Lords Sitting of 8 June 1967

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Chester

GRANTS TO EMERGENT COUNTRIES
3.5 p.m.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many emergent countries which since the grant of independence have later departed from true Constitutional Government are still in receipt of any subvention or grants from the United Kingdom.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY FOR COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS (LORD BESWICK): My Lords, if the noble Lord will be good enough to let me know more precisely which countries he has in mind I will endeavour to let him have all relevant information.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, is the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, able to give any indication whether the designation of emergent countries is in any way affected by the continuance or the reverse of Constitutional Government? Further, can he give any separate categorisation of those immediate emergent countries, such as Sierra Leone, Nigeria or Tanzania, which have either broken off diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom or are presumably in a state of rebellion against Her Majesty's Government?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I do not think that any useful purpose can be served by trying to categorise countries according to those which, in the noble Lord's opinion, are constitutionally governed and those which are not. Because a country breaks off its relationship with this country, it does not necessarily mean
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that it is not under a constitutional form of government.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, since the amount referred to is very large—a total figure of some £80 million was recently given—has not the time come when we should reconsider the generosity of these grants to countries which are no longer constitutionally governed?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, before any contribution is made to any country all factors are taken into account. It is not necessarily a factor against the giving of aid that its form of government has changed.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, may I ask Her Majesty's Government this question? Are they aware that the common people of Portugal look upon our payments to Zambia with an unfavourable eye because they say that these funds are used—or release other funds to be used—for arming infiltrators who cross the Portuguese border and commit rape, robbery and arson in unprotected places against the persons of our oldest ally? Would it not be worth while for Her Majesty's Government to withhold contributions to Zambia until they are satisfied that that Government is doing everything in its power to prevent that kind of thing from happening?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, as I understand it, many factors are taken into account before a decision is taken as to the amount of economic aid given to any country. I am not aware, however, whether the opinion of Portugal is among those factors.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, I agree with giving aid to all the former Colonies, in the context of the fact that we gave them independence, but does not my noble friend think that, with the pressure to join the Common Market, the situation now is that we are attacking the independent nations when they have teething troubles, rather than helping them to make a multiracial society within the Commonwealth?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I quite agree with what I understand my noble friend to be saying; namely, that some of these countries, to which certain noble Lords take exception, are going through the kind of difficulties which we in this

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country went through hundreds of years ago.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, may I ask whether the noble Lord's answer to me means that Her Majesty's Government are indifferent to the kind of thing about which I have complained?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, would be good enough to read in the OFFICIAL REPORT what I actually said.
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, can my noble friend say whether a Constitutional Government includes the House of Lords?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am not certain about that, but I do know that they are not among the recipients of economic aid.

60 M.P.H. SPEED LIMIT ON A.45 ROAD
3.12 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will state what consultations were held by the Minister of Transport before announcing their intention to impose a 60 m.p.h. speed limit, on a trial basis, on the A.45 road between Thurlaston roundabout and the Coventry boundary.]
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the police and the Ministry's Warwickshire Area Road Safety Unit were consulted. The proposal will shortly be advertised, and any representations will then be considered in the usual way.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that when a new principle such as this is introduced by the Minister, it is at least customary to consult the various interested organisations? Am I to assume that this was not done?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, having been a Minister in this particular Department, will be aware that the Ministry are under no statutory rule to consult anyone. My
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right honourable friend has consulted these two organisations which have been carrying out a survey over this road for a length of some 25 miles. On this strip of road there is a very heavy accident rate: I think there have been some 769 personal injuries there in the last three years. This speed limit is being introduced in an effort to reduce the accident rate. I stated in my original Answer that the representations can be made, and these will no doubt result in conversations.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that it was precisely because of the period that I was in the Ministry, to which he referred, that I asked this Question? May I ask the noble Lord whether he realises that I am aware of what are and what are not the Minister's statutory duties, and that in many of these matters there are indeed statutory obligations on the Ministry to consult? Am I to take it that on this matter the Minister did not consult the National Road Safety Advisory Committee or its working party on speed limit policy?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, in regard to this strip of road, I have already given the two bodies which my right honourable friend has consulted.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, may I thank the noble Lord for his answer? May I ask him whether he is further aware that we now have 30 m.p.h., 40 m.p.h., 50 m.p.h., and 70 m.p.h. speed limits, and that advisory speed limits on corners are creeping in? May I ask him whether this is not in the nature of a new principle, which may lead to confusion becoming worse confounded? Also, would it be possible for Parliament to be informed more widely when such new tiers of speed limits are introduced?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this is a new speed limit, of course, but it is thought that this limit is best for this particular stretch of road. I think that the noble Lord is going a little wider than the original Question, but I should be happy if he were to raise this matter on another occasion, because it has considerable bearing on our traffic safety problems.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that,

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rather than fixing a new speed limit, which at best is arbitrary—it may be too much or too little—a far greater improvement in road safety would be achieved on this 25-mile strip of road if he could introduce more mobile police patrols? They have a far greater effect than any number of speed limits, which are not always enforced very well.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I certainly would not disagree with the noble Lord.

PHENYLKETONURIA IN NEW-BORN BABIES
3.15 p.m.
LORD SEGAL: 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 how many local authorities are now arranging the testing for phenylketonuria of all new-born babies; and what steps they have taken to assist all doctors in the early diagnosis of this disease.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, all local health authorities in Great Britain are now testing for this condition. My right honourable friends the Minister of Health and the Secretary of State for Scotland have given guidance to medical officers of health about testing. They have emphasised that local arrangements depend for their success upon close liaison with family doctors and the pædiatric departments of hospitals in order to facilitate diagnosis and treatment and to help parents to deal with the problems of management and dieting, consequent on diagnosis.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply, but is he aware that this dreadful disease, although rare, can be treated successfuly only if it is diagnosed early? Is he also aware that several parents are fully prepared to collaborate with the Ministry to help in every possible way to save other parents from the ordeal which they themselves have had to undergo?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I agree with what my noble friend says. As he knows, a great deal of work is being done
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under the auspices of the Medical Research Council to evaluate the various forms of speedy testing, and we all hope that a successful outcome will emerge. I am happy to say that the incidence of this disease is very small—I am advised one in 20,000 births at present.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, does my noble friend realise that once a doctor has seen a case of this disease he is likely to remember it for the rest of his life? Would the Ministry be prepared to collaborate in producing a film on this disease for showing to local medical societies to impress on the doctors the importance of early diagnosis?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, as I have said, I agree with my noble friend that early diagnosis is essential. I think he is aware that it is the practice to ensure that every child shortly after birth is tested for this disease. I agree with him about its distressing character. As noble Lords will be aware, it is an inherited disease which, if left untreated, will result in varying degrees of mental deficiency. If we can get the additional co-operation of parents it would be a good thing, and I will gladly consult with my noble friend to see what might be done. I know of the work which he is doing for the Mentally Handicapped Children's Association.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend for his reply and for the offer he has made to collaborate further in trying to prevent these unnecessary cases of this disease occurring.

HOSPITAL ACCOMMODATION FOR MENTALLY HANDICAPPED CHILDREN
3.18 p.m.
LORD SEGAL: 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 how many hospitals now provide accommodation exclusively for children who are mentally handicapped; what is the total number of beds available, and what increase in their number is planned during the next ten years.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, in England and Wales there are 29 hospital units providing in-patient treatment exclusively for mentally ill or seriously maladjusted children, and one unit where children and adolescents are accommodated together. There are 525 places in these units. In addition, there are beds in general children's hospitals or departments in which psychiatric treatment is given to those children who do not require the special facilities of a children's psychiatric unit. There are also out-patient facilities for children and a number of day hospitals for the treatment of children who are able to remain outside hospital for part of their time. The plans which Boards have already made in their hospital building programmes, will, when implemented, provide nearly 550 more beds in children's psychiatric units. In addition, there are plans to provide psychiatric treatment for some children in children's departments of district general hospitals, and to increase day hospital facilities.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that reply, I would ask him whether he is aware that many parents are still being told that they will have to wait three or four years before their children can be admitted into hospital? Could not the Government take rather more energetic measures to try to prevent the necessity for such disappointing statements?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am not aware of the actual length of time that some children may have to wait, but it is true that there is a shortage of accommodation of this kind for the mentally handicapped child. Even if the programme to which I have referred is completed, there will still be some shortage of accommodation. However, I would point out that it is not simply a question of accommodation. If we could get more child psychiatrists they would be able to do more in the preventive field, this would relieve the pressure upon accommodation.
LORD AUCKLAND: My Lords, can the noble Lord say what is being done to provide adequate nursing facilities for these children, as many hospitals, particularly outside London, are short of suitable nursing staff?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I think this is possibly a wider question and one that is bound up with the recruitment of nurses.
LORD ST. HELENS: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether he is aware of this large body of medical opinion which feels that it is a bad thing that mentally handicapped children should be segregated? May I hope that his Answer did not imply that these children are being kept on their own?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I will certainly look into this point. I am not aware of what the noble Lord says. What I certainly feel—and I think he will agree—is that what we really need is more preventive work. That is why I place emphasis on the provision of more child psychiatrists, who could work in the field, probably making it unnecessary for some of these children to become in-patients at all.

THE MIDDLE EAST
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I beg to ask the Government a Question of which I have given Private Notice; namely, whether they will make a further Statement on the affairs in the Middle East?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, with permission, my noble friend Lord Chalfont will reply to that Private Notice Question shortly after 3.30 p.m. this afternoon.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
3.23 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD rose to move, That, until the House adjourns for the Summer Recess, Standing Order No. 35 (Arrangement of the Order Paper) be suspended so far as is necessary to give Government Business, except with the consent of the Government, precedence over other Notices and Orders of the Day. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of my noble friend the Leader of the House. This Motion and this Standing Order are normally moved formally, and much closer to the Parliament Recess. On this

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occasion perhaps a few words of explanation should be given why we are moving it so much earlier.
Irrespective of their political complexion, Governments tend to have a very heavily congested business programme at this time of the year. This is not the fault of Governments, but is mainly due to the financial privilege of the Commons, which goes back to the 17th century. This Motion will give us a degree of flexibility in the arrangement of our business. I think the House should be aware that the Government have in mind the need for taking two Wednesdays in July, which normally are days for Private Motions, for the consideration of important Government business. But if this situation should arise, I can give the House the assurance that it will be done only after consultations through the usual channels. I think the House should also be aware that it is very likely that we shall have to sit on three Fridays during July, in order to take two Private Members' Bills in which I think there is considerable interest in your Lordships' House.
It may also be necessary to ask the House to agree to shorter periods between stages of Bills. If this is necessary, we shall seek to do it between the First Reading and the Second Reading, in order to ensure that there is adequate time between the Second Reading and Committee stage. I think the House attaches great importance to this. But here again, if there is any reduction, this will result from negotiations through the usual channels. But we will seek by the use of Notices of future business to give Members of the House as much knowledge as possible of our programme.
In regard to the Bill that is now before us, the Criminal Justice Bill, I have had consultations with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, and others to see whether we can find a satisfactory programme in order that we may complete the Committee stage by Tuesday of next week. We suggest to the House that to-day we should go up to Amendment No. 38, which is Clause 28; that on Monday, the 12th, we should take first Amendment No. 39, Clause 30, and then continue up to Amendment No. 86, which is the end of Part IV of the Bill. I understand that if we do this we should
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be able to complete the Committee stage of this Bill at a relatively early hour on Tuesday. But this does mean sitting to a rather late hour on Monday; and, naturally, dinners will be provided. I beg to move.
Moved, That, until the House adjourns for the Summer Recess, Standing Order No. 35 (Arrangement of the Order Paper) be suspended so far as is necessary to give Government Business, except with the consent of the Government, precedence over other Notices and Orders of the Day.—(Lord Shepherd.)
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, it would appear that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, is having unusually early trouble with another place in producing a large quantity of legislation during the last few weeks of the Session. As regards his suggestion about Wednesdays, I should like an assurance from the noble Lord that this suggestion of his will in no way affect the rights of the Opposition to raise debates, and that they should be first business on Wednesdays, in the usual way.
Secondly, on the question of Fridays, I have had very strong representation made to me by noble Lords on this side of the House that they do not feel that the habit of sitting on Friday should be allowed to grow. We feel that we are, to a certain extent, an amateur House as compared with the other place, and it would be better to sit late on the days in the middle of the week rather than to overflow on to Friday. Also on the question of Fridays, the two Bills which I think the noble Lord has in mind are both highly controversial Bills. I think it would be better to take these in the middle of the week and, if there is such a thing as some uncontroversial Government business, that this should be taken on the Friday instead.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I very much sympathise with the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, in his troubles. While I appreciate that one or two Wednesdays may have to go, I hope he will endeavour to keep them to a minimum. I should like to associate myself with what was said by the noble Earl, Lord St. Aldwyn, about business on Fridays. We should be extremely careful about encroaching on these days, and certainly

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not for Bills which can be called controversial.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, as one who is not one of the "usual channels", may I put in a plea for Private Members' business? This Motion, I gather, will give the Government the right to take over the business and exclude Private Members' business if they find it necessary to do so. This, as the noble Lord has said, is unusual at this time of the year. There is one Motion in which I am particularly interested, as the noble Lord knows, and that is the Motion on Hong Kong. We have had a serious situation in Hong Kong. The matter is still, one might say, not by any means cleared up. Several noble Lords in the House have approached me to know whether it is possible to have a debate on that particular Motion. I would ask the noble Lord, who is always very helpful in these matters to those of us who are not the usual channels, to see what he can do to have a debate on Hong Kong and its relationship with China before the Summer Recess, if this is at all possible.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, when we are going to sacrifice all our Wednesdays, I should like to put in a word for the people on the Cross-Benches. They do not very often attempt to occupy a Wednesday, but when they do it is generally on something they feel to be of vital importance. I think that if that should occur they should get what is called "friendly co-operation" from the Government.
3.30 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, if I may, I would thank the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, for his very kind remarks. May I say to the noble Earl that the difficulty which the Government are experiencing to-day is no different, I believe, from the troubles and difficulties which he experienced when he was Chief Whip, but I am sure he will recognise that our position has been aggravated and we do not yet know to what extent we may be in greater difficulties in view of the situation in the Middle East. As the noble Earl will know, we have been asked to provide time for a debate on the Middle East and we are very ready to do that if it becomes necessary. We never know, too,
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at this stage, when other matters will need to be raised quickly. Therefore, in making my plans I must try to give myself a degree of leeway, so that if those debates are required time will be found for them.
It is not a case of taking all the Wednesdays, as the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, suggested. I think we may need only two Wednesdays, by arrangement through the usual channels. I can assure noble Lords opposite that it is unlikely that their Party will suffer in this matter. I think it is more likely that the criticisms will come from my colleagues behind me, because I believe that the two Wednesdays we have our eyes upon are two Wednesdays which normally would have gone to my colleagues on these Benches.
With regard to the request of the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, for a debate on Hong Kong, naturally I will see what I can do, but at the moment we have a very full programme. Of course, a great deal depends upon your Lordships and how long we take on legislation. I agree with the noble Earl, Lord St. Aldwyn, in that I should prefer to sit late into the evening or into the night and not have to sit on Friday. But the noble Earl will acknowledge that we on this side of the House are relatively small in numbers. We do have a difficulty late at night to obtain a quorum. I know that occasions arise when Governments can be caught napping without a quorum, and we then do not have the full time that we should have had; but I will not go over the past. But if I were to have an assurance from noble Lords in all quarters of the House that, irrespective of the lateness of the hour, all noble Lords who were present in the Chamber would co-operate to provide a quorum, I should be a great deal happier in my mind.
In regard to sitting on Fridays and taking these two major Bills, I recognise that they are controversial. I should certainly be happy to take them on Monday, Tuesday or Thursday, and if the noble Lord is prepared to take Government business on Friday—and I do not think that much of our business is going to be controversial—then we should be very happy so to do.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, highly though I regard the noble Lord, I have no sympathy for him whatever in

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this matter. The congestion of the Parliamentary timetable is due, as it always is, to the fact that the Government will not start enough Bills in this House, and as a result we get congestion towards the end of the Session. If the noble Lord had listened to what I myself and my colleagues have been saying for the last three years he would be in no need to have sympathy from me at all. I would just ask the noble Lord this, and would ask him for an assurance. If we pass this Motion, it will mean that the noble Lord can deprive the Opposition of its July Wednesdays. I ask him, therefore, whether he will be good enough to give the assurance that he has no intention of doing so.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, may I say to the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, that it is not for him to offer me sympathy; I would not expect it. If the noble Lord is again coming back to the difficulties which all Governments since I have been in this House have experienced at this time of the year, I would say that the root cause of the trouble, if my researches are correct, goes back to 1671 and 1678, which those in the House of Commons will recognise as years relating to great historic Resolutions of another place in regard to financial privilege.
As to the assurance for which the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, has asked, it is perfectly true that I can play ducks and drakes with the House in terms of this Motion. But the noble Lord has been here longer than I have and he well knows that, again irrespective of the Government's political complexion, the Govment are answerable to the House and the House itself controls the Business. If, therefore, I try to deprive noble Lords opposite, which I have no intention of doing, of a debate, the power certainly lies in their hands.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, may I make one more appeal to the Government about Friday sittings. I really think that a point of great principle is raised in the Statement we have just heard. I know that another place habitually sits on Fridays, but the other place is in a very different position from your Lordships' House in one important respect: the Members are paid, and paid really rather highly, for sitting, while
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your Lordships are not paid. I can say this because I am in the happy position of being sufficiently well endowed with this world's goods for it not to make a very great difference to me. But there are a great many Peers who are not—young Peers working for their living and keeping their wives and families going by the work they do—and many live far off in Scotland or Wales, a great distance from London. It is going to make their lives almost impossible, and I should like very much to see the House sitting later to have these important debates.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I would not disagree in any respect with the words of the noble Marquess. I would, however, put it to him that I have a responsibility in programming business to see that I give sufficient time for the House to be able to consider all the legislation that comes before us; and this I am endeavouring to do. If I can avoid Friday sittings I will. It may be unnecessary to sit on Fridays; it depends on the progress and speed with which we deal with legislation before us. But I thought it right to give a warning to the House—not a threat, but a warning—as to the circumstances before us. Certainly if we could avoid a Friday sitting I should be one of the first, and most happy, to do so.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord one question: when we are likely to rise for the Summer Recess; whether there is any constitutional or other reason why this House should rise simultaneously with the House of Commons; and whether in the circumstances there are not strong arguments for our continuing to sit into August, particularly as the August Bank Holiday has now been removed from the first week-end in August and the grouse mature rather later these days?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am quite sure that if I were to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alport, I should lose the entire sympathy of your Lordships' House. There are no constitutional reasons, so far as I know, why this House should not sit longer into August than another place, but, having been in business management here for some time, I would say there is no hope.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

THE MIDDLE EAST
3.38 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (LORD CHALFONT): My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I should like to repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary. The Statement is as follows:
"I have endeavoured to keep the House very fully informed about developments in the Middle East, but there is little I can add to-day. The situation is very fluid and it is simply not possible at this moment to amplify the general picture I gave yesterday.
"The immediate necessity is to obtain an effective cease-fire. The position on this is that the Israel Foreign Minister said in the Security Council yesterday that his Government was ready to accept the Security Council Resolution calling for a cease-fire at 8 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time yesterday provided that the Arab Governments did the same. So far the Arab Governments have refused to do the same, with the exception of Jordan, who have announced their Government's acceptance. But I must tell the House frankly that there are very conflicting and disturbing stories about what is actually happening on the Israeli/Jordan front.
"Even though the United Arab Republic Government have not yet accepted the cease-fire, the Israel Government have announced that they are halting the advance of their forces in the Sinai Desert short of the Suez Canal. But I also have reports of resumed fighting on this front.
"We still have no positive response from the Soviet Government about arms supplies and it is clear that for the time being there is no immediate prospect of a general embargo. We are therefore reverting to our normal practice of scrutinising applications for arms in each particular case, and we are naturally doing so particularly carefully in the present circumstances.
"The only material change in the oil situation since yesterday is that the Libyan Government have suspended all oil exports. It is not entirely clear whether this is a temporary suspension
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due to strikes by oil workers. And here let me say that I understand the pressures that are operating on these Governments in this highly charged atmosphere. The Arab Foreign Ministers were due to meet to-day in Kuwait to discuss the implementation of the resolution on oil supplies recently passed at the Baghdad Conference, but I have just learned that the meeting has been postponed. Now that it has become so patently clear to everybody that we were not involved in the conflict, I trust that they will decide to withdraw the actions which they were misled into taking against us.
"We have examined the dangers in each of the territories where the safety of British subjects arises. We have made plans, some of which are already being operated, to ensure the safe evacuation of British subjects from these areas. In a situation where airfields have been closed and others have been damaged this is clearly not an easy operation, but it is proceeding.
"My greatest concern is with the British subjects in Jordan. Evacuation by road would be too dangerous; and evacuation by air involves the difficulty I have mentioned. However these problems will be overcome.
"I will of course continue to report developments to the House when anything of significance occurs. Meanwhile we are in close contact with all parties concerned.
"Our immediate objective must be of course to make the cease-fire effective. The House should be under no illusions that this may still take some time. Once this has been achieved we must move on to consider how a more permanent settlement in the Middle East, on an equitable basis, can be reached."
That, my Lords, is the end of the Statement.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, for repeating that Statement. May I ask him whether he could amplify some words that he used? I think he said that there were:
"conflicting and disturbing stories about what is actually happening on the Israeli/Jordan front".

