGLO-EUROPEAN AERO INDUSTRY
5.54 p.m.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL THE EARL OF KINNOULL rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what steps are being taken to ensure that in the 1970s the European aero industry is given a reasonable chance of meeting the requirements for civil aircraft of a European market of some 320 million people. The noble Earl said: My Lords, when I put down this Unstarred Question last Thursday, the purpose of it was to probe the Government on both the Concord project and the proposed European airbus. I did not know then that on the same evening the Minister of State of the Ministry of Technology, Mr. John Stone-house, was to address a private meeting of the Aviation Committee of the Parliamentary Labour Party on the very same subject. And, as is now the custom of this Government, this so-called private meeting turned out to be remark ably well reported in nearly every national daily paper the following day. But as some newspaper accounts differed from others as to what the Minister actually said at this meeting, I hope the noble Lord will take this opportunity to-day to confirm officially what the Government's intentions are for both these projects and so remove any doubts or suspicions that may still linger in the minds of our European partners.
Anyone who has taken the opportunity, as I did this week-end to look back over all the Questions and debates in Parliament as recorded by Hansard over the last year, would, I am sure, have reached the same conclusion: that progress on agreement about the European airbus between Britain, France and Germany has been painfully slow and nothing much else has emerged beyond the now familiar Declaration of Intent. The project was, I believe, first envisaged by Britain in 1961, but it was not until February 17 of last year that the British and French Governments met to consider a

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joint report on the feasibility and commercial attractiveness of the airbus. It was decided at that meeting to ask West Germany to participate in the project. We learnt this information from the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, during the course of his winding-up speech in the debate on the Plowden Report, which, if I may say so, was ably introduced by my noble friend Lord Jellicoe.
Nine months later, on November 21, the then Minister of Aviation, Mr. Mulley, admitted during an aviation debate in another place that progress on the airbus project had been disappointing. But he was able to announce that the industrial companies which had worked on the proposals of the airbus had been able to reconcile their differences and had submitted their joint proposals to the three Governments. At that time, in November, the three Governments were assessing and evaluating the proposals.
Nothing much else was heard from then on as to the progress of the airbus until February 1 of this year, when it was announced in another place that a meeting of Ministers of the three Governments had been held in January last at which there was general agreement on the project except for three outstanding points. In the first instance the national airlines of each country were to be sounded as to their future plans for orders of the aircraft; and secondly, the choice of an American or a British engine for the aircraft was still to be decided. Lastly, the financial participation in the project by the aircraft industry was to be looked into. The Minister then announced that a further meeting between the Governments was planned to take place this March, when one assumes that the final decision to launch the project will be made. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, in his reply could confirm whether in fact this is the intention of the next meeting of Ministers in March.
So, my Lords, after a year of negotiation the balance of the future of the European airbus appears to rest in the hands of the three partners in the project—that is to say, the financiers of the aircraft, the British, French and German Governments, who will not move until they are satisfied that the project has potentially a world market as well as basically a
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home market; secondly, the builders of the aircraft, the industrial companies who appear to be happy now and who have reconciled their various interests but who have no doubt got an eye on the increasing danger of American competition from Lockheed; and lastly, the operators, the three national airlines, B.E.A., Air France and Lufthansa, whose commercial interests no doubt conflict but without whose firm support the project would scarcely become viable. What happens if, in fact, these airlines do not commit themselves to an order? This is a question which perhaps the noble Lord could deal with when he comes to reply.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, I am sorry I did not quite follow the drift of what the noble Earl was saying. Is he at the moment referring to the airbus?
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: Yes, I was referring to the European airbus. I was saying what would happen if the national airlines do not commit themselves to any firm order for the European airbus. This is a question which I do not think is hypothetical, for it is well known that Lufthansa have up to now never purchased any aircraft other than Boeings and it is well known that their seating requirements appear to differ from those of B.E.A. and Air France.
As the noble Lord will know, there are many doubts in the minds of British experts as to whether, in fact, this much-heralded European airbus will turn out to be a success, or whether it will turn out to be an enormous white elephant. As I understand it, from the British point of view, the reason for the doubts is that in, the first instance, our resources are already well stretched on the Concord project. But despite whatever attempts the present Government may make to try to cancel this project, the treaty of agreement between France and ourselves has no "break" clause in it, and unless we break the treaty the project must go on. The second reason for British doubts is that, so far as B.E.A. is concerned, it appears very unlikely that they will have any real need or use for the airbus within the next decade, as I understand that they are shortly to announce Stage II of the order for their

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re-equipment of aircraft. As I understand it, the choice for this order lies between the Trident III and the BAC 2–11.
