Lords Sitting of 20 June 1967

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Worcester):
The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
The Earl of Cork and Orrery—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his kinsman.

MENTAL HOSPITALS: TREATMENT OF ELDERLY PATIENTS
2.30 p.m.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in the light of the article in the Sunday Times of June 4 dealing with the treatment of elderly patients in some mental hospitals, steps are being taken to improve the situation where necessary.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS (LORD BESWICK): My Lords, the Government are aware of the allegations reported in the Sunday Times of ill-treatment of the elderly in hospital. None is supported by particulars of a kind that would make it possible to pursue inquiries; individuals are not identified and there is no indication where the alleged incidents took place. Such allegations cast unfair suspicion on large numbers of hospital staff who are doing difficult work with skill and devotion, and they must cause distress to patients' relatives. The professional and other bodies concerned and the Ministry of Health set high standards of care and are always seeking to improve them. If undesirable practices are occurring the Government wish to have evidence in a form that will enable investigations to be made, so that such practices may be stopped.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for his reply and to put one supplementary question to him: namely, supposing it were possible to amalgamate the roll and the register of the general nurse with the mental case nurse, does he not think that these two bodies could rotate a little and in that way take away some of the strain from the mental nurses in the work that they have to do?
LORD BESWICK: Yes, my Lords. The proposal that the noble Lord puts forward is, as is the case with every contribution that he makes in these matters, a constructive one, and I will certainly see that it is considered. However, as he possibly knows, one of the difficulties is that registered nurses in psychiatric and non-psychiatric hospitals possess different qualifications which are not interchangeable. As a matter of fact, a proposal has been made in an opposite sense to that made by the noble Lord; namely, that registers should be split for psychiatric and non-psychiatric enrolled nurses. Nevertheless, I will undertake to see that what he has suggested is considered.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, have the Government invited or asked the Sunday Times to provide information which will enable the Government to investigate these allegations, if there is any evidence at all anywhere in support of them? If that has not been done, may I ask that the Government should ask the Sunday Times to furnish particulars to support the allegations that they have made?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, there has in fact been a long history of correspondence between the Minister and a Mrs. Barbara Robb, who is the authoress of a book which is about to be published, and on which I understand the article is based. She has given certain information which has been examined, and it was found that the allegations then made were unfounded. I will certainly see whether anything more can be done to get her either to substantiate or to withdraw what she has said.
LORD ILFORD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether the Government have invited the newspaper to supply the information upon which this article was based?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I will certainly see that what the noble Lord suggests is considered.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, cannot the Government give a definite instruction that when elderly people are admitted to these hospitals they shall not be deprived of their dentures and spectacles?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, guidance to hospital authorities on the care of mental patients has been issued, and that practice has been ruled out except on medical advice. I have absolutely no reason to think that that particular charge is justified at all.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether the Ministry has inquired of hospitals throughout the country where there are a great many elderly people, whether they have received a great many complaints, although I know these elderly people and their friends are often frightened to complain?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I do not think it is for the Ministry to inquire into individual cases. But last year a memorandum was issued by my right honourable friend the Minister of Health, containing comprehensive guidance in relation to the procedure for inquiries into complaints made on behalf of or by patients.

"KEEP BRITAIN TIDY" WEEK
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they are taking to support the organisers of the national "Keep Britain Tidy" week.]
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, the purpose of this Week and of the organisers behind the scenes is certainly most commendable, and I am sure that the noble Earl will be gratified to know that considerable progress has been made. In many parts of the country there is evidence that the campaign has been succeeding; and, of course, the schools have done a great deal in this direction, with
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some success, judging from the admonition that I received from my six-year old granddaughter the other day for tossing a matchstick out of my car window. This indicates the fact that children certainly are absorbing the great necessity for this tidiness.
The organisers themselves have an annual grant from the Exchequer and are helped annually by the production of posters and other material, available without charge to local authorities and other organisations. Many of these offers have been taken up and posters have been displayed. My right honourable friend is speaking at the opening conference for the Week which has the Government's best wishes for success. May I add that it is certainly to the credit of noble Lords that, on the whole, we in this House keep our own House quite tidy compared with—I will not say another place, but elsewhere.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply. I greatly hope that during this Week in particular, which is the first national Week ever held with this object, intensified instruction will be given in schools in this sense.

KENYA: LAND PURCHASE SCHEME AND PROPERTY SALES
2.38 p.m.
LORD WEDGWOOD: 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 whether they will say how many British farmers have refused offers under the present Land Purchase scheme in Kenya; and whether those offers refused are due to disputed valuations; and, if so, whether any of these cases have been investigated by the British High Commission.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I understand that of 31 offers of purchase made by the Kenya Agricultural Development Corporation 20 have been accepted, seven refused and four withdrawn. All offers were made on the basis of willing buyer/willing seller. Some of the refusals are believed to have been due to disagreement over valuation, but there

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may have been other factors involved. The High Commission were informed of the valuations and of the offers made, but since the offers were in accordance with the agreement reached between the Kenya and British Governments, the High Commission have had no cause to intervene other than to seek clarification of various issues raised by individual farmers.
LORD WEDGWOOD: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his comprehensive Answer, I should like to ask whether he is aware that under the present scheme offers to purchase are based on a valuation figure for the farm concerned which is not made available to the seller? Would he not agree that as these offers, which are made on a lock, stock and barrel basis, show no breakdown of fixed and loose assets, the farmer is at a great disadvantage in any subsequent negotiations? Further, does he realise that these somewhat arbitrary methods of purchase, from which there is no appeal, are creating much bitterness in the British farming community in Kenya whose farms are now required to be taken over by the Kenya Government over the next three years?
LORD BESWICK: Offers under this programme are based on current market values as determined by professionally qualified valuers of the Kenya Lands Department, and are in accordance with the agreement reached between Her Majesty's Government and the Kenya Government. Moreover, as the noble Lord will know, the valuation itself is now made known to the High Commission, and if it is thought it is an unreasonable valuation and not in accordance with current values there is then a possibility for the High Commission to intervene.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, do Her Majesty's Government realise that many of these farmers were pressed strongly, as a public duty, to go to Kenya; and do they realise, further, that in many cases these men put their all into the farms, and years of work as well? Lastly, do the Government realise, as the noble Lord, Lord Wedgwood, has already said, that the present basis of valuation is very different from what it was before the grant of independence for Kenya? In those circumstances may I
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ask the noble Lord whether there will be any chance of Her Majesty's Government themselves doing something to bridge the gap between the former values of these farms and the valuation now put upon them?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the fact of the matter is that Her Majesty's Government have made available £30 million of British taxpayers' money to enable purchase of these farms on a willing buyer/willing seller basis. The procedure for valuation has been agreed between the British and the Kenya Governments, and I do not believe any further action is either called for or justified.
LORD WEDGWOOD: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that his statement about willing seller/willing buyer is not strictly applicable to this purchase scheme? May I draw his attention to the fact that these farms are required for purchase by the Kenya Government for their own purposes, and although it is strictly legal that the seller does not have to sell, is the noble Lord aware that there are no other purchasers in the market except the Agricultural Development Corporation? Would the noble Lord not agree that there is some room for improvement in the method of purchase under this scheme, so that a demonstratively more fair procedure could be arrived at?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, it is a fact that these sales are effected on a willing buyer/willing seller basis. If the present owner does not wish to sell, then there is no compulsion at all upon him to sell. I do not believe it is correct to say that this scheme was agreed first and foremost for the benefit of the Kenya Government; it was agreed as a means of enabling those who wished to leave Kenya to do so without sacrificing any of their capital. Moreover, it is a fact that there are facilities for private sale, and Her Majesty's Government have made available very substantial sums of money to the Land Bank to enable private buyers to purchase farms if such a sale can be effected.
LORD PARGITER: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree, having looked at what has happened in many parts of that continent, that the arrangements in Kenya would appear to be excellent?
LORD WEDGWOOD: 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 cases are outstanding of British subjects in Kenya who wish to sell their property for compassionate reasons, and are either unable to do so or have not yet received payment in full.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, there are no cases outstanding. All those who have recently accepted offers of purchase for their farms under this scheme, with one exception, have now been paid in full.
LORD WEDGWOOD: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his brief and reassuring reply. I wonder whether the noble Lord could further reassure us that in any future arrangements for dealing with compassionate cases, these people will have all the help and attention that the British High Commission in Nairobi can give them?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I gladly give that assurance. I might add that the possibility of continuing this scheme is being considered, and I hope that a statement will be made in the near future.

BRITISH RAILWAYS (NO. 2) BILL
Read 2a, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
MANCHESTER CORPORATION BILL
Read 2a, and committed to a Select Committee.

DANGEROUS DRUGS BILL
2.47 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. It is a year since the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, initiated a valuable general debate about
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drugs. That debate underlined our awareness that the problem was growing and your Lordships expressed concern that the situation should not get out of hand. In my remarks at the end of the debate I said:
"… the length of my speech will, I hope, be taken as an earnest of the great seriousness with which the Government view this situation or, perhaps, I should say the prospective situation."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30/6/66, col. 837.]
Since then the situation has indeed become more serious. A few figures will make my point. In 1965 convictions for offences against the Dangerous Drugs Act totalled 767, including 626 for cannabis. Last year the total was 1,174 including 978 for cannabis offences, an increase of more than 50 per cent. in a single year. Under the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964 there were 958 convictions in the 14 months ending December, 1965, and 1,261 in 1966, including 676 in the last half of that year. The police, with an augmented force of specialist officers, have been still more active this year. Convictions still show an increasing trend and a sentence of ten years imprisonment was recently imposed for drug peddling.
I have no need to scare the House about the drug problem. The time to sound the alarm is past. To my mind one of the striking features of the past twelve months has been the speed with which Press and public comment has moved from dismay that drug-taking occurs in the United Kingdom, to constructive interest in why young people get involved in drug abuse and what can be done to stop it. An example of both the increase in the danger and willingness to take active steps to meet it, was the issue last month by the Chief Education Officer to the Greater London Council of a circular to the heads of 300 London schools giving advice and urging them to make sure their staffs can recognise that a boy or girl is taking drugs, and to report it.
To some people publicity about the drug problem has caused misgiving, but I believe that in the past year responsible journalists and other commentators have greatly helped in improving public awareness of the intricate difficulty of this social problem. The effects of different drugs, the dangers of "escalation", the problems of treatment—these and other matters naturally prompt questions. There are calls for "authoritative guidance".

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Most people, however, now understand that this guidance is very difficult to provide because—and here I quote the Brain Committee Report:
"the phenomena of habituation, dependence and addiction involve a complex variety of social, medical and psychological factors".
Because of the publicity I have mentioned certain points are now taken for granted. It is understood, for example, that drug-taking cannot be prevented or addiction cured simply by legislation; that drug peddling and abuse cannot be controlled by police action alone; and that addiction or drug dependence threatens not the majority of sensible healthy young people but a susceptible minority difficult to identify and hard to protect—a minority which is subject to mental, physical and moral deterioration; to unquenchable craving and increasing misery.
I have begun with these general reflections because today we are concerned mainly with one part of the problem. As I deal with this part, I want your Lordships to understand that I am fully aware of the other parts and of the links between them all. I know of the increasing menace of the amphetamines, of cannabis and of LSD which can induce madness. I know that addiction to hard drugs often has its roots in general drug abuse, abuse which sometimes starts by youngsters copying the unhappy example of a few of their "pop" idols. The Government are concerned about the whole drug problem. They are striving to approach it with balance and discrimination. They believe that this Bill, short as it is, will nevertheless help considerably in containing the general problem and bringing compassionate but real help to those who need it.
The Bill is concerned with addiction to "hard" drugs and particularly with heroin and cocaine addiction. I need hardly remind the House how this problem has been growing. In 1960 the number of known addicts to "hard" drugs was 454; four years later it was 753. In 1965 it had risen to 927 and last year to 1,349. Thus in six years the number of known drug addicts has trebled. In 1960 the number of heroin addicts was 68; in 1964 the number had risen to 342, in 1965 to 521 but in 1966 it was 899. That means that in the last six years known heroin addicts have increased
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thirteenfold. Last year more than 90 per cent. of the known addicts, whose addiction was not therapeutic in origin, were addicted to heroin. And there were some 300 heroin addicts under the age of 20 in 1966, as against only one in 1960—one person, not 100; in other words, a three-hundred-fold increase.
These are the figures for known addicts identified by inquiries into the supplies of drugs recorded by doctors and pharmacists. How many more have not yet come to notice? I can offer the House little guidance. Some observers, relying upon what they assert to be the economic basis for the new addict's life, argue that each must find or make two or three other addicts who will pay for part of his legitimate supply. On the other hand, addicts arc free at any time to seek treatment, including, if the doctor thinks fit, a prescription for the drug of addiction. In 1960 the Brain Committee felt that, by and large, most addicts came to notice quickly. Although we do not know for how long—or indeed why—individual addicts delay before seeking treatment from a doctor or a hospital, the numerical trends are obvious and alarming. They led an American Research Institute early this year to estimate that there could be 11,000 or more heroin addicts in this country by 1972.
Why has this wave of heroin addiction occurred? I do not think anyone can say with authority. Our problem in this country is quite novel. The new addicts have come from all classes of society. There is no close parallel with American experience. The reasons for other trends of drug abuse in the past are equally obscure. I will not take up the time of the House to-day with speculation. This is a field where we need to make full and continuing inquiry.
If we do not know the reasons for the increase in addiction, at least we know the source. The Interdepartmental Committee, in its Second Report, was satisfied that the increase had been fed from a surplus of drugs prescribed for addicted patients by a handful of doctors. The Committee gave examples of over-prescribing, which I need not repeat to-day. I must, however, tell the House that there is still no evidence of significant supply to addicts, other than through doctors' prescriptions—which are at present legitimate—and perhaps thefts.

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As the House will know, the addiction problem was carefully studied in 1959 and in 1964 by the Interdepartmental Committee on Drug Addiction under the chairmanship of the late Lord Brain. I should like to pay particular tribute on behalf of the Government to the very great assistance which Lord Brain gave, both in his leadership of this Interdepartmental Committee and in the discussion of many other important problems. It was his Committee which recommended that a Standing Advisory Committee should survey and advise upon the whole field of misuse of drugs and we had hoped that he would have been able to launch it. His death has been a sad loss to us all.
The Brain Committee's 1961 Report, written when problems of control were not challenging, was largely concerned with questions of procedure and treatment. Its second Report, published late in 1965, examined the new wave of known addiction and recommended appropriate counter-measures for what it likened to an epidemic. The three main measures were: compulsory notification of addicts, the setting-up of panels to advise doctors whether a patient is an addict or not, and the provision of special treatment centres. After very full consideration the three proposals have been fully accepted by the medical profession and the Government.
There are very difficult dilemmas here and it is important that I should make clear the implications of the Bill. Where addiction is pervasive rather than passive there are three choices for counteraction. One is to treat the addict as a criminal and try by police action to eradicate all drug abuse and peddling. That has been the American approach to heroin addiction and it has shown no signs of final success. We reject it. The second approach is to regard the addict as a dangerous patient and detain him for compulsory treatment. This has been tried in one or two countries, and very recently the State of New York has passed legislation providing for the compulsory institutional treatment of addicts for periods up to three years. The price to be paid for any compulsory and restrictive régime is, of course, much the same: a massive black market and dire complication of the general problem of crime. We reject that also.
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The third approach is to regard the addict as a sick person and to try to win his co-operation on voluntary treatment. That has been the United Kingdom policy for many years: doctors being free under the law to supply dangerous drugs to addicts whilst making every effort to cure their addiction. I am sure that no one would want us to abandon this basic principle and, by a repressive policy, encourage criminal elements to establish and exploit a thorough-going illicit traffic. On the other hand, it is plain—and the Government recognise this—that the present British system has defects and weaknesses. We have a rapidly growing number of addicts to heroin and cocaine. Many of them are young, unstable and eager to enlarge the unhappy army of addiction. They represent a formidable challenge to the general practitioner. We have seen more than once that the problem is accentuated when an individual doctor feels unable to continue to help a large group of addicts. All of us have read in the Press of cases of this kind: of how, for example, some addicts are lost to view; how others approach inexperienced doctors (I mean inexperienced in the question of drug addiction) with urgent pleas for help.
In these circumstances, it is natural to ask whether the principles of treating addicts need to be changed. The present principles are broadly based on advice given by the Rolleston Committee in 1926. These principles presuppose, first of all, that the general practitioner will make every effort to cure the addiction. If those efforts fail, however, the doctor may continue to prescribe dangerous drugs—in the words of the Rolleston Committee:
"where complete withdrawal produces serious symptoms which cannot be treated under the ordinary conditions of general practice, or where the patient, while capable of leading a useful and fairly normal life so long as he takes certain non-progressive quantities, usually small, of the drug of addiction, ceases to be able to do so when the regulated allowance is withdrawn".
Obviously, my Lords, if these principles were abandoned, or even thought by addicts to be abandoned, many would look to an illicit source for their drugs, and that is a development we must strive to avoid. Your Lordships will recognise that the doctor's dilemma—arising at every stage in his handling of the patient—is profound: whether to

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encourage withdrawal at the risk of driving the addict to the pedlar, the "pusher", or whether to give the addict just enough of his drug not to prejudice the hope of progress to a cure. It is this concept of "just enough" that is so difficult to evaluate. In their Report in 1961 the Brain Committee gave general support to the present principles. The Government believe that they continue to command general acceptance by the medical profession. Accordingly—and I should like to stress this—the Bill is based on the assumption that certain doctors will continue, subject to their professional judgment, to apply the Rolleston principles and give maintenance dosage.
It is to preserve these principles and create conditions in which their adoption can be more beneficial to addicts and to society that the Government propose to change the organisation of treatment on the lines recommended by the Brain Committee. I will leave it to my noble friend Lady Phillips to describe in more detail, when she comes to wind up the debate, our plans for a system of special treatment centres for addicts to heroin and cocaine. The case for confining the treatment of such addicts to special centres is, in the Government's view, fully made out on two considerations. Prescribing can be more effectively controlled by a comparatively small number of selected doctors in these centres than is possible under conditions of general practice; and, more positively, treatment centres closely linked to the resources of hospitals should be able to offer more comprehensive treatment. Noble Lords will recall that the Brain Committee, in both their Reports, expressed the view that satisfactory treatment of addiction is possible only in suitable institutions. The Government believe that addicts are likely to be more encouraged to seek institutional care if efficient out-patient facilities are available.
It will be obvious that to transfer addicts away from general practitioners to a limited number of treatment centres involves a difficult transition. The problem is complicated because we do not know how many addicts will be prepared to seek treatment from a centre. Nor do we know how many unknown addicts—that is, unknown at present—will in due
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course want to do so. Nevertheless, the Government are convinced that general practice is no longer the right or adequate means for dealing with the new type of young addict—and in saying that I fully appreciate the dedicated help that has been given in the past by a number of doctors to many difficult addict patients. The addict's first and most compelling purpose is to get his "fix", and it is reasonable to assume that he will go to a treatment centre where he can get it—but without a surplus which he could sell to others. It is equally reasonable to suppose that many who attend the centres can be persuaded to attempt a cure.
We must therefore make the best estimates we can of the provision to be made. We must try to provide facilities which will ensure a close and sympathetic relationship between the individual addict and skilled centre staff. We have got to build up the confidence, both of addicts and of treatment centre staff, in the merit of our proposed new arrangements. Above all, we have to phase the arrangements so that in the individual case there is no gap between the support now being given by a general practitioner and the help which can be obtained from a treatment centre. All these considerations are being kept in mind in the course of Government planning.
I turn now to the Bill itself. It is an enabling measure, with necessary provision for enforcement, concerned solely with drugs scheduled under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1965. It extends to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Clause 1 extends the powers to make regulations conferred on the Home Secretary by Section 11 of the 1965 Act. Under the extended powers he will be able to make regulations to require the notification of addicts by medical practitioners and to prohibit medical practitioners, except under licence, from providing addicts with specified drugs. As I have indicated, the initention, initially, is to specify heroin and cocaine; but other drugs will be specified if it becomes necessary. The medical profession will be fully consulted in the preparation of these regulations.
As regards notification, the regulations will have to define addiction, lay down the circumstances in which notification will be required, specify the central authority (this will be the Chief Medical Officer of the Home Department) and prescribe the procedure for notification. Our aim,

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however, will be to keep the administrative burden on doctors to a minimum. I would emphasise that notification will have no legal consequences of any kind for the addict. It will merely indicate to the central authority that a particular doctor has attended upon a patient whom he considers or suspects to be addicted. It will not give that patient any continuing status as an addict as if he had been registered. As the House will know, the Brain Committee were firmly opposed to any system of registration. The central records of notification will simply enable the inquiring doctor to be put in touch with any doctor who previously notified that patient. Information provided by doctors under the regulations will be subject to the safeguards of the Official Secrets Acts. It is not contemplated that there will be disclosure of notification except to doctors with a professional interest in the individual case, and to the police.
The police have a special interest which I would explain. At present the Home Office obtains its information about prescriptions to dangerous drugs from routine police examination of records kept by pharmacists. The Brain Committee envisaged that this routine scrutiny would be continued to provide a means of ascertaining addicts who had not been notified. The police need to be informed therefore, as at present, when a case of addiction is made known and confirmed to the Home Office, so that the relevant prescriptions can be taken into account in the routine police scrutiny of the Pharmacists Registers.
As to licensing, the intention is that in selected National Health Service hospitals the doctors who receive licences will be consultant psychiatrists, in charge of the treatment of persons addicted to heroin and cocaine, and certain other medical staff under their supervision. The question of criteria to be applied for licensing doctors in approved centres, outside the National Health Service is under consideration. In the exercise of his licensing power my right honourable friend, the Home Secretary, will be advised by the Chief Medical Officer of his Department. He will, of course, take into account the requirements and plans of hospital authorities and any advice thereon which my right honourable friends, the Minister of Health and the
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Secretary of State for Scotland, may wish to offer.
As to prescribing for ordinary medical purposes, the Bill makes no provision for change. Regulations will allow doctors to continue, without restriction, to prescribe any dangerous drug in the course of medical treatment, provided it is not related to addicts. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, sometime ago asking me whether our proposals might preclude the possibility of his continuing his prescription for laryngitis. I am glad to assure him that our proposals will not interfere with him in any way. The regulations will not prevent a doctor from prescribing heroin or cocaine to an addict where that drug is needed for a medical purpose, other than treatment for addiction.
The larger part of the Bill is concerned with enforcement. The Brain Committee felt that since notification of addicts and prescribing for addicts closely involve the exercise of professional judgment it would he inappropriate for a court of law to deal with breaches of the new obligations on doctors. They suggested that a more appropriate tribunal would be the Disciplinary Committee of the General Medical Council, but they did not take evidence from the General Medical Council on this proposition. Behind this, no doubt, was the thought that the medical profession should, if possible, discipline itself, especially where the issue turned on matters involving an assessment of a doctor's professional judgment. When the matter was discussed with the Council, the latter explained that the Committee's proposal did not fit in with the Council's established functions. It is not the Council's responsibility to deal with contravention of statutory obligations or offences; or to intervene in matters of professional judgment on medical treatment.
The conduct of a doctor, acting sincerely, who gives a generous supply to an addict would not necessarily be infamous conduct in a professional sense of the kind with which the Council deals, even though it might help to complicate and magnify the general addiction problem. Accordingly, the Government accepted that neither the Council nor its Disciplinary Committee were ready-made bodies for tackling the enforcement of regulations under the Bill. In devising