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I wonder whether the noble Lord could explain exactly what he means. Does this concern what is happening internally in Jordan in regard to the King, or is it renewed fighting between Israel and Jordan?
Secondly, I am rather surprised that no mention has been made of the closure of the Suez Canal. I asked the noble Lord yesterday what was being done about it. It may be, of course, that at this particular moment it would be impossible to use the canal, but I should have thought it extremely important, from the point of view of this country, and the fact that it is an international waterway, that the United Nations should reiterate the importance of keeping the Suez Canal open.
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, the situation in Jordan is obscure in a number of ways, not only in the sense of the rumours about internal differences in Jordan and the movements of King Hussein. All I can say is that our Embassy in Amman informed us last night that there is absolutely no truth in the rumours that King Hussein has left Jordan. In addition to that, the operational position in Jordan is still obscure. It is by no means certain that fighting has stopped, although the Jordanian Government has accepted the United Nations call for a cease-fire.
As to the Suez Canal, it is not possible to say at the moment whether traffic through the canal has been, or is being, stopped. According to our best estimates, there are between 17 and 20 ships of different nationalities in the Suez Canal. Five of these ships are British. A North-bound convoy of tankers came out of the canal yesterday. None of these tankers was in fact British, but your Lordships will appreciate from that that the situation in the Suez Canal is not clear. Of course I take the noble Lord's point that the Suez Canal—as I said in your Lordships' House yesterday, in a comment on the legal situation—is an international waterway. And we shall bear this in mind in the sort of negotiations which will go on continuously, but especially after the cease-fire has been made effective.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, for keeping the House informed.
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There are two questions which I should like to ask. First, is there any information as to what is happening on the Syrian front? Secondly, is it possible that the non-acceptance of the cease-fire on the Israeli/Jordan border is due to the fact that the Jordanian Army is commanded by an Egyptian? Would it be possible to get more direct communication between King Hussein of Jordan and Israel to see that this fighting stops?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, to deal with the noble Lord's first question, there is no clear information about that. We know that the Syrian Government has not accepted the United Nations call for a cease-fire, and there are reports of operations taking place between Syrian and Israeli forces in that sector. I take the point about the situation in Jordan, and it may well be that some of the confusion still existing there derives from the fact that the Jordan forces are under supreme United Arab Republic command. We shall certainly bear that fact in mind in our future dealings in this area.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, the noble Lord has said in the Statement:
"Now that it has become so patently clear to everybody that we were not involved in the conflict, I trust that they"—
that is the Arab States—
"will decide to withdraw the actions which they were misled into taking against us."
Of course I hope that that will be so. But has the noble Lord seen in this morning's papers, since the denials which were discussed yesterday, that new allegations have been made by the Egyptian Government that British Canberra bombers took part yesterday in the action over Suez? I am not asking the Government to react too shrilly or indignantly to these further lies. But do the Government appreciate that this may be not only a question of stopping oil supplies for a few months: it may be the beginning of a very serious propaganda campaign to be built up, based on falsehood, in order to cover the defeat of the Arab armies and to rebuild similar sinister forces for the future?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, this possibility is very much in the Government's mind. I think it is inevitable that a lie of this sort should gain some circulation in Arab countries. The latest

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allegation, of which I have seen reports, that Canberra bombers have been in action in the theatre of operations, is as false and as outrageous a lie as any previous allegations that British forces are taking part in this battle. They are not, they have not, and they will not. It would not be in my nature to be shrill or indignant about this, but I hope that I can at least be firm and unequivocal in denying this story. I realise that it is not enough to deny it in your Lordships' House. We shall deny it throughout the world, through the normal diplomatic channels and the available communications channels. Your Lordships will have seen that the B.B.C. has recently increased the hours of broadcasting to the Arab countries, and we shall of course take advantage of this to give the lie constantly to these allegations.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, would the Government consider any positive United Nations investigation?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, we have this very much in mind—indeed, my noble friend referred to it in your Lordships' House yesterday. We certainly have these possibilities in mind.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, should we be right in assuming that, in view of the fact that Israel has accepted the ceasefire, there will now be no likelihood of increased Soviet pressure on Israel, and notably no suggestion that there would be a rupture of diplomatic relations?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, it is, of course, difficult to speculate on the Soviet reaction to any set of circumstances in a situation like this. I can only point out that the latest Security Council demand for a cease-fire was sponsored by the Soviet Government. The next action, as my right honourable friend said in another place, is to make the cease-fire effective; and the next action in the Council will be to consider a Canadian draft resolution which asks the President of the Security Council, Mr. Tabor, with the assistance of the Secretary-General, to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure compliance with the two resolutions of the Security Council.
LORD WAKEFIELD OF KENDAL: My Lords, can the Minister say what kind of reception there is in the Arab coun-
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tries for the B.B.C. broadcasts? Are the people really able to receive these broadcasts, and would he consider that it might be appropriate to augment these broadcasts by broadcasts from ships, either in the Mediterranean or in the Persian Gulf, to ensure that people in the Arab countries in fact do hear what is being put over to them?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, our information has always been that our broadcasts to the Arab countries have what the technicians call a "high degree of audibility"; in other words, people can hear them quite well. We will bear in mind other ways of improving this service, but we believe that at the moment the reception of our broadcasts in the Arab countries is satisfactory.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, can my noble friend give an indication to the House as to whether the British Consulate General in Alexandria is still able to function normally, and also as to the safety of the personnel in that Consulate General, since Alexandria may form a very useful outlet in case British subjects in the U.A.R. are endangered?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I am afraid I cannot answer in any detail my noble friend's question. We have no specific information about the Consulate General in Alexandria to suggest that it is not functioning as it normally has in the past. If we receive any information indicating a change in that situation I will, of course, inform your Lordships' House.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, as Syria has not accepted the Security Council resolution, and in view of the fact that the Syrian troops have not been involved to any great extent in this conflict, is there not a grave danger that the main front may be moved to that part of the world in the very near future?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I think it would be unprofitable to speculate about the future course of operations in this area. Certainly there is information that fighting is going on in the Syrian sector. I very much hope we shall be able to take care of this by a universal cease-fire, but I agree there is a considerable danger that if fighting is stopped in one part of the area, without

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an effective cease-fire troops might move to another front.
LORD ROWLEY: My Lords, would not my noble friend confirm that the Government of Israel would not be in breach of their undertaking to the Security Council to observe the cease-fire if there are areas in which their troops are being opposed by forces belonging to Governments who are refusing to respond to the demand of the Security Council for a cease-fire?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, it is implicit in the statement of the Israeli Government that if the Arab forces will observe the cease-fire they will themselves observe the cease-fire. Of course, this is a conditional response to the United Nations demand, and I should hardly expect that the Israeli Government would completely observe the ceasefire in an area if their troops were under fire. I think this is implicit in the Israeli reaction to the Security Council resolution.
VISCOUNT BRENTFORD: My Lords, can the noble Lord inform us whether the inhabitants of Arab countries are free to listen to the British Broadcasting Corporation's broadcasts, or are they subject to any prohibition?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, so far as we are aware, there is no prohibition imposed upon listening to broadcasts from the B.B.C. There has been in the past a degree of jamming of B.B.C. broadcasts, and this is something about which we can do nothing. But our information at the moment is that a good deal of what we broadcast to the Arab countries gets through to the populations in that area.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, have the Government contemplated any action if the Arab States stop our oil supplies? Have Her Majesty's Government considered temporarily freezing Arab assets in this country? Are we going to allow the Arab countries to withdraw their sterling holdings?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I think it would be going too far to go into the various measures that the Government might take if the supplies of oil were
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seriously interrupted and it began to have a serious effect on this country. Perhaps we may return to that subject if this unfortunate circumstance arises.

PORT OF LONDON BILL
Read 2a, and committed to a Select Committee.

ROAD TRAFFIC (AMENDMENT) BILL
3.55 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD POPPLEWELL: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. I was very pleased to comply with the request of the originator of the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill to introduce this proposed measure for your Lordships' consideration. This, I am sure your Lordships will agree, is a very useful Bill. When originally introduced by my honourable friend, the Member of Parliament for Gateshead, West, in another place, it was sponsored by supporters of both the Government and the Opposition, and it has received general approval. The provisions of the Bill are accepted by the motor trade and by the motoring organisations as necessary or desirable in the interests of road safety.
The Minister has been in discussion and in communication with the Society of Motor Manufacturing Traders, the Motor Agents' Association and the Scotch Motor Traders' Association on behalf of the trade, and with the Standing Joint Committee of the R.A.C., the A.A. and the R.S.A.C. on behalf of motoring organisations, and has been able to resolve or satisfy questions or doubts on detailed points raised by them. Therefore I was a little surprised to receive some representations from the R.A.C. which raised a certain amount of doubt. However, the R.A.C. has expressed some doubt whether the written evidence permissible under Clause 7 would be accepted by the courts. In reply, I can only repeat the words of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport in the Committee stage in another place. The report of the Committee, is

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dated March 15. May I quote his observations at column 21:
"All that the clause says"—
that is referring to Clause 7, which was introduced by the Ministry when the Bill was going through Committee—
"is that the person concerned must prove to the court 'that he did not know, and had no reasonable cause to suspect, that the facts of the case were such that an offence would be committed.'
"It does not say that the court may not accept written evidence, if satisfactory written evidence can show, 'that he did not know, and had no reasonable cause to suspect …'."
I understand that the Criminal Justice Bill, with which we are concerned in this House, contains clauses that make it permissible for written evidence to be accepted by the courts. Therefore I hope that my words here may give some satisfaction to the R.A.C., who are rather doubtful about this point; but if it be that more suitable wording can be found, I am very willing to discuss this with the Ministry to see whether it is possible to find ways and means. But I must express a warning that I question whether anything more can be done than accept that advice offered by the Parliamentary Secretary at the Committee stage. I thought it would be as well to clear this matter up at this stage.
It is the purpose of this Bill to correct some anomalies and to rectify some omissions in the Road Traffic Acts which experience has shown to be necessary or desirable in the interests of road safety, and in particular to secure effective enforcement of the regulations relating to vehicle condition. I propose first, with your Lordships' permission, to outline briefly the several provisions. The first is to require owners whose vehicles are found to be defective at a roadside check, carried out under the provisions of Section 67 of the Road Traffic Act 1960, to have the defects remedied within a specified time and to furnish proof to the Ministry of Transport that this has been done, or alternatively to show good reason why it has not been done.
Section 67 enables any vehicle to be stopped on the roadside by a police officer in uniform for the purpose of the vehicle's examination by Ministry of Transport officers to ascertain whether it complies with the statutory provisions relating to construction, use and lighting. The
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provisions of the section were designed to operate as an advisory rather than a punitive measure and they have been applied mainly to private cars and motor cycles, because goods vehicles are dealt with under other provisions of the Act which enable the further use of a defective vehicle to be prohibited pending satisfactory repair.
Although the drivers of private cars which are found to be defective at roadside checks can be, and in particularly bad cases are, prosecuted, there is no power to enforce the repair of the defective vehicles. It is not to be implied that these roadside checks carried out to date have been ineffective or wasteful. They have not; they have been extremely useful. Since the provisions were put into effect in the autumn of 1960, some 20.000 vehicles have been inspected each year.
As a car is seldom delayed for more than twelve to fifteen minutes the checks impose a minimum of inconvenience on motorists and have been generally welcomed by them. They have stimulated an awareness of the need for regular maintenance and attention, and the attitude of drivers generally has given reason to believe that the majority of those who are notified of defects get those faults remedied. However, that cannot be said of all, and as the records show that about 50 per cent. of the total number of vehicles examined, which includes all age groups, are defective, mainly in brakes, steering or lighting, the number of vehicles which continue to be used in defective condition must be considerable.
In almost every case the defects are due to lack of regular maintenance, and the checks show how quickly vehicles in constant use can deteriorate with this lack of attention. This is particularly so in regard to the older vehicles, even though they are subject to an annual test. But newer vehicles are no exception. Twenty-five per cent. of vehicles under three years old are found to be defective. I think it will be generally agreed in the light of these considerations that the proposals now before your Lordships are fully justified for the purpose of seeing that defects are remedied.
The second aim of the Bill is to obtain better enforcement of Section 68 of the 1960 Act, which makes it an offence to sell or to offer for sale a vehicle in a condition in which its use on the roads

541
would be unlawful. Although goods vehicles in use may be examined at the operators' premises, others, and those up for sale, may be inspected on premises only with the permission of the vehicle owner or, failing his consent, on the expiration of 48 hours' notice, and the consent of the owner of the premises must also be obtained. Efforts to ensure compliance with the law by dealers in secondhand vehicles, and sometimes inquiries into suspected or reported instances of the fraudulent issue of a test certificate, can be frustrated.
This Bill makes provision for Ministry of Transport examiners, on production of proof of identity, or police officers to enter dealers' premises without prior notice for the purpose of inspecting any used vehicles offered for sale. It is by no means suggested that the majority of second-hand dealers are neglectful of their obligations, but we all know that there are some who are much less scrupulous than others. The House will be aware of the problem of "written-off" vehicles: many of them are resold after inadequate or unsatisfactory repair. These proposals, if approved, will provide a better means of checking on the extent to which this happens and will act as a deterrent.
The third main provision of the Bill is directed at used vehicles imported from abroad or sold on the civilian market after use by the Service Departments. The age of vehicles subject to annual test under Section 66 of the 1960 Act is defined by reference to the date of the first registration in this country of the vehicle. The result is that imported or ex-Service vehicles may escape the test for three years, even though they may have been used considerably before that time, and, as I have indicated, they are beyond the age at which other vehicles need to be tested. This Bill provides that these vehicles will be liable for a test in accordance with their real age. Fourthly, the Bill includes provision for a minor amendment of Section 65 of the 1960 Act to enable urban district councils, as well as county and borough councils, to operate public testing stations if they so wish.
The Bill contains two further provisions inserted as amendments by my right honourable friend the Minister of Trans-
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port on the Committee stage in another place. The first, to Clause 6, is to remove a difficulty which arises from a doubt about the correct interpretation of some of the penalty provisions of the Road Traffic Act 1960. As the law now stands, it is in many cases not clear, despite an amendment to the Road Traffic Act 1962, whether for certain offences against the Construction and Use Regulations prosecutions should be brought under Section 64 or under Section 239 of the 1960 Act. This causes the courts and the police considerable practical difficulties, and it is administratively inconvenient. This Bill aims to clear-up this difficulty a little. The present position is that breaches of some regulations carry a penalty of £50, and in others it is only £20. The provision in the Bill removes this anomaly by providing that all offences against the regulations shall be dealt with under Section 64 of the Act and be subject to the same penalties.
Finally, provision is made in Clause 7 to correct an anomaly which may arise when an employer is convicted of using a vehicle in contravention of the Construction and Use Regulations. Because the owner is vicariously liable for the acts of his servants, an employer may be convicted of an offence against these regulations although his servant was the actual user of the vehicle and the employer did not know of the defect. In such a case the employer's personal driving licence may be endorsed and he may be disqualified, or become liable to disqualification under the totting-up system. This principle may operate very harshly on a man who is running his own business. It particularly affects road haulage operations, but instances are known of other kinds of business in connection with which vehicles are operated and in which difficulties have arisen.
There is the further anomaly that the driving licences of employers who are proprietors of, or partners in, a private business are at risk whereas those of members of a limited company are not. At present the law, in effect, discriminates between the owners of non-limited and limited companies on these offences. The effect of the measure now proposed is to remove the possibility of an owner's being disqualified or having his licence endorsed when his conviction arose solely from his vicarious liability for his driver's

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acts—that is to say, just because a defective vehicle was used by one of his employees—provided he can show that he had no knowledge or constructive knowledge of the defect. It provides similar protection for the driver in a case in which it can be shown that he had no knowledge of, or reasonable cause to suspect, the existence of the defect. This provision, of course, has no effect on the liability of either owners or drivers to be convicted and fined for the offence with which they are charged.
Your Lordships may like me to explain in a little more detail the provisions of certain of the clauses of the Bill. Clause 1 provides that an examiner who finds certain defects in a vehicle which is inspected at a roadside check, under Section 67 of the 1960 Act, may give notice in writing to the owner of the vehicle specifying the defects and requiring the owner to give to the Minister of Transport within a specified period—28 days, or such longer period as the Minister may allow—a certificate of repair. This provision is most important. This certificate must contain a statement signed by a tester at an approved testing station that the signatory has either carried out repairs to remedy the specified defects or has examined the vehicle to ascertain that the necessary repairs have been carried out, either by the vehicle owner or by some other person, and are satisfactory. This 28-days period may be extended by the Minister if there is good cause—for instance, if the owner is ill or abroad, or if the garage had been unable to obtain the necessary spares for a repair in time.
As an alternative to producing a certificate of repair a vehicle owner may give a declaration that he has sold or disposed of his interest in the vehicle, or that he does not intend to use it again on a road in Great Britain. The clause provides penalties for failing to give a certificate of repair or a declaration within the permitted period, for obstruction of a vehicle examiner, or failure to give him information about the ownership of the vehicle or for knowingly making a false statement in a repair certificate or declaration.
Clause 1 also empowers the Minister of Transport to make regulations prescribing the manner in which examination of the vehicle is to be conducted at
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testing stations, and it gives a right of appeal against the refusal of a certificate by a testing station, prescribing the information to be supplied by the vehicle owner and the documents to be produced by him at an examination or an appeal. The regulations will prescribe the fees to be paid by a vehicle owner to the testing station for the examination and provision of a certificate and will prescribe the various forms of notices, certificates and declarations. The actual size of this fee will depend upon what defects are found in the vehicle, and no doubt this will be the subject of a good deal of discussion in regard to the fee to be paid.
Clause 2 empowers the Minister to require a vehicle for which a certificate of repair has been given to be submitted for further inspection by a Ministry officer to establish whether the repairs have been properly executed. This power is subject to conditions designed for the convenience of the vehicle owner, but the provision is necessary as a deterrent against malpractice and for enforcement of the requirement.
Clause 3 deals with the right of entry to dealers' premises for the purpose of inspecting used vehicles on offer for sale. The powers of inspection are applied only to used vehicles; that is to say, those which have previously been the subject of a retail sale. Any person, other than a police constable in uniform, who is an authorised examiner for the purpose of this section must, if required to do so, produce his authority for entering the premises for that purpose.
Clause 4 deals with imported or ex-Service used vehicles. It disregards any use before a vehicle is sold by retail so as to ensure that vehicles of foreign manufacture imported for sale in new condition are not affected. It provides the Minister with powers to make regulations which will make the registration and licensing of an imported or ex-Service vehicle conditional on the production of a test certificate or a declaration, as appropriate, signed by the owner of the vehicle, either that the vehicle is not of testable age or that he does not intend to use it on the roads other than for a purpose or in an area where it would not be subject to the test regulations. The age of the vehicle for this purpose is defined by reference to the last day of the year during which

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its final assembly was completed—a definition which is designed to avoid doubt or difficulty about the date of manufacture; for example, when a chassis is built by one manufacturer and its body is added by another.
I now come to Clause 5. I am sorry to be speaking at a little length on this Bill, but it is a very important piece of legislation; and I hope that if I explain it quite fully now it may avoid a good deal of discussion in Committee. Clause 5 amends Section 65(3) of the 1960 Act, which makes certain local authorities eligible to be designated by the Minister of Transport to appoint inspectors to conduct tests and operate public testing stations. The amendment would extend eligibility to urban district councils. The discrimination in the 1960 Act against urban district councils appears to have no logical foundation. Some are responsible for much wider areas than borough councils, and a few operate considerable fleets of vehicles and have much better facilities than many of the borough councils for operating testing stations.
I hope that I have given sufficient indication of the aims and scope of the Bill to satisfy your Lordships that the additional legislative measures proposed are justified and necessary. There can be no doubt that mechanical defect is a factor in road accidents, and I am sure that none will disagree with me in believing that we cannot afford to neglect any measures likely to reduce their number and the consequent loss of life, of wellbeing and in material, which is so often involved. All of us are road users in one way or another and are liable to suffer from a minority of vehicle users who wilfully or carelessly neglect their obligations to maintain and keep their vehicles in safe condition. My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a. —(Lord Popplewell.)
4.20 p.m.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, may I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Popplewell, on successfully moving the Second Reading of this Bill, and on the thoroughness with which he described it to us? As he told us, Clauses 1 to 6 of the Bill cover a number of small but important points in regard to
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the maintenance of proper standards of road safety in vehicles, which experience has shown to need attention by amendment or addition to the law. I welcome them as being sensible and practical points, and after the noble Lord's very through explanation of them I do not think I need take up the time of noble Lords by further discussing them. Perhaps I might make the general comment that there is an ever-growing range and complexity of road traffic legislation which the private citizen is supposed to know, and I therefore hope that Her Majesty's Government will exercise the utmost restraint in adding to it.
The only point which I wish to discuss for a few minutes is on Clause 7, which has a rather different history from the rest of the Bill. This is an addition to the Bill to meet an important point which was pressed upon the Government during the recent passage of the Road Safety Act which dealt with drink and driving, and I am not entirely happy about the measure in Clause 7 to meet this point, which the noble Lord has explained to us. As the noble Lord explained, as the law now stands the owner of a fleet of vehicles is held vicariously responsible for the roadworthiness of every vehicle in his fleet. If any one of them is found to be defective with regard to the Construction and Use Regulations his personal driving licence is at risk and will be endorsed, with such endorsement counting in the totting-up process to the total of three at which level he is liable to a six months' disqualification. This is obviously far too severe an extension of vicarious responsibility, and I am glad that the noble Lord and Her Majesty's Government, by their support of Clause 7, appear to recognise that a modification is needed.
I realise that the Bill has gone some way to meet the previous objections, by now giving the fleet owner whose vehicle is found defective a statutory defence by proving that he did not know about the defect which has been discovered. But in my judgment there is still the substantial objection that the owner of the vehicle is presumed guilty unless he has proved himself innocent. This, in any event, is an objectionable concept and Parliament, rightly, is reluctant to see it go on the Statute Book unless there is the most cogent necessity for it, particularly when the ultimate penalty of

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disqualification of the fleet owner's personal driving licence is the penalty involved. I do not regard this as being a very satisfactory situation, and I should like to suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Popplewell, and to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, who I understand is to speak for the Government, two possible alternatives which they might consider before the Committee stage. Here may I say that I welcome the invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Popplewell, to discuss this clause, arising out of the representations which he has received from the R.A.C.. particularly with regard to written evidence.
The two alternatives which I would suggest are these. First, that the Bill is amended so that automatic endorsement of the owner's licence should not follow a conviction in these cases, but that it should stop short at giving the court the discretionary power to order an endorsement in cases which in the judgment of the court warrant it. This would relieve to a considerable extent the objection which I see. The alternative approach which I throw out—and perhaps it is rather late in the process of this Bill to throw it out, but I think it is worth considering—is that instead of the ultimate penalty of disqualifying the fleet owner from driving, which seems to me anyway to be rather illogical for this offence, courts should have the power to suspend the licence of the vehicle for a limited period. This would seem to be a much more logical approach to this kind of offence, and one could be quite sure that the financial loss involved to the business would provide the necessary incentive for the management to find out who was the culprit in regard to the defective condition, and for taking the proper action.
This approach has the further attraction that it gets over the rather ridiculous anomaly that at present if a limited company is the fleet owner apparently it escapes this penalty altogether. It seems to me that that, too, is a thought worth considering, and I ask the noble Lord, Lord Popplewell, and the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, to consider these two possible approaches before the Commit-
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tee stage. Perhaps we may have some discussion about it, and I may then put down an Amendment on one approach or the other. With that comment, I have much pleasure in supporting the Second Reading of the Bill.
4.27 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I rise merely to make two points. First of all, I should like to join with the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, in congratulating and thanking my noble friend Lord Popplewell on introducing this Bill, and on the manner in which he did so. He may have thought that I was under the mistaken impression that he was speaking too long, but at least the noble Lord gave us a very full description of the Bill. Secondly, I should like to inform the House that the Government fully support this Bill. They welcome it, and hope that it will have a speedy passage through your Lordships' House.
The noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, raised a point in regard to Clause 7. I can see some point in the second suggestion which he made, except that there may be some difficulty as the licence for a vehicle is issued by a different authority. I am not quite sure whether magistrates would have power to withdraw that licence, since it is issued by a different body. But I shall certainly look at this matter and, as I have already indicated to the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, I shall be very happy to consult with him and with my noble friend, and no doubt with the Department, to see whether there is anything which we can do to meet the noble Lord's point of view. With those few words I commend the Bill to the House, and trust that your Lordships will not only give it a Second Reading, but will pass it through all its remaining stages.
LORD POPPLEWELL: My Lords, thank the House for the way in which it has received this Bill. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, that I am only too ready to discuss with him and with my noble friend who has spoken on behalf of the Government, the two proposals which he put forward.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

FISHING VESSEL GRANTS BILL
House in Committee (according to Order).
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment: Report received.

ADVERTISEMENTS (HIRE-PURCHASE) BILL [H.L.]
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. This is a small consolidation Bill, consolidating all the Statute law in the field of advertisements for hire-purchase facilities. 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.

