Lords Sitting of 24 July 1968

Preamble
The House met at two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Leicester.

LORD ENERGLYN
William David Evans, Esquire, having been created Baron Energlyn, of Caerphilly in the County of Glamorgan, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Arwyn and the Lord Evans of Hungershall.

PEERS AND PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS
2.15 p.m.
LORD RATHCAVAN: 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 why Members of this House are disqualified from voting at elections for Members of the House of Commons.]
THE PAYMASTER GENERAL (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, it is difficult to answer the question, "Why?", but I might help the noble Lord if I say that Members of this House are disqualified from voting at Elections for Members of the House of Commons by the Common Law of Parliament. The question was conclusively decided in the Court of Common Pleas in 1872 in the case of Earl Beauchamp v. Overseers of Madresfield. The Court's decision did not make new law but was a restatement of what is described as the "ancient, immemorial law of England". The ratio decidendi of the Court has recently been re-argued and reaffirmed in the Election Court in the case of the Parliamentary Election in Bristol, South-East, 1961, and is based on the doctrines of constitutional law which are most authoritatively stated by Coke in his Institutes Part IV:
"And the King and these three estates are the great corporation or body politic of the Kingdom and do sit in two houses, viz. the King and Lords in one House called the
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lords' house and the knights, citizens and burgesses in another house called the house of commons. … And whosoever is not a lord of parliament and of the lords' house is of the house of the commons either in person, or by representation, partly coagmentative, and partly representative."
LORD RATHCAVAN: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his reply, may I ask him two supplementary questions? The first is: has he any information about what are the practices in other countries, particularly in the Commonwealth, where there are bicameral Legislatures? My second question is this. Having read the judgment in the law case of 1872, may I ask the noble Lord whether he would agree that the disqualification of Peers has existed because they sit by right of heredity, whereas this situation has been profoundly altered in recent years by the creation of a large number of Life Peers? Surely, this introduces completely new aspects of this matter so far as they are concerned. There is also the case of Peers having Leave of Absence, who are taking no part in the proceedings here.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am a little doubtful whether this is a question which Her Majesty's Government ought to seek to answer at all, since it depends on the interpretation of the law. If I may take the first part of the noble Lord's question, it is my understanding that in other Commonwealth countries members of the Second Chamber or the Upper House are free to vote in Parliamentary Elections: in Canada, Australia, Northern Ireland (perhaps the noble Lord has that in mind: the Senate of Northern Ireland), and also in the United States of America. I have not carried out research in great detail into this matter, but no doubt further information could be gathered.
When it comes to this question of interpretation I am in real difficulty. Indeed, I had nearly thought I might have been wiser at the last moment to ask my noble and learned friend who sits on the Woolsack to answer this Question. There is here a certain area of disagreement. Indeed, the opinions expressed in Halsbury have been expressly denied by noble and learned Members of this House, and it would be unwise for me to attempt to reinterpret a particularly complicated piece of law. I do not know whether the noble Lord feels that this

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is a matter of great significance, but if so I think it would be necessary to consult the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor on the possibility of some further investigation. The difficulty is of interpreting the law and finding a means of getting a definitive expression. I suppose it is conceivable that if your Lordships' House were to be reformed we might all be given the vote anyway, which seems to me to be the sensible thing to do.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that even Life Peers rather resent being coupled with the other two categories of disqualified persons?
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in the recent Canadian general election I was entitled to—and did in fact—vote, despite my disqualification here?
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, does my noble friend not think that as there is a huge Tory majority in this House it would give them a further advantage in the General Elections?
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, can the noble Lord give any information whether the three estates of Scotland have made a similar enactment to that made by the three estates of England, and, if not, whether Scottish hereditary Peers are therefore qualified to vote at General Elections?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am afraid I am quite unable to express any opinion on Scotland; I find it difficult enough to express one about England. When one goes into this matter one finds the anomalies are of such deep fascination that it would take up too much of the time of your Lordships' House. I see the point made by my noble friend Lord Blyton. None the less, although the addition of the 700 Conservative hereditary Peers—if that be the right number—might have a significant effect if they all lived in one constituency, the prospect does not alarm me too much.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHESTER: My Lords, if the noble Lord is going to consider the disqualifications that exist at present, will he consider a further disqualification, which is that a clerk in Holy Orders may not take his seat in the House of Commons?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, this again strikes a particularly sensitive note in Northern Ireland, as we remember from one particular case. I find there is a certain obscurity as to when a Bishop becomes disqualified from voting in Parliamentary elections, and no case has been tried in the courts which would enable us to establish this. There is the case of one Irish Peer who, as a Member of Parliament, was allowed to vote in elections while he was a Member of Parliament but was not allowed to vote when he was not a Member of Parliament. I gather that none the less he did vote at a number of General Elections.
LORD RATHCAVAN: My Lords, may I ask one further short question? Is the noble Lord aware—as no doubt he is—that every year the House of Commons passes a Sessional Order at the beginning of every Session, in which it says that Peers may not vote for Members of the House of Commons? When looking up the case of 1872 I found that Lord Campbell, who gave the principal judgment, expressed the view that the Resolution of the House of Commons was of no validity whatever. In fact he said, "It is not worth the paper it is written on".

POSTAGE STAMP COLOURS
2.23 p.m.
LORD AIREDALE: 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 have observed that in artificial light there is a confusing similarity between the colouring of the 4d. and 1d. stamps in 10s. stamp books; and whether they will have this situation remedied.]
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, the colours of the new stamps were carefully chosen, and my right honourable friend the Postmaster General considers that the difference in shade between the 1d. and 4d. stamps is sufficient to enable them to be distinguished in artificial light.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord for that

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Answer, but would not the Government undertake to give us back our bright red 1d. stamps, provided that I give a corresponding undertaking to urge the next Administration to give us back our true blue 4d. stamps?
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, I think the position is that many years ago all letters all over the world were posted under a red stamp and all postcards under a green stamp, but inflation has made a difference and we are now having a great variety of coloured stamps, which I think appeal to people. I wonder whether the noble Lord, in his artificial light days, had noticed two things on the current stamps: first, Her Majesty's head, and, secondly, the price of the stamp? I think they are really most attractive and the price is quite clear.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I do not quite know what the noble Lord means by my "artificial light days". I should hope that they will be some way ahead.
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, it is overhead now.
LORD BOWDEN: My Lords, is not the answer to the noble Lord that we must look before we lick?
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, can my noble friend say whether the Government cater for colour blindness?
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, I do not know how colour blind my noble friend is, but in fact I went into the question of colour blindness and I understand that people who are colour blind find it much more difficult to distinguish red from green than between different shades of brown.
LORD ALLERTON: My Lords, it may not be quite relevant to the Question, but may I ask the purpose of the outsize stamps which appear from time to time?
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, I think they are big because they are more valuable in the amount that has to be paid for them. The 2s. 6d., 5s., 10s. and the £1 stamps are much bigger in size than the ordinary postal stamp that we use.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, it is all very well for my noble friend to say that his right honourable
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friend the Postmaster General finds these stamps are clearly distinguishable, but the fact remains that to the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, myself, and a large number of other people they are not so distinguishable, and I hope he will take notice of that point.
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, I think my noble friend Lord Bowden answered the noble Baroness when he said, "Look before you lick".

T. & A.V.R. III TRAINING AND REGIMENTAL FUNDS
3.27 p.m.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will give estimates of the total amount spent by units of T. & A.V.R. III from their regimental funds during 1968 to date to enable them to undertake some training; and of what further amounts are likely to be spent from such funds for the same purposes during the remainder of the current training season.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (LORD CHALFONT): My Lords, no information is available about the amount of non-public regimental funds spent, or likely to be spent, by units of the T. & A.V.R. III on training.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, while expressing surprise, and some disappointment, that the Government do not know more about the details of training being undertaken by units of T. & A.V.R. III, may I ask the noble Lord to take early steps to discover this, with a view to repayment from public funds, which seems the very least return we can make for this unselfish service?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I reject utterly any allegation that Her Majesty's Government do not know the details of training undertaken by these units. They do. What they do not know are the details of the regimental funds being spent on training, because they are the private concern of regiments and not of the Government. I cannot hold out

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any hope that there will be any repayments of these funds to the units which are to be disbanded. I see no reason why the cost of their training should be defrayed from public funds.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, since the War Department, or the Ministry of Defence, presumably knows what the different forms of training cost, and the noble Lord says they know what training is being carried out; and since the Government know what small amount is being met out of public funds, it ought to be a question of simple arithmetic to arrive at the sum about which we are speaking. With the example of exhibitionism last week-end in the West End of London by other young men and women, and of the damage they did, not least to the police, may I repeat that in my view repayment from public funds is the least we can do for people who try to do things for their fellow men.
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I am sorry I cannot follow the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, in his convolutions of thought between the demonstrations in the West End of London and the training of the T. & A.V.R. III. All I can say is that although the Government are as capable as the noble Lord of doing simple arithmetic, we see no reason in this case for doing it. If the units wish to expend regimental funds on their training that is their concern. The Government have decided that these units are to be disbanded and no public funds are to be expended on their training.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether, in the recent Defence debate, it was not said that the decision on the disbanding of these units would not take place until the end of the year? Is there any conflict between that statement and what the noble Lord has said?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, there is no conflict. The decision as to detail will be taken at the end of this year. The decision as to the disposition and disposal of the manpower that is saved, and the other resources that are saved, will be taken at the end of this year. The decision as to disbandment has been taken, and arising from that decision there is also the further decision that while this is pending no further public funds will be expended on training.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend a nice, friendly question? Is it not a fact that recruiting for the Regular Army is falling off very considerably, and are we not, by disbanding Territorial units, depriving ourselves of a very reliable reservoir of possible recruits for the Regular Forces? Is it still too late for us to alter the decision already taken about wrecking the Territorial Army?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, all these are extremely interesting questions, especially to me, but they do not arise out of the original Question.

NATIONAL VOLUNTARY EFFORT AND USE OF DRILL HALLS
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: 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 considering bringing into a unified volunteer Reserve all the branches of the national voluntary effort, whose members could benefit by the availability for occupation of the remaining drill halls not yet disposed of; and, if so, whether this process of disposal can be temporarily held up, pending emergence of a settled policy.]
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have no plans for creating a unified voluntary reserve on the lines suggested; and the disposal of drill halls will continue.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, while not cordially thanking the noble Lord for that Answer, may I ask him, in the fewest possible number of words, two supplementary questions? Is it not the fact that there is to be no organised manpower behind the Army, even in support of the civil power against imponderable emergencies? Therefore, would the Ministry not agree on the advisability of maintaining the pattern overall of drill halls and of delaying disposal? In 1967 there were 1,250 drill halls. The future of 224 has been settled and 400 are still at disposal. It is a question of "Going, going, gone." Of the others—and this is what I deplore—certain will be good "buys", because, after all, what is the future, what is the

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lookout, for an ordinary drill hall? They will be good buys for people who want to make money. Once they have been bought, we do not know what the years to come will ask for and give us. Therefore, it is bad thing to let them go now. Also, in places of scattered population do we not want gathering places?—that is, places where young, eager men can go on their motor bicycles and get together and learn comradeship, loyalty and all the other things that drill halls have produced.
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I think I might comment with the greatest friendliness, that that speech is almost as long as the one I made on the same subject when we debated this subject in your Lordships' House recently. The answers to the noble Lord's questions are these: there is, in our view, no foreseeable requirement for these drill halls, and where no Government Department or no local authority wishes to buy them, they are then placed on the open market for sale. That seems to me to be a logical and reasonable thing to do. I cannot believe that the noble Earl objects strongly to the fact that in buying one of these drill halls someone may get a bargain. The drill halls are being disposed of because we do not think we shall ever want them again and they cost money to maintain. If we kept them, they would have to have a caretaker, and there would be justifiable criticism in the country at their being kept at public expense and no use being made of them at all. I regret to say that we cannot foresee any use for these. We are therefore disposing of them in the most reasonable and economic way.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, arising out of the answers to the last two questions and in view of the fact that many of us are very worried about the effect of the Government's decisions on our Reserve Forces and our Regular Forces, may I ask whether it is proposed by the Government to have a debate on the recent White Paper on Defence before we adjourn for the Summer Recess?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, that is a matter which will have to be dealt with through the usual channels. I could not presume to answer that question myself, but I take note of what the noble Lord has said.

ELECTORAL LAW REFORM
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, at a convenient moment after half-past three my noble friend Lord Stonham will be making a Statement on electoral law reform. May I add that dinner will be available to-night between 7 and 8.30 p.m.
CIVIL AVIATION BILL [H.L.] CIVIL EVIDENCE BILL [H.L.] THEFT BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons earlier this day, agreed to, with Amendments: the said Amendments printed, pursuant to Standing Order No. 45.

GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL
2.38 p.m.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I beg to move, That Standing Order No. 147 (Bill as amended in Committee to be deposited at Public Departments) be considered in order to its being dispensed with in respect of the Greater London Council (General Powers) Bill. I should like briefly to explain this Motion to your Lordships.
I am asking the House to agree to this procedural Motion this afternoon. Standing Order 147 provides that a Private Bill amended in Committee should be deposited with various Government Departments not less than three clear days before it is read a third time. Owing to shortage of time, which has arisen through no fault of the Promoters, the prescribed period of three days has to be shortened in this case if the Bill is to receive Royal Assent before the Recess. No Government Department has objected, and in fact the period of deposit has been cut down by only one day. I would therefore ask the House to agree to dispense with the Standing Order so that the Bill can become law before the Recess.
Moved, That Standing Order No. 147 (Bill as amended in Committee to be deposited at Public Departments) be considered in order to its being dispensed with in respect of the said Bill.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Bill read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (BLACKPOOL AND STOURBRIDGE) BILL.
House in Committee (on Re-commitment).
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of July 15), Bill read 3a, and passed.

MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (WEST KENT MAIN SEWERAGE DISTRICT) BILL.
House in Committee (on Re-commitment).
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of July 15), Bi11 read 3a, and passed.

SUNDAY ENTERTAINMENTS ACT 1932
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, this is one of the general Orders made under the Sunday Entertainments Act 1932. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department for extending Section 1 of the Sunday Entertainments Act 1932 to the Rural District of Pocklington be approved.—(Lord Bowles.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

THE CIVIL SERVICE: FULTON COMMITTEE'S REPORT
2.40 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR rose to call attention to the Report of the Committee on the Civil Service (Cmnd. 3638); and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I venture to hope that it may serve a public interest if your Lordships' House spends to-day discussing the Report on the Civil Service. It seems to me highly desirable
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that one or other House of Parliament should find time to discuss a subject and a Report of this importance within a reasonably early period. It is clear that in another place there would not be available time before they rose for the Summer Recess. I am aware that it is only four weeks since the Report was published. That is a short time, but if we do not debate it now four months will have to elapse, and I cannot help thinking that it may be of value to the Government to obtain at any rate initial reactions from one House of Parliament.
I expect that few of your Lordships will have had time to do more than read Volume 1 of the Report and dip into Volumes 2, 4 and 5. Volume 3 is not yet published. I am certainly not going to demand quick answers from the Government to questions which need far longer study. The sheer volume of the material which the Committee had to handle, as may be seen from the other published reports, emphasises our immense debt to the Committee, and especially to the two noble Lords who served on it, Lord Fulton and Lord Simey; to the noble Lord, Lord Futhon, outstandingly, for carrying this tremendous burden, and to the noble Lord. Lord Simey, for an important note of reservation. By comparison I have small qualification to express views, and I am aware of that; no more qualification than the fact that to me the subject is an absorbing and fascinating one in which I have long been deeply interested. But I had the opportunity to see something of the Civil Service at close quarters when I was for eight years a Cabinet Minister, having before that occupied the post of Financial Secretary to the Treasury which carries special responsibilities for Civil Service matters. I see my function to-day as simply being to roll the pitch for some of the much more experienced batsmen who are to follow, including at least five former Permanent Secretaries, of whom two were also heads of the Civil Service. None of us would accept that through occupying these distinguished positions their view s on these matters should override all others. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the opportunity for both Parliament and the Government to hear quickly the views of such as them, should of itself justify the debate.
Briefly, I find myself thinking that the majority of the recommendations of the Committee are right but that the tone of the Report is wrong. Let me say first of all where I agree with it. I am sure the Committee is right to recommend the transfer of responsibilities, including responsibilities for Civil Service pay, from the Treasury to a new Civil Service Department, and the merging of the Civil Service Commission in that Department. I have only one small piece of personal experience I can add to the case as set out in the Report. When I was Financial Secretary I had, as I mentioned, special responsibilities towards the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the Civil Service and co-incidentally with that special responsibilities towards the Civil Service as a whole. I am quite sure that I did not have sufficient time to discharge those responsibilities adequately. The Treasury Ministers are traditionally extremely busy people, and the Chancellor and the Financial Secretary, at any rate in my time, were outstandingly so. I hope that I let down neither the Chancellor nor the Civil Service, but I am quite sure that I was not able to find sufficient time to give to Civil Service matters in the position that I held, and it seems to me that that would always continue to be the case with Treasury Ministers so long as the control of the Civil Service was within the Treasury.
I know that the charging of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, with special responsibilities for this new Civil Service Department has been universally welcomed in your Lordships' House. That was quite clear on June 26 when the announcement was made. Indeed, it seems to me that there is much to be said for this particular post being regularly held by a Cabinet Minister in your Lordships' House. The function of the new Civil Service Department should essentially be well shielded from the pressures of Party politics. It would surely be easier to maintain that good tradition if the Minister who is entrusted by the Prime Minister with special responsibility for the Department was not himself daily sailing the angrier sea of Party politics in another place.
As to the structure of the Civil Service, I have long thought that the distinction between the Administrative and the
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Executive classes was a hindrance rather than a help, and in the light of the Committee's Report I certainly can see a strong case for abolising all classes, as the Committee has recommended and as the Government say that they accept. In this connection, above all, the specialists, the accountants, the scientists and engineers and so on, should be far better integrated into the Service than has been the case. These specialists have also tended to be underpaid, with the result that the Service has not always been able to attract the best of them. I must say that in this whole context it seems to me that the Committee has approached rather optimistically the immense problems for Civil Service pay which the abolition of classes and the Committee's proposals for integration, for job evaluation and so on, are going to create.
I warmly welcome, too, the idea of a Civil Service College, and surely in the new concept of the Civil Service put before us by the Committee the establishment of this college must be given priority. The Committee emphasises the problems that are going to arise in the transition between the Civil Service as it is now and the Civil Service as it will eventually be if reorganised in a thorough-going way, and it is hard to see how we can successfully find our way through that transitional period unless a Civil Service college is in existence for training purposes.
From the Prime Minister's announcement of June 26 I sense that in the present economic circumstances the Government could be reluctant to find room for this new college in the Estimates, but the force of the Committee's logic is that if there is not to be an unacceptably long period of transition this must be done quickly. The Committee is right, too, I am sure, in stressing the inadequate amount of training in modern management throughout the Civil Service. So far as they stress this I am entirely with them in what they say about the need for a greater professional element in the Civil Service and in the training of civil servants. The Civil Service is a vast organisation, and more pressingly than most it needs a widespread understanding of the personal, the administrative and the financial problems inherent in the running of a very large undertaking. I would not myself accept that management

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consultants are always right in their findings, but to omit to learn from them all that one can about modern techniques is folly.
Last of the major points on which I agree with the Committee is on the need for greater mobility in and out of the Service, combined with less rapid mobility in some cases within it. If the present non-contributory pension scheme is incompatible with ready transferability of pension rights in both directions then that is a strong case for going over to a contributory scheme. In this context the Committee also has some suggestive ideas for breaking down the sharp distinction between established and temporary service, though it need not have insinuated, as it did, a link between establishment and complacency.
For the main defects of the Service the Fulton Report blames what it calls the philosophy of the amateur, the cult of the generalist. In stinging words it says—I quote from paragraph 15:
"The cult is obsolete at all levels and in all parts of the Service".
Your Lordships may wish to test this sweeping judgment against the quality and relevance of the contributions that will be made later by some of the scorned amateurs who rose to high positions in the Service.
I can identify two major defects in the functioning of Government Departments which do not seem to derive from what the Committee thinks it has diagnosed as the main weakness, the root of all else. The first is delay. All sorts of operations in the Civil Service take too long. The Civil Service is not sufficiently responsive to the pressures of time—with one exception, and that is the Parliamentary Question. If one of those coloured folders containing a Parliamentary Question is going round it moves swiftly. In other respects this lack of responsiveness to the pressure of time is in contrast with the running of most businesses, especially businesses in direct contact with the public, where, if a person cannot get served quickly with what he wants or cannot get answers to his letters he goes elsewhere, and the business knows it. With the Civil Service one cannot go elsewhere. In-trays are constantly full, arrears do not get cleared off, and there has grown up an acceptance of delay as in the natural order
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of things. Maybe I am committing a fault and generalising too much. I know there are exceptions, but I think informed public opinion would accept that what I have said is, in general, true. I find too little about all this in the Report, though for my part I believe it is a greater cause of public ill-feeling towards the Civil Service than any of the specific matters mentioned in Chapter 8.
Secondly, for thirty years the higher ranks of the Civil Service have been grossly and continuously overworked in most Departments. This is largely the fault of Governments. Originally it was the fault of the war, but since the war it has been the fault of Governments which cast huge new tasks on the Civil Service without sufficiently taking into account the side effects of what they were doing thereby, or sufficiently building up the strength of the higher ranks of the Civil Service to cope with the extra burden.
My Lords, few even of the busiest businessmen would care to grapple with the colossal load of work, particularly paper work, which almost every senior Civil Servant has to tackle daily and to take home with him in the evenings and at weekends. The fundamental fault here is not with the amateurs nor with the Treasury as the Report suggests, but with Governments. I mention these points because I am not convinced that the Committee probed deep enough when they sought to make the all-round amateurs the scape-goats for everything that was wrong. The most outstanding manifestation of first-rate efficiency at the highest levels which I have had the privilege of coming across anywhere is in the Cabinet Office. I greatly doubt whether this level of wise, swift, unfailing efficiency is matched in any other country of the world. It is entirely based on the amateur tradition which the Report so roundly condemns.
In the selection and recruitment of civil servants the Committee has much that is wise to say. I agree with the minority against the majority on what the Committee calls, in the jargon, "preference for relevance". The majority say that in the selection of graduate recruits for the Civil Service preference should be given to those who have studied at their universities subjects which will be directly relevant to their probable work in the Civil Service. I