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alternative machinery the Government have tried to give effect to the wish of the profession for a suitably qualified tribunal and for the opportunity of representations against a tribunal's recommendation. The relevant provisions may appear somewhat involved, but the Government believe that by elaborating the substantive provisions in Clauses 2 and 3 and in the Schedule they are properly protecting the interests of the individual doctor, and of any other persons who may be involved in an inquiry into his professional conduct. The medical bodies have fully accepted the proposals in the Bill. The Council on Tribunals has also been fully consulted and has expressed agreement with what is proposed about the tribunal.
In this context I ought to say a word about Clause 4. This enables regulations under the 1965 Act to provide that contravention of particular regulations shall not constitute a criminal offence under Section 13 of the Act. It will also allow the Secretary of State to apply the safeguards of the tribunal and advisory body procedure in cases in which a court has found a doctor guilty of an offence under the Act and consideration is being given to withdrawing the doctor's authority. In this way it will be possible to deal with all withdrawals by a common procedure.
There are some other points I should mention. First, the Bill does not provide for implementing the Brain Committee recommendation for detaining addicts during treatment. The Committee did not favour compulsory detention as a principle. It had no belief in the success of this approach. It felt, however, that when a patient entered hospital voluntarily for treatment it might in certain circumstances he useful if the staff could detain him for a very limited period during a crisis in his recovery. The proposal was discussed later with Lord Brain who came to the view that initially it should not be proceeded with. As your Lordships will appreciate, any element of compulsion would materially affect the transition from one régime to another. The Government are convinced that the wisest course is to exclude compulsory detention at this stage.
Again, the Bill does not deal with the problem of dependence on "soft" drugs. The Government are, of course, very much
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concerned about this question, but although facilities for treatment are available there is no consensus that the same controls are necessary for amphetamines and barbiturates. Indeed knowledge about dependence on these drugs is very limited. We need to assess this area of the general problem by much further study and inquiry before considering statutory provision for notification or other measures. The Government propose, however, to make certain important aditions to the Bill at the Committee stage, and I shall be tabling Amendments in due course. This will be of particular interest to the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, whose continuing interest in this problem and whose knowledge and pursuit of it are greatly appreciated by Her Majesty's Government.
The first of these Amendments relates to the safe keeping of drugs, the second to the powers of search. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has for some time felt concern about the inadequacy of present arrangements for the safe keeping of drugs in the premises of manufacturers, wholesalers and pharmacists. When addiction is increasing and abuse of "soft" drugs appears to be widespread, the need for effective security becomes vitally important. My right honourable friend has recently consulted the representative bodies of the pharmaceutical industry and pharmacists, with a view to strengthening his powers of requiring safe keeping, record keeping and packaging of "hard" and "soft" drugs. I am glad to tell the House that the representative bodies have fully endorsed the principle of my right honourable friend's proposals for wider enabling powers. As with the regulations on notification and prescribing, the effect will be to allow my right honourable friend the opportunity to impose or modify controls as the situation develops. It will be understood that the requirements which it may be appropriate to introduce will be the subject of detailed discussion with the interests affected.
As to police powers of search, Section 14 of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1965, and Section 3 of the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964 (the creation of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, and the favourite of his assistant, the noble Lord, Lord Derwent) required that the names of the individual police officers

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should be endorsed upon the search warrant. This has been found to cause difficulty when police action is required at short notice. The requirement originated many years ago. It is an anachronism and serves no useful purpose to-day in the changed conditions, and the Government therefore propose that it should be repealed.
Apart from this, the police have been hampered in detecting offences of unauthorised possession by the present limits on their power to search on suspicion. It is noteworthy that a very high proportion of the convictions obtained under the 1964 Act have been made in the Metropolitan Police area where police powers arc more extensive. The Government therefore propose to sek your Lordships' approval of an Amendment which will give the police power to stop and search without warrant any person suspected of being in unlawful possession of a drug controlled under the Acts of 1964 and 1965. My Lords, we mean to stop the "pushers" and the pedlars of drugs by all means in our power, and we look confidently for the support of your Lordships in the measures that we shall introduce.
My Lords, I have spoken at some length because, although this Bill is short and its substance mainly concerned with the conduct of doctors, it foreshadows great changes in the organisation and treatment for addicts. No doubt much of our discussion on the Bill will be about differences of view on the planning of that treatment and related matters. The Bill, I would remind your Lordships, was passed by another place without amendment. The Government believe its provisions are sound and they have the full support of the interested bodies. For this reason, I hope that your Lordships will welcome the Bill and give it a unanimous Second Reading. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved. That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Stonham.)
3.23 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, at last we have something. We welcome this Bill now it is here, so far as it goes, but it is nearly two years since the Brain Committee on Drug Addiction rendered its Second Report, and it has taken Her Majesty's Government 18
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months to set up the Standing Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence which, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has pointed out, is so obviously needed to give continuous attention and authoritative advice on the whole rapidly changing and extremely anxious problem. And it has taken Her Majesty's Government 20 months to bring forward this very modest piece of legislation, most of which was spelt out for them by the Committee in its Report.
Not only has there been this really regrettable delay; there has, I submit, been a failure by Her Majesty's Government to grasp the nature, and particularly the urgency, of this problem. I do not want to exaggerate the size of the problem—the noble Lord has spelt that out admirably, and it is sombre enough reading on its own—but I do want to stress the extreme urgency (the figures given by the noble Lord speak for themselves) and the need to get to grips with this problem quickly, before it gets out of hand. One measure of Her Majesty's Government's failure to grasp the problem is the fact that it was left to the Lord Chief Justice to brine forward the Private Places of Entertainments Bill in January of this year, a vital weapon in the fight against this menace. At any rate, my Lords, here at last is the Bill, and I now turn to it.
The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, called it an enabling Bill, and it is indeed an enabling Bill, with a vengeance. We have the noble Lord's description of what is to happen under it, and we can accept that. We are glad to know that this is how it is to work. But little of that is in the Bill. Everything of substance is still to come under regulations which are not yet before us. Here we have a Bill dealing with addicts, yet to be defined, covering—and I quote from Clause 1(1)(a)—"drugs of any description" but yet to be specified, which no doctors, except those yet to be licensed by the Home Office, will be allowed to prescribe to addicts. We understand that licences will be granted only to doctors on the staffs of treatment centres yet to be provided.
Clause 2 indicates that all this is going to involve tribunals and advisory panels which have yet to be set up; so there is quite a long way to go yet. Incidentally, there are going to be more people on each set of tribunals and advisory

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panels than there were doctors (only six) who were the original cause of this particular mischief of over-prescribing heroin. I wonder, do the doctors know what is happening to them? Presumably they do. It is not for me, a member of another profession, to offer any advice to the doctors about how they should run theirs. But, my Lords, the clergy of the Church of England have long experience of nationalisation—we were nationalised by Henry VIII—and I think that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester would agree that if we had been put in the position in which the medical profession was put by the Brain Committee Report, we should certainly have followed the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Brain, and tried very hard to keep the disciplinary procedures required under this Bill under the control of the profession itself—in this case, under the control of the General Medical Council.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, is the noble Lord suggesting, first, that we did not try very hard, and secondly, that the B.M.A. were willing to accept this responsibility? I hope I made it clear that they were not.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I was just coming to that. I believe that the doctors themselves will come to regret their decision to do otherwise than the Brain Committee recommended, and I think it is our duty in this House to-day to make quite clear (I shall be interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, and the noble Lord, Lord Segal, have to say about this) that it is not the decision of Parliament or of Her Majesty's Government, and it is certainly not the wish of the Opposition, but the decision of the medical profession which will bring down upon them all this paraphernalia of tribunals referred to in Clauses 2 and 3 and in the Schedule. It is not the Government who brought this about, and I am sure that noble Lords on these Benches would have sought to do as the Brain Committee recommended. However, be that as it may.
I now turn to the hospitals and what they have to say and do under this Bill. They are not mentioned in the Bill, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, made quite clear and explained, the whole object
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of the Bill is to shift the treatment of addicts into the centres to be established, primarily in the London and Metropolitan hospitals. But nothing can happen under this Bill, as the noble Lord's friend the Minister of Health made quite clear in another place, until these centres are provided, staffed, equipped and ready to function. No extra money is to be provided for this purpose. Very few doctors working in hospitals have much experience of treating addiction, and I do not believe (though noble Lords who are doctors and who hope to follow me in this debate will correct me if I am wrong) that the treatment of addiction figures to a great extent in the training of doctors. It is therefore, I submit, highly relevant for us to know how the hospitals are getting on with this task.
The Minister of Health set out what he wanted of the hospitals in his Memorandum H.M. 6716 of March 7, and asked for a report from them within a month—that is to say, by April 7—of what they had done and were planning to do in order to implement their part of this programme. So by now he must know, the noble Baroness must know, and I think that we should know, too, exactly how they are getting on. The noble Lord, has so far told us nothing. I hope that the noble Baroness, when she winds up the debate, will tell us a great deal. If she does not, I fear that our suspicions will be greatly increased.
My information, admittedly incomplete and unverified—and, I hope, incorrect—is that the hospitals are far from satisfied about the arrangements for these centres. They have not been given any extra money to bring them into practice. They are far from clear about how the centres are to operate, and they are far from being ready to take the steps without which the provisions of this Bill cannot possibly be brought into operation. As I say, the noble Baroness must have available the replies from the hospitals to this Memorandum of March 7, and the House should be given an accurate summary of them before giving its final approval to this Bill. I hope therefore that she can do that for us.
It is not quite accurate to say that the Bill implements the whole of the Brain Report—and I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said so. It implements part of it. In particular, it

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does not implement recommendation No. 7, as the noble Lord mentioned, in which power for detaining addicts in centres was recommended. I agree entirely with him that we should be unwise to copy the approach of the United States of America to this problem. Unfortunately for them, they have a far more extensive experience than we have in this matter. To treat the addict as a criminal would be disastrous, but I am not yet convinced that the modest measure of compulsion which the Brain Committee asked for would not be helpful in a number of cases. I know that it is the experience of the Convent of Spelthorne St. Mary, which has dealt with drug addicts on a voluntary basis for some number of years, that a court order applied to a voluntary patient is extremely helpful in keeping him at the centre until his cure has been successfully completed. Perhaps the noble Baroness can deal with this matter further. That is all I have to say on the Bill itself.
I should like now to follow the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, and for just a few moments turn to the problem of drug addiction as a whole. It could he said—and I know that my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor, who was Home Secretary at the time, would readily admit—that the terms of reference given to the Brain Committee when it was reconvened were somewhat narrowly drawn. But this had the great advantage of enabling the Committee to deal with the comparatively narrow matter of the over-subscribing of drugs for heroin addicts and to report quickly. That is an advantage which, I submit, by their dilatoriness Her Majesty's Government have now largely thrown away. That decision to ask for a report on a narrow front now means that we find an urgent need for much fuller information and authoritative guidance covering the whole of this disturbing and rapidly changing programme. For example, the illicit sources of supply of heroin are now thought to be quite different from those discovered by Lord Brain's Committee. As well as the over-prescription of herion, we now face, as the noble Lord mentioned, the smuggling of drugs out of factories, raids on pharmacies and the forging of prescriptions. These are now outstripping the over-prescribing of drugs by a handful of doctors.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I made it quite clear that we have no evidence of any substantial supplies of heroin and cocaine other than those arising from prescriptions. The references which the noble Lord is now making to my speech are references to the other field of amphetamines and so on. He should make this clear distinction.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord. I thought I had made it clear that I am now dealing with the whole problem, and that these remarks cover all drugs. I fully accept what he says about heroin. It is good to know that the regulations tightening the security over all drugs that may be harmful are having some success.
Another matter which the Brain Committee were not asked to report upon and did not report upon was cannabis and all its derivatives. This is a dangerous drug within the terms of the 1965 Act. Last April there were suggestions and letters to The Times, not at first particularly authoritative, that reefer smoking, the smoking of marijuana and hashish, was not too bad, no worse than the drinking of alcohol. A letter by Mr. Manfred Mann, who started the correspondence, was followed eventually by two long articles by Dr. David Stafford Clark, a well-known psychiatrist, in which he spoke of the "relative innocence" of marijuana by comparison with alcohol. If that is a good expression of our experience in this country, it is only because marijuana has not been smoked long enough by a sufficient number of people to reveal anything else. My information is that not only is marijuana with amphetamines one of the many roads leading eventually to heroin addiction but—and here I am relying on information in the latest edition of British Journal of Addiction—in time marijuana on its own leads to incurable insanity. It would be helpful to the House and to the public at large if the noble Baroness could give us some authoritative guidance on this point, because, if I am right, it is important that this is spelled out.
Perhaps she could deal also with the question of soft drugs, on which the noble Lord has touched. This Bill deals only with those people who have reached the end of the road; it does not touch those who are just starting on it or under

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temptation to start. I think that the House could well hear a little more than it has had already on what Her Majesty's Government have in mind for this part of the problem. Can the medical profession, for instance, justify the continued production of so many addictive stimulants in such large quantities for quasi-medical purposes, like slimming, when other non-addictive drugs, I am told, are available as alternatives? I understand that this matter is under consideration. If so, I suggest that it ought to be considered with dispatch, as the matter is urgent.
Finally, I come to the rehabilitation of addicts, a matter I raised in a Question last March, the answer to which I fear revealed remarkably little forward-thinking or planning in Government circles. I understand that there have been further consultations early last month, but I do not believe that the light has yet fully dawned. Ail the time and the money and the effort that is being expended on making provision for medical treatment in such centres is going to be wasted, unless adequate long-term social support for addicts who have been withdrawn from their drug is also provided to see them through, right to the end of a successful cure.
Rehabilitation and the provision of rehabilitation hospitals is supremely a job for a partnership between statutory and voluntary bodies. But the position in this respect is not, so far, an encouraging one. With a few notable exceptions, such as the long-standing contribution of the Covent of Spelthorne St. Mary, I see only a few struggling pioneers, grappling with very daunting problems of finance, with little positive contribution from medical officers of health in this field—though I should be the first to acknowledge their contribution with education officers in the field of education—and great uncertainty in the Ministry itself as to what to do next.
Further guidance on rehabilitation was foreshadowed in the hospital memorandum which I have already quoted. We should like to hear from the noble Baroness whether it has been given, and if so, in what terms. If the noble Baroness who replies can say anything to dispel the rather anxious and gloomy view that I at present take about this
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subject, no one will be more pleased than I shall. Meanwhile, while hoping for considerably more from the Government, and soon, we on this side of the House welcome and support the Bill.
3.42 p.m.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I am sure that anyone would give support to a Bill which made some attempt to deal with this very serious moral, social and physical problem, and I feel certain that your Lordships will give this Bill an unopposed Second Reading. The state of the law regarding medicines has been unsatisfactory for quite a long time, and one has been promised—or it has been suggested—that by now more comprehensive legislation would come out dealing with more drugs than this Bill deals with. That principle was accepted by all. But such legislation has not come, and we must be content with this little ad hoc Bill, which deals purely with the dangerous drugs of addiction, the so-called "hard" drugs.
There is a good deal of evidence that the use of the so-called "soft" drugs, which I think might be called the dependent drugs, as opposed to the addictive drugs, does lead to increasing dependence upon hard drugs and to becoming addictive. It is claimed by some people that soft drugs when taken in reasonable quantities do no harm; some people even claim that they may have a beneficial effect. But this, I think, is a point of view which should not be encouraged, because I am sure that, fundamentally speaking, they are dangerous to all people. One has seen in the Press from time to time remarks by people who think themselves prominently important encouraging the use of these drugs, and who say that they take them themselves. This is something that is greatly to be deplored.
A great deal of what I should like to say has already been said by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and I am in general agreement with everything he said. I should like to say, in passing, that I was a friend of the late Lord Brain, and I am not a member of the General Medical Council. I would rather not pursue this matter further.
One agrees entirely that an addict should be regarded as a sick person rather than as a criminal. One has seen

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that the opposite attitude did not work in the United States. But because of that, and because the Home Office is the Department which deals with drugs, it will need a close co-operation and working together between the two Departments. The Home Office does a great and good work in all sorts of ways, and although at present it is one of the kindest and most humane of the Departments of State, the fact remains that in the minds of the public a certain penal quality attaches to it. That, I think, is inevitable. But I am sure that the Government will do what they can to ensure that the Ministry of Health, via the National Health Service, are given a proper part to play in the treatment of these unfortunate people.
There are one or two points to which I should like to refer. I gave the noble Baroness who is to reply notice of some questions, and I will ask a certain number of them. Clause 1(1)(a) of the Bill says that the doctor shall furnish particulars of a patient he
"has reasonable grounds to suspect …"
is addicted, and so on. This is something about which I am a little worried, because my profession is not accustomed to being turned into detectives of crime. I do not know whether this provision has any particular sinister connotation. I do not think it has, but I was rather surprised and sorry to see it in the Bill.
Then, although there is not going to be any register of addicts, the names of such people are to be recorded somewhere: there will be some information centre. I should like to ask whether the addict will be told that his name has gone to that information centre. And supposing the man says that he is not an addict, will he have any appeal against his name being sent? And supposing he is successfully cured, will his name be expunged from the record at the centre? Then, what will be the position supposing an addict is taken to hospital suffering from some other disease, and the hospital happens to be situated some distance from where he lives and where his treatment centre is? Will the doctor at the hospital, although he is not the registered doctor, be able to give the addict his supporting drug, or will it be necessary for the doctor with whom the addict is registered to
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come and give the drug? And supposing the addict himself, due to his current complaint—a broken leg, or whatever it may be—cannot travel to the centre, will it be possible for the doctor treating him in hospital to give him his dose of drugs?
There is to be an information centre where all this information will be collected together. Will that centre be open for the whole of the 24 hours of the day? I ask this because addicts are "cagey" people, who do not keep regular working hours and if the addict comes to a centre and one cannot ring up to check from the information centre at any time whether he is already registered with somebody else, that can lead to some kind of abuse of the powers. What kind of steps will be taken to ensure that one addict—as I say, they can be cunning and clever people—does not register with more than one doctor, or with more than one treatment centre? That is all I have to say on Clause 1 of the Bill.
I should like to turn now to Clause 5, where subsection (3) seems to me to be extremely wide. I am not quite sure what it means. It seems to me to give the Minister enormous powers, but I cannot think that this is intended. I assume that this covers merely drugs in the Schedule to the principal Act. Suppose that there were further drugs to be added by the International Convention to the drugs in that Schedule: would it mean that this Bill, when it becomes an Act, would fall and that we should need to start again, or would this Bill then apply to Schedule 1 to the amended principal Act? I trust that I have made myself clear.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, may I answer now? The answer is, Yes, of course; we could add the other drugs in Part I of the Schedule to the 1965 Act.
LORD AMULREE: I thank the noble Lord. That has cleared up that point. I was going to ask whether provision was going to he made whereby pharmacists and chemists and drug houses could protect the drugs but the noble Lord said that he would move an Amendment on that question, so I shall not proceed with that any more. That is all I have to say about the Bill itself.
I should like to add just one of two remarks before I sit down. First, I hope that the old machinery, such as it is, will

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not be taken away before the new machinery is absolutely ready. Drug addicts are curious people and it is not easy to move them from one place to another from the point of view of getting treatment; and, furthermore, they like to feel that they are going to have the same person treating them for a long time. So I trust that that will be borne in mind and that we shall not see any danger of the general practitioner being banned from prescribing drugs to addicts until the network of treatment centres over the country is completely finished and is working properly. If that does not occur, it will make a black market, and illicit sales of drugs will occur immediately. So although I consider the matter to be urgent, I trust that we shall not proceed too quickly and take away the old system, such as it is, before we have evolved a new and complete one in its place.
I do not know a great deal about the new centres. I have seen that there are to be two in London teaching hospitals, and four more are proposed. What I should like an assurance about is this. These new centres will cost money. Further premises may need to be provided; it will be necessary to provide extra staff to work them. That will cost money. The Minister in another place was closely questioned about that matter, and I thought he was rather cagey in what he said. I should like from the noble Baroness an assurance that extra money will be found for the establishment of these clinics and staff and, if necessary, premises; and not only that it will be found for the first year but that it will go on being found for subsequent years, for as long as the centres are in existence. One has observed in the past that money has been given for the first year of a new project, and in the second year it has been said, "This must come out of your budget. You will have to rearrange your internal affairs." One would like some guarantee that that is not going to happen in this case, because if it did I think it would go a long way to negative the value of the Bill. In conclusion, I would say that I trust that this Bill will succeed in the object it sets out to achieve. But I should like to say again that a drug addict is a curious and elusive creature, and it may be very difficult to pin him down.
3.56 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF WORCESTER: My Lords, I imagine that every right-minded person will give his support to this Bill, which I see as part of a plan to tackle the problem of drug addiction. And here it might be well to remind ourselves of the wise words of Edmund Burke:
"In all forms of government the people is the true legislator."
This Bill, like any other Bill which deals with a matter of reformation, however well conceived, depends in the final analysis for its implementation on the good will and support of the people.
In order to have this community support it is necessary to have three things. First, people must have faith in the legal and administrative machinery that is being set up. Secondly, they must appreciate the fact that there are limits to what legislation can achieve; and, thirdly, in the particular case of this Bill, they must realise that we are all involved, that drug-taking is an inevitable by-product of a technically advanced society such as our own. Drugs are now used extensively in medical practice. Most of us have benefited from this, and there can be only a few fanatics who would think it wrong to do so.
Without wishing to weary your Lordships, I should like briefly to develop these three points. First, people must have faith in the proposals of this Bill and see their point. This is important, because I imagine that many people, old or young, are ill-informed and prejudiced about drug-taking. At one extreme there are those who make sweeping condemnation of "the teenage drug menace", and demand action to "stamp out this vice". At the other extreme there are a lot of young people who defend drug-taking in extravagant language and, one suspects, are more ignorant than they will admit about the dangers involved. There is, of course, between these groups a complete lack of communication. Someone has indeed said that the:
"gap between the generations yawns wider at this point than anywhere else".
But there is also a third group, made up of many young people, parents, teachers and just ordinary everyday decent folk, who are prepared to ask questions about the use of drugs, to examine the