REMUNERATION OF TEACHERS (SCOTLAND) BILL
4.32 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD GRENFELL in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.
Clause 3 [Provision for arbitration]:
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (3), to leave out "by the Minister of Labour". The noble Lord said: I think we all desire—at least, all of those who have a continuing interest in education in Scotland—that the new procedure for fixing the remuneration of teachers in Scotland should be brought into being with the full support of all the parties to the negotiations. The troublesome fact that we have to face when we come to this clause, which makes provision for arbitration, is that there is disagreement as to who is to appoint the arbiters.
I do not intend to go over the arguments again, because I think they have been fully covered on Second Reading. But the point is simply that in the event of agreement not being reached by a committee set up under Clause 1 for the negotiation of remuneration of teachers, then there is to be recourse to arbitration; and the question at issue is who is to appoint the arbiters. The Educational I Institute for Scotland, representing the great majority of teachers in Scotland, wants to keep the existing method; namely, the appointment of arbiters by the Lord President of the Court of Session, and sees no reason for a change. The Government, with the acquiescence, I believe, of the education authorities (I am not sufficiently well informed on the matter to put it higher than acquiescence; but, at any rate, with the acquiescence of the education authorities) want the appointment to be made by the Minister of Labour.
What I think is abundantly clear is that the arbiters should be acceptable to both sides. The difficulty that I see in the immediate present is that it so happens that the Educational Institute for Scotland has its annual general meeting to-morrow, and it appears that each side—that is to say, the Secretary of State on the one side and the Educational Institute on the other—have "dug in" on their positions, one in favour of the Minister of Labour making the appointment and the other of the Lord President doing so.
The object of this Amendment and the next one (which I suggest, with the leave of the Committee, we discuss together) is simply to leave the matter open for the time being so that there may be more time for reflection. Then, when the circumstances arise, it will be possible under the clause as it now stands for the Secretary of State, in consultation with the bodies concerned, to make arrangements for matters to be referred to arbitration without necessarily laying them down in the Bill.
Acceptance of this Amendment will leave the matter open. I can see many ways in which compromises could be reached on this. For example, the Lord President might appoint one arbiter and the Minister of Labour might appoint another; or the Lord President might be invited to make an appointment from a panel of arbiters; or, again, it may be

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that the Lord President may himself feel that, in the new circumstances, it is no longer appropriate for him to make the appointments. I do not know whether he has been consulted, but it may well be that in the new circumstances, which the noble Lord explained to us so clearly at the last stage, the Lord President himself would not feel it appropriate that he should make this appointment—it being, of course, the only appointment of its kind in the salary negotiation field that is made by him.
However that may be, the object of my moving this Amendment is, as I say, purely to avoid a clash in the immediate present. I am aware, as the noble Lord will no doubt tell us, that further talks have taken place since the last stage. What I am not certain of is that the Government have been able yet to persuade the Educational Institute that it is in their interest as well as in the national interest that the appointment should be made by the Minister of Labour. If it should prove that the Government have not persuaded them, and if the E.I.S. were to turn down the proposal at their annual general meeting to-morrow, I think that the situation would become that much worse. For that reason, and in a spirit of desiring to avoid a clash, I beg to move this Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 38, leave out ("by the Minister of Labour").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCOTLAND (LORD HUGHES): I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, for the way in which he has spoken to this Amendment and for the reasoning which led him to put it down in this particular form, and I only wish I could agree with him that to accept this Amendment at this stage, with the E.I.S. conference taking place to-morrow, would be likely to be helpful in getting an agreed solution. I may say that neither I nor my colleague have given up hope that such a solution is possible, but I do not think that what the noble Lord has put forward would, in fact, do other than intensify the desire of the E.I.S., if that desire still exists, to adhere to the position they have hitherto taken up.
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The Amendment, as the noble Lord said, leaves the position open, but I do not think that that is the position in which the Government would find themselves. Here we have a Bill in which it is laid down that arrangements for arbitration may be made—I would point out that they are not absolutely mandatory—under which the Minister of Labour would select the arbiters. I would point out, also—though this is not at all clear from the remarks of the noble Lord—that it is not an appointment of one arbiter; it is the appointment of three arbiters.
I shall come on to the conditions, because I do not think it was clear from his remarks that the noble Lord was aware of the extent to which the teachers are involved in the selection of one of the three arbiters. If we were to accept the Amendment we should be accepting an Amendment to delete the present reference in the Bill to the Minister of Labour. I think that anyone outside would believe, with reason, if we accepted the Amendment, that the Government would be accepting the deletion of the Minister of Labour in both word and spirit. I think it would be deceitful of me and of the Government were I to accept an Amendment the purpose of which, quite clearly (and I think the noble Lord made this quite clear), would be to permit the Minister of Labour to appoint arbiters, or permit someone else to appoint arbiters, and do so in the hope that we could persuade the E.I.S. to agree with us, if, at the end of the day, if they did not agree, we were still going to have the appointment made by the Minister of Labour. If we accept the deletion of these words we ought, in all honesty, to be prepared to accept that that is the end of the matter so far as the Minister of Labour is concerned; and that the Government are quite unable to do.
I should wish to follow the example of the noble Lord and refrain from going over ground which was covered on Second Reading, but in view of what has taken place since then I cannot do that entirely. As has already been pointed out, and as the noble Lord reminded us, the role of the Lord President of the Court of Session in appointing arbiters under the arrangements for the Scottish Joint Council for teachers' salaries is unique.

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Only in the case of Scottish teachers has the Lord President this function in the context of salary negotiations. Moreover, the present style arbitration is limited, in the sense that it imposes no commitment whatever on the Secretary of State. He was, and is, prepared to agree to a diminution of his present powers. He undertook to give effect to the arbiters' findings save in exceptional circumstances, and even then Parliament would have to sanction the setting aside of an arbitration award. But the Secretary of State agreed to do this as part of a completely new scheme.
The reason for the Government's stand on this issue is quite simple. The appointment of arbiters has been regarded by successive Governments over a long period of time as a task for the Minister of Labour. The fact is that the impartiality of arbitration (and, after all, it is the fear that arbiters appointed by the Minister would not be impartial which has led to the opposition to this matter by the E.I.S.) under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour has completely satisfied the staffs in other public services, including people with high professional qualifications. It is not a case of there being one standard for professional people and another for, say, manual workers; it applies over the whole range. In the National Health Service, where the Exchequer meets the whole cost of the salaries bill, there could be no stronger test of the impartiality and integrity of arbitration arranged by the Minister of Labour.
I would remind your Lordships that what the teachers fear is that because the Secretary of State is responsible, through the grant system, for a very large part of the Bill for Teachers' salaries, an arbiter or arbiters appointed by a colleague of the Secretary of State would, somehow, not be as impartial. Yet over a period of nearly 20 years the system of arbitration in the Health Service, where the whole of the salaries are paid by a colleague of the Minister of Labour, has never at any time come under attack on the grounds that the arbiters chosen by the Minister have proved to be creatures or tools of the Minister of Health or of the Secretary of State for Scotland. We feel, therefore, that we are obliged, for that reason in addition to all the others, to stand by this principle; because to do otherwise would be to accept the implication that some of these highly qualified,
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professional people are open to attack, not as individuals but as a class; that they have so little regard for their own personal integrity that they would accept a position requiring them to be completely fair and impartial but doing so on the basis that they were to arrive in advance at a decision which the Secretary of State wished.
As I implied during the Second Reading debate—I do not think I carried it further than that—my colleague has had further discussions with the E.I.S. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, was perfectly right in assuming that those discussions had taken place. Following the meeting with members of the E.I.S. last Friday, the Department, on his instructions, wrote to the E.I.S. yesterday, setting out in detail, so that there could be no misconception at all about what the Government wanted, the kind of procedure which would be involved under the Government's proposals for the appointment of teachers; and I should like to read from the letter which the E.I.S. now has. I will not read the whole of the letter, but those parts relative to our discussion:
"What the Secretary of State has in mind to propose, however, is that any unresolved difference within the new Committee shall be referred for settlement to an arbitration body consisting of three members. One of the three arbiters would be an independent person appointed as chairman by the Minister of Labour. Before making this appointment the Minister of Labour would consult the two sides of the Committee and would take into account any view which they might wish to express about the proposed appointment. It is the Minister's practice to select for this work a person of standing with wide experience in arbitration. The other two arbiters would be selected by the Minister of Labour from lists of persons, say four or five, considered suitable by the management side and by the teachers' side respectively. It would be for both sides to draw up their own list of persons deemed to have appropriate qualifications and experence; but persons with an immediate interest in teachers' salaries—for example, teachers. members and staff of education authorities—would be ineligible for appointment."
In view of what my colleague has said to the officers and Executive of the Educational Institute of Scotland, I hope that they will find it possible to accept that the Government have no ulterior motive in seeking to do this. What we are hoping is that the new machinery will work in the interests of teachers, education authorities and the Education Department alike, because we all have a common interest in trying to ensure that difficulties

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about salaries are resolved as speedily and as amicably as possible.
It was because of this desire that the Secretary of State caused this Bill to be introduced in the first place. The attitude of conciliation runs through the whole procedure of the Bill. I cannot conceive of a situation developing where the arbiters appointed by the Ministry of Labour would act in such a way as to destroy the faith of the teachers in their decisions. I hope that when the teachers have consulted together further they will arrive at the conclusion that they do not have grounds for viewing with either suspicion or alarm the proposal that the responsibility for the appointment of arbiters should rest with the Minister of Labour, who traditionally has been entrusted with this responsibility for a long period of time.
May I conclude by referring to something which the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, said on Second Reading? He quoted some remarks of Sir Roy Wilson, the President of the Industrial Court, to the Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers' Associations. These remarks sum up so well what any body submitting to arbitration would expect of arbiters that I think I am justified in asking the House to allow me to quote again what he said. Sir Roy Wilson said:
"In the first place, I have always regarded it as axiomatic that under the voluntary system of arbitration which exists in this country arbitrators should he entirely independent and free from the advice and influence of the Government or a Government Department. I believe this to be the universal and the correct view. The Industrial Court should remain entirely independent of its decision. That independence could, in my view, be modified only by Parliament."
As a definition of what the teachers should expect of an arbiter, I do not think it could be bettered.
The noble Lord, Lord Balerno, said that:
"This is what four-fifths of the teachers in Scotland have their teeth into: they have their teeth into this principle of an independent arbiter.…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, col. 1646. 11/5/67.]
But those remarks were made by a man who was appointed as President of the Industrial Court by the Minister of Labour. Obviously, in enunciating that principle Sir Roy Wilson does not consider that he is either the creature or
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the tool of the Minister of Labour and obliged to bring in decisions which will be acceptable either to the Minister or to the Minister's colleagues. If, by chance, members of the Educational Institute of Scotland should be considering to-morrow what is taking place in your Lordships' House this afternoon, I would suggest that if they did nothing else they could rest on the definition of what a good arbiter should be as expounded by Sir Roy Wilson, who is himself an appointee of the Minister of Labour.
I have spoken a little longer than I intended. My justification is that I accept completely that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, is at one with me in seeking to get a solution to teachers' salary negotiations which in the long run will be in the best interests of all concerned. I accept that that is his motive in putting forward this Amendment. I hope that what I have said will make him feel that it would be in the best interests of all concerned if this Amendment were not accepted by your Lordships.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, unlike all too many of his colleagues, always accepts an Amendment in the proper spirit and argues why it should not be accepted, and this case is no exception to that rule. But I should like him to give your Lordships the assurance that any arbitration award made by the arbiters could net be reversed, either by the Secretary of State for Scotland or by Parliament.
LORD HUGHES: Yes, I can give the noble Earl the most firm assurance. This is part of the Bill. The Secretary of State binds himself to accept the arbiters' decision, except in conditions of exceptional national urgency, which are specified in the Bill, when it would be a matter for Parliament to decide whether it would be in the national interest for the award to be implemented. In such a decision both Houses must concur. So I am able to give the noble Earl the assurance for which he seeks, with the exception of the special circumstances to which the Bill refers.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: Arising from the noble Lord's reply, for which I am grateful, the only further comment I would make is that it seems that even the Government do not have much trust in the impartiality of the Secretary of

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State for Scotland, inasmuch as they think it necessary that arbiters should be appointed by an outside Minister. But it may well be, at least in the present circumstances, that this will be an advantage, because I am afraid that at the present moment the Secretary of State for Scotland's name stands something worse than mud with the teachers Of Scotland.
LORD HUGHES: I am afraid I cannot accept that the noble Earl is as fair to the Secretary of State for Scotland as a little earlier he was to myself. There is no question of the impartiality of the Secretary of State being impugned by having arbiters appointed by the Minister of Labour. It is laid down in the Bill that the Secretary of State is one of the parties represented in the new machinery on the employers' side, where he will be represented by two officers of the Scottish Education Department. The reason why we have not suggested that the Secretary of State should appoint arbiters is that it would be against all the ordinary canons of fairness that one of the parties to the negotiations should subsequently have the right to appoint arbiters to consider the result of the negotiations.
The Secretary of State is content that his direct part should be limited to the part which his officers play in the negotiations in the first instance. We hope that, through the new machinery, mostly—frequently—sometimes—they will arrive at agreed decisions. The arbiters will come in only if the new machinery fails to bring agreement and if the Secretary of State and the representatives of the other employers, the local authorities, are unable to agree with the teachers on what the award should be. Then the matter passes out of the hands of the Secretary of State and out of the hands of the local authorities and of the teachers, and goes to the arbiters. For the first time, under these proposals the Secretary of State will be placed in the same position as everybody else. He will have to accept the award like the local authorities and the teachers. It ought to be unnecessary for me to say that it is a tribute to his impartiality in this matter that this proposal to divest himself of the power which every Secretary of State has had up to the present
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came from the Secretary of State for Scotland himself.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am grateful to the noble Lord for his explanation of this matter. Indeed, I could wish that he were to be present tomorrow at the annual general meeting of the Educational Institute of Scotland, where he could have said what he has had to say in this House to-day directly to the teachers. I am sure that it would be greatly appreciated. I do not go so far as the noble Lord in saying that if this Amendment were to be accepted it would be taken to mean that the Secretary of State was climbing down on the recommendation that the Minister of Labour should make these appointments. This is my Amendment and I have made plain the basis on which I was making this recommendation to your Lordships.
On the other hand, it is undoubtedly a matter for judgment whether the passing of this Amendment at this particular time would be helpful or the reverse. As I say, it would leave the matter open for the time being. The noble Lord prefers that the Secretary of State's intention should be made quite clear, and, indeed, what he has said has indicated that this is the firm intention of the Secretary of State from which he does not intend to depart. In those circumstances, I can only hope that what the noble Lord has said will carry conviction with the teachers to-morrow. If not, then we shall inevitably, and I may say sadly, have to return to the matter again. I think we can leave it there for the time being, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.

LEGAL AID (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
House in Committee (on Re-commitment) (according to Order).
House resumed: Bill reported without further amendment; Report received.

MARINE ETC., BROADCASTING (OFFENCES) BILL
4.32 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, owing to the omission of two words in the Amendment that was to have been moved by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, I beg to move that the Third Reading of this Bill be postponed until Tuesday next.
Moved, That the Third Reading of the Bill be postponed until Tuesday next.—(Lord Sorensen.)
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord for his consideration in seeing that this Amendment is got right. For myself, and I hope for all noble Lords on this side of the House, I concur with what he has just suggested.
On Question, Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE BILL
5.5 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be again in Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Stonham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD STRANG in the Chair.]
Clause 15:
Restrictions on refusal of bail
(5) The foregoing provisions of this section shall not require a magistrates' court to remand or commit a person on bail—
(f) where the act or any of the acts constituting the offence with which he is charged consisted of an assault on or threat of violence to another person, or of having or possessing a firearm, an imitation firearm, an explosive or an offensive weapon, or of indecent conduct with or towards a person under the age of sixteen years;
(6) The requirements of subsections (1) and (2) of this section shall not apply to the adjournment of a trial by a magistrates' court under section 26 of the Magistrates' Courts
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Act 1952 for the purpose of enabling a medical examination and report to be made on the defendant if it appears to the court that it would be impracticable to obtain such a report without remanding the defendant in custody.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR moved, in subsection (5), to add to paragraph (a): "or detention in a detention centre." The noble Lord said: I moved this Amendment towards the end of our proceedings on Tuesday night, and our discussion came to an unhappy end because not enough noble Lords took part in the debate to enable the Division to have effect. As a result, under Standing Order No. 51, the Question remained undecided, and it falls to us to continue the discussion now. I do not know what is in the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, but, for my part, I propose to speak quite briefly, because the arguments are all set out in Hansard and have been available for noble Lords to study since yesterday morning. I will simply summarise the position to which this Amendment is directed and which it is designed to improve.
We all, I think, agree with the general purpose of Clause 15: to restrict remands in custody and to secure a larger proportion of remands on bail. The clause proceeds towards this purpose by compelling magistrates' courts in a wide variety of cases to remand on bail rather than in custody. When we come to subsection (5) of the clause, we find there set out a list of exceptions. It does not mean that in the exceptions listed the court is required to remand in custody; it means simply that in the case of these various headings the court is given an option whether to remand on bail or in custody at its own discretion.
Under paragraph (a) of subsection (5) the court is given this discretion to remand either on bail or in custody where a person
"is charged with an offence punishable by that court with imprisonment for a term of not less than six months and it appears to the court that he has been previously sentenced to imprisonment or borstal training."
The Amendment I am putting before your Lordships is to add to that paragraph the words, "or detention in a detention centre". What is in my mind is that if the magistrates have in front of them somebody who has in the past got into sufficient trouble to land himself

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in a detention centre, then it is only right that the magistrates should in such a case have the same discretion as to whether they should remand him on bail or in custody as they would have under this clause if, instead of having been sent for three months to a detention centre, he had been sent for a month, two months or three months to prison.
Personally, I think the case for that Amendment is overwhelming. It compels nobody, and I cannot accept the argument of the Government that the Amendment must be resisted on the ground that it would increase, perhaps, marginally, the number of remands in custody. If the Government rest on that argument, that is asking your Lordships to accept that every word of subsection (5) is absolutely right. I do not think there would be a great number of these cases which would end with remand in custody, but I feel sure that the option should be available to the magistrates' court.
When I moved this Amendment on Tuesday night it was supported by my noble and learned friend Lord Dilhorne; it was also supported by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice. I had, therefore, substantial legal support for what I was proposing. It was opposed by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, on behalf of the Government. I said at the conclusion of the debate that there was a clash of opinion here, and I believed that he and I in all sincerity held contrary opinions. I have read the debate through since Tuesday, and nothing that I have read or thought about this matter since has convinced me that it would be wrong to press this Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 13, line 11, at end insert ("or detention in a detention centre.")—(Lord Brooke of Cumnor.)
5.11 p.m.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: I want to add a word, if I may, in support of my noble friend. I agree with him in thinking that the argument for this Amendment is overwhelming. It is one thing to give guidance to magistrates as to how they perform their duties, and another to restrict their powers. This Amendment is the first, but I think not the only, part of this Bill where there is a restriction of the powers of magistrates, and I fear the result may well be
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that the impression is gained that the administration of the law is getting too soft in relation to those charged with criminal offences.
It may be the fact that the granting of bail has been too much restricted in the past and that it ought to have been granted more frequently. But that is no reason for the Bill's providing that a person who has served a sentence of detention—and it may be because he has been found guilty of very serious offences—must, when charged with another offence, be admitted to bail. That is what the Bill provides now. The magistrates have a discretion if the person has been sent to borstal training or to imprisonment. As the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice pointed out, nowadays it really is quite fortuitous as to whether or not there is room in a detention centre, and if there is not it is quite fortuitous as to whether he goes to detention or indeed to borstal. I think it is quite wrong to restrict the magistrates' discretion to grant or refuse bail in a case where a man who is charged has served a sentence of detention, and that they should have the same discretion as they do if he has gone to borstal or to prison and served there before coming before the court again.
If I understand Lord Stonham's argument correctly, the only argument really advanced by him was that, as detention differs from borstal training and imprisonment, he did not want a person remanded in custody, who had served detention, to go to prison to get the taste of prison. I think that is a wholly inadequate reason for restricting the discretion of magistrates, and I think it shows undue regard for the person charged with the offence who has already been convicted of other offences, it may be of a very serious kind, and an inadequate regard for the preservation of law and order. I shall certainly support my noble friend in the Lobby on this.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: Do Her Majesty's Government not realise that many of the youths who are sent to those most admirable new institutions, detention centres, have been sent there because they have been guilty of very violent offences? I visited a detention centre in Perth some time ago, and at that time, to give just two examples, there was one "little angel", in appearance, who on

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being refused free admission to a Glasgow cinema, kicked the manager in the stomach and went on kicking him. Another young gentleman had threatened his father with a carving knife and had to be forcibly disarmed.
When, as all too often happens, despite their corrective training, lads of this description again get into trouble, surely the magistrate, or magistrates, should have a discretion to say that it is unwise from the point of view of the safety of the Queen's citizens that these young men should be at large until their trial has been carried out. If the Government are unwilling to accept this most reasonable Amendment, which does not seek to make it mandatory to refuse bail but merely leaves it to the discretion of the magistrates to do so if they think fit, then it is merely one more evidence that, unfortunately, this Government are infinitely more solicitous for the welfare of the criminal than for that of the respectable citizen.
LORD ROYLE: Since this Amendment appeared on the Order Paper one has obviously given a great deal of thought to it, and I confess at once that I have been torn asunder and that at one point I was deeply sympathetic towards it; but, after a great deal of thought. I have come down against it. I am one of those who believe that bail must be given whenever possible, and particularly when it applies to our younger offenders.
My mind goes back to the 1948 Act when the detention centres were first brought into legislation, and I remember the words of the then Home Secretary, the late Mr. Chuter Ede, when he described what the detention centres were for. He described it as, "a short, sharp shock". I regard this, therefore, as a form of penalty which is very different indeed from a sentencing to borstal. A borstal sentence is of a longer period than a sentence to a detention centre. From one's experience of young people appearing before the courts, I assure the noble Earl who preceded me that not all the youngsters who have been sent to detention centres are of the type which he mentioned.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: I never suggested that they were.
LORD ROYLE: I accept that at once.
LORD STONHAM: They were the only examples the noble Earl gave.
LORD ROYLE: They were the ones mentioned by the noble Earl, and there are many others. In the early days of the detention centres I remember cases in which conscientious objectors were sent there. In the past there have been many mistakes as to the type of person who should be sent to those institutions.
I am concerned because I know from experience that many of these young men may have had a period in a detention centre simply because of the shortage of remand centres, and under this Amendment magistrates would be compelled to remand such men to prison. Prison is a very different place from a detention centre. I greatly dislike the thought of some of these people, even for the short period of remand, ever getting into prison. I am all for discretion for magistrates, but I assure noble Lords that there are many magistrates who are much happier when they know precisely what the law is and what they are compelled to do. It is because of these considerations that eventually I came down on the side of the Government, believing that sentence to a borstal and sentence to a detention centre are two very different kinds of penalty, and that the people who have had experience of a detention centre are not the people who should be refused bail if they happen to appear before a court again. After having given the matter a great deal of thought I am quite confident that the Government are right on this matter.
5.20 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Royle, not only for the sentiments he has expressed but for the fact that they come with a great many years' experience as a magistrate, and indeed as vice-chairman of the Magistrates' Association. Despite the eminent legal authority to which we have listened this afternoon and which has been quoted in this debate, I would remind your Lordships that it is, after all, the magistrates who are concerned with Clause 15.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, told us that this clause is one with which we all agree. I imagine he means

