Lords Sitting of 22 March 1967

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Lichfield.
The VISCOUNT CLIFDEN—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his brother.

TURNHOUSE AIRPORT: FLIGHT DIVERSIONS
2.36 p.m.
THE EARL OF PERTH: 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 what percentage of the flights in and out of Turnhouse were diverted in the ten days beginning February 27, and how many passengers were inconvenienced.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD WALSTON): My Lords, 27 per cent. of air transport flights were cancelled or diverted during this period; 2,486 passengers were affected.
THE EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for the figures, which I am sure all your Lordships will agree are very shocking for a ten-day period. Do Her Majesty's Government realise that, with the tendency to use bigger planes and faster planes, the figures are going to get worse in the coming years, and this is of particular importance regarding flights from Europe? I therefore hope that Her Majesty's Government will consider the situation very seriously.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, perhaps it would put the matter in a slightly better perspective if I were to give the figures not simply for the short period which the noble Earl asked about but for the three years, 1964, 1965, and 1966. Only 0·7 per cent. of all scheduled air transport flights were cancelled or diverted because of cross-winds. I agree
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with the noble Earl that this is a matter which requires serious attention, and it is being looked at very carefully, particularly in view of the flights coming in from Europe which he mentioned. I think it would be unfortunate if people got the idea that the high percentage figure I gave for the ten days beginning on February 27 was in any way representative of the longer period.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, arising out of that reply, may I ask the Minister this further question? While there may be some justification for saying the past record has not been too bad—though it has been bad enough—is the Minister aware that by 1969–70 British European Airways hope to be operating new aircraft, which will accentuate the present disadvantage unless some action is taken before then?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I would not accept that the new aircraft will be less capable of landing and taking off in cross-winds. But, again, I accept that this is an undesirable situation, and it is hoped that a decision will be taken in the fairly near future to improve it.

TURNHOUSE AIRPORT: SECOND RUNWAY
2.39 p.m.
THE EARL OF PERTH: 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 long it will take to construct the second runway at Turnhouse, once the decision has been taken to go ahead.]
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, it will take about four and half years.
THE EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, this is a most shocking figure. May I ask whether it includes the time needed to deal with such items as the acquisition of the necessary land and the drawing up of plans and specifications?—because your Lordships will know that if there were any objection to the acquisition of land the need for a public inquiry would arise and the delay could be even greater. Could the noble Lord tell us whether this matter of the acquisition of land is

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included, and, if not, whether the Government would now start taking the necessary steps to get the land for the purpose?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, that figure takes account of all the operations that would have to be done. The actual detailed engineering, planning and construction would take about three and half years. Land acquisition and planning approval, which of course would include a public inquiry, if one were considered necessary, would probably take about 18 months to two years. But those periods could to some extent overlap, and, as I said, the overall time would be in the neighbourhood of four and a half years from the time the decision was actually taken to go ahead.
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, have I heard aright? Would it really take four and half years to construct another runway? I heard on the radio this morning that the United States have constructed a 9,000 ft. runway in three months.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, the noble Lord did not hear exactly right. It will not take four and a half years to construct the runway; it will take three and a half years. Twelve months makes some difference, I submit. The three and a half years period includes the detailed' engineering planning, as well as the construction. I can certainly hold out no hopes that we can emulate the United States and construct this runway in nine months.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: My Lords, would the noble Lord see to it that these preliminary matters are gone ahead with at once, so that it will be less than four and a half years before the runway is operating?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, as I said earlier, I hope that the decision as to whether or not this plan should be proceeded with will be taken in the very near future; and from then on it is estimated that four and a half years will elapse before the runway becomes operational.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, do the Government appreciate that if there is to be no new runway until 1972, that will mean that British Euro-
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pean Airways will have to operate their new aircraft, and indeed their Tridents as well, in and out of Edinburgh with a severe economic penalty? Is that not a crazy way to try to run an airline?
LORD BYERS: My Lords, would the noble Lord say what are the major factors which lead to a period of three and a half years being required to design and engineer such a project? Surely this is not the first runway that has been constructed in this country.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, it is not the first runway, but every runway is individual. We cannot buy them "off the peg" and lay them down; they have to be planned for the particular place in which they are being laid down. Indeed, unless this scheme were given absolute priority, not only over runways, but over many other schemes of civil engineering, which I think many noble Lords would feel at least equal with this, it would be impossible to do this in significantly less time.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, could the noble Lord say whether this period would be reduced if we introduced a Bill to nationalise land?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, could the noble Lord at least give an assurance that the three-and-a-half years period includes all necessary works, including any necessary diversion and reconstruction of roads?
LORD WALSTON: Yes, my Lords, it does. That is a relevant point, because as the noble Lord well knows, there is a main road which at present conflicts with the proposed new runway, and therefore a new roadway would have to be built.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, could the noble Lord say how long the idea of having a new runway has been under consideration?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I am afraid I cannot give any specific answer to my noble friend, because a good deal of thought was given to this matter before the present Administration took office.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, would the noble Lord admit that the American construction industry is more than twelve times as efficient as ours?
LORD WALSTON: No, my Lords, I certainly would not admit that.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: But the figures show that.
LORD PARGITER: My Lords, would my noble friend ask the Department to look at the time it took to construct runways during the war, particularly for heavy bombers, to see whether this period could possibly be reduced?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I have already made it clear that the period could be reduced if this matter were given absolute priority over various other objectives. But, as I say, I think that not only noble Lords on both sides of the House, but the public at large, too, would complain, and justifiably so, if many other valuable and important civil engineering projects were pushed aside in order to make this runway.
THE EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, since it is possible to start at once on the necessary acquisition of land, may I ask once again that that be proceeded with now, rather than continuing the delay for an indefinite time?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, this will not be delayed for an indefinite time, but I think the noble Earl realises full well that many interested parties have to be brought into consultation. In my view, it would not be right for Her Majesty's Government to ride roughshod over all those interests, and simply issue an edict that to-day this will be done.
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, will my noble friend make sure that he does not give this runway exceptional priority over roads that would be used by many more people than would a runway in this situation?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, this runway will not be given undue priority; it will be given the priority which, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, it deserves.
EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, would the noble Lord tell us by how many yards the proposed runway will overlap the present aerodrome?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I think I have that information here. Certainly
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I have seen it myself on a map. It will be a considerably longer runway, and will require the acquisition of a considerable area of land. The new runway will be 8,400 feet long, and will be limited at one end by the existing railway, and at the other end by the proposed motorway.
THE EARL OF EFFINGHAM: My Lords, if this is as serious a problem as it appears to be, would my noble friend give me some indication of what will happen when the Concord becomes operative?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, the Concord will not operate at this particular airport.
THE EARL OF EFFINGHAM: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend, but there will be other parts of Great Britain where it will become operative. How long will it take to build a runway from which it can be operated?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I suggest that that is another Question.

I.T.V. BROADCAST: EFFECT ON YOUNG CHILDREN
2.48 p.m.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware that items broadcast on I.T.V. on Tuesday, March 14, between 6.5 p.m. and 6.35 p.m., when many little children were listening, contained words of an offensive and obscene character; and whether measures can be taken through the State schools to counteract the effects which the use of this kind of T.V. language may have on small children.]
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I assume that the noble Lord refers to the television programme, "Three After Six", broadcast on March 14. The Government are aware of the content of the programme, but it is for the Independent Television Authority to consider what was said in the course of it. They, like the B.B.C., are a public corporation, wholly responsible for the content of their programmes and with full authority over the services they provide.

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The Government do not believe that it would be proper or sensible for them to seek to take measures through the schools as the noble Lord suggests. Control of the curriculum in schools is the responsibility of the local education authorities and the teachers. The best action the schools can take is to guide their pupils generally to acquire soundly based standards of usage, taste and judgment, rather than to try to react to particular incidents. Much current educational practice is directed to this end by means of relaxed and frequent conversation and discussion between staff and pupils on a wide range of topics and by the exchange of ideas and comments in an easy and natural atmosphere.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, philosophically, of course, that Answer, is an ideal one. But does my noble friend not feel that, although the kind of language used on that occasion might be acceptable in newspaper offices or sergeants' messes, it was hardly the kind of language for little children to hear between 6 and 6.30 on the night in question? Would my noble friend please ask the Government nominees on I.T.V. to give this matter their personal attention?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I think that I have nothing to add to what I have said in relation to the Government's concern in this matter; namely, these Corporations must control the contents of their own programmes. I think the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, is in his place and will be listening to this discussion, and I am quite sure that he will take note of it. From my own recollection, when one appears on any Independent Television programme one is given a form to sign stating that no obscenities or unfortunate language will be used. Incidentally, I believe that another thing one must not do, is to incite to riot, and one has to sign to this effect. I hope that the programme authorities will look into why the undertaking I have mentioned was contravened on this occasion. But, as I have said, we must leave it to them.
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, is it possible that on this occasion I.T.V. were being guided by the words of the Post-
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master General who recommended the use of four-letter words on television?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: Of course, this is quite incorrect. As the noble Lord is well aware, the Postmaster General did not recommend the use of these words. I did take some note of that speech. The Postmaster General was making the same point as I am now making on behalf of Her Majesty's Government: that the Corporations themselves must be masters in their own house and control their own programmes.
LORD ROWLEY: My Lords, is it not a fact that the three words in question, according to my information, contained more than four letters?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: I was waiting for some noble Lord to ask me that. One contains four letters; one contains seven letters and is a reflection on one's parentage, and one contains six letters, and I believe is used as a term of affection in certain counties.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I quite understand noble Lords finding this matter highly amusing, but I happened to be sitting with my little grandchildren looking at that programme and it filled me with disgust. As I am a former company sergeant major, that is saying something.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I should like to say that I have the greatest personal sympathy with the noble Lord.
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness if she will do what she can to help? While I do not think that anybody in this House wants to enforce a puritanical censorship, nevertheless those of us who are concerned with young people are deeply concerned when things like this happen on our broadcasting system. What is more it does very little to win the respect of people who come to this country from countries overseas.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I would, of course, endorse everything the right reverend Prelate says, and I think he will find that noble Lords who are members of the authorities can probably do more in this matter than the Government.

WAR DEFENCE WORKS
2.54 p.m.
LORD ALPORT: 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 any of the defence works constructed during 1939–1945 in Great Britain have been scheduled for preservation as being of historic interest.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF PUBLIC BUILDING AND WORKS (LORD WINTERBOTTOM): My Lords, no defence works constructed during 1939–1945 in Great Britain have been scheduled, but there are a number of such works which have been superimposed on scheduled monuments. If the noble Lord has any such work in mind which he feels is worthy of preservation, owing to its historic interest, we shall be glad to consider whether it should be scheduled.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, although I have no particular example in mind, would the noble Lord agree that future generations will be interested in the way in which the people of this country prepared to defend themselves in 1939–1945, and that it would be right for us to try to ensure that the best examples of the preparations that were made are preserved, rather than to leave it rather haphazardly to the passage of time?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, this is a general problem, which applies not only to the 1939–1945 war but also to the 1914–1918 war and earlier periods. We have only comparatively recently started to take an interest in the preservation of monuments of historical interest. If I may turn specifically to the noble Lord's Question, there are reminders or records of the Second World War at Pendennis Castle, Dover Castle, Hurst Castle and Pevensey Castle. Coalhouse Fort, which is owned by Thurrock Urban District Council, and Cardiff Castle, which is owned by the
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City Council, also retain changes in their fortification which were brought into being for purposes of defence during the war mentioned. The principal problem we have to face is that the main defence fields set up during the war tended to rely on such things as barbed wire, mines and anti-landing obstacles, which are the sort of thing we want to get rid of as soon as possible and which cannot be retained.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the Government of Malta are in fact scheduling defence works of the last war where they consider them to be of historic interest? If they can do it in relation to the fortified island of Malta, should we not try to do something on the same lines in this island?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, that is an important point which I shall bear in mind.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, is the Minister aware that on my farm on the South Coast I have a gun emplacement which we have retained out of interest? Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Alport, would be glad to know that it has remained. If he wishes to schedule it as a national monument, I shall be delighted.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether, among the defence works which might be considered for preservation, the Government will include that hideous building which continues as a blot beside the Horse Guards Parade over twenty years after the end of the war?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, that is another question. We are trying to cover it up with verdure. The actual removal of it would cause a major financial problem which we are not yet ready to face.

BUSINESS STATEMENTS
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, at a suitable moment after 3.30 p.m. I shall be making a Statement on prices and incomes, and then my noble friend Lord Shackleton will make a Statement on Bristol Siddeley Engines, Ltd.

PROCEDURE OF THE HOUSE
2.58 p.m.
Order of the Day read for the consideration of the Fourth Report from the Committee.
The Committee's Report was as follows:
HYBRID SPECIAL ORDERS
The Committee considered certain procedural difficulties inherent in the provisions of Private Bill Standing Order 216 relating to hybrid Orders; particularly in respect of the passage through the House of Orders which are in force when made and which expire unless approved by both Houses within 28 days.
To expedite procedure in respect of "28 day" Orders the Committee recommend that the Petitioning time prescribed in the Standing Order (paragraph 4) should be abbreviated from 14 to 10 days except by leave of the Chairman of Committees.
The Committee also consider that procedure, in respect of all opposed hybrid Orders, could he expedited if the Special Orders Committee, when examining a Petition, were able to consider representations in writing from the Minister responsible for laying the Order and the petitioners; and that parties should only be heard by themselves, their Counsel or Agents by leave of the Committee.
The Committee therefore recommend the following two amendments be made to Standing Order No. 216:—
(1) At end of line 51 insert:—
"Provided that in its application to a Special Order whose continuance in operation is conditional on an affirmative resolution, the last preceding paragraph shall have effect as if for the word 'fourteenth' there were substituted the words tenth or, by special leave of the Chairman of Committees, fourteenth'."
(2) Line 92, leave out from "Order" to the end of line 95, and insert:—
"the Committee shall consider any representations made to them in writing by the petitioner and the Minister of the Crown responsible for laying the Order before Parliament and may allow the petitioner and the Minister to appear before them in person or by their Counsel or Agents."
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now considered.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES:My Lords, in asking your Lordships to approve this Report I should like briefly to explain the reasons for, and the effect of, the two proposed Amendments to our Standing Orders. The Procedure Com-
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mittee at their last meeting considered various difficulties which have arisen, and which are likely to continue to arise, in applying the provisions relating to hybridity of Private Business Standing Order 216 to the passage of Special Orders through this House. They considered first the special difficulties which arise in respect of Orders which are in force when made and which expire unless approved by both Houses within 28 days. The main difficulty here is simply that 28 days is not long enough to allow full compliance with the provisions of Standing Order 216 if a Petition is deposited and a Select Committee is set up.
Your Lordships may remember the recent case of the Solus Petrol Order which the Government withdrew and repaid, because otherwise the original Order would have expired before the Select Committee had considered it and reported to the House. To expedite our procedure in respect of 28-day Orders the Committee recommend the first Amendment set out in their present Report. The effect of this Amendment will be to shorten the petitioning time from 14 to 10 days, unless in exceptional circumstances the Chairman of Committees gives leave for a Petition to be deposited within 14 days. It will be appreciated that this is a small saving of time. On the other hand, it might make all the difference in getting an Order through the House within the prescribed time limit. The Committee are confident that any party affected by the provisions of the Order will be well aware of the circumstances and should not be in any way prejudiced by the shortening of the petitioning period.
The second Amendment in the Report provides for the Special Orders Committee, when examining a Petition, to consider representations in writing from the parties concerned, and removes the existing right of parties under the Standing Order to be heard by themselves, their counsel or agent. It is hoped that this Amendment, which will enable the Special Orders Committee to meet as soon as written representations have been received, will effect a further saving in time. The Committee felt that the second Amendment should apply to all hybrid Orders and not only to 28-day Orders, as it would be anomalous to give petitioners against other Orders the right

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to appear by counsel, while only allowing petitioners against 28-day Orders the right to appear by leave of the Committee.
I should like to emphasise that both alterations in our procedure can be reviewed if they are found in practice not to effect a worthwhile saving of time. The Committee propose these Amendments as an interim measure, pending a general review of procedure in respect of hybrid Orders. My Lords, I beg to move that the Report be agreed to.
Moved, That the Report be agreed to.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
3.2 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am sure the Whole House will be grateful to the Lord Chairman for having explained these Amendments to the House. I think the Whole House will also agree that it is a very courageous and ingenious attempt to get over what is a real difficulty in regard to these Orders which have to be considered in only 28 days. The kind of Order which involves the possibility of difficulty in carrying out the procedure within the time limit of 28 days is one regarding which there has been no departmental or local inquiry after the Order has been drafted and before it is laid before Parliament; for example, Orders made under the Monopolies and Mergers Act. Such Orders are liable to lay on individual persons or companies obligations or restrictions not laid upon persons or companies in general. In other words, they are of a discriminatory character. It is therefore of the utmost importance for Parliament to ensure, as it is entitled to do, that the discrimination is both fair in itself and entirely necessary in the public interest. There should be no question of the Legislature acting as a rubber stamp for the Executive in these matters. That is why I personally attach considerable constitutional importance to these Amendments.
May I ask the Chairman of Committees how he expects that the Special Orders Committee will in fact operate the procedure if the Report is agreed to? At present, as I understand it, every Special Order stands referred automatically to the Special Orders Committee, and that remains. I believe I am right in thinking
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that the Government Department concerned invariably provides for the Committee a note or a memorandum explaining the background of the Order and its effect. Any Petition received by the Committee against the Order will obviously state the reason for objecting to the Order. If these are all the documents that the Committee have to consider, then the Committee may well be able to report without calling on the petitioner or the Minister to appear in person, or by their counsel or agents.
I conceive that the Committee's function is to recommend where there is aprima facie case to be considered by a Select Committee. If this is so, if these are all the documents, there will be a very considerable saving in time, especially since it may well be that in such cases the petitioners will be able to present their Petition some days before the new normal period of 10 days within which it must be presented has elapsed. The reason for this is that the Department will normally have consulted the parties affected, and they may know in advance the purport of the Order, or at least have a pretty good idea of it. In other cases—cases which the Chairman of Committees did not mention—where the purpose of the Order might be defeated if the parties affected were given an inkling of its content in advance, it might be necessary for the Committee to allow them the full 14 days as at present. Therefore, it is clearly wise to keep as well the full 14 days as a possibility.
The difficulty which I find in the second Amendment is in the reference to representations. I can see that the Minister might want to submit representations objecting to the facts as stated in the Petition. If so, will the petitioners be served with a copy of the Minister's representations, and be given the opportunity to submit counter-representations? It seems to me only right and fair that they should. But all of this would take time, with an interval between each set of representations, and it would probably leave inadequate time for a Select Committee to be set up and for them to consider the Petition and report to your Lordships' House. It seems to follow that, unless the Special Orders Committee are able to report on the Order in the light of the Minister's explanatory memorandum and of the Petition alone, it would be quicker for them to hear the