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facts objectively and to take part in intelligent and rational discussion of the problem involved. I support the Government most heartily in the promotion of this Bill. But I should also be glad to have the assurance that they will produce the material necessary for such discussion as I have suggested on, say, the teacher/pupil level, or by youth club leaders and club members, or parents' associations.
This brings me to my second point. If people are to be aware of what legislation can or cannot do in this matter, they must be told what are the medical facts about dangerous drugs; why some young people experiment in drug-taking; what are the social and personal pressures which make a person liable to addiction, and how society ought to tackle this problem. I should have thought that education and discussion on these lines is essential if the Title of this Bill is to be fulfilled. It is described as:
"An Act to provide for the control of drug addiction and to make further provision with respect to drugs."
It is this "further provision" which to me seems so important.
My third point is that once people are aware of the problem they are usually prepared to be involved in its solution. And I must confess that I feel that a better Title for the Bill would have been, "Potent Drugs (Prevention of Abuses) Bill". The World Health Organisation now discourages the use of the word "addiction" and prefers the word "dependence", for basically drug dependence is the abuse and misuse of something which in its proper use is a great blessing and power for good. Countless thousands have reason to be grateful for morphine and cocaine, and other drugs, after accidents or major surgery. They have removed pain, or made it easier to bear, and for many people their passing from this life has been made an easier and less fearful experience. The tragedy is that, human nature being what it is, in this case as in many others it tends to change what should be a blessing into a source of evil.
Here, young people are peculiarly vulnerable, for, because they lack experience, the drug pedlar and those who support him have found them easy targets for making vast profits in their diabolical
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trade. These young people, like adults, gradually develop a state of mind called "psychic dependence", and it is to help such people that the various clauses of this Bill are designed. The Bill enables the Secretary of State to take certain action where it seems advisable, but behind the Bill are the causes which have made such a Bill necessary. The Bill deals with ends. It is the community who must deal with the causes, because, as I have suggested, the whole community—that is, all of us—share responsibility for the anxiety, the negative attitude to life, that drives some people to the extremes of escapism in the use of such self-destructive drugs. Therefore the whole community shares a great responsibility for dealing with the situation.
The ordinary citizen will no doubt discharge his duty in this regard with a certain amount of grumbling; will shoulder the higher taxation, if that is necessary for the new out-patient facilities for supplying drug dependents and inpatient facilities for withdrawal treatment. But this is not enough. Experience has proved that a great deal of personal voluntary effort is required to supplement what I would call the "professional case-work curing technique". The Salvation Army and the Church Army, to mention only two of many organisations thus involved, have shown, on the one hand, what can be done for the "incurables", and, on the other, how voluntary effort can help in the rehabilitation and resettlement of those who have successfully undergone treatment.
I believe that to-day there is an enormous potential of individual voluntary workers who cannot find any outlet for their urge to serve. They are not just "do-gooders"; they are anxious to be trained and equipped for the job, and it is a situation for an incisive national lead to be taken by the three Ministries responsible for coping with the abuse of dangerous drugs, in the co-ordination of these voluntary resources. At national level let there now be a complete frankness about what is required of such voluntary effort. Is it redistribution of wealth without tears? Is it collecting money for the new social service which cannot be obtained from increased taxation? Is it the creation of a community spirit so that the known drug dependent is not driven away to

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sleazy hidey-holes? Or is it really the provision of lodgings, sitting-in for overworked staff of hospitals, or finding and equipping and setting up hostels financed from statutory services? I very much hope that the ministerial statement in another place that:
"there is scope for valuable contributions by voluntary bodies"
means that we are soon to have a comprehensive statement as to precisely what personal contributions ordinary people of good will can offer towards the success of the plans to be built upon this Bill.
Let me presume to conclude by quoting some words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, uttered in a speech in Manchester in 1847—and I feel that the situation which he then envisaged, applies to-day:
"I feel in regard to this aged England … I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before—indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigour and a pulse like a cannon".
I believe that this is true to-day. Let the Government tell the people that this is a great challenge, in which the whole nation is involved, for it is nothing less than the opportunity to use, for once, the great benefits of scientific research and discovery for the benefit and not the destruction of humanity. The response will, I am convinced, be such that when the history of these times comes to be written, this Bill debated here to-day will be seen to have marked a great step forward in our national life.
4.5 p.m.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, I should like, if I may, to preface my speech by one or two comments on the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, who opened up from the Opposition Front Bench. He accused the Government of undue delay in bringing forward this Bill. If I may say so, I am inclined to think that this criticism of culpable delay is somewhat unwarranted. Eighteen months of discussion with professional medical bodies is, in the light of my experience, not an unduly long time, and, as the whole House will realise, the working of this Bill must depend on the active co-operation of the medical profession, who in themselves are not by any means agreed upon its machinery. Another point on which the noble Lord spoke was that
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of exercising some pressure on the medical profession in order to get, as he said, certain professional bodies to co-operate more actively. My own feeling is that if we cannot exercise compulsion upon the addicts themselves, by what right can we hope to exercise compulsion upon the medical profession? The noble Lord went on to say that the medical profession may yet have some cause to regret their decision in this matter. I am inclined to think otherwise. I think the decision was reached after long and careful discussion, and if the General Medical Council's Disciplinary Committee had assumed full responsibility for the disciplinary aspect of this Bill I think they would have been abrogating from the medical profession as a whole a good deal of their inalienable rights, which they would reluctantly yield to any Government.
Perhaps I may be allowed also to venture one slight criticism of one of the remarks made by the right reverend Prelate. He suggested a change in the title of the Bill and thought it might be improved if it were described as the Potent Drugs (Prevention of Abuse) Bill. To my mind every drug in the Pharmacopœia is in itself, if it were prescribed in sufficiently large doses, a potent drug. In fact, so far as my knowledge is concerned, I am totally unaware of any drug which can be described as an "impotent" drug.
I think we can all agree that this is not only a necessary Bill but also a measure of extreme urgency. To me, the most welcome part of the Bill is the provision that the regular prescribing of dangerous drugs should be taken out of the hands of the general practitioner and devolve upon licensed consultants who will be able to keep a strict control over the patient. It is highly important that the element of financial gain to the general practitioner by his prescribing of dangerous drugs to an addict should be entirely removed.
In discussing this measure, we are conscious to-day of the absence from our midst of Lord Brain, whose untimely death leaves a painful gap, not only in the profession which he adorned, but also in the membership of this House. His wisdom and kindliness and, above all, his quite unique knowledge of the subject we are discussing this afternoon,

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leave us not only greatly enriched by his life, but sadly the poorer for his passing.
The Brain Committee's Second Report, in paragraph 11, quotes the notorious case of one doctor who in 1962 alone prescribed 600,000 tablets or 6-kg of heroin to addicts, but that in all only six doctors, out of more than 20,000 on the Medical Register, prescribed very large amounts of dangerous drugs to individual patients. Whether they were well remunerated the Brain Report does not say, but I suspect that some financial gain must have accrued to the doctors concerned. I can recall a case of straightforward prescribing by an elderly ex-Army doctor, living mainly on his Army pension, who started giving a weekly prescription of heroin to a confirmed addict and for only a very nominal fee. But the weekly amount gradually became used up in less than three days and the patient kept coming more and more frequently for his prescriptions. In the end, the doctor had to issue him with a daily prescription, so that his fees from this one patient soon became increased sevenfold. And even this soon got out of control. With the date carefully inserted in the prescription, the patient was found standing on the pavement outside an "open-all-night" chemist, waiting for his day's supply of heroin to be dispensed on the stroke of midnight. So his daily supply became used up long before the next 24 hours were over, and the doctor had to insert on his prescription, "Not to be dispensed before noon".
At this Second Reading stage, I would express some of my anxieties about this Bill. Can the Minister give the House an assurance that, on the Bill's vesting day, there will not be a vast increase in the overall amount of heroin dispensed? What I fear may happen is this. If patient "A" is now receiving from a doctor a given amount of heroin and is able promiscuously to dispose of part of it to addict "B", with whom he may even be living, or to peddle part of it on the black market, it may well be that on vesting day addict "B", who until now has drawn all his heroin from an illegal source, will come forward to a doctor and ask for his case to be notified to the specified authority. Once notified, he will then presumably receive his required amount of heroin from a properly legal
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source. But would patient "A" then receive from the doctor licensed to prescribe only a half, or a third, or a quarter of his former prescription, to be used exclusively for his own requirements? I can foresee a very real danger on vesting day, not only of a large increase in the number of addicts now known, but also a vast increase in the overall quantity of heroin prescribed.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, may I interrupt my noble friend? He may well be right; perhaps there is some reason to hope for a vast increase in our knowledge of known addicts, and he may well be right in regard to the total amount prescribed. Where he cannot be right is in thinking that the individual addict will receive more than he properly needs for the treatment of his addiction. He will not get enough to supply to other addicts.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, I fully accept my noble friend's statement that he will not receive more, but there are certain cases where the people to whom he has been passing his excess heroin will be entitled then to have their own supply, and the original addict "A" should properly receive less than he formerly received. I think the Minister should be forewarned of the trap he may be laying for himself under the Bill. Does he propose that no doctor, not even a specially licensed doctor, should be allowed to prescribe any dangerous drug for a new patient on vesting day? If so, would not this be an unwarranted interference with a doctor's freedom to prescribe? What exactly are his plans in this matter?
May I add another warning? Great stress was laid in another place upon the provision of adequate facilities for treatment, and it has also been referred to in your Lordships' House this afternoon. I shall come to this aspect later on. But cases have occurred not infrequently of patients undergoing treatment at a treatment centre who peddle heroin secretly among themselves, thus undoing all the good work of the doctors and nurses who are trying so assiduously to effect their cure. These cases are sometimes so persistent that the doctor treating them is left only with the hope that they may eventually be convicted of a criminal offence, such as forging the quantity of dangerous drugs on a prescription, and receive a prison sentence. Then there is

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a good chance of a cure being effected. For on admission to prison their clothing is searched for dangerous drugs and they are admitted at once to the prison hospital, where attempts at cure can be strictly controlled. But even then the chances of a cure are not absolute, for cases have occurred in the past where, on their discharge from prison, all their property has been returned to them, including the heroin and syringes found on them at the time of their admission. Such cases of immediate relapse after cure, I believe, cannot occur to-day.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt again. I do not think there have in fact been instances of heroin actually being returned. There have been instances of syringes being returned, but action is now being taken to ensure that there is no possibility of a recurrence of that.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, I am glad to be able to confirm from my own knowledge what my noble friend has said. But I should like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that, without question, abuses have been known to occur in the past.
There is a third point which I should like to bring to the notice of the Minister. Till recently, I have always felt that our approach to this problem was far more humane and considerate than that of America. In this country we have always regarded the drug addict as a sick person, as much in need of treatment as the rheumatic patient or the diabetic. But during the last six years the increase in known cases of heroin addiction has been so great, as has been said, from 68 in 1960 to 749 in 1966, and so much crime and suffering is being caused as a result, that I feel the prescribing of heroin to any new patient should now be prohibited altogether. It would be utterly wrong to deprive a known confirmed heroin addict of his controlled access to the drug he needs. Once addiction has set in, no substitute for heroin can, I believe, be truly effective. But in a case where no addition to heroin as yet exists, a vast number of alternative synthetic drugs, highly efficient as pain-killers, are available to a doctor, and all of them far less habit-forming than heroin. So, while the banning of heroin to confirmed addicts would be wrong and inhuman, I feel that
1300
legislation to prohibit altogether the prescribing of heroin to any new patient is now long overdue.
One of the terrible pitfalls that face a doctor confronted for the first time by a new patient asking for heroin is that lying is one of the patient's main symptons. It is an axiom of English law that a man must be presumed innocent until he is proved guilty. But with a drug addict I have come round to believe, contrary to my own sense of fairness and from long and bitter experience, that it is always safer to assume that the patient is lying until it can be proved that he is telling the truth. Few doctors in general practice, I believe, would willingly undertake the treatment of an unlimited number of addicts unless they had some financial interest in the proceeds. I know of one doctor who did so purely in the interests of medical research. He said he would treat all-comers for a period of one year and register them on his National Health Service list. During that year he collected, thanks to the underground "grape vine", no fewer than 24 heroin addicts.
Then he decided to give them up and have them removed from his list: they were so demanding of his time and energy at all hours of the day and night that he refused to take them on any more. But he soon found that he could not give them up. The doctor/patient relationship with the 24 had become so complex that he felt he would be letting them down if he handed them over to the care of another doctor. But he also felt that all his other patients were being affected by this relationship and receiving less of his care than they needed. Under this Bill he can transfer all those addicts to a specially licensed consultant, far better able to give them the time and care they need, and far better able to exercise a strict control over their dosage and to initiate their treatment. The comment of this doctor to me was "Any general practitioner who would willingly take drug addicts on to his list ought to have his head examined".
Take the case of another doctor. He was prescribing for a heroin addict, an artist, living in circumstances of abject poverty. Suddenly the doctor was surprised to find the patient's house beautifully decorated, fitted with luxurious new furniture, and the patient himself was seen driving about in a large American

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car, far more expensive than the doctor himself could ever afford. The addict explains this by saying that he has sold a few more of his paintings. The doctor has his suspicions. What does he do? Quite rightly, he phones up the Dangerous Drugs branch of the Home Office and reports his suspicions. But the addicts' parents, who are also beneficiaries in their son's new-found prosperity, go off this doctor's list. The addict's wife and children also ask to be transferred to another doctor. The whole street may come to hear of it and the doctor's practice may suffer. This Bill, by transferring the care of this addict automatically to a specially licensed doctor, will effectively protect a conscientious practitioner from these pressures, and enable him to continue doing his good work with a tranquil mind.
Reference was made in another place to the cost of this Bill. I firmly believe that the cost will be negligible compared with the wastage in manpower, in human material, often of valuable human material, some of it highly gifted, intelligent and creative, of enormous potential value to the community, desperately in need of help and now being thrown aside on the scrap heap. The urgent need of the moment, however, is for strict control. The genuine addict must be granted, in the first instance, the right of access to his drugs, free of all cost to himself and under the National Health Service. But prescribing must be kept under the strictest control to ensure that the whole amount of the drug prescribed is used only by the patient himself. By this means we may eventually hope to destroy the black market in these drugs.
But before we start to condemn any addict, and accuse him of lying and of deceit, let us remember that under the present system an addict is sorely tempted to ask a doctor for far more heroin than he really needs. He is often unfit for work; he may have little inclination to go out and work. He knows that he can always readily dispose of any surplus heroin and effect an easy living by this means. I imagine that many heroin addicts, if not all, who desire to go straight and always to tell the truth about the amount of heroin they need for themselves must find this temptation hard to resist. So that if at any time an increase
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in quantities is required, that should be the signal to recommend a course of treatment to the patient in his own interest.
The strictest control can, I believe, be achieved under this Bill. That is why I welcome the Bill wholeheartedly and with but few reservations. But again I would emphasise that, while research is important and urgent, and treatment even more important and urgent, by far the greatest urgency of all is that the consumption of these drugs must be brought fully out into the open and kept under the severest control. Let us remember that research takes time; and this problem cannot wait. Let us also remember that in treatment the rate of relapse is appalling, and that months and years of patient treatment can often be destroyed in a single week. But control can be stringent and absolute.
Many addicts will have to be allowed to live with their addiction, as a rheumatic with his rheumatism. We may not be able to cure his rheumatism, but we can prevent it from getting worse. That is often the most humane and understanding approach to the problem of drug addiction, and I believe in many cases the only true medical one. I once heard of a large employer of labour, the head of a prosperous business, who travelled to his office each day in his Rolls-Royce, under the constant care of a trained nurse, and who was daily injected with more than 30 times the maximum official dose of heroin. Why was that? Simply because he had developed an abnormal tolerance to the drug, which was originally prescribed for him 16 years previously after a major surgical operation. Yet that man was able to run his business efficiently and to look after more than 2,000 employees.
He lived to well beyond the allotted span. Would anyone be so foolish as to suggest that this man should submit himself voluntarily to undergo a course of treatment? He was happy and efficient, left as he was after 16 years under the strictest and medical nursing control. Yet he was able to render a useful service to the community, far more useful than if, at the age of 75, he had been induced to undergo a course of treatment.
But in bringing the consumption of dangerous drugs under control, let us be

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careful at this stage not to change the present machinery. I believe that it works well now, and can be made to work even better under this Bill. There is the closest working collaboration in these matters between the Ministry of Health and the Home Office. The machinery is well established. The personnel is excellent. Some modification may indeed prove necessary in the near future and in the light of working experience under this Bill. But now, at all costs, let us avoid a leap in the dark, only to find later on that we may have created a pedlar's paradise.
I also believe that on balance the General Medical Council were right to remain outside the disciplinary machinery required for this Bill. But this is a matter perhaps more suitable for discussion during the Committee stage. Let us also ask ourselves: why should there be a sudden rush for in-patient treatment under this Bill? Do addicts rush to get cured? I greatly doubt it. A taste of "cold turkey" or treatment by means of gradual withdrawal of the drug may well tend to put some of them off. I rather think that as regards the provision of in-patient treatment things will go on for a while much as before. I only hope that as the need for in-patient treatment steadily increases facilities may gradually be made available.
But do not let us delude ourselves with fantasies of vast new hospitals, with special wards for specialised treatment, suddenly springing up overnight. Nor about millions of pounds having to be diverted from other pressing needs of the National Health Service for the treatment of drug addicts. Such ideas, I believe, are a delusion, and a cruel delusion at that. We are dealing here with human material, humans who are desperately in need of medical help, and who have the right to receive that help at the hands of our community. May I say, finally, that I believe this to be a good Bill. It is a highly necessary Bill. It is a Bill which should command approval from every quarter of this House.
4.30 p.m.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, I had not intended to speak on this Bill, although for some time I have been extremely interested in the problem. In
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the days of the League of Nations I was one of those working with the Narcotics Committee and was well instructed by Sir Malcolm Delevingne of the Home Office. I realised then how certain measures that had been taken had brought about a wonderful improvement in the problem of the appalling traffic in illicit drugs that had been going on throughout the world. The basis of this was that a complete record was kept of the drugs from the raw state. The Committee discussed and examined how many acres were used in the cultivation of the opium poppy. They kept records of the raw materials which were taken into a country and manufactured into certain drugs to be administered. Records were kept of amounts taken in by retailers and sent out by retailers. They had complete records and could know at once when and where there was a leakage into the illicit traffic.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has told us to-day that the illicit traffic, or the illicit source of drugs in this country, is very slight and that addiction has come from over-prescribing by a certain number of doctors. It seems to me that if—which I hope will occur as a result of this Bill—over-prescribing is stopped, we shall have to watch very carefully to see that those who are dealing with this traffic do not find other ways of circulating these drugs. We have only to look at the history of this terrible trade to see how clever people are, to what extremes they will go. and what trouble they will take to get the material they want on which they will make large sums of money by peddling it to the poor victims.
What sort of records are we keeping in this country? I know, sadly enough, that during the war the world-wide records were destroyed. The Narcotics Committee moved to Canada, and I saw some of the records then. They are now, I think, attached to the United Nations. A great deal was lost during the war and I doubt very much whether it has been possible to build up again the scheme we had before the war. I should like to know what is the system now. Do we know the amount of raw material that comes into this country? Do we know the manufacturers to whom it goes? Do we know the amount that is manufactured by them, and have we a record of the amount that goes to the various retailers

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and pharmacists? Do we know how much goes to the doctors who have the right to prescribe, and do we know—if we have those records—the amount of leakage, and can we trace it? We know, of course, that other stuff will be brought in. I do not think we can evaluate what the problem is and what the illicit problem will become unless we have those records.
I did not wish to detain your Lordships for any length of time, but I was so impressed with what I learnt and with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Segal, who showed us how complex this problem is. It is no good thinking that when we have passed this Bill, that instead of people being over-prescribed by a doctor, they will just go off to the right place where we should like them to be that they will be willing to go in and to give up this addiction, and that there will be no thought of trying to get more of the stuff and peddling it one from the other. I wish that were true. Those of us who know anything about this appalling difficulty will know the problems: how much we shall have to deal with deceit; how much we shall have to deal with the appalling craving, and how much we shall have to deal with people who, at the beginning, do not think it matters, and find later that it matters more than they can possibly express.
4.36 p.m.
LORD ST. JUST: My Lords, may I have the presumption to say to Lord Stonham, who I know is not present in the Chamber at the moment, that his speech, and the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, who followed him, were so clear that I have thrown away my prepared speech and am working entirely from a few notes. Everything I was about to say has already been covered. I am certain that the Government are correct in treating the drug addict as a sick person. This is an important, fundamental point from which to work. One point, also, that I think is important is that when the time comes for an addict to go into a hospital or treatment centre his treatment should at that time be entirely on a voluntary basis. I think everybody will accept this, and I am certain it is the right way to approach the matter. There is difficulty, however, when the treatment of withdrawal has started, and then in some cases some form of limited
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compulsion must, I think, be held over the patient's head. I think it is impossible that when a man has gone into hospital and started a cure, having been, let us say, a serious addict for a number of years, and with withdrawal symptoms having started, he should be in a position to say: "I have had enough; I am now going out." This may be an extremely dangerous thing for a patient to do.
May I go on to another point connected with a subject already spoken about on many sides of the House to-day—the staffing of these centres? It is a question not only of doctors, but also of finding staff, psychiatric staff, to man these centres. This is a very important and serious problem in many of the psychiatric clinics attached to teaching hospitals at the present time. The clinics have some doctors, but they cannot get the psychiatric staff. After all, a great deal of work—especially in this branch of medicine—falls on the heads of staff nurses and even on junior nurses. This is a very difficult point to deal with, and I am certain it must be gone into in great detail.
I have a suggestion to make which the noble Baroness may throw out with the greatest of pleasure if she does not agree with it. When efforts are being made to persuade these addicts to go to centres and undergo treatment of withdrawal, I am wondering whether it is possible for people who have been cured to be present and argue with those patients the reasons why they must take a cure. It is the same idea as with Alcoholics Anonymous. A patient comes voluntarily into a psychiatric hospital to take a cure and when the psychiatrist or doctor sees him the patient turns round and says, "But you do not understand what it is like". However clever a doctor or psychiatrist, or anybody, may be, this is a true fact: the doctors do not know. I believe there may be something in this argument. I think it is exceedingly difficult to send a person who has been cured as a drug addict out again into the wide world to face these people, because there is a terrible danger that he will become an addict again. But if some people who have been cured could be present at the centres, where the staff could keep an eye on them, they might be able to help enormously in persuading addicts to take the cure and, when started, to go on with it.