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that all your Lordships agree. I hope that is right; but I must say that, from what we have heard so far, agreement in some sections seems somewhat muted. The whole purpose of this clause, and indeed a major purpose of the Bill, is to reduce the number of people sent to prison, as the noble and learned Viscount Lord Dilhorne said; but he omitted one vitally important word—sent to prison unnecessarily. This is what this clause is about.
When an accused person is remanded in custody he is sent to prison—for varying periods, unspecified, and, at the time of the remand, virtually unknown. This clause provides that in certain circumstances, but not in others, when magistrates remand an accused person they must grant bail. Magistrates have discretion now as to whether or not they should grant bail, and it is a fact, which is repeated every year, that, of some 35,000 occasions when they do not grant bail, more than half of the offenders subsequently convicted are not sent to prison. In other words, the magistrates who eventually try them, and who presumably earlier remanded them in custody, do not think that the offence was such as to justify imprisonment. This must be what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, meant when he said that we all agreed with this clause; that the idea was to reduce the number of prisoners remanded in custody. That is the point on which I understand we are in agreement; and, therefore, if we are going to do this we must limit the magistrates' discretion, otherwise there is no reason to think that we shall be able to reduce the number of remands in custody.
So the point is the much narrower one of the exceptions. I must remind your Lordships again that there are powerful exceptions to the mandatory grant of bail in these courts. The first is that it must be a summary trial for an offence with a maximum punishment of not more than six months' imprisonment. In other words, the alleged offence is unlikely to be a very serious crime. The noble and learned Viscount Lord Dilhorne said that the Government's attitude in this was an example of the law getting too "soft", or of our wanting the law to be too "soft". I would remind him that we are considering here people, mainly young people, who are charged with an offence—and not a
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particularly serious offence at that—but who have not been convicted. Indeed, at the time when a decision is made as to whether or not they should be sent to prison, they are still in law innocent. I am arguing that they should not be sent to prison.
It has been mentioned by my noble friend and by other speakers that there is a difference between a detention centre and prison, and the very reason why the detention centres are full and why sometimes, unavoidably, young people who would otherwise go to detention centres have to go to prison is proof that the magistrates do see a difference and that they think the nature of the offence means that going to a detention centre for three months (which in fact means eight or nine weeks) is a way of dealing with the case instead of sending the man to prison or to borstal. There is a difference, and anyone who thinks otherwise cannot have been to a detention centre or to a prison and seen the very great difference in the régimes.
Another thing I want to point out is what I regard as the high success rate in detention centres. In senior detention centres it is 51 per cent., compared with the success rate in borstals (where we have boys for up to two years) of some 38 per cent. Having regard to the nature of the crimes committed by some of the boys, to which the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, referred, that is quite a remarkable success rate.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: Can the noble Lord explain how the success rate for detention centres, which I agree is remarkable and very satisfactory, can possibly affect the question of the discretion of magistrates in a case where there has not been a success, at least apparently, because the man, having served a sentence of detention, comes before the magistrate on another charge? Surely that is the question we are considering.
LORD STONHAM: I was, of course, hoping to come to that when the noble and learned Viscount interrupted me. I would remind him that the first detention centre opened was at Goudhurst, in Kent, over twelve years ago. That means that it is not only a young person who comes before a magistrate who may have had a term in a detention centre: it may be a man of 33. And, because of our

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success rates, that man of 33 might have gone straight for ten or twelve years, and when he came before the court it might not be on a serious charge but might be on one which required a remand, not because of the nature of the offence but purely for the purposes of the court. If the Amendment is accepted, it means that the magistrate, looking at the Act, would see detention centres mentioned, and it would be a strong reason for denying bail. This is why I say that the question of success rates is important.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: I do not follow why the noble Lord says that. After all, if the magistrate looks at the Act, he will see that he has a clear discretion in the matter.
LORD STONHAM: Of course he has that discretion now, and that is why we have this clause, in order to reduce the number of people going to prison on remand, unconvicted, unnecessarily.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, said he could not accept that this Amendment would increase the number of people going to prison unnecessarily: he could not accept that it would have this effect. If it would not have that effect, what is the good of putting down the Amendment at all? If it is unnecessary, if it will not increase the number of people sent to prison on remand, then I cannot see that is an argument for having the Amendment at all. It is no use saying the magistrates could use their discretion if the Amendment were made.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: The noble Lord has no confidence in magistrates?
LORD STONHAM: I have perhaps a greater confidence in magistrates than the noble Earl has, but I am faced with the facts. We have this enormous number of remands in custody, so many of them afterwards proving not to have been necessary. We all agree that we should cut down the number, and I think that if there is any reason for having this Amendment it is that the magistrates will use it. Of course they will use it at their discretion, but what is the procedure when there is a question of bail? The police enter into it, of course, and if this Amendment is written into the
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Bill the police will regard it, quite properly, as a justification for asking that bail should be refused; and it must carry weight with the magistrates.
I would put one last argument. I am very glad that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice is in his place, because this is a point he raised on Tuesday evening which was referred to by the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne. I, of course, have no legal knowledge at all, and obviously I am not a very good layman. It is perhaps unutterably presumptuous for me to disagree with the Lord Chief Justice, but I do so disagree. The Lord Chief Justice said that he was for the Amendment because, as he quite rightly pointed out, there are occasions when a magistrate would like to send a boy to a detention centre but cannot do so because he cannot find a place for him, and he has to go to prison. Therefore, he argued, it was purely fortuitous whether a boy went to prison or a detention centre. So far we are together.
But the noble and learned Lord then said that that was an argument for the Amendment, for saying that boys who had been sent to detention centres, on coming up before a magistrate on another occasion, should stand a greater chance of being remanded in custody. With the greatest respect. I think that that is an argument against the Amendment, because the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice clearly felt not in favour of wanting to send these boys to prison but that it would be unfair because some other boys who had been sent to prison came under the clause anyway. It is a case for more and more detention centres, but it is a case also for persisting in our policy of training these boys and doing the utmost we can to see that they are not contaminated by prison. I hope your Lordships will not agree to the Amendment.
LORD DERWENT: Am I right or wrong in thinking that the noble Lord made a mistake in what he said? He said that subsection (5) applies only to offences where summary punishment is six months or less; when a man has been tried on an offence which only carries a penalty of six months or less. That is not the case. It also applies to those under subsection (2), where an indictable offence

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is dealt with summarily; six months does not come in there.
LORD STONHAM: I would be sorry if I did make an error. I think I said in cases tried summarily. That, of course, covers both summary cases and cases which can be either summary or indictable, but which the magistrates decide to try summarily.
LORD DERWENT: But in some of those cases which are indictable and tried summarily the penalty is more than six months.
LORD STONHAM: Perhaps I may read the clause. It says:
"Where a person who has attained the age of seventeen is charged before a magistrates' court with a summary offence which is not also an indictable offence and is punishable with not more than six months' imprisonment, then, subject to the following provisions of this section, if the court adjourns the trial and remands him, it shall remand him on bail."
Subsection (2) says almost the same thing, except that it refers to those offences that can be either indictable or summary which the magistrates elect to try summarily.
LORD AIREDALE: I want to refer to what is a possible compromise. I think it is generally agreed that the basic difficulty we are presented with here is that there are not enough places in detention centres. That being so, why will not Her Majesty's Government accept this Amendment now until such time as there are enough places in detention centres? When there are, the need for this Amendment will largely have disappeared, and Her Majesty's Government can then introduce legislation at the first available opportunity to repeal it. In the meantime, while there are not enough places in detention centres, surely the thing to do is to accept this Amendment as an interim measure.
LORD STONHAM: I am always grateful for the noble Lord's suggestions, but I think it is bad policy to accept something that you know to be wrong simply because for administrative or other reasons it might be expedient. At a later stage in the Bill we are proposing to give the Secretary of State powers to stop sending people to prison for the offence of being drunk and disorderly. We shall not implement those powers until there
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are other arrangements available, but we will have them in the Bill. The Government's case against this Amendment is the Government's case for this whole clause; we want to stop sending people to prison unnecessarily, and no administrative convenience should weigh on that.
LORD AIREDALE: You will not achieve that by not having enough places in detention centres, so that people have to be sent to prison unnecessarily.
LORD STONHAM: We are talking about remands in custody. In fact, following the noble Lord's argument, if it was decided to remand people in custody simply because they had been to detention centres, it would mean more people going to prison unnecessarily, before they have been convicted, which is what we want to stop.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: Not only are there not enough places in detention centres, there are not enough remand centres either. If we had more remand centres, there would be no need for the noble Lord to speak about contamination by going to prison. On this main issue there is a sincere and clear clash of opinion. The noble Lord says that if this Amendment is accepted a number of magistrates will use their discretion badly.
LORD STONHAM: The noble Lord must not misquote me. I did not say they would use it badly; I said they would use it.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: What the noble Lord said was that a number of people would be remanded in custody unnecessarily. If there is any meaning in that word "unnecessarily", it means that the magistrates have used their discretion faultily. That is, of course, a hypothetical matter.
LORD STONHAM: Some of the people remanded will be found to he innocent, and the magistrates cannot possibly know that when sending them to prison on remand.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: They certainly cannot know that, but I see no reason whatever why magistrates should not be trusted to use their discretion sensibly. If this Amendment is accepted, things will not go on as before. It seems to me inconceivable that magistrates

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generally will not take the very strong hint contained in this clause, and all that we have been saying about it in both Houses of Parliament, and will not recognise that they should think carefully before remanding in custody if the case is a doubtful one. What is absolutely beyond question is that if this Amendment is not accepted the magistrates will have to remand on bail a certain number of people—it may be a small number, but a certain number—who may not
Resolved in the affirmative, and Amendment agreed to accordingly.
5.48 p.m.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE VISCOUNT DILHORNE moved, after paragraph (c), to insert as a new paragraph:
"( ) Where he is charged with driving when disqualified and he has twice been convicted of the same offence in the last three years."
The noble and learned Viscount said: I think the Committee will probably agree
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necessarily be young people, who they think should be remanded in custody. That seems to me an unsatisfactory situation. I sincerely believe that the magistrates should have discretion in this matter, and that is why I wish to press this Amendment.
5.40 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 19) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 61; Not-Contents, 46.

CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Aberdeen and Temair, M.

Ebbisham, L.

Merrivale, L.

Ailwyn, L.

Emmet of Amberley, Bs.

Milverton, L.

Airedale, L.

Ferrier, L.

Monckton of Brenchley, V.

Albemarle, E.

Foley, L.

Napier and Ettrick, L.

Amory, V

Fortescue, E.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Atholl, D.

Goschen, V. [Teller.]

Parker of Waddington, L.

Auckland, L.

Grenfell, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Berkeley, Bs.

Gridley, L.

St. Helens, L.

Blackford, L.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

St. Just, L.

Boston, L.

Hamilton of Dalzell, L.

Salisbury, M.

Brooke of Cumnor, L.

Headfort, M.

Sandford, L.

Brooke of Ystradfellte, Bs.

Howard of Glossop, L.

Sandys, L.

Byers, L.

Hylton, L.

Sempill, Ly.

Carrington, L.

Ilford, L.

Somers, L.

Chesham, L.

Ironside, L.

Stonehaven, V.

Colville of Culross, V.

Kinnoull, E.

Strange of Knokin, Bs.

Cromartie, E.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Thurlow, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

McCorquodale of Newton, L.

Tweedsmuir, L.

Derwent, L. [Teller.]

Mansfield, E.

Vivian, L.

Dilhorne, V.

NOT-CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Leatherland, L.

St. Davids, V.

Beswick, L.

Lindgren, L.

Segal, L.

Bowles, L. [Teller.]

Longford, E. [L. Privy Seal.]

Scrota, Bs.

Burton of Coventry, Bs

Mitchison, L.

Shackleton. L.

Chalfont, L.

Morris of Kenwood, L.

Shepherd, L.

Champion, L.

Morrison, L.

Sorensen, L.

Chorley, L.

Moyle, L.

Stonham, L.

Crook, L.

Pargiter, L.

Stow Hill, L.

Darwen, L.

Peddie, L.

Summerskill, Bs.

Gaitskell, Bs.

Phillips, Bs. [Teller.]

Swanborough, Bs.

Gardiner, L. [L. Chancellor.]

Plummer, Bs.

Walston, L.

Granville-West, L.

Popplewell, L.

Wedgwood, L.

Hall, V.

Ritchie-Calder, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Hilton of Upton, L.

Rowley, L.

Williamson, L.

Hughes, L.

Royle, L.

Wootton of Abinger, Bs.

Latham, L.

that driving when disqualified is not only a serious but also a most prevalent offence in these days. I do not think there is any need for me to expand on that and take up any time in commenting and enlarging on the serious nature of the offence. When a person has twice been convicted of this offence in the last three years, it must show that he has little, if any, regard for the law, and in such a case I feel that magistrates should have a discretion not to admit to bail.
It may be said by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, when he comes to reply, that such a case will be covered by Clause 15(5)(g), where it says that there will be a discretion:
"where it appears to the court that unless he is remanded or committed in custody he is likely to commit an offence"
I have some doubt whether that would apply, because that paragraph begins with the words "where it appears to the court …". I should think—and perhaps the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will correct me if he disagrees—that that must mean that there is some evidence before the court, on which the court can act, that he is likely to commit an offence unless he is remanded or committed in custody.
I do not see how on that wording it would be open to the court to operate that subsection merely on account of the fact that he had twice been convicted in the last three years of driving when disqualified. Even if it is the view of the Lord Chancellor that that would be comprehended within paragraph (g), it seems to me that it is open to some doubt. Therefore, I feel that there would be some advantage if clear guidance on this subsection could be given to the magistrates through the insertion of the Amendment which I propose. I think it should be made clear beyond all doubt that, in a case where the charges involve driving while disqualified, and where there have been two convictions within the short period of three years, the magistrates can, if they think fit, refuse bail. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 13, line 17, at end insert the said paragraph.—(Viscount Dilhorne.)
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: I ought perhaps to have raised this matter in connection with the previous Amendment. I am puzzled about all these conditions, both those at present in the Bill and those proposed in the Amendment of the noble and learned Viscount, all of which assume that when remanding an accused person, after he has pleaded and before he is tried, a court will know whether he has been previously convicted or sentenced to imprisonment, or borstal, or to a detention centre, and whether he has been previously convicted of driving while disqualified. I should
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have thought it totally contrary to the elementary principles of British justice that the magistrates who are to try a case should know the previous record of the accused when they are deciding whether or not to grant bail. In my long experience as a magistrate I have never heard a previous record given. The police will say that a man has no fixed abode, that he is likely to interfere with other witnesses, and that they think he will commit another offence while on bail, but in no circumstances have I ever heard the previous record given, and I feel that it would be most improper to do so.
LORD PARKER or WADDINGTON: Before we consider this Amendment, I was going to ask much the same question as the noble Baroness who has just spoken. I am very anxious to elucidate what is to happen. Quite clearly, those concerned with the granting or refusing of bail will inevitably know whether there is a record or not. Does this really mean that a bench has to be reconstituted? Has it to be clear that no people who sat on the bail application should sit at the hearing? If so, what happens when it becomes a question of continuing bail overnight, when objection is taken and the bench, in the middle of hearing the case, have to see what the previous convictions are? There are great difficulties, and I myself should very much like to know how it is intended that it shall work before we consider any further Amendments to the clause.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: As the noble Baroness has raised the point, may I say that it was present to my mind that I was intending to raise this matter on the question whether the clause shall stand part. But as the noble Baroness will see that before subsection (2) was amended it obviously required that in certain cases the bench shall have it brought before them that the man has been in prison before, or that the man has been for borstal training, and that that would have to be a matter proved to them to be taken into account in considering whether or not to grant bail. That, I think, is a matter which did not arise on the last Amendment. I do not think it really arises on this Amendment, but it is certainly a matter on which I was going to say a few words when we come to the Question, That the clause stand

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part, because I feel that it is very important.
LORD STONHAM: I would not want there to be two discussions on this particular, and very important, point and, as the matter has now been raised by the noble Baroness and two noble and learned Lords, I think I will deal with it now.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: If that be so, I will perhaps deal more fully with the reasons for anxieties about the clause as a whole, but I was reserving it until the Question, That the clause stand part, when we can see what final form the clause will take.
LORD STONHAM: I am in a position of some difficulty. As the matter has been raised, certainly it must be answered, and I will answer it. But if my noble friend will leave it for the time being, I will reply to it on the Question, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
To come to the noble and learned Viscount's Amendment, I am quite sure that nobody will dispute that driving while disqualified is a serious offence. If a man came up for a third time on such a charge the matter would have to be examined very closely before a magistrate would grant bail. But the Government do not regard that as a special reason for making such people less bail-worthy than people charged with other offences. I am sure that the noble and learned Viscount would agree that it is likely that a good many defendants who for the third time are before the court on this charge may well have been to prison or to borstal and will be caught by subsection (5)(a). He himself raised the point about subsection (5)(g) and asked my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor for advice on this point. My advice is that magistrates would have discretion to commit an alleged offender before them under paragraph (g).
The offence of driving while disqualified is a hybrid offence, being triable either summarily or on indictment. This brings it within subsection (2) of the clause, under which the magistrates are not required to grant bail until it has been decided to try the case summarily and the defendant has pleaded to the
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charge. It would then be only in the event of the trial not being concluded on that day that the question of mandatory bail would arise. It would be at that point for the court to consider, as I have pointed out, whether any act of the exceptions to the mandatory granting of bail in subsection (5) applied.
I think that, on looking carefully into this Amendment and what is covered by driving disqualifications, the noble and learned Viscount may agree that it would be wrong to say that people so charged should be treated, as a class, as an exception in the way he suggests. I would refer him to the First Schedule to the Road Traffic Act 1962, which lists various offences that invite disqualification. Among them, for example, are carrying a passenger on a motor-cycle in contravention of Section 8(2); failure to comply with traffic directions; leaving a vehicle in a dangerous position; contravention of traffic regulations on special roads; contravention of pedestrian-crossing regulations; failure to obey a sign exhibited by school-crossing patrols. All those, and many more, can bring about disqualification to drive, and if we were to accept the Amendment it would mean that in all these cases the magistrates would have this discretion. We feel, however, that most, indeed all, of the cases which are likely to be bad cases—and many of them would be criminals, if only by reason of the fact that the disqualification cases were bad ones—would be caught. That lessens them need for the Amendment and, with the other reason that I have given, the broad umbrella covered by disqualification at large, would be another reason for not accepting the Amendment.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: I am grateful to the noble Lord for his explanation, but I am not in the least satisfied by it. One is not concerned here with the grounds on which the court has in the past ordered disqualification. The charge here, of which a person must have been convicted twice in the last three years before this Amendment could apply, is a charge of driving while disqualified. Having been disqualified by the court he is found driving again. It does not matter in that context what was the ground of the original disqualification. This Amendment deals with a charge of driving while disqualified by an order of the

577
court. If a man comes before a court a third time in two years on a charge of driving while disqualified, I should like it to be clear that the magistrates have a discretion to remand him in custody.
I am not quite clear from the noble Lord's answer whether he says that in those circumstances under this clause the magistrates have or have not got that discretion. At one part of his reply he rather seemed to indicate that he thought they had, if I understood him correctly, because he thought it came, or might come, under subsection (5) (g). I am not concerned with the possibility of whether, in other respects of the accused's character, he comes within any other provision; I am concerned with this particular category of driving while disqualified. If the noble Lord says that it comes within, and can come within subsection (5) (g), is he then saying (and I hope we shall discuss this when we come to the Question, That the clause stand part of the Bill) that proof of these previous convictions for driving while disqualified will suffice to justify a court in saying that it appears to them likely that if he is remanded on bail he will commit that offence?—be-cause I should not have thought that that necessarily followed.
If the noble Lord would like to say that he will give further consideration to this, I should certainly not be disposed to press this Amendment. But it is a serious point and one to which further consideration should be given. With the greatest respect to the noble Lord—perhaps he was not anticipating what arguments might be put forward in support of this proposal—his reply really has not met the case advanced for it.
LORD STONHAM: I think that, so far as subsection (5)(g) is concerned, I made the view of the Government clear, and I think that when the noble and learned Viscount reads what I said he will agree. On the other hand, I agree with him that this is a very difficult case. We do not want to create what I regard as additional classes of exceptions to the mandatory provision—certainly, we would not do it lightly—but I am impressed by what he has said, and I shall be very glad to look at this again and see whether we can find some solution.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: In those circumstances I have much pleasure in
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asking the leave of the Committee to withdraw the Amendment. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for what he has said, as this merits very serious consideration; in particular, as to whether the point really is covered by subsection (5)(g).
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.5 p.m.
LORD DERWENT LORD DERWENT moved to add to paragraph (f):
"or an offence under the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964 or the Dangerous Drugs Act 1965;".
The noble Lord said: As your Lord-ships know, subsection (5) of this clause deals with a variety of cases where magistrates have the option of granting or not granting bail. By my Amendment I seek to add something to paragraph (f) of subsection (5), which deals with serious cases of offences against the person—offences such as assault on or threat of violence to another person, having or possessing a firearm and so on. It deals with offences against the person, and I am seeking to add offences under the two main Drugs Acts—the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964, and the Dangerous Drugs Act 1965.
As your Lordships probably know but may have forgotten, the first of these Acts, the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964 deals largely with things like pep pills; and the more serious drugs, the hard drugs such as cocaine, heroin and so on, are dealt with under the 1965 Act. May I just digress to say that I was in some doubt whether to include the 1964 Act in this Amendment, but I have done so for one reason only. It does not deal only with the pep pill trouble; it deals with the drugs which cause hallucination such as LSD. In the early days of LSD it was thought that there would probably be no lasting effect, but it has since been found from people who take LSD that it can have the most serious side effects. It is now quite clear that in many cases the taking of LSD leads eventually to the taking of hard drugs, and that is why I have put in the less important of the two Acts as well as the 1965 Act.
Under both of those Acts there are, in the main, two classes of offenders. There is the trafficker in drugs, the man who trades in illegal drugs, and it is for that reason that I propose this Amendment

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to the paragraph which deals with offences against the person. The other class of offender is the person who has drugs in his possession because he is taking them. Magistrates have power under paragraph (h) to use their discretion in suitable cases about remanding a person in custody or on bail. That paragraph says:
"where it appears to the court necessary for his own protection to refuse to remand or commit him on bail."
In the case of somebody who is more or less permanently under the influence of drugs, they can use that clause to keep him in custody while he is on remand—maybe for medical reasons, maybe because he is not in a fit condition to be released.
What we are dealing with here are those who traffic in drugs. There is not the slightest doubt that if it were not for the traffickers in drugs—those who make money out of this evil trade—the vast majority of people who now take drugs, whether they are addicts or whether they are taking drugs which are not really drugs of addiction, would not be taking them. If the middlemen, the pushers, did not exist, most of the drug addicts would not exist either, and that is what makes this such a very serious offence.
I do not know how many of your Lord-ships, apart from those who are doctors, have any personal experience of people who take drugs. It is quite horrible. There is a fairly slow physical deterioration. There is an almost immediate mental deterioration and, quite rapidly, there is a loss of any moral standard. In addition there is the frightful craving, which is horrible to see, when the last dose is dying out, and it brings appalling misery to the person's family and his friends. In my view, people who make money out of this illegal trade are as bad as, and in many cases worse than, murderers. They slowly kill their victims, if not always physically then certainly mentally; and it is an appalling crime.
In case your Lordships think I am exaggerating, may I just point out what Parliament thinks the penalties for this offence ought to be? For the milder offences, which come under the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act, on summary conviction the penalty is a fine not exceeding £200 or imprisonment for a
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term not exceeding six months, or both; and on conviction on indictment a fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or both—for dealing with the less dangerous drugs, a pretty heavy penalty. When we are dealing with the hard stuff, this is what Parliament thought the offence was worth: on conviction on indictment, a fine not exceeding £1,000 or imprisonment for a period not exceeding ten years, or both; and on summary conviction a fine not exceeding £250 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding twelve months, or both—very heavy penalties indeed.
Coming back to the matter we have been discussing, I think there are two points here. There is the very dangerous criminal element, and there are the less important young people carrying pep pills. Is it really suggested that in this case magistrates are not fit to use their discretion as to whether they remand in custody or not? And, even if there is some doubt about that, are we to let this Bill go forward saying that the criminal element are to be remanded on bail so that they can go on pushing their drugs while they are waiting for their case to come up? It is not reasonable to ask us to accept that. I hope the Government will accept this Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 13, line 29, at end insert the said words.—(Lord Derwent.)
LORD STONHAM: Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, no one could fail to be moved by his concern about the effect of drug-taking. It is a concern we all share. Though they may not use exactly the same terms, no one can but share at least the sentiments the noble Lord has expressed with regard to the horror felt about the people who ply this ghastly trade. They presumably make a lot of money out of it, but at the same time they literally destroy human lives. There is no dispute at all between us about that, and the week after next I shall be moving the Second Reading of the Dangerous Drugs Bill, in which, with your Lordships' approval, we shall be taking legislative steps to deal with part of that problem.
What we are now considering, however, is whether in this Bill we should not include all the offenders under these