When he comes to reply, perhaps the noble Lord could advise us of the latest position on the B.E.A. Stage II order. For instance, has B.E.A. yet submitted its proposals to the Government for this order? One must recall that some months ago the Chairman of B.E.A. considered the placing of this second order to be a matter of priority. Will the Government hold up their proposals until a decision on the airbus has been made; and, if not, what effect will B.E.A.'s second order have on the market for the airbus? These are the questions which I should be grateful if the noble Lord would answer when he comes to reply.
I believe that the Government's biggest question mark on the feasibility of the airbus is the enormous research and development cost which it would involve, and this at the very time when there is this large commitment to the Concord project. A sum of £400 million has been mentioned for the research and development costs of the airbus, of which Britain would be responsible for one-third. Perhaps the noble Lord could confirm whether this is what the Government at present expect. Yet at the end of all this expense, even if the national airlines agree to support and purchase the aircraft, there is still a strong danger that the Americans may produce a competitive aircraft which will scoop the world market from under the nose of the European airbus. Such is the problem which faces the Government. Even though I am sure Her Majesty's Government are anxious to co-operate with their European partners, the Government's purse has a bottom to it. They cannot afford a mistake, and they cannot afford to back the wrong aircraft, even if politically it is for the right reason.
It is my opinion, for what it is worth, that the present concept of the European airbus project should now be dropped, and for this reason. We have in Britain to-day, in the BAC 2–11, what I believe to be a world beater in short-haul air craft. Its design and specification—it is a 180 passenger seater—have been formulated, with variations if required. It is already, I believe, ahead of the European
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airbus, and it would cost far less for research and development. Its role would be similar to the airbus. What it requires now, of course, is the support of B.E.A. in purchases, and the support of the Government in finance for its development. I appreciate that it is a risk and, of course, it will be contrary to the advice of the Plowden Committee to "go it alone". But it is a risk which I suggest is well worth taking. The aircraft would, as I understand it, incorporate the new technology engine of Rolls-Royce, and would give that great company the chance of winning engine orders for other foreign aircraft.
But can Britain to-day afford to back both horses—the BAC 2–11 and the European airbus? I do not think we can. Therefore, the Government decision is a critical one, and one which will mean that possibly the last of the noble line of great, all-British designed aircraft will sink or swim, unless they can persuade their European partners to use the BAC 2–11 as the European airbus.
If I may now come briefly to the Concord project, I should appreciate it very much if the noble Lord could give us an up-to-date report on its progress, and answer certain specific questions of which I have given him notice. The question which I know is in the minds of many people is this. Why have the Government still not given the "go-ahead" to manufacturers, so that they may purchase the metals needed for production? Why the delay? Are they still uncertain about the project? I am told that any further delay on the decision for the production order could well jeopardise the 1971 production deadline, and I hope that when the noble Lord comes to reply to-night he will have some news for us on this matter. Another question which I should like to put to the noble Lord is this. What is the latest number of options which have been placed for the aircraft, and have B.O.A.C. as yet definitely committed themselves to a firm order? Perhaps the noble Lord could also advise us about the Government's plans for financing the production of spares and components for this aircraft.
It is my belief that, despite the many doubts which have existed, the Concord will prove to be the first major success in what I hope will be a long run of

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successful aircraft designed and built by the European aero industry. It appears well ahead of its only rival, the Boeing, and even to-day one reads of further delays and problems which face the Americans with their aircraft. But the future success of the European aero industry relies, I believe, on two essentials. The first, and most obvious, is the choice of the right aircraft, and the second—and as important—is the unswerving loyalty, support and confidence of all Governments participating once the project has got under way. In order to achieve the second essential, I believe that in future all treaties must have the same "no break" clause as was inserted for the Concord project, for there is little doubt in my mind that, but for that clause, the Concord would not be in the happy position to-day of being on the point of snatching from the American grip the world market for long-haul passenger aircraft for the next decade.
6.7 p.m.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, the noble Lord has certainly asked quite a question, and it is of a very wide character. Although he confined his remarks to the rather narrow aspect of a particular type of aircraft, his Question asks:
"what steps are being taken to ensure that in the 1970s the European aero industry is given a reasonable chance of meeting the requirements for civil aircraft…".