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I have little more to say, except that I am certain that by this Bill the Government are moving in the right direction. As we know, drug addiction is a vast problem, but the country itself is now moving forward in its awareness of what has to be faced in dealing with it. As I said, this Bill is a step in the right direction.
4.41 p.m.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: My Lords, I did not mean to intervene in the debate, and I shall not keep your Lordships more than a couple of moments; but there are two or three points on which I should like to touch. First of all, I think this is a good Bill and deserves all support, and I have no doubt that your Lordships will give it a Second Reading. Also, it is a Bill which may work out well in practice. I could not help agreeing very much with the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, when he said he felt that the legislation had come later rather than earlier. But my noble friend Lord Segal seemed to think that that was because of the rather protracted nature of the deliberations of members of his own profession, so I suppose we must accept that and give the Government credit for the Bill.
I should just like to make two points. First, I share the view, which was also expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, that it is a pity that recommendation 7 of the Brain Report was not incorporated in the Bill—though I can see that there would be grave difficulties in doing so. I also agree with the noble Lord. Lord St. Just, about how helpful it might be if we could produce cured addicts. But I wish I knew of any who had been cured of addiction to heroin. I wish it could be established that people can be cured, perhaps by detaining them long enough to get over the habit. This is a very vital aspect of the need for work on this subject, but I do not think it can be done without implementing recommendation 7 of the Brain Report.
On the question of the constitution of the tribunals and the advisory bodies set up under Clause 2, I should like to think that there was some lay representation. There will be a barrister chairman and four 'doctors on the tribunals, and two doctors on the advisory bodies. But I feel (I am speaking only for myself, and
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not for the hospital board which I represent) that we should have some experienced lay representation on those bodies. I do not wish to put down an Amendment, but I hope that the Government will look at this point before the next stage of the Bill.
4.44 p.m.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, before the noble Baroness replies, I wonder whether I may ask one or two questions. I was most interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said, and I entirely agree with him that the guilty person is not the addict but the person who peddles the drug, and it is on him that the full weight of guilt should fall. Of course, the addict must presumably have a moment of weakness when he first starts, but he is not always responsible for that.
The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, spoke of the doctor's dilemma in knowing how much of these drugs to prescribe, and for whom they are necessary. But I should like to know, if the noble Baroness can give me an answer, whether there are ever cases in which these habit-forming drugs must be prescribed. After all, there are plenty of sedatives which are not habit-forming, and I should have thought that the use of drugs as sedatives could be confined only to any essential cases. Also, I wonder whether there could be some system by which there is complete anonymity for an addict receiving treatment at a hospital. Unfortunately, as with alcoholism, these patients are apt to bear the stain of what they have been suffering from, even though they may be entirely cured. In addition, it is not always known whether they are entirely cured or will go back again to drugs. But if it were possible for them to get treatment anonymously it would be much better if they want employment afterwards.
4.46 p.m.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, your Lordships have indeed set me a task in replying, or attempting to reply, to the many questions that have been raised during the Second Reading of this Bill. At the outset. I would say to those noble Lords who do not receive a reply this afternoon that it is not because Her Majesty's Government are unable to provide it, but probably because on this occasion I, as their mouthpiece. do not have the necessary information. But those of your Lordships who know me can

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accept my assurance that I will see that replies are sent to those questions which were raised later in the debate.
The discussion has ranged widely and has covered the problem of addiction over the whole range of drugs—the so-called "hard" drugs, the narcotics and the "soft" drugs—the prevention of addiction, including controls and their enforcement, and the extending of treatment and rehabilitation to those who become addicted. The Government are fully aware that the Bill we are discussing this afternoon does not set out to tackle all these problems. I was very heartened when the noble Lord, Lord Segal, told the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, that the allegation of unwarranted delay was not perhaps justified, and that in the opinion of a member of the medical profession 18 months was not long to consult with, and secure the agreement of, the medical profession. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, will accept those words as coming not from me but from a member of the medical profession. I was heartened, too, by the fact that the noble Lord said that had the Opposition been in the position of the Government they also would have acted on the recommendations of the Brain Committee.
The noble Lord put several questions to the Government to which I shall endeavour to give him replies. He asked, as indeed did several other noble Lords, whether the Government were going to give some guidance about rehabilitation. My reply is that the Minister proposes to issue guidance about rehabilitation and the co-ordination of the services of hospitals, of local health authorities and of voluntary bodies. This guidance will be issued on the advice of the Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence, which is urgently considering the question of how best to provide effective rehabilitation. In other words, certain further measures will rest on the recommendations of this Advisory Committee.
Because of our mutual interest in the National Council for Social Service, I know that the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, will be aware that it is very active in this field, and that the Bristol Council for Social Service is hoping to provide a hostel for drug addicts. He will also be glad to know what other voluntary organisations have set up hostels for addicts. They are the Hill Farm Enterprise, near Birmingham;
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Narcotics Anonymous, in London, and the Crossroads Trust, in Watford. Others which are working on setting up hostels include the Birmingham Midland Committee for the Prevention of Drug Addiction, the Life for the World, in Gloucestershire, and the Manchester and Salford Methodist Mission. I should like to assure the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, that my own very warm feelings for the voluntary bodies will enable me to press their case strongly with my right honourable friend when it comes to a discussion about assistance for the voluntary bodies in this field.
The noble Lord also inquired (or, rather, I think that here he made a more definite statement) about the fact that hospitals were not happy about the proposals in a certain memorandum, and he asked what response there had been to this. I am not sure that my information entirely agrees with that of the noble Lord, but the Minister feels that the hospitals, after full discussion of the memorandum, are quite happy about the proposals and that the response has, in fact, been most satisfactory. Where, in the case of some teaching hospitals, additional funds are required, the Minister has informed them—and I know this will please the noble Lord—that these will be forthcoming. Some hospitals have particular problems to overcome, as has been mentioned by, I think, the noble Lord, Lord St. Just, such as the appointment of additional staff, and these are being urgently looked at in conjunction with my right honourable friend.
The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, also raised a question which I should prefer to discuss with him privately. That was the question of authoritative guidance on cannabis. I should prefer to do that privately partly because it is slightly outside the scope of the Bill that we are discussing this afternoon; but I have some facts which I should be happy to let him have. Naturally, they are not in any way private, so they could be mentioned at later stages of the Bill if it is desired that they should be on the record. I was indeed delighted to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Horsbrugh. I am sorry I cannot give a direct reply to her question on the record of drugs. A voice behind me, from the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, tells me that this reply will be available in a moment. If the noble Lady will accept that somewhat

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unorthodox voice of Her Majesty's Government I will see whether before the end of the debate we can satisfy her.
Having had a doctor in the house, as it were—my son-in-law, who has been a general practitioner for many years and with whom I have discussed this question on many occasions—I should be the first to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Segal, and with other noble Lords who have mentioned this fact, that the drug addict is very difficult. It is perhaps more truthfully said that he is amoral rather than immoral, and in his attempt to secure what he feels to be a necessity he will not always stick to the truth. I believe all general practitioners will agree with this. I should guess, with the noble Lord, Lord Segal, that most general practitioners will welcome this Bill for that reason, if for no other. I felt that the noble Lord, Lord Segal, gave us a great deal of help, as he always does, not only by way of the valuable medical information with which he supplied us but also by way of the suggestions which he made. These, I am quite sure, will be looked at carefully by my right honourable friend, because those who have been concerned in the treatment of patients of this kind are always those best able to give practical advice.
There is only one point on which I would attempt to reply to the noble Lord, and that is on the question of vesting day for the suggested prohibition of heroin for new patients. I believe my noble friend Lord Stonham has already dealt with this point most admirably, but I add this as a further comment. Heroin is regarded as the best drug for use in certain cases of intractable pain, and it is certain that the medical profession would not accept a prohibition on the prescription of heroin for the treatment of new patients. This in some way rather cuts across the point which the noble Lord, Lord Somers, made, and as to which I felt I was going to say I agreed with him, because I know that there are doctors who claim that heroin is no longer necessary. Perhaps this is a point upon which the medical profession themselves must come to some agreement and those of us who have been on the receiving end of medical attention will know that, as a profession, they are rather like the legal profession—not always unanimous
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in their acceptance of various recommendations.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester, of course, echoed again the sentiments that we should all express namely, that prevention is always better than cure. I shall certainly pass on to my right honourable friend his admirable suggestions for the involvement of more voluntary people. I know from my own work in the voluntary social service field that there is a vast, untapped source of real good will available, not only in this field but also in many others. I agree wholeheartedly with him that this must also be a very real part of our work that the Bill alone is far too narrow if we leave it merely to the treatment of the known addict.
The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, was kind enough to give notice of his questions, and I therefore hope that I can give him slightly fuller replies than I have been able to give to some other noble Lords. I should first of all like to reassure him (and my noble friend Lord Stonham will repeat this, I am sure, during the passage of this Bill) that the old machinery will certainly not be removed before the new machinery is established. I should like to give him a quite categoric assurance that this will be so.
I feel that the questions which the noble Lord raised on the subject of notification perhaps need a little general comment from me. First of all, we are, of course, referring always to notification, and not to registration. The noble Lord did not in fact use this phrase, but the layman may be a little misled if we do not keep strictly to the fact that we are talking always about notification. The basic task is to identify the addict at the time he presents himself to a doctor for treatment, and that need, which arises when first prescribing for the addict, is in most cases a difficult matter for clinical judgment. Also, under the new regulations, a general practitioner will commit a breach if he prescribes heroin or cocaine to an addict for the treatment of his addiction.
Broadly speaking, there are two possible approaches to the problem of identification. One would be to rely on the addict identifying himself—for example, by an identity card, a registered number, or some other symbol of his continuing con

1313
dition. This would require a number of formalities. There would have to be a formal assessment, a provision for appeal, continuing reports and formalities for denotification. Procedures of this kind would be elaborate and cumbersome, in order to keep the addict's recognised status up to date. In addition—and this will be quite obvious to all your Lordships—it would be open to evasion. The Brain Committee rejected this kind of approach on the ground that registration—and I quote:
"might seem to imply that the addict is officially recognised as having a right to an approved quantity of a dangerous drug".
The other approach is to leave to doctors the task of identifying the addict, and to help by making that task as easy as possible. This was the approach recommended by the Brain Committee. That is why they recommended, and the Government accepted, that there should be an advisory panel to help the doctor who is in doubt about whether a patient is an addict.
The other help that can be given is by a central reference system, run on quite different lines from registration. The scheme of notification planned by the Government will simply indicate to the central authority that a particular doctor has attended a patient whom he considers or suspects to be an addict. Notification will allow the central authority to put in touch with the notifying doctor any other doctor who has cause to inquire about the patient he notified. Provided the central authority can identify each notified person from its records, and is in a position to refer any doctor inquiring about an identifiable addict to the doctor or doctors who last notified him, it can be left to the doctors concerned to exchange information without the central records being encumbered with details which might be medically important.
I should now like to answer the first specific question asked by the noble Lord—namely, will an addict be notified that he is being put on to the register? As I have already said, there will be no register, in the strict sense of the word, but only a list of notified names. On the question of whether to tell the patient, we believe that it is better to leave this to the doctor to decide. There are obvious dangers, of which the noble Lord will be only too well aware. If the doctor were
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to tell the patient that he intended to make such a notification the patient might be scared into thinking that it meant more than it does. This would have the effect of sending the patient "underground".
The doctor is the person in the best position to judge the implications and value of any disclosure to the patient and the need to protect both the patient and himself in the immediate circumstances. The Bill will not prevent an addict from asking the doctor whether his name has been or will be notified; nor will it prevent a doctor from giving the information to the addict. Will it be possible for the addict to appeal against his name being put on the register? As I have tried to explain, the inclusion of the name in the list maintained by the central authority will have no lasting significance and the fact of notification will be safeguarded (and this, I think, is the answer to a point raised by several noble Lords) by the Official Secrets Act.
Notification will not mean that the patient is in fact an addict: all it will signify is that a particular doctor has found, or thought, that he was an addict at a given date. If, subsequently, another doctor is in doubt about that patient and asks the central authority about him, the central authority will not say—indeed will not be able to say—that he is an addict; but will refer that doctor to the doctor who had previously notified him. There will be no need, therefore, for any appeal procedure. I wondered, as a layman, whether there is any comparable procedure in the case of notifiable diseases. If so, I feel certain that I must be registered on many lists, for I have had almost every notifiable disease there is—with a few exceptions.
The third question was: Will an addict's name be removed from the list when he is cured; and will he be so informed? As noble Lords are aware, the Home Office have maintained for many years a list of known addicts. The information is obtained from examination of the records of prescriptions kept by pharmacists and by subsequent inquiries made by the regional medical officers of the Ministry of Health. The Home Office list is constructed annually and includes the names of all addicts who have come to notice in a given year.

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The Government hope that it will be possible under the notification scheme to confine the particulars required to a minimum and to keep records uncluttered by the names of patients notified too long ago. It may be that it will be possible to construct the list on much the same annual basis as at present. This will mean that automatically the names of addicts who are cured will be dropped. The treatment centres will maintain their own records and we should hope to keep the central records up to date as regards the cures by information from that source. There will be no need to tell an addict that his name has been removed from the central list; because since its inclusion on the list in the first place is of no significance, its removal from it will equally be of no significance.
I was also asked whether the central authority register would be open for information 24 hours a day, and whether there is any danger that an addict's name will appear on more than one register. We shall be having further discussions with the medical profession about the operation of the central reference service; but our present feelings are that it will be unnecessary to maintain a 24-hour service for this purpose. But this is a matter for further study.
There will be only one central record maintained by the Chief Medical Officer at the Home Office, and we shall try to organise this so that doctors will be put to the minimum trouble in submitting notifications. The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, also inquired whether an addict who was admitted to hospital suffering, say, from gallstones (I am not sure that the noble Lord actually mentioned gallstones) would still be able to get drugs from the doctor with whom he was registered. The straightforward answer to that question is, Yes.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Baroness? What I meant was, supposing that he was admitted to a hospital a long way away from where he was registered, could the doctor at that hospital give the drug, so as to avoid the patient's own doctor having to travel a long distance; or would he get into trouble if he did so?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: As I understand it—and I am subject to correction—the answer is Yes; because for medical
1316
reasons this patient would be in need of the drug.
I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, inevitably and very sensibly, inquired whether extra money would be made available for opening the new treatment centres. I should like to tell him that all hospital boards are given additional money each year for development, and in general the Minister expects them to be able to finance the treatment centres from this money. It may be more difficult for the teaching hospitals whose budgets are smaller than those of the Regional Hospital Boards; but the Minister has said that if necessary extra money will be made available from a small contingency fund. The Government do not expect the provision of treatment centres to be held up by financial considerations. It will be obvious to noble Lords that, the treatment centres having once been involved as part of the service, they will then form a continuing part of the estimates submitted yearly. I hope that this will satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Sandford. If he is not satisfied I am sure that at a later stage of the Bill he will tell me so.
I was asked to tell the House something about the treatment centres. I am not certain at this stage that it would be something your Lordships would particularly wish to know. I feel—though it may not be very humble of me to say this—that often we talk too long on one subject in this House. I would therefore suggest, that at this stage of the Bill, I should confine myself to replying to questions. The noble Baroness, Lady Horsbrugh, asked about illegal sources of heroin. As it may be for my right honourable friend to note, my noble friend Lord Stonham emphasised in his speech that we have no evidence that the black market in heroin contains drugs smuggled in from abroad or manufactured illegally, as is the case in many other parts of the world. The illicit supplies are, so far as we know, derived wholly from the legitimate supplies and prescriptions and, perhaps, from forged prescriptions. This ends the note I have, but does not give the reply that the noble Baroness sought. This I will endeavour to do.
My Lords, apart from some rather minor points of criticism, I feel that there has been a general welcome to this

1317
Bill. There has been a wealth of professional advice tendered this afternoon. If any noble Lord is not happy with my rather inadequate replies, I am certain that during the passage of the Bill there will be ample opportunity for raising again the various points which have been raised to-day. I hope that the House will appreciate that Her Majesty's Government in this narrowly-drawn Bill are endeavouring to deal with what was rightly described by one noble Lord as a terrible trade. With that in mind, I would ask your Lordships now to give this Bill a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

SHIPBUILDING INDUSTRY BILL
5.10 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 Shackleton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.
Clause 3:
Grants to assist reorganisation of resources
3.—(1) If it appears to the Board that a person carrying on—

(a) a shipbuilding undertaking in relation to which, a grouping scheme has taken effect at any time after 24th March 1966; or

(b) a main engine manufacturing undertaking,

is putting, or has put, into effect a reorganisation of the resources used by him for the purpose of carrying on that undertaking and that the reorganisation is likely to lead, or has led, to increased efficiency in the use of those resources for that purpose, the Board may, subject to the provisions of this section, make grants to that person—
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (1), after "purpose", to insert:
"and that there are good prospects of the undertaking ultimately being able to be carried on successfully without further assistance of a kind provided under this Act".
The noble Lord said: The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, will recognise where this Amendment is drawn from—it comes from the Distribution of Industry Act. In that Act it was thought fit not to give financial asistance to firms unless they showed a prospect of being able ultimately to carry on successfully without further assistance. In this case, it would seem sensible to make it a condition of giving a grant or loan of public money that it should appear to the Shipbuilding Industry Board not only that a reorganisation is taking place, or has taken place, which is likely to lead to increased efficiency, but also that the efficiency will be increased sufficiently to ensure that in the long run the group will be able to carry on without State assistance. Forming groups is not in itself a guarantee of competitiveness, or even of survival, and since public money is involved this would seem to be a quite desirable Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 27, after ("purpose") insert the said words.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD SHACKLETON): I am sure that any Amendment coming from the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has a respectable ancestry, and I acknowledge this one. The purpose of the Amendment is, of course, an entirely laudable one, that it would be no use if the result of carrying out this policy were not to lead to increased efficiency, and indeed to the continued viability of the firm, without continuing Government assistance. I should like to assure the noble Lord—and I hope that he will accept this for the reasons that I will give—that what he seeks to achieve is already provided for in the Bill. Under Clause 3(1) in order to qualify for a grant a shipbuilding group or an engine building firm has to be putting into effect or has put into effect a reorganisation of their resources which is likely to lead or has led to increased efficiency in their use. It is the intention that assistance given under this Bill should result in shipbuilding and engine building firms which will be able to stand on their own feet in three to four years' time.
Under Clause 1—the noble Lord might like to look at subsections (1) and (3) of that clause—the Shipbuilding Industry Board is required to exercise its

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powers, which includes powers for making grants and loans
"For the purpose of promoting the ability of the shipbuilding industry…to compete in world markets…"
A shipbuilding or engine building firm which is not likely to be able to stand on its own feet in the timescale we envisage will clearly not promote the competitive ability of the industry, and it would be no good wasting scarce money and resources upon it. It is for the firm to convince the Shipbuilding Industry Board not merely that it would like loans, grants or guarantees, or that with such assistance it would become somewhat more efficient than at present, but that with this support it would be able to get back on its own feet in three to four years' time. Unless the firm is able to do so, the Board could not, consistent with their duty under Clause 1, give the assistance which is requested.
While, therefore, there is no difference between the noble Lord and myself on this matter, I can assure him that his point is already catered for in the Bill—not, I admit, in such precise terms as he suggests, but I am sure that he would be the first to agree that we ought not to put into a Bill words which are not really necessary. Having gone into this very thoroughly with my advisers, I am satisfied that the purposes of the noble Lord are met.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am grateful to the noble Lord. I agree that our intentions are exactly the same on this issue. Perhaps when we began to discuss this matter I ought to have said that it would be convenient to discuss Amendment No. 3 at the same time. This Amendment deals with grants and Amendment No. 3 with loans. I would merely make the point that, so far as loans are concerned, Clause 4(4) says:
"Any number of loans may be made…to the same person."
This perhaps makes it a little more difficult to see what will be required ultimately, but in view of what the noble Lord has said I think your Lordships may rest assured that this will be the object of the Shipbuilding Industry Board, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Clause 4:
Loans
4.—
(2) Subject to the provisions of this section, the Board may make to any person carrying on a shipbuilding undertaking—
(b) whether or not such a scheme has taken effect in relation to that undertaking, a loan for—

(i) the provision or improvement of buildings, structures, works, plant or equipment used or to be used by him for the purpose of carrying on that undertaking;

(ii) the re-training of workers for employment by him for that purpose.

(3) Subject to the provisions of this section, the Board may make to any person carrying on a main engine manufacturing undertaking a loan for the purposes of that undertaking generally or for such purposes of that undertaking as the Board thinks fit—

(a) if a grouping scheme has taken effect in relation to that undertaking at any time after 24th March, 1966; or

(4) Any number of loans may be made under this section to the same person.
5.16 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (2)(b)(ii), to leave out from "employment" to the end of the subparagraph, and to insert "in the shipbuilding industry". The noble Lord said: The effect of this Amendment would be that loans could be given for the retraining of workers not only as is stated in the Bill, for employment by the undertaking for the purpose of the undertaking, but also the re-training of workers for employment in the shipbuilding industry. Your Lordships will be aware that the hope is that there will be two groups formed on the Clyde and two in the North-East of England. There may, of course, be other companies which will get together, and there may also be companies which will remain individual companies.
The re-training of workers will be necessary in many cases, and it may well be convenient for the re-training to be done by one group of companies, or by one company, on behalf of other companies. In that case, the appropriate company to get the loan would be the company doing the re-training. Under this Bill it would not be possible for a company whose workers were being retrained by another company or a group

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of companies to get a loan for that purpose at all. It seemed to me that as drafted the clause is a little too restrictive, and the purpose of the Amendment is to make it a little wider. May I ask the noble Lord whether the word "workers" is entirely clear? It is not defined in the interpretation clause. In the notice in The Times today about the Confederation of Shipbuilding Unions, the word "workers" is given a much wider significance than is, I think, often given, and I should be grateful if the noble Lord would tell me exactly what is the significance of the words in the context of the Bill. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 14, leave out from ("employment") to end of line 15 and insert ("in the shipbuilding industry.").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD SHACKLETON: I was interested in the noble Lord's arguments, one of which I must admit I had not fully appreciated. I should like to give the case as I see it, but it may well be that I should like to take further advice. Basically, this clause and the particular subsection enables the Shipbuilding Industry Board to make loans to shipbuilding firms, whether grouped or not, for the retraining of workers to be employed in the firm concerned in its shipbuilding industry. The present Amendment will have the effect of enabling the S.I.B. to provide loans to shipbuilding firms for retraining workers in the industry at large whether or not they are employed by that firm and whether or not the new skills which they will acquire are required by that firm in carrying on its business.
Paragraph 551(c) of the Geddes Report, on which this provision is based, recommends the provision of loans to groups to provide funds for retraining of workers for the purpose and benefit of grouping if the cost thereof could not be covered by existing arrangements under the Industrial Training Act. Paragraph 588 also recommends the provision of funds to non-grouped firms for the purpose of retraining. In recommending that finance might be provided for retraining purposes, it is clear that the Committee did not envisage that loans should be made available for general retraining schemes in the industry—for example, as a result of technological change to retrain workers in new techniques or crafts. Their recommendation covered only that retraining
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which is made necesssary by an internal reorganisation of resources whether in a grouped or a non-grouped firm. In order therefore that the benefits of such retraining should be secured to the firm to which the loan is being made it is clearly necessary that the retrained worker should be employed by the firm for the purpose of carrying on its business.
The noble Lord made two points which I should like to look at further. He is concerned that loans may not be available for workers who need to be retrained in a firm which would not be entitled to grants. I do not think that he is correct in this, but knowing the thoroughness with which he studies legislation I hesitate to say that I am sure he is not correct. The retraining of workers in the shipbuilding industry to meet developments in the industry generally is covered by the Industrial Training Act 1964. The limited funds available under this Bill are intended to assist the reorganisation of the industry and should not be used for matters covered by other legislation.
I think this goes some way to meet the noble Lord's point. I agree that there may be difficult areas of judgment, and that technological change may occasionally be associated with reorganisation but as the Bill stands we believe that it is wide enough to give the necessary discretion to the Shipbuilding Industry Board without exposing them to requests for help which really ought to come under the Industrial Training Act. I am not sure that the noble Lord did not have a hand in passing the Industrial Training Act into law, and I should like to say to him that that is an Act which is obviously bearing good fruit. I will certainly consider this again, and also look at his point on the definition of "workers". I assume that the word is defined in other Acts. I must confess that for the life of me I cannot recall what it is. If I may deal with this point, if necessary, at a later stage, I shall be glad to do so.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am grateful to the noble Lord. Perhaps I read the words rather more restrictively than they are intended to be read. I am still not absolutely certain that the loans would be available for the retraining of workers where the retraining was being done on behalf of another shipbuilding firm. I am glad that the noble Lord has said