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two Acts in the mandatory provisions in so far as they apply under subsections (1), (2), (3) and (5)(a) to (g). In addition to these dreadful people, however, there are, unfortunately, large numbers of silly, foolish people who get picked up, sometimes 40 or 50 of them at a time, and who clutter up the magistrates' courts. The difficulty is that the noble Lord's Amendment would mean that these would all be put in a separate paragraph of subsection (5). I think he would agree with me that in any case he has suggested putting his Amendment in quite the wrong place, because subsection (5)(f) deals with violence and frightful crimes against people. I am not saying that drug-pushing, drug-peddling, drug-selling is not a frightful crime. Certainly it is a crime against the person in some sense, but it is not a violence in the context that we have it in subsection (5)(f). That is the difficulty.
With regard to the major offenders, I would submit this to the noble Lord. He read out the maximum penalties; up to ten years for a conviction on indictment. If a court had someone like that in front of them, it appears to me unlikely that they would grant bail; but certainly people concerned in an offence of that kind are not covered by the mandatory provisions, because they would be outside subsection (1) of the clause. That is at one end of the scale. If, however, they come within subsections (1), (2) or (3), where they are to be tried on indictment, they would not in any case fall within the restrictions of the clause; and even when these offences are tried summarily the magistrates would not, under subsection (2) of the clause, be required to grant bail until the defendant pleaded to the charge and the summary trial was adjourned. The question of mandatory bail could then arise only if the summary trial lasted more than a day, and any remand before the start of the summary trial would not be caught by the clause. Even then, assuming that it evades all those provisos, the other exceptions of subsection (5) would come into play. If the court considered that the defendant was likely to commit further drugs offences unless kept in custody, they could remand him in custody by virtue of paragraph (g).
Whilst we are very conscious of the gravity of drug offences—indeed, it is be-
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cause of this that we are introducing new legislation—we should be reluctant to categorise particular offences (that is, the whole field of them, including those of many of the people I have spoken about, the ones more sinned against than sinning) as being less bailworthy than others, because this would at least give magistrates the impression that bail should usually be refused in cases of that kind. Offences involving violence and other aggressive conduct directed against the person are in a different category, and even a brief release on bail might have disastrous consequences. But offences of that kind are in category (f). We do not think it appropriate that offences under the Dangerous Drugs Act should be put there, first because if they are really serious offences then the difficulty does not arise anyway, and secondly, because when they are not serious offences we think that bail should be granted.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: I have great sympathy with the thought that lies behind the Amendment moved by my noble friend, but I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that the inclusion of this category in subsection (5) would mean that the magistrates would get the impression that bail should be refused in respect of any case coming within the subsection. That is putting it far too high. If I understand it correctly, the subsection gives magistrates the discretion to refuse bail. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that serious drug cases would be dealt with not summarily but on indictment. But there may be some cases not of such gravity as to warrant trial on indictment with which it would be proper to deal summarily. Sometimes there can be a considerable adjournment between the laying of the information and the hearing of the case. In London I believe that the period is now shorter than it used to be, but there may be a considerable lapse of time.
I suggest that the noble Lord might have a further look at this problem, because it seems to me wholly illogical that the magistrates should have discretion to refuse bail where a man is charged with common assault under subsection (5)(f)—an assault which might involve just a blow with a fist—but no discretion to remand in custody someone charged with a serious offence under the Drugs Act, when it is contemplated that although the

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case is serious, it should be dealt with summarily. There seems to be no principle in that, and I ask the noble Lord also to give further consideration to it, because I think that is warranted.
LORD STONHAM: Of course I will have another look at it, but I am bound to say that I do not approach the task with any great degree of confidence. The noble and learned Viscount has stated the difficulties in clear terms. He has agreed with me that in the major cases there would be no bother, because they would not be dealt with summarily. We come to the less serious cases, down to the comparatively trivial ones involving just the victims. I do not mean those needing care—they will be caught by the exemptions anyway; I mean the others who are trying it on for "kicks" and that kind of thing. They will still be brought to the police court.
LORD ROYLE: The magistrates' court.
LORD STONHAM: That is where the distinction is made between those and others which are perhaps more serious, those which the noble and learned Viscount mentioned as a class, though he did not give an example. However, I realise the problem and I will look at it to see whether it may be solved. If I cannot, I will come back to the noble Lord.
LORD DERWENT: I am grateful to the noble Lord. I agree with my noble and learned friend that the big criminals who run the "rackets" would be dealt with on indictment: that I quite appreciate. But the people who do so much harm, who are usually not very well off and in need of money, are the "pushers". The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, doubtless knows that term. They are really a pretty awful lot. They are the sort of people who will go on doing it to get some money, but they will be dealt with summarily, I am quite certain, in nine cases out of ten.
I would ask the noble Lord to see whether we can get these people covered by the Bill by some such term as those who sell or dispose illegally of the drags mentioned in the two Acts. I am not now trying to draft the wording, but that is the sort of thing I have in mind. I do not know whether it is possible, but I
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should not have thought it impossible. We come back to the same question. I think this is one of the occasions when some discretion must be given to the magistrates whether or not to grant bail. Having said that, unless the noble Lord wishes to say any more, I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD ROYLE: Before the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, is given leave to withdraw the Amendment, may I raise one small point which has nothing to do with the Amendment? I am quite sure that the noble Lord, the Under-Secretary at the Home Office, would not like it to go into the Record that he referred to a "police court". I am quite sure I heard him say that in his remarks.
LORD STONHAM: I have complete confidence that that will be properly dealt with.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD HAMILTON OF DALZELL LORD HAMILTON OF DALZELL moved, in subsection (6), after "defendant" to insert:
"nor to an adjournment for the purpose of an enquiry under paragraph 3(5) of the Fifth Schedule to the Criminal Justice Act 1948".
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 22, and I suggest that it may be convenient if the following Amendment is considered at the same time, since the two Amendments are part of the same matter. Subsection (5) which we have been considering, sets out the circumstances in which a person may be remanded in custody instead of being granted bail. Subsection (6) adds one more by allowing a person to be remanded in custody "for the purpose of enabling a medical examination and report" to be made on him. The effect of my two Amendments is to give courts the power to remand in custody for the purpose of obtaining a social inquiry report as well.
The relevant part of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 referred to in the Amendment is that part which provides for such reports. It says:
"it shall be the duty of probation officers"—
among other things—
"to inquire, in accordance with any directions of the court, into the circumstances or home surroundings of any person with a view to assisting the court in determining the most suitable method of dealing with his case. …"

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It then goes on to other matters. Admittedly, in the situation set out in subsection (1) the trial will not have reached the state where a social inquiry report is likely to be needed. But subsection (2), as I understand it, seems to cover the whole period of the trial up to conviction, and that is the point at which the court may well want to adjourn the trial for the purpose of obtaining a social inquiry report. Normally, the need to remand in custody for this purpose will be covered by one or other of the grounds in subsection (5), but there will be occasions, especially in respect of young people, when none of these circumstances apply. Nevertheless, a remand in custody will still be valuable to enable a proper report to be obtained.
What I have particularly in mind is the position which will arise when more remand centres are opened. These centres will provide facilities for a thorough diagnostic appraisal of a defendant, and a report based on this would be of great value to the court. But it will be possible to obtain it only if the defendant is actually living at the centre. I know that there are not many of these centres yet, and we hope for better things in the future; but we are legislating for the future. I imagine that it may be some considerable time before a Bill would provide another opportunity for making a provision of this kind. I hope it will not be suggested that in the meantime magistrates will take advantage of the power I am proposing they should now be given in order to remand people to prison unnecessarily. I believe that this power will be useful under the conditions that I have suggested, in helping courts to come to the right decision about how to deal with an offender. I hope that the Amendment commends itself to the Committee, and I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 13 line 40. after ("defendant") insert the said words.—(Lord Hamilton of Dalzell.)
6.28 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): I listened with great attention to what the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Dalzell, said, but I was not quite clear what were the practical grounds on which he considered this power necessary. Clause 15 restricts the power of magistrates' courts to remand in custody a defendant charged with offences pun-
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ishable with not more than six months imprisonment. These are subject to the restrictions in the exceptions in subsection (5). Paragraph 3(5) of the Fifth Schedule to the Criminal Justice Act 1948, which is referred to in the Amendment, says:
"It shall be the duty of probation officers to supervise the probationers and other persons placed under their supervision and to advise, assist and befriend them, to inquire in accordance with any directions of the court into the circumstances or home surroundings of any person with a view to assisting the court in determining the most suitable method of dealing with his case, to advise, assist and befriend, in such cases and in such manner as may be prescribed, persons who have been released from custody, and perform such other duties as may be prescribed or may be imposed by any enactment."
In subsection (6) of Clause 15 it is stated that the restrictions
"shall not apply to the adjournment of a trial by a magistrates' court under section 26 of the Magistrates' Court Act 1952 for the purpose of enabling a medical examination and report to be made upon the defendant if it appears to the court that it would be impracticable to obtain such a report without remanding the defendant in custody."
We know from experience that it may be necessary to have a remand in custody in order to get a medical report, but the purpose of this Amendment is to inquire into home background. Courts frequently adjourn proceedings in order to enable a report on a defendant to be prepared by a probation officer, but I do not understand why for this purpose the defendant should be in prison. If the object of the probation officer's inquiry is to inquire into the circumstances or home surroundings of any person, there seems to be no particular necessity why the defendant should be committed in custody while the inquiry is taking place. If a defendant has no fixed abode, then under subsection (5)(e) the court may remand him in custody even though his offence comes within the restricted classes. But when a defendant has a fixed abode, one would not have thought that there was any special reason attaching to a probation inquiry which required him to be kept in custody when, if no report was being prepared, he might be released on bail. On the contrary, I should have thought that if his background was being inquired into, this could much more usefully be done if he was seen while he was at home.
The noble Lord's Amendments may be on the general grounds that where the

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courts are minded to obtain reports by a probation officer, they should not be restricted in the general exercise of their discretion. But the whole object of Clause 15 is precisely to restrict the discretion of magistrates in remanding defendants in custody in the case of offences which are not of a serious nature. I hope that when the noble Lord has an opportunity of considering what I have said he will agree that that is right, and the mere fact that a probation officer is asked to inquire into a defendant's home background is no reason for putting him in prison meanwhile.
LORD HAMILTON OF DALZELL: I hoped I had made clear that I had not in mind that a person should be put in prison. I had in mind particularly young people who get themselves into trouble, and when the background of the trouble seems to be that they are completely at odds with their parents, very probably with their fathers, and the home situation is unsatisfactory. If there are to be remand centres—not prisons—where proper diagnostic facilities are to be available to which a person can go while the probation officer is making inquiries, reports could be obtained from the remand centre as well as from the probation officer, and that is something which from time to time would be useful for the courts. It seems a pity that when remand centres are there, with facilities for diagnostic appraisal waiting to be used, it should not be possible for any person to be remanded to one of these centres so as to enable one of these reports to be obtained. I may have my machinery wrong, but that is what I am trying to achieve.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am afraid that I cannot add much to what I have said. The noble Lord spoke of "diagnosis". The clause already provides for medical examination. I still think that if the object is merely to inquire into the circumstances of a man's home surroundings, it is not necessary to remand him in custody. I hope that, having considered it, the noble Lord may be prepared to withdraw his Amendment.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: I expect my noble friend will be so minded, but I hope that the Government will give some further consideration to this, be
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cause some of us have attached a good deal of importance to the additional work which the creation of remand centres will render possible. I had always assumed that part of the theory behind the remand centre was that certain people could be sent there for a study by the probation service which would not be a purely medical study. It would seem to me unfortunate if we should inadvertently so draft the Statute that it was impossible in future to use remand centres for that purpose. I entirely appreciate that there are many cases where, if a person is to be studied in his social environment, it is better that he should be in that environment and not in a remand centre. But I am one of those who attach a good deal of importance to the potentiality of remand centres, and all I am asking is that we should draft this Bill in a way which will not prevent us from using them to their full potentialities.
LORD HAMILTON OF DALZELL: I am grateful to my noble friend for expressing so well what I was trying to state. In the circumstances, I think it is as well that I should ask leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.8 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 15, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: I should like to say a few words on this important clause, because I think it raises some difficulties which I should like to have cleared up, if possible, by the Government. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, is not here at this moment, because in the the course of a debate on an earlier Amendment he made some observations about the clause in general. I should like to start my remarks by saying that I do not dissent from the object of this clause; namely, to reduce the number of persons who are not admitted to bail where it is possible to do so without affecting the administration of justice.
It may well be the case that in the last few years too many people have been remanded in custody when they need not have been. But at the same time I do not accept the conclusion that, because when they have been tried they have not been sent to prison, it necessarily follows

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that it was wrong to remand them in custody any more than when a quarter session changes a sentence of imprisonment imposed by a magistrate to a sentence not involving imprisonment, it follows that the original sentence was at that time wrong. But I am doubtful about the wisdom of trying to achieve this objective by statutory enactment.
It may be too late to consider this issue, but I do not think that magistrates are reluctant to take guidance. It is true, thanks to the efforts made by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chief Justice and others, that magistrates get much more guidance now than they ever did in the past; and it is also true that they listen to it carefully and respond to it. I cannot but believe that if, instead of trying to restrict their discretion by Act of Parliament, magistrates had been given some guidance not in statutory form as to the general principles to apply, that would have been better than trying to draft this complicated provision.
I am wondering what will be the reaction of magistrates when they read this clause as a whole. They will see from subsections (1) to (4) that their power of remanding in custody is taken away. But when they look at subsection (5), it seems an absolute hotchpotch of provisions from which no real principle is to be derived. I must say that in trying to formulate the matters which magistrates have to take into account in a statutory provision I should have liked to see set out in clear terms what are the general provisions which should be applied.
If, while I am on my feet, I may seek to suggest what they are, I would say, first of all, that a man should not be remanded in custody unless it is thought likely that he will not appear to attend his trial. That seems to be covered by paragraph (e):
"Where it appears to the court that he has no fixed abode or that he is ordinarily resident outside the United Kingdom."
The next principle, I suggest, would be that he ought not to be refused bail unless, having regard to his record, it is likely that he may commit another offence before his trial. That is a general proposition, and it seems to me much simpler and clearer than paragraph (a), to which it is obviously directed. That seems to me to be the one example of the application of that principle, but
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it is dealt with in terrific detail. The other category of cases where there should be discretion is, surely, where the offence charged is of such a serious character as to necessitate his remaining in custody. We have that set out in some detail, but with tremendous width, because it includes common assault, in paragraph (f).
There is another category which is not dealt with in this subsection and which I should have thought in these days was a most important category. I know that I may be chided for not having put down an Amendment to deal with it, but one has had to do a lot of work on this Bill, and every time one reads through it one is inclined to notice something else. I do not apologise for not having put down an Amendment, because I hope that the Government will reconsider the whole of this clause. I am in favour of the objective of the clause, but I do not like the clause itself. I think you could do without this particular clause and express what is required more satisfactorily to produce the same effect.
The category which is left out is this. Surely a man should be refused bail where it appears to the court likely that he will interfere with, and possibly intimidate, witnesses for the prosecution. Even though there be the strongest evidence brought before the court by the police that this is a real fear, in many cases here the magistrates will have no discretion and they will have to grant bail. That, I think, is wrong. If subsection (5) is to be retained in the Bill I should like to see it redrafted to try to state the principles in clear terms, so that magistrates can easily understand what principles they ought to apply. I do not think this is apparent from the present subsection (5).
Then one considers how subsection (5) will operate. This is the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, with her great experience. I must say that I feel very worried about this. To take the case which comes within paragraph (a) under the Bill before it was amended, this must contemplate that before the person is tried in the magistrates' court evidence will be given by someone—we know the nature of the offence—that he has been previously sentenced to imprisonment or borstal training. That would have to be proved

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before the magistrates' court. If we take paragraph (b), that
"he has failed to comply with the conditions of any recognizance entered into by him on that occasion",
that again involves proof, before he is tried for the offence with which he is charged, that he has committed a previous offence. Paragraph (c),
"where he is charged with an offence alleged to be committed while he was released on bail",
involves the same thing. That would imply that he has been charged with another offence. How is it going to be done? Is it not quite new to require the police, if this subsection is to operate, to come forward and give evidence of that character before the trial takes place?
What will be the position of the magistrates? Will the magistrates, or any of them, who sit to hear this application over bail—the arguments put forward by the police and the facts which it is their duty to bring to the notice of the court—be disqualified from sitting on the case? Will other magistrates have to decide? It seems to me to involve great difficulties. And, quite apart from that, with this statutory provision on the Statute Book, will not the inference be drawn by any bench of magistrates before whom a man is brought for trial from custody, not having been on bail, that he is a man of bad or indifferent character, before his trial ever starts? I should have thought that very likely; and I think it is serious if that is the consequence.
I hope the Government will say that it is not too late to reconsider the wording—I am not asking them to reconsider in any detail the substance—of this subsection (5), so that if possible the two results to which I think the subsection now leads can be avoided. The first, as I have said, is the inference when it comes to trial before any bench from custody that he is a man of bad character; and secondly, the requirement of the proof of such detail about his past which subsection (5) seems to require. I should like this subsection—and I come back to this point—to contain some guidance in the way of some indication of principle which lies behind it. When I look at subsection (5) it seems to me to be a hotchpotch. I hope the Government will give further thought to this, because it is an important provision. I doubt whether it is wise to
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have a clause on this matter at all. I should have thought that it would be much more flexible if we did not. But if we are going to have a clause, let it at least show that there is some principle behind it, and let us avoid the difficulties to which I have drawn attention.
6.48 p.m.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: I do not wish to repeat what I said just now or what has been said more eloquently than I could say it by the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, but I should like to add one point. When it is proved that a man has previous convictions, and the court therefore are required to remand him in custody, it is no answer to say that the case must then be tried by a different bench of magistrates. This is quite unrealistic. It might be possible in the big cities, but in the country districts it is unrealistic to suppose that you could mobilise a different bench of magistrates to hear a case, when another bench has heard the previous record before deciding whether the accused is eligible for bail. It seems to me that this raises an important point. It is bound, in practice, to lead to the situation that magistrates will hear cases where they are already aware from what they have been told a fortnight before that a man has a long history of imprisonment. I should have thought that it was quite impossible to suppose that this could be done without prejudicing the trial. It seems to me quite contrary to the principles that run through the whole of the rest of British justice.
LORD LEATHERLAND: I had not intended to speak on this matter, but I am rather disturbed. When I sit in my court, weekly or fortnightly, as the case may be, and I see that a man is brought in custody and placed in the dock and has evidently been brought from prison where he has been remanded in custody, I do not know whether he is likely to turn out to be innocent or guilty. My mind is quite open until the end of the case. But under the clause as we have it here a clear line of demarcation is drawn, and it would be pretty clear to me that if the man was brought in from prison and placed in the dock he had a record, and undoubtedly a record of a very serious kind.
I am all in favour of granting bail wherever it is possible to grant it. I

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know that sometimes rather outrageous applications for bail are made by counsel appearing for prisoners. I had a case a few years ago where three men were breaking into a post office. They were arrested, and their van was found outside with a dozen sticks of dynamite in it, but learned counsel appealed to us to grant bail. We exercised our discretion and did not. But in these cases, if this Bill goes through in its present form, the whole theory of bail will be vitiated and a man will be condemned before the evidence against him has been heard, because he has come into court by a certain door and on that door it will say, "This man has a prison record". I think that magistrates should be given as much discretion as possible, with as few rules as possible. I think also that administrative circulars could be devised which would be circulated to benches of magistrates giving them general advice as to the circumstances in which bail should be granted, and that the clause here, instead of going into such detail as it does, might content itself with saying that magistrates' courts should grant bail wherever it is possible to do so.
LORD ROYLE: A record is going to be broken at this moment, because this is the first time on these matters that I find myself on the same side as the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne. But I am perfectly confident that what he has said in this latter debate is perfectly true, and I share his worries. It would be ridiculous at this time of the night to try to say anything supplementary to what he has said, and I am going to content myself by asking my noble and learned friend, when he comes to reply, to deal with another problem which is in my mind.
Subsection (5)(a) says that a man need not be remanded on bail:
"where he is charged with an offence punishable by that court with imprisonment for a term of not less than six months and it appears to the court …"
and so on. Exactly what does that mean? My noble friend Lady Wootton of Abinger pointed out in the previous debate that it was wrong that magistrates should hear a man's record when a question of bail was being considered. What does paragraph (a) mean? It says "it appears to the court". I take it that this does not relate to what is read out.
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This is something which is very vague indeed. Is it being left to the magistrates to draw their own conclusion, from the person's behaviour and other things which have gone on in the court, that it "appears to" them that he might previously have suffered a term of imprisonment? This wording causes me concern, and I am wondering whether my noble and learned friend can give an indication of what the Government have in mind regarding these words which are so vague.
LORD HAMILTON OF DALZELL: We have heard a great deal on this from noble Lords who have spoken, and I feel that we are in danger of getting ourselves into a muddle here, I believe largely unnecessarily, because I do not think these provisions are going to make much difference to the number of people remanded in custody. Looking back over my own experience, I do not remember ever having remanded in custody anyone who would not have come under one of the exceptions given here. I think that the question of the number of people who are remanded in custody and are not subsequently sent to prison is largely a red herring, because so many people who are remanded in custody by magistrates' courts are the homeless, wandering people who go around the country getting themselves into trouble of one kind or another. We may know perfectly well that we are not going to send a man to prison, but we have to remand him in custody, otherwise we shall never see him again. I think that here we are in danger of creating many difficulties, possibly without achieving the effect that we are trying to achieve.
6.56 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: We have had an interesting and full discussion on the whole of this clause, and particularly on subsection (5). I rather think that when the noble and learned Viscount invited the Government to reconsider the clause he meant subsection (5). We start off, I think, agreeing—I think that nearly everyone who has spoken has agreed—that to have 17,500 people a year remanded in custody who are not sentenced to any form of custodial treatment, and at least 1,000 who are completely innocent, is, particularly at a time when the prisons are as full as they are, too many. We all, I think, agree that that total ought to be