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would say rather that graduate candidates must be selected on grounds of sheer ability, not influenced by the subjects that they had chosen to work at in their universities.
Let us by all means go on trying to get more men and women into the Civil Service from the great provincial universities and the new universities. So far as the provincial universities are concerned, the Civil Service Commission has been trying for this for years. Do not let us go to lower standards of intellectual quality for recruits in order to do this. If Oxford and Cambridge continue to attract the ablest students and continue to produce abler men and women with an inclination towards entering the public service, let us accept this as one of the facts of life.
The Report has a great many wise things to say about training within the Service and about career management in relation to the individual. Some doubts arise in my mind about the recommendation to establish two new and distinct classes, a class of civil servants specially trained in social subjects and a class specially trained in economic, industrial and financial subjects. However, I have the feeling that a successful plan which takes these divisions of specialisation into account but is not rigidly governed by them can probably be evolved by the disparaged but highly gifted amateurs to whom it will fall to work out the practical schemes for the immediate future.
My confident hope is that something similar to that will happen to the Committee's recommendation for separate planning units in each Department. My impression is that every Permanent Secretary worthy of his position has already created some planning machinery of this sort within the Department, probably all the better for not being on too formal a basis. These units need not be staffed wholly by the young; I disagree with the emphasis in the Report here. I think the Report is weakened by its too easy acceptance of a number of current superficial judgments, one being that it is only among the young that you find thrust and drive. If that were true, the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, with whom I enjoyed the relationship of Minister and Permanent Secretary for four years,
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and whose maiden speech we are all looking forward to, must be permanently young. I think her speech will prove that she is.
I cannot easily visualise the triangular relationship between the Minister, the Permanent Secretary and the Senior Policy Adviser which the Committee envisage. In paragraph 182 they said:
"His prime job … would be to look to, and prepare for, the future and to ensure that day-to-day policy decisions are taken with as full a recognition as possible of likely future developments."
No, this will not work happily. The true task, in my judgment, is for a Permanent Secretary to secure for himself more time to think ahead by accepting that a great deal of paper of secondary importance should not pass through his hands at all on the way to his Minister. More of his senior colleagues should be trusted to make submissions and recommendations to Ministers direct. That has been the practice in the Treasury, I know, for years, and it could and should be more widely extended.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? He says, "it could and should be more widely extended". Certainly my limited experience is that this is normal practice. There are occasions upon which it is quite right that certain matters should come from the Permanent Secretary; but certainly the great majority of submissions that came to me when I was running a Department came from whichever appropriate Under-Secretary was concerned.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I am glad to hear that. I have no doubt that it varies in different Departments. I must apologise if, again, I fell into the trap of making too generalised a statement. I think the noble Lord would agree with me that it is desirable that the practice in this respect of the best Departments should be the practice of all.
I was about to say that in the work of Government, planning ahead is subject to an important difference from planning ahead in the business world. The difference is that Governments change, and they change quite rapidly. Are the departmental planning unit and the Senior Planning Adviser in a Department to take into account in all their work the

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constant likelihood that, within two or three years, there may be a change of Government?
A wise Permanent Secretary will, I believe, use those weeks that are quiet for Whitehall just before Polling Day at a General Election to think out alternative programmes of work for the Department over the next four or five years, according to whether the Department is to get a Right-wing or a Left-wing Minister. I believe in long-term thinking, but if it is too formalised in a separate section of the Department a dangerously high amount of that long-term thinking and planning work may prove abortive.
I should have liked to see the Committee tackle in greater depth, not only the implication of its proposed abolition of classes for the problems of Civil Service pay, but also the practical possibilities of securing a greater amount of two-way movement across the boundary between the Civil Service and outside world. Considering the importance of this, and especially the importance of enabling civil servants to gain experience in outside employment, I find the references in Chapter 4 and Appendix G a little—shall I say—jejune. This is a field where I should welcome an assurance from the Government that there is going to be a vigorous follow-up.
I believe the Committee felt debarred from considering in much detail the working relationship between Ministers and their Departments; yet this has considerable importance if one is thinking about the work of the Civil Service. There might be great value to future Ministers and possibly to future civil servants also if a Working Party of former Ministers and retired civil servants was commissioned to make a study of this fascinating and, I think, highly important relationship.
Just as Governments have been known to overload Whitehall, so some Ministers tend to overload their Departments, sometimes by starting too many hares at once, more often by simply not knowing enough of how the Civil Service works and therefore not understanding how to get the best out of their Department. As compared with civil servants, Ministers are net intrinsically superior beings. But Ministers and civil servants are, for the time at least, different ani-
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mals, each to be respected as such. In the business world there is normally no similar dividing line. I doubt whether we shall get full productivity out of even a reorganised Civil Service without Ministers of all Parties being enabled to learn quickly more about the machine of which they are temporarily in charge, and about the tools which are available to them for the purpose.
With regard to the Report, I regret that I must end on a critical note. It contains material of great value but it is vitiated by defects to which the noble Lord, Lord Simey, has drawn attention in his reservation to Chapter I. He deserves great credit for the courage of that reservation. I am only surprised that more members of the Committee did not join him in it. I feel particularly grateful to him for his reminder to us all of the outstanding importance of qualities of judgment and of decisiveness, which are not necessarily the concomitant or the result of professional training. My judgment is that the Report reads like a piece of advocacy rather than a balanced appreciation. There are too many dogmatic assertions, too many flat statements that things are wrong without presenting either background or reasons, too many optimistic assurances that if one makes the Service professional and classless practical difficulties and obstacles of all sorts can be overcome.
When the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Grasmere, was my tutor at the university and I was reading essays to him, frequently he used to interrupt one of my insufficiently thought out generalisations with the inquisitive word, "Namely?". It was very good for me. There are many assertions in this Report which I feel tempted to challenge with the demanding word "Namely?". I am aware that the Committee could answer me back by saying, quite correctly, that I have presented views in this speech without backing them up sufficiently with reasons. I can but reply that I have had only thirty minutes and they had one hundred pages and could have taken more.
My Lords, I have just had time to "roll the pitch" for wiser people than me to follow. My innermost belief is that the best thing we can all do to-day is to "roll the pitch" for Sir William Armstrong, because I believe it is supremely fortunate

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for the country that at this very moment we have as the head of the Civil Service a man whom I would trust more than most to extract everything which is of value in the Fulton Report, which is a great deal, and to translate it into practical action. Let Parliament back him up. I beg to move for Papers.
3.12 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, and indeed to thank the Opposition for choosing this subject for debate to-day, essentially a subject of no Party political controversy and, therefore, characteristically appropriate to your Lordships' House. I felt, like anybody else in this field, as if I knew a great deal about it, that I was thoroughly competent to speak about it, until I looked at the list of speakers. Now I realise that I am a Minister new to his task without even the Department which is to give substance to it, whereas the noble Lords who are to speak to-day—these mandarins, mandarins emeritus, or emeriti: I am not sure which it should be—are going to bring a weight of knowledge to bear that certainly requires me to pick my way with a great deal of care.
My Lords, the Government, the Civil Service, and indeed the country, are very greatly indebted to the authors of this Report They have produced a far-reaching study of the situation and of the problems of our Civil Service to-day, and a large number of recommendations which point the way to enabling the Service to be better fitted to meet the problems not merely of the latter part of this century but, indeed, of the next century. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, is here, and I hope also the noble Lord, Lord Simey (I know that recently he has not been well) who gave us an important reservation in Chapter 1.
One of the things I am not here to do—and on the whole I hope that your Lordships will also be inclined to eschew this—is to debate at too great length those aspects either in regard to the presentation of the Fulton Report or the weaknesses, as we see it, in the arguments. I should like to say one thing right at the beginning. I think it is unfortunate that Part 2 of the Report has
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not been generally available, because to my mind this is far and away a more important background document. Indeed, in some ways it is really more important than Part 1—and this is not to depreciate the value of Part 1. But in Part 2 noble Lords will find many of the answers as to the reasons—admittedly some of the answers may have been post hoc rather than pre hoc—for particular recommendations.
Much of the evidence that is contained within Part 2, and which was put forward by various bodies, illustrates the extent to which the tasks of Government have changed in recent years. And this is true of any Government, whatever its political complexion. There is one point that I would make right at the beginning: I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, that the deficiencies in the Government service, such as there are, are due in no small measure to the unco-ordinated efforts of Ministers. If we are to talk about amateurs (and I should be careful not to get too deeply into the controversy of the amateur versus the professional) it is clear that our system of government is not well suited to achieve efficient management if one is merely talking about management.
Let me not mislead anyone into thinking I am advocating any other system, at least at this stage of our development, from our present type of Parliamentary democracy; but we all know, and those of us who have been Ministers know, what miracles the Civil Service succeed in working in producing consistency, and indeed sense, out of the actions of ministers. It is against this background that we have to look at the great extension of responsibilities that are laid upon the Civil Service. I need not spell them out: the extent to which the traditional regulatory functions have multiplied; the new responsibilities in so many areas, and the ever-increasing interaction of problems in both our domestic and, international affairs. Government is very much more complex. Therefore it is not surprising that this Report should contain many proposals for change; and it is not surprising, either, that many of us, without the benefit of the examination and the analysis which the Fulton Committee have produced, have in fact been in favour of these changes. What the

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Fulton Report has done—and this is one of the great virtues of Reports—is to produce the stimulus to action.
My Lords, these proposals are limited to the Civil Service, which is the subject of the Committee's inquiry, and this is not the only field in which change will be needed for the efficient conduct of our affairs. Therefore this Report (and here again we have an example of interaction) has to be seen as an important part of the debate that will go on in the future of all our institutions: local government, the law, the trade unions and employers' associations, machinery of government, Parliament—even the reform of your Lordships' House. But within the Committee's terms of reference (and I think that the members of the Committee must at times have regretted that their terms of reference were not wider, though at other times they no doubt sighed with relief that the terms were, in fact, as restrictive as they had to be) there was a wide measure of agreement on the changes that were needed, though there is a division on certain points. Of course, we shall find agreement and disagreement in our debate to-day, and some of the issues which will be the most fascinating to debate may not necessarily be the most important issues in regard to the reform of the Civil Service.
Clearly it would be impossible for me to produce any startling statement on the implementation of the Fulton Report. The Government have done their best to strike a difficult balance in a not uncommon dilemma. Here is a Report with 158 numbered recommendations, many of them interrelated, some very far-reaching, some very costly, and the whole of them bound to call for the most careful study and, of course, consultation with interested parties, in particular with the Civil Service staff associations.
On the other hand, there was a real challenge in this Report which called for an immediate response if the Government were to mean business—and I would emphasise that the Government do mean business. Noble Lords will recall the Prime Minister's Statement, which I repeated, in which the Government accepted three of the principal recommendations in what might be called the institutional changes. These are the establishment of a new Civil
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Service Department; the creation of a new Civil Service College; and the abolition of classes, and the study which the Committee propose so that a practical system can be devised to give effect to this particular recommendation. I shall come back to those different points later on. The Government approach the remaining recommendations also with sympathy and goodwill. We may find that there are practical difficulties in regard to certain of the detailed proposals of what the Committee would have us do, but I suspect that the objectives in nearly every case will be found to be sound and likely to afford at least the target at which we should aim.
Arrangements to bring the new department into legal effect will be brought before Parliament as soon as practicable. It will be my immediate task to supervise this. I can assure noble Lords from the contacts which I have already had, particularly with the Treasury, short though they have been, that there is no spirit of holding back. Indeed, I have been struck by the determination of those I have talked with to press vigorously ahead without delay. I echo the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, in regard to Sir William Armstrong. It is a remarkable piece of fortune to me, first to be able to talk at all in this House about my Permanent Secretary instead of his being hidden away, and, secondly, to have the good fortune to be working with him. One of the first steps which has to be taken, a step to which I attach importance and which is strictly in accordance with the Fulton recommendations, is that a planning unit should be set up at once to map out the first tasks of the new Department and the practical application of the changes that are and will be agreed. The work of planning and setting up this new planning unit is already well in hand.
My impression is that, despite anxieties about criticisms, the Civil Service welcomes the close interest that is now being taken in its affairs. The Service is so often the butt of ill-informed or ill-directed criticism. I must say that I thought the B.B.C. news programme "Twenty-Four Hours" dealing with the Civil Service was quite inappropriate for what was meant to be a serious news programme. I have always been an upholder of the B.B.C., and I was strongly

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in favour of "TW3" until it became horrifyingly unfair. But if that sort of treatment is going to move into news programmes as well, I should be sorry to see this tendency go on.
The Civil Service, as I say, is accustomed to criticism—so are we all; it is one of the things we have to put up with—but I believe that the Civil Service welcomes the Report both for its recommendations and for the opportunity which it provides for other reforms, so many of which civil servants would have liked to see come into effect before. They are not averse to criticism and change—at least, I do not think that any general argument on those lines stands up. That is shown in the evidence which has been offered to the Committee by individuals, groups and staff associations, and by discussions with any representative group of civil servants.
The debate is well started, and it will go on. This is not something which we are going to settle to-day. Our debate to-day is really a Second Reading debate so to speak. Some of the recommendations are bound to be long-term. The provision of the extra resources that are needed to give effect to some of the recommendations will have to be fitted into the Government's public expenditure programme; and there will have to be a great deal of consultation and discussion, which cannot be achieved in a few months. Wherever it is possible to introduce changes quickly, this will be done.
I should like now to deal with some further general impressions of the Report. There are three general points which I have noted. The first is that both the Fulton Committee Report itself and public discussion have inevitably intended to concentrate on the central direction of the Civil Service, and especially the Administrative Class centred in Whitehall; but it is important to remember just how large and diverse the Civil Service is. Here again Volume 2, the Report of the Management Consultancy Group, clearly demonstrates the enormous range of activities carried on far from Whitehall and, in certain areas, involving very few members indeed, if any at all, of the Administrative Class. The much more numerous members of the Executive Class, the Clerical Class and the Special
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Departmental Classes run local offices throughout the country and major blocks of work in places like Newcastle and Cardiff. In Whitehall many Departments are run by a combination of Treasury grades, engineers, scientists and other experts. One can go on at great length throughout the whole gamut of the great research establishments. Wherever there are Armed Forces to be found, there you will find the supporting Civil Servants.
The Report deals with different parts of the Civil Service, and criticisms applicable to one group may well be inapplicable to others. It may well be true that Whitehall has inadequate contact with the public. This is a difficult issue. But one must stress that there are many thousands of civil servants in daily contact with the public in local offices. I am sure that, like myself, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, and any noble Lord who has been engaged in welfare work either as a Member of Parliament or in other ways, would without hesitation pay tribute to the efficiency and humanity of the civil servants who deal directly with the public in all parts of the country. It is amazing notwithstanding the delays to which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, drew attention; and we could all give examples. I had one case brought to my notice which had been going on for three years when I became a Minister; the civil servant who knew all about it had died in the interim. Such examples are to be found. But when one thinks of the astonishing amount of efficient work that is done in the payment of pensions, and so on, one realises that it is an achievement of high efficiency and very great humanity.
My second general point is that, with perhaps two or three exceptions, the Report is essentially an advocate of evolution rather than revolution. Some critics of the Report have indeed suggested that it was dressed up as a revolutionary report, and the Press headlines have been misleading on this matter. One need take only a few examples. Chapter 2 deals with the need for better training of administrators. I think it has been a criticism of the Government Service in the past that there was not nearly enough training. Neither was there nearly enough training in business. I should say that in this matter business still lags far behind the Government Service. In the

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last few years, since the Centre for Administrative Studies was set up, some very real progress has been made. To-day every Assistant Principal who enters the Service has to do a six-months' course. The recommendations on recruitment, with one exception which I shall mention later, are not particularly revolutionary.
The proposals for greater mobility in and out of the Service which are urged upon us are ones of which I think the Government Service has always been strongly in favour. There are difficulties in this matter. In my experience of industry, it is not so easy to take somebody from the Civil Service and put him in a production job or a marketing job. As we well know, it is sometimes easier to bring businessmen into the Government Service, especially those with administrative experience. There can be no question as to the desirability of this, and the Report rightly urges us to press on with it.
Then, again, the section on accountable management and management by objectives strikes a familiar chord in the Management Services Division of the Treasury. This has been under study for quite a long while. It has major implications for the Government's accounting system, and here I think there is scope for very important developments in accounting. This is also very desirable in large areas of industry, where in some cases they do not know whether or not they are making a profit and what certain activities are costing. I was always amazed in industry at the extent to which the cost of certain activities is known to a penny while there is no check at all on certain other activities. This is particularly true of some of the administrative services to be found in industry.
However, the proposals to which the Committee draw attention are important, because we have not been moving anything like far enough or fast enough. I suspect that there is not a single modern management technique which somebody in the Service has not studied, but their systematic application or introduction over a wide field has not got very far. The greatest service which the Report has rendered is not so much that it proposes some radically new approach as that it provides a powerful impetus to move further and faster in ways which we know and which the Civil Service know they ought to go.
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Then there is the question of under-management. If one were to find one word to sum up the criticisms in the Fulton Report and the defects which the recommendations seek to make good it would be "under-management". Here, again, many of the suggestions can be traced back to the fact that inadequate resources are available for management of all kinds. I think there will be agreement that this is a general shortcoming in almost all parts of our national life. I should like to quote from another Report which has some relevance both to Fulton and to the Civil Service. This is the statement:
"The trouble with the public school and Oxbridge graduates lies not in the old-boy network of recruitment but rather in their amateurism."
Those words were not said by Fulton about the Civil Service but in the Brookings Report about British industry.
There are many statements here—whether or not one accepts them in detail—which seem to be a criticism not just of the Civil Service but, indeed, of standards of management throughout our national life. It is important to recognise this; indeed, it is important to recognise some of the deficiencies in the education system which have led to this position. The interesting point is that in the past it has been the Government Service and the Civil Service which have sought to influence the education system in the direction in which it could be most relevant to our national life. But further emphasis and further changes in this direction may be necessary, and neither industry nor the Civil Service can afford to be content. In my view, the Government need the Fulton Report to jolt them into altering our priorities. Therefore, we must be clear what is at issue.
More people are needed for personnel management, to plan careers, to provide training, to negotiate schemes for exchanges of staff and to apply in each Department many of the modern techniques which we already have at our disposal. It will be necessary for people to be released from some of the day-to-day pressure. It is always the counsel that there should be people with time to think, but how difficult it is for them ever to find time to think about the longer term! This is not just to say that we need a net increase of staff to manage the

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Civil Service better, although there is bound to be some element of this. We need to improve methods and, in some posts and areas, the quality of those who are carrying out certain jobs.
I have already indicated that I cannot hope to cover even a tiny proportion of the many recommendations, but I should like to single out a few, either to make a statement or perhaps to invite debate. There is the fascinating controversy which is summed up in words like "professional" "amateur", "specialist" and "generalist". While I was trying to draft a passage of my speech on this subject, I found I was so engaged in producing fresh definitions for each of these terms that I suddenly decided it might be better for me to hear what your Lordships have to say on the subject. So I do not propose to get into a philosophical discussion or either to rebut or justify criticisms. But one point comes clearly through the Report—and I hope we shall all agree on this—and it seems to be one of the main points of the Report, and one of the main messages of Part 2. It is that administrators or managers must seek to develop greater knowledge in depth, not merely of specialist subjects or functions—and here, again, there are lots of management theories available on this subject—but also of the profession of management. The dilemma that confronts the civil servant is brought out in Part 2. It is his obligation to be both a policy adviser and a manager.
I must make clear that the first priority has inevitably had to be policy advising, and any Minister who has had to conduct legislation through Parliament—and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, will know this as well as anyone—knows the very high quality of the advice which one gets on these occasions and the extraordinary rapidity with which the Civil Service works in these matters. It is indeed a miraculous and remarkable achievement. But it is clear—and I think there will be general agreement on this point—that on the management side there is a need for improvement of a kind which, equally, is necessary within industry.
There are certain recommendations which bear on this matter. There is the question of the "preference for rele-
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vance" in education. I can only say that this is a fascinating subject about which I am going to say nothing more at the moment. The Government will obviously have to face this. But whether or not it is right—and the Commission were divided on this issue—to influence our education system, I can only say that the Civil Service sought to do so in the past. It may well be that this is a matter of presentation. It may be the image of the Civil Service; and, as I say, I shall await with great interest to hear what other noble Lords have to say.
Then there is the streaming of administrators—an interesting concept which the Committee put forward rather more tentatively to indicate again this problem of the immense increase in the number of specialisations which may require a greater focusing in a certain area. After all, most people tend to pursue careers in particular areas and with particular expertise. This, of course, is a problem which confronts not merely the administrator in the Civil Service but the engineer and the technologist to-day. Whereas before engineers had four or five main branches and could be divided into electrical engineers or mechanical engineers, here, too, the same problem of specialisation within the specialisations arises. It is an interesting proposal.
As to training, I have already said something about that. It is fair to say that since 1963 some of the younger civil servants have been receiving training at a level not far short of what the Fulton Committee recommend; but, here again, attention has perhaps focused unduly on the training of central administration. The Committee acknowledged that very much of the departmental training was very good indeed—and I would have said on the whole better than is to be found in large areas of industry. It is only in the last few years, since the Industrial Training Act, that there has been real pressure to bring into industry generally the sort of training standards which are to be found in the best of industry. Let me also make clear, so that the emphasis is not wrong, that the best of industry is very good indeed; and it is on the best of industry that the Fulton Commitee has set its sights.
Personnel management is a subject on which I should have liked to talk at great length and on which I shall have to be

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particularly careful, as the departmental Minister, to avoid turning myself into the chief personnel manager of the Civil Service. The Treasury freely admit that both the resources and the understanding that have been given to personnel management have been nothing like enough. Again, personnel management in the best of industry has advanced a good deal further. It is interesting to see how often Civil Service methods have been taken from the Civil Service and developed much more effectively outside; and I think we shall need quite usefully to look at some of the developments which have gone on in some of the nationalised industries, particularly those which are very much concerned with—I will not say entirely similar activities, but high-level activities, like the Atomic Energy Authority. It will be there, as well as at private industry, that we must look.
My Lords, here we come to another, different problem—the problem of scientific and professional staff. We agree with the Committee that they need to be given greater responsibilities within their specialist fields, and greater opportunities to reach high posts in policy-making and management, although it would be quite wrong to assume that every scientist and professional wants to become a Permanent Secretary. If they did, far more would seek to enter the Civil Service as administrators in the first place—where, again, there would be a strong welcome for an increase in the number of candidates with a scientific or technological education. Let us not forget that one of the greatest civil servants of our age, the late Lord Waverley, in fact entered with a scientific qualification; and there are more to be found. I remember Lord Waverley pointing out, in relation to his earlier work—I think it was on uranium—that much of the physics which he did in those days was pretty out-of-date and not very relevant to the present time.
The opportunity, however, must be more readily available for those who are professionals to gain the experience and to get the extra knowledge necessary for the use of management techniques. In particular, we welcome the Fulton Committee's idea of a senior policy and management group across the whole hoard of the Civil Service. But what will be more important to a greater number of scientific and professional staff is, I think, the
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opportunity to carry fuller responsibility within their own field. This, I think, comes down to two things which are related: first, the boundary line and the inter-relationship between the work of the specialist and the work of the administrator needs looking at very carefully. There is a tendency here for duplication. Examples of this are interestingly Set out in Part II, and certainly we shall be looking very closely at the idea of moving towards a more integrated approach; although there are kinds of management teams which, again, are being developed in private industry, where integration is not as strictly pyramidical as some people might prefer. But certainly there may be a strong case for giving professionals more control over all aspects of their work, including the financial, accounting and contractual sides. Of course, this is not new in certain parts of industry. It already exists in various ways in parts of the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Technology and the Navy Department of the Ministry of Defence. One could go on at great length on this subject but the lesson must surely be again to provide greater opportunities for training, not only in the present new techniques that are becoming more familiar but in the new techniques which will come into use in the future.
I should like to say a word or two about the Civil Service college, because I think there is some misunderstanding here. The criticism of this proposal is based on two assumptions. The first is that such a college would be a single, large residential centre which would monopolise all the management training of civil servants and where the courses would be conducted by civil servants for civil servants with a complete lack of contact with the outside world. The second criticism is that virtually all the training needs of the Civil Service could be better met by universities, business schools, technical colleges and so on, and therefore it is unnecessary for the Service to have any, or more than a very small, organisation of its own. The first of these misconceptions cannot be reconciled at all with the intentions set out in the Fulton Report, and it is equally inconsistent with the present policy on Civil Service training or any policy likely to be adopted in the future. Neither envisage an introspective bureaucratic centre. The Report recommends that