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that he will look at this, and I do not propose to pursue it further now. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved to add to subsection (5):
"which, however, shall not be withheld without assigning a reason, which the Board shall forthwith communicate to the applicant."
The noble Lord said: The point of this Amendment is that it is clearly desirable that the applicant for a loan should know why a loan negotiated between him and the Board is refused by the Minister, otherwise he does not know what to do to rephase the loan in order to make it acceptable. I assume that in the ordinary way loans will be negotiated between the Board and the applicant, and that the result will be passed on for the approval of the Minister.
Under the Distribution of Industry Act the President of the Board of Trade can approve proposals for financial aid to an applicant in whole or in part, but cannot give aid in excess of such proposals or where no such proposals are made. Here the only power the Minister has is to approve or refuse a loan. If an application is refused after it has been agreed between the Board and the applicant, without any reason being given, the applicant is bound to feel unfairly treated and aggrieved. It is difficult to see what course is open to him in such a case other than to approach his Member of Parliament and have the case taken to the Ombudsman. It would save a lot of trouble for the Department if a reason were given for a refusal of a loan.
It was stated on behalf of the Government in another place that in most cases the Minister would give a reason, but that it was possible to conceive of circumstances in which it would be embarrassing to do so. No indication was given of the sort of circumstances the Government had in mind. If it is possible to conceive of them, then the Government should be able to say what are the circumstances they conceive. Otherwise the conception is somewhat imaginary and, one may say, rather barren. There is no harm at all in the Government saying that they have refused a loan because they did not think that even with a loan the company would be viable in the long run, even if the Board thought so. Nor is
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there any reason why the Government should not refuse a loan in terms that they did not consider the status or stability of a company was sufficient to warrant a loan. I think it is right to be as frank as possible, and I think that the Government would be wise to accept this Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 38, at end insert ("which, however, shall not be withheld without assigning a reason, which the Board shall forthwith communicate to the applicant.").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD SHACKLETON: I hope that the noble Lord will not think that, because I express sympathy with his purpose but am not so helpful in my reaction, this sympathy is merely designed to calm his fears. In any case, I know that it is difficult to deceive the noble Lord by false assurances. I do not think there is any disagreement between us. The Minister hopes that he will seldom, if ever, need to withhold his approval where the Shipbuilding Industry Board wishes to make a loan under this clause. If he does withhold approval it will be in the normal exercise of his administrative discretion under the Bill. It may not be for one or more specific reasons, but on the balancing of considerations. It is argued that some of the considerations may be confidential for the time being; for example, in respect of information which might affect other firms or, indeed, other industries, or in respect of new legislation which might be under consideration. It might, therefore, be undesirable for the Minister to be under a statutory duty to give his reasons for withholding approval.
I know that it is all too easy for the Executive to protect itself in this way, but there is a further sanction, of which the noble Lord is well aware, if I understand this correctly, in the Parliamentary Commissioner Bill. It will be possible in such circumstances to ask the Parliamentary Commissioner to investigate, and for him to establish whether the discretion had been properly used. It is my understanding—but I should like this to be subject to correction—that in certain circumstances the refusal to give this permission could itself amount to maladministration. It is early days in the administration of the Parliamentary Commissioner, but it

1325
is in this sort of area that he could be effective. As the noble Lord said, the Minister has given an undertaking that he will normally grant this. There is the further sanction, in that Clause 8(2)(b)(iii) requires the Board in its Annual Report to state cases where the Minister has withheld this approval for grants and loans. We think that this goes some way to meeting the point of view of the Opposition.
I am still rather sympathetic towards the noble Lord, because I remember some of the discussions on the Steel Bill, where the Government were able to be more forthcoming. But this is rather an unusual, and experimental Bill. It is possible to conceive of circumstances where it might be difficult, and I have given some examples, although it is a question for judgment whether the examples I have given are wholly convincing. But I will give an undertaking that I shall talk further to my right honourable friend on this, and if for some reason it is not possible to amend the Bill in the way the noble Lord wishes, I will see whether it is possible to give an even stronger understanding in regard to this matter. As we know, the Minister is open to Parliamentary check, as well as that of the Parliamentary Commissioner. I think it is a finely balanced argument. I will certainly undertake to consider this again, although I do not wish to mislead the noble Lord into thinking that I can make a promise.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am obliged to the noble Lord for his undertaking to give further consideration to the matter. When he is doing so, will he take into account the fact that the reference in Clause 8(2)(b)(iii), as I understand it, is not a great deal of help to somebody who has had an application refused. It may be quite a long time—a year or more—after the refusal, and I should have thought that the purpose of putting this in was rather to give a more general idea of the policy the Minister is adopting towards applications and the number of refusals that are being made than to deal with any particular refusal. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 4 agreed to.
Clause 5 [Relief for interest on loans]:
5.33 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "being interest in respect of any period before the end of 1970." The noble Lord said: The point of this Amendment is quite simple. As the clause is drafted, the Board is able to remit only the interest payment on a loan during any period before the end of 1970. Apart from the fact that the life of the Board may continue longer than that—it may go until 1971—it may well be that a loan would be negotiated, say, in 1970 itself, or in 1969. It does not seem altogether reasonable that if a man negotiates a loan in 1967 or 1968 he can get a remittance of interest in the early part of the loan, but not if he happens to negotiate the loan in 1969 or 1970—certainly in 1970. It seems reasonable that the words,
"being interest in respect of any period before the end of 1970",
should be omitted. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, leave out line 6.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD SHACKLETON: On this matter, unlike the previous Amendments, I am, I fear, in disagreement with the noble Lord. I understand the purpose behind his Amendment, but I hope I can convince him that this would be a step which could be counter-productive in regard to the purposes that we both have in mind. Under Clause 5(1) the Board's power to give relief of interest applies only to interest accruing up to the end of 1970, and, as the noble Lord said, there is no provision for this period to be extended, even if the Shipbuilding Industry Board's life is extended. The effect of accepting this Amendment would be to enable the Board to give grants in relief of interest throughout its life, including any period up to the end of 1971 for which that life is extended. The Geddes Report, in paragraph 551(a), recommended that the Shipbuilding Industry Board should be empowered not to charge interest on loans in the first three years; that is to say, in respect of interest due not later than the end of 1970. The present Amendment could result in loans being eligible for remission of interest for a period of four years or more and is. therefore, contrary to the recommendation of the Geddes Committee.

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The remission of interest, as I am sure the noble Lord will agree, is a valuable additional assistance to the industry and therefore an incentive, and the sooner a company qualifies for and receives a loan, the longer the period over which it will be eligible for relief of interest. This provision is intended as a further incentive to get on with reorganisation as quickly as possible. By extending the period during which grants could be made in remission of interest, the Amendment would to this extent reduce the incentive and blunt the sense of urgency which it is vital to maintain in the industry.
The noble Lord may say that this is not significant, and it is more important to be able to give this extra incentive afterwards. But I am sure he will agree with me that the shipbuilding industry is facing serious and urgent problems. The level of orders taken by the industry last year and during the first four months of the present year, both from home and overseas owners, was very low. Many of the firms in the industry suffer serious financial problems. It is therefore vitally important that the industry should take the necessary steps—by the grouping of firms, reorganisation of resources without delay, and so on—to become competitive.
The power of the Shipbuilding Industry Board to provide the loans is the incentive to grouping and reorganisation; the power to provide grant in remit of interest is a valuable additional assistance to the industry. And again I stress the importance of getting on with it quickly. The sooner it qualifies and receives a loan, the longer the period over which it will be eligible for interest. To be effective, such a bonus scheme must be open for a limited time only. The Geddes Report recommended a period of three years, and this has been followed in the Bill. The Amendment could mean that the time for which the scheme is open was extended to four years or more, and this would reduce the incentive and blunt the sense of urgency which in present circumstances it is so vital to maintain in the industry. Although the noble Lord knows I am not anxious to pressure him on this matter, it is so vital that almost every day counts in this matter. So I am afraid that I must disagree with him. This would not serve a valuable purpose and could even be a disincentive.
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It is, of course, arguable what period it should be. We could pick on a number. It certainly was the considered view of Geddes that it should be three years, and I see no reason to alter that; although I can see reasons against it. I stress that the firms who are considering this now have to move quickly, and anything which suggests something to the contrary would. I think. be damaging. So, reluctantly, I must disagree with the noble Lord.
LORD HAWKE: I rather wonder whether the noble Lord and the Government are not trying to ride two horses on this particular issue. He has mentioned the deterrent, the sense of urgency and using this as a deterrent to encourage people take their loans quickly. But, normally speaking, loans of this sort sometimes have an escape clause on interest, on the ground that the loan has not borne fruition for a certain number of years. I should have thought that was a much more reasonable way of looking at these loans, and that the proper course would be to use a time inducement by saying that there would be no loans available after a certain period: but always say that the Government in any case can remit the interest for the first three years while the loan is beginning to bear fruit.
LORD SHACKLETON: I did not use the word "deterrent"; I used the word "incentive"—
LORD HAWKE: Incentive, yes.
LORD SHACKLETON: —though what I am concerned with here is the deterrent effect—anything which suggests that it is not urgent, when almost every day counts. I agree that there is force in the noble Lord's arguments in general terms, but we are dealing with an unusual situation. This "package" has been carefully thought out. It has been discussed, and indeed I have myself argued the case, as I always do. I always try to argue the case for the opposition before I come along to argue the case against the oppossition. And I am convinced that the stand we have taken on this is right.
There are, of course, other provisions in the Bill with regard to funding in certain matters, and we shall come on

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to these in relation to possible investment in the company. But I think that in this particular context I am satisfied, although one could argue as to which year would be the right one. The noble Lord might even argue that it would be better to have no limit, but I see no particular virtue in adding the extra year. It is not the case that we have just "thought of a figure" and are sticking to it. This is the one that has been recommended, and I am satisfied that it is the right one.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I wonder whether the noble Lord would take this into consideration. There are, of course, under Clause 4, two separate aspects of loans. First of all, there is the loan for acquiring shares. On that, I can see that one can deal with the financial aspects fairly quickly. It may well be that the grouping first arranged will not prove to be the best one. There may be within the next two or three years adaptations of the grouping, and this may call for further financial assistance. So it may well happen that by, say, 1970, in three years' time, some further acquisitions or expansions, amalgamations, mergers and the like, will have to be considered.
The second aspect is that there are the physical consequences of the regrouping, and these may take a good deal of planning. There is the question of building structures and works, and so on, and also the point that I have already mentioned, that under Clause 4(4) the Bill envisages that any number of loans may be made to the same person. It may well be that a series of loans will be initiated over the same period. That being so, however great the incentive required in order to encourage people to get on with the work, it must be envisaged that there will be a succession of loans throughout the period. It does not seem to me entirely sensible that it is only the loans in the early part of the period that will be entitled to remission of interest. I do not propose to press this matter further now, but I should be grateful if the noble Lord will look at it again. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 5 agreed to.
Clause 6:
Assistance by acquisition of share
6.—
(3) The Board shall not dispose of any shares acquired by it by virtue of this section except with the approval of the Minister.
5.47 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved to add to subsection (3):
"if the sale of the shares would realise a sum less than that subscribed by the Board for them."
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 6. The point of this Amendment is simply this. Obviously, if there were going to be a loss to the Treasury there would be a good deal to be said for requiring a Board which is to be given the latitude we understand this Board is to be given to apply to the Exchequer before disposing of the shares. But I should have thought that neither the Exchequer nor the taxpayer would have objected in any way to the shares being disposed of at a profit. Therefore, if a profit were available on the shares it would seem unreasonable to deny the Board the discretion in this matter of disposing of the shares at a profit. The point is a simple one. It does not seem to me that there is any reason why the Board should not reduce its holding if it is advantageous to do so. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 27, at end insert the said words.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD SHACKLETON: In this case the Government have thought it desirable to provide under this clause that the Shipbuilding Industry Board should have the power to acquire shares in shipbuilding firms. Of course, one of the reasons is that if the firm concerned becomes profitable the public should be able to participate in the profits which accrue, and if a firm becomes, or looks like becoming, so profitable that the value of its shares in the market rise above their issue price, it is right that the Government should have the option of retaining those shares so as to secure for the public purse a share of the profits which the public investment has helped to make possible.
If we give the Shipbuilding Industry Board freedom to dispose of shares and relieve it of the obligation to secure the

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Minister's approval for disposing of such profitable shareholdings, it will deprive the Government of this option. One may argue on this that it is unlikely that the Shipbuilding Industry Board would not behave responsibly in this matter, and it certainly would be argued that it would not go for a quick profit merely to make the final report look good. But, unlike other bodies which are concerned regularly with investment, this is essentially a short-term Board. It is an unusual situation, and I think that the Minister must, in the end, be responsible. After all, he is going to take over the holdings after the Shipbuilding Industry Board is disbanded and I do not really see any virtue in putting this responsibility on to the Board.
Indeed, although the Board's advice can be vital in this matter I think this is a power which should ultimately rest with the Minister concerned. I can see there are dangers of adding more and more responsibility on to Ministers, and if this were a continuing Board it might be a different situation. I would not wish to argue that in the case of the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, they have these powers, but this is a rather unusual case and therefore I think it is better to leave the responsibility with the Minister who, in any case, will have to continue that responsibility after the Board is wound up.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I do not attach a great deal of importance to this Amendment and in any case one would recognise that the Board would be likely to be in close contact with the Minister. I do not think I need press this Amendment and therefore I beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 6 shall stand part of the Bill?
5.52 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: As the noble Lord is well aware, this is a matter on which we cannot see eye to eye on our side of the Committee with the Government's point of view, but the particular reason why I have put down an Amendment to leave out Clause 6 is that on the Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, expressed sympathy with my view that it would be wrong for the Board or the Government to make it a
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condition of giving financial assistance that part or all of the money should be advanced against an issue of shares, or that the loan should be convertible into shares at the option of the Board or, after 1970, at the option of the Minister. I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord is now able to tell me that the Government share the noble Lord's sympathy and that neither the Board nor the Minister will insist on having shares in the equity as a condition of giving financial aid.
It is Government policy that the Geddes recommendations that companies should reorganise themselves into groups should be implemented. It would be quite wrong if that policy were to be frustrated in any instance by insistence on the part of the Board or of the Minister that the applicant should concede shares in the company as a condition of getting the money, even if that was acceptable to the recipient of the money. It seems to me it would be equally wrong to bring the full force of Government pressure to bear on a group or a company to make them issue shares against their better judgment. I personally have no objection in principle to the taking up of shares in a company by the Board or the Government, provided it is done with the full consent of the company given in accordance with the Companies Act: but it must be a matter for agreement between the parties and must not be something imposed by one party upon the other.
I would repeat what I said on Second Reading: that at the same time there are obvious practical difficulties. If the Board or the Government have an interest in the equity of one group and not of others, or have a greater such interest in one group than in others, it would be idle for the Government to delude themselves into thinking that actions would not be influenced by that interest. I think we are all entitled to assume that Ministers or Government-appointed Boards and civil servants are human and that they do not act differently from any other group of managers who have particular interests to safeguard. To claim that they do is either self-delusion or hypocrisy. Even if ministers and civil servants sprouted wings and, by virtue of belonging to the British Government, became de-humanised, as it were, the remainder of Her Majesty's subjects could

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scarcely be expected to believe in such transformation; and it seems to me wholly undesirable that the Board or the Minister should be thought to be prejudiced in these matters by reason of an interest in the equity in favour of one group and against the rest. I hope the Government will think again about this matter, but the main point I want to establish is that, whatever may be thought of the merits or demerits of this clause, it will not be used oppressively; that is to say, it will not be used in the way of denying a group or company the financial benefits of the Bill unless a share of the equity is conceded in return.
LORD SHACKLETON: Let me give the best assurance I can that this clause will not be used oppressively. It is always impossible to guarantee everything in life, but it is certainly not the intention of the Government that it should be used oppressively, and it is not the intention of the Shipbuilding Industry Board. I should like to give rather a full reply to the noble Lord because I think it is important, although I cannot meet him on this matter—and I do not think he expects me to—so far as leaving out the clause is concerned. On the other hand, it is important that there should not be anxiety or misunderstanding about the intentions behind it.
First of all, let me say that I do not think we ought to attach overmuch importance to this particular clause. It seems to me perfectly proper that the Government, like any other provider of capital, should be enabled to invest in the particular company, and we have seen developments along these lines in other forms of public company. The framework was made—I cannot remember whether it was by this Government or the previous Government. I think the previous Government were interested in the idea of taking equity in one of the airline companies. Clause 4 empowers the Shipbuilding Industry Board to provide shipbuilding and engine firms with capital in the form of loans and in certain circumstances for the purposes described. This enables the capital under Clause 4 to be made available in forms other than a simple loan. First, the Shipbuilding Industry Board is enabled to make a loan on terms which provide for the debt to be discharged by its taking up new shares
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issued by the borrowing company, and, secondly, the Shipbuilding Industry Board is enabled, instead of making a loan, to take up new shares in the first place.
It is intended that the loans made under Clause 4 should be at the Government credit rate. Clause 5 enables the Shipbuilding Industry Board to make grants in relief of any interest payable up to the end of 1970, and this clause may result in capital being made available on very much more favourable terms than are obtainable commercially. The Shipbuilding Industry Board may then be in the position of an investor putting money into a new or reconstructed business without expectation that the investment will pay off immediately. But whereas the investor would expect to benefit later as the business became profitable, the return to the Exchequer under the Clause 4 loan will continue to be limited to the Government credit rate at the time the loan was made. In those circumstances the Government considered that the Shipbuilding Industry Board should have the additional options provided by this clause and thus have normal commercial freedom to negotiate with the undertaking seeking capital about the form in which this capital should be provided.
The noble Lord was worried that this procedure might be used too oppressively, and might in certain circumstances be used to deny a loan that would otherwise be desirable. The only reason, I should have thought, for resistance by a company in such circumstances would be the anticipation of a much higher rate of profit than the interest which otherwise they would pay. I really do not see why, in these matters between a willing lender and a willing borrower, this should not be the subject of ordinary negotiation. The first advantage of this proposal is that the Shipbuilding Industry Board could, in suitable circumstances, ensure that the public purse, from which the capital was provided, could participate in the profits which might accrue later to the borrower as his efficiency and profitability increased. Otherwise the return to the Exchequer, which initially provided the money at specially favourable terms, and possibly also with grants in relief of interest, would be limited for the period of the loan to the Government credit

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rate at the time the loan was made. If, as is hoped, the profitability of the enterprise rises above this interest rate, the benefit would go to the private investor, and the public would be precluded from participating in the profitability which its provision of capital had made possible. For the life of me, I cannot see any reason, other than the fears expressed by the noble Lord, why there should not be this provision and why the public should not benefit from their own investment. They, after all, are providing this help, and we all agree that this help is necessary. I do not think the noble Lord seriously disagrees that the Government and the taxpayer should benefit in this way.
This clause would enable the Shipbuilding Industry Board in effect not to expect any return for a period extending beyond the end of 1970. This could be done in certain circumstances, but this could be a mixed blessing. Clearly borrowers with little confidence in their own long-term profitability could see it as a way to secure what amounted to loan capital at little or no interest, and the Government would not expect the power to be exercised in such a case. This is not intended to prop up companies which cannot stand on their own feet. It is doubtful whether a company anxious to have capital on those terms for this reason would be a suitable recipient even for a loan. While the Shipbuilding Industry Board may be as sure as they can be that a particular undertaking has excellent prospects of becoming profitable, it may be uncertain as to the precise timing, or the Shipbuilding Industry Board may in the case of a second stage reorganisation, starting possibly in 1968, reach the view that the company could not be expected to pay interest on the capital quite as soon as the end of 1970. In that event the provision of capital under this clause might not be just a safe option for the borrower but an arrangement which has eventual financial advantage both to the undertaking and the Exchequer.
Thirdly, the Shipbuilding Industry Board might consider it should take a more direct interest than is normally taken by a provider of loan money in the steps taken to develop the management of a particular enterprise. It is true that the Shipbuilding Industry Board has other powers, such as that of giving
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or refusing grants under Clauses 3 and 5, and recommending guarantees under Clause 7, but these are essentially in the nature of vetoes exercised from the outside, and the Shipbuilding Industry Board may feel it could contribute more as a participant in the undertaking's equity. Indeed, there are signs, as I know, that this is already happening in order to forward some of the progress that is necessary.
This clause, therefore, provides the shipbuilding industry with certain options to meet a changing situation, and it is subject to two limitations. The cost of any shares acquired will be taken into account for the purposes of the ceiling on loans under Clause 4, so that loans and share acquisitions together cannot exceed £32½ million. further, the Minister must approve the acquisition or disposal of shares just as he must the provision of loans under Clause 4, and since the cost of any shares acquired will he met from voting money under Clause 10(2)(a) and subsection (7), there will be the usual Parliamentary control.
The noble Lord suggested—and this was also suggested in another place—that the Shipbuilding Industry Board should not be provided with this option since their competitors would be bound to suspect that the Shipbuilding Industry Board would be more favourably inclined to a firm in which it had an interest, whether or not the suspicion was justified. The option is between an equity share or a loan, possibly for as long as 15 years. In either case the Board will have a powerful interest in the firm concerned. The fact that somebody has loan capital in a firm does not alter the fact that the Board is greatly concerned with the firm's progress, and it is doubtful, therefore, whether the interest would be greater if there were equity participation instead of a loan.
I would never accuse the noble Lord of unworthy suspicion, but I really think this is not a very meaningful suspicion, and it would certainly not be the intention of the Shipbuilding Industry Board to behave in a way in which they showed particular favouritism, or were more inclined to make a loan because of the return upon it. They will have to judge this within the terms of the Act, and it seems to me proper to provide that the public should get the benefit, if benefit there should be, and that it should not be

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transferred to the private investor. I would say this is a very happy and balanced arrangement. I apologise to the noble Lord for the length of the reply.
6.8 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I do not think the noble Lord need apologise at all. I think he has given a much better justification of this particular clause than has been given before. Indeed I go so far as to say it was because of the way in which the Government approached this clause in another place that I put down this particular Amendment, because it was said, not once but several times, that this would be at the choice of the Board, in consultation with the Minister, and not—and this was the point—at the choice of the person who was going to receive the money. The noble Lord, in his justification of it, has made it fairly clear (and this of course may be so) that it may be to the advantage of both parties. What I am saying is, accepting that we have to have this clause, are we assured that it will be used only where it is patently to the advantage of both parties, and not just to the advantage of the Government; in other words, can we be assured that the Government will not deny financial assistance unless it is taken in a certain way. I think the noble Lord has answered that question in the affirmative, unless I am mistaken. I hope he has.
LORD SHACKLETON: I am sorry if my eloquence has had an even wider effect than I intended. Here is a group wanting certain support and they get it on certain terms which will be judged best for the industry. But clearly it is arguable that if people think they are on to a good thing, and loans they are going to make will bring in a good return in a few years' time, it may be that they would prefer to have it at loan capital at less than commercial rates.
It seems to me that the public interest must be respected in this matter. It is not a question of harrassment or using a stick; it is a question of arriving at a satisfactory agreement and a satisfactory negotiation. But I should not like to suggest that a firm will be entitled to loans regardless of what the prospects may be.
I hope that I have given a rational explanation. I am sure that this will be conducted in a sensible and negotiating
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way. I am sure that the Shipbuilding Industry Board will be reasonable. Equally, the companies concerned must realise that it is right that they should not get something for nothing. If there is some equity profit and there is perhaps convertible loan stock, or whatever it may be, I do not think they will necessarily want to take the equity. I do not know what form it will take, but we will say that it will take the form of convertible loan stocks. To my mind, it would be desirable that in this case the lender should not be more handicapped than any other big institutional lender. This is a considerable, if I may use the term, bailing out of private enterprise, and it seems to me that private enterprise should reasonably pay what they would pay to others, bearing in mind already the favourable terms of the Government.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I do not think I can reasonably dissent from what the noble Lord has said, except perhaps in one particular to which he almost returned in his second reply. At an earlier stage he said that the only reason for resistance to the suggestion that shares should be taken up by the Board would be the anticipation of much higher profits for the existing shareholders than if the assistance were given by way of loan. I do not believe that that is so. I think that there are other reasons, reasons of control and management, which would lead people, companies or groups to be not altogether favourably disposed towards the acquisition of shares by the Shipbuilding Industry Board or the Government. I think that one has to take that into account.
But I agree that a balance must be reached, and I hope that the ventilation of this matter in Committee to-day will to some extent enable the industry to be reassured that they are not going to be forced against what seems to be their will and their interest and, in some cases they may think, common sense, to issue shares in return for assistance, instead of taking it by way of loan, where taking it by way of loan would seem to be just as beneficial to the Government and to the taxpayer. In other words, I hope there will be no doctrinaire approach on either side in this matter.
Clause 6 agreed to.
Clause 7:
Guarantees in connection with shipbuilding Guarantees by Minister
7.—(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, the Minister may, with the consent of the Treasury, guarantee the payment by any person who is an individual resident in, or a company incorporated under the law of any part of, the United Kingdom, any of the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man of any sum payable by that person in respect of principal or interest under arrangements (whether by way of loan or otherwise) entered into by that person for the purpose of financing—

(a) the construction to the order of that person in a shipyard situated in the United Kingdom of a ship of not less than one hundred tons gross tonnage; and

(3) No guarantee shall be given under this section except on the recommendation of the Board, and the Board shall not make such a recommendation unless it appears to the Board—

(a) that the person carrying on the shipbuilding undertaking comprising the shipyard in question—

(i) has since the date of the commencement of this Act put into effect a reorganisation of the resources used by him for the purpose of carrying on that undertaking (including a reorganisation begun but not completed before that date); or

(ii) is making satisfactory progress in the preparation of plans for, or in putting into effect, such a reorganisation as aforesaid,

being a reorganisation which has led, or is likely to lead, to increased efficiency in the use of those resources for that purpose; and

(b) that the carrying out of the order in question in that shipyard is consistent with, or will contribute to, that increased efficiency and will secure that use is made of resources which are then or will shortly be available and are otherwise unlikely to be used.