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Parties than to proceed by way of written representations and counter representations.
Here I would ask: is it expected that the parties will be ready to appear, either in person or through counsel, at short notice after the consideration of the initial documents? I hope that the Minister would not wish to delay matters by submitting written representations, but would allow the Special Orders Committee to make up their mind upon the Order, as explained by the Minister and the Petition and report whether in their opinion there ought to be a further inquiry. If that is done, then there should be enough time, though not much more than enough, for a Select Committee in the House to consider the matter. If, on the other hand, the Minister prolongs the proceedings of the Special Orders Committee by making representations in writing, he will have only himself to blame if the Order lapses at the expiry of 28 days before the House has had time to consider the Report of the Select Committee.
I feel constrained to ask the Chairman of Committees for an assurance that, if any representations are submitted to the Committee by the Minister upon the Petition, they will be made available to the petitioners, and that the petitioners will be given the right to reply to them either by written or by oral representations. Given this assurance, in my view the House could safely accept the Report, as the noble Earl described it, as an interim solution to a difficult problem.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: My Lords, I shall certainly do my best to reply to the noble Lord's questions, and I should like to start by saying that I entirely agree—and I am sure that members of the Procedure Committee would also agree—with his view that the House attaches a very great deal of importance to its responsibility for protecting private rights and interests. The noble Lord asked me first of all how it is envisaged that this new procedure of written representations will work. I think it will work as follows. First of all, as soon as written representations have been received by the Committee, both from the petitioner and from the Government Department concerned, the Committee will meet to consider whether or not a further inquiry is required by a Select Committee. If it
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decided that a further inquiry was required by a Select Committee, then a Select Committee would be appointed and would report to your Lordships on the Special Order. The saving of time there would be that the Special Orders Committee would meet as soon as the written representations had been received, instead of having to wait, as they have done hitherto, until the expiry of the 14-day petitioning period. The noble Lord also asked—
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, would the noble Earl allow me to interrupt? He is using the word "representations" now to mean the original documents, as opposed to subsequent representations. Is this what the word "representations" was intended to mean? As I understand it, he is using it to refer to the Order and the explanatory note of the Order and the Petition itself, which incorporates, of course, the reasons for the Petition. Is this what he is meaning by "representations" in this sense?
3.10 p.m.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord for raising that point because I should like to make this matter as clear as possible, both to the noble Lord and to other noble Lords who may be interested. I was not using the word "representations" in that restricted sense. I was using the word "representations" qualified by the epithet "written"—that is, "written representations"—to include all the written representations by both parties. That would include, first of all, the exchange of representations between the petitioner and the Government Department concerned, and then the answer, if the petitioner wishes to make one, to the representations of the Government Department on the petition. That is the stage at which the Special Orders Committee would meet to consider all the written representations that had been received, and to decide whether or not a Select Committee should be appointed.
I think this answers the noble Lord's question as to whether or not the petitioner would receive a copy of the Department's written representation on the Petition, and would have the opportunity to submit an answer to these representations. The answer to that question is, of course, Yes. The petitioner would

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have an opportunity to make any answer in writing that he wished to make on the objections of the Government Department to his Petition.
I am not certain that I can give the noble Lord the assurance for which he asked, because I think what he wanted was an assurance about both oral and written representations. The object of this Amendment is to avoid the present necessity for oral statements by the parties represented by counsel. If this Amendment is carried, there will be oral statements by the parties represented by counsel only if the Committee wish to have them; that is to say, if, having considered the written statements, the Committee are unable, without a further oral statement from the parties, to decide the question as to whether or not a Select Committee should be appointed. I should like to emphasise that this proposed procedure is experimental and that its object is to save time. We shall try it out; but, of course, if it proves that there is no worthwhile saving of time, the position will then be reviewed by the Committee.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

PROCEDURE OF THE HOUSE
THE CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES: My Lords. I beg to move that this Motion be agreed to.
Moved, That the Lord Merthyr be appointed a member of the Committee.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

IRON AND STEEL BILL
3.13 p.m.
Returned from the Commons with certain of the Amendments agreed to, and certain other Amendments disagreed to, with a Reason for such disagreement.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Reason for disagreeing to certain of the Lords Amendments to the Iron and Steel Bill be considered forthwith. It may be for the convenience of the House if the main discussion takes place on the next Motion which I propose to move, which is that this House doth not insist on Amend-
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ments Nos. 1 to 3, to which the Commons have disagreed. When I come to my second Motion, I think it will probably be for the convenience of the House if I deal with all the Amendments. Meanwhile, I beg to move that the Commons Reason for disagreeing to certain of the Lords Amendments be considered forthwith.
Moved, That the Commons Reason be considered forthwith.—(Lord Shackleton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS REASON FOR DISAGREEING TO CERTAIN OF THE LORDS AMENDMENTS
[The references are to Bill (165) as first printed for the Lords. The Commons Reason is printed in italics.]

LORDS AMENDMENTS
[Nos. 1–3]
Clause 9, page 7, line 27, leave out ("securities") and insert ("ordinary and preference stocks and shares").
Clause 10, page 8, line 30, leave out ("securities") and insert (" stocks and shares").
Line 39, leave out ("securities") and insert ("said stocks and shares").
The Commons disagreed to these Amendments for the following Reason:
Because the Amendments would alter the financial arrangements made by the Commons, and the Commons do not offer any further Reason trusting the above Reason may be deemed sufficient.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, as I assume that the House is acquiescing in the suggestion to take these Amendments together, I beg to move that the House doth not insist on Amendments Nos. 1 to 3, to which the Commons have disagreed. This House sent down to another place 44 Amendments to the Iron and Steel Bill. Of these Amendments, the other place have agreed to all but three. I think this shows how the Bill was improved in many respects by its passage through your Lordships' House, and confirms what I said on Third Reading of the Bill about the useful and constructive nature of our discussions. At the risk of repetition, I would again pay tribute to noble Lords opposite for the help they have given.
There are now only three Amendments in question, and all of them are essentially on only one point. They are the Amendments which were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, and the question was whether or not debentures (I very nearly found myself saying

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"debutantes") should be nationalised. On both Committee and Report we had a very full debate on the issues raised by these Amendments. It was recognised that they gave rise to very real differences of view; and as I told your Lordships on Third Reading the Government considered the question very carefully in the light of the arguments then made. Nevertheless, they still found it impossible to accept these Amendments for the reasons I gave on Report, and as I told your Lordships the Government decided that my right honourable friend the Minister of Power would advise their removal when the Bill was sent back to another place.
Another place gave an exhaustive consideration of two and a half hours to these Amendments. I cannot honestly say that I think they added much to what we had already said, more succinctly, in your Lordships' House. My right honourable friend's advice was accepted by the other place, in which, I must make it clear, there was still no agreement on the issue involved. This will disappoint some of your Lordships, but at least it achieved the main objective which the mover of the Amendments, the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, set himself, which was a discussion of these matters on the Floor of another place.
I have mentioned the questions of substance raised by these Amendments because of the strong and powerful arguments which were put forward, but in moving that your Lordships do not insist on these Amendments it is not on considerations of this sort—and I repeat that they have been very fully discussed both here and in another place—that I want to rest my case. I warned your Lordships on the Third Reading of the Bill that the Amendments might raise the question of Commons privilege, and the Deputy Speaker has in fact since ruled that they do infringe this privilege. The reason for that is that, by changing the amount of compensation payable, they would affect the charge on the Consolidated Fund.
My Lords, as your Lordships will see, the Message from the Commons hints that the Amendments infringe their privilege. This has, of course, happened before, and Erskine May says that
"this hint of privilege is generally accepted by the Lords, and the Amendment is not insisted upon"
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In view of this, and in view of the fact that I think the mover of the Amendments and those who supported him have achieved their objective of giving scope for further discussion on the Floor of another place, I now move that this House doth not insist on these Amendments.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on Amendments Nos. 1 to 3, to which the Commons have disagreed.—(Lord Shackleton.)
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I think it will be a matter of some regret to a number of your Lordships that another place was not able to accept these three Amendments. They were put down, as the noble Lord, Lord Shackle-ton, has said, by the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, and the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, and were argued both on Committee and on Report. However, my noble friend Lord Conesford made it clear that one of his motives in pressing these Amendments to a Division at the Report Stage in your Lordships' House was to allow the subject to be debated thoroughly in another place. That aim was undoubtedly achieved, as the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has just said, yesterday afternoon. In view of the Deputy Speaker's ruling that these Amendments affect the financial provisions of the Bill and therefore involve the privilege of another place, I would advise your Lordships that we should accept what the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has said. Having said that, it is the case that 41 Amendments made by your Lordships to this Bill were accepted in another place yesterday. The Bill has undoubtedly been improved, although, as we made clear on the Third Reading, we still deplore it.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

CONSOLIDATED FUND (NO. 2) BILL
Brought from the Commons endorsed with the Certificate from the Speaker that the Bill is a Money Bill, within the meaning of the Parliament Act 1911, and read 1a.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of March 16), Bill read 2a: Committee negatived; Bill read 3a, and passed.

CIVIL DEFENCE
3.22 p.m.
VISCOUNT YOUNGER OF LECKIE VISCOUNT YOUNGER OF LECKIE rose to call attention to the organisation of Civil Defence; and to move for Papers. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name, and in doing so I would remind the House that so far as my researches go it is almost exactly five years since the last debate took place in your Lordships' House on Civil Defence. That debate was introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, on April 5, 1962. Unfortunately, Lord Lindgren is abroad and cannot be with us to-day. But I have read the debate, and what Lord Lindgren said at that time is as true now as it was five years ago. I think he would agree that the main point which he made was to call for greater effort to make general information about Civil Defence available to the public. It is a great pity that successive Governments have failed to take his advice. The result is that there is still widespread ignorance on the whole subject, and unlimited scope for misrepresentation. It is for this reason, among others, that my noble friend Lady Swanborough and I thought it time that we had another debate on it. With that view the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has agreed.
May I say here how pleased we are that Lord Stonham is sufficiently recovered to take part in this debate on a subject on which he is an acknowledged expert. I hope that he will give us a re-statement in unmistakable terms of Government thinking on Civil Defence and on the tasks which the Government wish the organisation to fulfil. He can perhaps also tell us something of the higher level of Civil Defence, with which I myself shall not be dealing, and of any new developments of importance which have taken place since we last debated the subject.
My own interest is at a much lower level. For the last five years I have been a volunteer and a controller-designate, as they call it, at county level. I make no apology for the fact that most of my remarks will be made from that point of view; particularly because the principal changes which are proposed by Her Majesty's Government are almost entirely effective at local authority level. The
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instructions for implementing these proposals have been issued in Home Office Circular No. 1 of 1967 and its Scottish counterpart, which were published on January 31 of this year.
It would, I suppose, be justifiable for me to complain of the extraordinary time that has elapsed since the cuts were first foreshadowed in this House, as long ago as July, 1965. We realise, however, that behind the scenes a fierce battle has no doubt been going on with the Treasury, and possibly even at Cabinet level. Therefore I think it is sufficient if I simply say that by the time the new arrangements come into force, which will be at the end of next September, the whole Civil Defence organisation will have been in a state of suspended animation for well over two years, with local authorities unable to plan, paid staff uncertain about their jobs and volunteers in doubt about their role. This, needless to say, has led to great uncertainty for the local authorities, for whom, it seems to me, Civil Defence means often just one more responsibility to add to their already long list of priorities.
I think it is the general experience that in most authorities Civil Defence is kept going by a mere handful of elected members and officials; and great credit, I think, is due to them for the extra trouble they take on this rather unpopular subject. Certainly, without their support the Civil Defence Corps could get absolutely nowhere. The full-time Civil Defence officers of the local authorities, on the whole, do a very good job, not only with confidence but with enthusiasm—and frequently for somewhat modest remuneration, considering that much of their work takes place at weekends and in the evenings.
In Scotland we have a very special reason which does not apply in England and Wales, to be grateful to the police, because in Scotland they have up to now been responsible for the recruitment and training of our wardens. I do not know whether they have made a better job of it than is made in England and Wales. I think it is possible. Certainly I have been greatly impressed with the quality of the instructors they provide. We are particularly grateful to them and very sorry that our official connection with them is now to be terminated, although I am sure that we shall still have their

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help. But, my Lords, in spite of these good points, the weak point at the local authority level has always been the same: the tremendous variation between the effectiveness of one local authority and another. I do not think that is surprising in an organisation which covers the whole country; but if we could get the standard of all authorities up to the standard of the best, or even to the standard of the average, we should have little to worry about.
As regards the proposed economies, I have asked the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, to give us a detailed breakdown of the Civil Defence expenditure as of now, and to indicate, so far as he can, where the proposed economies are expected to be made. The need for economy must of course be accepted by us. I gather from the local authorities that they are confident that they can meet the Government requirements in one way or another. Nevertheless, I hope the Government will remember that this is a service which has never enjoyed a very high priority, and therefore a good deal of ingenuity is going to be needed in effecting these economies. It is important, I think, that Her Majesty's Government should leave a good amount of latitude for individual local authorities to effect these economies in the detailed ways which suit their particular circumstances.
My Lords, some of the proposals in the Home Office circular can be welcomed unreservedly. The intention seems to be to call for increased training of local authority staffs. That is something for which we have been asking for many years. There are also proposals for more thorough and more frequent inspections of the emergency plans of local authorities, and this too is to be welcomed, because it is probably the best way to bring the weaker authorities up to the level of the better ones. Incidentally, I note with some regret that there is no mention of this inspection in the Scottish circular.
A third point which I believe might escape notice in a casual reading is the proposal to build up a substantial reserve of people who have passed through their active Civil Defence training. I think this a most important provision. These people are going to keep their uniforms; they are fully trained; many of them
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will have been in the Corps for many years. I think that if local authorities use their initiative they will be able to keep in touch with these people and give them the opportunity of an occasional participation in training; and particularly to have in their mobilisation schemes provision whereby these people can be called upon in an emergency not simply as a few isolated individuals but perhaps in some organised detachment.
Regarding the proposals to make further use of local authority staffs, I hove told the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that I am not entirely happy that the implications of this have yet been thoroughly worked out. I have no intention of pressing the noble Lord to-day for detailed facts and figures about that, but I hope he will be able to tell us that he will have further talks on the subject with local authorities to see how this is going to work out.
It may be helpful if I call attention to one or two aspects of this matter. The staffs are not obliged by their conditions of service to undertake Civil Defence training. Therefore we have to rely on volunteers, the supply of which, as is the case everywhere, is limited. In fact, we probably have already a large proportion of local authority staffs who are prepared to volunteer. It is therefore important, I think, that the Government should get their priorities right. I wish only to submit that the overriding priority, in my opinion, for local authorities is to have sufficient people on their own staff trained in dealing with problems of Civil Defence in their own departments as these would arise after a nuclear attack.
This is particularly so of the three key departments—health, welfare and roads—which would be absolutely overwhelmed with work and would have to operate on a 24-hour day basis. I believe they require not only their own emergency trained staffs but also a substantial number of people from other departments not so directly involved, who would be available to be drafted in to help through the emergency period. My Lords, until these priorities are met, I suggest to the Government that it is surely unwise to contemplate taking local authority staff to learn the unfamiliar techniques of an operations room and signals office, which has no bearing on their normal local authority training and is a service which

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the Civil Defence Corps is fully trained to give.
That is all I want to say on the detail of these proposals, and now I should like to turn to the wider issues which are really of greater importance. A decision has been taken that if drastic economy is necessary, the one thing we must retain is a system of control and communications. This is clearly right, because no matter whether the resources available are large or small, they cannot be efficiently deployed without an effective communications system. Nevertheless, this decision has implications which are of great importance, but I cannot find much evidence that it is fully appreciated by the Government; I am sure that it is not fully appreciated by the public. I think that the public tend to identify Civil Defence almost entirely with rescue work, because that is what they see in peace-time emergencies such as Aberfan. The public may therefore be somewhat shocked, I think, to learn that the whole of the rescue forces—that is to say, the rescue, first-aid and welfare sections—of the Civil Defence Corps are to disappear completely.
I am not going to refer in detail to the first-aid and welfare functions, as the two noble Baronesses who are on the list of speakers, the noble Marchioness, Lady Reading, and Lady Hylton-Foster, will, I hope, give us expert advice on how far the voluntary societies can help out the Government with these functions. I would only say that in my opinion it is most public-spirited of these voluntary societies to offer their help to the Government in this way when already they have so many peace-time commitments. I can assure them that the Civil Defence Corps will co-operate with them in every possible way.
The position of the rescue function is not so happy, and it is far from clear, at any rate to me, that any adequate substitute is available for the rescue section of the Corps. It is said in paragraph 10 of Appendix B that:
"rescue operations could make only a limited contribution to the saving of life after a nuclear attack."
This may be true if one regards the saving of lives, possibly in thousands, over the country as a "limited contribution". Perhaps it is in comparison with the
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millions which we hope to save in other ways. Nevertheless, this decision to scrap the rescue section is one which we can receive only with great regret. Here is one more public-spirited activity which appeals to young, strong, fit men, and it is going to be lost. I think it a very great loss.
This brings me to the whole question of life saving, which is of course the all-important means to our objective of national survival. I doubt whether it is generally understood that the major contribution to life saving is likely to be made not by rescue work but by the prevention of deaths from the secondary effects of attack. We must get the public to understand this, because they have a major part to play in it. I expect that most of us are familiar with the danger, after any bombing attack, of death from hunger, from disease or from lack of medical attention. But nuclear weapons have introduced the new danger from radioactive fall-out, which is not only a lethal danger in itself, but of course complicates and enormously restricts the measures which would normally be taken to deal with the more familiar dangers. Fortunately, on the other side of the picture there are features about fall-out which make measures to protect the public possible. Once the bombs have fallen, fall-out is both predictable and measurable, and after a certain time it decays with very great rapidity. Civil Defence has the scientific staff, the instruments and the trained personnel to take advantage of these features. But it is a colossal task, a task for which first-class communications with the public, and indeed willing co-operation by the public, are absolutely indispensable.
Hitherto, we have placed much reliance on the wardens' service as our link with the public and to some extent, also, on the considerable number of uniformed Civil Defence workers who would be in touch with the public on the ground. The present proposals greatly weaken these links with the public and also the communications between the control system and whatever rescue workers may happen to be available. I would ask the Government: how do they see these links being strengthened? For instance, what plans, if any, have they for local broadcasting? Are these only paper plans, or are they in a reasonable state of readiness, so that

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they could be called upon at short notice? For the same reasons, a much greater load than we had hoped in controlling the public under fall-out will fall on the police. Can the Government say, for instance, whether special constables are receiving Civil Defence training? On this question one could also speak of military assistance, but I intend to leave that to subsequent speakers.
If we fail in this task of controlling the public under fall-out, we face the possibility of a large number of unnecessary, avoidable casualties from radiation, not only among members of the public but also among members of the rescue forces. However well planned our measures may be, I do not believe that they will achieve their object unless the public have been prepared beforehand—and by beforehand I mean in peace time—to understand the simple, basic facts about fall-out. Almost everything we shall ask the public to do to protect themselves against fall-out will be either difficult or unpleasant, or both. It will often involve real hardship, discomfort and squalor; and it will certainly call for a high degree of readiness to help one's neighbours. To make this task even more difficult, as your Lordships will be aware, fall-out cannot be felt, seen or smelt, and my fear is that people will simply not believe in it unless to some small extent they have been familiarised with it beforehand.
I would ask that the Government make a break with the past about this. The first essential, in my view, is that Governments should be more forthright in their statements on Civil Defence policy. I think, too, that they must be prepared to contradict misrepresentations when they are made by responsible persons in Parliament, on T.V. or on other public platforms. But they could do more than that. It had not been my intention to say anything about the so-called one-in-five scheme, which some noble Lords may know about, and which my noble friend Lady Reading has asked me at least to introduce—and I hope that she will fill in some of the details when she comes to speak. I believe that this scheme was, in fact, her brainchild. At birth the wretched infant was not looked upon entirely with favour by the powers-that-be, but it has since grown up, under my noble friend's tutelage.
The scheme amounts roughly to this: that the W.R.V.S. have appointed selected speakers, trained to give brief talks, the contents of which have been approved by authority, to voluntary audiences of women. The objective has been to bring this message to one woman in five of the adult population. Believe it or not, my Lords, the target has been reached in a great many parts of the country. The talks have been remarkably successful, so far as I have heard, and I should imagine have cost virtually nothing. I strongly urge the Government to consider whether they could not initiate and give their approval and support to local authorities in introducing a system of this sort to a wider range of voluntary audiences. I know that this is being done here and there. Many societies like to have talks on rather abstruse subjects such as Civil Defence, and a great deal can be done in this way; but unless any effort of this kind has Government approval and support, it will not be thoroughly widespread. I submit that this is a worthy cause.
I have tried to introduce this debate in a matter-of-fact and undramatic manner because I think that this is the way in which the Civil Defence forces have to approach their formidable task. But, of course, the very idea of a nuclear attack on a heavily populated country like ours is a horrible and dreadful one; and no one knows this better than we do in Civil Defence. We know that we cannot hope in peace time to simulate the appalling conditions under which we should have to work in war, but there is something we can do: we should set our standard of training sufficiently high to stand up to the strain of war. And that strain will be a severe one—the strain of exhaustion, of hunger, of fear; and also, I have little doubt, of great personal anxiety and tragedy. To my mind, there is only one way to meet that—by high morale based on confidence in one's training and confidence in one's colleagues. If we can get that, then we have some chance of maintaining the morale of the public, without which, I am afraid, all our plans for national survival will be doomed to failure. If Governments and the public will give us their support in peace, I believe that they will get their reward in war. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

PRICES AND INCOMES POLICY
3.50 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I think that it would be for the convenience of the House if, with your Lordships' permission, I were to repeat a Statement that has just been made by my right honourable friend the First Secretary in another place. The Statement is as follows:
"The Government has been considering in consultation with representatives of management and trade unions the lines on which the prices and incomes policy should develop after the end of June. I am laying before the House this afternoon a White Paper summarising our views on this question, copies of which may now be found in the Printed Paper Office. But the House will wish to have a brief indication of the main points in it.
The essence of a prices and incomes policy is that growth of money incomes should be related to growth of real wealth, and that movements of prices should give adequate return to producers while ensuring that consumers and workers share in the benefits resulting from improved methods of production. The value of such a policy is that it can give everyone in all walks of life and every place of work a clear interest in increased efficiency; and that it can so safeguard our balance of payments as to make possible sustained economic growth and a high level of employment. In the last six months of last year the policy took the form of standstill; at present it takes the form of severe restraint. These forms are a temporary product of necessity. As growth proceeds, prices and incomes policy can become less restrictive till it reaches its full stature as one of the instruments for ensuring that wealth is more efficiently produced and more justly shared. We have yet to reach that stage; but after the middle of this year it will be right to have more flexible arrangements than those now in force.
On the prices side, the Government attach great importance to continued efforts to restrain price increases and to
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encourage price reductions. The criteria which should govern price behaviour will be those laid down in the White Paper of April, 1965 (Cmnd. 2639), which were agreed between Government, management and unions. A necessary part of prices policy is that the voluntary arrangements for early warning of proposed increases should continue to apply and where appropriate we will be discussing development of the arrangements with the C.B.I. and interested trade associations.
On the incomes side it would be inappropriate in our present economic circumstances to reintroduce a positive norm on the lines of the annual norm of 3–3½ per cent. which prevailed up to July, 1966. In the 12 months beginning on July 1 next we do not think any group of workers ought to expect to receive an increase in pay simply and solely as a result of the passage of time. Any proposed increase ought to be justified against specific criteria. As in the case of prices, these will be the less restrictive criteria which were laid down in the White Paper of April, 1965. The White Paper which I am presenting this afternoon also draws attention to certain additional considerations which need to be taken into account.
The continuation and development of the voluntary early warning arrangements for pay are of great importance. We welcome the decision of the T.U.C. to strengthen its own arrangements for securing notification and vetting of pay claims. A successful prices and incomes policy depends on a wide measure of agreement between Government, management and unions. It is our intention to encourage the voluntary operation of the policy, and in this context we attach great importance to the role of the C.B.I. and the T.U.C.
As the House is aware, Part IV of the Prices and Incomes Act will expire on August 11, 1967. The Government's objective is to achieve a return to full reliance on a voluntary operation of the policy as quickly as possible. On the matter of reserve powers the Government are consulting further with the C.B.I. and T.U.C. and I shall make a further statement after Easter.