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many courses should be open to students from business firms, nationalised industries and local government, and the college would run some courses in more than one centre, making use also of existing courses and outside institutions, as well as teachers and lecturers from other establishments, as in fact they do now. It could well become a particularly useful focus for research in problems of government. None of this, is it suggested, should be exclusive; and perhaps the word "college" itself has an emotive significance which is apt to disturb clear thinking on this wider concept that I have put forward.
My Lords, I would say only that I do not think either that it is possible or, indeed, that it would be responsible, any more than it would be in industry, for the Civil Service to hive off the whole of its training and do nothing itself. Universities and other institutions are bound to feel that they have a great deal to contribute and, of course, they have. But, as we know, in other countries—and we have had attention drawn to them—there are such specialised institutions as the American schools and the E.N.A. in France. We shall, of course, go widely and carefully into this. I think it will be possible to arrive at a sensible and reasonable balance in which there will be a hard core of training, including management training, which may best be met within the Service, even though there may be help from outside institutions.
My Lords, time is pressing. I ought to say something about the unified structure; but I think it might be useful if I were to leave this until I have had the benefit of hearing what noble Lords have to say. The point that has attracted most attention is the proposal that classes should be abolished. Certainly, it is the Government's wish—very much with the agreement of the Treasury that unnecessary formal barriers should be removed. But this must be read in the context that occupational groups are bound to have to be retained. Therefore, we shall have to make very clear in any organisation that a position will have to be found especially for the professionals in the Service. There may have to be some grouping; we cannot think entirely of a large undifferentiated mass; but we cer-
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tainly accept that there are far too many different groups and that the border line is sometimes badly drawn.
My Lords, I have said a good deal about the criticisms of the Civil Service. I hope I have made it clear that these criticisms have been accepted in a constructive spirit. But here again, we must not forget the many achievements of the Civil Service. Perhaps I have said enough already on this, but it is interesting to recognise how many developments in management started originally within the Government service. This is particularly so in what are now called management services: the provision of specialised assistance to general management. We all know the contribution of the Government service to the early development of Organisation and Methods, of how operational research grew up within the Government service, particularly among scientists during the war. From this base has begun to grow a modern management service which makes use of outside consultants where appropriate. But many of these developments have advanced far more slowly into general use than the early promise would have suggested. Here I think Governments must share some of the blame. We know that in the field of automatic data processing the Government and Government Departments are well in the lead. Certainly many of the most sophisticated uses of the computer have been developed within the Service. And we have been hearing much about all these modern techniques of investment appraisal, cost benefit analysis and discounted cash flow. There has been great development, particularly within the Treasury itself, and programme budgeting, which was introduced into the Ministry of Defence under the previous Government, has been a tremendous success in the field of defence planning.
I hope that the picture therefore is of a Service which, while open to criticism in some respects, is one of which we can be as proud as of any institution within the country. Some of us may hesitate to accept in full all the criticisms in the Report. But I want to emphasise that we ought not to spend too much time arguing about whether a particular criticism is fair or not. We ought not to argue about it until one

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has read Part I and Part II of the Report; and indeed Part III, which has not yet been published, which is a certain handicap. The most striking thing—and the Report fully acknowledges this—is the extent to which we now take for granted the integrity of the Civil Service; so much so that we never question it; yet we know that in other countries they are still striving towards the same sort of integrity.
The burdens that Governments of all Parties have placed on the Service in recent years—and let me accept that the present Government have put some pretty heavy burdens on the Civil Service—have been very heavy indeed. The Service has responded not only with remarkable thoroughness but with most extraordinary speed and ability. This constant pressure, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, pointed out, of day-to-day business falls most heavily on the top men. It is this as much as anything else which has hampered rapid progress with major internal reforms.
Nevertheless, in conclusion, I would say that if there are aspects of the Report with which some of us may disagree they are far outweighed by the many valuable and constructive ideas put forward by the Committee. Civil servants, both individually and collectively as represented by the staff associations through the Whitley machinery, have built up something which is very remarkable and unequalled in other parts of the world. I am glad that the Report commended Whitleyism as it approaches its 50th anniversary. I am impressed by the way in which the staff associations have received the Report. I think there is one thing we shall be agreed upon: that there can be no doubt that the Civil Service will respond to the challenge which has been offered by the Committee.
It is a challenge which I believe must be met, and the outcome will certainly be of great importance if it is successfully carried out, not merely to the present Government but to many Governments in the years ahead. This is not a reform that can be implemented in a day. It will be a long process. It is a task that will fall to others who will come after me, and perhaps after the noble Lord, Lord Carrington. I noted what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, had
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to say about the desirability of the Minister for the Civil Service being in the House of Lords. But this is going to be a long haul, and I think we who are now beginning to work on this matter are conscious that we are having to build something which will last for a very long time into the future.

ELECTORAL LAW REVIEW
3.58 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My Lords, with permission, I should like to bring to your Lordships' notice a Statement which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has made in another place about a review of electoral law. I will use his own words:
"The Government have studied the recommendations made in the Final Report of Mr. Speaker's Conference on Electoral Law (Cmnd. 3550) and the Government's conclusions are set out in a White Paper which is available at the Vote Office now. May I take this opportunity, Mr. Speaker, of expressing the appreciation of the House of the care which you, and the Members of this House who served on your Conference, gave to the review.
"The Final Report of your Conference contains seventy-one conclusions, of which the Government accept sixty. Of the remainder, four of the conclusions on which the Government differ relate to major issues. First your Conference recommended by a majority that the minimum age for voting should be reduced to twenty. On the other hand the Government have already announced their acceptance of the recommendation of the Latey Committee that the age of majority should in future be 18 and the Government accordingly recommend in the White Paper that the minimum age for voting should also be reduced to eighteen years.
"Secondly, your Conference recommended by a majority that public opinion polls and betting odds should be prohibited for seventy-two hours before the poll: the Government are not convinced that this is practicable.
"Thirdly, while your Conference

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recommended no change in polling hours at Parliamentary elections the Government consider that the present hours of 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. should be extended so as to end at 10 p.m.
"The fourth major recommendation from which the Government differ is that Party labels should not be allowed on nomination and ballot papers; the Government's view is that these should be allowed if the necessary administrative machinery can be worked out; and I proposed to consult the Parties on this matter.
"The White Paper also contains the recommendations of the Electoral Advisory Conference which was convened at the same time as the Speaker's Conference to consider detailed questions on election procedure. The Government have examined these recommendations and the White Paper explains that we accept all but three of them.
"My right honourable friend the Leader of the House has asked me to say that it is his intention to make arrangements for a debate on these matters when the House resumes after the Recess. The Government would then consider the views expressed during the debate with a view to the introduction of legislation next Session."
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for having repeated that Statement in your Lordships' House, more particularly as none of your Lordships is entitled to cast a vote at the elections whose arrangements we are discussing. I should like to ask the noble Lord two questions. First, what are the precedents for a Government departing from the recommendations of an all-Party Speaker's Conference on election matters, except on the ground that a recommendation is not practicable? Secondly, is it the intention of the Government to bring in, at the same time as the conclusions which the noble Lord has just announced, the recasting of boundary constituencies in accordance with the recommendations—or at any rate based on the recommendations—of the Parliamentary Boundary Commission, which have to be completed by 1969?
LORD WADE: My Lords, may I join in thanking the noble Lord for repeating this Statement. Clearly, careful thought will have to be given to the White Paper, and it is not possible to comment in detail on it at the moment. If I may say so, I think that the decision to reduce the voting age to 18 is right, particularly having regard to the time-lag for many between attaining voting age and actually having the opportunity of voting. Following the question of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, may I ask when the Government intend to introduce legislation to give effect to this reduction of the voting age to 18? Further, if Party labels are to be used on nomination papers and voting papers, how will the authorities deal with a case where there are several claimants to the same Party label? Will this involve the introduction of "primaries", as in the United States?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, asked what are the precedents for a Government's departing from the recommendations of a Speaker's Conference other than if they were impracticable. I am afraid that I cannot answer that point precisely, so far as precedents are concerned, except that it is always the responsibility of the Government of the day to decide and to make their own decision in matters involving legislation.
Secondly, the noble Lord asked whether it was the intention to bring in at the same time the recommendations of the Boundary Commission; and this brings in the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Wade. My Lords, it is the Government's intention to bring in a Bill next Session with regard to the implementation of changes in the voting age, and it is hoped that the Register of Electors which will embody the changes and include any new age groups will be published in February, 1970. The Boundary Commission are obliged to report by next year. It is not yet possible to say when the recommendations, which will have to be considered by Parliament, will be brought before Parliament for approval.
On the point about several claimants to one political Party, I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Wade, is concerned about his own Party, but I do not think there is any very general

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concern about this matter. It is one of the details which has to be worked out in a matter which is not always easy.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, we all recognise that there is a responsibility on the Government of the day to make up their minds. But does the noble Lord accept that in a matter of this kind, where it is a question of altering the rules of the game, there is a very special responsibility on the Government to take account of what has been arrived at through all-Party machinery?
LORD STONHAM: Yes, my Lords, but the Boundary Commission are due to report in the Autumn of 1969, which is still some way hence. The Government see no reason at the present time to take a decision about the work of the Commission in advance of receiving their Report.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, in my supplementary question I was not referring to the Boundary Commission.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether a Party label is going to be compulsory? Will it actually be a criminal offence to be an independent?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord is quite safe. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, for not replying to his supplementary question. I must have misheard him. Perhaps he would repeat it.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I said that everybody accepts that the Government have a responsibility to make up their minds on this and all other matters. But I asked: does the noble Lord accept that the Government are in a special position in a matter like this which is concerned with the arrangements for a General Election and where any change in the arrangements is equivalent to altering the rules of the game? When the rules of the game are altered it is important that all the participants should assent to those changes; and in this case we have the guidance of an all-Party Conference.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am quite sure that the Government have this very well in mind. I do not accept that there is any charge in the rules of the
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game, other than the decision by the Government, the responsible decision, to submit to Parliament a proposal that the voting age should be 18.

THE CIVIL SERVICE: FULTON COMMITTEE'S REPORT
4.9 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, as I understand it, the position is that the Government have accepted in principle the main conclusions of the Report which is the subject of the debate this afternoon, subject, naturally, to the, possibility of modifying them when it comes to applying them over the years. But I must say that I rather hope that they will take serious account of any criticism or suggestion that may be made in relation to the Report in this House this afternoon. One has only to look at the list of speakers to realise that there are in this House some of the greatest possible experts on the Civil Service: noble Lords who have perhaps as much experience of the Civil Service as the authors of the Report themselves—perhaps even more. But may I say that we on these Benches also approve of this Report in principle and more especially of the great majority of its main conclusions and recommendations.
In particular, I believe that on the evidence submitted it was clearly right to recommend that there should be constituted a separate Civil Service Department, under the ultimate authority of the Prime Minister. There never seemed to us to be any overriding reason for placing the Civil Service under the Treasury, and I believe that its removal from that Department will be in the interests of the nation and, indeed, I should have thought, in the interests of the Treasury itself. But whether the Civil Service Commission should be actually embodied or incorporated in this new Department—which I think is the proposal of the Commission—is to my mind rather more open to doubt. Perhaps this will not result in the future in any undue political pressure being put upon members of the Commission, but who can tell? I know that in another place about a month ago the Prime Minister said that
"some specific and formal arrangements will be made to ensure the continued independence and political impartiality within the new Civil

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Service Department of the Civil Service Commission in the selection of individuals for appointment to the Civil Service."
That is very good so far as it goes, but if it is necessary to make these stringent regulations and precautions, why was it necessary to embody the Commission into the Department at all? Why not let it go on being independent as it now is? Perhaps the Government would like to give their views on that particular question when they come to reply.
We also like the proposal to set up what is called a Civil Service College. Here I hope that I am not under any misapprehension, though I must say that I have not read the Report with all the attention that it deserves, and it is possible that I am. I am not certain that I speak for all my colleagues on this particular point, but certainly I should have wished the proposals to go even further in the direction of something more equivalent to the famous Ecole Nationale d'A d-ministration, of which, as the Minister has said, an excellent account is given in Appendix C. We ought not to be too frightened of an élite to run the country. Incidentally, I know that under the French system all the top administrators have to speak fluently one language other than their own, and to possess at least the rudiments of another language. My Lords, how many of our top civil servants in this country can speak one language other than their own fluently? I do not know. Perhaps some noble Lords who will be speaking in the debate and who have an intimate knowledge of the Civil Service will be able to tell us how many there are. If there are very few, then it seems to me that this in itself is a slight evidence of a certain provincialism. I do not say this as a general criticism, but I do think there is a certain provincialism in the mentality of some of the administrators in this country who do not know as much about foreign countries or of the Continent of Europe as they should, and, indeed, as their opposite numbers in France apparently do at the present time.
Then we are told in Appendix C that the chairman and some of his colleagues were much struck by the fact that the men in posts of very high responsibility in France are often remarkably young compared to their British counterparts. Was it the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of
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Cumnor, who said that it was not necessarily a good thing to push on young people in the Civil Service, and that it was perhaps better to keep the average age of the top administrators fairly high? I am not so sure about this.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, with respect, that is not what I said. What I said was that drive and thrust were not confined to the younger generation of civil servants.
LORD GLADWYN: That is broadly so, I agree. But, on the other hand, it may be said that though they are not confined naturally to the younger civil servants, if there is a considerable element of youth in it the total amount of drive and thrust in the Service may well be increased. That is, anyhow, the suggestion of the authors of the Report. They say that it appears to be well accepted that a young man may be put into a central post close to Ministers and may later move away from the centre to take charge of a job of a more managerial character within a Ministry or great organ of State like the Conseil d'Etat, or indeed outside the Civil Service altogether. The existence, they continue, of these outlets to reward the older man—because that is in a way an outlet; the older man, too, will be able to move on outside the Civil Service—makes possible the turnover in the central positions, which affords opportunities to bring forward the younger man. This seems to me admirable as a basis for a system, and I personally hope that the institution of the Civil Service College will result in the application in this country, at any rate to a certain extent, of this particular principle. Perhaps the noble Lord when he comes to reply will also let us know whether the Government have any views on this point.
While I am on it, may I say that it seems clear that what we in this country want, broadly speaking, is more Polytechnicians in the French sense; that is to say, a chosen few—an élite if you will—grounded in the sciences and economics and in managerial disciplines, too, who are in France (as we read) interchangeable between the Civil Service and industry, and who have even been known to penetrate the Diplomatic Service, as well, though I am not, of course, speaking that at the moment. It appears that these élites in France tend sometimes to be rather arrogant. This is mentioned

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in the Report, and it is no doubt a disadvantage, but I suggest that if you adopt this system at all it is something which you just have to put up with. Anyway, if it is a straight choice between arrogance and inefficiency, I personally should be entirely on the side of arrogance. Therefore, I should welcome some elaboration of the Government's view on the development of the Civil Service College; how they expect it to work out in practice, and whether any progress can be made in the directions that I have indicated.
Another feature of the Report of which we on these Benches approve is the abolition of the present multifarious classes, which should halt any tendency for the Service to become a rather complicated mandarinate and give all members a feeling that they have, potentially, the famous Field Marshal's baton in their knapsack. The gradual development of a group of economic and financial administrators, and a second group of social administrators, also seems to us to be sensible. A man who is well qualified, or turns out to be well qualified, to run the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Education, for instance, is not necessarily the right man to run the Treasury or the Board of Trade. I think it would be wrong to become too specialised, and it should obviously be possible to switch people from one group to another if it seemed particularly desirable to do so. But, in general, we think that this is likely to be a salutary reform. We like, also, the emphasis on management, to which reference has already been made, and on making civil servants acquainted with the quite new and rather complicated managerial techniques. I think that there has lately been some criticism levelled at the present Civil Service by quite intelligent people in the City to this effect; and, indeed, I myself made some allusion to it in a speech I made not long ago on the machinery of Government.
Finally, we think that the proposals regarding the recruitment by Ministers of small numbers of experts on a temporary basis (I think I have the phrase right) is no doubt acceptable in principle and corresponds to the practice of the last few years. But here we should like to express a small caveat. Surely, when a Minister comes to power and wishes to nominate independent outside experts on his staff, he should only
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be able to do so with the concurrence of the new Civil Service Department under the ultimate authority of the Prime Minister. It would usually, no doubt, be a formality, but approval should surely be sought. No doubt the temporary appointments which most Ministers might desire to make would be quite unexceptionable, but it is conceivable that they might wish to insert into the machine men who because of their known views might be considered to be some kind of disturbing element or they might even be—let us face it frankly—a security risk. It would surely be right, therefore, that the last word in the appointment of such outside temporary officials should lie with the Prime Minister. Perhaps that is the intention; I do not know, but I should like to be assured that it is.
All the features in regard to which I have so far expressed our approval are, I am glad to note, more or less in harmony with the evidence of the Liberal Party which we gave to the Commission in 1966. But I should now like to express a few criticisms of certain features of the Report. In the first place, we rather doubt—and I think that this is contrary to the views of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, but I am not quite sure—whether the studies pursued by candidates for the Civil Service at university should necessarily be regarded as "relevant" from the point of view of ultimate selection for service. Many students, I am told, and I believe, tend to change their studies during the course of their time at university, and in any case they probably do not make up their minds in advance as to what career they are eventually going to take. So we should hope that the Government would not necessarily adopt this criterion when considering the question of recruitment.
Then there is the proposal that there should be established under the Department what are called "senior policy advisers" who would run a kind of planning establishment of their own. I must say I should have thought that it is possible that this might lead, if it is not very cleverly applied, to administrative chaos, unless, of course, the senior policy adviser is firmly under the ultimate authority of the Permanent Secretary and has not the right to go straight to the Minister and insist on some major decision of which

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the Permanent Secretary is totally unaware and to which he might quite conceivably himself object. I know that the Commission hold that working arrangements should be informal, as they say, and variable from Department to Department, leaving it to Ministers to determine the actual pattern of the administration administered. That is quite right, but at the same time is it not a little dangerous? Surely, there must be one man who is generally responsible for the Department under the Minister, and if the Minister cannot get on with this individual then he has a perfect right to replace him with somebody else.
Of course, the head of the Planning Board, or what is called the Chief Specialist, should have the right to see the Minister and put forward his own proposals. Nobody would dispute that. But here is the point; they should either be cleared in advance with the Permanent Under-Secretary, or the Chief Specialist or the Chief Planning Officer should know that it is not something which the Permanent Under-Secretary would take violent exception to himself. Nor do I think (and here I may be wrong) that what is called "forward planning" can really be entirely separated from general administration. I think that that is probably so. The general policy to be pursued by the Department is something which obviously combines the present and the future, and I should therefore hope that this particular proposal might be looked at again in regard to its practical application.
As a more general criticism, which I certainly have not time to go into at the moment, I would say that there does not perhaps seem to have been quite sufficient investigation of the possibility of reducing the total number of civil servants. The figures given on page 97 under the heading "Manpower", though they may not be very frightening nevertheless show a steady upward tendency from 388,000 in 1955 to 472,000 in 1968. Here, the greatest increase seems to have been in the clerical category, and to a lesser extent in the professional, scientific and these sort of spheres, while the administrators—this is an interesting point—do not seem to have increased in numbers at all.
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The Commission point out that acceptance of their proposals will result in an even greater increase in the total numbers. Planning units, the Civil Service College, the Civil Service Department, and so on, will obviously need additional people to serve them. But while this is so, I cannot help thinking that a rather severe investigation of what the existing 472,000 employees actually do might well result in proposals for a reduction in the number of posts, which would lead at any rate to no further increase of the total number of people, given the present inevitable increase. I do not think there is any reference (I may be wrong here) to Parkinson's Law in the entire Report, but I am sure that in anything to do with the Civil Service it is an extremely relevant law.
This brings me, my Lords, to my final criticism. It is just not fair to refer to the bulk of the present administrative classes as inspired by the philosophy of the amateur. Whatever else they are or may be, the higher civil servants whom I have met in the past seem to me to be entirely professional in their outlook. I do not think, therefore, that this particular term is one which should have been selected to describe their philosophy. It is true that you can say, if you like, that people trained in general administrative techniques are "generalists" as opposed to specialists; certainly, one could say that. But I very much doubt whether you can deduce from that that they are not suitably qualified to cope, for instance, with the correct employment of scientists or specialists of various kinds. They might be better able to cope with the specialists, and so on, if they have in the future been through something like, as I say, the École Nationale d'Administration, or have received the same kind of upbringing as a Polytechnicien; and this, as I say, I hope will happen. But that the élite in the Civil Service should be managers of men rather than specialists is a principle of the greatest importance.
I remember very well how, when I was in charge of an organisation during the early part of the war, known as the S.O.E., we went down to Anti-Aircraft Command, I think at Uxbridge, to get advice on the best way to manœuvre Lysander and Wellington aircraft conveying agents to France and Europe

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generally through the German antiaircraft barrage—a difficult and important subject. We were the guests at lunch of the General Commanding, a perfectly splendid man called Sir Frederick Pile, who, I am glad to note, is still with us, and may well be known to some of your Lordships. When he was not exercising his military command he was, I gathered at lunch, very interested in fox-hunting. During lunch I said that I knew he had a number of scientists on his staff and asked how he managed to cope with them and with the advice they gave, seeing that he, presumably, like myself, knew little or nothing about science. "That is quite all right, my dear fellow", he said, "I manage them perfectly well. They are like my hounds. I tell 'em by their cry". There seems to me to be a great deal to be said for this general technique. In any case one thing is certain: the anti-aircraft command was an extremely efficient organisation, second to none in efficiency in the whole war.
In conclusion, I would repeat that I trust the Government will examine this important, and in many ways very good, report in the light of the criticisms which I am sure will be advanced during the debate this afternoon by those much more expert in the matter than I am.
4.32 p.m.
BARONESS SHARP: My Lords, it is with great diffidence that I embark on a maiden speech. I am in special need of your customary indulgence as, owing partly to the demands of the Royal Commission on Local Government, I have not been as regular an attender in your Lordships' House as I would wish.
I speak in this debate, of course, as an old civil servant; and as one who, during the war years, served in that management division of the Treasury which has come under such severe criticism in the Fulton Report. As the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, said, all (or anyhow most) civil servants welcome the opportunity that the Report gives for making a number of much needed changes in the Service. Few of us, I think, would agree with all the recommendations; none of us, I am sure, would accept all the criticisms. There is great indignation in the Service that the Committee wholly failed to acknowledge the great efforts that have been made by the Service to adapt to the
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changing scope of Government and to improve their methods and their management. But again I am sure that no civil servant, past or present, wants to spend time on that. The point is, again as the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton said, that the Report gives the new Civil Service Department a chance to make a start on those reforms which many civil servants have for long felt are badly needed.
I should like to concentrate on what seemed to me to be the two central themes in the Report. The first is the criticism made by the Committee of what they call the "amateur". That word, of course, hit the headlines, and I think it was the wrong word. It entirely failed to recognise the very high degree of professionalism of the administrative civil servant. Nevertheless, I see what the Committee meant, and although I wish they had chosen their language more precisely, I think there was a great deal in it.
I believe it is true that in the Service we have overdone what they call the "cult of the generalist", and the higher one goes in the Service the truer this has been. Far too often, to my way of thinking, Permanent Secretaries have been appointed to take charge of Departments who have come from some quite different area of government and with, inevitably, no real knowledge of the work of the Department, of the clients of the Department or of the concepts that rule the Department. This has been done on the theory that administration is an art that can be applied to any subject. Sometimes indeed it has been done more to solve a personnel problem elsewhere than in the interests of the Department concerned. And one is bound to get this if the main concern with making these appointments is that of central management and not of the Department. However, I should like to return to that theme later.
When the Committee came to their proposals for curing what they described as this amateurism, the first was one with which I think we would all agree. It was that we need in the Service very much better career planning. Nobody should underestimate the difficulties of this, particularly in a Service made up of a number of independent Departments; and efforts have been made, not least by the Treasury, to secure better career planning. But by and large it has all