6.15 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (1)(a), after "construction" to insert "conversion, adaptation or substantial modification". The noble Lord said: This is an important Amendment, and it has the backing of both shipbuilders and shipowners. After "the construction" this Amendment would add the words, "conversion, adaptation or substantial modification". The paragraph would then read:
"The construction, conversion, adaptation, or substantial modification to the order of that person in a shipyard situated in the United Kingdom of a ship of not less than one hundred tons gross tonnage."
Here we are dealing with the giving by the Minister of guarantees under Clause 7. I am told that unless this Amendment is made, in the course of the next year or two British shipowners will have to dispose of some ships to foreign buyers, if they can find any, or alternatively have the work done abroad. I quite accept that ship repairing has to be excluded from the Bill. But conversion and adaptation to a new kind of use seems to be markedly different from repairing or normal overhaul: the major conversion of, say, a passenger ship to a one-class ship, or major conversion of a freighter to make it suitable for containers or the process of what I believe is called "jumboisation". If it is a fact that British shipbuilders could be covered under the Export Credit Guarantees for such work of foreign shipowners, why on earth should they not be covered by this clause for British shipowners? But even if they cannot be so covered, there seems to be a strong case for keeping fitting out yards occupied with conversion work, especially where reorganisation is in process, if there is no other work to do in the lifetime of the Shipbuilding Industry Board or at any particular interval, rather than let the work or the ships go abroad into foreign ownership. It seems to me that there is a strong case here for widening the clause and allowing guarantees to be given, not just for construction, but also for major conversions, for adaptations or substantial modifications. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to see his way to conceding this Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 37, after ("construction") insert ("conversion, adaptation or substantial modification").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD SHACKLETON: The noble Lord has helped me, and I shall not attempt to explain his Amendment because he has explained it quite clearly. Even the way in which he used that unfortunate word "jumboisation" gives one confidence. Of course, the cost of such a process certainly could be more than the cost of building a ship. It could go up to £1 million or £2 million. There is a border line between shipbuilding and ship-repairing and it is difficult to delimit. I have already mentioned one border line in relation to this process

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to which the noble Lord has referred. There is another, that ship repairing can be carried out not only in a repairing yard which is part of a shipbuilding concern, but actually in a yard normally used for shipbuilding. Indeed, in the case of a major ship repair or conversion job, the shipbuilding yard may be the more appropriate.
This Amendment seeks to extend the clause, which is concerned with shipbuilding orders; that is, orders relating to the construction and fitting out of a ship. There are problems, some of which are awkward; one of which, of course, is this problem of definition. Conversion, adaptation and modification are not exact terms. Quite small jobs on quite small ships can include an element of conversion or modification, and the only practical way of drawing a distinction would almost certainly be to provide for a minimum contract price, to make the conversion or modification job with a contract price exceeding £500,000 eligible. That is an example.
A more important problem is that, although there is evidence that ship orders by British owners are going abroad because of the interest disparity which the clause is designed to overcome, I am sure there is no such body of evidence that ship conversion jobs are going abroad for this reason. I am very willing to consider any further evidence on this, but if it is argued, despite the absence of any body of evidence, that the extension of this provision to conversion or substantial modification jobs would have an effect on the placing of the orders, then the major difficulty becomes clear. Even large conversion or modification jobs can be carried on in ship repair yards which are not part of shipbuilding groups. If, in order to qualify, the orders had to be placed either in a shipbuilding yard or in a yard belonging to a shipbuilding undertaking, then it would be most unfair discrimination against ship repair undertakings which are not in a shipbuilding group, because it would tend to divert business from one concern to another and, in effect, to draw what is ordinarily regarded as ship repair work from specialist ship repair concerns to shipbuilding concerns.
To sum up, even if the problem of definition could be overcome, and if there were evidence that disparity in credit
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terms was having the same effect on ship repair as it has on shipbuilding, the Government do not think they could extend this clause to cover ship conversion without extending it, and possibly the Bill as a whole, to cover assistance to the ship repairing industry. Therefore, reluctantly—although one always tries to do everything that is possible—I must say that I think this inevitably goes beyond the purpose of the Bill, and it certainly goes beyond the financial Resolution, which clearly I cannot discuss. I therefore hope that the noble Lord will not press his Amendment. It has, as he knows, been very carefully considered by the Government, and there have been discussions. I should not like to say that this is just a "good try", as I see the force behind it; but I do not think that it is strong enough to amend and widen the Bill in the way he suggests.
LORD MITCHISON: Before "jumboisation" is put into the Bill, could we be told if it means to prevent a ship from being a white elephant or to make it one?
LORD DRUMALBYN: I do not know whether the noble Lord's noble friend would like to answer that question; do not think I should venture to do so.
The noble Lord has left one very small chink open to me to see if I can get information which would satisfy him, although I think we all recognise the difficulties of definition involved. Before we part with this particular point, I wonder if I could ask him one other question. Clause 7(1)(a) deals with the construction of a ship, a complete ship. I believe it is sometimes the case that a shipyard will construct a whole section of a ship—the middle section or something of that kind—and I should have thought that considering this is clearly a shipbuilding job, it should be possible to get the assistance envisaged for that kind of operation, even if assistance for adaptation and conversion were not available. I wonder whether the noble Lord would help us a little further on this. I imagine that, whatever may be said about the financial Resolution, it would probably be possible to bring that within the financial Resolution. If not, I have no doubt that it will be possible to make the necessary Amendment, if the other place should think fit. I do not know

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whether the noble Lord opposite is going to add to this discussion, because he knows a great deal about these matters. But, unless he wishes to do so, at this stage I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.26 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (3), to leave out from first "Board", to the end of the subsection. The noble Lord said: The effect of this Amendment is to leave out all the various conditions which have to be observed before a guarantee can be recommended by the Board. I would concede at once that there are obvious arguments in spelling out for the Board the conditions on which it should give or withhold guarantees. My objection is not to the spelling out of the conditions, but as to the conditions which are spelt out. It seems to be unfair for the Bill or the Board to discriminate between British shipbuilders in a way in which E.C.G.D. does not discriminate.
If a foreign shipowner places an order for a ship, the guarantee does not depend on whether the order is placed with the shipbuilder who is at present reorganising or with one who is not. It is very odd that it should do so if the order is placed by a British shipowner. The clause has departed a long way from the Geddes recommendations, and it appears that the Bill was held up for a considerable time to enable the clause to be worked out. Naturally, the clause is supported by those shipbuilders who intend to reorganise, but surely, if there is to be discrimination, the guarantee should depend on the efficiency of the shipbuilder and his ability to make a profit at competitive prices, and not whether he has to reorganise to do so.
One could really take this argument very much wider and say that in the shipbuilding industry one is dealing with an entirely international industry, and ask whether those who build ships in this country should not receive credits on the same basis as is available to shipowners if they go abroad for the same order. The point is that shipowners should not be driven abroad to order from foreign shipbuilders if they can get the ship built in this country on the same terms, apart from the credit terms. Yet in certain
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cases this is happening and shipowners are being driven to order abroad merely because of the credit facilities given and guarantees attached. I should have thought this was the right way to have tackled the matter rather than try to attach it as an additional incentive to encourage people to reorganise. Whether they do so or not, it seems to be only fair and reasonable that shipowners should not be deterred from ordering in any particular British shipyard because the same terms which they can get if they order a ship abroad are not available to that particular British shipyard. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 2, leave out from first ("Board") to end of line 21.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD SHACKLETON: As the noble Lord has pointed out, subsection (3) of Clause 7 provides that the Minister shall not give a guarantee except on the recommendation and in accordance with the criteria, and the criteria is spelt out clearly, and it seems to me to be desirable. In recommending guarantees, the S.I.B., in the exercise of any of its powers, must consider whether the action it recommends would promote the ability of the shipbuilding industry to compete. The noble Lord seeks to delete the detailed criteria. He argues that they are in some degree contrary to the Geddes Report and could be used with unfair discrimination against shipbuilding firms which did not need reorganising. It is the contention—and I know no one connected with the Shipbuilding Industry Board who would say otherwise—that there is no shipbuilding firm in the country which does not need reorganisation. Of course, the situation has changed very considerably since the Geddes Report was published. In certain respects the change works in support of the noble Lord's argument; namely, the rather desperate situation and the tremendous decline in orders which have led to the Government's producing so very much bigger a scheme for £200 million.
But there is, of course, a difference from loans obtained under the Export Credits Guarantee Department, which the noble Lord realises are guaranteed by the Department, though they are provided from commercial sources. This money comes from the Exchequer. Again, while Geddes did not specifically recommend

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that loans might not be made in accordance with these criteria, he considered that preference should be given to reorganisation. The urgency of the situation and the certainty of those concerned that reorganisation and regrouping virtually everywhere are going to be necessary, have made the Government face this squarely and insist on applying these criteria.
LORD DRUMALBYN: May I intervene for one moment? Is the noble Lord right in saying that the money which is to be guaranteed comes from the Exchequer? Are we not confusing two sets of loans here? Because the loans that are to be guaranteed in this case are the loans to be made by banks to the shipowners in periodic payments.
LORD SHACKLETON: Yes. I beg the noble Lord's pardon. I know that if ever I go wrong the noble Lord can always be relied on to put me right in the nicest possible way. I would withdraw from that argument.
Let me look more closely at my brief on this. The arrangements under this clause are temporary, and the guarantees can be given only on the recommendation of the S.I.B., which will be dissolved at the end of 1970, or possibly in 1971. The real difference—and this, I fear, is where I went wrong—apart from the technicality that the loans come from commercial sources rather than from the Exchequer, is that the Geddes Report envisaged a modest ceiling. I must apologise to the noble Lord for getting that wrong. But, even so, this does not significantly alter my argument, that the whole purpose of this Bill is to stimulate reorganisation, and it is the view of the Government that these criteria are necessary and need to be specifically stated.
At one stage I considered whether these criteria were necessary, and whether Clause 1 covered the point. But after discussion it is quite clear that these are the criteria which we want to apply, and we want to apply them specifically. Whereas there could be a certain argument on justice in this matter, I do not believe that any real issue of this kind arises. The reorganisation will be necessary and will come about, and it will be of a kind that it is vital we should proceed to as quickly as possible.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am obliged to the noble Lord, but when he looks very closely at the conditions he will see that they are very tight. The person must have:
"since the date of the commencement of this Act put into effect a reorganisation".
It is not just that he has to be contemplating it; he must have already put it into effect. It may well be that in the meantime, before the reorganisation has been put into effect—
LORD SHACKLETON: I do not think the noble Lord is quite correct. The paragraph goes on
"or … is making satisfactory progress in the preparation of plans".
Perhaps on this occasion I have been able to correct the noble Lord.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am obliged to the noble Lord. As he said, the paragraph says:
"is making satisfactory progress in the preparation of plans for, or in putting into effect, such a reorganisation as aforesaid".
But it may be a very difficult matter to judge how far a shipbuilder has got in his plans. I should like an assurance from the noble Lord that, so long as a shipbuilder has signified his intention of going ahead with plans and has indicated that he is doing something in that direction, a guarantee on a ship which he is to build will not be refused in a case of that kind. It is very important that this should not be regarded in too tight a manner; otherwise we may find that orders which could have kept a firm going will go elsewhere, and the firm may go out of business altogether before it has even been able to lay the basis of the plans. I hope that the noble Lord will give us an assurance that this provision will be interpreted in the widest possible manner.
LORD SHACKLETON: I am not sure that the argument which the noble Lord has advanced does not weaken his case. If the firm is in danger of going out of business, the reorganisation or making of plans is all the more necessary. If it is in danger of going out of business, and has not even started planning for the future, it may not be a suitable recipient of this help. But here again I must stress that this is part of the package and, as I understand the position, there is a great deal of

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activity towards reorganisation. So far as I know, of the requests put forward for guarantees (of course, the requests cannot yet be accepted because the Bill has not been passed), the Shipbuilding Industry Board expects to agree every one; and there are other ships under consideration.
I can see the anxiety of the noble Lord, but I must stand on the principle. However, I should be very willing to go into this a little further, and perhaps give a little more information on it at a later stage of the Bill. Certainly I can make no promise, nor give any undertaking of the kind for which he has asked; nor do I think it would he proper to do so. But I may be able to make him a little happier, which may also relieve other people's fears. But we must stand firm on the principle.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am grateful to the noble Lord. I take the view that if a firm is going to remain in business it must get orders, and that that has an even greater priority than reorganising. There is no point in reorganising unless the firm has orders in hand and has something to get on with. But in view of what the noble Lord has said, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7 agreed to.
Clause 8 [Reports and accounts]:
6.40 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: This is a minor, probing Amendment put down to discover whether the statement of "grants" in the annual report is to include remission of interest on loans, which under Clause 5 is to be treated as grant. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 4, at end insert ("including any such grant as is referred to in subsection (2) of section 5 of this Act,".—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD SHACKLETON: I realised that this was a probing Amendment. As I understand it, all the grants provided in the Bill are covered, and there is therefore no need to itemise this particular kind of grant. So I think the noble Lord has achieved his purpose.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am much obliged. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD DRUMALBYN: The reason for putting this Amendment down is because it seemed to me that a mere statement of loans made is not very informative unless one also knows what is the rate of interest at which, and the period for which, each loan is made. I recognise that the terms of the loan may be complicated. Nevertheless, the information asked for in the Amendment should help Parliament and the Press without misleading them in any way. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 4, at end insert ("and the rate of interest at which and the period for which the loan is made.").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD SHACKLETON: I entirely agree with the noble Lord. He is asking something that is reasonable, and I do not think there can be any objection to it. I would have been inclined to accept this in principle and to suggest that another Amendment should be put down at Report stage. I am willing to consider this with the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, and any other noble Lord who is interested, certainly before Third Reading, when I think we should also be able to amend it. If I gave the noble Lord an absolute assurance that the Government would—I hesitate to use the word "instruct", because I am not sure without checking it how far they can give a precise direction on this—but would certainly procure that in some way the Shipbuilding Industry Board include this information in their annual report, I wonder whether that will satisfy him. In other circumstances I should have preferred, as would the noble Lord, to put this in the Bill, and certainly if the Shipbuilding Industry Board were going on for a long while then I think it should be framed in legislation. But I hope that, having given the assurance that it will be put in, this will meet the noble Lord's wishes. He might wish to consider that aspect of it further; but certainly I agree with him that this is a worth while objective.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Naturally, one always likes to have things of this kind put in a Bill if it is at all possible, but

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we are in the difficulty, which I completely recognise, that the industry is very anxious that the Bill should go through as quickly as possible, and one does not want to hold it up in any way at all. I am not quite certain how long it takes for another place to make an Amendment, and if on inquiry the noble Lord were to find that this could be dealt with quite expeditiously, then I should have thought that it was an Amendment worth making. It certainly would not be debated, and would he readily approved in another place if it were made. At any rate, I am grateful to the noble Lord. We can discuss this. I beg leave to withdraw this Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 8 agreed to.
Clause 9:
Dissolution of Board
9.—(1) Subject to any order under subsection (2) of this section, the Board shall cease to exist at the end of 1970.
(2) The Minister may at any time before the end of 1970 by order direct that the Board shall not be dissolved until such later date, not being a date after the end of 1971, as may be specified in the order.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "exist" and to insert "operate". The noble Lord said: Perhaps it may be convenient to take Amendments Nos. 11, 12, 13 and 14 together. I am afraid that what the noble Lord said on the last Amendment does not encourage me to think that he will accept this series of Amendments.
LORD SHACKLETON: The noble Lord does not mean No. 14, but Nos. 11, 12 and 13.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Not No. 14? Would the noble Lord like to deal with that separately?
LORD SHACKLETON: It is a separate point, I should have thought. If I may deal with it in that way, I can perhaps be more helpful on it.
LORD DRUMALBYN: The purpose of these Amendments is to secure that after the Board has ceased to operate and before it finally ceases to exist it will make a final report. It seems decidedly odd that a body should issue its final report after it has ceased to exist, and subsection (4),
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which provides for the Minister to make an order laying down, so to speak, its obsequies, does not help very much. I shall deal with the other point when I come to it.
LORD SHACKLETON: I am sorry. Perhaps I should not seek to guide the noble Lord. Perhaps it would be as well to mop up No. 14, too.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I think it would be convenient to discuss them all, because they were conceived as coming together. It seems to me desirable that Parliament should know exactly what are the assets, rights and liabilities which the Board hands over to the Minister. I strongly suspect that my Amendment No. 14 is defective, but I hope that the noble Lord will approve of at any rate the way, if not the actual words, in which the four Amendments seek to deal with the demise of the Board and what might be described as its last testament, which customarily comes before, rather than after, death. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 32, leave out ("exist") and insert ("operate").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD SHACKLETON: Perhaps I may deal with the first three Amendments and then make some comments on Amendment No. 14, too. These Amendments accept the principle that the Board's operations should cease on those dates, but leaves the date of the actual dissolution of the Board indefinite; and the Amendments obviously have the purpose of providing a period after the Board has ceased to operate during which it will be able to prepare its final report and put its affairs in order. I submit that these first three Amendments are not really necessary. The Government recognise that such a period may be necessary, but have provided for this, first, by making provision for the extension of the life of the Board (and in considering such an extension the need of a period for tidying up the Board's affairs will be taken into account) and by providing in subsection (4) of Clause 9 power for the Minister to modify the provisions of Clause 8. For example, as regards the periods covered by the final report of the Board, which have been precisely laid down, power is given to the Minister to modify that, and this is to meet the situation at the time.