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I do not underestimate the problems of achieving an effective policy for productivity, prices and incomes, but I believe that the whole nation now recognises the need for such a policy and will not be content to return to a so-called "free-for-all" which is in fact injurious to all, and strikes its hardest blows at those who are least able to defend themselves."
My Lords, that is the end of the Statement.
3.55 p.m.
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, I am sure we are grateful to the noble Lord for repeating this Statement that has been made by the First Secretary in another place, and we shall, of course, study with the greatest interest the White Paper that has become available this afternoon. But it seems to me that the only comment one can make on this Statement of so-called policy is that it is a Statement of non-policy. We are referred back in the Statement on both prices and incomes to a White Paper of April, 1965 (I have just refreshed my memory of it), which amounts to little more than a series of pious aspirations, and which did nothing to enable the Government to avoid a serious crisis last year. Are we to understand that the Government have learnt nothing since April, 1965?
More particularly, are we to understand from the verbiage contained in this Statement that the absence of a positive norm means, in simple language, that for the 12 months beginning in July this year the norm is to be zero? And, in turn, does this mean that for the same period the Government estimate that there will be no measurable increase in gross national product in this country? If this is really the case it means that at the end of nearly four years of Socialist rule this will be the sum total of their efforts.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, may I intervene for a moment? I think that when he has had an opportunity of reading the White Paper—and I fully understand that he has been unable to do so—the noble Lord will regret the words that he has used this afternoon. We have sought since we came into office—and I think those who have any interest in
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industry will recognise that there has been a great achievement by management, unions and Government—to find an agreed policy. In a free society this takes time. I think it would be utterly irresponsible of anyone to suggest that we have not achieved a very remarkable acceptance by the three partners in industry and in the control of our national economy.
I would ask the noble Lord, and other noble Lords, to read this White Paper very carefully. The noble Lord mentioned the fact that we are suggesting that on the overall question the rise in incomes should be zero. This is correct. When he sees the White Paper he will recognise that there will be increases for some who come within the criteria, and in particular for those who may be involved in true productivity agreements. But if we look at the results when we set the previous norm at 3–3½ per cent., the nation as a whole seemed to believe that that figure was to be the norm for each and every individual worker in the country, when clearly this was not so.
Therefore, what we are seeking is that our workers should recognise that incomes can rise, if they are not to cause difficulties in our balance of payments and general inflation, only with the rise of productivity. In these circumstances, we have set the total figure in the sense of zero norm in order that people will realise that there should not be increases in salaries by right, or simply and solely as a result of the passage of time. There will be increases in salaries and wages, but they should be judged against the criteria in the White Paper.
The Government have learned a great deal, but when I listen to the noble Lord, and particularly his right honourable friend who I believe is the spokesman on Defence in another place, who referred to a prices and incomes policy as "Fascism", I feel that the Opposition have learned nothing.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that there are other people in the House who find this Statement somewhat puzzling? Would it be possible to clarify one particular point? The Statement says:
"We welcome the decision of the T.U.C. to strengthen its own arrangements for securing notification and vetting of pay claims."

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It goes on to say that it is the intention of the Government:
"to encourage the voluntary operation of the policy, and in this context we attach great importance to the role of the C.B.I. and the T.U.C."
That I think is quite unexceptionable. But where in the Statement is the role of the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. specified?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the role of the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. is well understood by both these bodies and by the Government. They are seeking to co-operate on the notification of rising prices and encourage, if they can, the reduction of prices and, so far as the T.U.C. are concerned, the notification of increases in incomes. We wish this to continue, and we have no reason to believe that it will not do so. I hope that our discussions with the T.U.C. and the C.B.I. as to further measures which may have to be taken will be continued, and that we shall be able to make a statement shortly after Easter.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, have I perhaps missed the point? Is there any reference in the Statement to the role of the Prices and Incomes Board?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, there is no specific statement, but it is in the White Paper.
LORD ST. HELENS: My Lords, the Minister appeared to rebuke my noble friend and to suggest that he was not making a very responsible comment. May I ask Her Majesty's Government this question? Having clamped down strictly on the spending in the private sector of industry, when are they going to show a little responsibility by clamping down on public expenditure, which is under their control?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the noble Lord should not abuse the system which is normally followed in your Lordships' House. We are to-day dealing with a Statement on Prices and Incomes. The noble Lord is going very much wider than that, and I certainly do not intend to break the rules by following him.
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, I asked the noble Lord whether, in view of the fact that the norm for the 12 months from July of this year is to be zero, this is an indication that the Government do
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not expect any measurable increase in the gross national product in the 12 months from July?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the Government certainly expect that there will be an increase in production, as I think I suggested to the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, the other day at Question Time. By a nod of his head the noble Lord approved of what I said. There are already signs of increased production. If we take the motor car industry as one of the guide factors, their production is increasing. Therefore from the Government's point of view we have every reason to believe that production over-all throughout the country will increase during this year.
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, is the noble Lord prepared to give an estimate?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, unlike the noble Lord, I do not intend to be as foolish as that.
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, I do not know about being foolish, but the noble Lord was responsible for a National Plan which purported to suggest what the total national product was going to be in 1970.
LORD CARRINGTON: Answer!

BRISTOL SIDDELEY ENGINES, LTD.
4.4 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, with permission I will repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister of State at the Ministry of Technology regarding Bristol Siddeley Engines. It was as follows:
"I think the House will wish to know that Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd. have repaid to the Department a sum of £3·96 million. The effect of this repayment has been to reduce the profits which the firm made on sales at fixed prices, totalling approximately £16½ million, under a number of contracts for the overhaul of certain types of aero-engines in the years 1959 to 1963. The repayment also includes an adjustment for the fact that, by mistake, double payment was made for certain work carried out on some of these contracts.

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"The Department's staff had called in 1964 for information about past costs before agreeing further prices. The attention of the senior management of the company was then drawn by their staff to the high profits and they very properly brought this matter to the attention of the Department.
"The cause of the excessive profits was that in each year the firm submitted very high quotations which the Department's cost estimating staff did not detect as being above a fair and reasonable level. I have been assured that the Board of the company who, of course, carry the ultimate responsibility for this repeated over-quoting, have given it their particular attention. The Department itself might have been expected to notice this over-quoting; I am satisfied, however, that to some degree this lapse can be attributed to pressure of work and staff shortages at the time.
"This case emphasises how necessary it is that Departments should obtain the right to equality of information with contractors when prices are being negotiated. This is an issue on which Her Majesty's Government has been in negotiation with industry for some time and on which clearly an early decision should be taken."
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord for repeating that Statement to your Lordships. It discloses an extremely serious fault in the administration of a Government Department and the failure to control costs. It also raises the much wider and more controversial question of excess profits, whatever they may be, (the words "fair and reasonable" appear in the Statement), on contracts with public bodies, as in the Ferranti case. Although the failure to detect the over-quoting is serious enough, in all conscience, the double payment that is referred to in the early part of the statement suggests incompetence on a totally different scale, and I think the House is entitled to a little further information on the comment that by mistake double payment was made for certain work carried out on some of these contracts.
The second question I have to put to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, concerns the doubt that is left in the mind
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of anyone who has heard this Statement as to the dates when these errors took place. The period 1959 to 1963 is referred to. Does this mean that the contracts were signed in this period for aeroengine maintenance and overhaul, and that work has been going on beyond 1963, and perhaps is still continuing to-day, or does it mean that all the work was completed in the years 1959 to 1963?
The Statement also makes reference to the fact that in 1964 the Department called for information about these costs. They first got wind that something was wrong in 1964. We are now in March, 1967, which at the very least is three years further. So what has been happening since then?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, the noble Lord is putting a very bold face on it. It scarcely needs me to refer to the laxity—if there has been laxity—of the Department under the previous Administration. Indeed, I will spring to their defence. I understand that these overpayments took place in the years 1959 to 1963; and the excessive charging took place during that period. The extent to which, without equality of information, it is possible to detect an excessive rate of profit where information is not readily available seems to me to be a difficult question to answer. To my mind it raises quite serious and, I believe in this respect, personal issues of commercial morality. Certainly as one who has had a good deal of experience in business, I make this particular comment.
The fact is that when the matter was brought to the attention of the board of Bristol Siddeley Engines, Ltd., they then saw fit to inform the Ministry of Aviation. In fact it came about as a result of the Department's insistence on being given certain information so that they might judge the suitability of future contracts—information which they had some difficulty in getting. This information came to light early in 1964. The full extent of it was not then realised and there was a good deal of discussion as to what the appropriate rates of profit should be. I would not suggest for one moment that there has not been some failure on the part of the Department. I would certainly accept this. They have, of course, as was made clear at the time of the Ferranti case, had to cope with

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great difficulties, shortage of staff and very heavy pressure. Such failures as there have been are not considered to warrant disciplinary action. I am only glad to say that in a situation in which we have regard to prices and incomes, the £4 million which would otherwise have been lost to the taxpayer has been regained.
4.11 p.m.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, we on these Benches are disturbed at the Statement which has been made by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton. In the first place, we should like to know, as this apparently all took place during the period of the late Conservative Administration, whether the present Labour Administration are taking any steps to see that it does not happen under them. Secondly, we should like to know whether there is any fraud in this case. It seems to us rather odd that there can have been a double payment. It might be possible to have an excess payment, but how somebody can be paid twice for the same engines is very difficult to understand.
Thirdly, it seems to us disturbing that when the matter was discovered it was not discovered by the Department or their officers; it was presumably discovered by the company's officers, who very rightly and properly brought it to the attention of their seniors. Does not that indicate a great lapse of zeal and expertise on the part of the officers of the Department themselves? I do not think it is any use for the Government to try to shuffle off liability and responsibility by saying that the officers had a lot of work to do. We all have a lot of work to do. This is what they are paid for. We should like to know why it was the company who discovered it and not the Department.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I was not sure which Government the noble Lord was referring to. I must stress to the noble Lord that for a long time, certainly over many months, the Government have been asking for equality of information, and talks have been going on in regard to this matter. It is an established practice in relation to contracts, for instance, in the United States. The noble Lord asked me, in particular,
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whether unfortunate events like these, of which the Ferranti case was a much more acute example, for it occurred in a single payment—this, after all, arose over a four-year period—could occur again. I would again stress the extreme importance of obtaining equality of information. Certainly it is necessary for the Department, and therefore the Government, to accept responsibility for part of this.
Bad bargains were struck for a number of years. The contracts required that prices should be fair and reasonable, and the profits in this case clearly indicate that they were not fair and reasonable. Measures have been taken to improve the efficiency of the Department and to strengthen it. I can only say that the long-term solution is the one I have suggested. Certainly the Department, and no doubt also those who deal with Government Departments, are aware of this. Let me add that of course the Auditor-General would in due course have had access to some of this information, but it came out sooner through the voluntary initiative of the company.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, may I ask a further question? To be honest, I do not think that there is really much Party political capital to be made out of this sort of issue. These things, regrettably, happen under all Governments, and I think the noble Lord might be a little careful. I think it might even happen under a Liberal Government—if one can conceive of such a thing. It is quite a long time since this over payment was first discovered; it is getting on for three, years. Can the noble Lord say why it has taken so long for this to be investigated, and for the matter to be put right? And can he say whether additional steps have been taken, other than the steps taken at the time of the Ferranti overpayment, to prevent this sort of thing happening again?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I certainly follow the noble Lord in what he said. I may have made one misstatement. I think I said early in 1964; in fact it was late in 1964. So it is a period of two years. The Department did put in hand an investigation, but the work of checking through transactions covering several years, and in a Department which was already overworked, was

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complicated. The check was not completed until September, 1965, and subsequently the final figures were agreed with the audit of a well-known independent firm of auditors.
Steps have been taken, following the report of the Lang Committee on the Ferranti case, to improve the position in the contracts department. I must say that I think the department is under heavy pressure; and while it is inconceivable that this sort of thing could ever happen under a Liberal Government, I agree it is conceivable that it might happen under a Conservative or Labour Government. I can only repeat that the answer must, in the long run, be equality of information. Steps have been taken to improve the position. I should not like to suggest that the Government are entirely satisfied about the position of the department concerned, which carries very heavy reponsibilities and discharges them, I think (and I have gone into this at some length on earlier occasions), with great expertise and thoroughness and public spirit. The fact is that the department is not as strongly organised as we wish it could be.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, may I ask two questions? First, how many contracts are involved; and secondly, could my noble friend say something in reply to Lord Ogmore's question about the double payment?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I cannot tell the noble Lord how many contracts were involved. I will say something about the double payment—and I apologise to the noble Lord for not having dealt with this point. Separate contracts are placed for the stripping and overhaul of engines and for the repair of engine components, and because of a change made by the firm in their procedures some part of the work of stripping assemblies into components ready for repair was charged for under both contracts. This was brought to light in the course of a full investigation carried out by the Department's staff. The agreed refund effects complete repayment of the sums charged twice, and it is estimated that this double charging amounted in all to about £½ million. The noble Lord will recall that the total repayment is £3·96 million.
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There has been no difficulty in settling this part of the matter. As soon as it was established that there had been overcharging, and the figures had been sorted out, there was immediate repayment; and there is, of course, no suggestion that this was done other than by mistake on the part of the company. The extent to which the Department ought to have spotted the double payment is very difficult to say now. It is, of course, possible to confuse a situation of this kind. I do not doubt that in the long run the Auditor General would probably have got on to this, but on the whole it is clearly a matter in which, as between customer and supplier, the customer relies on the fact that he will not be charged twice for the same item, even if he goes only into a department store.
LORD PARGITER: My Lords, has not a great deal of the trouble which has arisen in this case, and in similar cases, been due to the abolition by the previous Administration of the Ministry of Supply, the dispersal of highly skilled staff among a number of Departments, and the insistence of these Departments on managing their own affairs when it would continue to be done better by the Ministry of Supply? Has not the result been that the job has not been done so efficiently? In view of the fact that there was, and so far as I know still is, a most efficient Government aero-engine maintenance factory at Treforest, might I also ask whether their services could not be used to greater effect, rather than that these excess profits should be paid back to private companies?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, although interested in the noble Lord's suggestion, coming from his great experience, I should not really have liked to conclude that it was as a result of the abolition of the Ministry of Supply. But certainly I note the point he has made. It may well be that there was some rundown of essential staff. So far as maintenance is concerned, there are a number of different repair and maintenance arrangements for all three Services. I rather think that the Royal Navy do their own engine servicing, but probably not all. The Royal Air Force puts the work out to the industry and where a particular firm is the maker of the engine there is an obvious advantage in putting it there. It is a long while since I heard

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the argument on Treforest, but I note the noble Lord's point, and I will, if he wishes, go into it further.

CIVIL DEFENCE
4.22 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, now we can revert to Civil Defence. Even if the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, had not delivered so responsible, so well-informed and so impressive a speech, he would have put us all in his debt by creating this overdue opportunity to discuss this most important subject. My connection with Civil Defence has continued ever since the last war, when I had the honour to represent in another place a much-bombed constituency in South-East London, so that I became closely in touch with many Civil Defence workers there; and ever since I have never ceased to support and admire all of those who have kept the Civil Defence flag flying through difficult years, not only those in positions of responsibility, but the many volunteers to whom the country cannot express sufficient gratitude.
In the seven years when I was head of one or other of the Departments closely concerned with Civil Defence, I was so conscious of this difficulty that it was almost impossible to believe that the fantastic contingencies against which one was planning might one day become realities; and I think all of those at the head of Civil Defence activities are deeply affected by that. But, so long as nuclear weapons exist in conceivably hostile hands, then these almost unthinkable tragedies might happen. That is why it has been common ground among successive Governments that plans must be made accordingly.
All Civil Defence plans cost money. The money is an insurance premium, and we always like to pay as low insurance premiums as we reasonably can. But if in this case the premium we pay is insufficient, it would be better, maybe, to pay none at all. There are two fundamental questions here. First, is the total amount of money made available each year sufficient to produce a Civil Defence foundation that is large and strong enough in peace time to bear a vast expansion in the case of emergency? Secondly,
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do all the plans fit well enough together to be effective if they had to be put into action? If I may give an example, just as in battle guns are useless without ammunition, so in Civil Defence the fire services will be useless without water supplies and water pipes.
The second question is really an adjunct of the first, because there is no doubt that the planning has been done responsibly and admirably in the Home Office and at the Staff College at Sunningdale and elsewhere; and yet plans may break down if money has not been found for some essential basic needs or equipment. Financially, Civil Defence is being run on a shoestring. It is terribly irksome and frustrating for the volunteers and for those who hold paid appointments alike. They get little recognition or gratitude from the Press or the great British public, and they realise they have far too little money made available to them for all the action and preparation which they know to be desirable.
I cannot help thinking that the Government's latest cuts have snipped so much out of the shoestring that it could now be broken by the slightest strain. The figures that have been given in successive Defence White Papers have been an estimate of £24 million for Home Defence in 1964–65, £22¾ million in 1965–66, £19¾ million in 1966–67, and I think that the strictly comparable figure is £18 million in 1967–68; there is an additional £2 million which now falls on the Civil Votes which used to fall on Defence Votes. The Civil Defence budget was small enough, in all conscience, in 1964. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer has effected a 25 per cent. cut in it since then. The present Home Secretary has accepted this. I am bound to ask whether Home Office Ministers think that what will be left of Civil Defence after these cuts will retain its credibility.
May I say that we all look forward greatly to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. We are delighted that he is again able to take part in a major debate. It would have been a tragedy if we had had to debate this subject without his assistance. As Civil Defence has not been debated here for the past five years, and I believe it has not been debated in another place for 10 years, the noble Lord will realise that we must ask him a series of probing questions.