Of course, that embraces a wide range of other issues, including airports, radio aids and the whole broad picture of civil aviation operations, upon which I certainly will not embark this evening.
My particular thought is for the British section of the European aircraft industry. It is true that we are co-operating with the building of the Concord, but it is not all brotherly love in Europe, and there is a great deal of commercial rivalry—and rightly—still existing, and which will continue to exist during the 1970s. Therefore, my thoughts are: What can Her Majesty's Government do to ensure that in the 1970s the British section of the European aircraft industry is given a reasonable chance of meeting requirements?
I think it is necessary to remember that our big rivals in the European market are going to be the Americans, and it is also as well to remember a funda-
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mental difference between the British and American development of civil aircraft. It is too late now, I am afraid, to reverse the situation, but for many years past America has poured money into research and development in connection with military types of aircraft, but with the thought in the background all the time that there shall be evolved a civil edition. Therefore, American civil aircraft have had this inestimable benefit of enormous sums of money being poured out on military budgets. We in Britain have rather cheeseparingly given limited amounts of money for the development of civil aircraft, and in nearly every case where the military have said at the time of the project's commencement that they have no interest in it they have later come along and said, "We should like a military version". We have been at a tremendous disadvantage in civil aviation, due to that fundamental difference between America and ourselves.
Now one says: "What can we do?" We have not the resources to do everything. I am afraid that I am a bit of a heretic over the Concord. I trust that the Concord will be a sound aero-dynamic proposition, but I fear it is never going to be an economic proposition having regard to the real price at which it should be sold and not the artificial price at which it may be sold. Having regard to the real price at which it should be sold, I do not believe it would ever be able to carry across the Atlantic passengers paying a sum which they would be willing to pay for their transportation, a sum that would cover the operating costs, depreciation and insurance. I think there is always going to be an operating deficiency in the case of the Concord. It may he that, for the sake of world prestige, it is a worthwhile effort. But it is water that has passed under the bridge; we are committed.
However, I hope that we shall limit our commitment on that if the expansion of that commitment is to be at the expense of the development of aircraft suitable for mass travel in the short and medium ranges. If it were Concord versus mass travel, I should vote every time for mass travel. It is curious to note that every time the fare to, say, Paris is lowered by 30s. or £2 a whole new category of travellers is tapped. I always think that civil aviation passengers

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are rather like a triangle. At the apex of the triangle one has the limited number of first-class passengers. Then, at the base of the triangle, there is the cheapest form of air travel, night economy. Every time that the fares can be lowered, the whole base of the triangle of aircraft carriage is broadened. That is why I would always go for mass travel as the means of economic success for our aircraft industry, rather than for a small number of very high-priced supersonic aircraft.
My Lords, how can the Government help? I believe that they can help in several ways. I think they can help by making quick decisions on vital issues which are at present unsettled. As is the case with many others who are interested in these matters, I am extraordinarily worried that we are getting out of phase in our aircraft and our airports. I am afraid that we are going to develop aircraft which carry 150, 200 or 250 people, but that we shall suddenly find that we have lagged behind as regards the alteration of our airport buildings—the waiting rooms, the buildings providing the general travel facilities and the Customs. I hope that Her Majesty's Government are going to phase all those requirements in line with the development of aircraft.
Again, I think the provision of new airports will help the British aircraft industry to play its part in the seventies. I am not going to embark upon where the third London airport should be, but let us remember that, particularly bearing in mind the artificial, uneconomic restrictions which are being put upon the use of Heathrow, due to the noise factor, the need for a third airport is increasing month by month. I believe that the Government could help the British aircraft industry in the 'seventies by making now clear and courageous decisions on the noise levels which are acceptable, in order to allow the designers to go ahead.
My Lords, I believe that, apart from providing a great deal of money, the Government's chief job is not to hold up essential decisions. The noble Earl who asked the Question spoke about decisions being wanted by British European Airways. I am still too close to the picture to speak upon that, except to say that when those who are responsible for operations, present and future, ask for
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positive decisions, having given the Government all the information they possibly can in order to allow the Government to arrive at those decisions, there should be a spirit of urgency within the Administration to give those decisions without delay.