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These provisions enable the Minister to ensure that the affairs of the Board will be put properly in order before its dissolution. They also provide flexibility in dealing with administrative matters which cannot be foreseen at present and which may arise on the Board's dissolution. At the same time, they ensure that there will be no doubt as to the date on which this statutory body will cease to exist. I think it should be possible to secure that the last few weeks of the Board's life is a running down period in which it is largely tidying up its affairs, and it should be able to prepare its final report and accounts during this period in such a way that they cover the time right up to immediately before the Board's dissolution. The final report and accounts could then be rendered formally, immediately before dissolution. In any event, if, when the time came, there was any difficulty about this, Clause 9(4) is wide enough to enable provision to be made whereby the final report and accounts could be rendered on its behalf after its dissolution by the final members of the Board. There is also a technical difficulty on the word "operate".
May I now turn briefly to the last Amendment, Amendment No. 14? It is arguable that there is really no need to require the Board to report on the exercise of its functions or to repeat information already published about the rights and liabilities to be vested in the Minister. I must say that the Government are sympathetic to what the noble Lord seeks to achieve. In other circumstances, I should have suggested putting down an Amendment, perhaps at a later stage; and this can be done. But while I agree that this sort of information ought to be in the Statutes, we are not legislating for all time; we are legislating for a period of three or four years. It may be that in 1970 or 1971 there will be a situation which will call for further legislation. This we do not know; but it would be wrong to ask Parliament to consider that at the moment. There may be further matters which will have to be dealt with. I am not suggesting that there should be a successor body. This is intended to be a major rescue and reorganisation operation.
I think, therefore, we have enough flexibility. But I will give an under
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taking to the noble Lord, by Amendment or othewise, that we will ensure that the final report will contain the sort of thing he wants—both the functions and any recommendations that may be made. Certainly we shall see that the final report gives a general review and, in particular, an up-to-date statement of the rights and liabilities vested in the Minister. I will give a clear undertaking that this will be provided for, and we can consider whether in the circumstances there is any need actually to put down an Amendment.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am much obliged to the noble Lord for what he has said. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 9 agreed to.
Clause 10 [Financial provisions]:
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, in subsection (7), to leave out "(a)". The noble Lord said: This is the last of the Amendments we have to deal with. Before I move it, I should say to the noble Lord that we very much appreciate the work he has put into this particular Bill amid all his other responsibilities and cares at the present time. I know he has had to take this Bill on rather at the last moment.
This particular Amendment looks very small. The subsection as at present drafted says in effect, as I understand it, that where the Board (or, after 1970, the Minister) exercises an option under a loan agreement to take up shares under Clause 6(1)(a), the Minister must repay the loan into the Exchequer out of moneys voted by Parliament—that is, out of the annual Vote. The annual Vote can, of course, provide for this contingency in advance. The Minister will then hold the shares he has taken up out of the loan agreement. What I do not understand is why shares should be paid for out of the annual Vote in a case where they are taken up under a loan agreement some time after it was made, but should not be paid for in the same way if they are taken up against an advance at the time when it was made.
If there is to be this distinction between the way in which shares and loans are

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financed in the case of options exercised, why should there not be the same distinction when the original advance is made partly by making a loan and partly by subscribing for shares—or, for that matter, entirely by way of subscribing for shares in one case and entirely by way of loan in the other case? The point is that a loan should be repaid, whereas the money paid for the shares will not normally be repaid. Even if the shares are sold it is unlikely that the amount received will be exactly the amount paid for them. To a considerable extent this is really a bookkeeping matter; but it is also a matter of accountability to Parliament. I should be grateful if the noble Lord could explain why there is this distinction. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 8, line 5, leave out ("(a)").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD SHACKLETON: I was about to say that this is a most unintelligible Amendment. It is one which I had to take the greatest care in understanding. I agree with the noble Lord that what it deals with may not be a major point, but certainly it is interesting and significant. I hope the answer I give will satisfy him, as I doubt whether I shall be able to give him another. Subsection (7) of Clause 10 preserves the distinction that is made in Clause 10(1) and Clause 10(2) of the Bill—and this follows the usual practice—between the financing of loans by the Board and the financing of all other expenditure by the Board. The loans are to be financed directly out of the Consolidated Fund, as the noble Lord knows, and all other expenditure, including the purchase of shares, is to he financed out of Votes. The power to make loans dischargeable by the issue of shares calls for a special provision to maintain this distinction in any case where a loan is in fact discharged by the issue of shares. The necessary provision is contained in Clause 10(7) which ensures that the Consolidated Fund is reimbursed from Vote money for any loan money originally taken direct from the Consolidated Fund under the terms of Clause 10(1) which, instead of being repaid under the terms of the loan agreement, is discharged by the issue of shares. Perhaps that is clear. Possibly, if I had put in a
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full stop it might have been easier to understand.
The power of the Shipbuilding industry Board to enter into loan agreements containing provisions of this nature derives from paragraph (a) of Clause 6(1). The power given under paragraph (b) of that subsection is a power to acquire shares directly and not through convertible loan agreements. When shares are acquired directly, the purchase will in any event be financed out of Votes, since the cost will be "an expense" of the Board and therefore covered by Clause 10(2)(a). The reference to paragraph (a) of Clause 6(1) is therefore precise and exact. The deletion of this reference in subsection (7) of Clause 10 would really add nothing to the clause. I hope that answers the noble Lord. I could give him a fuller explanation. I should like to thank him for his help. I would say that this has been a pleasant change from South Arabia—but not without its complications.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am much obliged to the noble Lord. I found his explanation entirely clear, but I am afraid it prompts me to ask a question that I asked on Second Reading. What is the amount of the Vote for the purchase of shares during the current year? I wonder whether the noble Lord is able to give me that information.
LORD SHACKLETON: That is a very fair point; but I am afraid I do not have the answer. Perhaps I may give the noble Lord the answer on Third Reading. I remember that he asked that question. I do not know how far it is possible to provide in anticipation of legislation; but, of course, it is always possible to proceed by Supplementary Vote.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am much obliged to the noble Lord. I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clauses 10 and 11 agreed to.
Clause 12 [Interpretation]:
7.0 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 12 shall stand part of the Bill?
THE MARQUESS OF ABERDEEN AND TEMAIR: I have no exact wording for an Amendment which I should like to

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move, but if I am not out of order, I should like to refer to a particular point. Clause 12, the interpretation clause, refers in line 34 to the "main engine manufacturing undertaking and obviously accessories not essential for the vessel are excluded from grant. There is, I claim, one class of machinery which cannot be looked upon as an accessory and without which a ship would be useless; that is to say, the refrigeration machinery. There are certain classes of vessels which cannot go to sea without this machinery.
Without refrigeration they are quite useless. When I first started work (I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, will agree when I say that I was a worker; and my mates and I felt that we were workers) we were making fishing vessels of less than 100 tons and at that time the vessels did not have refrigeration plant; they had to use ice in the cargoes. To-day no fishing vessel can take to sea without refrigeration.
I do not wish to extend the argument fully, but the other vessels to which I wish to refer (they are mentioned in the Geddes Report) are classed as refrigerated vessels. In paragraph 90 of that Report there is an explanation of the importance of refrigerating plant which is in increasing demand. It is true that the demand is not so great as it was at one time. I may say that the firm with which I was engaged produced refrigerating machinery for refrigerated vessels and supplied 50 per cent. of the entire world output. We are a long way from that to-day, but in fact such vessels are built to take the plant and cannot be used without it. The vessels are used for the importation to this country of meat and many other items. A third class of ship in which refrigeration is used is the passenger vessel, which to-day, of course, is always fitted with refrigerating machinery. I would ask the Minister to consider whether it is right to exclude that very important plant, which is essential for a ship, from any form of financial help. I cannot put it in the form of an Amendment, but I hope that the suggestion may be accepted and considered by the Minister.
LORD SHACKLETON: I certainly recognise the noble Marquess as a
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worker. He is the oldest apprentice in this House, and probably in his long and interesting life has known more about shipbuilding, and indeed industry, than any Member of your Lordships' House. So one is bound to respect what he says. I fully accept the force of the argument advanced by the noble Marquess, although I have not had an opportunity to consider his suggestion. The fact is that there is a large amount of ancillary equipment for ships, including, I am afraid, refrigeration equipment, which is not covered by this Bill. The noble Marquess may say that this is a mistake, but the Bill relates basically to the organisation of the shipbuilding Industry. The refrigeration industry is not part of that industry, and were we to act on the suggestion of the noble Marquess we should be going far beyond the purposes of this Bill.
I will consider what the noble Marquess has said, and if there is any further explanation that I can give to him I shall be happy to do so on Third Reading. But, so far as I can tell not only is this point not covered, but I do not see how it could come within the terms of the Bill or of the Financial Resolution. I suppose that this type of equipment would be bought-in, and the provisions of the Bill are not directed to that particular aspect of shipbuilding. The particular aspects to which the Bill is directed are described in the Long Title. So, reluctantly, because I should like to be of help to the noble Marquess, I can offer little hope, beyond an undertaking to comment further at a later stage.
THE MARQUESS OF ABERDEEN AND TEMAIR: If I may, I would remind the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that the matter is mentioned in the Geddes Report.
LORD DRUMALBYN: The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has said that the matter is not covered specifically, but there is no doubt that it is broadly covered by the words in Clause 1(1):
"For the purpose of promoting the ability of the shipbuilding industry in the United Kingdom to compete in world markets …"
In the Long Title there is a reference to "marine engine manufacturing undertakings". I do not know whether a marine refrigeration engine is a specific and separable kind of engine, but if so I should have thought this could be

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brought within the ambit of the Bill quite simply. The great difficulty that I pointed out on Second Reading is that the margin by which the cost of British ships has to be brought down is quite considerable—it is of the order of 15 per cent.—to make the industry competitive. Any way in which costs can be brought down, by the organisation of plant or by any assistance which can be given, to make British shipbuilding as a whole more competitive would certainly be very much in line with the objects that we are pursuing by this Bill, and I do not think this suggestion should be rejected out of hand. I think that the noble Marquess has conferred a benefit by drawing attention to this point.
LORD SHACKLETON: It is, of course, an interesting point, but I should be very surprised if we could alter the definition, which I think is what the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, wants to do in relation to main engine manufacturing. The fact that there is a definition does not mean that it can be altered to mean something which is not implicit in the name itself. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, who supported the noble Marquess, has been able to put a point now which he would not be able to put on Third Reading, because we should no longer be able to add to the Bill. But your Lordships are usually pretty tolerant, and I will try to give an answer. I must say, although I make no complaint, that this is rather a "swift one" to be bowled in the last stage of the Bill, and if I have not batted as well as I should, I think that the noble Marquess must bear some of the responsibility. However, I will certainly think further about it and tell the noble Marquess the answer.
LORD SOMERS: I note that there is a reference in the clause to engines for propulsion. Are steering engines therefore excluded?
LORD SHACKLETON: I think that I should have to go back to the noble Lord. Lord Drumalbyn, to help us, but as I understand it, they are not necessarily a "main engine". For all I know, such engines are manufactured by a main engine manufacturing undertaking, but I am going so far outside my brief that I really think I had better say no more.
Clause 12 agreed to.
Remaining clause and Schedule agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, we are all agreed on the urgency of this Bill, and if there are any further matters with which we wish to deal by Amendment, perhaps they can be dealt with on Third Reading. I beg to move that this Report be now received.
Moved, That the Report be now received.—(Lord Shackleton.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am agreeable to the course proposed by the noble Lord. I feel certain that any further matters that have to be dealt with can be dealt with on Third Reading.
On Question, Motion agreed to, and Report received accordingly.

ROAD TRAFFIC (AMENDMENT) BILL
7.12 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 Popplewell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD AIREDALE in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 to 6 agreed to.
Clause 7 [Exemption from disqualification and endorsement for offences against construction and use regulations]:
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD moved, to leave out Clause 7 and insert the following new clause:
Discretion of court not to endorse driving licence in certain circumstances
".The requirement under subsection (1) of section 7 of the 1962 Act that the court shall order the particulars of the conviction of any offence specified in Part I or Part II of Schedule 1 to the 1962 Act, and of any disqualification ordered on such conviction to he endorsed on the driving licence of the convicted person, shall not apply to any offence specified in paragraph 19 of Part 11 of Schedule 1 to the 1962 Act. The Court may order that

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particulars of the conviction of such an offence shall be endorsed on the driving licence of the convicted person if it thinks fit so to do."
The noble Lord said: I beg to move the new clause which stands in my name on the Marshalled List. I called attention to this point on the Second Reading of the Bill. I recognise that Clause 7 makes some improvement on the law as it stands now under the 1962 Act—let credit be given where credit is due. My Amendment will go a little further in what I think is the right direction.
As the law now stands, the owner of a commercial fleet of vehicles is held vicariously responsible for the roadworthiness of every vehicle in his fleet, and his own personal driving licence is in peril of suspension by the endorsement procedure in the event of a prosecution. This new clause gives the owner a statutory defence. He shall not be liable to be disqualified under Section 5 of the Road Traffic Act if he proves 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. This difficulty is awkward to overcome. It means that the fleet owner has to prove a negative, and that is always difficult. It will put him to considerable trouble and expense to do so. I think that normally it would oblige him to attend court. It may be that it is allowable to submit written evidence, but obviously that would weaken his case, and where his personal licence is in danger it would normally be obligatory upon him to attend court in order to make sure that his case was as strongly put as possible.
I would put this question to the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom. Is it really in the public interest to twist an employer's arm to this extent and take up his time—it usually takes a full day, travelling to court, and with all the waiting about that is inevitably involved—in order to deal with this kind of danger that besets him? My Amendment would remove the threat of endorsement one stage further away from the fleet owner. The court would still have power within its discretion to order an endorsement following a conviction, but the onus of proving that it was justified would be thrown on the prosecution. Of course, this does not in any way affect
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the punishment by fine which would follow conviction in the normal way, but it would ensure that a fleet owner is not needlessly put at risk of losing his personal licence and therefore obliged to spend valuable time attending court defending himself. If in special circumstances the court were satisfied that it was a proper penalty, an endorsement could still be ordered.
There is one further point which I think is worth mentioning briefly. On Second Reading I expressed the view that the penalty of endorsing the fleet owner's personal driving licence seemed to me an illogical, if not an improper, penalty. Endorsement, leading by the totting up process to disqualification from holding a driving licence, is normally the punishment for driving offences which cause danger on the road and indicate a lack of personal care in driving which in the public interest should be corrected by a stiff punishment. In most cases of offences of this kind involving fleets of vehicles there would be no such element present with regard to the fleet owner—none at all. Indeed, it would really be as logical to endorse the driving licence of the Minister of Works on account of a breach of regulations by a motor car in the Government car pool as it would be to do this. All cars in the fleet come under the Minister of Works, and a logical application of this Bill would make him responsible, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, with his special responsibility in that Ministry might find his own licence endorsed, too. This is something I should not wish to happen in any circumstances, but I am making my case that this is unfair and illogical to the point of being ridiculous.
The logical case is not to act against the person, the fleet owner, but to act against the vehicle by suspending the vehicle licence for a short period. There is a respectable precedent for this in the 1962 Act, in that a carrier's licence for a goods vehicle can be suspended for breach of the Construction and Use Regulations. Therefore, I would suggest to the noble Lord that if the Government want an additional penalty on top of the fine as in the 1962 Act, this would seem to be the logical course to follow.
I am surprised that Her Majesty's Government have not been more receptive to this since I made the suggestion on

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Second Reading. Here I should thank the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, in his absence, for the lengthy reply which he gave to the points which I raised, but it indicated no sort of welcome to the improved ideas I was putting forward. However, I am content for now to accept the basis of the existing law, illogical though it is, and to move the new clause on the Marshalled List, which will at least remove the immediate threat to the fleet owner's driving licence, and I hope that the Government will accept it. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Leave out Clause 7 and insert the said new clause.—(Lord Nugent of Guildford.)
LORD SOMERS: I should like to support my noble friend's Amendment. I am not against endorsement as a principle, but the whole point of it seems to be to provide a record for the magistrate of the driving faults of the person before him. It is of no importance to the magistrate to know that on such-and-such a date the person standing before him exceeded the 30 m.p.h. limit by 2 m.p.h., or that he parked in a wrong place, or something of that sort. What he wants to know is whether the man is a dangerous driver, or a careless driver, and what his general standard of driving is. I do not feel that purely minor offences like this deserve a licence endorsement. I have heard of a case of a young man who was driving through a town somewhere in the West of Wales at about 3 o'clock in the morning, when there was nothing else on the road, and he attained a speed of 35 m.p.h. He was fined £5 and his licence was endorsed. While I am not in favour of breaking the law, I feel that this sort of practice makes motoring law, as it stands at present, somewhat absurd.
7.22 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF PUBLIC BUILDING AND WORKS (LORD WINTERBOTTOM)THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF PUBLIC BUILDING AND WORKS (LORD WINTERBOTTOM) I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, feels that we have moved in some direction to meet an objection to existing legislation which I think both sides of the Committee agree should be altered. The only thing that separates us is the measure by which existing legislation is to be altered, either by our Amendment or
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by that of the noble Lord. He has said that this is a wider freeing of the rights of the individual in this matter. As a fleet owner, I think it is certainly an uncomfortable feeling to know that at the moment one can receive a series of endorsements to one's licence which can lead to the loss of the right to drive, even though the offences have not been committed by oneself. It is not only because of my present position, to which the noble Lord referred, that I share this view, but also as a farmer with vehicles on the road—and I understand that in that feeling I am not alone in this House.
It is generally agreed that something must be done to amend present legislation, but again, in the philosophy lying behind so much recent legislation on road traffic (one remembers the Road Traffic Bill with which we dealt not long ago) there has been a tendency towards stricter control of suitable penalties, because we are all concerned at the recent death toll that road traffic is taking. It is for this reason that the Government do not feel that they can go as far as the noble Lord would like them to go in his Amendment. The reason is that the type of offence covered by the Amendment is only one of a number specified in the Schedule—and from the point of view of road safety by no means the least serious of them—for which conviction carries with it the additional penalty of licence endorsement and, in consequence, the risk of disqualification. The purpose of the provisions relating to mandatory endorsement and the totting-up procedure is to create a compelling reason for better observation by motorists of their statutory obligations, and to ensure that persistent and serious offenders do not escape adequate punishment because of leniency by the courts.
This question of leniency has been drawn to the attention of your Lordships on numerous occasions. Knowingly to use, or to cause or allow the use of, a vehicle in a condition in which it is a potential danger to all road users, and which might be the cause of a fatal accident, is, in the view of the Government, too serious an offence to admit of any justification for mitigating the present penalties. To do so in the way proposed by the noble Lord would be unwarranted in itself, would create a precedent for other exemptions from the totting-up

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provisions, and could not fail to weaken the whole structure of the penalty provisions.
We do not feel that we can be too lenient in this matter of the safety of all road users. We must make the owner of ha group of vehicles remember at all times his vicarious responsibility, and use his best endeavours to make certain that the vehicles which he owns, and for which he as an individual is responsible, should be kept in the best possible working condition. It is for this reason that I must, with regret, reject the noble Lord's Amendment, although I am, as I am sure we all are, in sympathy with its aims.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: I must thank the noble Lord at any rate for the manner of his rejection even if the matter was so unsatisfactory; and I should also like to thank my noble friend Lord Somers for his support. The brief to which the Minister was speaking repeats, of course, the point made in the letter which I received from the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd: that any concession of my point that the action should be against the vehicle rather than against the person would in the view of the Ministry create a dangerous precedent. This is, of course, a typical Ministry of Transport reaction. In a large number of cases I should accept that their collective wisdom would justify their sticking their toes in, but here I believe that they have an illogical procedure. I am sure that this point will not stand the test of time. The 1962 Act was wrong in this respect. I do not think it would necessarily be conceding a greater leniency to change the law in this respect. To suspend the licence of a vehicle is quite a serious punishment, and could, indeed, be more serious financially than suspending the driving licence of the fleet owner.
But it is the logic of the matter with which I am concerned. I find something objectionable in proceeding against the personal driving licence of the fleet owner when, as will be the case, he has no control of the condition of the vehicle. I am not criticising the philosophy underlying the endorsement and disqualification procedure, which in my view is a sound procedure for personal driving cases. However, I have made my point. I hope I have made some mark with the Ministry of Transport and that they may
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think about this in the future. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7 agreed to.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM LORD WINTERBOTTOM moved, after Clause 7, to insert the following new clause:
Extent of powers under Motor Vehicles (International Circulation) Act 1952
". It is hereby declared for the avoidance of doubt that—

(a) the power conferred on Her Majesty by section 1 of the Motor Vehicles (International Circulation) Act 1952 (Orders in Council for implementing international agreements about international road traffic) to make provision by Order in Council for modifying any enactment relating to vehicles or the drivers of vehicles includes power to make provision corresponding to any such enactment; and

(b) the reference in subsection (1)(b) of that section to any enactment is a reference to any enactment passed before or after that Act.".

The noble Lord said: On behalf of my noble friend Lord Shepherd I beg to move Amendment No. 2, and, with the permission of the Committee, I should like at the same time, to speak to Amendment No. 3 because it is consequential on this Amendment. This is quite an interesting point. Its purpose is to remove a doubt about the correct legal interpretation of Section 1 of the Motor Vehicles (International Circulation) Act 1952. Even when this Act was passed some doubt was expressed as to whether it covered any enactment relating to vehicles in existence in 1952, or would cover enactments passed in the years subsequent to 1952.
Apparently this point has not caused any great difficulties so far, but we now have before this House the Criminal Justice Bill, and this may affect the issue. Under the Criminal Justice Bill power is given to a magistrates' court, when committing a person to a higher court for sentence in respect of a disqualifiable road traffic offence, to order the person concerned to be disqualified until his case is heard by the higher court. A certain procedure is laid down about the production of the licence, its endorsement and notification of the particulars of the ordering of the interim disqualification. It will be necessary to adapt this procedure for persons who drive in Great Britain on permits used under the

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provisions of the Motor Vehicles (International Circulation) Order 1957, because these permits will not be covered by the procedure laid down by the Criminal Justice Bill when it becomes law.
I suppose the situation foreseen is that a foreign visitor to this country comes in with an international driving licence, gets into some traffic trouble which justifies disqualification, and that it is conceivable that the circumstances covered by the provisions of the Criminal Justice Bill will apply. One can foresee the situation in which a foreign visitor might have to leave his vehicle here, and with the result that sundry complications would arise. It is with this difficulty in view that this Amendment has been tabled, so that the provisions of the Criminal Justice Bill, when it becomes law, can be applied in these cases. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 7, insert the said new clause.—(Lord Winterbottom.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I beg to move Amendment No. 3.
Amendment moved—
In the Title, line 6, at end insert ("and to remove doubts about the extent of the power to make Orders under the Motor Vehicles (International Circulation) Act 1952").—(Lord Winterbottom.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Title, as amended, agreed to.
LORD POPPLEWELL: In expressing my thanks to your Lordships for dealing with this Bill, may I say that I sincerely hope that everyone will realise the importance attached to the particular principles involved in the Bill. I think it is a good step forward in accordance with the rules of safety which we are trying to instil, and in our efforts to create a better atmosphere on the roads and reduce the accident record so far as the nation is concerned. All of us are very concerned indeed with the very high toll of the death rate which we experience with the motor car, and we should take every possible step to prevent it. I am sure that this is a very useful Bill, and I am very grateful to your Lordships who have taken part in the Committee stage. Now that my
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noble friend has returned, I will simply give the Bill my blessing.
House resumed: Bill reported, with Amendments.