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If one may approach the matter chronologically, decisions on dispersal will have to come early, should the threat of a nuclear attack ever rise above the horizon. What are the Government's plans for dispersal now? The Home Secretary said in another place on February 2, 1966:
"We consider it desirable to continue with plans for the dispersal of at least certain priority classes."—[OFFICIAL REPORT; Commons, col. 1094.]
May I ask how far these plans have now been carried? How long will it be before they reach a point where they can be put into practical effect, if the emergency arises? Broadly, the priority classes were those under eighteen, the mothers of young children, and blind or crippled or aged and infirm people dependent on the care of someone in another of the priority classes. The Home Secretary's statement, which was in answer to a supplementary question, was slightly ambiguous, when he said:
"at least certain priority classes."
I am not sure whether he meant that the list of priority classes was now being cut down. If so, which are not now included any longer?
Is it still the policy to carry out most dispersal by rail, in spite of the abandonment of many railways that lead to the more thinly-populated areas? I am well aware that it is expected that dispersal could only be over relatively short distances compared with former ideas, but nevertheless the rail network will be intensely important. Although successive Governments have struggled with these dispersal plans, it would not surprise me if one day a Government came to 'the conclusion that the best advice to be given to everybody was that they should stay put. I have always felt that it is almost inconceivable that any Government would take upon themselves the colossal responsibility of ordering dispersal, bearing in mind that it would virtually bring the economic life of the country to a standstill before the attack had taken place.
Now I come to the matter of warning of attack. Warning is extremely important because if you are caught in the open you have no chance at all, and even a short period of warning may enable a very
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large number of people to get under some kind of at any rate semi-effective cover. Is the warning and monitoring system now complete? It should be by now. Are any of the Government's current cuts falling on that system?
If I may refer to a booklet The Hydrogen Bomb, which was published by a previous Government first in 1957, and then reprinted in 1963, on page 28 it says:
"After a hydrogen bomb explosion vast numbers of people would be in dire need of help. In the immediate vicinity of the bomb crater there would be few survivors. Farther out, however, there would be people trapped in damaged buildings. Others would be injured and needing urgent first aid."
As the noble Viscount said, the Government have now decided that there are no longer to be special sections of the Civil Defence Corps trained in the different techniques. I think they also say, or at any rate imply, that it will be impossible to rescue people who are trapped. I cannot believe that the Government will withhold the money, if it is a question of money, for people to be trained and equipped to rescue those who are trapped.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, if the noble Lord will allow me to interrupt, we have never said that. There is no publication in which we have said, nor has any Minister ever said, that we shall not have an organisation to rescue people who are trapped.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I am seeking to make a probing speech, as the noble Lord will recognise, and one has to try to elicit from the various statements which have been made what is the truth about the Government's thinking. I should like to refer now to paragraph 10 of Appendix "B" to the recent Civil Defence circular of January 31. It says, speaking of rescue work:
"Extensive specialised Corps activities in this field can no longer be justified."
Is it on money grounds, or is it on a new assessment of rescue possibilities? If so, I wonder whether we can hear more about this new assessment, because until fairly recently the Home Office experts told us that very large numbers of casualties, including trapped people in the less damaged areas, could be enabled to survive.

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If I may refer again to the pamphlet The Hydrogen Bomb, it says on page 31:
"… improvisation would not be enough … adequate help for the victims of attack could come only from people trained and organised in advance. An efficient Civil Defence organisation, linked with a public that knows the facts, could save millions of lives."
I find some difficulty in appreciating just what the Government envisage. I am not suggesting, as the noble Lord thought, that there was an attitude of callousness, but in reading this new policy it certainly appears sometimes that now the concept is that those who are trapped or seriously injured at a distance of miles from the burst will have to be left to die because they cannot be rescued. What matters to Parliament above all is whether the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, can satisfy us that there will still be an efficient Civil Defence organisation, and that the Government are not saying that improvisation is now all that we can manage.
The Government have announced the abandonment of national recruitment and publicity campaigns for Civil Defence. I myself regret this. It is also announced that there will be no more expenditure, save in the most exceptional circumstances, on buildings for Civil Defence training. I do not know whether the Government are applying any stimulus at all to Industrial Civil Defence, which seems to me to be lagging far behind what is required. I appreciate that the Government want to concentrate the effort of the Civil Defence Corps on helping the local authorities to man the control system and on providing limited numbers of specialists to organise first aid and welfare. By this means they expect to cut the active strength of the Civil Defence Corps by one-third. The noble Lord will not mind my asking whether this is a plan for more effective action or a counsel of despair, because if it were a counsel of despair one wonders whether it is worth spending even the £18 million a year, and whether we might not indeed abandon Civil Defence altogether.
It is made clear in the circular and in the appendix to it that local authority staffs are to be called on for a great deal more at many levels. The noble Viscount from his special knowledge said a good deal on that. I have not so far been able
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to discover from Government statements or publications what are the financial arrangements proposed if expenditure which has hitherto been financed centrally is in future to fall on the local authority. In connection with this new policy of integrating local authority staffs much more closely with the Civil Defence effort, it seems to me that almost everything will turn on securing the keen co-operation of the local authorities. That co-operation will only be forthcoming if there are no financial problems left outstanding and if the local authorities are left in no doubt as to where the burden of cost is to fall.
The noble Viscount spoke of the training of these local authority staffs. I am not clear whether they are to be trained in normal working hours, or whether it is to be a compulsory obligation on them outside normal working hours. The noble Viscount suggested that under the existing terms of service of local authority staffs this would be entirely voluntary. I see from paragraph 8 of Appendix "B" that the Secretary of State will seek Parliamentary approval for new regulations making explicit the duty of local authorities to train their employees for control duties. Can the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, explain exactly what will be the position of the individual member of the local authority staff in future as regards training?
Also, who is to direct all these extra activities within the local authority? In my experience in urban areas, generally speaking the town clerk has assumed voluntarily considerable extra responsibilities in connection with the overall supervision of Civil Defence in the area. Those duties will become very considerably more burdensome when local authority staffs are to be integrated so much more closely with the work of Civil Defence. It would seem to me, at any rate, that if this combined operation is to work out successfully there will be many town clerks who simply will not be able to give the time to all the Civil Defence side of their duties, and will need extra high-level staff to relieve them of some of the work. That, of course, will cost money. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, can explain what larger part he anticipates the town clerks or, indeed, the clerks of councils will have to play under the new plan, and what

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additional staff it is contemplated by the Government that councils will have to employ at a high level, and at whose expense. I am not sure whether all this was hammered out by the Government with the local authorities before the Government announced their plans.
I myself have never been in the slightest doubt about the intense importance of restoring law and order as quickly as possible after an attack, together with some semblance of tolerable life for the less damaged parts of the country. The stake, after all, is nothing less than the survival of the British race. If, after nuclear attack, all communications were to break down, if millions of lives were to be lost through sheer ignorance of the whereabouts of the fall-out danger, the whole population of this island might be nearly wiped out, and the British race as such would virtually disappear from the face of the earth. That would be a heavy loss to the future of the world.
There is one further most important question which I want to raise. If there will be any danger greater than fall-out, it will be fire. We know from the last war how the immediate blast effects of an ordinary bomb can be vastly worsened and extended by the uncontrolled spread of fire. A nuclear attack, far outside the range of total destruction, is going to start sporadic fires by heat radiation an immense distance away from the burst. For the last time, may I quote this booklet, The Hydrogen Bomb, which I can see will need to be revised and re-issued in the new circumstances? It states, on pages 29 and 30, that the peace-time fire brigades will be formed into a National Fire Service, which:
"would be greatly expanded by the mobilisation of several thousand R.A.F. reservists, trained in fire fighting."
The fact is that those R.A.F. reservists do not now exist. The peace-time fire services throughout the country are highly trained, but in war they will be far too few, and the Auxiliary Fire Service is short of volunteers. I would judge that unnecessary loss, through small fires which establish themselves and spread unchecked, will be appalling unless the Government in peace-time see to it that thousands more people are trained in fire fighting. What are the Government's intentions in this matter?
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None of us could make a comprehensive speech on all the aspects of Civil Defence without taking up far too much time, and I am conscious that on a number of aspects the noble Viscount has spoken much more knowledgeably than I could have done. I am quite sure it has been right in these last ten years progressively to break away from the old-time concepts of the purpose of Civil Defence in the last war. I am sure it has been right to lay progressively more emphasis on the survival and recovery period. But I do not believe that we have yet thought through all that would be essential for enabling the nation to rescue itself from that strange, almost sub-human, form of civilisation which for a time might follow a widespread nuclear attack. I am sure the Government recognise that it will be a colossal task to keep the survivors alive, with uncontaminated food and uncontaminated water; I was going to add, "uncontaminated milk", but it will probably be impossible to get any of that at all for a long time. But it is right to ask the Government whether they have planned adequate preparations for keeping the people alive, apart from maintaining law and order, in this post-explosion period. Is the stockpile of food adequate, for instance?
One could ask so many more questions. If all these plans were not properly made, the suffering of the millions of survivors might be more poignant than the fate of the millions killed outright. This is one of the reasons why we owe so much to the W.R.V.S. and to other voluntary organisations, who address themselves to the immediate emergency after the attack. But it must be the Government who co-ordinate and plan all that, and what Parliament needs to do at this stage, I submit, is not to run away from the horror of it all, but to ask the Government responsibly whether they are satisfied that their plans are adequate and comprehensive.
4.49 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My Lords, the whole House, and indeed the whole country, has reason to be very grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, for providing this opportunity to discuss this vital question

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of Civil Defence for the first time for five years. As a Controller-designate, he is one of the people on whom a great and truly awful responsibility would descend if there were a nuclear emergency or attack. His speech was informed, since he spoke with knowledge, with a complete consciousness of his responsibilities and of many of the things which he would have to do. I am extremely grateful to him personally for that, as also for his kindly references to myself.
I am also extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, whose speech I regarded as most helpful. One would have expected an informed speech on this subject to come from a former Home Secretary, and indeed from one who, as a Minister, was responsible for some seven years for various aspects of Civil Defence, or whose Department had to deal with those aspects. I therefore very much welcomed his questions and, indeed, the observations tha he made.
Although we have had two speeches from noble Lords who know a great deal about this subject and who are fully informed of the need for Civil Defence, may I say that I give place neither to them nor to anybody else in this country in my belief that an efficient Civil Defence Service is a vital necessity under present conditions. In answer to one question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, I may say that I would not be standing at this Box and would not be a Minister if I did not believe that the task of Civil Defence, which I am about to explain, was not viable and credible—and it is not only here that I would say this.
As the junior Minister responsible under the Home Secretary for Civil Defence, I gladly accept the invitation of the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, to re-state Civil Defence policy and, as he put it, to set out in unmistakable terms the Government's thinking on this subject; and I hope to explain in some detail the changes on which we have decided in the light of the recent review and of the current strategic assessment. I have already been asked a great number of questions, to most of which I hope to be able to reply, but as my speech is the first from a Government spokesman on this subject for five years, I want to
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set out the whole thing. However, I shall try to answer the questions as I go along, although the answers may not necessarily be in the order in which the questions were put. Although one talks, as it were, to your Lordships and also, if they will listen, to the nation, I am personally conscious of the need to be talking now to the local authorities, to those with responsibility, to the members of the various Civil Defence forces, and to all those who make up the machinery that comprises our great force of Civil Defence.
The noble Viscount has opened this debate, whether through kindness or by chance, on the eve of the season for anti-nuclear marches and demonstrations. We all agree that the principle behind the slogan, "Ban the Bomb", is fervently supported by all the peoples of the world. Unhappily, the Governments of the nations of the world have not yet been able to agree on the means to implement it. Fortunately, as the Defence White Paper made clear, tension in Europe has relaxed, and there is at present little danger of nuclear aggression. Indeed, in the present state of deterrence it is difficult to believe that any rational Government would seek to expose its land and its people to the appalling risks of a nuclear exchange. But no one can say that all danger of a nuclear attack has disappeared, and until we can say that with certainty no Government worthy of the name could leave its people helpless in the aftermath of such a disaster. That is why, I am glad to say, Her Majesty's Government insist on the need for Civil Defence, and on the maintenance of an effective programme of Civil Defence preparations. My first point, therefore—because we are not always preaching to the converted; very far from it—is that, on the basis of these indisputable facts, the continuing need for Civil Defence is alike indisputable.
My second point is that if we ever suffered the horrors of nuclear attack, only Civil Defence could ensure the survival of the nation. There are those who say that in such a disaster we should be helpless, that nothing would avail or survive. We totally reject that view. The noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, asked: but how are we going to inform the public? I will ask my noble friend Lord Hughes to give some detail on that

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subject later, but the Government have never sought to conceal or minimise the terrible consequences of nuclear attack. Official publications on sale to the public put the position very bluntly. There can be no certainty about the form of an attack or the weight of the bombs which would be used, but in training Civil Defence personnel we spell out the areas of total destruction, the blast damage and the fire hazard for various sizes of weapons, including the worst.
Perhaps I may take the extreme example, the worst that could happen: an attack with 10 megaton bombs, each of which is equivalent to 10 million tons of T.N.T. Each would totally destroy an area with a radius of three and a half miles, an area in which no living thing would survive. This has some impact on our thinking about heavy rescue, which I shall come to later. Each bomb would create a belt of fires measuring from 7 to 20 miles across, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, mentioned, and would cause varying degrees of blast damage over a similar, possibly a wider, area. Our planning also assumes that wide areas of the whole country, including many not suffering fire and blast damage, would be subjected to the hazards of radioactive fall-out. This is the situation we should face, and we make no secret about it. It would be a man-made holocaust, exceeding in its effects the worst natural disasters in recorded history.
But there would be many areas with millions of people living in them which would suffer only supportable, or even minor, damage. It is the task of Civil Defence to ensure that these people survive, and that orderly government continues wherever there are people to be helped. Our plans provide for the achievement of this task. Without them, millions who survived the first onslaught would undoubtedly perish. Our plans provide for a series of options open to the Government of the day. We are talking about a period which could be one day, ten years or thirty years hence. Therefore, it is a question of a strategic assessment and of making plans to provide the Government of the day, whenever it happens, if it happens, with certain options. And in the course of our review we have greatly improved the
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options open to the Government at a time of emergency.
Our current planning takes account of the fact that the period between a declaration of a state of emergency and an actual attack may be considerably shorter than that which has previously been assumed—I think the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, guessed that this was so—and we have accordingly concentrated on those protective and control measures which can be maintained in a high state of readiness. I am not referring to the four-minute warning, which some people mistakenly declare to be all the warning we should receive. We think that a "bolt from the blue" in the sense of an attack being launched without a preceding period of international tension, is highly improbable. The time from what I might call "press button"—the Government decision—to readiness would be all too short, but with realistic preparations it would be enough.
My Lords, I think it has already been made clear by the two noble Lords who have spoken, but I cannot emphasise strongly enough, both to the public and indeed to some Civil Defence personnel that I have met when going round, that our preparations are not to be judged in terms of the A.R.P. of the last war, of the rescue worker in the damaged area, of the welfare worker at the rest centre and, as it were, of Government functioning from Whitehall in the usual way. Under nuclear attack, Civil Defence means nothing less than the maintenance, at all levels, of the whole machinery of government, and it involves the control of all services essential to the community, whether in public service or in nationalised or private industry. The vast scale of damage and casualties and the disruption of ordinary communications means that we must have instruments of government able to carry on wherever government is possible. There must be provision for the creation of an authority which, in a given area, could of its own volition marshal resources for the maintenance of law and order, and of food, water, shelter and medical supplies and deploy them to the best advantage for the continued survival of the community.
The foundation for these preparations (and I put this control at the very peak

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of everything in civil defence; for nothing is of any use without it) is the effective emergency system of decentralised control which we have developed and are continuing to develop at all levels. The largest units are Regional Governments under Regional Commissioners. They and their key staffs have been designated, but the actual seats of Regional Government would, for obvious reasons, be established after attack, in the light of prevailing circumstances. Meantime the sub-regional Government controls—two or three to each region—which will be manned on a declaration of emergency before attack, will be responsible for communications, life-saving operations, and initial survival measures. They will be staffed by the main Government Departments, and the Police, Fire Service, Armed Forces and public utilities. Sub-regional control premises are now available in most of the sub-regions, although some are improvised, and will need to be improved or replaced in the longer term. But they are there.
The next link in the chain of control below sub-regional level is the local authority administrative area. Steady progress is being made with the provision of protected accommodation to provide controls for county borough and county authorities, and for county sub-controls within the larger counties. So far, about one-third of the permanent controls have been provided in England and Wales, and two-thirds in Scotland. Those I have visited, though spartan, are excellently equipped and sufficiently staffed for the job they would have to do (uninformed people have said that these are a sort "funk-hole" for the selected; but they are far from it), but they would not survive in an area of total destruction. That is why the emphasis must always be on flexibility, and on the units of Government operating where and how they can.
In 1964 local authorities were advised to base their plans on the assumption that emergency legislation would provide for the delegation of their peacetime powers to a small emergency committee of about three elected members, and they were asked to nominate one person as Controller. I am glad to say that Controllers have now been designated for all county and county borough areas. The Controller will exercise, in addition
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to his local authority duties, some central Government functions, and will have powers to co-ordinate central Government and public utility functions at county and county borough level with those of the local authority—for example, to determine priorities in the allocation of labour, materials or transport. In Scotland, planning is adapted to the somewhat different local authority control structure.
The effective discharge of these functions depends on the Controller having close touch with those with the expert knowledge needed for restoring essential services and supplies. For this reason we propose that local authority controls should be manned before attack, with experts drawn from local and central Government, and public utilities, as well as with an operational staff for life-saving. Guidance on the staff needed for the exercise of these controls was issued to local authorities on January 31 last in the circular to which frequent reference has been made. In Scotland it is being prepared, I understand.
Parallel with, and complementary to, the emergency control system we have the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation, about which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor asked a question. I can tell him that there have been no cuts at all in this Organisation. Its purpose is to provide public warning of an actual attack, and afterwards to provide information about the location and power of the nuclear weapons exploded, and the distribution and level of radioactive fall-out. This vital part of our home defence preparations is now complete and could be brought to operational readiness within a matter of hours. The system provides for attack warnings received by the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at Fylingdales, and other military installations, to be transmitted immediately to 24,000 warning points all over the country so as to give the public a minimum four minutes' warning of actual attack, whether by missiles or by aircraft.
In addition, the well-manned Royal Observer Corps is trained and equipped to track and measure radioactive fall-out. Five Home Department sectors (manned by civil servants), 29 Royal Observer Corps group headquarters and over 1,500 underground Royal Observer Corps posts have been built and are provided with communications and essential