6.17 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Kinnoull for putting down his Question to-day. I myself feel that, though it is sometimes useful to discuss these very big problems of the aircraft industry in a full-dress debate, it is also useful at times to have the chance of discussing sectors of these large problems. I share the belief of both my noble friends that we need a vigorous and viable aircraft industry in this country. I also believe that one of the conditions on which the health of the industry depends is really effective collaboration with our European partners. For that reason, I think that, speaking personally, I would at this stage give rather more benefit of the doubt than my noble friend Lord Kinnoull was inclined to give to the airbus, although I entirely agree with him that early decisions are needed here—and I think he made out a fairly powerful and cogent case for Government support for the BAC 2–11 project.
I think I should also be inclined to place a slightly different emphasis from that of my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye on the Concord project, and it is to that subject that I should like to address myself briefly. The news for the Concord project, as I understand it, is at present rather good. From all that I have been able to ascertain, the technical and industrial collaboration between the firms concerned in England and France, both on the airframe side and on the air-engine side, is quite excellent. There have been delays in the United States, and this means, as I understand it, that we have a good chance of maintaining a good lead for the Concord over the American S.S.T. Furthermore, according to American airline chiefs there are likely to be continuing sales for the Concord, even after the American S.S.T. has come into production. All this is reflected in a growing order book (or rather, I suppose one should call it at this stage, a growing option book) for the Concord. Surely, if this is the case, this is the moment for the Government

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to take bold and bullish decisions about this project.
One of the points which rather worry me is the contrast between our national attitude about this type of project and the attitude which I detect when I go over to France. One finds that they make the most of their technical successes in this field—the Caravelle, the Mirage, the French space programme. One does not find the same feeling of enthusiasm in this country for technical successes. And I find this rather depressing. I believe we have in the Concord the chance of a real success, a real break-through, both technically and commercially. I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord, when he comes to reply, will be able to take a rather more robust and optimistic line than the rather niggling line which the Minister of State, Mr. Stone house, is reported to have taken at the recent private meeting of Labour Party Back-Benchers in another place to which my noble friend referred. As he said, it was one of those private meetings in another place which now provide most of our daily breakfast reading. I know there are problems with the Concord at present, not least the problem of sonic boom. I know the Americans are ahead of us in the practical investigations which they have made into this very difficult problem. It is my understanding that Anglo-French trials in depth are likely to begin soon, or have been initiated. I should like to ask the noble Lord whether he has anything to say on that particular score.
That said, I should like to endorse what my noble friend Lord Kinnoull has said on the production aspects of the Concord programme. We are coming to the point when hard decisions are needed on the production programme. Those decisions need to be urgently taken if the Concord is to meet its dateline; and it is extremely important that it should meet its dateline if it is to maintain that invaluable two or three years' lead over the American supersonic transport. In this context, I would put three questions to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton. In the first place, we read that formal authority is required for the two preproduction models in the larger version. Has that authority been given? Secondly, there is the question, which has been
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raised by my noble friend, of the authority which will be required soon for orders for certain of the long-lead items in the production programme. Can the noble Lord tell us whether that authority has been given? And, if not, when will it be forthcoming?
Above all—and this is my third and final question: when will the production programme itself be decided? What production rate will be decided? One reads that a decision is required between a production rate of three aircraft a month and one, perhaps, of five aircraft a month. A lot of people "in the know" feel that a decision should be made to opt for the faster production rate if only because that will mean we can catch the full market for the Concord.
None of us—and here I agree with my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye—would seek to hide the fact that the Concord is not only a great venture but also a considerable gamble. Frankly, I am not certain that the Government of the time, had they known then what is now known about the great costs of this programme, and of the sonic boom problem, and of the other options which could have been open to us in the big subsonic field, would have been justified in taking the decision they took some years ago. Nevertheless, I would emphasise that that decision was firmly taken by the two Governments. It was confirmed, after a major hiccough, by the present Government; and the programme is well down the road. It has almost reached the point of no return. At least, if it goes on, we shall reap rewards; if it stops, we shall have had only the expenditure. The prospect of great commercial and technical success is now visible; and failure at this stage would represent a great setback to European technical collaboration. It would also, in my view, do a great deal of damage to industrial morale in this country. I hope therefore that the noble Lord will confirm, when he replies, that the Government are giving full, and full-blooded, support to the Concord project.
6.26 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I must say that until to-day I was not very clear as to the purpose of the Question put down by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. Indeed, I came to the House

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prepared to give quite a lot of information on
"the steps being taken to ensure that in the 1970s the European aero industry is given a reasonable chance of meeting the requirements for civil aircraft of a European market of some 320 million people."