NIGERIA
7.36 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY LORD BROCKWAY rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what action has been taken to facilitate a peaceful solution of the constitutional confrontation in Nigeria. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to ask permission to put the Unstarred Question which I have on the Order Paper. I have thought very carefully about whether I should maintain this Unstarred Question and initiate this debate. The situation in Nigeria remains critical, and a wrong word may exacerbate it rather than contribute towards a solution. For this reason I ask your Lordships to excuse me if I keep more closely to my notes than is usual.
Since the exchange of Questions and Answers in the House last week I have done my best to obtain the fullest information to enable a balanced decision to be made. I have seen the Minister of State, his Principal Adviser on West African Affairs, and the Minister in this House; I have seen the Commissioner for Nigeria and the Permanent Secretaries to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Industry and Trade in the Federal Government; I have seen the High Commissioner Designate appointed by the penultimate Government in Nigeria, and learnt something of the attitude of the East. I have seen the Head and the Deputy Head of the Commonwealth Secretariat. I have seen individual Nigerians and British citizens who have been resident in Nigeria. From these conversations I have been impressed not only by the urgency of the crisis but by the need for caution in approaching it. I shall endeavour to speak in that spirit, and I know that those who follow me will do so also.
The situation in Nigeria is urgently critical. Probably as many deaths have occurred as in the Israeli/Arab war. There are probably as many refugees. There is a blockade now of the East by the Centre. The last news indicates that the Centre may feel compelled to invade the East by force. Should this happen, disastrous civil war, with incalculable loss of

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life and ruinous division and antagonism, would occur. To those who have been closely associated with events in Nigeria this would be a tragic disappointment. We had hoped that it would be a model for Africa. It is worth remembering to-day that tolerance and patience shown by the South in the achievement of the united Independence of Nigeria. The East and West regions of the South could have obtained their independence two years earlier if they had been prepared to go forward without the North. They preferred to wait until the North was ready. The East was prominent then in urging the unity of all Nigeria. Both Dr. Azikiwe of the East and Chief Awolowo of the West showed great statesmanship at that time.
We must speak carefully to-day because of the sensitivity of independent States to any suggestion of external intervention in internal affairs. My supplementary question eight days ago was interpreted as an indication that the Commonwealth Secretariat had offered mediation. My actual words were that the Secretariat had made "an approach on these matters". In fact the deputy head of the Secretariat was very careful in his visit not to infringe Nigerian independence. His visit was entirely fact-finding and exploratory.
The rights inherent in independence must be very much in our minds as we seek to find a way to help heal the wounds in Nigeria now. I am aware of the series of helpful steps which the Government have taken since April and before. They have been concerned to prevent an outbreak of violence but have refrained from overt actions of a character which might give any suggestion that the Commonwealth Office has retained any residue of the colonialist attitude.
It is clear that any appeal for a settlement, from whatever quarter, must have the support of the Nigerian Government and of the Parties which are in dispute. I am so anxious to avoid saying anything which would aggravate the difficulties that I do not propose to attempt to estimate the events which have led to the present division between the Federal Government and the East. These events affect bitterly the present dispute, but for us they can await history. The immediate need is to avert further disaster.
Nigeria has proved its recognition of the value of membership of the Commonwealth. It is also loyal to the Organisation of African Unity with which the African independent States are associated. African nations in the Commonwealth and the O.A.U. are deeply concerned about what is happening in Nigeria, and are anxious to help. Indications of "good offices" have already been made by Ghana, Tanganyika, Zambia, Gambia and Basutoland within the Commonwealth, and by Ethiopia, Liberia and Dahomey among other African States. There is one Englishman—or rather a Scotsman—in Africa whose advice would be trusted by African leaders: Malcolm MacDonald. He has indicated his concern.
The political climate in Africa is such that any hopeful approach should come from Africa itself. It would be wise, even, in the first instance, that this should not he too formal. The dispute between the Federal Government and the East has now become one involving sovereign status. Therefore any mediation by heads of State might be unacceptable to Lagos as implying equality of status. This does not rule out, however, the offer of "good offices" which the East has to-day indicated its readiness to accept.
The African Governments, with their own problems of minorities and disputed areas, are against secession and the division of existing States. None of them has recognised Biafra. Biafra has declared its sovereignty; but still I do not believe a solution is impossible. Colonel Ojukwu has not completely shut the door. The Nigerian Association which he is proposing includes many common services, including shipping, harbours, ports, railways and airways, free movement of goods without customs barriers, co-ordination of currency management and monetary policy, and dual citizenship. General Gowon has not yet been so specific, but he also has indicated that he is thinking of a centralised authority for common services, which would provide extensive autonomy for the States. I hope he will soon expand this in a communication to the military governors of the regions. Whether the term is used or not, both sides are proposing what is in effect a confederation in Nigeria.
The problem of the areas of the States remains. General Gowon has proposed

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twelve, which would involve the separation of the oil producing area of the East, which Colonel Ojukwu resents. But this could surely be a matter for consideration by the Commission which is examining the problems of the future Constitution of Nigeria. We should welcome this approximation of the views of the Federal Government and the East on the relations of the Centre to the States. This is one of the most important issues in Africa to-day, and Nigeria might again give an example which would be of value to the whole continent.
Africa needs not further Balkanisation, but further union on a basis which recognises continuing racial and tribal loyalties. It might even be that Nigeria could find a basis of association between Regions and the Centre which could not only contribute to the solution of its own problems but even encourage some of its neighbours in West Africa to become associated with it. Very often in politics the solution of localised difficulties can be found with eyes on a wider horizon.
There is an immediate British interest, or rather an interest of those concerned in the oil companies whose installations are stationed in the East. At present their tankers are permitted to breach the blockade, but the question arises to whom they should pay their royalties. I hope they will not become involved in the conflict. The advice of the Commonwealth Secretary, Mr. Herbert Bowden, is probably wise—that they should place what is due into a suspense account until the issue is resolved.
The alternative to an approach of conciliation may be tragic conflict. The point is near where there can be no return. One welcomes the appointment of twelve civilian Ministers, including Chief Awolowo, to the Federal Executive. This should contribute an all-Nigerian solution. The East may be alone in having defied the Government, but the West, where Chief Awolowo has influence, is also uneasy. The civilian element in the military government may hold back the tendencies towards conflict. Nevertheless, the danger is very near. General Gowon may feel that he is compelled to act militarily.
May I speak for a moment not in my role as a citizen of this country, not as a Member of this House, but as one who has identified himself with the African
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struggle for political freedom, often in opposition to the policies of Governments here, and as one whose happiness it is to claim so many Africans and their leaders as my friends? I beg them not to allow this further disaster to occur in Nigeria. My plea to the Federal Government is to hold its hand. My plea to the East is to keep the doors open. My plea to the peoples of Nigeria is to control sectional passions in the interests of co-operation within a wider and liberal union.
My Lords, I believe Parliament would have failed in its duty if we had not taken notice of this grave issue. Our minds are on the problems of the Middle East, but meanwhile issues are arising in Africa which may be as decisive for the future of the world—Nigeria to-day, Rhodesia to-morrow. Nigeria is the largest nation in Africa. What happens within it will affect the future of the whole of this controversial continent. The last thing which we should do in the psychological disturbance of Africa is to give any impression of imposing our will. Only as friends can we try to contribute to a solution which will avert tragedy for Nigeria and all Africa. It is in that spirit that I appeal to the Government and to the Commonwealth Secretariat. I know what they have done, and that this appeal will not fall on deaf ears. It is not for either to dictate, but both can help to create an atmosphere in which African Governments, within the Commonwealth and outside, will be encouraged to explore urgently the best means of contributing to a solution and in which both the Federal Government and the East will be encouraged to respond.
7.58 p.m.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, I have listened with the greatest interest to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, which I think could not have been better. He has put the case in the most moving and simple terms, and he obviously has enormous knowledge of this subject. I am making this short intervention because Nigeria is the one country in Africa which I have had the honour to visit. I went there with a Parliamentary delegation as one of the people who were invited to attend the Independence Celebrations. We even gave to the Government of Enugu the Mace and the book

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by Erskine May which is always given at the start of these Parliaments. I have vivid recollections of how extraordinarily happy one felt that here, at last, the Africans had evolved, in a very peaceful manner, a Parliamentary system which they themselves were extremely keen to work and which should be a great success.
There did not seem to be any of the problems which beset any of the other countries. There was no question of the whites and the Africans quarrelling in any way, because the whole of Nigeria was being governed by African Nigerians. That particular problem which has bedevilled so much of the African world simply was not there. Equally, one felt that the enthusiasm of the Africans and their friendliness towards those of us who had the honour to go out there representing this country was really tremendous. One felt that they were most anxious to carry on the traditions which we had started. Everything seemed to be just what one had hoped for the future. Therefore, it was with a great feeling of sorrow and unhappiness that one read of the happenings of last year.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has struck the right note. Obviously we cannot impose or suggest anything much from this country. But we have always had, or so it seemed, the respect of both the Eastern and the Western Nigerians. As we have that respect, I agree with the noble Lord's suggestion that perhaps an appeal to the Africans on such lines might help to delay matters before anything absolutely desperate occurs which would be quite irrevocable. Perhaps their friendship with us in the past might allow them to enlist, anyway our friendship if not our help, in trying to solve these Parliamentary and Federal problems. They are desperately difficult problems.
I agree with the noble Lord that, because of the vast size of Nigeria and the fact that it has been so enormously successful, this is probably one of the most important decisions which can be taken. One remembers the things that happened there leading up to independence. There was the establishment of the university and of the medical
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school at Ibadan, and the other universities that have been started. One hoped that all these things would lead to the creation of a number of Parliamentarians who were educated and interested, and able to carry through what admittedly is a complicated system, the Parliamentary system. That that should all be destroyed by precipitate action on one side or the other is nothing short of tragedy.
I am sure that everyone will agree with me in the hope that Her Majesty's Government will be given the opportunity of being able to help in some way, at any rate to stop any irrevocable step in the breaking out of hostilities. It seems that the people are hesitating. Although in a sense they are lined up against each other, they are not anxious to begin a civil war, the most terrible of all wars. I hope that, with the words which the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has contributed to this debate—and no doubt others will follow—together with the words of the Commonwealth Secretary and the support which everyone would give to any move to try to stop the breakup of this remarkable coming together of African interests in Nigeria, we might well stop anything desperate happening, and that that which we all hoped for so much at the Independence celebrations, namely, the successful development of Nigeria, can still take place in spite of the difficulties which at the present time seem so overwhelming.
8.5 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, for giving us this opportunity of briefly discussing one of the more threatening developments on the international scene. That scene, as we all know, is threatening enough; clouds of violence and uncertainty hang over much of Asia. The Middle East, to put it mildly, is disturbed; and now the threat of civil war, with all its attendant horrors and possible carnage, is suspended over the largest State in Africa. I do not always find myself in total agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, but I am in entire agreement with him that this is a serious, indeed potentially a tragic, situation. I should like to echo what my noble friend Baroness Elliot of Harwood has said, and say how delighted I was

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at the caution and circumspection with which the noble Lord addressed himself to this problem, because we all know how much deep emotion underlies what he said.
Unlike the noble Lord and my noble friend, I cannot claim any personal knowledge of Nigeria and its peoples; yet, like most of us, I had entertained high hopes of this great and comparatively new independent member of the Commonwealth. When all around successive coups had accelerated the downward spiral in Africa, until quite recently Nigeria seemed set on a much happier course. It had seemed the best guarantee that West Africa, indeed Africa as a whole, would not witness, to use the noble Lord's phrase, a progressive Balkanisation.
I need not therefore dwell on Nigeria's importance. It is the largest African State. It has considerable and growing resources. As the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, reminded us only a few days ago, Nigeria is in many ways the key to Africa, and its future stability and prosperity is of not inconsiderable importance to us in this country. I will not dwell on our assets there, our growing imports of oil—not insignificant in quantity, and not insignificant because they come from the Atlantic area. It is not just those bread and butter, or the palm olive and oil aspects of the matter, which mainly interest us this evening. It is because we are partners with Nigeria in the Commonwealth, and because this country has had such a long and close association with Nigeria. Therefore, I echo what the noble Lord has said about the dangers in the present situation, and I echo what he said about the disastrous result which can flow from its further aggravation.
Perhaps I may take the opportunity provided by this short discussion of asking the noble Lord who is to reply whether he can bring us up to date, briefly, with the present situation. I should like to know, in particular, whether he has anything further to add about the situation in the Northern area of Eastern Nigeria. How many of the British nationals, for example, have availed themselves of the facilities to leave, which I understand have been put at their disposal by the British High Commissioner? What can he tell us of the blockade? Can he confirm, as I understand is the position as
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sketched by the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, that despite the blockade oil exports are still flowing?
What can we do in this situation? Quite clearly, this is pre-eminently a situation in which this country and its representatives must act with the utmost delicacy. Ultimately, this Nigerian dispute must be settled, we hope for the better, by Nigerians themselves. What to well-wishers might appear as friendly and studiously neutral advice or mediation, might to those in Nigeria appear, or be portrayed, as arrogant neo-colonialist interference. In my view, that is why we must resist any temptation to offer any unsolicited advice or mediation in these difficult circumstances. We must neither interfere nor be thought to be interfering. I believe that this applies with equal force to other well-wishers of Nigeria inside Africa or in the Commonwealth Secretariat, or wherever it may be. This may appear to be somewhat fairly negative advice—it is. I should like to qualify it in two respects: and here I am saying nothing either original or what has not been said already in your Lordships' House this evening.
In the first place, I very much hope that, despite the present difficulties, the economic progress and development of Nigeria will not be held up; that oil, exports and trade will continue to flow. This, of course, immediately involves the difficulty which the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, touched on: the difficulty over royalty payments, which could become very acute in a few weeks' time. As the noble Lord said, in another place the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs mentioned the possibility of making such payments into a suspense account. This would only postpone a final solution of this aspect of the difficulty, but it would at least postpone it; we should gain a little time here. I hope myself that this idea can be pursued and that agreement—if only temporary—can be reached on it, and I should like to ask the noble Lord who is replying whether he can confirm what I understood the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, to say: that that has been tendered as official advice by Her Majesty's Government to the oil companies concerned.
My other qualification is to make it clear that we are not opposed to our offering advice or mediation, or whatever

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it may be, as such, but only to our offering it unsolicited. The same applies to the Commonwealth Secretariat and the other well-wishers of Nigeria, whether inside or outside Africa. I share the inhibitions expressed by the noble Lord about mediation, should there be a possibility of it, at Head of State level; and, for example, should the good offices of the Commonwealth Secretariat be invoked by the responsible authorities in Nigeria I, for one, could see no objection to their trying their hand, and I know they would do it circumspectly.
It would be clearly more dangerous for Her Majesty's Government, or a distinguished British individual, to respond to such a request from Nigeria and Nigerians. But the stakes are so high, the hazards in any further deterioration of the situation are so great, both in Nigeria and Africa, and the well-wishers of Nigeria in this country are so numerous, that I believe we should, if we were to receive an appropriate request, whatever the dangers involved, be prepared to respond. I do not, of course, wish to prejudge in what way we should respond. That said, I await with interest the noble Lord's reply.
8.15 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD WALSTON): My Lords, I too should like to add my thanks to those of the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, and the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, to my noble friend not only for having introduced this debate, but also for having approached it in such a restrained and helpful manner. This is, of course, a matter which has given Her Majesty's Government, and all the many friends of, Nigeria, and indeed Africa, a great deal of worry over a long time. Your Lordships will remember this is not something which has blown up suddenly; there have been many unhappy events in the past year or eighteen months which have led up to the present state. I will not go into them; they are well known to your Lordships.
We have been watching carefully—indeed anxiously—what has been happening in Nigeria, and we have done so for many reasons. We have done so, of course, because we are fellow members of the Commonwealth; we have done so
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because as humane people we hate to see other human beings suffering and dying—especially if they are, as is so often the case in such events, innocent human beings. Also we have watched with anxiety because we know so well the enormous potential of Nigeria, the potential not only in material wealth—which is as great as that of any of the richest countries of Africa—but also because of the potential to which the noble Baroness referred: the universities, places of education, Parliamentary processes and example which was there for other countries of Africa to see and to follow.
We have watched, too, because we ourselves have such a close historical tie with Nigeria, both in its earliest days, and in its more recent days—because, after all, it was this country that brought Nigeria to independence. We have, as noble Lords who have spoken have mentioned, immediate, perhaps personal, interests in Nigeria. There are at the moment some 20,000 United Kingdom subjects working and living there. We have a vast trade with Nigeria, an annual turnover of some £170 million, and British firms have very wide investments there which have been to the benefit both of Nigeria and of ourselves. There are, of course, the relatively newly discovered oil deposits which are being exploited now with such enormous success.
For all these reasons we have watched with very great anxiety, as I say, what has been happening. Perhaps at this point, in mentioning the United Kingdom subjects, I should reply to the question of the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, about the number of British nationals who have left. I cannot give him the exact figures, but there are in the Eastern Region a substantial number of families, women and children, who have left on official advice. In the North, so far as I know, no British subjects have left. In the East there remain United Kingdom subjects who are doing a job mainly in the oilfields, and we hope that it will be possible for them to remain there, going on doing their job, which is a very valuable one to the whole country.
We have of course made it very plain to the leaders of Nigeria, to all Nigerian leaders, that we have no intention whatsoever of intervening in the internal affairs of Nigeria. It is only right that we should make that completely plain.

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But that does not mean that we take no interest in what is happening; and we have also made it plain to them that we hope very strongly that the present difficulties can be solved, and solved peacefully and by negotiation. Her Majesty's Government share with those noble Lords who have spoken the belief that it is in everybody's interest that a formula should be found which will enable Nigeria to remain a single political economic and international unit on a basis which commands general support. We have said this on earlier occasions, and I repeat it now.
Perhaps I should answer the other question of the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, concerning the advice given, or reputedly given, to the oil companies. Her Majesty's Government have given no official advice to them. We do not feel that that is our job. They are independent bodies who act in what they consider to be their own best interests and, obviously, on the best legal advice and other advice which they can obtain. In my view it would not be right for us to give them any official advice on this matter.
I come to the matter of mediation. The Nigerians know that we are ready to help in any way we can, if they ask us to do so and if our help is acceptable to all parties. In fact, as your Lordships will remember, there was an attempt at mediation by General Ankrah, of Ghana. He was able to make what looked to be a constructive and helpful contribution in the early months of this year, when he was able to bring together the leaders of both sides near Accra. Unfortunately, this did not prevent the East's breakaway move at the end of May. But I should like to pay tribute to the efforts which the Ghanaian Government made to bring the Nigerian leaders together again, and in those efforts the Ghanaian Government had our fullest sympathy and support. Others have offered help, too. Several African leaders have said publicly that they would be ready to mediate if they were asked to do so, and there have been some rather less publicised messages from Heads of Government in Africa and elsewhere. Also, since the actual secession of the East a number of African leaders have called for a peaceful solution for the sake of Africa. So there is no dearth at all of
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good will or of offers of help from a very wide range.
With regard to the Commonwealth Secretariat, it is perfectly true that towards the end of April one of the Deputy Secretary-Generals of the Commonwealth Secretariat paid a visit to Nigeria at the invitation of the Nigerian Government. As he himself explained in a Press conference at that time, his visit was purely a fact-finding mission so that he could make himself familiar, and through him the Secretary-General and the Secretariat, with the situation in one of the many Commonwealth countries which the Secretariat serves. These visits are nothing unusual; they are often paid, and it is clearly right that the Secretary-General should keep himself informed of developments in the countries of the Commonwealth, and that he should maintain a close liaison with their Governments.
But it would not be right that the Secretary-General should be required to report to other member Governments his impression of the internal affairs of a member, an impression which has been obtained while he was making these visits or members of his staff were making visits on his behalf. Therefore we have not approached the Secretary-General in any way to attempt to get him to disclose to us things which may have been said during that visit. During his visit the Deputy Secretary-General made it very clear that the Secretariat had no authority on its own to intervene in the internal affairs of a Commonwealth country, but that it would naturally not refuse to help in trying to resolve the crisis if the country asked it to do so. In other words, there have been offers of mediation not only from African countries and other countries but also from the Commonwealth Secretariat.
There is no need for me to remind your Lordships that mediation cannot be imposed on a sovereign Government, and nothing can be done unless those concerned wish and request it. But, of course, this does not prevent any of us, including the Commonwealth Secretary-General, from keeping in touch with the Government of Nigeria. I am quite certain that the Government of Nigeria—and I say this from what the Secretary-General and his Deputy and others have told them—know very well what sort of facilities

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would be available to them to help in the present crisis if they wished them.
Now let me come to the British position. There are two things which stand out very clearly. First of all, the Federal Government look upon the present difficulties as essentially an internal matter for Nigeria. I believe that they realise full well the widespread international concern, but as the internationally recognised Government of Nigeria they are entitled to claim that other Governments have no right to intervene. Internationalising the dispute therefore clearly poses very special problems.
Secondly, it is clear that in spite of our interest in Nigeria—indeed, one might say to some extent because of our interest—neither the Federal Government nor the Eastern Government would regard a public initiative by Her Majesty's Government as being entirely helpful. If anyone is able to help in this mediation, and I sincerely hope that they can, it is not necessarily ourselves. There is no reason to apologise for this but, for reasons which have been mentioned by my noble friend and by the noble Earl, it would be unrealistic to pretend that these feelings do not exist in Nigeria. I repeat that we have no wish whatsoever to interfere in Nigerian internal affairs, and it would be misleading to let anyone believe otherwise.
Therefore our position is this. We should be delighted to see any initiative from any quarter, and I am thinking particularly—and here I am at one, as so often, with my noble friend—of Africa itself, which meets the crucial test that it would have a chance of success. To press for a more active British role not only would be misinterpreted in Nigeria but would not help ourselves or the Nigerians or those British people living in Nigeria. But this does not mean that we are not deeply concerned with the course of events in Nigeria. I agree with all those who have said that it would be a tragedy if fighting were to start. I still hope that it will be possible for the present dispute to be solved peacefully, because once violence is used it is very difficult to prevent it from spreading and to bring it to an end.
I hope the Nigerians will realise the very real amount of sympathy which exists for them in this country—and I
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am sure that any of them who read the report of this debate will be in no doubt about that—and in the Commonwealth, too. For our part we are ready, as we always have been, to help in any way we can; but it is difficult, it is impossible, for us to do so unless all those concerned want our help. At the moment this is not the case. Meanwhile we want to remain on good terms and to continue to do business with all Nigerians on the same disinterested basis as in the past. Our greatest wish is to see this conflict brought to a peaceful conclusion, so that this great country of Africa can continue on the path on which it started so confidently and so excitingly not many years ago, to develop its vast resources of all kinds for the benefit of its own people, for the benefit of the continent of Africa and for the benefit of the whole world.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, before the noble Lord finally resumes his seat, I wonder whether I may ask him one question arising from his reply. Given the nature of this debate and the care with which he was replying to the Question, I did not wish to interrupt him in the course of his remarks, but I was puzzled by what he told me about the official advice tendered by Her Majesty's Government, but not to the oil companies. I would remind the noble Lord that on June 6 in another place the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs said in reply to a Question—and I quote from column 811 of Hansard:
"I understand that oil supplies are normal at the moment. I hope that that will continue to be the position and that any oil royalties will be paid into a suspense account, if necessary, for a temporary period."
That statement was authoritatively tendered in Parliament by the responsible Secretary of State, and the question I should like to ask the noble Lord is: When does advice from Her Majesty's Government constitute "official" advice?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, perhaps we are getting somewhat into technicalities here. What I meant when I said that no official advice had been proffered was that there was no letter from the Secretary of State, in his official capacity, advising the oil companies to do this. He said these words in public as his hopes, as what he would like to see happen. Undoubtedly that is true.

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But I think there is a technical difference between giving official advice and making the remarks to which the noble Earl has referred.
LORD BROCKWAY: Again technically before my noble friend sits down, may I ask him one question? In view of the terrible urgency of this matter—in which, according to the last reports, the Federal Government now feels that it must resort to arms—is it not possible for Her Majesty's Government, in association with the Commonwealth Secretariat, to communicate with the African members of the Commonwealth to see whether, jointly, they can take some action to prevent this tragedy occurring in Nigeria?
LORD WALSTON: I think that if my noble friend reads carefully the words that I used he will realise that there can be no doubt in the mind of the Nigerian Government that there are many countries in Africa, many Commonwealth
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countries, the Commonwealth Secretariat and ourselves who, if we were asked, would be very happy to help. There can be no doubt that the Nigerian Government know that; so there is no point in telling them that again. The point I wished to stress was that offers of unwanted help might be construed as being interference, so that, until there is a definite indication that the Nigerian Government wishes for that help which it knows is available from all these sources, not only would it do no good to offer such help but it might even do harm if we were to attempt to force it on them.

GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (MONEY)(No. 2) BILL
Reported without Amendment.
House adjourned at twenty-eight minutes before nine o'clock.