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reduced, remembering always that it is a very difficult thing for an innocent man to get up his defence from a prison cell.
My noble friend Lord Leatherland says that it should be left to the discretion of the justices. That is exactly the position now. They have a complete discretion, and these enormous figures are the result of leaving it to the discretion of the justices. I think one criticism was made that one of the grounds ought to be a likelihood of the defendant interfering with witnesses. But that, I suggest, is covered in paragraph (g) because interference with witnesses is a Common Law offence.
The real difficulty, I think, in the division of opinion has been as to whether the justices are to be informed of previous convictions. The intention of the clause, as I understand it, is that they should be. There has always been a dilemma about this. At the moment, very largely, the discretion is not really exercised at all. As we all know, in a great many justices' courts when the police say, "We oppose bail", nobody says, "Why?", or, "What is your evidence?". If the police oppose bail the justices automatically say, "No bail". The reasons why the police oppose bail will obviously be reasons adverse to the accused, and if the justices ought to be exercising their discretion on the relevant facts, how are they to do that if they do not know the facts? If the facts are inimical to the accused, well, there they are.
As we all know, practice in magistrates' courts tends to vary. That is why the Home Office from time to time circularise courts with any directions, or indeed any sort of recommendations, to magistrates which the Court of Criminal Appeal (as it used to be called) may have made. If on this point I may cite from Stone's Justices Manual, Volume 1, page 42, the law is stated in this way:
"The justices may also take into consideration previous convictions recorded against the accused (R. v. Fletcher (1949)) … in which case Humphreys, J. commented that it is desirable that if newspapers are reporting the case they should not include in the report any mention of previous convictions. It is recommended"—
and this was, I think, taken from a case called Dyson, in 1949, in the Court of Criminal Appeal—
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"that information of previous convictions, when advanced in opposition to an application for bail, be submitted in writing rather than given viva voce in open court."
Then there was this specific direction in the case of Armstrong, in 1951, when the Court of Criminal Appeal reaffirmed that—and I quote:
"it is clear that it is the duty of the justices to inquire into the antecedents of a man who is applying to them for bail, and that it is undesirable that a newspaper should disclose such evidence, but such publication by itself is not a ground for quashing a conviction …".
LORD PARKER OF WADDINGTON: I wonder if the noble and learned Lord would allow me to intervene, to ask whether what he is citing really refers to cases in which the justices have decided to commit, and the question is whether a person should be committed in custody or on bail. Then, clearly, the magistrates must know the record of the man; and it is quite right that they should, because they are functus officio: they are not going to deal with the case any more. I understood that we were talking about applications for bail in cases which were going to be tried by that very bench of magistrates.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am afraid I cannot answer the question because I did not know the point was going to be raised. It appears to be a general recommendation applying to bail generally. Of course we shall have an opportunity of considering this again at the next stage of the Bill.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: Will the noble and learned Lord give way to me for one moment? I think that it must be that that applies only in respect of committal, because otherwise I cannot see how it would have come to what was the Court of Criminal Appeal.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: That particular case may have been, but of course the dilemma remains: are people to be remanded in custody on the ipse dixit of the police or are the justices to exercise discretion? If they are to exercise a discretion, how are they to do that if they do not know the relevant facts? If there must be a discretion in the justices to decide whether a man should be remanded on bail I am not quite clear why the discretion should be entirely differently exercised according to whether or not it is a committal case.
LORD PARKER OF WADDINGTON: If the noble and learned Lord would allow me to intervene for a moment, I should like to point out that in one case the justices are not going to deal with the case any further: they have committed. But in the case we are now considering they are going on at once to hear that case on the merits.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: It is quite possible to have a different court. The proceedings are not necessarily going on at once, and there may be a substantial period of remand, for one reason or another. For instance, last week there was a case reported in the papers with six weekly remands running, during which I think the accused had been in custody. The question whether he ought to have been in custody for that time or whether he ought to have been on bail must, I apprehend, have been decided on some facts. Obviously there will be some cases where defendants ought to be in custody and there will be other cases where they ought not to be in custody; and unless somebody has told the justices the facts I do not understand how they are to decide, unless they refuse bail whenever the police object and grant it whenever the police do not object to it. However, this is not my field and I am quite sure that my right honourable friend will carefully consider everything that has been said in connection with this clause. I think it raises questions of some difficulty which do require consideration.
LORD PARKER OF WADDINGTON: I hope that the noble and learned Lord will not think I am against the object of this Bill. I was only anxious to know how it would work. But I am sure that in many districts it is quite unrealistic to think that you can get a bench differently constituted. so that no member of it has dealt with the question of bail.
There is just one other matter that I should like to know before making up my mind on this clause. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said that some 17,500 persons were remanded in custody who ultimately were not sent to any form of detention. That I can understand, but the figure that I should like to have, I confess, is how many of these 17,500 fail to come within paragraphs (a) to (h) of subsection (5). It may be, as the noble Lord, Lord
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Hamilton of Dalzell, said, that we are not going to save anything by this clause if all the 17,500 would possibly have been refused bail because they came within one of these paragraphs.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: I feel that in one way I owe an apology to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for not having given him or the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, notice of these matters. The difficulty is this. If I had put down an Amendment to leave out this clause it would have created an entirely wrong impression, and I am not going to ask the Committee now to agree to leave it out because, like everyone else who has spoken, I am in favour of its objective. I share the fears and doubts expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, and the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland. I do not think it is any answer to say to the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland: "The justices have this discretion now, and look how they have exercised it", because I believe that in these days (although it may have been different some time ago) you can achieve the result you want to achieve in this clause by giving guidance to the magistrates—guidance which I think they almost invariably follow to the best of their ability. On principle, where we can achieve the result by giving guidance to people who voluntarily discharge these duties I am against imposing a restriction by Statute.
I ventured to suggest that the drafting of this clause might be looked at again with a view to trying to make it clear that there is some principle behind the exceptions in subsection (5). I think there is, but it does not emerge, and I suggest that the whole of this could be thought about again. I tried to adumbrate the various principles which I think ought to apply, and I mentioned the case of interfering with witnesses. That was only one of the categories in which I thought bail could properly, in certain circumstances, be refused. Of course interfering with witnesses is an offence. I am not sure whether, in a summary case, it is a criminal offence to interfere with somebody who is going to be called, or who may be called, as a witness—I think that is much more doubtful. But one of the categories of case in which it might be right to refuse bail would be a case where, in the view of the court, there was a real

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risk of someone who was going to be, or might be, called as a witness for the prosecution being interfered with before the trial took place. If that is one of the recognised categories it does not emerge very clearly from subsection (5).
However, we have a great deal of business to get through. I think we are making good progress, and I do not think we are debating points which have not considerable substance. I hope the Government will give serious consideration to all the points which have been raised on this before we come to the Report stage, because I believe that if this clause is left in its present form it can be productive of quite a considerable amount of trouble and uncertainty.
Clause 15, as amended, agreed to.
7.9 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved, after Clause 15, to insert the following new clause:
Power of magistrates' court to commit on bail for sentence
". Where a magistrates' court has power to commit an offender to a court of quarter sessions under section 5 of the Vagrancy Act 1824 (incorrigible rogues) or section 28 or 29 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1952 (committal for sentence), the court may instead of committing him in custody commit him on bail."
The noble and learned Lord said: In moving this Amendment, may I refer also to Amendments Nos. 68, 134, and 139. The substantive Amendment is the new clause, Amendment No. 24. The last three Amendments are merely consequential to that new clause.
Where magistrates commit an offender to quarter sessions for sentence under the provisions of Section 28 or 29 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1952 or Section 5 of the Vagrancy Act 1824 (incorrigible rogues), they have no discretion as to bail and must commit him in custody. The principle behind this requirement is that in these circumstances the magistrates consider that their own sentencing powers are insufficient and are committing the offender for the express purpose of enabling quarter sessions to impose a longer sentence; committal in custody could therefore be regarded as appropriate and necessary. But it is doubtful whether this is any longer a sufficiently strong reason for making committal in custody manda-
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tory. First, if an offender committed for sentence under these provisions appeals against his conviction by the magistrates, there is power in the High Court under Section 37 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 to release him on bail pending the determination of the appeal. An offender who does not appeal against conviction is unable to be released on bail until he is dealt with by quarter sessions, and your Lordships may feel that it does not seem right that bail should depend upon the somewhat fortuitous existence of an appeal against conviction; the anomaly may actually have the effect of encouraging frivolous appeals merely to attract the right to apply for bail. Secondly, while it may in general be true that magistrates have in mind a long custodial sentence when committing the defendant to sessions (although they could in theory commit with the view to the imposition of a larger fine than they have power to impose), the fact is that in 1965 just under 2,000 offenders out of 8,500 so committed did not receive custodial sentences at all. Thirdly, in the context of encouraging courts to be liberal in the exercise of their discretion on bail, it is incongruous to make the refusal of bail mandatory in certain circumstances. Fourthly, a provision on these lines will help a little to reduce the number of remand prisoners.
The three Amendments to Schedule 5 and the one to Schedule 6 are consequential, in that they amend the Vagrancy Act 1824 and Sections 28 and 29 of the Magistrates' Courts Act, which three enactments require an offender committed to sessions for sentence to be committed in custody. The consequential Amendment to Clause 51 of this Bill (revocation of licences and conviction of prisoners on licence), provides that where a magistrates' court convicts a person subject to a licence under Clauses 49 or 50 of this Bill of an offence punishable, on indictment, with imprisonment and commits him to quarter sessions for sentence in accordance with section 29 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948, then it may commit him on bail or in custody; the clause as at present drafted would require the committal to be in custody. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 15, insert the said new clause.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: The Committee will be grateful to the noble and learned Lord for explaining so fully the purposes of this Amendment. In fact I believe it has a cross reference to his Amendment No. 27 later on, because if this Amendment is not made and Section 37(1) of the Criminal Justice Act is repealed, as is proposed later on, the High Court will lose the power which it decided in Whitehouse it had; so I think there is a distinct connection between those two Amendments. Particularly bearing in mind what the noble and learned Lord has said, and the fact that magistrates will have complete discretion, I am sure the Committee will welcome the Amendment proposed.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 16:
Special conditions of bail
16.—(1) The conditions on which bail is granted to any person may include conditions appearing to the court to be likely to result in his appearance at the time and place required or to be necessary in the interests of justice or for the prevention of crime.
(2) A court which on granting bail to any person imposes a condition under the foregoing subsection shall not require him to find sureties in respect of that condition.
7.15 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "bail is granted to any person" and to insert "any person is admitted to bail". The noble and learned Lord said: In moving this Amendment, may I also refer to the subject matter of Amendments Nos. 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, and 142. The object of the new clause, Amendment No. 27, is to extend the range of circumstances in which the High Court may admit a person to bail or vary the conditions upon which bail has been allowed by a lower court. It was the Law Commission which drew the attention of the Home Office to inadequacies or doubts which exist as regards the grant of bail by a judge in chambers when bail has been refused (or offered on such terms as to amount to a refusal) by the court below. This is so in three cases. First, there is no power in the High Court to admit to bail where the magistrates' court has remanded an accused in custody after conviction for reports before sentence, although the magistrates have power to admit to bail under Sections 14 and 105 of the
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Magistrates' Courts Act 1952. Secondly, there is no power in the High Court to admit to bail where a court of quarter sessions has remanded an accused for reports after conviction; and, thirdly, there is no power in the High Court to interfere where the court below has offered bail in such terms, as to sureties and so forth, that the defendant is unable to comply with them.
There is room for argument about the High Court's powers in some of these cases, but it is clearly right that the High Court should have power to grant bail in all these cases and that the power should be stated in terms which do not admit of doubt. The new clause therefore provides that, without prejudice to any existing power of the High Court over bail applications, that court may allow bail in any case in which the lower court could have allowed it, and vary any conditions on which bail was offered by a lower court. I venture to think the Committee will think that in principle that must be right.
Subsection (1) states the main proposition of the clause: that in connection with any criminal proceedings, the High Court may admit to bail any person who could have been allowed bail by an inferior court, and may vary any conditions on which bail was offered by an inferior court. By "conditions" are meant the conditions which may be attached to the grant of bail under Clause 16 of the Bill. There is no provision that the High Court should not consider an application for bail which has not first been considered by the court below, since the High Court can be left lo determine its own rule of practice in this matter.
Subsections (2) and (3) make the necessary procedural arrangements to support subsection (1) and are modelled on Section 37 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948. Subsection (4) defines an "inferior court" as a court of quarter sessions, a magistrates' court or a coroner. Subsection (5) states that the powers conferred on the High Court by the new clause shall be in substitution for the more limited powers in section 37(1) of the 1948 Act. The new powers are, however, without prejudice to any other jurisdiction of the High Court to grant bail. The Amendment to Schedule 6 is the consequential repeal of certain provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 1948.
There are five drafting amendments to Clauses 16 and 17, which replace the references to "granting bail" by references to "admitting to bail". These Amendments are necessary to produce consistency throughout the Bill with the language of the new clause. It was found to be necessary to use "admit to bail" in that clause because "grant bail" does not distinguish very happily between the case where the magistrates release a man on hail and the case where they offer him bail but he stays in custody because he cannot find the required sureties. I hope that the Committtee will be in sympathy with the principle of the clause which encourages only the High Court, if it thinks fit, to grant bail in cases in which the lower court may do so. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 14. line 10, leave out ("bail is granted to any person") and insert ("any person is admitted to bail").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Again I think this is a good series of Amendments. Indeed when I looked at the existing law on the matter I was surprised to find that in the present legislation there was a possible source of doubt whether the High Court was in fact restricted as the noble and learned Lord has explained. It seems a curious thing that the legislation as recent as 1948 should have been of an obscure nature, and such as to cause doubt, and in fact apparently to preclude the High Court from dealing with bail where the magistrates' courts or quarter sessions could have done it in certain cases. I am sure, therefore, that the general provisions of the new clause are a great improvement.
There is, however, one thing that I should like to ask the noble and learned Lord. I rather think that this will mean an amendment of Order 79. Rule 9 of the Rules of the Supreme Court, which deals with the powers of the High Court to grant bail and the procedure for it. I think this will be required because at the present moment it looks to me, at any rate, as though this rule deals only with the question whether or not bail should be granted and not at all with the question of conditions on bail. Therefore I hope that the noble and learned Lord will give an assurance that no sooner does this Bill come into force than the
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equivalent alteration will be made in the
Rules of the Supreme Court.
I should also like to ask him about one other point. The rule at present provides, in the cases where application is made to the High Court for bail, that if the prisoner has not the means to instruct a solicitor he shall be represented, if the court so thinks, by the Official Solicitor. Is the noble and learned Lord able to tell the Committee whether there have been any problems about this matter? In this Bill we have wide revisions of the whole question of legal aid, and I wonder whether it may be that over the years experience has shown that it might be better to do this through legal aid rather than to use the Official Solicitor, who I know has a large number of other duties to perform; and whether, if any information is available to the Committee, it might be that we could consider taking this duty away from him and empowering either him or the High Court, or somebody, to appoint a solicitor or counsel under the Legal Aid scheme to make this application where the prisoner has not sufficient means. It is only a suggestion, but since we have the whole subject matter before us in this Bill it might be worth consideration.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am most grateful to the noble Viscount for the two points which he has raised. I am afraid I cannot answer them on the spot. They will both be considered and I will write to him about them before the next stage of the Bill.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I beg to move Amendment No. 26.
Amendment moved—
Page 14, line 15, leave out ("granting bail to any person") and insert ("admitting, or directing the admission of, any person to bail").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 16, as amended, agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I beg to move Amendment No. 27.
Amendment moved—
Insert the following new clause:
Extension of power of High Court to grant, or vary conditions of, bail
(".—(1) Where in connection with any criminal proceedings an inferior court has

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power to admit any person to bail, but either refuses to do so or offers to do so on terms unacceptable to him, the High Court may admit him or direct his admission to bail or, where he has been admitted to bail, may vary any conditions on which he was so admitted or reduce the amount in which he or any surety is bound or discharge any of the sureties.
(2) The conditions as to the time and place of appearance of a person admitted to bail under this section which are to be included in a recognizance entered into by him shall be such conditions as the inferior court had power to impose.
(3) Subsections (3), (4) and (6) of section 37 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 (ancillary provisions as to persons admitted to bail by the High Court under that section and the currency of sentence in the case of persons so admitted) shall apply in relation to the powers conferred by this section and persons admitted to bail in pursuance of those powers as it applies in relation to the powers conferred by that section and persons admitted to bail in pursuance of those powers, except that the said subsection (6) shall not apply in relation to a person admitted to bail pending an appeal from a magistrates' court to a court of quarter sessions.
(4) In this section 'inferior court' means a court of quarter sessions, a magistrates' court or a coroner.
(5) The powers conferred on the High Court by this section shall be in substitution for the powers so conferred by paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) of section 37(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1948, but except as aforesaid this section shall not prejudice any powers of the High Court to admit or direct the admission of persons to bail.")—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 17 [Arrest of persons granted bail]:
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I beg to move Amendment No. 28.
Amendment moved—
Page 14, line 19, leave out ("granted") and insert ("admitted to").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I beg to move this Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 14. line 23, leave out ("bail was granted") and insert ("he was admitted to bail").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I beg to move Amendment No. 30.
Amendment moved—
Page 15, line 4, leave out ("bail was granted") and insert ("he was admitted to bail").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 17, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 18:
Process for minor offences. 1952 c. 55
(2) A warrant for the arrest of any such person shall not be issued under section 15 of the said Act of 1952 (non-appearance of defendant) unless

(a) the offence to which the warrant relates is punishable with imprisonment; or

(b) the court, having convicted the defendant, proposes to impose a disqualification on him.

(3) Where a summons has been issued under the said section 1 and a magistrates' court has begun to try the information to which the summons relates, then if—

(a) the defendant, at any time during or after the trial, makes a statutory declaration that he did not know of the summons or the proceedings until a date specified in the declaration, being a date after the court has begun to try the information; and

7.25 p.m.
LORD STONHAM LORD STONHAM moved, in subsection (2) after "15" to insert "(2)". The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 31 standing in the name of my noble and learned friend. I hope that it will meet your Lordships' convenience if I deal also with Amendment No. 32 which is the substantive Amendment, and also with the Sixth Schedule, Amendment No. 145, which is consequential. As your Lordships are aware, the aim of Clause 18 is twofold: first, to restrict the unnecessary issue of warrants of arrest under Sections 1 and 15 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1952; secondly, to enable courts, after the necessary amendments have been made to the Magistrates' Courts Rules, to proceed in the absence of a defendant who has failed to acknowledge receipt of a summons for a summary offence. It is expected that these provisions will enable courts to deal more efficiently and expeditiously with minor offences without having to resort to warrants for the arrest of defendants, who are sometimes recalcitrant in ignoring process, but probably are just as often genuinely unaware of the proceedings. Such defendants are protected by the right given by the clause to have the proceedings against them annulled by way of statutory declaration.
The procedure on the non-appearance of the defendant is at present regulated by Section 15 of the 1952 Act. After the

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passing of the Bill the position will be that the court will be able to issue a warrant for the defendant's arrest if the offence is punishable with imprisonment or if the court, having convicted the defendant, proposes to disqualify him. It will be able to do this even though he may not have acknowledged receipt of the summons, since the Magistrates' Courts Rules will be amended to dispense with strict proof of service. Similarly, without proof of service, the court will be able to proceed in the absence of the accused. If, however, the court chooses to do neither, but instead adjourns the hearing, perhaps to give the defendant the opportunity to be present, it will not subsequently be able to proceed in his absence or to issue a warrant for his arrest unless it is satisfied (by strict proof of service) that the notice of adjournment came to his knowledge. Under Clause 20 of the Bill, which deals with restrictions on passing sentence in the absence of the defendant, the court is under a duty to adjourn if the defendant fails to appear: his presence is necessary for a sentence of imprisonment to be passed; and he must be apprised of the court's intention to disqualify him. In effect, therefore, if the court adjourns, either because it must do so or if it merely wishes to give the defendant a second chance to appear before issuing a warrant, it loses the procedural advantage that will accrue from this clause and the subsequent amendment of the Magistrates' Courts Rules.
We think that this represents a significant defect in the procedure and that it exposes two questions. First, should proof of service of the notice of adjournment be a pre-requisite to the issue of a warrant of arrest on the non-appearance of the defendant? Secondly, should such proof be necessary before the court may proceed with an adjourned hearing in the defendant's absence? There is no reason why, on the non-appearance of the defendant at an adjourned hearing, a warrant should not be issued without strict proof that the defendant received the notice of adjournment. Where the offence is punishable with imprisonment a warrant could have been issued in the first instance, instead of a summons, and on the first occasion of non-appearance a warrant could similarly have gone out. If the court does not have the power to
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issue a warrant on the second non-appearance without strict proof that the defendant received the notice of adjournment, there may well be a tendency to issue one on the first occasion instead of following the perhaps more enlightened course of adjourning. Section 15 of the Magi-states' Courts Act 1952 is therefore amended to dispense with the need for the court to be satisfied that a defendant received the notice of adjournment before issuing a warrant under that section for his arrest. The power to issue the warrant will remain restricted by Clause 18(2) of the Bill—the offence must be punishable with imprisonment or the court, having convicted the defendant, must propose to disqualify him.
Courts are not to be enabled to proceed with an adjourned hearing in the absence of the defendant unless satisfied that he received the notice. Where, under Clause 20 of the Bill, the court necessarily adjourns in order to give the defendant an opportunity to be present at a hearing where it is proposed to disqualify him, it would be wrong for it to proceed in his absence without being satisfied that he received the notice. In other cases, where the question of disqualification has not arisen, the fact that the court has adjourned will usually indicate that it would prefer him to be present, and it would be incongruous then to proceed regardless of whether he had received the notice of adjournment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 15, line 18, after ("15") insert ("(2)").—(Lord Stonham.)
7.30 p.m.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving a summary of the way in which he sees that Clauses 18 and 20 will work together. I am not sure if I correctly took it all in, because he spoke rather fast. I will not ask him to repeat it to-night, but I will look to see what he said in Hansard. I rise to ask the noble Lord this question. I see that under Clause 20, where there is a question of imposing a sentence of imprisonment or disqualification, that cannot be done in the accused's absence. I think that is right. What bothers me is this—and again I am looking at the matter from the magistrates' point of view. If a Bench of magistrates, with the accused not being present and there

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being no mitigation, decide that there must be disqualification and adjourn the case, can that case at the adjourned hearing be dealt with by a different bench, or has it to be dealt with by the bench of magistrates who heard the case originally? If it is to be dealt with by the bench of magistrates who heard the case—and sometimes in country districts the adjournment will be for as long as a month, for the court sits for only once a month—then I can see great difficulties in the way of the magistrates reconstituting the same court after a month's delay.
If, on the other hand, it can be heard by a differently constituted bench of magistrates, the result seems to me very unsatisfactory because it surely would be quite wrong for a bench which has not heard the evidence to sentence a man to imprisonment, when he is present, merely because the bench which has heard the evidence adjourned the case with a view to passing a sentence of imprisonment. I hope that the noble Lord will think further about this matter, because I see great practical difficulties arising if one has to reconstitute the same court at the adjourned hearing, with all the same magistrates, in order to pass the sentence which those magistrates at the earlier hearing thought was the right one. I do not know whether the noble Lord can say anything about that, but it seems to me to be a real point of difficulty.
LORD STONHAM: I take the noble and learned Viscount's point. I understand that he is presupposing a case where the first court dealt with a case in the absence of the accused, and he is then asking whether, when the accused is finally present, it would be right for another court to sentence him, not having heard the evidence.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: The first court decides that he is guilty, they hear all the evidence and say that the right sentence is to send him to prison. They cannot do it because he is not there; and he is brought before the court in a month's time. I ask whether the court will need to be similarly constituted or differently composed.
LORD STONHAM: I have now received the answer just in time. The sentencing justices do not have to be
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those who heard the case. The Magistrates' Court Act provides for that.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD STONHAM: I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 15, line 23, at end insert ("and proviso (a) to that subsection (restriction on issue of warrant for arrest of defendant who fails to appear at an adjourned trial) shall cease to have effect").—(Lord Stonham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
7.33 p.m.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE VISCOUNT DILHORNE moved, in subsection (3)(a), after the first "or" to insert: "within six months". The noble and learned Viscount said: In dealing with this clause the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said that where there had been a conviction in the absence of the accused it could be vitiated by a statutory declaration. I do not object to that happening, but I am a little worried about one aspect of this matter. A statutory declaration may be true or may be false. It will say that the man did not know of the proceedings until a date specified in the declaration. That may be true or it may be false. But if it is false it will be very difficult indeed to prove the falsity of it. It seems to me that under the clause as it now stands the position may arise that a man who is dealt with in his absence will learn in due course that he has been convicted. He will then wait a bit, and will file his statutory declaration. Whether that statutory declaration be true or false, it clearly has the immediate effect that all the proceedings are void, without prejudice to the validity of the information. Am I not right in thinking that there is a time limit within which an information can be heard and a summons can be issued? I have not looked it up, but I think I am right in saying that there is a time limit and that it is not very long.
Under this clause as it stands a man could, for instance, three years after he has been convicted, file a statutory declaration and of his own act make that conviction void. All he has to say is that he did not hear of the proceedings until a date specified in the declaration. There is no stipulation as to the period within which he has to make that declaration. I consider that a period ought to be specified, otherwise this could operate as a considerable loophole. I suggest that he