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equipment. I have visited some of these 1,500 holes in the ground and met the devoted local men and women who man them. No words of mine can pay adequate tribute to their efficiency, dedication, and unswerving determination to play their full part if the need should ever arise. Theirs is a highly efficient organisation. It is there; and, as the Home Secretary made clear last year, we intend to keep it so. Possibly it is true that, so far as the ordinary public are concerned, not one person in twenty knows that this work is going on, day in, day out, week in, week out; but it is. It is there to be used if wanted.
My Lords, coming now to the various elements of the Civil Defence organisation, I would first refer, briefly, to the Fire Service and the Police. Here we have the advantage, in each case, of an existing peace-time service which is being prepared and trained to meet emergency conditions. In the event of war, all local authority fire brigades will be brought under national control. The main part of the Fire Service, to which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, made special reference, would be formed into mobile fire columns, constituted from the regular Fire Service, recalled personnel (which he omitted to mention), and the Auxiliary Fire Service. It is true that we do not have the number of trained personnel that we should like; but those we have are well trained and are far from being a negligible quantity. These columns would be based outside the probable target areas. Ail members, both regular and auxiliary, of local authority fire brigades receive training in the special techniques of emergency fire-fighting, and use the special equipment and vehicles provided for the purpose.
Another thing I am glad to say is that we have large stocks of equipment for this purpose. This, of course, as noble Lords will be aware, is equipment that we do not use now, except for exercise, because there is no present need. But it would be used in emergency because, for example, there might then be no other means of conveying water. General training takes place within fire brigades, but we at the Home Office Fire Service Training Centres provide specialist courses; and liaison between the regional Governments would be maintained through regional fire commanders all of
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whom were appointed some time ago. as were the regional police commanders.
In the case of the police, we propose that the bulk of the service should, in the event of an emergency, remain as home cover forces in their own areas. A substantial proportion of police manpower will, however, be withdrawn from police operations prior to attack and formed into mobile police columns. Their task would be to provide a mobile reserve of trained manpower for use after attack, wherever the need was greatest. To assist in training police officers for their war-time duties we have at present one mobile training column, and we shall have a second column by the end of the year.
In the maintenance of law and order the police will have the support of the Armed Forces, including the invaluable assistance of the 23,000 men of the Territorial Army Volunteer Reserve III, whose training will be designed to prepare them to co-operate with the police in a variety of ways. And here I would say how glad I am to think that we shall have that support which would be so badly needed for the maintenance of law and order. I agree entirely with what was said by the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, on this subject; but we have the system there and we shall have the means, certainly the framework and the structure, which will bear, as the noble Viscount asked, the sudden necessary expansion.
My Lords, so far I have filled in the background to the whole field of Civil Defence policy and tried to illustrate the total concept and the change of governmental control right down. I come now to the reorganisation of the Civil Defence Corps itself which the Home Secretary announced to Parliament last December. This inevitably took longer to decide, and I make no apology for the delay. After all, I have suffered more than most. For two years I have been going around the country making speeches on Civil Defence—and did not say a word; and therefore it is a great relief for me to be able to say something at last. But in a matter as important as this we did have to make the most careful and searching study. It was important to be certain that the foundations we were laying for the future were sound. We had to secure the widest measure of agreement among

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all the interests concerned, which necessarily involved long calculations; and I want to say how grateful we are to the representatives of local authorities who worked so hard on the Working Party, which is in itself an assurance, because of these consultations, that they think our decisions are on the right lines.
In his Statement my right honourable friend said that the Corps was to be reorganised and its numbers substantially reduced. Its future role would be to help local authorities man the control system and provide a limited number of specialists to help organise the first aid and welfare resources of the community. He mentioned that, after the period of adjustment, the active strength of the Corps throughout Great Britain was likely to be 75,000 to 80,000 compared with about 122,000. A Parliamentary Statement was necessarily short and I am glad to have this opportunity of speaking more fully of the nature of the changes to be made, and our reasons for them.
My Lords, bearing in mind that the overall purpose of the vitally important control system is the carrying on of government in war, it is obvious that local government staffs are specially well fitted for this task, and local authorities will be expected to make the fullest possible use of their own staffs in manning the control system. The numbers of local authority staffs required to fill control appointments will not be large. In the extreme case, that of the very largest county controls, the maximum would be 90, and of course correspondingly less in county boroughs and county districts, but we recognise that they may need help. The position will vary from one area to another. Some larger local authorities may be able to manage; the smaller ones will certainly require assistance. At nearly all controls scientific support and help with signal staff (a point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie) in manning communications of course will be needed—we recognise that—and the smaller authorities may also need operations, information, intelligence and administrative support. Provision of this help is, in our view, the principal future task of the Corps.
The system of control extends still further downwards from the local authority controls to sector posts and
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control posts. Hitherto it has been the role of the warden section to man these lower levels in the control system. The word "warden" has an honoured place in the history of Civil Defence, but it is no longer entirely appropriate to the role now envisaged, which is essentially that of a local leader, responsible at these lower levels for the mobilisation of community resources. The term "warden" has therefore been replaced by "control officer", and the "warden post" has become the "control post". At sector and control posts, as at the local authority controls, the task of the Corps will, in principle, be to supplement the resources of the local authority, but the manning of many of them is likely to fall largely on the Corps, which will therefore play a vital part in the system of public control at local level.
The remaining task of the Corps in the future will be to provide limited numbers of specialists to help organise first aid and welfare resources, but they will no longer be expected to provide large numbers of "pairs of hands" for these tasks. Reliance will now be placed in the main on the voluntary organisations. The St. John Ambulance Brigade, the St. Andrews Association in Scotland and the British Red Cross Society have agreed to assist local authorities, I am glad to say, in carrying out their first aid functions.
The W.R.V.S. has always made a considerable contribution to the welfare section of the Corps and has trained its own members and other women in welfare duties. They have now expressed their willingness to expand their instructional services and to make them available to more women so as to help local authorities to discharge their welfare functions in an emergency. We have made it clear in our circular that we look to local authorities to avail themselves of this valuable assistance. My Lords, the nation is extremely indebted to the W.R.V.S. for their tremendous work for Civil Defence—A.R.P. at it was—over a period of some 29 years. Now, as has already been mentioned, they approach the conclusion of their great enterprise in conveying the essential facts of Civil Defence to 3 million women in all parts of the country.
We may add to the Civil Defence workers 3 million women who have been

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given the facts, or the essential facts. True it has been done through the great enterprise, determination and devotion of the noble Marchioness, Lady Reading, and her members, but there are a lot of people, fortunately, who do know the essential facts about Civil Defence. The noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, asked about local authorities carrying this matter wider. Local authorities can conduct talks on the facts of life in the Civil Defence if they wish to do so. We certainly would not discourage that. But we are glad to know that we can look to the W.R.V.S. for indispensable assistance in preparing women for the manifold welfare duties which would be required in an emergency, including emergency feeding, care of the homeless, billeting, and (a point that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, put to me) if the Government of the day decided to exercise another option that we shall provide, dispersing mothers and children from the main centres of population.
The noble Lord was right to suggest that the system we had in mind meant shorter distances, and there has been no change in our minds as to the classes which should be regarded as priority. I agree with the noble Lord that this is an option that we should provide. We propose to provide that option. It might well be open to the Government of the day faced with the emergency to decide to advise people to stay put. But it is up to us to provide that option and to be ready, and in that case the W.R.V.S. and other voluntary bodies will have an enormous part to play.
Scientific assessment, on which we must rely, shows that rescue operations can make only a limited contribution to the saving of life after a nuclear attack. This is inevitable, given the size of the task, the limited time available for operations owing to the fall-out hazard, and the scale of resources necessary to make any appreciable impact on the situation. The noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, spoke about saving the lives of a few thousand people, and suggested that if it was only a question of money it should still be done. If your Lordships can conceive of an area of total destruction, a wider area ravaged by fire, and the whole area under fall-out, you will appreciate that a
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considerable time will elapse before anyone can get near it.
We are being realistic in our preparations. We are not thinking in terms of the A.R.P. of 1939. We do not propose to meet the conditions envisaged, as has been done three times this century, by starting a war on the basis of the techniques of the previous one. We have made a scientific assessment of the situation, subject to constant review and consideration, and what I am now putting before your Lordships is our best assessment of what should be done and of the instruments which should be created to meet the situation envisaged.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I have listened with the greatest interest to what the noble Lord has said. May I ask him whether there has been a substantial change in policy, thanks to relatively recent scientific assessment? I remember the time when it was expected that rescue workers would have to operate under fall-out with clear knowledge as to the amount of exposure which could be permitted, but it was then hoped to be possible to rescue a substantial number of people. Is it the case that the newest scientific assessment suggests that it will be impossible to rescue as many as had been hoped?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am speaking of heavy rescue. It is still envisaged that Civil Defence workers with protective clothing will work under fall-out, and they are being trained for that purpose. But the noble Lord must have looked at this many times and he will appreciate that radioactive fall-out is only one of the difficulties in connection with heavy rescue. Our assessment of the situation is that vast-scale resources would be needed to make any appreciable impact on the situation at all, apart from those people, many of them in the areas of lesser destruction farther away from the centre, for whom we intend to provide rescue arrangements.
In future the main provision for rescue will be led by those whose peace-time work and expertise fit them for it—for example, a local authority's own labour force, perhaps supplemented by industrial resources, depending on the circumstances at the time, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, suggested. Now that decisions have been made, I hope that

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they will continue to grow in strength. The Fire Service will also render valuable assistance. Extensive specialised Corps activity in heavy rescue can no longer be justified, but the more elementary rescue skills will be taught to every member of the Civil Defence Corps, and provision will be made for a limited number of members of the Corps to receive further rescue training, which will enable them to act as leaders and to give special advice to Corps members and others made available for rescue tasks.
Augmentation of the ambulance services in England and Wales will no longer be a function of the Corps. The Minister of Health is planning new arrangements for the expansion of the service and the local authority associations will be consulted as soon as draft plans are complete. Because of these fundamental changes in the role of the Corps, it will no longer be divided into sections. The tasks hitherto discharged by the rescue, ambulance and first-aid and welfare sections will not in future fall to the Corps on a scale sufficient to justify a continuation of separate sections for these purposes. I think that that must be generally accepted. If the Corps is not divided into sections, there will be far greater scope for local discretion in deploying its members to supplement the staffs of local authorities, and it will help to simplify training arrangements. The noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, mentioned the training arrangements, and I am sure that he has studied our proposals. They are being adapted to these new roles, and I think adapted effectively. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, asked how we were relating scientific assessments to training. The latest training manual for instructors, which was published in January of this year, brings our information right up to date.
The conditions of service of members of the Corps have been modified to meet the needs of its revised functions and structure. Class A will continue to provide a nucleus of highly trained volunteers to fill key posts, but a reserve which could be utilised in any emergency will also be built up to provide a source of trained manpower to deal with the many tasks arising within control post areas. Accordingly, mem-
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bers of the Corps will be enrolled on a short service active engagement and will ordinarily pass to the reserve on completion of a single term. The normal term of active engagement will be four years, composed of one year's recruit service followed by a three-year period in Class A.
The reserve will be divided into two classes. Emergency List I will consist of members who pass to the reserve on completion of their period of engagement in Class A. Emergency List II will comprise those who have completed recruit training, but not training in Class A. All possible links between active and reserve members will be preserved, and reservists will from time to time be asked to take part in exercises or to attend a refresher session of training. I attach great importance to the maintenance of a large, well-trained reserve, who would all have a vital contribution to make in an emergency, particularly in helping to man the sector and control posts and so provide local leadership. Indeed it is for this reason that the reduction in the size of the Corps and the change in its functions in no way reduces its importance—quite the reverse. Under the new arrangements, members will need to be able to turn their hands to whatever task is most necessary at the time, and all volunteers will be trained in more than one function so as to provide the greatest flexibility in their use. For these tasks we shall continue to need volunteers of a high calibre, with qualities of leadership and versatility—in fact, a corps d'élite, backed by a substantial, highly trained, and constantly refreshed reserve, which in my view, having regard to the remarkably good morale which prevails, will provide an even more efficient service than we have at present.
The noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, asked me to say something about the cost of Civil Defence. I think your Lordships will agree that my speech is already overlong, and I propose to leave it to my noble friend Lord Hughes to give details of finance when he winds up the debate. But perhaps I might say that, while we have necessarily had to review expenditure both in the light of the current strategic assessment and of the need to restrict Defence expenditure as a whole, we are continuing to ensure

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a viable and comprehensive Civil Defence organisation. This has been achieved by the most thorough revaluation of all previous plans to ensure that every measure would still earn its cost on current planning assumptions, and that our available resources were concentrated on the really essential tasks. Excluding the £2 million contribution to the cost of T. and A.V.R. III, the cost of Civil Defence in 1967–68 will be £18 million. This compares with the cost of £30 million which, at current prices, was the figure forecast for that year before we began our review and reorganisation. In these days of inexorably rising estimates it is an achievement which I am glad to place on record. The £18 million covers the Home Defence expenditure of all civil departments.
I have only had time this afternoon to discuss the preparations of the Home Departments—the control system, the Civil Defence Corps, Police, Fire and warning and monitoring. But those of your Lordships who have studied Appendix "J" of the White Paper on the Defence Estimates will have seen the number of other Departments included and the diversity of matters covered by what we call Civil Defence. The Minister of Transport's emergency port scheme, the Minister of Power's emergency plans for the gas and electricity industries and the supply of oil, the Minister of Agriculture's plans for food—the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, mentioned stocks of food—all these and more go to make up the complete picture. The price of all this is certainly the cheapest and one of the most important insurance premiums of which I have knowledge. And it has only been made possible by the selfless devotion of an army of volunteers, who year in year out train and equip themselves to face a dreadful emergency that we all pray will never happen. They deserve well of their country.
5.32 p.m.
BARONESS SWANBOROUGH: My Lords, so many people have spoken so much about Civil Defence, yet some people wonder what Civil Defence really is. I think we should make it clear, both to ourselves and to other people, that broadly speaking Civil Defence is the emergency service that one gives to the nation in a time of great trouble. As
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the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, whom we are all so pleased to see here to-day, said, in its final analogy Civil Defence is essentially the carrying on of Government in war. But this is obviously, and should always remain, in the final sense only. Civil Defence is perhaps the most difficult of any task that any human being can undertake. It is so for a great many reasons, and primarily because it is hard to translate in its local application, because nobody ever believes that the worst can happen to him. This is true of so many things, and it is particularly true of Civil Defence.
The second reason is that it demands a great sacrifice of leisure from those who serve it; and people, although they know they should have an insurance, are slack and lax about paying the instalments on it. Thirdly, it should be the responsibility of everyone. But many people evade their responsibility until the very last moment, and then it is too late because of their unpreparedness. I do not say this in the way of just voicing words. I say it after many years' experience of Civil Defence. I feel that this is one of the prime difficulties that we always have to face as we discuss and, even more, as we operate Civil Defence itself at the local level.
Civil Defence as an arm of defence has, like all of Her Majesty's Services, gone through many phases of change. The present movement to prepare and shape a system with lines of communication, with an observer and warning system, with trained, responsible officers, is something which seems to me not only wise, but practical and workable. It means decentralisation, so that local self-reliance and local delegation of responsibility can be assumed. This is surely what we want if we want local participation, because with modern methods of communication, public utilities and transport, the local unit must to-day be self-sufficient.
It is therefore right to my mind that Civil Defence should be handled by local authorities so that they can take responsibility for the local unit. Those of us who work with this arm of defence know that the survival of public utilities is of the greatest importance. I know that I, for one, would never have realised this had I not met it head-on. And local

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authorities often have the full responsibility for, and always have the full knowledge of, public utilities. These, and communications at local level, are much less likely to be dislocated if they are operated at their lowest common denominator, rather than from a distance. This gives the merit of independence and the generating of a self-sufficiency which in the ultimate should be of the greatest value.
It is necessary, I am sure, to recognise that the greatest necessity of all is to have people trained at every level in every area. It is no earthly use having a lot of highly trained and highly skilled people in one area who cannot move into another one. Therefore, it seems right that local authorities should now be occupied, as they are, with the problem of changing the shape of Civil Defence in their own areas, and finding out how they can effect the economies they have been asked to make, so that a plan can be ready to dominate as from the end of September.
Many things could be overlooked if we did not suggest them ourselves. One of them, I think, is the interest that could be encouraged in youth. Too often people suggest that youth should do jobs which have no challenge. Today we know that much of youth has played an invaluable part in the past in connection with all kinds of emergencies. They could play this part in the future if those who are responsible took the trouble to encourage, to train, to guide and to meld them in with a sense of responsibility into the general structure. Local community effort and local community service could be stimulated through youth, and the initiative and the provision of minimum necessities to them for doing their work is something that should be thought about carefully.
I do not think your Lordships will expect me to be so ungenerous as to pay tribute just to Civil Defence and not to Civil Defence workers in the welfare section. I have worked with them and for them since 1938, and my interest, which I should declare, is that I am at present the Chairman of the W.R.V.S. Workers up and down the country—not just the W.V.S., but all sorts of workers—have done so much more than could have been expected of them; and words as
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tributes seem so very inadequate. The one-in-five scheme which the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, mentioned was merely an effort to make men realise that if they would listen to women most of their troubles would be dispersed. Therefore, knowing which was the wiser of the two, we thought that if just one in five of the adult population of women could know the basic facts of what an attack on the country could mean, this would be a help to men! We thought we must be practical in doing such a thing, and therefore we realised that it would not be any good having a target of three million. We should have to work right down to the village target figure, so that in fact, if there is to be an informed public, it will be on a local basis and not where they cannot be of use at the moment when the need arises.
Nobody so far in this debate has spoken of the fact that these are days when those of us who are old in years have to withdraw from Civil Defence. This is a truth. There are too many old people in Civil Defence, and I would boast that in fact I am no longer in charge of Civil Defence in my own service; and I would say with misery that I have to answer to one of my juniors who has now taken over the responsibility. I do not know that she enjoys it entirely; but still, I do my best.
I should like to devote my time this evening to the question of welfare, because I know that someone who is much more qualified than I am will speak on behalf of the voluntary aid services. Whether one is working in welfare or in any other field of Civil Defence work it is absolutely essential for everyone to qualify well and truly in first aid. In the field of welfare there is a body of people who will be playing a big part in survival, and I think the people who are to-day in the welfare section should have an opportunity of becoming the officers of to-morrow in connection with welfare work. Many of them will go on to the emergency list, but many others will retire, either because of age or for some other reason, and I should like to plead that it be never forgotten that all persons who have once taken a proper training are informed members of the public and therefore, wherever they lived, would be of value in playing their part if ever the dread moment were to come.

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Experience has certainly taught me, and I am sure it has taught many other people, even if it were not self-evident, that at any time of emergency it is necessary to have additional and trained support for all services, whether in the field of welfare or elsewhere. For this reason, training must be carried out to a tremendous extent. As the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has stated, the W.R.V.S. has undertaken to do training on a very big scale, and I need hardly say that the content of the syllabus has been agreed with the Government Departments concerned. I hope that all W.R.V.S. members will, as members of the women's auxiliary to Civil Defence, prepare themselves by training for the kind of service that they may be called upon to give.
As an auxiliary, W.R.V.S. have lived through the changes which started with A.R.P. and we have reached a belief that the approach—where women are concerned—is to prevent them from feeling that each individual woman is being asked to sign a "life sentence". This may be a feeling that women have more than men, but the difficulty in getting a woman to sign on the dotted line in connection with any sort of service is great. For this reason, we have undertaken, in addition to training our own members, to give elementary welfare training to those women who would like to have an opportunity to take this training but who are unable to undertake any specific commitment and who do not wish to join W.R.V.S. itself. We shall urge everyone who is taking such training to go on and take training in first aid. This would mean that a great mass of women, because they had taken some slight training, would be of value at the local level, if in no other way, by knowing what to do for themselves and their families.
Training will be on three bases; that it will be practical; it will be where the volunteer wants it (not making her go a distance for it), and it will be when she wants it, which will mean that it will stop a lot of quarrels with her husband. This will be a convenience to women who cannot travel distances in order to fulfill the present regulations of a class of so many people at such a place and at such a time.
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I believe that this service to the "consumer" will be made possible by a great increase in the number of women who will come forward to be qualified. It can be attained only by having a sufficiency of qualified and authorised trainers, who will manifest the third letter in "W.R.V.S." and will not receive any fees, although the standard of training will be as high as it is to-day, if not higher, All trainers will have to he qualified and authorised, and, in addition —and this is a new thing which does not operate at present—they will have to be retested periodically, so as to obviate that ghastly "waffler" who always sends the audience to sleep.
Women at the ordinary local level who are doing day-to-day work will, in fact, be of great value; they are operating today in the field of welfare, and in practically every case they are working to a statutory body. Those who are doing meals-on-wheels are working ultimately to the local authority officer who is responsible for this particular phase of local authority work; those who are doing housing work are working ultimately to the housing manager; and those who are doing work for old people are working to the welfare service. This day-to-day work has unconsciously taught the worker lines of communication, chains of responsibility and local authority machinery, and this has given them their contacts with the person in control, as well as the general "know-how" of their own locality. These women are known locally and have earned the confidence of those they serve, and the type of service they have learned to give —"blown up" in an emergency and under the control of skilled persons—is not only possible but desirable from the point of view of work, of morale and of survival. What we envisage is, of course, recognised as being full of difficulties. Obstacles will be legion and will have to be overcome; but women do understand women, and we believe that the objective of this scheme can be achieved.
5.49 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LICHFIELD: My Lords, my contribution to this debate will be a brief one because there is only one particular point that I wish to make. However, I should like to begin,

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speaking on behalf of the Churches, to express our gratitude to the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, for initiating this debate to-day and for the most important statements which have followed. The conditions under which we might have to try to exist, if such a terrible thing as we have been contemplating should fall upon us, are so dreadful that it would be highly difficult to imagine them, and it has rightly been stressed in this debate that it is no use our thinking of Civil Defence in terms of what was done in the last war. Obviously this is an entirely different matter. Nevertheless, the basic human needs remain the same.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, spoke about the need for uncontaminated water, food, and so on, thus satisfying bodily needs. There are also the spiritual needs, and the question of the maintenance of morale. I believe that in this matter of the maintenance of the morale much can be done by those who are accustomed to working among the people, and who know them and are trusted by them. Here I would come to the part that the clergy and Ministers of religion might well play in this and would wish to play in this.
Naturally, one thinks about what happened at the outset of the last war, with the evacuation of the children and then the onset of the bombing. I found myself in those days as the vicar of a parish in Southampton, and we had both those experiences; the evacuation of the children and then, subsequently, what in those days was very heavy bombing. I know that the fact that the clergy were in the closest touch with the Civil Defence organisation in those days was of very great value. Looking back on it all, I am pleased to think that the Civil Defence organisation of those days told us in the Churches that they valued the contribution we were endeavouring to make. I remember that shortly before I left the Civil Defence organisation of the town held a special parade service in my church, and we had many contacts together which we greatly valued; and I know that the Churches were able to play a most valuable part because the people knew the clergy and I think they trusted them.
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When we come to what might happen in the future, it will be appreciated that, having had all this close contact in the past, I was particularly pleased to be invited to serve on the committee which in 1963 was called together by the then Home Secretary, now the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, to consider the whole question of the part which the clergy and ministers of religion might play in war. This committee, which was under the chairmanship of a high official in the Home Office, was fully representative of all the Churches, and it included the Secretary of the Churches Main Committee—that is, the body which in these matters represents all the main Christian denominations in the country; and in this matter the Jewish community also is associated with it. We had a number of meetings at the Home Office. We went into this aspect very thoroughly, and we produced a report. It will therefore be understood that there was considerable disappointment among some of us when the Government decided, in the end, that they were not going to publicise this report, and nothing further was done about it. I am not complaining about this matter, because it is fully understood what the reasons for this delay may have been.
In 1965 the Churches Main Committee to which I have referred issued a circular setting out that it had been decided by the then Government that it would be premature to issue a report at the present juncture, in view of the further consideration which the Government were giving to the whole question of defence policy. This further consideration has been given by the Government over the last two years, and we hear that various circulars have been issued. I hope very much that we shall soon hear from the Government what they would wish the clergy and Ministers of religion to try to do in this matter; because since then we have not heard anything. I believe that it is folly not to call on people of good will who might be of the utmost assistance. We should like to play our part. Before the last war we all went to the Civil Defence courses; we went to first aid courses; we went into the examinations, and I well remember how hard I tried, because I thought it would be disgraceful if my curate passed the examination and I failed. I mention this merely to show that we were really trying.