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been too little and too late, and I am sure that in emphasising the need for this the Committee were quite right.
I come now to another of the recommendations to which reference has already been made in this debate. It is the recommendation to give preference to what the Committee called "relevant qualifications" in selecting entrants to administrative work. This is very much more dubious. Relevant qualifications in the view of the Committee are the social studies, mathematics, biology, the physical sciences, engineering—I think that was the list. I would entirely agree with the minority who said that the Service could not afford thus to narrow their field of selection. But I think there is another reason, just as important, for not going with this recommendation. That is that the study of history, of philosophy, of all the humanities, is just as relevant to the work of Government to-day as ever it was. So I very much hope that the Government will not accept that particular recommendation.
I think that specialisation should come after entry, and then I agree that it should come. The Committee recommended two methods for this: one, career planning, to which I have already referred, and the other, training—training both in the techniques of management and in the special subject matter of a particular field of administration. I agree that their emphasis on the need for greater training of both these types was right; but in spite of what the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has said. I cannot believe in this proposal for a Civil Service College. This has nothing to do with the French school; it has nothing to do with a school for the élite.
If you look at the jobs which this College is to do (I think they are set out in paragraph 100), it will be found that they cover a very wide field, both of subjects and of different types of civil servants, with different qualifications, of different ages. It would be an enormous affair, and in my belief a very mediocre one for that reason. I believe that the right approach to this is that if the training that is needed can be given, and given well, in some university or other educational institution, that is the right place to give it rather than in a Civil Service College; and I cannot help feel-
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ing very doubtful whether there is a need for this Civil Service College at all.
Another recommendation made by the Committee which I think goes to this question of the amateur was the one, to which reference has been made, that Departments should institute more regular arrangements for long-term policy planning and for the related research. In spite of what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, said, I do not think most Departments could claim that they do this well, if indeed they do it at all. I believe that this is a real defect in the Civil Service. No doubt the cause has been, as has been said, the endless difficulty of finding men for the jobs there are to do: it is no good planning for to-morrow if you think you are not going to survive to-day. Nevertheless, I think this has to be done, and done much more effectively than it is at the moment.
But I do not go with the Committee —and here I am in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn—in thinking that this should be done in no relationship to the day-to-day work of the Department, but quite separate from that. Nor do I accept that it should not be under the control of the Permanent Secretary, something in which apparently the Permanent Secretary is not thought to take a great deal of interest. Well, perhaps the Committee had some justification in feeling that Permanent Secretaries had not taken as much interest as they should have done in this. Nevertheless, this is where the interest must be taken. I should have thought that if there was one job which was central to the work of the head of a Department, it would be not only the long-term policy planning, but also the settlement of the priorities for the related research. There is an awful lot of ruin in research, and I think one needs to get one's priorities quite firm in what is going to be done.
Generally, on this theme, I think it is a condition of the success of our Civil Service system that there should be complete confidence between Ministers and their chief officers, both administrative and specialist; and in particular I am thinking of Ministers and their Permanent Secretaries. It did seem to me that at points the Committee faltered over this. The theme of their Report was that we should get better civil servants and,

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ex hypothesi, better Permanent Secretaries. Yet here and there they said, "Well the Minister had better have outside advisers, or young dashing policy advisers, or whatever". It seemed to me that at some points the Committee were not quite confident in their own recommendations. I am quite sure from all my experience that unless we do develop a relationship of complete confidence, real confidence, by the Minister in the Permanent Secretary, the machine will grind and there will be confusion and disarray. Above all, what we have to try to secure is conditions in which Ministers will be able and willing to place complete confidence in their chief officers.
My Lords, the other theme on which I should like to say something is the role of central management. There has been a general welcome for the proposal that a new Civil Service Department should be set up to take over the management functions of the Treasury. I, with others, agree with that. But I do not agree that the role of central management needs, as the Committee say, to be enlarged. I think that some of our troubles in the Service have come from the fact that central management has tried to take too large a role. It is, I believe, extremely important to emphasise the responsibility of the individual Departments for their own efficiency, and it should be the main concern of the Civil Service Department to provide the conditions in which Departments can secure, and will secure, their own efficiency. It is the best route to efficiency, given, of course, that you have the right men in charge.
That is always the question. What do you do if you do not? You cannot always win, and will not always win. Everyone knows this in every organisation. You make mistakes; or people who start well do not finish so well. Well, partly, you have to accept this. This is the condition of a permanent Service. But the Committee did suggest (and I think this is not something to which reference has been made to-day) that earlier retirement should be made more possible. I think that this must be right. It is not a sovereign remedy; the idea of "hiring and firing" is obviously at odds with the whole concept of a permanent Service; nevertheless, something more could be done. I myself have
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never seen why we do not in the Service make it a condition of appointment to the highest jobs that nobody will be allowed to hold them for more than 10 years, and that at any time, given reasonable notice, it may be necessary in the interests of the Department to ask for early retirement. I do not suggest this would make a dramatic difference, but I think it could be useful.
Finally, my Lords, there was one subject which was outside the terms of reference of the Committee; that is the machinery of government. There is today great confusion in some areas of Government about the allocation of responsibility between Departments. The Committee suggested that it should be a function of the new Civil Service Department to advise the Prime Minister on the proper allocation of responsibilities between Departments. But if there are to be radical changes—and in my belief, in some areas, radical change is needed—it will require the greatest determination, at the highest levels. It is the most difficult of subjects. Both Ministers and civil servants suffer acutely from the present confusion of responsibilities and multiplicity of Departments; yet there would be enormous resistance to radical changes from both Ministers and civil servants. That is the irony of it. But unless we can tackle this problem of the machinery of government, whatever changes are made in the Civil Service, it will still work under appalling handicaps.
4.47 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LEICESTER: My Lords, I feel that an apology is almost due to the noble Baroness who has just sat down; that the words of congratulation should come to her from such a specialist branch of your Lordships' House as the Episcopal Benches. But I believe that when she first arrived in this world she was soon welcomed into the arms of her father, who was an Anglican clergyman; so perhaps there will be something homely about her receiving her first welcome as a speaker from someone dressed in these robes. I, like all of us, knew her name so well, for her name was a familiar one in our ears; but I did not have a very clear visual image of her until to-day. I think that I had a kind of complex picture of Deborah, the Abbess of Whitby and Portia all mixed together; but the half

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is not told us, and we look forward very much to many more of these calm and competent contributions based on a very long experience of public life.
I have not many qualifications for speaking in this debate, but I have at least one small one, and that is that for five years during the last war I was seconded to the Ministry of Information. I could a tale unfold about all that, but suffice it to say that a Ministry that included Mr. John Betjeman, the present Poet Laureate, Mr. Nicholas Bentley, the noble Earl, Lord Arran, and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor (whom we are pleased to see sitting in his place), was not exactly a typical Ministry! But all the same, I did learn during those years a great deal that has been very helpful to me in afterlife, and I certainly developed a real appreciation of the standards of integrity and discretion that then, as now, animated the general run of our civil servants. I did learn, looking back on it, the two sides of Civil Service work that often have to be kept separate. There is that task which is fulfilled by knowing and judging, and that task which is fulfilled by doing and creating. I will not stop to illustrate that in detail from the Ministry of Information, but it is something that I believe runs right through our services, and we sometimes wrongly criticise one section of the Civil Service because we are unconsciously judging it by a standard that is more appropriate to the other.
I have found it extremely stimulating to read and study the Report of the Fulton Committee. It is a document which will undoubtedly take its place among others as indicating a moment in the evolution of our social life and institutions. No small gratitude is due to the Committee for reprinting the Northcote-Trevelyan Report and the Report on the India Civil Service from 1953 and 1854 respectively. It was fascinating to read those Reports over famous names like those of Thomas Babington Macaulay and Benjamin Jowett. The style of these Reports shows only a few signs of their Victorian provenence as, for instance, when one of them speaks of "the parents and friends of sickly youths" endeavouring to obtain for them employment in the service of the Government. Some of the phrases of the old Reports have
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in fact found their way into the new. When I came to the phrase, for instance, "the conduct of our affairs" I thought we should not use pompous phrases like that nowadays, only to find this particular phrase forms the concluding words of the new Report. It is good to think that continuity prevails even in the writing of such Reports over intervals of a hundred years.
In spirit, of course, the Fulton Report is a contemporary document, or, shall I say, a nearly contemporary document, for I felt that it expressed characteristically the social ideas that were in the ascendant about seven years ago, the ideas, shall we say, of the book, The Anatomy of Britain, and the articles in the Sunday newspapers of that period. If we were to sum it up in a few loaded phrases, we might say that it began by rejecting Pope's phrase, "Whatever is, is best" and replacing it with, "whatever is, is worst", or it is 'at least worse than you can find in America, in France or in Sweden. A critical attitude to amateurism in all its forms was its characteristic note. In sport, all amateurs were "shamateurs"; the existence of Cowdreys and Dexters was a troublesome anachronism for sports writers. To be the son of your father was a serious disqualification for executive responsibility if he happened to be the managing director of a business. All universities were equally good with the possible exception of those which had been pre-eminent for centuries.
Some of all this has become a bit flyblown in the intervening years. The mighty France has proved to be rather more precariously balanced even than little England. The great America has her own difficult and indeed tragic problems. The older universities with their colleges and tutorial systems have so far proved less vulnerable than those where permissiveness was the order of the day. The anarchy which was praised in the Reith Lectures by the Provost of King's does not look quite to attractive when actually tried out in the Sorbonne. So it is that the attack on "generalism" in this Report, the decrying of all that is in any sense amateur—all that is done for the love of the thing—does not read quite so convincingly as it would have done even a few years ago. In any case, some

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of the arguments in the Report are contradictory. The "all-rounder" is to go, but the specialists are to be given special training outside their specialism, and what can be the purpose of this except to qualify them to be more like all-rounders?
I think most will agree that the abolition of classes is a good and necessary step. It is excellent that there should be complete freedom of movement up the scale. But the argument advanced in favour of it at the foot of page 67, as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, has to be taken with a pinch of salt. There it is said that not only is the difference between the Administrative Class and the other classes a source of trouble and frustration, but it goes so far as to say that all differences between classes are themselves a source of worry and a sense of inferiority. This seems to me to be going rather far and I think we have to watch it rather carefully. We may get rid of one kind of hierarchy but we shall certainly have to produce another. We always think at moments like this of the famous words of Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida:
"Take but degree away; Untune that string, And hark what discord follows"
There must in any vast organisation be some grouping and grading, however fairly it is arrived at.
I find myself in the main in sympathy with the minority reservation of the noble Lord, Lord Simey. No one can accuse him of being backward looking or out of touch with modern social developments. But he finds it necessary to stress the importance of the best possible general education as a source of those qualities of wisdom and judgment which are absolutely essential in work of this degree of responsibility. Surely it must be seen that the ability to turn quickly from one subject to another and to bring to bear on it the same qualities of mind and judgment is itself a professionalism of the highest character. The Report is itself clear proof of this, for what is it but evidence that a group of first class minds can address themselves to a very large, largely strange, subject and soon get a grasp upon it?
Most of the practical proposals seem to me to be sensible enough. One class throughout; some streaming into broad
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divisions; proper training at all levels in relation to the work to be done; more "in and out" movement in the matter of appointments—although I am not quite certain that those whose qualities have been largely those of judgment and discretion are going to be warmly welcomed in their later years into businesses that depend entirely on dynamism and movement and action. I am not sure whether you can shift off all our slightly maturing civil servants on to industry and business quite as easily as that.
No doubt, however, these changes will help to improve morale and to increase efficiency. But some of the underlying concepts in the letterpress of the Report, the idea that the typical civil servant of high grade is less discerning, able, hardworking than his counterpart in business and industry, the idea that a general education of high quality is of less importance than technical equipment for specific tasks, the idea that management of those below is to be developed at the expense of responsible service to those above—all this I think is very open to question.
Before closing, I should like to pay a brief tribute to one section of the Civil Service with which the Churches are brought into constant touch, and that is the Registrar-General's department. All clergy have to make regular returns to this department in the matter of the weddings celebrated in their churches, and I am quite certain that all of them would agree that the standard of courtesy, understanding and consideration that they receive from this particular department is beyond praise, and I think that may be typical of many other departments that get rather a hard deal in the letterpress of this Report.
5.0 p.m.
LORD HELSBY: My Lords, I ask for the indulgence your Lordships give to those who speak for the first time, and I also trust that your Lordships will be tolerant if I, through the exceptional closeness which I had to the problems which we are discussing, speak on any point with more warmth than is altogether fitting in a maiden speech. During the five years in which I was head of the Service I not only worked on these problems, I lived with them at very close quarters indeed.

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I would first pay my tribute to the efforts of the Fulton Committee. The five volumes of their Report already published, with the sixth still to come, are an eloquent monument to their industry; but they are not publishing oral evidence, and perhaps I know almost better than anyone outside the Committee how much patient hearing and how much painstaking discussion went into the formulation of their recommendations. Although in my later remarks I shall be a little critical of the Report, I think their recommendations succeed in laying down guidelines for the Service for development over the next few years which are of great importance. So I think we are indeed indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, and his colleagues.
My Lords, there is a healthy tradition that the Civil Service comes under the eye of either a Royal Commission or a high-powered Committee on the average once in a generation. The Committee whose Report we are considering is the sixth in the 115 years since the Northcote-Trevelyan Report. It belongs therefore to a very distinguished camp. The Northcote-Trevelyan Report itself marked the beginning of the Civil Service as we know it, because it did away with jobbery and substituted recruitment on merit based on the recruits' written academic examination. There was a big assumption that written examinations would provide results which could be fairly taken into account in measuring administrative potential, but in fact it worked pretty well down the years. People who came top of the examination list, like the great Lord Waverley who has been mentioned already this afternoon, did make their mark when they got into the Service.
But over twenty years ago that dependence on the written examination was set aside and there was introduced an alternative method designed to provide a direct appraisal of administrative potential. This was a bold and, in its day, almost revolutionary change, but none the less it has worked. The evidence that the test provides the right results is convincing. In this change, and in many others, we have moved a very long way since the Northcote-Trevelyan Report. I am bound to say I think it is a pity that the Fulton Committee chose to lay so much emphasis on Northcote-
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Trevelyan and in so doing to belittle all that has happened in the development of the Civil Service in this century, and especially in the last twenty-five years. They stress too much the historical significance of what they themselves had to say, in the context of the past century.
I would glance briefly at what has happened in the last 25 years. At the outbreak of war all recruitment to the Service ceased, as indeed it had done once before in this century during the period immediately following the economic crisis of 1930–31; but with the end of regular recruitment there came instead a great surge of temporary recruitment to the Service by which it was immensely strengthened and invigorated. Wise and able men came in from industry and from the universities. Some of them are now Members of your Lordships' House, and I am particularly glad that we are to hear this afternoon from the noble Lord, Lord Sinclair of Cleeve, who is the most senior, perhaps, of that great company. With the end of the war, these men began to go back to their own fields. Fortunately for the Service, there were a few oustanding men who stayed for a few years, like the noble Lords. Lord Robbins and Lord Plowden; and there were some others, mostly junior men, who worked as temporaries during the war in more humble positions and who chose to throw in their lot with the Service on a regular basis.
The effects of this pretty radical invasion of the Civil Service from outside were, I think, lasting and beneficial. One effect has been to create an understanding and mutual respect between the Civil Service and those whose work lies in quite different fields. I do not think that any of us who came into the Civil Service as temporaries in those war days found the Administrative Class exclusive, and not for a moment did we think it amateur. I myself had for some years been teaching economics in two universities, and in that sense I first came into the Service as a professional; but I soon realised that the administrators were professionals in a far more demanding way, and I was glad, as others were, to learn my trade as a professional in the business of government. I think we often forget in this country that we have the most highly-developed system of government in the world. One is tempted to think that the principles of Parliamentary

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government are basically simple. I suppose they are, but when it comes to working them out as we have done in this country down the years, they become a highly-developed, highly-sophisticated machine which needs true professionalism if it is to be worked to the best advantage.
Looking back, I well remember the great ability, the clear vision, of the senior civil servants of those war-time days, and what stands out most vividly in my memory is their prodigious capacity for hard work. They were men to whom the phrase "working oneself to death" was not just a form of words but a very likely risk, and all of us remember that far too few of those who retired in the years not long after the end of the war lived to enjoy their retirement for very long. I think many Members of this House must have known some of them and remember them, as I do, with respect and admiration.
It was not a narrowly based profession, either. During my time in the Service I knew three heads of great Departments who had started their service at the age of 16. They were most able men, held in the greatest respect, and rightly so. Even later, when I was Head of the Service, there were at one time four heads of major Departments who had started in other parts of the Service, as well as four or five ex-temporary civil servants like myself. None of these things is the mark of the kind of exclusive society that is sometimes depicted.
While all these changes were going on the educational system was beginning to change in the post-war world, more slowly perhaps than the new work for the Service was building up, taking them out into the fields of innovation in the national life which had been unknown and unthought of before the war. It is only recently, however, that it has become clear that the structure of the Civil Service is no longer linked satisfactorily to the educational pattern. In the old days it made sense to recruit only a few of the best university graduates and then go for the best of the grammar school leavers. It was better to do that than to try to take in more university graduates. But it is clear now that for the future the best of these young people will go to the universities, and the Civil Service must recruit more of them as
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graduates, and on a broader basis. But it would have been a rash man who reached that conclusion as a firm basis for action before the Robbins Report within the last five years.
My purpose in this quite cursory glance at what has been happening in the last twenty years or so, is to show that it is there that we must look for the problems of the Service as it is to-day, not in the 19th century. The problems have grown up since the war, as the nature of the work changed out of all recognition and as the educational system began to change also. None the less, as I have said, the main recommendations of the Report are eminently sound and practical, and I am glad that they will be carried out. More training, more scope for specialists, more insistence on the new techniques of quantitative analysis which have been developed in recent years inside the Civil Service as well as outside, are all clearly required. I am glad, however, that the Committee were favourably impressed by the amount of training that already goes on in the Civil Service, because it has indeed been greatly built up, not least in the last five years' since the Centre for Administrative Studies was opened.
The Committee are also right to press that more resources should be devoted to personnel management, including career planning, which has certainly suffered from the priority that must always, in a time of scarce resources, go to operational work. I am afraid that with the best will in the world it is not going to be easy to give as much priority as the Government would perhaps like to personnel work in the coming years. Of the criticisms of the Committee on Civil Service management, especially personnel management, and on what the noble Baroness said about moving people around at high level in the Service, I would only say that I think that not much distinction has been drawn between the things done of set purpose, deliberately and as part of policy, and things which have been done on the principle that "needs must when the Devil drives". The Civil Service has been driven hard in recent years. All these developments will require additional resources, and I am glad that the Government, in willing the end appear to be ready to provide the means as soon as they can.