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should have the opportunity to make the declaration within six months of the conviction. My reason for saying this is that if he has been convicted and a penalty of any kind has been imposed—for instance, it may be a fine—an attempt ought to have been made to recover that fine from him within the period of six months, in which case he then will have had notice of his conviction and will have had time to make his declaration. If it is done then, the original information can remain and a further summons can be issued. I do not want to take up time on this matter, but I feel that the point requires looking into. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 15, line 27, after ("or") insert ("within six months")—(Viscount Dilhorne.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Subsection (3) of the clause enables a defendant to have proceedings which have taken place in his absence annulled, subject to certain conditions. It is necessary to appreciate that it is proposed to amend Rule 76 of the Magistrates' Courts Rules 1952 concerning proof of service of a summons. Rule 76 regards service of a summons as proved only if the defendant was served personally with it or if he acknowledged receipt. It is proposed to amend Rule 76 so as to dispense with the necessity for an acknowledgement of a summons for a summary offence served by being left at the accused's place of abode or sent to him by registered post or recorded delivery. In these circumstances it may happen that the defendant does not know of the proceedings, and it would clearly be wrong for those proceedings to stand.
The subsection provides therefore that, where a magistrates' court has begun to try a case following the issue of a summons under Section 1 of the 1952 Act, the defendant may, at any time during or after the trial, make a statutory declaration that he did not know of the summons or proceedings until a date after the court had begun to try the case. If he then serves the declaration on the clerk to the justices within fourteen days of the date on which he claims the proceedings came to his knowledge, the summons and all subsequent proceedings become void. Where a defendant does not receive a summons he may become
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aware of the proceedings at any time. He may hear about the proceedings before the court begins to try the case. If so, he must act at once, because this new procedure is not open to him. Or the defendant may become aware of the proceedings after the court has begun to try the case, but before it has made its adjudication—again possibly on receipt of the notice of adjournment, perhaps with a view to the imposition of a sentence of imprisonment or disqualification.
Finally, the defendant may remain ignorant of the summons and proceedings until after the court has tried and adjudicated on the case. The first he may know of them may be the notice of fine, or even his arrest on a means inquiry warrant. In these circumstances, he would be required to serve his statutory declaration on the clerk to the justices within fourteen days of that date, but in practice would no doubt do so more quickly.
There is no need to impose a further time limit on the service of a statutory declaration on the clerk of the court. To impose a limit of six months after the close of the trial would be unfair to the defendant who is not reached by the court's subsequent enforcement process until after that date, which would be quite possible. For example, the defendant may have been tried and convicted and fined in his absence; but, because he has been abroad, or his new address cannot be traced, it may be up to a year before the court is able finally to achieve the execution of an enforcement warrant upon him. In such circumstances it would be wrong if the defendant were precluded from showing that he had no knowledge of the proceedings, but it would remain his duty to serve his statutory declaration that he was ignorant of the proceedings within fourteen days of his becoming aware of the proceedings. The clause gives the defendant only 14 days' grace; any longer delay is not the fault of the defendant (who has no knowledge of the proceedings at this stage) and it is wrong that he should be penalised for it.
The time limit on the laying of information, under Section 104 of the Magistrates' Courts Act, is six months for a summary offence and this is why the words "without prejudice to the … information" appear in Clause 18(3). It is said by the noble and learned Viscount that all a person has to do is to swear

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a declaration to have the whole matter automatically set aside, and this is really requiring very little of him. But, of course, it is we who are wanting to simplify things by not always having to prove a personal service and so on, and if one is going to do that then there must be a right for somebody who knows absolutely nothing at all about the matter, and who has been tried and convicted without his having any opportunity of defending himself. We must agree that in those circumstances we must go back to the beginning, because that is the only fair thing to do. In a sense it is a convenience for society to depart from our hitherto rather strict rules about personal service in legal and, certainly, criminal proceedings; but if, for our convenience, we are to do that, then if someone does not get notice and if he knows nothing about it at all we must start again.
LORD PARKER OF WADDINGTON: The difficulty about this clause, as it is worded at the moment, is that the summons and all subsequent proceedings become void on the making of a statutory declaration, whether that declaration is true or false. While everybody would welcome the idea that an honest man, who makes an honest declaration that he did not know of the summons or the procedings until, say a year after the event, should be able to have the proceedings declared void, there is a tremendous loophole which enables a dishonest man to make a dishonest statutory declaration that not for months, or it may be years, after had he heard of the trial. It seems to me that if this clause is to be kept in this form, there must be some provision to test the truthfulness or falsity of the declaration.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for his reply, and I do not disagree with his proposition that if you try a man in his absence and he is convicted but has not heard of the conviction there must be a procedure for quashing that conviction. But I am worried about the provisions of this clause as it stands because, as I said, it seems to me—and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice agrees to open a wide door to the dishonest man, and a door where it will not be very easy to find out if he
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is being dishonest when he walks through it.
I put this to the noble and learned Lord because it is a real problem. Again, I am not going to press it tonight, but I would ask him to think about it. Am I not right in saying—and perhaps he can answer this tonight—that a man could swear a declaration two years after his conviction, and say—it may be true or it may be false—that he only heard of that conviction less than 14 days before the expiry of those two years? That will automatically have the effect of voiding the conviction.
That would be all right if he could he tried again for that offence; but can he be, having regard to the time limit on the hearing of information and the hearing of summonses? Even if he could be, is it likely—if we take, say, a motoring offence—that after the lapse of two years the prosecution will again be able to call the evidence which they called at the original trial? This needs more thinking about, though I am not against it in principle, and it requires more safeguards written into it to prevent abuse of the right which is here being given to the defendant when the trial is in his absence. Having said that, and in the hope that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will look at this point again, as I think he will—is that so?—
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Yes. I quite understand what is said. Of course, there is a penalty of two years for making a false declaration, and while I quite understand what is said I am still not quite clear how the Amendment proposed by the noble and learned Viscount really meets the point. If I have been abroad and have not had any notice at all and I come back after six months, it cannot be right that I cannot get the proceedings set aside.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: I am not arguing so much that the Amendment is right—if I may say so, that is not my point. I put down this Amendment to draw attention to this difficulty. Maybe the period of six months is not right. There are two ways by which this could be dealt with. I am speaking off the cuff, but I hope the Government will think about it. One way is by prescribing a time limit—it may not be six months; it may be nine months, it may be 12 months. I quite agree that it might be

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somewhat arbitrary, but taking into account the probabilities of getting notice there might be some provision for enlarging the time period on the defendant's satisfying the court that there was a good reason for the enlargement of the time. Another point which I think will have to be considered, if this clause is kept in anything like its present form, is the enlarging of the time within which the original information or summons can be heard.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I think that point is covered, because the last two lines of subsection (3)(b) of Clause 18 say:
"without prejudice to the validity of the information, the summons and all subsequent proceedings shall be void."
So the validity of the information, if it has been laid in due time, whatever the time limit may be, is preserved.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: I should like to look at that, because I was under the impression—I may be wrong—that there was a time limit within which information had to he heard, as apart from a summons. At any rate, we need not pursue that now. I think there is a point here which deserves attention, but with the leave of the House I will withdraw this Amendment.
Amendment, by leave withdrawn.
Clause 18, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 19 [Restriction on issue of search warrants under Obscene Publications Act 1959]:
On Question, Whether Clause 19 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: As I know it is desired that we should complete Clause 29 to-night, and also that we should if possible rise by 8.30 p.m. or so, I propose not to move the deletion of this clause. I shall make no comment on the clause at this stage, and I shall put down the Motion again on Report. I hope that that will be a convenient course for those of us who need to get home at a reasonable hour.
Clause 19 agreed to.
Clauses 20 to 23 agreed to.
7.50 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved, after Clause 23, to insert the following new clause:
Extension of costs in Criminal Cases Act 1952.
".—(1) Subject to the following provisions of this section the Costs in Criminal Cases Act 1952 shall apply to proceedings under section 6, 8 or 9 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 for dealing with an offender subject to a probation order or an order for conditional discharge, and to proceedings under section 31(1) of this Act for dealing with an offender subject to a suspended sentence within the meaning of Part II of this Act, as if the offender had been tried in those proceedings for the offence for which the order was made or the sentence passed.
(2) The provisions of the said Act of 1952 other than section 6 (costs as between parties) shall apply with all necessary modifications to proceedings in which it is alleged that an offender required on conviction of an indictable offence to enter into a recognizance to keep the peace or be of good behaviour has failed to comply with a condition of that recognizance, as if that failure were an indictable offence committed in the same place as the offence of which he was convicted.
(3) Where any proceedings mentioned in either of the foregoing subsections take place before a court of assize or quarter sessions and the fund out of which the costs of those proceedings fall to be paid by virtue of that subsection is maintained by a local authority other than the authority for the local government area in which that court is held, those costs shall—

(a) be paid in the first instance by the local authority for that area; and

(b be recoverable, together with such sum (if any) in respect of the expenses of holding that court as may be determined in accordance with regulations made by the Secretary of State under section 18(3) of the Criminal Justice Administration Act 1962 (contributions to certain costs), from the local authority maintaining that fund.

(4) Where proceedings under section 8 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 for dealing with an offender subject to a probation order or an order for conditional discharge or under section 31(1) of this Act for dealing with an offender subject to a suspended sentence take place before a court of assize or quarter sessions before which the offender is convicted of an indictable offence committed while he was so subject, or by which he is sentenced for any such offence after being committed for sentence to that court, the costs of those proceedings shall be treated for the purposes of the Costs in Criminal Cases Act 1952 as part of the costs of the proceedings in which he was convicted or sentenced.
(5) Where any proceedings mentioned in subsection (1) of this section take place before a magistrates' court, and relate to an order made or a sentence passed for an offence committed outside the local government area

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for which or for part of which that court acts, the offence shall be treated for the purposes of section 7(1) of the said Act of 1952 (local funds out of which costs are to be paid) as having been committed in that area.
(6) In this section "local authority" means the council of a county or county borough or the Greater London Council and "local government area" means a county, county borough or Greater London.
The noble and learned Lord said: The purpose of this new clause is to extend the application of the Costs in Criminal Cases Act 1952 to certain criminal proceedings which are at present outside the scope of the Act, in order that a court may have power to make an order for the payment of prosecution or defence costs, including witnesses' expenses, arising in those proceedings. The Costs in Criminal Cases Act at present enables an order for the payment out of local funds of the costs of the prosecution or, if the accused is acquitted, of the costs of the defence, to be made by a court of assize or quarter sessions before which a person is prosecuted or tried on indictment or inquisition or to which he is committed for sentence under various enactments; namely, a committal to quarter sessions (a) under Section 28 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1952 with a view to borstal training; (b) under Section 29 of that Act for sentence for an indictable offence tried summarily; and (c) with a view to the making of a hospital order with an order restricting a person's discharge, under Part V of the Mental Health Act 1959. A court of assize also has power (at present limited, but extended by Clause 24 of the Bill to all cases in which a person is prosecuted or tried on indictment or inquisition) to order the accused, on conviction, to pay the costs of the prosecution or to order the prosecutor, if the accused is acquitted, to pay the costs of the defence. An order for costs may be made by a magistrates' court dealing with a case summarily or enquiring into an offence as examining justices.
It is necessary to make the 1952 Act applicable to proceedings under Clause 31 of the Bill in which a person subject to a suspended sentence who is convicted of a further offence is dealt with in respect of the suspended sentence. It is also desirable that the Act should apply to certain existing types of proceedings in criminal courts which are at
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present outside the scope of the Act. The proceedings in question are, first, proceedings in which a person who is subject to a probation order or an order for conditional discharge is dealt with by a court for failure to comply with a requirement of the probation order or for the original offence following the commission of a further offence. Secondly, there are proceedings in which a person who has been convicted of an indictable offence and required to enter into a recognisance to keep the peace or be of good behaviour is dealt with by a court for failure to comply with a condition of the recognisance.
The effect of the Amendment is to give to the court which deals with an offender in such proceedings the same powers of awarding costs as if the offender had been tried in those proceedings for the original offence as a result of which the suspended sentence was imposed or the probation order or order of conditional discharge made, or the recognisance entered into. This means that, in general, where a court makes an order for the payment of costs out of local funds in such proceedings, the costs will be paid out of the funds of the county or county borough where the original offence was committed.
For reasons of practical convenience, however, this general principle is subject to the following modifications. First, where the costs of proceedings before a court of assize or quarter sessions fall to be paid by a local authority other than the authority for the area in which the court is held, the costs will be payable in the first instance by the latter authority, which will recover them from the authority responsible for bearing the expenditure. Secondly, where a person subject to a probation order or order of conditional discharge, or on whom a suspended sentence has been imposed, is convicted of or sentenced for a further offence by a court of assize or quarter sessions and the court then proceeds to deal with him for the original offence or in respect of the suspended sentence, the costs of the latter proceedings will be treated as part of the costs of the proceedings in which he was convicted of or sentenced for the further offence. Finally, where the proceedings for dealing with an offender subject to a probation order, order for conditional discharge or suspended sentence take place before a

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magistrates' court, for the purpose of determining which local authority should bear the costs the offence will be treated as having been committed in the area for which the court acts. Unless the Committee wish me to deal with each subsection separately, I will leave the matter there, and I beg to move accordingly.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 23, insert the said new clause.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Again, this is clearly a very sensible and timely Amendment which takes account not only of the new position under Clause 31 but of various anomalies and inconveniencies which have doubtless arisen and were not foreseen in the legislation in 1952. I am sure, therefore, that noble Lords on this side of the Committee will welcome it. I would make only one comment: that the more the noble and learned Lord does tidying up operations on this sort of matter the more it seems to me we shall be in need of something in the region of seven or eight Consolidation Bills very soon.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 24 [Amendments of Costs in Criminal Cases Act 1952]:
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved, after subsection (1), to insert the following new subsections:
"( ) Sections 1 and 5 of the said Act of 1952 (costs awarded by assizes, quarter sessions or magistrates' courts out of local funds), section 8 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1966 (payment of expenses of witnesses in connection with criminal appeals out of local funds) and paragraph 8 of Schedule 1 to the said Act of 1966 payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of expenses of witnesses in connection with appeals to the Courts-Martial Appeal Court) shall apply in relation to a registered medical practitioner making a written report to a court in pursuance of a request to which this subsection applies as they apply in relation to a person called to give evidence at the instance of the court, and in the case of a report made in pursuance of such a request made by a magistrates' court shall so apply notwithstanding that the proceedings for the purposes of which the report is made are not proceedings to which the said section 5 applies.
( ) The last foregoing subsection applies to a request to a registered medical practitioner to make a written or oral report on the medical condition of an offender or defendant, being a request made by a court—
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(a) for the purpose of determining whether or not to make an order under section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 (probation orders requiring treatment for mental condition) or section 60 of the Mental Health Act 1959 (hospital orders and guardianship orders) or otherwise for the purpose of determining the most suitable method of dealing with an offender; or

(b) in exercise of the powers conferred by section 26 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1952 (remand of a defendant for medical examination and requirement of such an examination on committing a defendant for trial on bail).

( ) Sections 1 and 5 of the Costs in Criminal Cases Act 1952 shall apply to a person properly attending at the instance of the court to give evidence as they apply to a person called to give evidence at the instance of the court."
The noble and learned Lord said: The main purpose of this clause is to enable the courts to order the payment out of local funds of a fee to a medical practitioner who furnishes a written medical report on a defendant at the request of the court. Provision already exists (in Sections 1 and 5 of the Costs in Criminal Cases Act 1952, in Section 8 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1966 and in paragraph 8 of Schedule 1 to the latter Act) for payments to be made out of local funds to a doctor who attends court and makes an oral report on a defendant, but there is no corresponding power to order payment for a medical report which is made in writing.
A medical report may be obtained by remanding a defendant in custody or by arranging for him to see a doctor while he is at large. When a person is committed in custody for a medical report the medical examination is arranged by the prison authorities and the prison doctor is not paid a separate fee for such an examination; if an outside doctor is also asked to examine the patient, his fees are paid by the Home Office. It is where the defendant is not in custody that difficulty sometimes arises. There is no statutory provision enabling anyone to pay the fees of the doctors who examine a defendant in such circumstances. Where the examination is carried out by a hospital doctor, the examination and the furnishing of a report are at present among the services which are normally provided without charge in accordance with the doctor's terms and conditions of service under the National Health Service Act 1946. This position may change, however, as the Ministry of Health are

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shortly to review, with the Joint Consultants' Committee, the current classification of work which is done free by hospital doctors as part of their duties and work which is not part of their duties and for which they may charge a fee. Moreover, if a report is furnished by a general practitioner, or if a report by a second doctor is necessary—as is the case where a court contemplates the making of a hospital order under Section 60 of the Mental Health Act 1960—this work is already outside the scope of the services provided free of charge under the doctor's conditions of service. It is intended that the power to order payment of a fee out of local funds should be used by the courts only in those cases where the provision of a written report is outside a doctor's terms of service.
Subsection (2) is, I think, clear. Further, as Section 5 of the Costs in Criminal Cases Act 1952 relates only to indictable cases in magistrates' courts, and as it is necessary to provide these courts with power to order payment for written medical reports in both indictable and summary cases, the subsection provides that where a medical report is furnished at the request of a magistrates' court the provisions of the 1952 Act shall apply notwithstanding that the proceedings are not proceedings to which Section 5 applies. Subsection (3) provides that subsection (2) shall apply to a request by a court for a written or oral medical report for the purposes which are there set out.
The purpose of subsection (4) is to enable the court of assize, quarter sessions, or a magistrates' court, to order payment out of local funds to a person who attends at the instance of the court to give evidence, but who, in the event, is not called to give evidence. Section 1(6) and Section 5(6) of the Costs in Criminal Cases Act 1952, already defines a witness as
"a person properly attending to give evidence, whether or not he gives evidence."
But this provision does not cover persons attending at the instance of a court, who may be made the subject of an order for payment only if they are "called to give evidence". Subsection (4) will place persons attending to give evidence at the instance of the court in the same position as other persons properly attending to give evidence, and enable them to receive payment irrespective of whether they actually give that evidence. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 17, line 38, at end insert the said subsections. —(The Lord Chancellor.)
8.1 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Again, this seems to be an admirable Amendment, and one which I should advise the Committee to accept. There can be no doubt that the doctor's reports and, in the case of an order restricting discharge, his oral evidence are now an absolutely crucial part of the machinery of the court, both under the Mental Health Act and also in cases where a probation order with a condition of residence in an institution for mental treatment is required. I know that sometimes these matters have to be dealt with rather quickly and at the last moment, particularly where a second report has to be acquired for the purposes of compliance with the Mental Health Act.
Having listened to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, it seems to me that all possible combinations of events have now been covered, save for this: in the second of the new subsections which the noble and learned Lord is proposing to insert, it says that the request must be "made by a court". It usually happens that these things do not turn out in any clear cut way. It is true that sometimes the court says, "We think that this is the sort of case where we should like to act under Section 60 of the Mental Health Act, and therefore we must have a second Report." In such a case, no doubt the written report would be at the request of the court. Equally, it may appear to the county prosecuting solicitor, or one of the officials of the court, that for the sake of safety, and so as not to hold up the case when perhaps the accused has been brought under escort from somewhere or other, they ought to have a second report in any event in order to be perfectly safe.
I simply raise this query: what is a "request made by a court"? Does it have to be made in open court? Will a request by the clerk in advance of the hearing suffice? Is the noble and learned Lord satisfied that all possible methods by which these reports may be required are covered, either as a request by the court or as the evidence of a witness which is covered under other legislation?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am much obliged. We shall certainly consider the point which the noble Viscount has raised.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 24, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 25 to 27 agreed to.
Clause 28:
Punishment of persistent offenders
28.—(1) No person shall be sentenced by a court to preventive detention or corrective training.
(2) Where an offender is convicted on indictment of an offence punishable with imprisonment for a term of two years or more and the conditions specified in subsection (4) of this section are satisfied, then, if the court is satisfied, by reason of his previous conduct and of the likelihood of his committing further offences, that it is expedient to protect the public from him for a substantial time, the court may impose an extended term of imprisonment under this section.
(3) The extended term which may be imposed under this section of any offence may exceed the maximum term authorised for the offence apart from this section if the maximum so authorised is less than ten years, but shall not exceed ten years if the maximum so authorised is less than ten years or exceed five years if the maximum so authorised is less than five years.
(4) The conditions referred to in subsection (2) of this section are:—

(b) the offender has been convicted on indictment on at least three previous occasions since he attained the age of twenty-one of offences punishable on indictment with imprisonment for a term of two years or more and that on at least two of those occasions a sentence of imprisonment (other than a suspended sentence which has not taken effect) or of corrective training or of preventive detention was passed on him; and

(c) the total length of the sentences of imprisonment, corrective training or preventive detention to which he was sentenced on those occasions (taking into account any period by which any such sentence falls to be reduced under section 17(2) of the Criminal Justice Administration Act 1962) was not less than five years.

8.5 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR moved, in subsection (3), to leave out from "for any offence" to the end of the subsection, and to insert:
"shall not exceed twice the maximum term authorised for the offence apart from this section, or fourteen years, whichever is the less."
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The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 36. It is followed in the Marshalled List by two Government Amendments which I think are principally designed to improve the drafting; and then I have two Amendments down to one of those Amendments. I do not wish to embarrass the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, in any way, but it would be perfectly acceptable to me if, on this group of Amendments, we could have a general debate about preventive detention and what we are to do about it. I think that would save time, and at the end the Amendments could be put separately without further debate.
I need hardly say that I welcome subsection (1) of this clause, the subsection which will abolish preventive detention and corrective training. I welcome it particularly because I announced to Parliament on July 23, 1964, as Home Secretary, the then Government's intention to abolish both these penalties, and my only regret is that it has not been possible to legislate to that effect earlier. The purpose of my Amendments is to ascertain from the Government why they have departed in certain particulars from the proposals which I was responsible for announcing to the House of Commons some three years ago.
If I may remind your Lordships, this originated from a Report in 1963 from the Advisory Council on the Treatment of Offenders which recommended the abolition of preventive detention, and made certain suggestions as to the longer periods of ordinary imprisonment with which it should be replaced. I am sure that the main purpose of that Report was right, and indeed if I remember correctly I acted immediately to amend the prison rules so that that the troublesome five-sixths rule, which caused a great deal of ill-feeling in the prisons, was abolished; but to go further needed statutory action, and we now have that to-day.
I do not know whether it is right or not to say that it is unfortunate that the experiment of preventive detention and corrective training failed. I think one may look on the good side and say that we are now getting so much greater variety in the possible prison treatments that we can give to different kinds of prisoners under modern classification, that there is no need still to call different forms of custody in prison under different names.