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In the awful conditions we are contemplating I believe that the spiritual needs of people will be very great, and I believe that the clergy can do much to help them at that time. But we, the clergy and ministers, will be far more able to help the people if we are given the necessary instruction and given the lead for which we are asking. This report tried to give that lead, and we worked very hard. Perhaps the report that was not published may have been no good, but I certainly hope that something will be done in order that we may be given the lead for which we are asking and pleading.
I should like to touch on one other matter, and that is the question of premises. Again, we are thinking in different terms altogether from those of the last war, but I know that at that time premises owned by the Churches were very valuable in moments of stress. How well I recall, for instance, my own church hall suddenly having a whole lot of French troops billeted there after they had been withdrawn from Dunkirk! I am sure that the Churches would like to play their part in being as helpful as possible in this matter of the use of premises. The present position is not over-clear, and if the Churches could be helped a little more in this matter by the Home Office it would assist us.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, may I intervene?—because I am not sure why the position is not clear. In any case, as the right reverend Prelate will be aware, he and other Bishops have been invited to let us know if there were any points which were not clear.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LICHFIELD: My Lords, perhaps if I could have a word with the noble Lord at a later stage I could make it plain why it is not quite clear.
Finally, I would say this. It has been my duty and privilege during this week to take the Prayers in the House, and I always feel that they are magnificent Prayers: that Prayer for the Parliament is most moving, and in it we speak of "the peace and tranquillity of the realm". The subject we have been discussing this afternoon is one which concerns the very life and death of the nation, and while obviously, as is rightly being stressed to-day, we must take all possible steps to see that we meet such a calamity as efficiently as we can, what I would
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ask is that we should pray that this calamity may, by God's mercy, never come. I therefore feel that I should be remiss if I allowed this opportunity to go by without saying that I hope that all believers in God in this country—and I trust in many other countries too—will continually pray that men may not be so led along the paths of folly and wickedness that such a disaster as this ever overtakes the human race. And in that effort all of us can surely play our part.
5.58 p.m.
LORD TWEEDSMUIR: My Lords, I will only detain the House for a few minutes, as most of the points I wanted to make have been made, and probably better than I could have made them. I would welcome the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, who I am delighted to see back in his place, and quote what he said, that Civil Defence was "a vital necessity". "Vital" is the right word. Where a country is threatened with attack, only two things are vital, and the rest are merely mightily important. The first is the will to resist, and the second is possession of the training and equipment with which to resist. We are a little apt to think of Civil Defence in the present day as entirely our own affair. It is a preoccupation of a great many of our allies as well.
No two countries have quite the same problem. In Canada, where you have 13 large centres of population, strung along about a 3,500 mile border, and a wind that blows predictably evenly so that you can guess where the fall-out is going, and with a car to every three and a half people, some possibility of evacuation might very clearly be considered. Whether they will consider it I do not know. But we, I think, with this overcrowded country of ours, have to budget to stay pretty well where we are. As noble Lords have said, we depend on two things, a large force of trained volunteers—and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Swanborough, said, properly trained in every area—and a public that knows what to expect, what is expected of it, where to go, and what to do in a survivable situation. That is what we are dealing with—the area beyond the ring of fire, the survivable belt.
I think the first thing that I would press on the Government is the urgent

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need for much more publicity. I join the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, who made a most earnest plea for this. It must not be local publicity, where some authorities do it and others do not. It must be national publicity, however contentious, however horrible, and however unpopular. The right reverend Prelate has made a most eloquent plea for this very thing. Governments did not flinch before the war to tell the people of Britain the full horrors of mustard gas, Lewisite gas, and all those other things to which we were going to be exposed.
It is possible to reduce one's commitments in the foreign field, and consequently to reduce one's armaments, by shrinking these overseas commitments. But this is an absolutely unshrinkable commitment to the people of Britain, who stay there in their same numbers, and to whom we owe the maximum protection that we can properly give them. This is not anything absolutely new. I think it helps to see this threat in some kind of historical perspective. There always has been a threat. I was reading the other day a letter to the journals from a gentleman who was most concerned about the invention of a new death dealing weapon. He picked up his pen and he wrote to the paper as follows:
"If, moreover, this new system is applied to the military, war could shortly become so frightful as to exceed all bounds of imagination, and future wars would threaten, in a few years, to destroy not only armies, but civilisation itself."
That letter to the papers was written in 1817, by a man who was immensely concerned to read about the invention of the percussion lock; and it was thought that that would be the result if it ever succeeded the old flint lock.
I have only a word or two to add to that. I think it is well worth remembering what tremendous achievements Civil Defence has had in this country. It has now become accepted by the civilians of this country, like the fire brigade and the police, as an arm of public service which is there to help. They felt that, I am sure, at Aberfan. We in Scotland certainly felt it in Aberdeen some few weeks ago when a large building collapsed, burying a number of people. The Civil Defence people were on the spot quickly, and undoubtedly they
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helped to save a number of lives. I see Lord Hughes in his place, and I would ask him to comment, if he would, on an article which appeared in the Aberdeen Press and Journal of March 10. It was an interview with Mr. James Smith, the Civil Defence officer there, who said that in the event of a nuclear attack Aberdeen would need 3,000 workers. He said he had 1,000. Perhaps Lord Hughes could comment on that, and say when we could possibly hope to recruit the rest. Mr. Smith, I may say, expressed the greatest possible confidence in the Government's new plan. What sometimes clouds our thinking is only considering the blazing centre of a nuclear explosion. There must be an enormous area around it which could be called survivable.
I would venture to say two further things before sitting down, just to remind your Lordships of two calamities which have happened in my lifetime and that of most other noble Lords, too. One was the Napier earthquake, and one was the flooding of the Fraser River in British Columbia, the first in the early 1930s and the second in early 1948. Napier was a town of 19,000 inhabitants in New Zealand. With a most law-abiding people, they had but a small police force, and, I imagine, not a large fire fighting force. They had no soldiery anywhere about. They had not been needed. They had in fact no formed body to deal with the calamity. That was one of the most terrible earthquakes that has ever occurred in history. In a trice the water-mains were broken; there was no food, water or transport; and there was no light. Two warships reached there the following day and brought some kind of government structure to help out. But of the 260 people who perished in that earthquake, I feel that had there been a chain of command many of them would have survived.
Then in 1948 the Fraser River came down in tremendous flood, sweeping away whole villages and parts of townships, flooding farms and a great deal of the country. The flood waters were rising. It was only three years after the war, and they got hold of three or four militia regiments—territorials, as we call them here—who were battle-hardened men for the most part, strongly disciplined, and they took over the entire

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fight. It was they who rescued the people; it was they who dealt with the sandbagging of the river banks, preventing the flooding getting worse. It was they who kept law and order. It was they who produced medicines, food, rescue, communications and everything. It happened in a part of the world where they had these trained people, and an almost inconsiderable loss of life resulted, whereas if they had not been there, the loss of life would have been something terrible.
In bringing my remarks to an end, I would just say (as I think many noble Lords have already said today, but it bears repeating) that this intractable commitment to the people of Britain depends on the morale and training of volunteers; and it depends on the level of information of the public. I wish Her Majesty's Government extremely well in putting through their policy, and in bringing to an end this uncertainty which, as the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, has mentioned, has hovered over us for the last two years. I end by saying that perhaps not everybody quite realises that one of the most significant deterrents to prevent an aggressor nation going to war is the realisation that the nation they intend to attack is determined to survive, and that, I believe, is our resolution here.
6.8 p.m.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, it has been communicated to me that, at a certain time of the clock, we shall have to adjourn during pleasure, so I shall endeavour to trim what I had intended to say into the time that remains. But I do want to declare where I stand to start with, by saying that I believe that an adequate, but not necessarily extravagant, Civil Defence organisation is necessary. I greatly admire the men and women who serve in it.
One particular difficulty in the Civil Defence movement is that it is an organisation without glamour, particularly in peace time. But a week or two ago I discovered one quarter where the Civil Defence organisation was appreciated. It was in Chelmsford Gaol. They had enjoyed a lecture from one of our Civil Defence officers. He found that they were far more attentive than the normal audience which he addressed. Whether they thought that he would be training
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them in the use of ladders for rescue purposes, I do not know.
However, I do not want to argue about ideology or psychology, except to say that I think it would be stupid to create the impression that if we have a Civil Defence service we can almost shut our eyes to the menace of the H-bomb. There is no complete defence against that weapon. We have to face it. All the same, an efficient Civil Defence service can save a large number of lives, and could keep the community running; and in the present state of the world, some form of Civil Defence is most certainly necessary.
Let us look round the world. America has some 1,700 bombs of the biggest size. Russia has about the same. De Gaulle is experimenting by blowing them up in the Sahara. Even China is discovering the secrets of nuclear weapons. And in Germany there has been really alarming progress in the technique of making bombs and putting plutonium to warlike uses. My attitude to Germany is a friendly one. But will Germany always be friendly? We are hearing quite a lot about the Oder-Neisse line, about the eastern provinces and about new Nazi leaders who are trying to drive the band-waggon. I do not feel quite so comfortable about the future as I should like to be.
However, at the moment we are living in a relatively peaceful present, and I think we can take a broadly calm and rational view of the situation. I do not think that any of us fears a Russian offensive. I think a new era has dawned in Russian relationships with the West. But to get rid of Civil Defence now, in a somewhat uncertain state of the world, would, in some respects I think, be like getting rid of our dog and hoping that burglars will never visit us. A word has to be said about the value of the Civil Defence organisation in dealing with what one might call civilian catastrophes. We have seen much of their efforts in recent months, and they will always be a valuable reinforcement for the civil forces of law and order, to use the term in its broadest sense.
What kind of Civil Defence organisation do we need? We want to have our minds on two things. We must not spend more than we can afford. On the other hand, what we do spend must

811
assuredly yield us a service which we can regard as efficient. I think that the scheme which the Government are now considering is justified on both those grounds. But there are some rather jagged edges which will have to undergo close examination in the next few months. First of all, there is the question of money. If the cuts are made too drastic, we might have chaos. We might not be saving money, but might be wasting the whole of the money which has been spent on the Civil Defence force. There is more sense in spending 10s. and getting 10s.-worth of real value, than in spending 8s. and wasting the lot.
We have already had cuts of £4 million in the last three years. The large shelter system has been abandoned, quite rightly, and the dispersal system has been restricted and limited. The spending on training centres has been cut, and I would ask my noble friend what the position is about the famous training centre at Warley which was to cost £60,000. Is my noble friend able to assure us that the Warley Civil Defence training centre will now be abandoned or postponed?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, is my noble friend speaking about the shattered village?
LORD LEATHERLAND: Yes.
LORD STONHAM: I can give him that assurance.
LORD LEATHERLAND: I think that is pleasant, having regard to the present state of people's minds.
As we know, 45,000 people are going to be sacked from the Civil Defence force, with some considerable saving of money. Personally I do not like the way we say to these 45,000 people, "You have sacrificed your time, you are serving well, you will probably be useful. But we cannot keep you—go away!" I do not like that, but I realise the inevitability of it. We are now asking for a cut of £1 million, which brings the cuts up to 20 per cent. since 1965. I doubt whether that £1 million saving will be achieved. If it is achieved it might be counterbalanced by extra work and expense which will fall on staffs of local authorities and the ratepayers.
Cutting off £1 million is not an easy task at the moment. There will have to
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be control rooms built in council offices, and that will cost money. There are many leases which are now running for premises built for Civil Defence and which will have to be surrendered. There will also have to be compensation. There are many Civil Defence officers whom we shall have to suspend, and they will have to receive redundancy pay. Many voluntary organisations will be called upon to put in more work in the future than they have done in the past, and probably there will have to be some subsidies or subventions. Many Civil Defence centres are going to be closed, with the result that volunteers will have longer distances to travel to the centres, and we shall have to meet the extra travelling expenses. Therefore, this cut in expenditure to the extent of £1 million is not going to be an entirely one-sided operation.
Incidentally, I would ask whether the Home Office have yet completed the costing operation which they told us a few months ago they were undertaking. If some of this counter-expenditure eats into the £1 million saving, I hope the Ministry will not come back in a few months' time with a programme for another set of cuts for local authorities to put into operation.
My main interest is to see whether the exercise will result in more efficiency. I think it will. I think we may need a longer transition period in order to get into full working operation. There are many difficulties associated with it, there will have to be many delicate negotiations, but I think that it will be a good thing. As noble Lords are aware, at present the Civil Defence bodies are the county councils and county boroughs, and quite rightly under the new scheme they will continue in that capacity.
In this new scheme there is a considerable change in the whole emphasis and orientation. The councils will have direct responsibility to undertake more work, and there will be a change in emphasis all round. The local authorities will be made more responsible for manning the controls and for constituting the system of civil government in an emergency. It is right that they should be the linchpin, for they know the areas and the resources and people in those areas. But much will depend on the amount of time which the employees of

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councils put in. In one of the documents issued by the Ministry this passage appears:
"Local authorities should as far as is practicable provide from their own resources the staff required to man the controls and posts in the control chain."
I think we are going to encounter some snags in that regard, and I will say a word or two about that later.
The uniformed Civil Defence Corps is to be cut by 45,000. I think this involves some radical changes in our conception of the organisation and its composition. The rescue sections will be abolished, as will the ambulance sections and the welfare sections. The Corps is to become a kind of general duty Corps, with some elementary rescue and first-aid training. The ambulance work is to be handed over to the Red Cross and St. John, and the welfare work to the W.R.V.S. I am sure that they are capable of rising to the occasion, as they have done so many times in the past.
I am rather doubtful about sacking so quickly the 45,000 men who are to leave the Service. It does not necessarily follow that in a particular district there will be in the Civil Defence Corps the kind of man who can fulfil the needs of the particular technician required in that district. I feel that there must be a certain amount of elasticity when cuts of this kind are being imposed. I wonder whether we are not embarking on the sacking too soon, especially in regard to the Class A men, who are very superior trained people, and three-quarters of whom will be denied the opportunity of re-engagement. The scheme will also involve the sacking of a number of Civil Defence officers, some of them municipal employees, some not. They have been trained in all the duties of the Corps, and they will be very steadily lost when new people are taken in to learn the new duties of the revised Civil Defence Forces. Having said that, I would add that I believe the scheme is on sensible lines and will ultimately result in a far more efficient organisation.
But there is one matter that must be tackled, because it goes to the heart of the whole problem, and that is the
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manning of controls. My own chief Civil Defence officer was good enough to give me a report on this matter—I shall not quote it, as I have only a few minutes left before the ceremony which is to take place in a moment. However, it is quite clear from his report that those controls are not properly manned, and he insists that there must be more volunteers from the local government service to man them and to put them in a workable condition.
There were many more things that I wanted to say, my Lords, but I will take only a few more minutes.
At the present moment, the grant to local authorities for Civil Defence purposes is 75 per cent. of the sanctioned expenditure. I feel that it should be 100 per cent. The local authority is not called upon to pay the cost of the local Army unit, of the naval ships which happen to be standing in its harbour at the moment, or of the aircraft which happen to be standing on the airfield within its boundaries. But this Civil Defence force is, as much as those other three Services, one of the defence forces of the nation; and it is not right that, whereas with the other three Services the Government pay the whole of the cost, for the Civil Defence Service the local authority itself is required to pay a quarter of that cost.
There are many other things to say, but as a company sergeant major, I was reared in a good disciplinary atmosphere, and I shall strictly obey the time limit which was given to me. I would close by saying that, on the whole, this changeover of the system will involve some pains somewhere: we have to face that. But when the changeover is completed we shall have a far more efficient force than we have at the moment. I hope that if the Minister finds that he cannot complete all these changes by the deadline of September 30, he will allow a little more time so that the job can be done properly, as it should be if it is worth doing at all.
House adjourned during pleasure:
House resumed.

ROYAL COMMISSION
6.30 p.m.
The following Bills and Measure received the Royal Assent:

Consolidated Fund (No. 2),

Misrepresentation,

Plant Health,

General Rate,

Forestry,

Export Guarantees,

Teachers' Superannuation,

Parliamentary Commissioner,

Licensing (Certificates in Suspense)
(Scotland),

Post Office (Borrowing Powers),

Teachers of Nursing,

Iron and Steel,

Glasgow Corporation Order Confirmation,

Greenock Corporation Order Confirmation,

Tees Valley and Cleveland Water,

Clergy Pensions (Amendment) Measure.

House adjourned during pleasure:
House resumed.