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There are just two further recommendations of the Committee to which I would refer briefly. First, there is the creation of the new Civil Service Department. I think that this strengthening of the central management of the Service is desirable. Whether it is necessary to do this through an entirely new Department is a matter of judgment. The Treasury is not a Department which enjoys the brightest of public images, and it may be that there is advantage in creating a Department which would carry, or which one would hope would carry, with it much more good will. But let us not be under any illusions. The change will not, in itself, work any wonders at all.
Secondly, the Committee recommended the total abolition of classes. This is one of the recommendations which, as has already been said, hit the headlines. The Civil Service itself had proposed the abolition of the administrative class through merging with the executive class, primarily for the educational reasons which I have mentioned. The Service had also proposed that the distinction between the classes should disappear in the area towards the top of the Service, where managerial responsibility is predominant and the exercise of specialist skills is of less importance. But this was not enough for the Committee. They felt that all classes should go, and I think perhaps they are right in terms, because the fact is that class has become a highly dangerous word, with emotional undertones or overtones that are best avoided in these days.
The fact remains, my Lords, that the modern Civil Service contains, and must contain, representatives of practically all the specialist skills that exist in the country, and representatives, too, of the few specialist skills of its own—tax inspectors and the like who do not exist in the outside world. The Committee recognise that these people will form distinctive occupational groups, and I think that this is the reality of the situation. But it is no good thinking that they can all be pushed together. Your doctor, your lawyer or your scientist may well wish to gravitate towards administration as he rises in the Service, but is not likely to want to acquire the qualifications to enter one of the other specialist disciplines. Still less
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is he likely to want to enter one of the many departmental specialisms—for instance, to become an agricultural adviser. I do not think he is going to be grateful for saying that he has got the chance of doing that. All he wants is the chance of being considered for advancement in the higher managerial field as he makes his way up.
To give more substance to the abolition of classes the Committee propose the adoption of the American Civil Service system of having a score of grades into which every civil servant would be put. I am very doubtful about this. It would be a pay structure only, as the Committee admit; it would not serve for recruitment purposes, and it would not serve for training purposes. As to pay, the Priestley Commission set out the principles for settling Civil Service pay which the Committee say should be retained, and I am sure they are right about that. So that the new structure is not strictly essential for settling pay, and I doubt whether it fits very well with the way in which the modern world is developing. On the whole, the tendency is for people to pay more attention nowadays to specialist skills than of old, and to say that the scientist is to acquire the label "Civil servant grade 10", or whatever it is, along with lawyer, doctor, psychologist, agricultural adviser, and a host of others, seems to me to be ignoring differences which might be greatly valued by the people concerned in this modern world.
The Committee also lay a good deal of stress on the technique known as "job evaluation" as a method of settling pay. I will only say of this, my Lords, that "job evaluation" is a technique that was first developed for settling pay on the factory floor, and many very experienced managers have grave doubts about the currently fashionable thesis that it is universally applicable. I hope that the suggestion that it should be applied universally to the Service will be examined very carefully.
My Lords, this is a Report that contains many admirable recommendations which, as I have said, will enable the Service to develop usefully in coming years, but it is not a radical or a revolutionary Report. The matters on which I have ventured to express differences from the views of the Committee are

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not fundamental or of basic significance. I could have wished, indeed, that these matters had not been thrust into quite the prominence that they have received. As it seems to me, the paramount need in the Civil Service must surely be to continue to attract its proper share of the very ablest young people in the country, and some older ones as well. There is no satisfactory measure of the expansion of Government activity, but we all know that it is going on year by year whichever Party is in power, and there is no sign of any reversal of the trend. Public expenditure is the best crude indicator we have of this sort of development, and public expenditure now represents only just less than half of the total national income, having risen just about as fast in the years of Conservative rule as it has in more recent years. It would surely be a sad outlook if the Civil Service that has to administer this system did not get men, and women too, of really outstanding ability, integrity of mind, clearness of vision, and sound judgment. Let them have technical competence, too, but if the people are able enough they can be given their technical competence afterwards if need be. It is surely not necessary for the young to learn all they are going to learn in life before the age of 21, 22, or whatever it may be. Technical competence is no substitute for true outstanding ability.
The Fulton Committee expressed no serious anxiety about the power of the Civil Service to continue to attract its share of really able people. The record since the war is not entirely encouraging. Industry has been taking more graduates for non-specialist work; we have been up against competition in almost every direction. Perhaps the most severe and the most hardly felt competition has come from the universities themselves where many able men have become Dons as the universities expanded who might have made most valuable civil servants. Competition for the most able people is going to remain fierce, and this surely is the fundamental problem to which we must address our minds.
The Committee spoke, and the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, has spoken, of the merits of the French Civil Service, which are indeed impressive despite the fact that the system transgresses principles which in this country are of great
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importance. The secret in France is undoubtedly that the Service attracts the very best of the young people. This is the answer. You must get really good recruits if the Service is to prosper.
My Lords, some of the disadvantages of being a civil servant, and especially a senior civil servant, have, it seems to me, become more apparent in recent years than used to be the case. I am not thinking only of the unrelenting pressure of grinding hard work, though that is an outstanding feature. Probably there is no escape. There is certainly no easy escape from that. I, myself, share the doubts that have been expressed by noble Lords about the proposal to ease the burden of the Permanent Secretary by appointing a senior policy adviser. The fact is that there can be only one head of an organisation, and the Committee are very right to recognise that that must be the Permanent Secretary.
Early retirement may provide part of the answer, but only, I suggest, if it is possible to devise a system under which able and senior men may move out as part of a regular career pattern into other parts of the public sector. It is not enough to depend on their moving out into the private sector. I think they would be accepted there, but in these days when the intervention of Government in business and industry in almost every part of the field is so widespread I do not think we can accept as a regular thing a pattern of career that leaves our most senior civil servants seeking employment in the private sector before retirement. At any rate there are dangers about that, and the integrity of the Service must be preserved. I think that there may be possibilities in the public sector, and I am not at all sure that we have not been wrong in thinking that the nationalised industries, the many boards and commissions that have been set up since the war, are not fields to which civil servants could bring great gain.
The core of the problem of maintaining recruitment to the Service surely lies in the public attitude to the Service. I would not for a moment suggest that the Civil Service should not be criticised. Clearly it will always be criticised, and sometimes severely criticised, by people who do not think very much about the requirements of Government. The man in the street under modern conditions is bound to be

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a critic of the Civil Service. Although he wants to have a National Health Service, a national pensions service and a system for spreading employment around the regions, he does not like the kind of inquiry into his private and family affairs that is inseparable from operating those bureaucratic arrangements. The popular Press tends to express the opinion of the man in the street. Moreover, there will always be a certain amount of informed criticism of the Civil Service, partly because it deserves it, and partly because we have built into the governmental system, and are now expanding, machinery which exists precisely for criticising the Service. Our new specialist Parliamentary Committee—the new Select Committees—will in nearly all their reports say, not that this is a splendid body of men doing a splendid job, but that this or that or the other could be done better if only they would set about it differently. There will be a steady flow of criticism in this way and it is not unhealthy. But no organisation can live on a steady diet of nothing but criticism and denigration. If we are to hope for a better Civil Service evolving out of the changes which we now contemplate, surely we have to make it clear that the present Service is, at least potentially, really first-class, and make people understand that it is a first-class service which we want in the country and which we believe we can have.
5.33 p.m.
LORD SNOW: My Lords, it is a special pleasure to me to express congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Helsby, since I once had the pleasure and honour of being one of his colleagues. I think your Lordships will agree that the two magisterial maiden speeches from two eminent civil servants make one somewhat amused by the word "amateur", but I shall have a few brisk observations about that later.
We all agree that the Fulton Report is an important State document; that is common ground. I have been struck, as I am sure have most of your Lordships, by the general agreement, on both sides of the House and on no side of the House (meaning our independent Lordships behind me), that much of what has been said is good and useful; that some of it is wrong and a certain amount silly. But in my view the nice things one can say about this Report very substantially outweigh the nasty ones.
1104
It seems to me that in the long run this is going to be important. Much of what the Report has said has been going through the air of the Civil Service itself for years. The noble Lord, Lord Helsby, and I, ten or twelve years ago—in fact more years ago than that—were agitating for adequate recognition for scientists of ability so as to enable them to move more quickly into the administrative class, and so on. There is nothing new in this; it has been canvassed almost since the war. Some of these initiatives died away owing to a rigidity which, it seemed to some of us, came into the Civil Service in the early 1950s. After the extreme fluidity of the war, about which Lord Helsby has spoken, the Civil Service took upon itself some seven or eight years later a more rigid form.
In the war the Civil Service was absolutely at its best. I do not believe that any Civil Service of any country was anything like as competent as our Civil Service at its expanded, fluid, emancipated best. The good things in the Fulton Report seem to me to show an inclination, a desire, to get back to some of that fluidity which the war taught us. Much of this has already been discussed, and I will not weary your Lordships by going over it. But there are many good things. The sensible use of temporary civil servants, which was extraordinarily valuable in the war, could certainly be accommodated in peace. I have a good deal more faith than noble Lords who have spoken in the use of planning officers, even though the administrative structure is difficult to get right. On the whole I am convinced that the broad structure of the so-called classless system is probably the shape which the Civil Service will have to take; although, as we have been reminded, the classlessness will always be a great deal more apparent than real.
We agree that this is an important State document. So was the Northcote-Trevelyan Report, to which in tenor the Fulton Report bears a certain resemblance. One will remain as a document expressing the contemporary 19th-century view of the Civil Service, and the other will express a 20th-century view of the Civil Service. Both Reports show foresight and wisdom, and both express a good many conventional stereotypes. The Northcote-Trevelyan Report is full of the

1105
concept, which was very dear to 19th century England, that all civil servants were entirely idle. You will find this is fiction; you will also find it in journalistic work. This comes in strongly in the Northcote-Trevelyan Report. The contemporary stereotype is the very unhappy one that the Civil Service is composed of amateurs. I much regret that this absurd stereotype was not criticised out of existence during the process of drafting. Nothing could be more ridiculous. If these are amateurs, who are professionals?
I can only think that this Committee, who have done a real public service, were hypnotised by two facts. One is that civil servants on the whole have good manners; and good manners, in modern conditions, tend to suggest a certain disinclination to get on with the rough, tough work of life. The second is that they do not write jargon. The writing of jargon has unfortunately got inseparably connected with the concept of professionalism. If they used more noun-adjectives, great lumping phrases, I am sure that it would be thought: "These chaps know their jobs because I, for one, cannot understand what they say." They constantly use the word "expertise". I get a certain sardonic amusement in reading through the Report, which scolds civil servants for not knowing foreign languages, to find them using this wretched word in a sense known only to the English. Possibly if our civil servants misused foreign languages with the same facility and confidence, we should think rather more highly of them.
Nevertheless, we have to think of another example of a conventional stereotype coming into action, and the example that comes closest home to me is the observations of the Fulton Report on methods of selection. It does not matter very much if the Civil Service is abused, except to the extent that the noble Lord, Lord Helsby, said that this is undoubtedly discouraging the brightest characters from going into it. But the Civil Service has lived through much. It has lived through a bad Press for 150 years, and it can go on living through another bad Press for another 150 years. That is not very serious. What seems to me much more serious is this ludicrous concept of the relevant subjects. What are relevant subjects? Do your Lordships believe that
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any young man at 18 ought to be studying entirely that which is going to be all his professional life?
I cannot understand how a man as wise as the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, has forgotten the old academic distinction between "hard" subjects and "soft" ones; how some of our ablest youths and girls know that if they do not do "hard" subjects in their teens and early twenties they will never do them at all. "Hard" subjects, I may remind your Lordships, are defined precisely like that—as subjects which, if you do not do them by the end of your undergraduate days, you will never do. I am thinking of mathematics, classics, difficult foreign languages, exact sciences and so on. These you will never do, unless you have done them in your undergraduate days.
Having done them, if you are intellectually competent and if you have an interest, you can then learn almost anything else fairly quickly. I would bet that anyone who had a good English degree—our standards are high in any of those hard subjects which I ripped off a moment ago—could go through one of the two courses in these great French training schools for civil servants and do extremely successfully—and a good many of the people I am thinking of could do both. I beg the Government to take this particular conventional stereotype with as many grains of salt as they can possibly manage. If they do not, it is something to which we shall have to return, because it would be very easy to take the real bone and fibre out of English education within twenty years.
In rather the same sense, I have one more serious criticism. It is about the disquisitions on the methods of selection. This is a terribly difficult problem upon which a good many people have spent twenty years and come to no sort of sensible answers. But we know at least some of the difficulties. The Committee appear to have taken this with the bland confidence which in others they would regard as a manifestation of amateurism. For example, they talk about the method of extended interview, which the noble Lord, Lord Helsby, reminded the House was brought into the Civil Service twenty years ago. Everyone agrees that this is a perfectly sensible way of choosing. But it has a real defect, of which those of us who were anywhere near to it were only

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too conscious. It is a method of eliminating risks. Almost everyone selected by this method can be regarded as a probable success up to a certain point. The wastage is very small. On the other hand, when you are eliminating risks by this kind of extended interview you have an unhappy knack of eliminating persons who are odd, but very valuable. Indeed, one of the activities, and, indeed, almost the only activity of the final selection board on the rare occasions I sat upon it, was to try and check the extended interview in precisely that sense.
I can think of two noble Lords in this House—this was before the time of the noble Lord, Lord Helsby—who, in fact, were regarded with the utmost suspicion by the method of extended interview and we had to take very rough steps to reverse the judgment. Both of them have sat on Front Benches, one on each side of this House, and it is reasonable to say that if they had persisted in their Civil Service careers they would have been real "fliers".
The problem of allowing for oddity is one of the hardest of all these selective problems. None of us knows the answers, but at least we know what the question is, and we know that the methods which I think the majority of the Committee suggested—the first method being open only to relevant subject takers and the second method being without any check of the final selection board—will very quickly produce a Service which is perfectly competent, but without any great proportion of the real "fliers" or oddities which any organised institution must have.
Finally, I think that in the view of most of us it is desirable that the Civil Service should attract a certain amount of really high ability. In the 'twenties and 'thirties that was very easy. There were not very many jobs of comparable attraction for people of really high competence who did not have a particularly marked specific creative gift. That was the field from which the Civil Service was traditionally recruited. Now there are many opportunities for such persons.
Industry has realised—and this is a good thing—that they need such persons, too. We shall gain by this insight and realisation. And there are the fields of public communications, which are mak-
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ing great raids upon some of our highly able young. But nevertheless it remains true that a really high class public service such as we must have needs its proportion of our most competent young men. The indications are that that process is not really happening, or, at least, the proportion of the really good entering the Civil Service is getting rather less. My fear is that all that we are talking about is going to make the Service rather less attractive—although not dramatically less—to the very small proportion of "high fliers" than it is at present.
The Committee themselves seemed to me in some dubiety on this point. They talked with admiration—and I am glad they talked of them—of the French and Swedish systems. They talked of the French system with admiration for the elite that it attracts. Of course it attracts them, simply because it is an elite system—with absolutely no shame and no holds barred. I am afraid that we tend to get into the position in this country where we admire elite-ism so long as we do not apply it ourselves. It may be necessary, if we are to get this injection of really first-rate talent, to have some small enclave where the general squashing down process, which much of our efforts are going into, has in fact been temporarily—just for these exceptions—removed.
With that said, I believe that the Report genuinely shows the way in which the public service is going. I wish that its asperities had been somewhat different. If I had been the noble Lord, Lord Simey, I would have signed with him or possibly have written a rather sharper note myself. But for its general guidance, for its imagination, for its feeling that we have to manage our affairs with more energy and more foresight than we have done, then I for one am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, and his colleagues.
5.50 p.m.
LORD REDCLIFFE-MAUD: My Lords, I know your Lordships are always generous to the maiden speaker, but I think I have special reason to claim your Lordships' indulgence this afternoon. First, a very high standard has been set me by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and the noble Lord, Lord Helsby—and if it is not impertinent

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I should like to add my congratulations to those that other Members have paid them. Secondly, this is the first time in my life that I have ever tried to make a political speech or, indeed, to take part in a debate. Finally, we are debating, and have been all the afternoon, in the white-hot light of a Report which swingeingly castigates the amateur. For all those reasons, I ask your Lordships' indulgence.
I must also declare one or two interests. I have a strong personal interest in the success of such inquiries as that of the Fulton Committee because, with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, I am at the moment involved in one of them, seeking, by the same technique or something like it, to see whether English local government could not become even more efficient and more democratic than it is to-day. I know that some people think that this kind of inquiry is just a relic of the Victorian age and quite unfitted to the white-hot, technological 20th century in which we live. Indeed, if it is true, as the Fulton Committee here and there seem to think, that only professionals with technocratic or sociological training are competent to deal with public affairs, it does seem a bit odd to ask a mixed bunch of people, mainly amateurs, to conduct an authoritative critique of one of our great political institutions. But I personally believe in this technique, as indeed I must so long as I am involved in my local government job. I believe in it, and I am all against looking gift amateurs, any more than gift horses, in the mouth. I should like, if I may, to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, my congratulation being not untinged with a certain sense of envy, on the success, and the swiftness of the success, which has followed the publishing of his Report.
This brings me to the next personal interest I must declare, which is that the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, and most of his colleagues are my personal friends—or at least they were until this afternoon. Finally, I must admit to being thoroughly and strongly prejudiced in favour of the Civil Service. If I might explain to your Lordships, I have this admiration as one who came as an interloper, an uitlander, a rank amateur, into the profession of the British Civil Service. And, to be quite serious, do not let anybody
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pretend that this is not a great profession, whatever it may be fashionable to call it. I came in and was a temporary "hack" in various parts of Whitehall for a number of years; I observed the regular Civil Service at work—and, my word, they struck me as a wonderful set of people! Able, of course; disinterested; with fire in many of their bellies; many of them imaginative, dynamic and creative; all of them humane and honourable.
Some of them, of course, were, and no doubt still are, promotion-hunters, as you find in any profession, even in the universities. But I have never met a set of men and women more committed to the view that what really matters is that people should be served and the job in hand well done, and that what does not matter is that you should get personal credit for your part in the success This is a tribute which, as an outsider, I wish seriously to pay to the people I knew in those days.
I wish, and I wish profoundly, that the Fulton Committee had paid their tribute more convincingly. The tribute they paid is scattered up and down the Report, and in the last paragraph of all they refer to the Service having members with the "ability, vision and enthusiasm" to carry out the changes which the Committee recommended. Too little, and too late, in my opinion. It was high time, and it is high time, for an authoritative repudiation of the scurrilous things that were said in published evidence to the Committee; for example, about the alleged sabotage of ministerial policies by senior civil servants.
Your Lordships remember what Shylock said about the Jews:
"If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? … and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"
Civil servants are as human as anyone. So, if you prick them they bleed, and if you tickle them they laugh. But they are in one sense unique: that if you wrong them they will not revenge. I am therefore very glad that this debate will, before it is finished, leave the Service and the country in no doubt of our awareness of the debt we owe to the half a million men and women who work for us as civil servants, and not least to that small bunch of 3,000 members of the administrative class from whom, as

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the Committee says, the leadership at present comes, and has come since the war.
It was ten years ago that I left Whitehall, and, like all institutions which I have served and left, the Civil Service has enormously improved since I ceased to have anything to do with it. The noble Lord, Lord Helsby, referred to the new training arrangements in the administrative centre—and that is only one of the things to which we could pay tribute that have happened during the time that the noble Lord was himself Head of the Service, and during the great period when the late Lord Normanbrook and, before him, the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, were in that position. There has been tremendous improvement; and, of course no-one is more convinced that there should still be more improvement, and more drastic improvement, in the years to come than the Civil Service itself. I think that much of the Report will be of the greatest help to the Civil Service and to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, in settting forward this great institution of ours to still greater efficiency and effectiveness.
I disagree, if I may, with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, about the Civil Service College. Of course it would be disastrous if it took on the whole job, but there is clearly no intention of that, as the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, pointed out. Provided that every possible use is made of the business schools of administration and the universities, I still think there is need for, and that it is high time we had, a first-class, top-grade College—I do not myself mind calling it a "College", which seems to me not necessarily a pejorative word—where the essential training and research job will be done that cannot be done elsewhere. It will do that essential job only if it substantially abbreviates what seems to me the very long shopping list given it by the Fulton Committee.
I think the Civil Service Department will help, too. However well the Treasury have struggled, I am sure it is right that, in the light of experience and of what the Report says, we should try the experiment of a central Civil Service Department under the Prime Minister, separate from the Treasury, though I am prepared
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to bet that ten years from now we shall revert to something of the sort we had in times gone by. But I am convinced that there are several things in the Report which we should reject and which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, will reject. Most of them have been referred to. The idea of hiving-off responsibility for long-term planning, to someone other than the man who is supposed to be in charge of the Department under the Minister, seems to fly in the face of all the excellent advice from the management consultants which is in the second volume of the Report—and to be definitely stupid. Again at a time when we are not getting enough first-rate applicants for the Civil Service or enough first-rate ability in spite of the big increase in the university population, it seems crazy to confine our choice to people who happen to have done this or that work at the university.
The other thing which I hope very much that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, will not accept, except after great thought, is the idea in the Report that not only should there be annual Reports on how the Civil Service is getting on—which I think is excellent and to which I think we are all entitled—but also that in five years there should be another inquiry. Rather let us trust Sir William Armstrong and his colleagues in the Civil Service under Lord Shackleton and the Prime Minister, to "do it themselves".
Finally, my Lords, may I say how right I think it is that in the Civil Service we should seek to learn from every outside experience that seems relevant? Let us learn what we can from abroad; let us learn from business organisation; let us learn from management consultants. But let us remember that the Service is, and must remain, unique because it is and must be part and parcel of our peculiar British way of life. In particular, it must fit our faith in the responsibility of Ministers to Parliament and, through Parliament, to us all; and it must fit our faith in the unique capacity of British permanent civil servants, without sacrifice of personal conviction, imagination or creative energy, to serve with equal loyalty Governments of all political convictions and to deserve equally the trust of Ministers of every Party.
6.4 p.m.
LORD SINCLAIR OF CLEEVE: My Lords, it is a peculiar privilege and pleasure to me to be the first to voice a sentiment which I am sure we all feel and to express to the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, our warmest congratulations on a maiden speech which has been a joy to listen to. I know that we all hope that we shall have the pleasure of hearing him on many subjects often in the future. May I also take the opportunity to add my tribute to those paid to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and to the noble Lord, Lord Helsby, for their maiden speeches which gave us all such great pleasure. I think the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, and his colleagues must be very happy to think that the publication of their Report has evoked three maiden speeches of such rare distinction as we have heard to-day.
My Lords, I speak in this debate against a background of experience within the Civil Service as a temporary civil servant and from outside through industrial contacts and through such "dialogues"—to use the term currently in fashion—as one has with Government Departments when one is active in an organisation such as the Confederation of British Industry. In the First World War after a recovery (more or less) from Gallipoli, I was seconded to the Ministry of Munitions, first at Woolwich Arsenal and then in London, and served in that Department for something over three years. Throughout the Second World War, I was again a temporary civil servant and in that capacity I had contacts with many Departments.
In the light of that experience, when I read the first summaries and Press comments on the Fulton Report I confess I did not look forward to reading it. I felt that the criticisms of the past and present were likely to be too harsh and that the changes for the future would be, to my way of thinking, too revolutionary. However, when I read the Report, I confess that in some respects at any rate my views were modified. I should like sincerely to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, and his colleagues for the immense care with which they have surveyed this field; and for their courage—because for me, at any rate, I think it would have taken a great deal of courage—in their tackling the fences that were
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inherent in this problem and to erect some others that they had the imagination to grasp. I think they have produced a coherent plan, or plotted a course, for the next 20 years which can be of great value.
My Lords, I need hardly say that in the course of my experience I formed a view of the Civil Service, and of the civil servants at the head of it, that is in every way as favourable as the views that have been expressed on that same subject to-day. I will not repeat them except to say that I came to admire greatly their outstanding ability, their great integrity and disinterestedness and—a word I think not used to-day—their dedication to public service. I am proud to think that I number many of them among my best friends.
My Lords, I feel that I should like to comment, but only briefly, on one or two points in the Report. My first is that personally I should be in favour of the abolition of the classes and of their replacement by a single unified grading structure for the non-industrial part of the Service. The élite which was in the past drawn in the main from the administrative class would still come to the top, and perhaps there would be among them a few more who were essentially specialists originally rather than generalists, and I think that will be to the good.
Secondly, my Lords (although I am merely labouring a point which has already been clearly established), I found the argument for the new Civil Service Department, so-called, convincing and I am glad to know that steps are being taken, with the full support of Sir William Armstrong, towards setting up that Department. I share the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, on the desirability of keeping this Department small, and avoiding a too large expansion of staff. My third point is somewhat related to this new Department (for which I hope that the Civil Service will succeed in finding a different title than "Civil Service Department"). The related point is that I would put in a plea for what is called in the Report "accountable management", which they define as:
"holding individuals and units as responsible for performance measured as objectively as possible."