The noble Earl, however, confined his speech to rather a smaller area. In fact I am not quite sure which 320 million people the noble Earl has in mind. I find that I have to add one or two countries which are certainly not in Western Europe to reach that figure.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, I think the population is rising all the time. I was referring to Western Europe.
LORD SHACKLETON: This is an extrapolation; this is the population that perhaps will exist in 1970. That is a very interesting thought. But I shall not waste the time of the House by going into any subjects other than those actually raised. I must say, having heard the three noble Lords, that I find myself more in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, and the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, in their approach, than I was with the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull—especially when he laid down this firm rule that no Government should ever negotiate a contract with a break clause. That seems to me to be exceedingly dangerous.
This is not to suggest, however, that the debate has not been useful. I agree with the noble Earl that these smaller debates, in rather an easier and relaxed atmosphere, help to clarify ideas. Unfortunately, I cannot say that from what we have heard to-day the Government have been given a very clear steer as to which particular horse they should back. I greatly appreciate the frankness of the noble Earl in regard to the problem of the Concord. I wholly agree that we are committed on this path. At the same time, I must say to the noble Earl that it has always been conceivable that the French might decide at some stage that it was not an economic proposition. It always seems to be assumed, because at one stage there was some doubts in this country and the French were very determined to go on, that there were not some people in France also who had doubts about this programme.
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My Lords, I will answer as many as possible of the points that have been raised. I shall deal first with the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, because I know that he has an appointment. I was very interested in his remarks. With his long experience in this field, there is a great deal of wisdom in what he said. I am sure that on social grounds, and also, I should have thought, on general, national and economic grounds, the argument in favour of mass travel must win the day. But of course we do not follow only one line of argument. In this respect I am sorry that the noble Earl was so hostile—that was the impression he gave—to the airbus. I understand his reasoning. He is afraid that it is holding up urgent decisions on other projects. But one thing is apparent: this is an immensely complex subject. This is an area where any Government—Governments of the past or this Government—have to think very hard indeed before taking decisions. It is peculiarly difficult in the aircraft field, because there is this marked divergence between the military and the civil; and this again was one of the points which was so interesting about the remarks of the noble Lord.
It is a fact that over a long period the American aircraft firms, particularly regarding the production of larger aircraft in which they have always been predominant (even right back to the war, when we looked to America for transport aircraft such as the B.24), were in a much stronger position to get into the civil market than we were, who had made such brilliant pioneering development in more specialised types of aircraft. This is something which to the best of our ability we must always bear in mind. It will be exceedingly difficult to achieve this correlation; but clearly if it can be achieved at any point (obviously it cannot be done in certain specialised types of aircraft) the advantage to the civil and military aircraft markets will be very great indeed. Therefore I noticed his philosophy in this matter with great interest.
The noble Lord also made a plea that we should provide airports and face the question of sonic boom. Again, these are matters which are engaging a great deal of Government time. The sonic boom, about which I shall not speak at

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great length to-day, presents a very difficult problem. My own feeling—and I am expressing purely my personal opinion; one may be wrong, one reads so many different points of view—is that there is a tendency to show too great a fear of the sonic boom. The noise of aircraft that afflicts us, especially those living near airports and military airfields is, I should have thought, at least as trying as, and probably infinitely more trying than, the sonic boom would be. But this is a matter on which there will be further study.
I am afraid that I am not able to answer the point made by the noble Earl about the extent of the possible further tests in this country. As he knows, there have been very extensive tests in the United States and in France, and all one can say is that they have been very inconclusive. I expect that the noble Earl read the report of the tests which were carried out over, I think it was, Oklahoma—
EARL JELLICOE: It was Arkansas.
LORD SHACKLETON: Yes, my Lords; but I must say that by the time I read the report through I was as uncertain about the conclusions to be drawn as were those who compiled the report. There is a good deal of supersonic flying going on over France; I do not know how much there is in the way of complaints. Here in this country, of course, we limit supersonic flying. We do not allow the R.A.F. to fly supersonically over England. These are matters which will have to receive very careful consideration. I have noted the point the noble Earl has made on this matter.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord, may I ask whether I am right in supposing that it is virtually impossible to silence a jet engine?