CIVIL DEFENCE
6.45 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD THURLOW: My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, for introducing this Motion to-day. It is extremely valuable that we should review the situation after five years have elapsed and hear what has been done since we last debated this very important subject. I am very heartened by much of what the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has said and by his obvious dedication to this important problem. It is six years since I was closely connected with Civil Defence in the No. 1 Region, and I am impressed with quite a lot that has
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been done. I should like to add my tribute to all those devoted people who keep the Civil Defence organisation going: the Civil Defence workers, the W.R.V.S., and I should like to add also the officials of the Home Office, who do not get many thanks, for continuing for a very long period a very difficult job.
I regret to see that the Government plan a reduction in costs of 20 per cent. on the expenditure for 1967–68. This is overall; so that some authorities will probably suffer even greater cuts. For these, even more than others, this reduction, that has to start on April 1 next, is virtually impossible as leases cannot be terminated and any employees who are redundant must be found other jobs, if possible. The new organisation, in which local authorities are given the important responsibilities, has been touched on by several noble Lords, and I do not intend to say anything more on that except to wish the scheme well. It is so important, first of all, that they have the time to devote to this and that they take to it enthusiastically. I hope that they will be able to do the very important job that they have now to take on.
In addition to the local authorities, there are the education authorities, and I want to say a word about them. In March, 1964, the Ministry of Education issued Circular No. 3 of 1964, in which it was stated that in the first, or planning, stage it will be necessary to earmark those educational premises which would be needed for specified Civil Defence purposes and to decide, so far as may be practicable, the duties to be carried out by educational staff in an emergency. Under the Civil Defence emergency feeding regulations, emergency feeding authorities, the county councils and the county boroughs, are required to prepare plans for the emergency feeding of the civil population. Schools and the school meal service play a prominent part in these plans. The Circular continues:
"The staff of schools and colleges which were closed would be available for other duties. Teachers might be asked to help in dealing with members of the public attending emergency feeding centres, in the issue of ration cards, in the work of rest centres, in arrangements for dispersal"
and so on. All this is sensible and efficient, if it works and if everyone plays his part in it. But I should like

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to ask the Minister what progress has been made as a result of the circulars. Have local authorities and educational authorities prepared plans? They have now had three years in which to do so. Are they giving this scheme their wholehearted support? What has been done and what remains to be done?
My Lords, I want to say how impressed I was with what the noble Marchioness, Lady Reading, said about youth. I think there are great opportunities for the youth of this country to take part in voluntary training in Civil Defence. There is no doubt at all, if this appalling tragedy fell upon us, that they would be able to do a very large amount of work. I should like to see this followed up, and I hope that the Minister who is to reply could say that those proposals—which, like all the noble Lady's proposals, are so very good—could be taken seriously and put into effect. I should like also to underline what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield said about the part that could be played by the clergy. As a son of a parson, a vicar in the town and a rector in the country, I know well what the clergyman and his wife can do in the leadership of our communities. Most of them take the lead in many ways and they can do a great deal. I hope that the Government will take very seriously the recommendations of the clergy in this respect.
I want now to say a word about the Army. So far as home defence is concerned, the Territorial Army has been reduced to A.V.R. III, whose role is to support the civil authorities in the maintenance of law and order in the event of an actual nuclear attack or a national emergency. The A.V.R.III, as well as being very small in numbers compared to what the Territorial Army was before, are the very simplest type of infantry; just riflemen, in fact. All the other arms and services which used to exist in the Territorial Army have disappeared, or will do so very shortly. So this force cannot undertake many of the tasks they could in the past. The numbers are greatly reduced, so it is unlikely that they could be much more than just a support for the police. Their duties might include a little traffic control, acting as cordoning guards at vital stops,
818
and limited reconnaissance. They are armed with rifles only and with no automatic weapons, which is a disadvantage, as in their guard duties they may well be confronted by saboteurs or looters armed with superior weapons.
In peace-time, training would be easier if they had more wireless sets and more transport, and on mobilisation they would certainly require more sets. Their transport requirements would be made up by requisitioning. It is no good giving them wireless sets unless they are trained to use them. A slightly better scale of vehicles and equipment, especially automatic weapons, would make training much more attractive and would lead to better recruiting. Has the Minister any plans to make training more attractive? Regarding wireless sets, there must be a vast number of old War Department wireless transmitter-receiver sets in depots. They are now obsolete for the Regular Army and the Volunteers, but they are perfectly serviceable over short ranges, and I should think that it would be a very good idea, and most encouraging, to issue these to Civil Defence sections.
Regarding command and control, I am very worried about the effect on Civil Defence of the disappearance of the territorial Divisional Districts. England is at present neatly divided up into Civil Defence Regions which correspond, and the military organisation was made to correspond, with Divisional Districts. These become one entity in war, with operation rooms presided over by the Civil Defence Director alongside the District Commander, heads of Police, Fire Service, Post Office and other departments which could be involved. It was an efficient organisation which showed up well in combined exercises in which I have taken part in the past. The Divisional District has provided a complete communication network for the Civil Defence organisation of wireless, trained staff officers, transport drivers and orderlies. When these disappear, as I understand they will this year, what will replace them? Is the Minister confident that other arrangements are adequate?
My noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor referred to the pamphlet called The Hydrogen Bomb, and I should like to refer to words which appear on page

819
31 about which I am a little alarmed. The words are:
"… all the Armed Forces in the United Kingdom who were not required actively to engage the enemy would have the responsibility of assisting Civil Defence. Because of the planning and training now in progress they would be to undertake a wide variety of tasks."
Of course all troops in this country, Army, Navy and Air Force would take part, but I hope that the Minister does not think that the Regular Forces will have very much knowledge and will know really what to do.
I should like to know whether, as part of the ordinary training of a teeth-armed unit when it gets to its barracks, say, in Edinburgh, Fort George or Wellington Barracks in London, it is given a Civil Defence scheme and exercised in that scheme. I very much doubt it, in which case the Regular troops may not be the asset that they are being counted upon to be. Of course, in war there will be various mobilisation tasks which may take them away, and it would be difficult to count on them; but I appreciate that if they are looked upon as a "bonus" to the existing organisation, it is all well and good.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I can assure the noble Lord that that is precisely what we have in mind, and we realise, of course, that the exigencies of the moment, or the points of attack, may mean that units of the Armed Forces may not be available for that purpose.
LORD THURLOW: My Lords, despite the little money which is available there is in this country a vast network of authorities who can be used if they are told what to do and how to do it. Most important of all, if their interest is encouraged they could be a source of volunteers; but I think that a little more equipment and more realistic training is needed. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, was not present in the Chamber when I said that we know of the noble Lord's immense keenness and enthusiasm for this job. I believe that publicity is needed, as was said by my noble friend Lord Tweedsmuir, and it would be very encouraging if the Prime Minister would make some personal effort to show that what is being done by these Civil Defence workers is appreciated by the
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Cabinet and the Government. We know that the Home Office and the Ministers concerned are most encouraging and take the greatest interest in it, but I think that a lead from the head of the Government would give a great deal of encouragement.
6.59 p.m.
BARONESS HYLTON-FOSTER: My Lords, I also am grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, for moving this Motion, for it gives me an opportunity to explain the new role to be played by the voluntary aid societies in helping fill the first-aid gap in the Civil Defence services. Before I go on, may I apologise to your Lordships for the fact that, owing to the late start of this debate, I shall not be able, alas! to hear the end of it.
Both voluntary aid societies, the Order of St. John and the British Red Cross Society, in this country, have accepted the Government's request to make our organisations available to the local authorities for first aid throughout the country. We are also helping in Scotland, but the final arrangement with the Scottish Office has not yet been settled. This differs from the old arrangement, under which members were free to join Civil Defence as individuals. Now the voluntary aid societies are responsible for numbers and not for names. This means that we shall not now have to serve two masters, which was the unsatisfactory feature under the original plan.
We know that recruiting for Civil Defence has for some time been difficult, and I see no reason why it should be any better now, unless some purpose is put into it. So far as the first aid side of Civil Defence is concerned, many more people trained in first aid will be needed. Those who belong to the voluntary aid societies do training all the time and keep up to date with new methods, but in the past Civil Defence recruits took one first-aid course, and that was that. The same thing is again proposed for those members of the public who are trained through their local authorities. That sort of training may or may not be better than nothing, but I feel that unless there is some purpose besides a problematic atomic bomb, few people will think it worth while to give up precious spare time to train. That is why I respectfully

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suggest to your Lordships that this is a wonderful opportunity to link Civil Defence in peace time with disaster training, safety in the home and road accidents —with any or all three of these.
As regards disaster training, I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Swanborough, as head of the W.R.V.S., will agree with us in the Red Cross that the training and discipline of our organisations was of great help at Aberfan. Safety in the home affects all of us, especially the very old and very young. It happens that yesterday evening I was talking to a doctor about first aid, and he said that he wished every mother and housewife could be trained in first aid. Hardly a day passes without some sort of accident on the road. Basic first aid should be taught to all of us, and the fruits of that training would be there if there were an atomic disaster.
How can we get over to the public the idea that training in first aid is worth while and not just a waste of time? This question applies also to Civil Defence. I suggest that we ought to start with the schools, as they do in the United States and Canada. I would also suggest that some sort of national service after school might be considered. Such service could include not only basic first aid but possibly Civil Defence training also, because there are young people who are bored with the jobs they do every day and want a worthwhile outlet after work. I think that could help.
Saving lives and preventing accidents is not dull, but training for something we all hope will never happen is something about which it is not easy to enthuse. Those who have taken part in Civil Defence exercises will agree that they are realistic, and more of this kind of active training in other fields would make all age groups realise that accidents can and do happen to people. Could the Minister tell us how the National Health Service Reserve fits into the new Civil Defence organisation? I speak here as an interested party, because I am a member of the Reserve. I am sure that this Reserve could be used mach more now for emergencies, and if it were so used it would give the members much greater interest in training.
May I digress for a moment to what other noble Lords said about the Press and public relations of Civil Defence? I
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feel that if only a quarter of the space in the Press and a quarter of the time on television and radio that is given to exaggerated news of strikes, "sit-downs", drugs and other people's misfortunes, were given to the achievements of Civil Defence in peace-time, a great service would be done to this country. But of course, as has already been pointed out, Civil Defence would have to co-operate. Finally, I hope that the Government will not turn down all these ideas on the ground of cost, saying that the reorganisation of Civil Defence is designed to save money. In the long run, the saving of lives and the prevention and treatment of accidents would reduce hospital costs, and it would also link Civil Defence training with a really useful purpose.
7.6 p.m.
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: My Lords, those of us who vigorously opposed the mutilation of the Territorial Army used as one of our most telling arguments that Civil Defence could not work properly without the Territorial Army. In my time of commanding units and formations of the Territorial Army, I did the Army Civil Defence courses at Millom and at the Civil Defence Staff College at Sunningdale, and everything I picked up only went to support the arguments that we used. Just last week, at the farewell to one of the formations which the Government are abolishing this month, a senior police officer reinforced these views from the police point of view. This month sees the end of a large number of famous names in the history of voluntary service to this country. They are to be replaced by such exciting initials as "A.V.R. II" and "A.V.R. III"— and I am pleased to see that the band I helped to reform after the last war has been allowed to stay on as—your Lordships have guessed it—A.V.R. IV.
To cap it all, the Civil Defence Corps is now also being mutilated. I think that a small but somewhat voluble section of the community speak from two basic misapprehensions. They seem to think that anything traditional must be conservative, and therefore must be wrong, and that anything voluntary must smack of "blacklegging" and must also be wrong—or perhaps it is not considered right to have anything done except by a professional. I certainly shall never forgive the Government for

823
what they have done to the Territorial Army; I hate and detest it. But I realise that it is our duty to see that the small crumb which our masters have permitted to exist specifically to help in home defence should get all the support possible, so as to be efficient and, what is even more important, appreciated. I refer to the A.V.R. III.
The Government have been so niggardly towards these new babies of theirs that one is tempted to believe that they want them to fail. With all the disbanding of units that is going on, could the Government not at least make them Landrover-mobile? Could they not at least give them adequate communications? Could they not at least provide them with light machine guns as well as First World War rifles? Without light machine guns, as anyone who knows anything about soldiering can tell them, the men cannot do even the basic military manœuvre, which is fire and movement.
I maintain that these people must be made to think of themselves as soldiers, because in times of crisis the veneer of civilisation wears extremely thin. If there is one lesson that I learned in the 15 months that I spent with the partisans in the mountains of Italy, behind the lines, during the war it was that once law and order break down, then man becomes a disgusting animal. I think the only hope here is to build up A.V.R. III so that if we ever become reduced to that state the police have at least that unit with the necessary discipline behind them. That is the Territorial Army side of the defence point.
What about the Civil Defence organisation itself?—and, naturally, I shall refer mainly to my own county of Devon. It was reorganised in 1962, with the reorganisation due to come into effect by 1964–65. The delays and the Press rumours started long before—and I think it was on September 4, 1965, that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, made a speech in Poole, which he will no doubt remember. I think it was made with the object of alleviating the uncertainty that existed at the time among the volunteers to the Civil Defence Corps because of the delay. In November, 1965, the Civil Defence Committee of the county publicly expressed their concern on this subject. On February 2, 1966, the Home Secre-
824
tary issued a statement which said inter alia that the Government had decided to maintain an effective Civil Defence policy.
On March 23 the Devon County Civil Defence Committee, because of the announcement of odd plans, began to make their reductions in Civil Defence. On September 1 last the Chairman publicly expressed his anxiety about all this uncertainty and the effect it was having on the volunteers, and requested a meeting with the Minister. The meeting eventually took place with the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, on October 29. The result was reported to the Committee when the members returned on November 2, and they passed this resolution:
"That this Committee greatly deplores the Government's attitude and inactivity on the future of Civil Defence, and requests that, as a matter of urgency, much more information should he made available to the public about measures which they should take for their protection in the event of emergency."
It was not until December 14 that the Home Secretary made a further statement, which mainly emphasised the part to be played by the local council. Then, after two years of loyal Civil Defence service and uncertain waiting by over 3,000 volunteers, on February 1 Home Office Circular 1/1967 arrived.
The reaction was as follows—and I will put it in a series of 10 questions. First, is this the end of the Civil Defence Corps? Secondly, if not, why should 75 per cent. of the volunteers, after four years' intensive training, be transferred to the emergency list when in the prime of their volunteer service? Thirdly, why is not their £10 bounty free of tax? How niggardly can you be? Fourthly, what is to happen to the Civil Defence Corps when the new local government structure is produced? Fifthly, the Government say that there will he another review in 1970. Do they expect that there will be any loyal Civil Defence volunteers left by then? If so, what further tests of their loyalty will there then be? Sixthly, why is there no mention in the circular of the civil disaster role, of prime importance to counties like Devon? And following from that, do the Government still support Home Office Circular No. 5 of 1957?
Seventh, what happens if the council employees refuse to do the training allocated them in the new scheme? Eighth,

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is it true that their union is already expressing doubts on this subject? Ninth, how does the rate of pay and overtime which will go to the council employees compare with what the volunteers were getting before? Finally, what will be the effect on the overall system if councils refuse to co-operate?—if they had a CND clerk or something like that? Was there not a relevant case in Coventry a couple of years ago? However, those are the reactions in the Civil Defence organisation in my particular part of the world.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt the noble Lord to suggest to him it is truer to say that that is the reaction of some Civil Defence personnel in Devon. I do not claim to know Devon as well as he does, but I know the Devon people very well. I met the deputation from Devon, and we had a most friendly and fruitful discussion. I have also read the Tiverton Gazette and other newspapers, and there are some very balanced comments from members of the Civil Defence forces there, as well as uncomplimentary ones. I think it does no good service to give what sounded to me rather like an unbalanced picture of the situation in Devon.
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right. He is extremely popular in Devon. If I may refer to the report issued after the visit of the noble Lord, the delegates were all extremely appreciative of his behaviour and kindness to them. His personal views on emergency planning and the Civil Defence Corps seem to coincide in many ways with those expressed in the past by members of the Civil Defence Committee. I am trying in these questions to give the reaction. I do not say that everybody reacts in the same way, but this is the overall reaction. I should not like to quote it in public, but I can tell the noble Lord personally, if he would like to know, how it arose.
The great things that this country has done in the past have generally been done in spite of our laws: as an example, the volunteer movement which started in 1852. I hope that we shall not go to the extreme now and do irreparable damage to our volunteer system, whether it is on the military side or on the Civil
826
Defence side. Finally, mention has been made in the Press and in another place of various questions of alleged breaches of faith on the subject of gratuities. I implore the Minister to use his influence with the Government to err on the side of generosity when dealing with those who have given loyal service, either to the Civil Defence Corps or to the Territorial Army.
7.19 p.m.
VISCOUNT BRIDGEMAN: My Lords, when I first saw the Statement made in this House on December 14 last I feared very much that the Government had fallen into the same error as they fell into when dealing with the reorganisation of the Territorial Army—that is to say, first, that they had started their reorganisation before they were quite firm on their operational plan; and, secondly, that they had based its implementation on saving, which is, after all, a negative aspect. I still thought so when I saw the last Statement. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham—who we are all glad to see back again in the House—has only partly persuaded me that there is a definite operational plan to work on.
Chapter 11 of the Statement on Defence starts by saying that in the last year—that is, 1966—home defence plans have been revised. It then goes on to say
"Since then we"—
that is, Her Majesty's Government—
"have decided, after consultation, that the Civil Defence Corps should be reorganised".
On the face of it that does not lead any ordinary person like myself to suppose that the reorganisation followed a change of plan. I feel and have felt—and the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, touched on this when he was talking about the A.V.R. II and III—that it is no good trying to collect and inspire a keen, loyal and well-trained set of people unless one can tell them precisely what to do. Some indication of that came out in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, but not, to my mind, quite enough, partly because I am one of those people who do not believe that measures to deal with nuclear warfare should be the be-all and end-all of the Civil Defence organisation.

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The noble Baroness, Lady Hylton-Foster, made an important point about the use of the Civil Defence organisation and the practice they have in dealing with disasters and floods, as did my noble friend Lord Tweedsmuir. Then there is that borderline between armed action and Civil Defence, with which the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence have never been able to come to terms, because they will insist on assuming that the enemy, whoever he may be, will be obliging enough to respect the borderline drawn by the two Government departments. Thus two important matters, sabotage and espionage, get left out. Just think what would happen if the brains of the people who organised, we will say, the Great Train Robbery, or the escape of Mr. George Blake, were turned on the planning of subversive activities. It has been a gap in our plans since the end of the war, but a clear statement of the operational need would go a long way towards producing the effect that we all want, and especially the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, to get the reorganised Civil Defence organisation off to a good start.
I must return to the problem of trying to do what I would call "exercising leadership by negative". The Statement of December 14, and the circular, dealt with the whole matter as something which has arisen because of the need to cut expenditure. That may be so, but as one who has had a certain amount to do with leadership and its problems for a good deal of my life, I would say that that is the very last way to begin and the very first way to make sure that things do not go right—and that is the atmosphere in which circular No. 1 has been received.
I am not saying for a moment that it was not right to reorganise or reduce the Civil Defence organisation. I have no doubt that there is a great deal to be said for it. I do not think that the matter is being entirely correctly handled at the present moment, and I am not at all sure that sufficient attention is being paid to the need to allow for a sufficient expansion factor in the various parts of the Civil Defence organisation which have been cut down. There is a point beyond which they cannot go, and in fact the instructions to local authorities to make an overall cut do not tend to improve
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the handling of that particular factor, because if they were interpreted literally (which I do not think they Will be for a moment) those local authorities who have been economical and good housekeepers will be penalised, and those who have been extravagant will be favoured. This we do not want. However much the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, may shake his head, that is an extremely serious danger.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, before the noble Viscount leaves that point, which I found interesting, could he explain what he means by "limiting plans for expansion"? He did not develop that point.
VISCOUNT BRIDGEMAN: My Lords, I am sorry if I did not make myself clear. What I meant was that if we reduce any force to a small number, we must take the greatest care to see that it is sufficient to provide an expansion factor for any needs; not necessarily needs which are likely to arise in the near future, but needs which might conceivably arise later on. That was one of the reasons why I was very glad indeed to see that more use was going to be made of organisations like the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John. To my mind, they have been under-employed so far, as, I think, have the Women's Institutes, which have not been mentioned in this debate. If an evacuation were to take place their services would be invaluable, and the expansion factor in those organisations is extremely high. Therefore their use in Civil Defence will be extremely helpful, in more ways than one.
I now want to go back to the point of saving money and cutting down expenses. When all this began, which was about 18 months ago, it seemed to me that the whole thing was being done in a manner which was far from being objective. What happened—and I am not speaking entirely without some knowledge—was a kind of game of departmental "old maid", where the great object seemed to be (to anyone who had a seat in the second row of the stalls) to pass the expenditure from the Home Office to the local authorities, or from the Ministry of Defence to the Home Office. A great deal of time was taken up with that, to the detriment of the consideration of the role of the Corps in the future.