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Though I believe there have been considerable developments in the O. and M. Section since my day—in fact I know that there have been—I would judge that there is scope for some action along the lines indicated, involving as it would in selected and appropriate cases—and I should like to underline that—examination by outside bodies expert in management consultancy. I know that temporarily this could be an upsetting experience, but many industries have found that it pays and I see no reason whatever to doubt that, in appropriate cases, the Civil Service also will find that it pays.
My fourth point, my Lords, concerns the overall direction of Departments. I, too, have grave doubts about the wisdom of the recommendations to have:
"in most Departments a senior policy adviser with direct access to the Minister."
This conception seems somewhat reminiscent of the techniques of the "Chief Executive", so-called, in the last war, although the functions are rather different. Long-term planning, in the sense in which the term is used in the Report, was a luxury in which, at least in my experience, Chief Executives had little opportunity to indulge. But an arrangement such as is proposed by the Committee can, of course, be made to work, if there is no clash of personalities, and if indeed there is complete compatibility of temperament. But, in principle, I am quite sure that there must be one permanent Head of the Department, and if he has not the capacity to delegate, he will not hold his position for very long.
The long-term plan, for which there is much to be said, must surely be a function exercised immediately under the Permanent Head of the Department and through him, but not independently alongside him. That brings me, my Lords, to my last point. I believe that there may be many of your Lordships (and not only those who were here until a late hour last night on the Committee stage of the Transport Bill!) who feel that we are suffering to-day from a surfeit of new legislation, much of it pretty indigestible. As things have developed in recent years I believe that the lines of departmental responsibility have tended to overlap more and more, and more and more departmental and inter-departmental committees are required. The
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machinery of Government has become clogged and requires overall modification and simplification, or so at least I believe.
This aspect of the situation is touched on by the Committee in paragraph 293 of the Report where they suggest that if the review of the hiving-off possibilities, which they suggest in chapter V, should result in recommendations for substantial changes, this would also provide for simultaneous consideration to be given to a general review of the machinery of government. I feel, my Lords, that possibly because the machinery of government was regarded as being outside their terms of reference, the Committee here have got their priorities wrong. I believe that there is a case now for a small high-powered Committee to undertake a review of the machinery of Government. It is 50 years since the Haldane Committee reported. That Committee was seven in number. Its terms of reference were:
"To inquire into the responsibilities of the various Departments of the Central Executive Government and to advise in what manner the exercise and distribution of its functions should be improved."
My Lords, much of the work of the Fulton Committee and the evidence submitted to it would seem to be relevant and to facilitate the work of another Haldane Committee; or of a working party such as was suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. I hope that consideration may be given to setting up some such body very soon.
6.18 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, in his charming speech the noble Lord, Lord Sinclair of Cleeve, let slip one phrase which is sometimes used in an apartheid sense. He said that a number of them—he was referring to civil servants— "are among my best friends". I wonder whether the noble Lord would allow one to marry his daughter. I married a civil servant myself and I can assure him that it is all right. They are not a separate breed. They are—well, any service which could admit the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, the Earl of Arran and myself during war-time must be—pretty broad minded.
The noble Lord, Lord Snow, spoke of élite-ism and we have had in three magnificent maiden speeches a perfect example of Civil Service élite-ism at its

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very best. This is what it is all about, I think: how to get such people into the Civil Service and keep them there. Because if one is running a business or any concern, nothing matters more than having absolutely outstanding people at the top. My noble friend Lord Shackleton said that he hoped he would not degenerate (I think that was the word) into the chief personnel manager of the Civil Service. I sincerely hope that he does not. I have had a good deal of experience of personnel managers in industry, and as a rule it is a fairly second-rate job. There are a few personnel managers who exercise a powerful and valuable function in their concerns, but, taken by and large, personnel management is the relatively unimportant physical function of dealing with P.A.Y.E., National Insurance, cleanliness of offices, charladies, et cetera.
The really important function in industry is the selection of personnel, and very few industries leave this to their personnel managers. And this is very sensible, because if they do they find that these people are not skilled in the particular fields in which selections have to be made. A glass manufacturer selecting a general manager may have his personnel manager with him, but he will be more concerned with the person's technique of glass manufacture and, indeed, his demonstrated capacity for management than in the opinion of his personnel manager, who will usually be a generalist of a very general kind.
Having listened to the criticism of poor Lord Fulton's Report, I do not think there is a great deal left of it. I must say that I rather agree with my noble friend Lord Snow that it is a fashionable Report. It deals in conventional stereotypes, and that is a very bad thing to do. It is a fault that one can easily fall into, and I fear the noble Lord's Committee fell into it. I am quite sure that management is not a skill in the same sense as medicine, statistics or the law are skills. Management is something which one acquires by doing it; by being exposed to a wide variety of experience; by being bashed about; by having a hard time, and sometimes a little easier time. But, above all, in order to do it well one must have immense energy, immense determination, and a reasonably high (and hopefully a very high) I.Q. These are the things that one needs to be a good manager. Given these things, I
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think one can become a good managing director or a good high civil servant. And the things that are to be taught in courses are very simple indeed; in fact, I think they are rudimentary.
The things to look for in a good manager, whether he be a manager or a high civil servant, are quite simple things. First, there is the capacity to pick out key facts from a vast volume of material. I wish that my noble friend Lord Shackleton were here, because I felt that his brief was an admirable example of a failure to pick out any key facts at all. I am sorry to be saying this in his absence, but it was a simply shocking brief, and I only hope that Sir William Armstrong was not responsible for it. It was one of those things where everything is balanced against everything else and every subordinate clause was put in, and so you are never committed to anything. Perhaps, in the long run, it is the best thing.
The next one is the capacity to express oneself in a minimum of words. How well our maiden speakers taught us our job there; and how well I was taught my job in a minimum of words, when I was a member of a Development Corporation and the noble Lady was secretary. Just on this business of words, I agree with my noble friend Lord Snow about the quality of the Civil Service in war time. I think the quality of Cabinet Papers was never higher than it was in war time and immediately afterwards. I think from what I see of it, sitting here, it is pretty awful now. It has gone to pieces, and I do not know why. I should say it is fatigue and poor editorial work; people having to churn out papers far too quickly. The otiosity and verbosity has been appalling. It is very bad, and it must be pulled up. Our Civil Service friends ought to have a good look at their editorial systems and their capacity to express themselves in a minimum of words. It is far harder to do that, of course, than to make a speech like that of my noble friend Lord Shackleton. My noble friend has just come in, and perhaps I nay say that I have been criticising his speech. I am sure he will not mind.
The next thing is capacity to communicate with those above and below. Here comes the question of morale. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Radcliffe-Maud, said about morale. The way people keep on "knocking" the

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Civil Service is terrible; it is enough to knock the stuffing out of anyone. Yet part of the bad morale is internal, and a failure of people to know those who are in charge of them in the Civil Service. Everybody in the Ministry, in my opinion, should at least know what the Permanent Secretary looks like, and recognise him, and hopefully and politely salute him when they see him in the corridor. This matters a great deal. It certainly matters in the university. It matters that people should know who is in charge, that there should be a good, free, open communication, and that he should be accessible. He cannot be accessible if he has too much to do.
Then there is the capacity to assess human beings quickly, but also to revise these opinions. Well, that is obvious, though, of course, it is—I will not say less important in the Civil Service, but the selection one has is limited: establishment so often sends the person one has to have, or the person faute de mieux. It is very important to be able to assess people quickly but also, having made quick decisions, to revise them, if necessary.
Then there is the capacity to reprove and reprimand when needed, though this is rarely needed, and very rarely does any good when it is done. Next we have capacity to praise good work. This I have found rare in the Civil Service, and it is a pity. Partly, again, it springs from busy-ness. I think it would be a good thing if seniors did more praising of juniors when they do good work. It is the way to go on getting good things out of people. It is a tedious job, but one has to do it.
Then there is the capacity to delegate—that is obvious—and the capacity to relax. Here I must say that I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Helsby, about the hard work of the senior Civil Service. The extraordinarily poor survival rate after pension is distressing, and I am sure is related to overwork. Something has gone wrong there. There is too much paper. I think it is reading files that does it. I never read a file; I get somebody to make a digest of it or tell me what is in it. To face a pile of files makes one sick.
I have said quite enough about the matter. I have great admiration for the
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Civil Service. I hope it will have an earlier retirement age. I think it is one of the ways out—out, not in a bad sense, but in a good sense. My wife was able to retire from the Civil Service at the age of 52 and freeze her pension because she is a woman. This is admirable. Why should not men do this? Who wants to go on in the same job, or even the same kind of job, for 40 or 45 years? Those who are really stuck in the rut; those who are unadventurous. Well, we want the "oddities" of whom my noble friend Lord Snow spoke, and we want the people who are ready to adventure in the Civil Service. Let them adventure for a bit, and after a time go off and adventure somewhere else.
6.30 p.m.
LORD SHERFIELD: My Lords, I should like to begin by saying how agreeable it was to me to listen to the speeches of the three ex-Permanent Secretaries, ex-colleagues, and friends, in this debate this afternoon. They seemed to me to typify the diversity of style combined with the consistently high standard of performance which marks the administrative class from which they sprang.
My Lords, I have been tempted to take part in this debate, for I suppose I am as good an example as any, though now somewhat decayed and passé, of the amateur (I leave others to supply the adjective) and the "generalist" so freely "roasted" in this Report. For I have been a Foreign Service officer, a Home civil servant and, with the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, a denizen of the nationalised penumbra wherein lies the Atomic Energy Authority. Of course, one must try to avoid being a laudator temporis acti, or refer to bygone days, such as those when the personnel department of an admittedly small Foreign Service consisted of the Second Private Secretary, at one time the noble Lord, Lord Inchyra, who did the job with efficiency, humanity and good sense single-handed. Such comments are no doubt out of place, and regarded as worse than frivolous in certain Common Rooms in Oxford. But the Fulton Report does not make very good reading for people who have spent most of their lives in the service of the State—not so much for its recommendations, some of which are perfectly sound, but for its general approach and tone and for its immoderate

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attack on the performance of the existing Service, particularly the administrative class.
It seems to me that the Committee have tried to keep up with the times but have succeeded only in keeping up with the slogans of the times. One expects, of course, the pendulum to swing, but it is a very long swing from the advocacy of a First in Greats to a diploma in social psychology as the ideal training for a Government servant. As, unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, I am not making a maiden speech, I am tempted to describe the notion that a man with a degree in economics and sociology is likely to make a better manager or administrator—and in the dictionary the words are virtually interchangeable—than a graduate in philosophy or history as (to use, if I may, an unparliamentary expression) poppycock. So far as I know, there has been nothing for many years to prevent economists, sociologists or graduates in any discipline from getting into the Civil Service if they do well enough in the tests.
There is an old story about an interview in 1940 between the late Lord Weir and Mr. Wendell Willkie, in which Mr. Wendell Willkie was inquiring in what way the United States could be of assistance to Britain by the provision of raw materials or manufactured goods. Lord Weir replied that no doubt there were many commodities of which Britain was short, though he felt that in one way or another the deficiencies would eventually be made up. There was one commodity, however, of which, in Lord Weir's opinion, there would always be a permanent shortage. After a pause, Mr. Willkie asked what that commodity might be, to which Lord Weir answered, "Brains, Mr. Willkie, brains". This is still the commodity most needed, and I suppose it is still in short supply, in the Public Service.
Happily, my Lords, my remarks on what I feel is miguided and unjustified criticism of the Civil Service can be curtailed, owing to the Memorandum of Reservation written by the noble Lord, Lord Simey. I think I agree with almost every word of it, and also with the substance of the reservations which he has made, with some of his colleagues, on other points in the Report.
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Before I comment on one or two of the specific recommendations, there is one general point, which has certainly been mentioned but not heavily stressed, that I would make. Already, five or six years ago, the Civil Service was being weakened by departures, especially from the higher ranks, to the outside world. The Service was already stretched. But the burdens placed on the Civil Service in recent times have been greater than at any time since the war. The number of Ministers has been the largest in our history, involving more private secretaries, private offices and servicing. A large number of temporaries—whether one should call them "amateurs" or "professionals" I am not sure, but certainly persons unused to working in Government Departments—have been brought in, and the education, servicing and assimilation of these persons requires a considerable administrative effort by those already in place.
But the major burden has come from the "general post" which has been taking place among the Departments, anti which began before the present Government took office. We have had the creation of completely new Departments: the Department of Economic Affairs, the Ministry of Technology, and of Land and Resources—though that met an early death. We have had concentrations of work in one Department, in the Department of Education and Science, in the Ministry of Defence, and now in the Ministry of Employment and Productivity. We have had transfers of blocks of work from one Department to another. These are only a few highlights. Over this period there have been Commissions and Committees of Inquiry in profusion, all of which have to be staffed and serviced by Departments. There has been a mushrooming of regional bureaucracy, with economic councils alongside economic planning boards, and regional offices of the Ministry of Technology beside regional offices of the Board of Trade.
A practice seems to have developed of setting up two Departments in a field of activity which had hitherto been the province of one Department. The Department of Economic Affairs aid the Treasury, the Ministry of Technology and the Board of Trade, are examples. This policy establishes an interface between

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Departments in the same field which inevitably generates friction and therefore increases the strain on the machine and on the civil servants who have to work it. Could it be that the Fulton Committee's apparent failure to take all this into account is partly responsible for the tenor of the Report? I know that the machinery of Government was outside their purview, but they might have taken account of this bouleversement which has been going on when criticising the extent to which the Civil Service have got on with the process of reforming themselves. How could a Service stretched to this extent have found the time and the people for the study of management in depth, for going to management courses and for further training? How could they have arranged for major internal reforms, for example, for longer periods of service in each post, when all their energies were involved in manning and running rapidly changing and expanding bureaucracy and meeting the ever-increasing demands of Ministers upon it?
It seems to me that this is fundamental to the consideration of this matter. Even a reformed Service on the lines now proposed would have been in difficulties in such a situation. You cannot expect a plant to grow and develop if you are frequently pulling it out by the root or dividing it up. In point of fact, in spite of this pressure, the Civil Service did a lot, both in thought and in action, in these years: in action, I instance the development of the Centre for Administrative Studies; in thought, the excellent Treasury evidence to which the Committee perhaps did less than justice.
My Lords, it is perhaps a cause of disappointment to some that the Government have instantly accepted three important recommendations of the Committee, all of which I think are questionable, before there has been an opportunity for public discussion. Though hesitating to differ from my former chief as Financial Secretary, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, I myself regret—and I realise that I am in the minority here—the decision to set up a new Department for the Civil Service including the Civil Service Commission. It seems to have been done not for any fundamental reason of organisation or efficiency but because it was assumed to be a popular move
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against a supposedly hated Treasury. Sir Frank Kearton, in a broadcast interview, said, in his breezy way, that it seemed to him to be a "jolly good gimmick". But my main objection to it is that it involves an extension of bureaucracy and sets up another interface—another possible source of irritation and friction within the Civil Service between the new Department and the Treasury. These difficulties are recognised and discussed in the Fulton Report, but hardly resolved.
When the Treasury was split in two parts in 1966, with one Permanent Secretary for the First Lord of the Treasury's business and one Permanent Secretary for the Chancellor's business, this was, in my view, a logical and successful arrangement. I regretted the second split when the first Permanent Secretaryship was divided between the Secretary of the Cabinet and the Head of the Civil Service, because it led to some diffusion of responsibility. Now this responsibility is still further diffused. If it was desired to have a Minister to deal with this part of the business of the First Lord of the Treasury, then could not this have been done by appointing another Minister in the Treasury?
The second decision is for a classless Civil Service. Here, my Lords, I would make a general comment. It would be absurd not to recognise that many of the recommendations in this Report relate to sensible and necessary reforms, but the effect of the Report, to my mind, is trequently spoiled by going too far and over-egging the pudding. The classless Civil Service is one example, though I will not spend long on it. I might say, en passant, that no doubt there are too many classes in the Civil Service, but that, having recently been concerned with job evaluation in a very small firm, my imagination boggles at doing it for over half a million civil servants, though the Committee rather play this down, Further, I think that this extreme approach has led the Committee into unresolved difficulties—for example, as regards the intake of graduates in relation to the senior posts and to the formation of the Senior Policy and Management Group itself.
I should like to take a much simpler illustration—policy-planning—which has been discussed by other noble Lords. The

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proposal for planning sections in Departments is, I believe, a sound one (incidentally, the Foreign Office has had one for a number of years), but the Committee then go on to say that this should be under the direction of a new functionary, a policy-planning officer, with special attributes and a special relationship with the Permanent Secretary which can only be described as "fuzzy".
With other noble Lords who have spoken I sec no reason for such an office. A Permanent Secretary, if only to survive, will delegate the supervision of blocks of work—and planning may well be one—within the Department to Deputies and Under-Secretaries. He will also give them direct access to Ministers. But he must equally remain in full control of the work of the Department—as indeed the Fulton Committee recognise—and, I would add, more particularly of projections into the future. So, why transform a workable system into one which at best will not involve a significant change, and at worst will set up a potential source of friction within Departments?
The third decision relates to the proposal for a Civil Service College. When I read the Report this seemed to me to be a case of setting up a large university-type institution, with presumably quite a large faculty, equipped "for major teaching and research functions". I had thought this was a rather extravagant proposal, and that existing universities and business schools could provide most, if not all, of both the training and the research. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, this afternoon sought to reassure us on both these points. I was only partially reassured, and I found myself in agreement on this point with what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp.
My Lords, if I have criticised the general tone and recommendations of this Report I have also accepted that there is need for change in many of the directions pointed out by the Committee. Fortunately, apart from the three decisions I have mentioned, the application of the remaining recommendations is to be worked out, as the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, again assured us, in discus-
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sions with all concerned. Personally, I agree with Lord Simey that
"the necessary reforms can be obtained by encouraging the evolution of what is basically the present situation, given the necesssary amendments in direction and emphasis".
So it boils down to the question of how this Report is to be implemented; and fortunately this is supremely a question of "men, not measures". The work will fall mainly on the shoulders of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and the recently appointed head of the Civil Service, Sir William Armstrong. In their judgment and abilities I have complete confidence, and I am equally sure that they will have the willing co-operation of the civil servants concerned, in spite of the battering that they have hid. So I reach the conclusion that, under such leadership, the Civil Service will survive even the Fulton Report, and adapt itself successfully to the ever-increasing demands which are likely to be made upon it.
6.46 p.m.
LORD RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, it is a great privilege and pleasure to follow the three distinguished maiden speakers to-day, the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, the noble Lord, Lord Helsby, and the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud. It is very interesting: we are having a discussion as between professionalism and amateurism, but in fact the debate, in terms of constituent discussants has taken the form as between the permanent and the temporaries. Noble Lords have either been speaking from experience in the established Civil Service or speaking as I do, as a wartime temporary. I may say I take no great credit for my contribution to the Civil Service during the war, but the fact is that at the end of the war I was asked to go permanently into the Foreign Office and, with great modesty, I said, "You do not build Nissen huts on to the Foreign Office". Some others, like our distinguished maiden speakers, the noble Lords, Lord Helsby and Lord Redcliffe-Maud did go on and they built permanent structures into the Civil Service.
What we are talking about to-day is a matter of profound importance. I am only sorry that in addition to discussing the reform of the Civil Service we are not also discussing that reform in relation

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to government machinery and policy. I believe that the Fulton Report has done an extraordinarily good job, as has been demonstrated by the speeches this afternoon, in opening wide windows and letting through strong draughts. We all agree, including the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, in his attack on the Report, that it has accomplished that. It has indeed shown that we need drastic reforms of the Civil Service if we are to keep up with the times.
This brings me to the only point on which I wish to speak at any length, and that is the essential question of the relationship of specialism to generalism. It is always difficult for me to talk about this because I have spent most of my life trying to encourage people to become scientists and trying to get science into government, and the proper applications of science in society. But it is true, as others have said, that we have almost passed that curve. It has been said that the Report reflects the cult; I can say that the cult is now passing. We are getting more and more suspicious of the experts. In fact, I myself have spoken of the potential tyranny of the experts, and we are becoming more aware that we have to get on speaking terms with them in order to curb them. The function of the Civil Service, and a very important responsibility of the Civil Service as we want it to develop, is that in point of fact it can call the bluff of the scientist. This is no reflection on my scientist friends, but it is important in the sense that most of our lives are now dictated or dominated by science, or the effects of it. My noble friend, Lord Snow, referred to a point which I repeat, that when you are dealing with the so-called expert, you are talking mainly about the language of the so-called expert. That is, if he cannot express his ideas in anything except the jargon of the trade, then it is a subject which ought to be looked at with very hard scrutiny indeed.
It was said by the late Lord Rutherford that if a scientist could not explain to the charwoman scrubbing the laboratory floor what he was doing, he did not know what he was doing. My practical experience is on the same lines. We are talking about what should be the necessary qualities of civil servants, particularly, I would say, in the higher echelon.
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That is that they must be able to understand the nature of science, and to be able to call the bluff of the scientist when he is talking purely the jargon of science. I may say that with notable exceptions, like the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, who took a First in history but nevertheless managed to take over the Atomic Energy Authority and, indeed, to cope very effectively with the experts, this has not at least been visible or seen to be apparent in the handling by the Civil Service of the experts. I think it was my noble friend, the Leader of the House, Lord Shackleton, who pointed out that in point of fact what we are doing here, and in this Report, is not only giving a lead within the Civil Service, but we are giving a lead within the whole society, and, above all, we are giving a lead in education.
If we are going to have the civil servants, whom we are discussing, qualified—not specialised to the point where they are intellectually crippled, which is true of many experts—to form judgments about the essentials of science, and the nature of progress in our time, then we have to have people who have a liberal education and who understand science. I have no reservation in my admiration for the people who have come out of Oxford with Modern Greats and so on, but we (do need people who will understand science, not practise it; not the experts, but people who can understand science. Therefore, the nature of our educational system has to be changed if we are going ultimately to get the kind of people who are essential, not only to the Civil Service, but to industry and, if I may say so, to politics as well, the people who can grasp the forces which are now changing so rapidly.
The approach to this has been impressed upon me by the fact that I was asked not long ago to take an American chair of generalism. At first I thought it was journalism. This was in a very famous post-graduate scientific university, and the object of this exercise was to teach the experts what they themselves were doing and what the people next door were doing, because they were so lost in their specialisations.
So, in heartily endorsing most of this Report, and the conclusions, I suggest to my noble friend, the Leader of the House, that we should have very strong reservations about the emphasis which

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has been laid on specialisation as a necessary criteria for the Civil Service. If we do, we shall be perpetuating the trend, which I think is passing, of asking for more and more specialists, and demanding that there should be specialits, even (shall we say?) in administration of policy. As a planner introduced into the hallowed precincts of the Foreign Office during the war when I was supposed to be taking scientific methods into policy, I want to say that of course I agree with the planning of policy and, of course we must have that. This does not mean that you exclude the policy-makers. You are in fact supporting and integrating the policy-makers and giving them proper support, foresight and so forth. I am very glad to see that the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, agrees with that. We do need very substantial improvements, I suggest, in the Civil Service along the lines which most people have accepted, while rejecting the criticism, or what some people call the slurs, on the Service.
One thing I do know is that we must recognise this clear and distinct dichotomy between what has been called the "generalist" and the specialist. I insist that the "generalist" must bring within the scope of his understanding in any liberal education, in any development of Civil Service administration, not the expertise (to use the word which Lord Snow properly rejected) but the understanding of the meaning of science in such a way that he can be on speaking terms with the experts.
6.56 p.m.
LORD ROBBINS: My Lords, I cannot rise to make a few observations on the subject under discussion without joining with other speakers in expressing admiration for the outstanding maiden speeches to which we have listened this afternoon, speeches which surely are a sufficient refutation in themselves of some aspersions which have been cast upon the quality of the public service in some quarters.
Whatever we may think of this Report, and its recommendations, I am sure we all agree on one thing: the importance of the matters to which it relates. Few things are more essential to the well being of our society than the efficiency and quality of the public service. With respect, Ministers come and go. One
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must never minimise the significance of their impact, but history shows that we can survive a good deal that is not altogether first-rate in that respect. The public service, however, goes on. If its performance declines in standard, the effects are widespread and long-lasting. A very momentous responsibility is therefore attached to the labours of Lord Fulton and his associates.
My Lords, to my very great regret, I do not admire this Report. Some members of the Committee are valued friends, and it causes me pain to say this. While I agree with many speakers that it contains many recommendations, most of which had germs, at any rate, in practices already being initiated in the Civil Service, on balance—for reasons which I will develop—I think its effects will be harmful.
I would prefer to begin by dwelling a little on some of the matters on which I agree. Let me say first that I support the proposed hiving-off of the establishments Division of the Treasury aid the creation of a separate Ministry. I do not think this will necessarily lead to conspicuous improvements in the efficiency of the Service. I confess I have never thought that the establishment side of the Treasury was the impressive part of that splendid Department. But I suspect that most of its shortcomings, such as they are, are due much more to the nature of the job to be performed, the uniquely vast field to be covered, and its peculiar liability to public questioning, than to any inherent lack of quality in the top administration, and I should not expect these inherent difficulties to disappear if it functions under another name and another Minister.
I imagine, too, that the change will involve some duplication of functions. After all, the Treasury cannot ladle out to the new Ministry without proper examination just what it asks for in the shape of sums to be voted. Nevertheless, on balance I would support the change. I believe it is probably desired by a substantial number of men I should respect in other departments of State. I also think it would deflect from the operation of the main divisions of the Treasury, with their admirable resourcefulness, informality and flexibility of outlook, some of the opprobrium which derives from the