LORD SHACKLETON: There seems to be a certain philosophic aspect here. I am not sure from my philosophy days whether this is—no; it is not the ontological argument; it is the gramophone playing in the desert. I do not think it is ever possible completely to silence a jet engine. If the machine is flown high enough, of course, you will not hear the engine. But you may hear the sonic boom. I do not know whether that answers the noble Lord.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, I was thinking more of those who live near airports.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, all I can say is that research is going on and that steps are being taken; and as we know, people who live near London Airport are entitled to a certain amount of noise-proofing for their houses. But I do not want to get further into this aspect, unless the noble Earl wishes to ask a question.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I do not wish to ask a question on the philosophy of sound; my question is a simpler one. I wish merely to re-pose a question which I had asked the noble Lord, whether he had any knowledge of the proposed Anglo-French trials on sonic boom which I understood were shortly to be under taken or had already started. I must apologise for not giving the noble Lord notice of that question. Perhaps I could put down a Question on the subject for an Oral Answer.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I think the noble Earl is a little premature in this matter. I do not think that there is any agreement to this effect at the moment, but if the noble Earl wishes I will try to give him a considered Answer. But I am quite sure that in fact there is no agreed series of trials of an international kind.
Now, if I may, I will turn to certain of the points which have been made and make a few general remarks. On this rather narrow, but interesting, field, I will not rehearse the general policy of the Government. We threshed this out, and I think that there is general agreement (although from time to time there is a little sniping) that we should move increasingly towards the association of the British and other European industries in a European aircraft industry. Predominantly, this means the French, but it also means the Germans and others, too. This has been fully accepted, and I must say that I have observed—and I think it fair to say this—that a much greater effort has been put behind the drive towards this objective in recent times. I am not making a Party point about this. I think that the "penny" dropped slowly with the previous Government and we are pressing on. There is a growing pressure towards more European

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co-operation. This may or may not appeal to the noble Earl—
EARL JELL1COE: My Lords, I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord again. I am not making a Party point either, but I would merely remind him that the "shilling" in the Anglo-French Concord had dropped before the noble Lord and his Government took office, and they had to extract it from the machine at one stage.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I do not think I will follow the noble Earl. It seems to me that he is getting into extremely dubious territory on this matter. What I was about to say was that the noble Earl did not seem to me to be a great enthusiast for collaboration; that what he was after was firm national decisions, which is something which I think it would be wrong for us to pursue regardless of the implications in the international field. We have taken the initiative. We still believe, with Plowden and, I believe, with the Party opposite (or at least with the Front Bench opposite), that we must make an ever-growing effort to make a success of European co-operation; and this undoubtedly imposes certain difficulties. It is always easier to go ahead and do something on your own; you do not have to consult so many people. It would have been simpler, for instance, for us to have gone ahead with a purely Anglo variable geometry aircraft, but I am absolutely certain that we were right to go ahead on a joint effort. My Lords, there have been a number of meetings between the Ministry of Aviation, and now the Ministry of State for Technology, with their French and German counterparts. There are continuous and detailed exchanges going on to further these very important collaborative projects, and to iron out the immense range of technical detail.
I think that I should again refer, on the subject of collaboration, to the variable geometry aircraft. Not only is it of importance from a military point of view; because although not related directly to design, it provides a real stimulus to the British and French aircraft industry. Undoubtedly there will he technical fall-out from that project. This
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is very important for ensuring that there is an effective European aero-industry.
A great deal has been said about the Concord. This is not the time to discuss whether it is the right project, or to rehash some of the arguments we have had in the past. I would say that it is proceeding on schedule, and that everybody concerned with it is showing great determination to make a success of supersonic transport and to seize the market while it is there. I am sure we are all agreed on this. I cannot say whether there is, perhaps, less obvious enthusiasm in this country for it—we have not made a social survey. The suggestion that there may be more national pride in technological achievement in France is interesting. If this is so, it is a matter on which we need to do more thinking, because undoubtedly this is a subject in which very properly national pride can find an expression.
There is no delay in the Concord programme. I am informed that satisfactory interim arrangements have been made for production financing in the coming months, and that the need for large sums of money does not arise immediately. The Government are discussing with the manufacturers the best way of meeting their future needs. We have all heard that the manufacturers wish that the Government would place production orders, and we have all heard that successive Governments have been exceedingly bland, as I have been, on this subject. I will simply say that I will take note of what has been said. I am sure that there has been no delay, but it is much nicer for manufacturers to know that orders are being placed and where the money is coming from. But there is always an element of risk, and there is a due point somewhere between the position of the aircraft manufacturers and the position that Governments take up in this matter.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, is he saying that the Government are claiming that there is no real need for manufacturers to call for advance production orders on the metals they require?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am saying that the steps the Government have taken are adequate and satisfactory to meet the needs of manufacturers. This applies in the field of long-need items.