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I am greatly concerned that this should not happen when the Ministry of Health is brought in—as I think it is now being brought in—in order to deal with the problems of the first-aid organisations—such as the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John. For heaven's sake! let the Government lay down the law about it and say which Department shall bear the cost. Do not let us spend any more time in arguing about which department shall bear the cost while all the Civil Defence Corps personnel wait on the touchline to see what is to happen. As the noble Baroness, Lady Swanborough, said, now that we have come to the time when those who were recruited in 1947, when Civil Defence was restarted after the war, are about to retire, new people should be brought in, and this should be done in the right atmosphere. I think this right atmosphere has to be produced. It is not there yet.
As a last point, I feel that the business of settling the exact part that the local authorities will have to play warrants a little firmer handling than it has had up to now. Unlike a number of other questions, such as, shall we say, diseases of animals or public protection, which can be handled by local authorities by and large in the way they want, this question of Civil Defence has a national aspect and cannot be left to the opinions of one local authority or another. It must be mandatory on local authorities to carry out certain directions of the Government. A moment's thought will convince any local authority that that must be so. It is not a local plan, not local administration, except in the sense that it is local administration of a national plan which is essential to the defence of this country.
That leads me to wonder how far the Government have the balance right between volunteering and the use of local authority staffs. I was not absolutely clear what was meant, and I am sorry to say that I may not be here to hear the answer. It seems to me that if, for example, you made the roads and bridges department of the Salop County Council responsible, then it ought to be part of the duties of a certain number of those employees to do that work. Put the other way round, if it is not made part of the duty of the roads and bridges department, then we are back to the
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position where you are at risk as to whether the work is done properly or not. That has been the position in the rescue sections up to now, where you have local authority A, with someone very keen on it doing what is wanted, and local authority B doing nothing of the kind.
I am not putting these points by way of criticising, but in order to point to certain aspects of the present plan which I think will need a good deal more attention if the plan is to work in the way we all want, and if the transitional period is to be carried through in the way that everybody wants, in the same way that the transitional period between the Territorial Army and Army Volunteer Reserve is being carried through now. If the points which I have ventured to mention are attended to, if the emphasis by the Government Departments concerned is made more objective, and if more time is taken with singing the Civil Defence song in a major key instead of having very boring, perhaps sordid, arguments as to who shall bear the cost, I, for one, have great hopes for the future of Civil Defence.
7.34 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCOTLAND (LORD HUGHES): My Lords, the task that I have been given in replying to this debate is, for once, one which I find both attractive and comparatively easy, not because the problems which have been discussed have been simple, but because of the tone of the whole debate. With the possible exception of the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, I do not think there was any hostility. I do not reproach the noble Lord at all for the tone of his remarks, and when I come to refer to his points I do not think he will find me ungrateful even for the way in which he found it necessary to state his point of view.
First, however, I should like to say to the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, how much we are in his debt, not only for persisting, through grave difficulties, in having this debate held at all, but also for the care with which he prepared his speech in opening, and for the ease, logic and kindness, if I may say so, with which he put it forward. It is a very great comfort to me, as a Scottish Minister, to know that if ever these disasters

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should arise while I have any responsibility at the Scottish Office (which I may say I do not anticipate), the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, is on my side. I would also pay particular tribute, as did my noble friend Lord Stonham, to the contribution from the former Home Secretary, Lord Brooke of Cumnor.
In singling out the initiator of the debate and a succeeding speaker for special mention, I do not wish to suggest that the other speakers have made less than notable contributions. I do not think any of your Lordships have wasted one minute of the time of this House in the discussion we have had. I would pay particular tribute (I do not think that it is necessarily usual but it is well deserved on this occasion) to the speech of my noble friend Lord Stonham. Towards the end of what was, by your Lordships' standards, a very long speech he apologised for omitting something and explained that he felt he had already spoken over-long. I think the House reacted in the same way as I did: that his speech had not seemed one minute too long. He held the attention of the House throughout, and we enjoyed hearing what he was saying and enjoyed knowing, from the way he delivered it, that he was back to the place and in the form to which we have been accustomed for the past two years.
Perhaps I might touch now on some of the points with which my noble friend asked me to deal, and points which have arisen since he spoke. The question of finance was raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. My noble friend Lord Stonham has already referred, as did the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, to the substantial economics which have been made over the years in Civil Defence expenditure. They brought it to the figure of £18 million anticipated in 1967–68, leaving aside the addition of the T. and A.V.R. III.
Both the noble Lords to whom I have referred asked for some breakdown of the expenditure. I may say that the bulk of the further saving of £1½ million expected in the coming year will be found by the Home Departments. By the reorganisation of the Civil Defence Corps we expect that a saving of £1 million can be achieved in the cost of the Corps
832
to the Exchequer. Since more than 80 per cent. of the Exchequer expenditure on the Corps goes in grant to the local authorities it follows that there will need to be a substantial reduction in their Civil Defence expenditure. Authorities have been asked to exercise severe restraint in expenditure, and they have been told that the aim over the country as a whole is to achieve a reduction of 20 per cent. in expenditure incurred by local authorities in 1965–66, which is the last year for which figures of actual expenditure are available.
I would draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that I said 20 per cent. over the country as a whole. We recognise that the scope for economy will vary quite a bit, according to the local situation and the level of the current expenditure of the individual authority. Some could not reasonably be expected to reduce by as much as 20 per cent., but there are others who we hope and expect would be able to make a more substantial contribution. A good part of local authority Civil Defence expenditure, of course, goes on running costs. Major items of equipment, like communications, the radiac equipment and vehicles, are supplied by the central Government free on loan. The capital expenditure of the local authorities is therefore comparatively limited—in effect, to the cost of land and buildings—and we expect in the next year on this to pay grants of some £740,000. This compares with the estimated total grant payments of nearly £6 million on revenue expenditure.
Local authority expenditure on the Civil Defence Corps covers a wide variety of expenses, and the proportion spent on each naturally varies from one authority to another. About half the grant goes to the cost of administration and salaries of Civil Defence officers. Other substantial items are the cost of premises—nearly 20 per cent.; and of instruction and training, 15 per cent. In addition, there is the cost of such items as the storage and maintenance of equipment and vehicles, the provision of uniform, publicity recruitment and bounty. We believe that the reduction of numbers, and the simplification of organisation and training, resulting from the changes in the Corps will enable the substantial savings that we require to be achieved.

833
Clearly there will need to be critical examination of local authority estimates and claims for grant aid, and we are considering how our arrangements for these purposes can be approved. Similarly, the annual inspections carried out by Home Office Regional Directors, and—if I may at this point take up the point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie—the comparable activities of the Scottish Home and Health Department, will provide opportunities for careful consideration of the costs of each local authority's Civil Defence activities. We have been discussing these and other possibilities with the local authority associations with a view to working out together sensible arrangements for containing Civil Defence expenditure consistent with the need to maintain a viable system of Civil Defence. This brings me back to the point made by my noble friend Lord Leatherland, that the objective should be to get 10s. value for 10s. spent.
The noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, asked about communications. I know that he referred to what would take place after an attack; but could I perhaps go back a little earlier, because what is done if there is an imminent attack has some relation on what may take place afterwards. I can assure the noble Viscount and other noble Lords that in these circumstances the fullest use will be made of the existing communications of television and radio. Of course, we cannot expect that television and radio will remain intact in the situation which arises afterwards. They may be of no use to us at all. But one of the things which will be of use to us is something which many of us—my generation, at any rate, with young daughters at home with a multiplicity of transistor radios—have come to regard as the greatest plague in existence at the present time. These, however, may prove to be a blessing to us at that time, because we are going to rely on the battery operated radio receiver as the principal means of communication so far as we know at this time; and we are drawing attention in times of possible stress to the value that a properly functioning battery operated transistor radio will provide afterwards, and if people take heed of that at the time
834
they will be in communication with the authorities afterwards.
I am glad to say that the point which the noble Viscount asked about has in fact been arranged for. The B.B.C. have completed the work for bringing into operation local emergency radio stations which in these circumstances would be the means of communication. These arrangements are ready now.
The question of local authority staffs was raised by more than one noble Lord. The local authorities will be under an explicit duty to train their staffs. This will be done by amendment of the Civil Defence (Public Protection) Regulations. The arrangements which should be made for this have yet to be discussed with the local authority associations and with the staff associations, and it would not he right at this stage for me to anticipate any details of these regulations. The local authority staffs will be trained for the particular appointment each is to fill. It is not envisaged that the organisation of this training will throw any considerable additional burden upon local authorities. I should say, however—and I cannot go beyond the wording which I have carefully written down—that that additional, identifiable expenditure in accordance with the regulations will rank for grant. As a former local authority man, I know that that is as much as you can ever expect any Minister to say. I have had it said to me so often in the past. I never thought I should have to say it to anybody in the future. Now it has happened.
On the question of local arrangements, I would touch on one other point which the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, raised. That was the question of the special constabulary. He asked whether they would receive Civil Defence training. The answer is, yes, they would, on the same lines as the regular Police, but in a shortened form.
It was a particular pleasure to me to hear the speech of the noble Baroness whom I cannot think of as the Baroness Swanborough, but as the noble Marchioness, Lady Reading. I cannot remember—and, having regard to what ladies are supposed to feel in these matters, I think it would be probably wrong of me to say—how long it is since I first met Lady Reading in connection with Civil Defence. Certainly it goes

835
back to the time when I was an A.R.P. controller and she was actively engaged in the wartime organisation of Civil Defence, or A.R.P. as it then was. She paid a generous tribute to the welfare work which had been done by voluntary organisations, and in particular by the organisation which we have now got to try to remember with a new set of initials, W.R.V.S. I thought that she was generous in that tribute, but no more generous than the work involved. What she did not say, and what I wish to say, is that she would not have been able to pay that tribute to her organisation if it had not been for the work which she herself has put in so unstintingly, so wisely and so practically over all these years.
I may find myself in a little difficulty with my colleagues when I say that I thought that the proposals which she put forward—the indications of the lines upon which the W.R.V.S. are thinking to-day, and the way in which they are going to work—were so sound, so practical, and I enjoyed listening to every moment of them, and I hope that most of them will in fact come into operation. I have to say "most of them", because I had it whispered to me during the earlier ceremony that it was not absolutely certain that the Home Office and my Department in Scotland would necessarily back every one of them. But if the noble Baroness is to be actively engaged in argument and discussion about this (if this is not an improper thing for a Minister to say), my money would be on Lady Reading to win the argument!
I was also glad to hear that the other noble Baroness who took part was following along similar lines. I was particularly glad to hear what she had to say also about women's organisations, and to know that in the other fields we can expect from them the same degree of worthwhile and invaluable co-operation as we have had in the past. She asked one particular question about the National Hospital Service Reserve which I think I should answer specifically in these words. Plans for the establishment of a wartime hospital service have been drawn up by Regional Hospital Boards following guidance issued by the Ministry of Health and the Scottish Home and Health Department. These plans provide for the ex-
836
pansion of acute hospital facilities in safer areas, for the reception of casualties and the provision of forward medical aid units which would receive casualties brought in by the ambulance service, give essential treatment, and send on patients suitable for admission to hospital. The staff of the hospital service would be increased by calling on the services of a number of doctors in general practice and by mobilising the National Hospital Service Reserve.
I would not necessarily accept what Lady Reading said, that if men would only listen to what women said and follow their advice there would be no problems. I will concede that if we listened to them more often there would be fewer problems, but I do not think that it has yet been given by God to either sex to find a solution to all problems, particularly this kind of problem.
The Bishop of Lichfield will forgive me if, as a Presbyterian, I have not his designation right—he should be referred to, I understand, as the right reverend Prelate. We do not take kindly to Bishops in my part of the world, but I have no hostility to the Bishop personally. But I did appreciate what he had to say, and I wish to assure him that the main point of his remarks about the maintenance of morale, and the part to be played in that process by the clergy, is one which I accept without reservation. I do not consider that all we are doing in all the other directions would have anything like its full value if morale went. I agree entirely with the right reverend Prelate when he says that nobody is in a better position to give that lead in morale than the clergymen and the ministers, whom the population know and trust, and to whom they are accustomed to turn in minor family troubles and always in periods of real strain.
On the question of the Report, the reason why it was not published is very simple. The Report became available just at the beginning of this very wide review which the Government undertook. The review took some two years. At the end of that period it would have been rather a waste of time and material to have published a report which, in some senses, had become out of date with the passage of time and changing decisions. What I can say to

837
the right reverend Prelate is that the Report will not be wasted. There will be further discussions and the Report will provide the very useful foundation from which the new discussions can start.
The noble Lord, Lord Tweedsmuir, remarked upon the need for more publicity of a national nature. The Government are not in disagreement with that suggestion. But what we say is that, having regard to the new nature of the Corps and the extent to which it has to be related to local requirements, there is now no longer a need for a national recruiting publicity, and that the publicity which should take place should be of a different character altogether. Having made that qualification, I would agree with him that publicity of a national nature is necessary.
With regard to the particular point in Aberdeen, I had not seen the article to which the noble Lord referred until he handed it to me outside the Chamber. I am afraid the necessity for co-ordinating what I was going to say in reply to the debate generally prevented me from taking other than a most cursory glance at the article. I know that the thousand people to whom the Civil Defence officer referred is the present active strength of the Aberdeen Division of the Corps. I do not know about the calculation of the need for 3,000 people which was made, and not knowing the basis on which it was made, it would perhaps be unfair to the Civil Defence officer if I were to offer any comment at this stage. I will examine this matter and if it should prove to be a point which is of interest only to the noble Lord I will deal with it by letter. If it should be a point of general interest to your Lordships' House, I can perhaps arrange with the noble Lord to put down a Question so that your Lordships can all have the benefit of the answer. Perhaps the noble Lord will accept that as a satisfactory way of dealing with it.
My noble friend Lord Leatherland was, I think, under one misapprehension about the reserve. He commented that it was rather wasteful to say to trained people, "You are now fully trained; we don't need you; you can go away". We are not saying that at all. It is because of the reserves, the value of which has been recognised before by more than one noble
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Lord, that we are able to get what we consider will be a better organisation than we have had before. There has been nothing more frustrating to Civil Defence workers than to come along year after year with apparently nothing new happening. How much more valuable it is that the time should be concentrated on giving training to the new people, with the people who are already trained going into reserve on the basis that they are there when needed, so that they will be willing to come back to have their knowledge refreshed or polished up, or to take part in the exercise which will take place from time to time.
I am reminded of what Lady Reading said, that the more trained people one had the better; that if a person had had training he never completely forgot it, and that this was a fund of knowledge and experience which could be called upon from time to time. Therefore there is no question of "sacking" 45,000 people. There will be considerable elasticity in this matter. On the question of "sacking" of Civil Defence officers (if I could use the rather brutal words used by my noble friend), it is inevitable in an operation of this kind that some people will find that their jobs no longer exist. But I am certain that my noble friend would not have it otherwise if the job is not there. It is no good, either nationally or locally, continuing a job which no longer exists, or to try to find a place for a man who is not needed. What I am certain is that neither Government nor local authorities will find themselves dealing ungenerously with men who have given good and loyal service to their local authority.
Finally, he raised a point which rang familiarly in my ears: why is the grant not 100 per cent.? The answer is, in the words of the song, "blowing in the wind". It has been "blowing in the wind" ever since I first heard it asked and the answer is the same: that the Government do not want to do it. In these times of changing local authority responsibility, local authorities have found in the past, only to their cost, that the first step towards the possible loss of responsibility for a service is to receive 100 per cent. grant in it. So long as the local authority have some contribution to make, they have some say in what is going to be done. I accept that the local authorities will always feel that

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their say is not so great as it ought to be. But it does work to a certain extent that when they pay they have some say; and the burden is not a large one. If this were the greatest of the local authorities' burdens, I doubt whether they would worry very much about it.
The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, had some points to make, one of which related to the question of the progress which had been made by education authorities as a result of the Ministry of Education circular in 1964 dealing with the earmarking of premises, and so on. We have ample evidence that local authorities are planning to make good use in an emergency of the resources of the local education services as provided for in that circular. But short of actually approaching the local authorities—and time has not allowed for this—I cannot give a detailed answer to the noble Lord's question. As the circular intimated, the school meals service and its staff have for long played a prominent part in the plans of emergency feeding authorities—county councils and county borough councils, to use only the English terms—for the emergency feeding of the civil population. The designation of school premises for this purpose was established by that circular.
LORD THURLOW: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, may I say that I mentioned the fact that it is three years since they were asked to do this? Would it not be a help to his Department (I am not criticising in any way) to know what has been achieved in those three years? I feel it is highly unlikely that in every part of the country everything will have been done 100 per cent. efficiently, and it might be important that pressure should be exerted.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I confess that I should be surprised if, even in three years, we had achieved 100 per cent, satisfactory results. It may be that the results are satisfactory. All I can say is that in the time at our disposal it has not been possible to find the answer, nor to furnish it to the noble Lord in this debate, although he was kind enough to give an indication in advance that he might be raising this point. I think it is important, however, that we should have an indication of the extent to which this is being done. If the noble Lord would
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be good enough to consider putting down a Question at some time after the Recess, my noble friend Lord Stonham, or one of my other colleagues, may well be in a position to give a report on the current state of play.
The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, and the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, both raised points in relation to the Territorial Army. I do not propose to deal with these points, because I do not think that a Civil Defence debate is the most suitable context in which to discuss the future organisation of T. and A.V.R.III. But the Government are satisfied—and this is as far as I propose to go—that the proposed equipment is suitable for the primary role of the new force; that is, the assistance of the police in the maintenance of law and order in war time.
I said that the only contribution which I thought was at all hostile was that of the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh. It was in a way hostile, but understandably so. I have to take the assurance of my noble friend Lord Stonham for this, but I have no reason to doubt his word when he tells me that the Devon authority were, and are, one of the most enthusiastic authorities in the country for Civil Defence. It was natural, therefore, that when we heard of new proposals which appeared to have the intention of destroying a part of what had been accomplished, or at best cutting it down considerably, they should ask critical questions and that those critical questions should appear to be hostile questions.
If I may deal with one or two points raised, I would say that if we had not been prepared to make regular reviews of Civil Defence (both the previous Government and ourselves have followed a pattern of regular review) we should still be thinking in terms of A.R.P. The need for flexibility is inherent in any viable aspect of defence policy, and the reviews in 1955, 1960, 1965, and again in 1970, are a necessary part of maintaining the organisation at the best possible level of efficiency. While I am quite certain that the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, will not go away from this debate tonight with all his fears allayed, I am satisfied that, with the zeal which the Devon authority have for Civil Defence,

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they will find that in a year or two from now the worst of their fears were groundless, that even some of their minor fears were groundless, and that they will be given the opportunity of creating and maintaining as good an organisation as they have ever had in the past.
I should like to say that, good as were all the contributions, the debate would not have been so good without the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh. We might in six months' time have looked on it rather as a gathering of members of a mutual admiration society, but he reminded us that while we in this House may see the particular merits of the Government's policy, there are some people outside who will have to have it proved to them. I think that in due course it will be proved to them.
Finally, there were the points made by the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman. He apologised to me and said that, because like me he is dependent on a timetable to get home, he would have to leave before I reached his remarks. But I should like to say that he was perhaps unnecessarily suspicious as to which was the chicken and which was the egg, in the need to save money and the need to have a reorganised Service. But his contributions to debates, either on Civil Defence or on Defence of any kind, are always so helpful, always being a mixture of criticism and advice, that it would be churlish of me in his absence to accept his contribution other than in the spirit which I am certain was intended; that is, as encouragement to the Government in the policy on which they are embarking, as advice which we will be glad to look at, and as criticism which we dare not ignore.
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Out of all of what he said, and out of all that has been said by all of your Lordships in this debate, I am certain that the Government will find value. I hope that the service which will emerge as a result of this reorganisation will be as good as the debate which your Lordships have had upon it.
8.6 p.m.
VISCOUNT YOUNGER OF LECKIE: My Lords, far be it from me to prolong the debate at this hour of the night. I feel that it has fulfilled the objects which we had in mind when we introduced it, and I think the mere fact that we have had it will be of encouragement to Civil Defence workers. I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords and noble Ladies who have taken part in the debate, arid I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

DEVELOPMENT OF INVENTIONS BILL [H.L.]
Reported from the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills, with an Amendment, and recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House.

AIR CORPORATIONS BILL [H.L.]
Reported from the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills, with Amendments, and recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at seven minutes past eight o'clock for the Easter Recess.