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operations of a branch of administration which, however well it is run, is bound to be unpopular among the unreflecting and the interested.
Secondly, I should wish to lend support in principle, if not in detail, to the proposal that there should be a general overhaul of the grading system in the so-called General Service Classes; and I am not opposed to any practicable suggestions for simplifying the other classifications and creating greater general mobility within the Service. I do not support this as an enlightened proposal which in the past has only been supported by clearheaded visionaries outside the Service, or on the ground that it will initiate revolutionary changes in the direction of more equal opportunity. I wonder how many readers of the main Report, with its penumbra of implication of making all things new in a milieu totally resistant to change, would realise that 40 per cent. of the present Administrative Class has been recruited by transfer from other classes, and that of the present Permanent and Deputy Secretaries about 13 per cent. began their careers in other groups. All this parade of the career open to talent is to a large extent an endorsement of a search which has been going on for a very long time.
But I am persuaded by the very cogent Treasury memoranda that the conduct of affairs will be facilitated by the merging of the Administrative and the Executive Classes, with perhaps the present Clerical Officer and Clerical Assistant grades thrown in as numbers 9 and 10. I agree that this should be done, and I agree further that a way should be sought of further integrations of the various specialist grades. I do not think that this will be altogether easy. I agree that the reorganisation will be a major undertaking. But under the sympathetic intuition of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and the truly professional leadership of that outstanding public servant, Sir William Armstrong, I am sure that satisfactory progress can be made.
When we come to recruitment, my difficulties begin in earnest. The majority of the Committee recommend a method which, if it does not wholly restrict recruitment to the management grades to candidates who have studied economics or sociology for a first degree, would at
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least create a substantial bias that way. My Lords, I think this is very unwise I have taught economics all my working life. I think quite well of it as an intellectual discipline and I believe it has an important contribution to make to the understanding and running of modern societies. But to weight the requirements of entry in its favour in this way seems to me to invite one of two consequences. Either it will induce a swing of undergraduate preference for social studies even greater than is taking place at present, or it will discriminate against those who do not switch over. Neither consequence seems to me to be at all desirable.
I personally should view with something like dismay a still greater proportionate swing to social studies at the undergraduate stage; probably it has gone too far already. Equally I should regard as folly a policy which imposes any sort of self-denying ordinance as regards recruitment from other faculties. In fact the whole recommendation seems to me to rest upon an almost grotesque misapprehension. The public service needs the finest intellects available, whatever their initial schooling; and as we know, there are far too few of such intellects about. Of course, it is desirable in the modern world that a substantial proportion of the higher grades of public service should have some acquaintance with the findings and techniques of social studies. But that is something which can be acquired for many purposes at a stage later than the first degree. The idea that at that stage the main bias and the main requirements of first degree curricula should be in this area seems to me to be as wrongheaded as the idea that the best training for practical action is a course in ancient languages. At this stage of education the main requirements of the "job"—to use the Committee's rather matey jargon—are good brains; the rest can be added later by proper training.
But where should the training take place? Here I come to another point of disagreement with the Report. The Committee recommended the foundation of a special college, a Civil Service College, which is to carry out this function. I am not in principle opposed to the creation of new educational institutions; indeed, I have been criticised in this House and elsewhere for excessive zeal in this direction. But I must confess, despite the

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somewhat soothing remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that I think this particular institution is one we can well do without. And this for two reasons: first, that there are already in existence all sorts of institutions with which satisfactory arrangements could be made for the provision of most of the requisite training. We have just founded, at great expense, two advanced graduate schools of management in London and in Manchester; and in many universities, both traditional and technological, there exist strong departments whose aid could be enlisted.
Secondly, if the Committee's avowed objective is to bring the public service into closer touch with the rest of the community and the ordinary business of life, this is just the way not to do it. Either the college becomes highly specialised in techniques peculiar to the public service as such, in which case the desired enlargement of horizon does not take place; or it does not, and it reaches out to provide courses in management in general and the associated technique, as the Committee throw in as a suggestion, in which case it involves an unnecessary duplication of what can be done equally well elsewhere and simply increases the demand for the already sorely pressed supplies of the available academic talent. The alternative course of collaborating with existing institutions seems to me to be the ideal opportunity for bringing business and the academic world and the public service into effective co-operation. I am very sorry that the Committee have neglected it.
Now my Lords, in spite of Lord Shackleton's exhortation that we should avoid the more popular subjects of controversy, I must enter a wider sphere of disagreement; I refer, of course, to the distinction, much discussed already in the debate, between amateurism and professionalism. The Committee accused the Public Service of the former, and present their own proposals as a way of elevating it to eligibility for the latter description. It is true now and then that they pay some tribute to the occasional appearance of ability and public spirit, but their use of the term "amateur" is throughout depreciative, and there can be no question that its use is to stigmatise not merely particular arrangements but the whole organisation and ethos of the
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public service. My Lords, I believe this to be intellectually muddled, morally unfair and extremely damaging to the interests of the State.
I say first that it is intellectually muddled. The conception of professionalism with which the Committee operate oscillates between two ideas, the idea of adequate training in relative specialisms and the idea of deep knowledge and ability to handle other managerial jobs; and the implication is that the Public Service at present lacks both.
As regards adequate training, I should not think there is much room for difference of opinion. My quarrel with the Committee here concerns their extremely ungenerous reluctance to admit how much has already been done. The Civil Service has been very active in recent years in providing special facilities for training entrants in relative techniques; and as for the alleged failure of those with such techniques to penetrate and influence the system, I wonder whether anyone reading these stirring exhortations to renovation and reform would imagine at the present day that both the First and one of the Second Secretaries of the Treasury holds First-Class degrees in the fields so warmly recommended, and that indeed for a long time the majority of top people in the Treasury have graduated in a like manner.
What about the alleged lack of professionalism in the wider sense of the word, the deep knowledge which comes from experience and devotion to the job? Here it seems to me that if one is to describe the Public Service as amateur one must apply the epithet nearly all round—to business equally as to the Public Service. How many of the most successful men of affairs have had training in the various specialisms they organise? How many have had specific courses at an earlier stage in the precise arts which they now practise? The noble Lord, Lord Fulton, has had a very distinguished career as an educationist, but I never heard that when he was at Oxford he took special courses in academic administration, and I should regard it as without any intellectual justification whatever were I to describe him as an amateur Vice-Chancellor.

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I should regard it, too, as an insult—and a totally undeserved insult at that. And in exactly the same way, and on the same grounds, I regard it as insulting to describe the present race of civil servants as amateurs. I must confess my Lords, to a deep sense of indignation in reading, and re-reading, the first chapter of this Report. This is not a fair description of the fine men among whom I had the honour to serve during the anxious years of the war—men who certainly deserve the title of professional as much as any of the signatories to this Report, and who gave much expert and dedicated effort to the Service of the State. I am not surprised that the public servants on the Committee must have felt that to protest against such indignities was beneath them, but I am amazed at what was subscribed to by others, and I thank Heaven for Lord Simey, one man who had the decency to repudiate the confusion and unfairness of it all.
In the end, what matters is not the way some of us feel shame and anger, but how the public interest is affected. And here I am clear that the effect must be almost wholly damaging. The Committee have decked out their indictment with all the clichés of contemporary fashion. For years to come, every cheapjack publicist on T.V. or radio will be repeating these facile smears; and the less knowledgeable sections of the public will be accepting them as "with it" truth. That surely will be bad. It will be bad if it is thought that the troubles of the last two decades have been due to the Public Service rather than to the policies which the Public Service has had to carry out. It will be bad if it deflects attention from the real impediments to the efficient formulation of policy which lie in the present machinery of government. It will be bad if it undermines confidence in an institution of which we should all surely be proud, and still more if it discourages and depresses the sensitive and dedicated men who work it.
For these reasons, my Lords, I am reluctantly compelled to conclude that in this respect at least the Committee have failed to rise to their important responsibilities and have let down the high traditions of fairness and objectivity which have usually characterised such public Inquiries in this country.
7.17 p.m.
LORD TREVELYAN: My Lords, I am not qualified to make a major contribution to this debate. After hearing so many expert speeches, and particularly the three outstanding maiden speeches, I shall not detain your Lordships for more than a few minutes. I shall make only one or two remarks as a postscript to what has been said.
I speak as an outsider, an outsider who has worked closely in connection with the British, French and American services, and from that point of view it would be quite wrong if I did not add to the chorus we have heard already of those who expressed complete agreement with the dissenting minority of the noble Lord, Lord Simey. I and everybody else who has had anything to do with the Civil Service in recent years have an unbounded admiration for them and their professionalism, and I believe that our Civil Service is greatly admired abroad. It has borne a great burden, it is responsive to change and it welcomes change. Sir Stafford Northcote and my great uncle conducted a necessary revolution. We need evolutionary changes now, and the civil servants want them, too; but we do not need another revolution.
I should like also to declare my agreement with the minority in the Report on the question of the relevance of academic discipline. It is not necessary for me to repeat the many arguments that have been put forward to support this point of view. Let us get the best young men and not restrict the field. They can get their training after they come into the Service. From my own experience the only point I can add is that a number of very efficient vice-Ministers in the Soviet Foreign Service started life as aeroplane engineers. The only relevance I can think of in this training is perhaps an unusual experience in the launching of trial balloons.
The French Service is good, but I believe no better than the British Civil Service. Perhaps I am too influenced by my memory of two inspecteurs des finances doing their homework during international meetings and taking their arguments to the point of hitting each other while we waited for them to finish. But among the many good points of the

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French Civil Service there is, as the Report pointed out, the creation of an elite. This should warn us that we should not level down too much. If we are to get the best young men from the university they must see a real career ahead and a fairly clear way to the top.
Why should we touch the Civil Service Commission? It is true that while we have commended to so many countries the principle of the independence of the Civil Service Commission when they themselves become independent, we are naturally considering the perhaps rather greater possibilities of patronage than there are in this country. At the same time I should have thought that in the long run the best safeguard against any form of patronage or prejudice is the maintenance of the present independent position of the Commission.
I am not impressed by the Marxist analysis in the Report of Method 2 of selection. "Subjective" is treated there as a dirty word, and it is assumed that the alternative is "objective". I think the whole purpose of this method is that it should be subjective, and from my small experience of leading one of the boards I have found that on the whole it is a good method which selects the best people, though I have not had experience of getting rid of any oddities, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Snow. I also think that if we mechanise the proceeding, if we try to make it objective, by, for instance, as the Report says, aggregation of marks, we should only get a less satisfactory and more mechanical method of selection.
As has been pointed out, there are many good proposals in the Report, and a number of them have, on the recommendation of the excellent Report of the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, already been introduced into the smaller Diplomatic Service. However, I share the doubts expressed about the length to which the Report goes in advocating job evaluation across the board, because in my brief time in industry I have already heard of the great difficulties that exist in the application of this principle over a wide field.
I am glad to support the general arguments that have been put forward in favour of a further consideration of the
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proposal for the establishment of a Civil Service College, in consideration of the numerous other institutions which we are now establishing for all the multifarious different kinds of management training which will be required in the Civil Service. Incidentally—a small point—I find it difficult to understand why the writers of the Report should find the word "establishment" so stuffy. Are they really so affected by the fashionable use of the word as a nickname for the people in power? The old Establishment and Organisation Department in the Foreign Office never had that connotation at all. It still exists, and, so far as I know, we still call the most senior and respected amateur in charge of the administration the "Chief Clerk".
I entirely agree with all those who have criticised the proposal in the Report for the appointment of a policy adviser with a position almost equal to that of the Permanent Secretary. There is clearly here a great danger of division of authority, and there is no doubt that complete authority must remain in the hands of the Permanent Secretary who, if he is overburdened, must delegate more. We certainly do not want to introduce into the British Service the system of a Chef-de-Cabinet, an official appointed by the Minister from outside and disputing the authority of the Permanent Secretary.
There seems to be some confusian of information and anonymity in the Report. It is clear that the Civil Service Departmeats will have to give more information generally, but this should not destroy, I believe, the general principle of the anonymity of the senior civil servant; for we require from him quite different qualities from those required of a television star, and we do not wish that he should either find himself, unconsciously, perhaps, distorting his judgment in the light of the public ordeal that he has to go through or avoiding responsibility and putting the decision up to the Minister. What we must do is to maintain the traditional relationship of the Minister and the civil servant.
There is one form of Civil Service work which probably needs looking into. This is the delays that occur in negotiations with industry. All I want to say on that now is that I believe that this is not satisfactory; that often the contracts are concluded before the negotiations are

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finished, with obvious disadvantages to both sides involved. I hope that during the inquiries that follow this Report, this aspect can be considered.
It appears to me that what has been said here to-night is correct, that evolution in the Civil Service is only half the story; but we must also go further towards reforms in the management of government. Let us now hope that the Report will be sifted carefully, that the unfortunate impressions given by it of our Civil Service will be contested, and that the Service will be put into a position to carry out its increasing and difficult responsibilities in the future.
7.27 p.m.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, may I join with other noble Lords in offering my hearty congratulations to my two colleagues, as I think I may call them, the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and the noble Lord, Lord Helsby. I call them "colleagues", because for 25 years I sat on the National Whitley Council for the Civil Service, and they were at times my opponents when we were trying to reach agreement. I have the highest regard for both of them, and should like to express my great appreciation of the speeches they have made to-day. It will therefore be apparent that the angle from which I speak to-night is somewhat different from that of the speeches of those who have gone before me.
During my 25 years on the National Whitley Council I saw developments and improvements in the Civil Service, and for that reason I commence by saying that I cannot call this Report at all a good one. It seems to me that it reaches some correct conclusions, but it does so for the wrong reasons. Occasionally it reaches those conclusions despite the fact that it contradicts itself.
To say that the first paragraph startled me is to utter an understatement. It would have been a bad note on which to start even had it been accurate. But nobody who has dealt with the Civil Service for 43 years can for one moment believe in the justification for that first sweeping generalisation, unsupported as it was by any positive evidence of any kind. It is a statement which is resented by thousands of rank and file civil servants. They are used to being the
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"whipping boy" of the Press and the public for what we in Parliament make them do, but they think that this Report, to put it mildly, does them less than justice. Of course, the Report is right when it says in that paragraph that the Northcote-Trevelyan Report provided the initial thinking. But it is silly, and it is nonsense to forget what has happened in the 100 years that have gone; to forget all that went on in the two wars and the period in between, when we in Parliament thrust on the Service new jobs, new taxes and new complexities.
I join with the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, and others, in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Simey, in signing that first chapter only after he had written the most penetrating minority observation. I agree with him, as I have said, that this chapter is unfair to the Civil Service. I also agree with him that changes are desirable, but that has been said by the Civil Service itself—it has said it through its organisations in submitting evidence to the Fulton Committee. As the noble Lord, Lord Simey, said, the first chapter does not recognise the contemporary relevance of the great contribution which the Civil Service made to the successful conduct of the last war and subsequently. I join him in the belief that this chapter fails to give recognition to the Service for its many achievements and qualities. Certainly the chapter's emphasis on the Service's shortcomings leaves it open in the future, as the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, said, for people to give a completely misleading impression.
While it is true that the foundations of the Service were laid in the middle of the nineteenth century, the characteristics it displays to-day, as the noble Lord, Lord Simey, said, are mid-twentieth century. Much more has been done to improve the efficiency of the Civil Service than is recognised in the Report. It is true that much more can be done to devise more effective forms of organization, but the noble Lord, Lord Simey, is right in reaching the conclusion that the existing Civil Service is an asset which it would be utterly foolish to discard, and that its potentialities provide an adequate basis for reform.
I lived through the great difficulties of the Civil Service from not long after the First War until 21 years ago I came into

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your Lordships' House. I lived through the period of the great Reorganisation Report of 1920. Those post-war years in the Civil Service represented for everybody very great difficulties in picking up the threads of the years that had gone. Let us remind ourselves that between the two wars the civil servants—thousands of whom had to be recruited hurriedly in the immediate postwar years—dealt with constant change and a multiplicity of tasks. There was vast unemployment; there was a coal crisis; there was a General Strike; there was an economic blizzard; the May Economy Committee Report, and then rearmament.
This Report may talk about nineteenth century organisation, but if you had lived with the Civil Service, taking all these things in its stride, you would have a very different kind of view. I say quite clearly that in my view the British Civil Service did the greatest job of its kind ever performed in the world. Those who have already mentioned the reactions of Ministers and the relevant job of the Civil Service, I am sure will find that no Minister who shouldered great responsibility in the war will fail to give credit to the Civil Service, both to the top people who were directing and the rank and file underneath. The expert organisation of manpower; the handling of one hundred and one new complexities unforeseen before of running a difficult economy; the feeding of people and seeing that the great directions given by the Cabinet from above were carried into effect, and the will and the morale of the British public lived up to the inspiration of the leadership. These were tasks which were never envisaged, not only in this country but anywhere in the world.
Having said that, may I say that a lot more thought needs to be given to this Report before many of the proposals suggested in it are implemented. I do not want to enter unduly into the argument about "all rounders" and "amateurs", but I must say one thing which the noble Baroness did not say in her speech but which she said in her article in the Sunday Times, which I thought very relevant, that is, that the Fulton Committee were after all rather in the position of being amateurs on the subject of the Civil Service. We, for our part, must be very careful not to take
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all they say as being necessarily practicable.
I certainly welcome the new Department. I welcome very much that it will have a Minister in the Cabinet as its head, and I welcome particularly the fact that my own leader, whom I admire so much, has been given this initial task in this very difficult problem. I join with others in saying how nice it is to think that Sir William becomes the permanent head of the Department. That Department has to investigate and consider rather more than the Fulton Committee investigated. Just think, my Lords—they took a peep at the U.S.A. and on little evidence adopted the American idea. If one looks at the Report, what was the evidence? The Chairman and one member of the Committee spent five days in Washington last year. In the last eighteen years I have been honoured to work with the United Nations, and I have met people in America, as others of my colleagues on these Benches have done, who, like others in the world, envy the brilliant British Civil Service and its traditions, its reliability and the way in which it still manages to keep itself aloof from graft and humbug. The more one sees of the state of public order in the U.S.A., whether you go there, as I do, or whether you only read about it, the more one sees the passage of events, the more one desires to refrain from drawing facile conclusions from the American system.
I welcome the reference to Canada, which has been busily trying to convert from the British system to this "straight through" system of the U.S.A. To be nice and polite and kind, they are having teething troubles at least. This conception of a unified structure wants more thought. The question, from the point of view of public interest, is whether or not such a structure would provide a more flexible organisation. There is a very good case for unification in the higher Civil Service, and it can probably be taken down to middle level, but whether you can have a completely unified structure among the lower levels where the numbers are so large—lot us remember they are running to half a million—is another matter.
It seems to me that the Report, on little or no evidence, seeks to throw everything overboard in favour of a

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system which has yet to be proved in practice. I suggest to the Minister that before we are committed to any form of copying the U.S.A. system, an early task of the Department should be to send a mission from both sides of the National Whitley council, composed of persons of differing rank and views with a real knowledge of the work in the Civil Service of this country, properly to examine the U.S.A. system and to return to the Minister with excellent information.
The weakness of the Report is that it devotes so much time and space to the graduate entrant, and seems to give very little attention to those tens of thousands underneath. One of the things that it talks about, of course, is this wonderful "job evaluation". I do not want to repeat what other noble Lords have said, but that wants looking at closely by the Department before any decision is reached. There is a tremendous difference between the application of job evaluation techniques in a motor car factory—and they have had enough strikes—and applying job evaluation in the Civil Service.
I cannot end without saying a little about training. With the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, I cannot see the need for this college as at present suggested. Very valuable training schemes were instituted before the war ended. I was associated with my friend, Ernest Bevin, whose inspiration gave the first training to Ministry of Labour staff. There could have been more training than there has been, but over the years the dead hand of the Treasury and lack of money has kept it down. But even when the Report deals with training, once again it bemuses everybody by speaking so much in terms of "graduates" and "professionals" and forgetting all those tens of thousands underneath. The Committee recognise the need to provide for the present generation of civil servants, and the Civil Service organisations welcome this. They have been pressing for it for years, and they gave evidence to the Committee on this matter. Many civil servants have had little or no training opportunities since recruitment.
The reference to recruitment leads me to one other contradiction in the Report. It is anxious that there should be inter-
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change between industry and the Civil Service. I am all in favour in principle, but at the same time the Report attaches great importance, as I do, to the career value which must exist for civil servants. The muddle in trying to marry the idea of a career service with this interchange can only be seen if one tries to read the Report a second time. I am all in favour of civil servants getting in touch with the public whom they serve. An excellent idea was implemented in the Ministry of Labour—the sending out of assistant principals after recruitment to work in employment exchanges for six months to get to know the work being done by the staff and to get in touch with the common public. Afterwards, when they sat down in Whitehall to write minutes or directions, they had some idea of the people for whom they were taking ultimate responsibility, and also about the public they were trying to serve.
I could go on talking about the contradictions I find in the Report. I will give only one more so as not to keep your Lordships at this late hour. I refer to the comment that the management side of the Service has regarded success in reaching agreement with the staff side as an end in itself and failure to reach agreement as a failure of management. I cannot help wondering what would have been the reaction of the Royal Commission on Trade Unions had they been able to read the Fulton Report before issuing their own Report. I do not know what they would have thought about it. Probably they would have thought it odd that management should be criticised for striving too hard to reach agreement with staff representatives. I should like to know the reactions of the right honourable lady who now leads the Department of Employment and Productivity, and for that matter, the views of the right honourable gentleman who said that he was so glad to have come from the Ministry of Labour "of blessed memory".
If I have given a mixed blessing to this report, it is because the Report itself is so mixed. I wanted to sound a warning about some of its contents. However, after this long general debate, it would not be right at this late hour for me to go on for too long. This Report will take its place alongside the Tomlin