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But I have noted what noble Lords have said. If they can give some further evidence on this, I will inquire further; but that is as far as I can possibly go now.
The Government will not be placing the production orders. This will be for the airlines. Therefore, the need is for providing production finance in anticipation of orders. The Government are discussing in detail with the companies concerned their future needs and how these can best be met. It should not be a pressing problem this year.
The noble Earl asked me a question on the total potential market for aircraft. I do not think that it is for me or for the Government to hazard a guess on this. There are enough occasions on which we have to stick our necks out, and this is one in which we are in no better position than many people who have made their own estimates, which have been published in the Press. But I would agree that the potenial is a large one. How much of it we shall meet depends on a number of circumstances which we cannot yet foresee, but already 70 delivery positions—it is rather like putting a boy down for school when very young—have been reserved by airlines throughout the world, including eight for B.O.A.C. and eight for Air France. But it is really too early to expect airlines to place firm orders at this stage. Inevitably there is an element of gamble in this, as the noble Earl said, but we have entered into this gamble, with every hope that it will pay off.
Let me say a few words about the airbus. There is no doubt in the Government's mind that a successful collaborative European airbus would be an important step towards further technological and economic co-operation in Europe. Against the background of rapidly growing traffic, particularly on short-haul routes, and following an initiative of the European airlines themselves, British, French and German officials, with the industry participating, have been studying for over a year the possibility of building an airbus. I was not sure whether the noble Earl was suggesting that we were taking a long time over it, or that it might be a mistake to go on with it at all. I think that what noble Lords are worried about is whether there is a real sense of urgency.
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My impression is that there is a sense of urgency, but we cannot cut corners in this difficult field. By the summer of last year, the three Governments had agreed on the broad specification for an airbus: 250 seats, with a stretch potential to 300;a range of about 1,500 kilometres—about 1,000 miles—anda target in-service date of 1972. In October, 1966, chosen manufacturers in the three countries submitted a joint airbus report, and there was a great deal of argument on the main characteristics. These are now being evaluated.
There was a meeting of Ministers at Bonn early last month. There will be discussions again at the end of this month. I cannot tell the noble Earl—I wish I could—how far definite decisions will emerge. There are some hurdles to jump, but I think that, when have got the further views of the European airlines, Ministers ought to be in a position to meet and consider the next steps.
The preliminary costs are still under examination. The noble Earl mentioned a figure, but I fear that I am not in a position either to confirm or deny it. I would rather say nothing on this matter, and I hope that he will not press me. On the selection of the engine, I hope that it will be a European engine, and certainly one which includes a great deal of British technology. We see the British aircraft industry playing a major role in any future European aircraft industry.
The noble Earl referred particularly to the equipment of B.E.A. He will recall that the Government took a firm decision that B.E.A. should adopt British aircraft rather than American. Following this decision, the Corporation have already ordered 18 BAC 1–11s in the 97-passenger version. B.E.A. are already considering how best to meet their requirement for a larger passenger aircraft. The noble Earl referred to the BAC 2–11, which I understand will seat 185 passengers. I must point out that this concept is at a very early stage. Then there is the Trident, 139-seat version. No proposals have yet been submitted by B.E.A., and it is too early to say what solution will be adopted.
At this point, I was going to come on to a wide range of other aircraft. It seems to me, however, that there is no need for me to do so, but I think we

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ought to remember that there are other projects of an important kind. There is the Handley Page Jetstream, which may have an important market, and which is receiving aid from the Government. If one mentions Handley Page, then one ought to mention the Hawker Siddeley 125, which has been extremely successful. There are many others, coming down to the smallest size, the Britten Norman Islander.
I believe this is a difficult field for decision-making, but I can assure the noble Earl that the Government are
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giving this subject very high priority, and that they are determined to take decisions at the earliest opportunity, with all urgency, but also with due forethought. I hope the noble Earl will be satisfied that, although I have not been able to answer all his points, I have at least indicated an attitude of mind which I believe is definitely the attitude of mind to be found, not only in the Government, but in the British aircraft industry itself.
House adjourned at nine minutes before seven o'clock