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Fortunately, we are getting well towards the point where all prisoners will receive what it was thought in days past only a certain number could be given in the form of corrective training. That at any rate is the purpose, but the main issue here is what shall be put in place of the old preventive detention.
I think that both my announcement in 1964 and the proposals in this clause are an improvement on what was recommended by the Advisory Council on the Treatment of Offenders. That Advisory Council recommended no special provision of extended sentence where the sentence was five years or under. What it recommended was that the courts should be empowered to pass sentence up to ten years imprisonment on persistent offenders convicted of offences at present punishable with imprisonment for terms of five years or more. That seemed to my colleagues and me, and to the Government, an inadequate solution, in that it provided nothing at all of a special character for the persistent offender who was guilty of an offence punishable with imprisonment for a maximum of less than five years, or, as in the case of many offences, where the maximum is two years. That would not be covered or provided for at all.
It seemed to me at the time (this is the first point I want to ask the Government) that it was a mistake to limit the maximum sentence in a very serious case to ten years, unless, of course, a longer period was provided as a maximum for the ordinary sentence for that offence. Under preventive detention the maximum sentence is fourteen years. Though I am well aware that the ordinary sentence period was seven or eight years, nevertheless it seemed to me, and it still seems to me, that there is some value in having authority in a really bad case to extend a sentence beyond ten years and up to fourteen years. That is the point with which my first Amendment deals.
I appreciate that the proposals in this clause give a considerable flexibility in shorter sentences. I had proposed that a two-year sentence could be doubled. The clause would provide that a two-year sentence could be increased to five years. The principal difference here is that the Government are proposing that none of these extended sentences should go beyond ten years. whereas the old pre-
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ventive detention maximum was fourteen years.
The other change which I perceive in the Government's proposal is that a person should not be sentenced to what is called here an extended sentence unless, under Amendment No. 38, one of the sentences which he has already received was a sentence of imprisonment for a term of three years or more. That is coupled in Amendment No. 38 with the provision that he must have been sentenced to a total of not less than five years in the past. In the proposals which I announced my intention of putting before Parliament it was suggested that a person would be liable to an extended sentence, and in my plan to a double sentence, if he had in the past served three years, not five years. Again, I should like to ask the Government why they have altered that period of three to five.
What is at the back of my mind is this. I think that the Government may possibly be taking a different view from mine as to the kind of persistent offender who is to be dealt with here. I had envisaged that when we replaced preventive detention there should be provision for the persistent petty offender, the man who never did anything that was terribly serious but was an unmitigated nuisance to society; the sort of person who could never keep out of prison for long; the sort of person who could not keep his hands off other people's property. Sorry as one is for people like that, it appeared to me—and still does—that in planning our substitute for preventive detention we should not forget about them. I know how difficult they are to provide for adequately and constructively in prison, but we ought not to give up hope. We ought to have a prison system which is diversified enough to enable us to do something constructive with the persistent petty offender.
I have the idea that the Government are not considering any special plans for these people. They are considering only people who have served at least one sentence of three years and have actually served sentences of five years in the aggregate. That will exclude a number of persistent petty offenders whom my plans would have included. There may be good reason for these changes. I doubt whether any of us could put his hand on his heart and say that the views

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expressed here to-day will inevitably be proved correct in ten years' time. Those who expressed views in Parliament on preventive detention and corrective training in the old days were absolutely sincere and genuine, and knowledgeable and well-advised, but it did not work out right. What we ought to do is to put our heads together and make every endeavour to see that these new plans will work out right.
I have put down these Amendments partly to invite the Government to explain why they have made these changes and partly to try to elicit an answer to the question whether they consider that the extended sentence should apply only to people who have committed some fairly serious offence and not to persistent petty offenders. If Clause 28 is not to apply to persistent petty offenders, then I am entitled to ask the Government what they propose to do about them.
Amendment moved—
Page 19, line 15, leave out from ("offence") to end of line 20, and insert the said new words.—(Lord Brooke of Cumnor.)
8.17 p.m.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: I think that there is a real difference of aim here. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, clearly intended that preventive detention, or what would take its place, should catch the persistent petty offender. It is equally clear that the Bill as drafted, with the Amendments proposed by my noble friend Lord Stonham, is designed to catch only the more serious offender and exclude the persistent petty offender. In other words, these clauses are to carry out the purpose which was laid down in the White Paper The Adult Offender, in which it was suggested that the persistent offender:
"must be clearly defined in such a way as to apply only to delinquents whose character and record of offences are such as to put it beyond all doubt that they are a real menace to society and exclude the petty criminal who commits a series of lesser offences."
The noble Lord is trying to take us much closer to preventive detention as it was. For instance, he is trying to restore the maximum of fourteen years, whereas the Government are proposing an absolute maximum for extended imprisonment of ten years, or five if the normal penalty is less than five years' imprisonment.
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When I read the proposals in the White Paper I put down a Question in your Lordships' House to find out how far the proposals, which are those in the unamended Bill, would exclude the petty offender and how far they would carry out the intention expressed in the White Paper of subjecting to extended imprisonment only the really dangerous criminal who is a menace to society. The answer I got was that, of 178 detainees under preventive detention examined in the Fifth Report of the Home Office Research Unit, 176 would still be caught by the new proposals for extended imprisonment; and of these 91 would be convicted of offences against property involving less than £100 and without personal violence. In other words, they were not offenders who could be said to be a dangerous menace to society.
It appears that in the Bill with the Amendments proposed by my noble friend the conditions that qualify for extended imprisonment will be made much more rigid, so that we may hope that these petty offenders who have committed offences against property involving less than £100, and involving no personal violence, will not be subject to extended imprisonment. My noble friend Lord Stonham proposes to amend the Bill so that anyone will qualify for extended imprisonment if he has a total of not less than five years' imprisonment, and if he has been in prison either once for three years or more for one offence, or twice for two years or more for one offence; whereas the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, proposes to cast the net much wider. He proposes to bring it down to three years previous imprisonment, instead of a total of five years, and he removes the requirement that the prisoner should have been subject to previous sentences of imprisonment of a specified length. The net result would be that we should be getting back very close to the old form of preventive detention, and that we should certainly still be catching a high proportion in this extended imprisonment of persons who are not dangerous menaces to society but are admittedly nuisances.
LORD PARKER OF WADDINGTON: Perhaps I might say a word or two on this Amendment. I say, quite frankly, that I do not think I mind very much what is done. I have been consulted on

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some such clause as this by the Home Office under three different Home Secretaries, each of whom has had a different approach; and each has said, after we had arrived at some amicable agreement, that a fresh look must be taken and we must start all over again. On the whole, I think I prefer a maximum of fourteen years, if only because the courts always envisage that there can be another case that is worse than the one they are dealing with, and, therefore, they never get anywhere near the maximum. And if the maximum is lowered, then I think, on the whole, instead of giving under preventive detention, where the maximum is fourteen years, seven or eight years, if the maximum is ten, probably no more than six years will be given. A period of fourteen years gives one a little greater elasticity.
When one comes to the qualifying conditions, they are a "headache" to administer in practice. Instead of thinking what sentence is the appropriate one in any particular case, the court has to see that this, that and the other has been complied with, and there are often mistakes. Ideally one would like to leave it to the discretion of the court. But I frankly confess that, as soon as one realises that there are no fewer than 347 people at the moment who would be entitled to give an extended sentence, one recognises that it is necessary to impose qualifying conditions, and rather strict ones.
Mention has been made of the object of this provision—whether it is to deal with petty offenders or the more serious cases. My difficulty is to know what is meant by a petty offender or the more serious case. The sort of case I have in mind that we get before the courts is what I call the constant false pretender, a crime which now merits five years' imprisonment. This is the sort of man who goes on, perhaps stealing a cheque book and then passing worthless cheques. He comes before the court with a great number of cases taken into consideration, and he goes on, getting perhaps slightly increased sentences, but never getting up to five years. Finally, a time comes when perhaps you get to a figure of something like 248 (or whatever it may be) of these cases, and the court says: "For the protection of society, although they are comparatively small sums, he
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must be put away for a substantial length of time." That is probably never done until the maximum for the offence has been given at least once.
Therefore, I do not think it really matters, when one is dealing with that sort of person, whether the two previous convictions that he must have had have attracted three or four years in total, because the court will never give an extended sentence until the aggregate is well above that. On the whole, I am quite content with the conditions. I should prefer the raising of the maximum term which can notionally be imposed from ten to fourteen years.
VISCOUNT D1LHORNE: I cannot speak on this subject with anything like the authority of the Lord Chief Justice, but I support him in thinking that there is a strong case for putting the maximum higher than it is in the Bill, for the reason that courts, as the noble and learned Lord has just said, seldom think the case with which they are dealing is the worst possible case of that category.
I have risen to my feet on this Amendment because of what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger. She said that these people who are petty offenders are not dangerous to society; they are offenders against property. Looking back over the years, I think that some of the cruellest cases I have seen have been where people of limited means have been defrauded of those means by conduct that was cruel and heartless. When it has been done, it has been an offence against property, and an offence which one might say, compared with some others, was a petty offence. I think that all those who have had any experience of the administration of the criminal law are familiar with cases of the petty criminal if you like to call him that, who goes round a council estate, or goes round places where the people are really of poor means, and defrauds people by false pretences of money that they can ill afford to part with. It may be right to say that that is not, in the words of the noble Baroness, a danger to society, but I am not sure that it is right so to regard it. I feel that this Bill will be less good than it ought to be unless it contains some provision for dealing with that category of offender.
The noble Baroness says that there is a difference of aim here between my noble

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friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor and the Government. That may well be the case. It may well be that, so far as this clause is concerned, there is a difference of aim. I do not think I should mind very much about that if I could be satisfied by the Government that there is some machinery in the Bill to deal with this type of persistent petty offender, who can cause great suffering and hardship by a series of petty offences against property to people who can ill afford the loss of that property. I do not see anything in this Bill, apart from this clause, which makes provision for that. This is why I support the Amendment moved by my noble friend.
8.30 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, for the suggestion he made, that we should have one debate, and also for the welcome that he has given to the belated abolition of preventive detention. I am also grateful to everyone who has spoken for the helpful tone in which the discussion has been held, because if there is one thing in penal reform which I have worked hard at over the last 19 years it is the abolition of preventive detention. Its introduction was one of the things which I regretted most of all about the 1945–50 Parliament, in whose other Acts I was very proud to take a part
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, quite rightly pointed out the differences between the proposals which he made for replacing preventive detention and those which were made by the Advisory Council for the Treatment of Offenders. I recall that when his noble friend, Lord Derwent, then Minister of State, announced those proposals in your Lordships' House, I then gave it as my view that the proposals for replacement of preventive detention would be no improvement whatsoever on the situation which had been prevailing for a long time. Therefore I was very sad when I saw the noble Lord's Amendment, because I had the feeling that we were back to square one, or would be if the Amendment was accepted. Therefore I am the more grateful for the way in which Lord Brooke of Cumnor has explained his purpose.
I propose to try to start the extremely difficult task of persuading some—I was going to say supremely eminent people,
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but that would be laying it on too thick—some extremely eminent people on my right. First of all, we propose that sentences carrying a maximum of less than five years should carry an extended sentence of five years as a maximum. Lord Brooke of Cumnor proposes that they should merely be doubled. We also propose that where the normal maximum sentence exceeds five years the maximum for an extended sentence should be ten years, and Lord Brooke of Cumnor proposes 14 years. I want to say why I think we are right in both cases.
I agree—and in this I agree with the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne—that continual thefts of property are not only vexatious but cause great distress. Even the entry of a burglar or housebreaker into someone's home is a dreadful and an upsetting thing, and its effect can go on perhaps for years; and even if almost nothing is stolen I do not underestimate the consequences of such acts. But we are here considering the length of sentence, whether it be 10 or 14 years in the maximum, and what good it will do both to the offender and to society. These are relevant facts for consideration.
I want to examine first of all the lower end of our proposals and the lower end of Lord Brooke of Cumnor's proposals. First of all, the maximum sentence for cruelty to children is only two years. That is an appalling offence, in my submission—I repeat, an appalling offence. Lord Brooke of Cumnor would make it in an extended sentence for the persistent child beater four years; under the Bill it would be five years. I think that a man who persistently assaults a policeman in the execution of his duty should be dealt with severely by society, but at present the maximum penalty is two years. It would be four years by Lord Brooke of Cumnor's proposal; five years by the proposal in the Bill. The man who is a persistent procuror of prostitutes can get only two years at present. He would get four years if an extended sentence was doubled under Lord Brooke of Cumnor's proposal; and five years under the Bill's proposals. I have not just taken those instances to make a case; I have taken them because, in my submission, they are bad. Those are the kind of cases I hate, where I should like to see the ordinary penalties more severe. But, in any case,

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we are doing something about them there for the persistent people and making the penalty five years, and, in my submission, at the lower end of the scale our proposal is an improvement on that which the noble Lord put forward.
Now we come to offences at the other end of the scale—I will come to the middle ones later, because I think the middle ones are the crux of the matter. I had a look at Archbold and I picked out, or tried to pick out, the offences which were punishable in the maximum with a sentence of 14 years or life. The list was so long that I picked only a few. I will give just a few of what I regard as serious offences, some more serious than others. These are all life: armed assault or assault with aggravation; burglary; grievous bodily harm with attempt to maim; throwing corrosives; arson, 14 years or life; explosive offences, 14 years for some, life for others. Firearms: either using to resist arrest or endanger life, 14 years. Forgery offences, many of 14 years, some for life. Housebreaking, 14 years if a felony is committed. Larceny by a tenant or lodger, seven years if the value is over £5. There are not many offences, other than those two-year offences I quoted earlier, where the maximum is not 14 years. I have had to search and I found only two which were seven years.
A NOBLE LORD: False pretences.
LORD STONHAM: The kind of offence the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, was speaking about was very often larceny of various kinds.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: I was thinking in particular, as a matter of fact, of false pretences.
LORD STONHAM: I mentioned one form of false pretences. But I will go on. I would mention that larceny covers something like 80 per cent. to 90 per cent. of indictable offences and therefore it covers an enormous field in crime, and when you mention that the penalty for larceny by a tenant or lodger is seven years and for all other larceny offences (except simple larceny, which is five years) it is fourteen years or more, you already have your maximum. In two cases the maximum for larceny is life. Malicious damage: in four cases, fourteen years; and in nine cases, life. Demanding money by menaces, life. Poaching has a seven-
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year maximum. That would be fourteen years if we doubled it. It is already fourteen years if three or more people go out together to poach armed. Rape, life. Robbery, fourteen years maximum. Armed robbery or robbery with violence, life. Sexual intercourse with a girl under 13, life.
The point I am making is that if it is what I think all of us would regard as a serious offence, I am not arguing and you can put all the penalties up to life and say that it is necessary, but, in my submission, in relation to the Amendment, fourteen years for all these offences, or life, is enough.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: Could the noble Lord deal with the false pretences case, because that is the one I had particularly in mind—the case of a housewife in a council house being deprived by false pretences?
LORD STONHAM: I agree. But in relation to the Amendment and the Bill the maximum for false pretences is not the same in all cases because there are various kinds of false pretences. In most cases, doubling it would bring the extended sentence up to at least fourteen years, I agree. But in other cases the ten year extended sentence which is in the Bill would apply, and I should have thought that where one is dealing with that kind of person there is enough scope in the sentence of ten years. At the moment one offender of whom I know, an old, regular customer, who would I am quite sure qualify as a persistent offender, got ten years for an extreme offence. We must have some regard for consistency in these matters. I think I am right in saying that it would be a sentence of ten years for false pretences. The ordinary maximum is five years, and therefore the extended maximum would be ten years under the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. So on the question of false pretences there is absolutely nothing between us.
I should now like to point out another matter not mentioned by the noble Lord. Lord Brooke of Cumnor. It is that with the extended sentence under this Bill the offender will either be in prison or under supervision for three-thirds of his sentence. I think that is a significant fact.
VISCOUNT DILHORINTE: Three-thirds?
LORD STONHAM: That is right—the whole of it. If I may put it this way, whichever alternative you choose, if he is released on licence after one-third of his sentence he stays on licence for the remaining two-thirds; if he is released in the ordinary way after two-thirds of his sentence, he stays on licence for the remaining one-third.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, and his noble and learned friend Viscount Dilhorne asked what are our intentions about this kind of petty persistent offender. This is one of them. The kind of person that we mainly have in mind will need continuous support of one kind or another. They are the petty persistent offenders, the socially inadequate people. We are rearranging our prison system in order to look after them better, to have them in "C" class prisons, and to enable them to have some responsibility.
May I now come to a matter which will be completely within the knowledge of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice. In February, 1962, the Lord Chief Justice issued a practice direction with regard to preventive detention. I cannot quote it verbatim now—my memory is not what it was; I used to be able to quote it in full. But at least he will agree with me that it was to draw the attention of his fellow judges, and those with the power of sentencing, to the importance of reserving this particular sentence for the more important crimes. I think he will also agree with me that this practice direction during the first two or three years or so was not as effective as he might have hoped, and it is only since the announcement by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, when he was Home Secretary, of the intention to abolish preventive detention, that this sentence began to disappear.
In those days, we had a sentence of fourteen years for stealing an overcoat; we had a sentence of eight years for false pretences in obtaining apples to the value of 1s. 6½d.; and we had eight years for stealing two books. These are not just sentences to me; they are men; I knew them. I have known them for years, and hundreds of others. I do not know them now—I am not allowed to know them as a Minister—but they are men, and I do not want the possibility of that kind of
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sentence being passed for that kind of offence. It is my ministerial responsibility to try to get them back into society again. There will have to be ways other than long prison sentences.
My noble friend Lady Wootton of Abinger, who has striven manfully—if she will not he offended by the term—in this field and with so much knowledge and energy, asked me that question in January, 1966, and this is another of the reasons why we have amended our proposals—that is, the Amendments to which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, will move Amendments, in order to try to be more selective about the people who will be given extended sentences, so that the more serious offenders will be given extended and longer sentences.
I was asked whether that would apply to petty offenders in future. Only the judges can answer that. In some cases it will, because if a man commits an offence of, say, stealing £5 or more, which incurs a maximum prison sentence of 7 years, then obviously if he went on doing it he could be given an extended sentence of 10 years, although I think we should all call him a persistent petty offender. But we have done some research on this matter, and the Bill as it stands would mean that of the persistent offenders—P.D. men—sentenced in 1957. 70 to 80 per cent. of those eligible for preventive detention and 99 per cent. of those so sentenced would have been liable to extended sentences under the present provisions of the Bill which I now seek to amend. Under the amended provisions of the Bill, if your Lordships approve the Amendments, 50 to 60 per cent. of them would still be liable for extended sentences, and of those 85 to 90 per cent. would receive extended sentences.
I hope, as a result of our discussions, and particularly as a result of the advice given by the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chief Justice, that the percentages will be lower than that. I think there will be a realisation that for the violent, savage offender—the enemy of society—the existing maximum sentences, most of which are life sentences, are adequate. The offender who persistently commits an offence of a fairly serious nature will run a great risk of getting his sentence extended up to 10 years, and that will mean he will be in prison or under supervision for 10 years. It will mean 10 years.

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But for the petty offender, the socially inadequate, the person who for most of his life needs constant support, long incarceration in prison is expensive, stupid and wasteful, both of men's lives and our money. We are providing, and will provide, more and different forms of treatment for them—perhaps even non-custodial treatment, in the sense that it will not be prison. This, I am sure, is the way to deal with them, and this is the way we are going on. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, for creating an opportunity to discuss this matter, and I hope that if I have not entirely satisfied him that the facts are on my side I have convinced him that I believe they are.
8.50 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: I appreciate the intense feeling with which the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, approaches this whole subject, and I give him full credit for it. He, for his part. will appreciate that I envy him that it should have fallen to him to bring before your Lordships the proposal to abolish preventive detention, because I think it has gone on for too long. I felt sure that it should no longer be a separate form of penal treatment, and I wanted to see greater flexibility. I have listened very carefully to what he has said. and. like him, I had studied that Appendix to Archbold before this debate. I say this with diffidence in the presence of the Lord Chief Justice, but study of that appendix and the course of this debate combine to persuade me that some of these maximum sentences need looking at afresh, lust as much as some of these maximum fines at which we are looking in a Schedule to this Bill. I appreciate the difficulty, but I am quite sure if some of these maximum sentences could be reviewed, and a better relationship could be established between them, there would be much less difference between myself and the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, as to how we should proceed at this time.
I am not going to press any of these Amendments. I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chief Justice for saying that he, too, thinks that the maximum term of extended sentence should be fourteen years rather than ten years. This does, of course. affect only those offences for which the maximum sentence now is seven years, and it is
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somewhat curious in some of these cases why the maximum should be seven years. So what we are trying to do by the words we put in here is, in my opinion, to clear up arrangements which are already somewhat arbitrary, and I do not think we can do it effectively by any of these doublings or other mathematical formulae. I think the whole matter needs to be looked at afresh.
As regards the petty offenders, I am not happy about the situation there. I understand how the Government, under pressure from the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, have sought to exclude the application of the extended sentence to the petty offender.
LORD STONHAM: Did I understand the noble Lord to say the Government were under pressure from my noble friend Lady Wootton of Abinger? It is a pressure of which I have not been conscious. I should have known about it.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: I noticed that reference was made to this Question which was asked, and it appeared to me that the Question which was asked in your Lordships' House had an effect on this Bill. That is what the noble Baroness said, at any rate; and I believed her—I think one should believe what a lady says whenever one can.
LORD STONHAM: It was the information produced by the Question which produced the eventual result. As soon as I saw the result we had it altered.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: I give the noble Baroness great credit for having asked the Question, which must have been a productive one. Perhaps we can agree on that.
As I have said, I am not going to press any of these Amendments. I should like to think about this matter further between now and the Report stage. I think your Lordships must take cognisance, for example, of what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice, said about making the maximum term fourteen years. I am inclined to agree with him, on the other matters, that one cannot be sure exactly what is right. Here am I criticising some of the provisions of this Clause 28, while I well know that a number of these provisions derive directly from my announcement to Parliament in 1964, which broke fresh ground

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that the Advisory Council had not gone over. On the understanding that we shall all have a further opportunity to think about this matter before the Report stage. I beg leave to withdraw this Amendment, and I will not move the two Amendments to Amendment 38.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD STONHAM: I beg to move Amendment No. 37.
Amendment moved—
Page 19, line 34, leave out from ("more") to end of line 37. —(Lord Stonham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD STONHAM: I beg to move Amendment No. 38.
Amendment moved—
Page 19, line 41, leave out from ("occasions") to end of line 45 and insert ("was not less than five years and—

(i) on at least one of those occasions a sentence of preventive detention was passed on him; or

(ii) on at least two of those occasions a sentence of imprisonment (other than a suspended sentence which has not taken effect) or of corrective training was so passed and of those sentences one was a sentence of imprisonment for a term of three years or more in respect of one offence or two were sentences of imprisonment each for a term of two years or more in respect of one offence."). — (Lord Stonham.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 28, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 29 agreed to.
LORD STONHAM: I am most grateful for the progress we have made, and
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I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.