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and Priestley Reports and others which have followed since the Northcote-Trevelyan Report. We wanted guidance from this Committee on evolution, but I cannot help thinking that what we have been given are proposals for revolution—proposals which for a long time to come will give a headache to my friends who remain on the National Whitley Council.
In conclusion, I am sure the noble Lord who has just taken over the task of organising this department has a very great job in front of him. One of his first tasks, following upon the first paragraph of the Fulton Report, is to lift the morale of the Civil Service a little. The rank and file do not like that statement, and it is still up to your Lordships and Parliament to realise that in general it may be that we have a much better Civil Service than we deserve.
7.44 p.m.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Crook, will forgive me if I do not follow him into the subjects which he has covered. The noble Lord, Lord Snow, made particular reference to the Northcote-Trevelyan and Macaulay Reports. I wish to start with the parts of those Reports which dealt with the method of selection of candidates. The Northcote-Trevelyan Report refers on page 18 to:
"a proper system of examination for the supply of the public service with a thoroughly efficient class of men."
The Macaulay Report goes into greater detail as to the content of the examinations. With Benjamin Jowett on the Committee, this Report emphasises the importance of skill in Greek or Latin versification. Admitting that this has no direct tendency to form a judge, a financier, or a diplomatist, it was a good method of selection because, says the Report:
"the youth who does best what all the ablest and most ambitious youths about him are trying to do well will generally prove a superior man".
There is a caveat to this, and it is probably pure Macaulay:
"We must remember that in the North of this island the art of metrical composition in the ancient languages is very little cultivated and eminent men … would probably have been quite unable to write a good copy of Latin alcaics or to translate ten lines of Shakespeare into Greek iambics."
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However antediluvian the description of that system appears to us now, with its 6,875 marks of which only 500 were allotted to science subjects, they got the principle right—the principle of contemporary comparisons.
With the ever-widening horizons of present-day university education, the old examination system has had its day. The Fulton Report, by a small majority of 7 to 5 came down in favour of retaining, though in a minor position, the examination system of entry known as Method I. To me the reasons they give are most impressive. Method II, known as the Civil Service Selection Board or, more colloquially, as "the country house procedure", has been evolved largely on the initiative of Sir Percy Waterfield out of the War Office Selection Boards and is continually evolving. In Appendix E this procedure is examined critically and some sound recommendations are made for improvement. Some of the references, however, appear to me to be slight and slighting. Perhaps they are based on inadequate information, for they seem to take but little account of the very great success of this procedure compared with anything else in the world of analogous kind. Quite possibly, this will be put right in the later volumes of the Report which will be able to go into this question in greater detail.
Personally, I have no recent knowledge of the Civil Service Selection Board, but I am rather surprised by the statement in paragraph (1) of this Appendix that:
"… we have serious doubts about the staffing and methods of work of the Civil Service Selection Board."
This statement makes me wonder how many of the Committee have had recent first-hand experience of the procedures of the Civil Service Selection Board. I do not expect an immediate answer or this question, but other statements in Appendix E have awakened in me some apprehension. I am very hopeful that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, who has had such great experience of selection boards in the R.A.F., will understand the importance of visiting this Board and seeing for himself its value as a method for the selection of civil servants.
I greatly regret that I can find nothing in the Report which recognises that these procedures of the Civil Service Selection Board are almost certainly the best example in practice of the quantum jump

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in the art and science of selecting people by assessing their capacities. So far as I know, this great advance in personnel selection, though copied by others throughout the world, has not been superseded by another system; nor is it likely to be displaced in the foreseeable future. From its outset Method II, the Civil Service Selection Board, has maintained a "follow-up". This is an intense and continuing scrutiny of the subsequent achievements of those who have been selected. I rather think that this has been very favourably commented on by the Estimates Committee of another place.
I welcome what the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, has just said about this method, and I am glad that he drew attention to the fact that a root problem is that it can never be completely objective, though it goes a very long way to being so. This emphasises the importance of getting the right staff and assessors, both resident and semi-permanent, and securing part-time staff who are themselves involved in the workings of their departments. If I may loosely paraphrase what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, said in his most interesting opening speech, we must get the ablest persons, intellectually, even if we have to go to Oxford and Cambridge to get them.
Thus those who are responsible for the Civil Service Selection Board should remember that Macaulay's remarks about talented persons "in the North of this island" are of as great importance as they were a hundred years ago. Beware of the modern equivalent of a bias in seeking human excellence by its ability to versify. More than pure intellect is essential, and that is why I welcome what the noble Lord, Lord Simey, has said in his reservations to Chapter 1, where he describes what is essential as:
"a capacity to face the truth at all costs, however inconvenient it may be to do so."
I submit that there is no better way of assessing this than by a Selection Board.
This excellent and fascinating Report has already been studied in Scotland, where our Civil Service arrangements are in certain respects peculiar to ourselves. The Secretary of State for Scotland is directly responsible for a whole variety of Departments administered in England by
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independent Ministers. In Edinburgh we have a unique set-up, with our own Whitehall in St. Andrew's House, and some there are who call it a "mini-Whitehall". The noble Lord, Lord Fulton, is himself an expatriate Scot, the son of a most distinguished Principal of University College, Dundee—the man who put that college, now a university, on the map. It is therefore surprising, to say the least, that the first volume of the Report has only one specific reference to Scotland. Very few people have found it, for it is located in Appendix D, where it is stated that:
"Scotland should clearly continue to have a separate legal service."
That is all.
In the long ago, previous to the Reorganisation of Offices (Scotland) Act, three of the present Departments—Education, Health and Agriculture—were virtually independent bodies reporting directly to the Secretary of State in one or other of his official capacities. This seems to me to be pretty near the method advocated in her most excellent speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, for this independence included recruitment and promotion. Thus it was that these Departments all had a series of distinguished heads, men of great authority in their own spheres, men sometimes brought in later on at the age of 30 or so to serve the State.
In Agriculture we had Sir Robert Patrick Wright, who was Principal of the West of Scotland College of Agriculture. In Education we had one of the greatest numismatists of his time in Sir George Macdonald. We have had a series of His Majesty's Inspectors as heads of the Education Department. Now this has changed, and the reason for the change in these technical departments is, I believe, associated with a memorandum submitted in the late 'fifties to the Treasury from the Association of First Division Civil Servants, urging that certain posts should no longer be open to civil servants who had entered as technical officers.
An example of the effect of this in the Scottish Education Department has been disclosed by the political reporter of the Scotsman, and can be seen in the fact that the possession of direct experience in school teaching is no longer regarded as a useful qualification for appointment to a senior post. In

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Volume 5 of the Report, the evidence of the Educational Institute of Scotland is rebutted by the Scottish Education Department in this curious phrase:
"It would be wrong to stipulate that a significant proportion of senior posts should be reserved for members of the Inspectorate…regardless of merit."
It seems to me that that is an evasive answer. No one at any time, in the Fulton Report or elsewhere, has suggested that experts and scientists should be promoted regardless of merit. The crunch of the argument is that they should have equal opportunity of promotion on their merit.
Not for one moment do I wish to cast any aspersion on the present holders of administrative posts in Scotland, or some recent ones who have not been officers in the technical branches. Scotland has been, and is being, well served by these distinguished servants of the Crown, and, indeed, "amateur" is the last word that we in Scotland should wish to apply to them. What I want to point out, however, is that Scotland was equally well served when the Departments contained a large element of what the Fulton Report calls "scientists, engineers and specialists".
Accordingly, I welcome the proposal for a single unified grading structure whereby it will be possible for those specialists who have the ability to get right up to the top. This has another advantage. My own experience of the Civil Service is chiefly through science. I have noticed that not a few of the "generalist" civil servants do not use their scientists properly. Very seldom is the scientist at the point of decision. He may be consulted before, but he is seldom even on the doormat when the crucial decisions are taken.
Very few generalists are competent to interpret to the Minister the advice of the scientists. With the best will in the world, they put a slant on it. Occasionally, their mind on policy having already been made up, the scientific advice which supports that policy is blown-up to bolster it, while inconvenient facts are quietly suppressed. The noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, has spoken of the need for senior civil servants to call the bluff of the scientist. I submit that the civil servant who best can do this is the one who is himself a scientist in his own
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right; that is to say, a scientist of the standard of Ph.D.
I direct your Lordships' attention to the position of accountants in the Civil Service, which this Report reveals in Appendix D. In the entire Civil Service there are posts for only 309 qualified accountants out of the 25,000 who make up the profession in this country. Of these Government accountants, not one carries a salary above £4,500. With the vast increase in expenditure by the public sector, common sense decrees that if industry and commerce find that accountants make good managing directors, surely the profession has something to offer to Government—something more than they are allowed to give under the existing system.
In the future, those scientists who will make the greatest contribution to the State in administration will have gained a postgraduate degree. Already in industry it is commonplace for the Ph.D. to gel right up to the top of his firm, particularly in the science-based industries; and I feel that much the same holds good for other specialists and experts. They will have to have some post-graduate experience before coming into the Civil Service, so they may well be aged 30 or so before they come in. They must be encouraged to do this if we are to get the scientists and the experts with the best brains. Thus we must make the highest echelons open to such persons, with a full career in the Civil Service, because then it becomes attractive to them and, in consequence, much better men will be recruited.
8.1 p.m.
LORD PILKINGTON: My Lords, I welcome this debate wholeheartedly. I had decided the lines I thought I would be following, but the debate so far—and particularly the three most re mark-able maiden speeches—has changed quite considerably the tone and content of what I had intended to say. I should like to join in the very warm tributes to three people whom I have known for a long time and who I hope will, and indeed must, give of their wisdom to this House on many future occasions—occasions which are not necessarily specialist but which are perhaps outside their own particular specialisations.
My Lords, I have never been a civil servant. To that extent I think I am almost unique among those who have

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spoken so far to-day. But for a continuous period of over a quarter of a century I have worked with, or for, at least six Government Departments at one time or another, and with three of them at least I have had particularly close contact for continuous periods of ten years. I started with the proper disrespect for anything bureaucratic—in other words, for the Civil Service—but long ago I changed my mind. I have in that time formed a very high respect indeed for almost all those senior civil servants, and very many less senior, whom I have come to know. Almost always that respect has continued to grow with increasing experience. This respect has applied, it goes without saying, to their unquestionable integrity and very high sense of disinterested purpose and duty—those qualities for which our Service is famous and admired throughout the world. It has also applied to the less widely appreciated qualities of imagination and initiative, and the willingness to listen to advice from outside, which is sometimes good and sometimes not, and to weigh it accordingly.
Few people from outside the Civil Service have the opportunity of appreciating how much talent and ability and devotion and hard work there is to be found in that Service. I am delighted, therefore, to pay my tribute to the men and women in that Service, to whom our country owes so much. They and their forebears have made the Service in the past and, under a changed structure, will make it even better in the future.
Just as in every growing company or activity in the private sector with which I have ever been connected, the system and organisation have never changed or evolved as fast as events required. I believe that despite the failings which are being so mercilessly exposed to-day, there is in this Report a great deal that is going to be valuable in future evolution. The Report looks forward, but it is in many ways a pity that it chooses also to look back in order to draw lessons from the past. I think it identifies some real organisational weaknesses which were not fully recognised before by some of us. I think that in some cases at least it pinpoints the right solution.
My Lords, the central recommendations are of course the key to the whole Report, and I believe they are right. For
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example, a new grading structure and the separation of the management of the Civil Service from the Treasury, with the absorption into the new Department of the Civil Service Commission. But there are a few particular aspects which of course need further thought, and, as with most people, the first one is professionalism. By inclination I am an amateur, which I count a word of praise and not of disrespect. But I am absolutely convinced and have frequently preached that the day of the gifted amateur in most competitive walks of life is, and must be, over. Competition is too strong. The amateur really cannot win unless he adopts a professional attitude alongside his colleagues, and the young man must have a professional attitude if he is to get to the top of the tree.
My Lords, what is the profession about which we are talking? I have been chairman of half-a-dozen or more Government Committees, some of them very important ones indeed. I think there was only one thing common to them all, and that is that I did not know anything at all about the subject of reference of any one of those Committees. That must mean that I was not chosen as a professional in those spheres of life, about which I knew nothing, but that I was chosen because I had some varied attributes which might make me perhaps to some degree a professional in handling a committee of inquiry appointed by the Government. It is particularly in management, which was for long not thought to require anything more than a flair, that objective training in modern methods and the use of modern tools and a high degree of continuity in the field of application is generally thought to be needed. Just as elsewhere, even the most talented people will be able to make the most of their talents only if the career system under which they work encourages and indeed requires a professional attitude to the particular job they are trying to do. The tasks of the Civil Service and their responsibilities are not merely incomparably greater than they were one hundred years ago; in many respects they are different, and so are the openings available to those who otherwise would have gone into the Civil Service as one of the few select professions available. So it would be extraordinary if the same generalised approach throughout the Service could possibly serve now.

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But it is not merely that. It is, I think, that in almost every task in life there is so much more sophisticated knowledge to be acquired than there used to be that only those who have really delved deep can hold their own with others of their own generation. The skills and judgment that experience has taught my generation and earlier generations have nowadays often to be acquired more quickly by the managers of to-morrow by deliberate training and by deliberate career management. But I do not nearly so fully equate an administrator with a manager as the Report does. I feel sure that Permanent Secretaries, and those who who are on the path that leads to their becoming Permanent Secretaries of Government Departments, require a combination of personal qualities, including human qualities, that make this a quite different profession from that of management.
I have looked at the division suggested between two groups of administrators, or even of managers: on the one hand, economic and financial; and, on the other, social. I am not happy about that. I think that a better division might be rather economic and financial, on the one hand, and social and financial (also financial), on the other. Thinkers can be economists or social scientists; but questions of how much money and how it is to be obtained, and what are the remoter financial implications of any course of action, apply with equal force both to the economic and social areas of life. Both have to be faced equally by administrators or by the managers responsible within their own groups.
My Lords, my next point refers to the question of accountable management by objectives, as it is now known in the whole of industry—even though it is fairly new and, as the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton said, was first pressed upon us in industry (as is often enough the case) by Government Departments and from within the Civil Service. It involves the creation of identifiable profit centres and of making management accountable both for devising the objectives and assessing the cost and for reaching it. In any business, there is some area of activity that it is difficult to make accountable or to assess. But there are quite a number of others where it pays great dividends to spend more on paying
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experts and accountants in order to achieve results.
This is not new. If I may I will give one example from my own experience. It was the first Government Committee that I was asked to undertake. It was the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, who was kind enough to suggest that I might be the person to do it and it related to the cost of school buildings, which at that time was assumed by those responsible for housing to be extremely extravagant. The implication was that houses could be built in greater quantity, and quickly if the Ministry of Education were prevented from wasting so much money on building schools. I, knowing nothing about that, was asked to look at it.
I found in that particular case that the Ministry of Education, seeing what was coming, had set up a professional department (calling it the Architects and Buildings Branch) which had an accountant, an architect and an administrator at the head. They had set up this branch in order to provide yardsticks for school building. The result was that for both primary and secondary schools the cost per place, which was one of the yardsticks, was reduced in the space of about two years by 40 per cent.; and a further result was that the schools came out better and not worse than the ones that were more expensive but not organised.
In any business, in order to achieve these economies, it is necessary to spend more on management training and instruction, on teaching the new techniques of management and on sufficient management accountancy—and this means accountants, modern management accountants. The one set of figures in the Report that rather shocked me was that relating to accountants, and in particular to their numbers. I strongly support the recommendations about the upgrading in numbers, quality, status and pay of accountants of the right typos.
My Lords, I should like to turn far a moment to the question of hiving-off—not the hiving-off of the planning officer, where I agree absolutely with those speakers who think it wrong—but the hiving-off of parts of Departments to public boards. I know that if a business or part of a business gets too large and

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outgrows the existing management then every so often hiving-off parts to a separate profit centre must be undertaken. Every department, like every business and every department of every business, gets too big for centralised management. The real test must be efficiency. To me, this hiving-off to public bodies makes sense, but I hope that when it takes place it will be in areas of activity where results will be quantified and where management by objectives can take place.
In beekeeping, a swarm is hived-off to make a new colony in order to produce more and not less honey or profit for the farmer. Moreover, very often the new colony is not established adjacent to the old one. I should like to urge that there should still be continuous effort to decentralise from Whitehall, not merely just to St. Andrew's House, to Belfast or to Cardiff, but to other parts of England, too. This is not a plea for more regional government. It is to enable people at the centre to be continuously and instinctively aware of the consequences of proposed actions and likely reactions well away from London.
During the last 25 years the Civil Service has had one valuable but diminishing legacy to which both the noble Lord, Lord Helsby, and the noble Lord, Lord Sinclair of Cleeve, made reference. During the last war a large number of very talented people, a number of whom have spoken to-day, entered the Service as temporary civil servants. A considerable number of them were from industry. Since most of those were, inevitably, not among the youngest of our nation, most of them after returning at the end of the war to their normal vocation, have now already reached, or are reaching, the age of retirement. The intimate personal knowledge which these temporary civil servants obtained of the methods of operation of the Civil Service is no longer available to industry in the same degree.
Similarly, the civil servants themselves have to find other ways of creating and deepening their contacts with individuals in industry to whom they may turn with the confidence and certainty that their problems and their approaches are understood. It seems to me to be vital that the knowledge of the outside
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world of the Service and that of the Service of the outside world, should be deep and not superficial; and that mutual respect should continue to grow on the basis of that knowledge, so that people in the Service will know where to go for advice and that both industry and the Civil Service shall have a feeling of the world in which each other lives.
This problem is touched upon in the Report. I think there are some suggestions there that may bear this indirect fruit. It has always seemed to me that Ministers and Members of Parliament collectively have the pulse of the whole country. The Civil Service, I think, has it rather less; we in private industry, I think, have it considerably less. I hope especially therefore that the new Civil Service College, if it is set up, will either have satellite establishments in the heart of agricultural or industrial counties or, and much preferably, will organise some of its longer courses on the sandwich principle, and preferably the thin sandwich principle, so that the knowledge acquired can be tested in uncloistered surroundings. Otherwise I fear that the Civil Service College will in due course become cloistered. And if that were to happen, we should be better without it.
My Lords, my last real point relates to the question of public confidence, although I feel that the suggestion that public confidence has been undermined by this Report has been overstated. I do not believe that Reports affect confidence very much. It is actions, and sometimes quite small, well-meaning, but misjudged actions, that can affect it far more; and I would rather play down the fears which have been so widely expressed this afternoon. May I recall to the attention of your Lordships some very wise words, written at the conclusion of the Crichel Down affair 14 years ago, at a time when confidence between the public and the Civil Service was threatened for, I think, the only time since the war. The words were written by a former civil servant, Sir John Woods, who acted as Chairman of a small Committee which was thought up by the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, who is to speak later. This Committee reported to the Prime Minister in July 1954, before even its appointment was ever announced.

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The number of the Report is Cmnd. Paper 9220 and the important paragraph is number 3:
"There is no defined set of rules by which the confidence of the public in the administration of Government Departments can be secured and held. Incorruptibility and efficiency are two obvious requirements. In the present case, corruption has not been in question and inefficiency has. Beyond that it is difficult to particularise. But the present case seems to us to emphasise one further factor which may be listed as self-evident, but which we regard with the highest importance. In present time the interests of the private citizens are affected to a great extent by the actions of civil servants. It is the more necessary for civil servants to bear constantly in mind that the citizen has the right to expect not only that his affairs will be dealt with effectively and expeditiously but also that his personal feelings, no less than his right as an individual, will be sympathetically and fairly considered. We think that the admitted shortcomings in this respect are the main cause of such loss of public confidence as resulted from the present case."
My Lords, that is still true, and with the growth of public expenditure and inevitable intervention it is perhaps even more necessary than it was in 1954; and this must not be lost sight of in any reform. Public confidence is part of the heritage which must be preserved, along with a reputation for integrity and for disinterested devotion to duty that we entirely take for granted.
8.24 p.m.
LORD PLOWDEN: My Lords, first I should like to pay my tribute to the speakers who made their maiden speeches this afternoon. The excellent objectivity of those speeches is an indication of the kind of contribution we may expect from them in future. We are all indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, and to his colleagues for the industry with which they have gathered together so much information about the Civil Service in the course of their work. The Report says many things about the Administrative Class on which the whole tone of the Civil Service depends. Some are complimentary, some the reverse, but there can be no doubt at all about the impression conveyed, and quite clearly intended to be conveyed, by the first chapter; that the Administrative Class is a class of amateurs; that its members are incompetent as managers; that they are out of touch with the community, and that when they employ professionals they do not give them proper responsibilities or opportunities or authority.
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My Lords, to one who for nearly thirty years has had close contact with the Civil Service, as a temporary civil servant in war and in peace, as a chairman of a public corporation and as an industrialist, the Service described in Chapter 1 is unrecognisable. The picture is untrue and unfair. It seemed so to the noble Lord, Lord Simey, with whose reservation I fully agree. The chapter is unworthy of a document of such importance and of the distinguished men who constituted the Committee. It is hard to understand how they could have brought themselves to sign it. Of course, all organisations can be improved, and large organisations, such as the Civil Service, have many things which the Civil Service itself recognises need improvement and change. But I think the Report misses the opportunity of defining the kind of Civil Service which is going to be necessary in the 1970's and beyond for two reasons: first, from a basic error of analysis, and second, from a weakness due to its terms of reference.
The basic error of analysis is tint the members of the Committee appear to see the Civil Service as something apart from the political life of the country which is embodied in Parliament and in Ministers. In their summary of recommendations they say that the Service is there to serve the community, and they give the impression that men of good will can find out in some objective manner what the community really needs and that objective tests can be found which will measure performance against those needs. They thus try to establish in the mind of the reader a comparison with the world of industry. But in industry the objective test is the market. The political community has to express its demands through Parliament, and the nearest we can get to an objective test is the result of the next election.
The Committee seem to want a Civil Service of philosopher kings who will run the country rather as the Indian Civil Service ran India before independence. But they are to be economists and sociological kings, held together by a kind of Fawley Agreement, with all jobs interchangeable and payment by results. The Report takes as its guiding principle that the nature of the job should first be determined and that the job should then be

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done by the man most qualified. But in its emphasis on management and on professionalism, which is largely equated with vocational training, it has failed to define the job. The most important part of the job, my Lords, is the service of Ministers who have to justify themselves to the public and to Parliament.
The Committee admires the independence of the French higher Civil Service; but that Civil Service was developed in a long period of weak, intermittent Parliamentary control. Indeed, it is a service which really is one of élitism carried to the extreme—none the worse for that, but something which the Report condemns in this country. It also speaks with approval of the publicity with which the work of the Swedish officials is carried out. But in Sweden, as the Report makes clear in its Appendix, there is virtually no Parliamentary control over a very wide range of activities which in this country are handled by Government Departments and Ministers have to answer to Parliament for them.
This leads on to the suggestion that civil servants in this country should develop more freedom, and particularly that they should be allowed to speak on matters of policy even at the risk of seeming to disagree with their Ministers. Thus, much of what is said appears to me to be a plea for a different kind of political system. Why do Ministers and officials agree that the latter should not speak on matters of policy? It is because they know that Parliament will seize on any opportunity, any indication of difference between officials and Ministers, so that they may embarrass the Government of the day.
Consider again the question of business efficiency. The essence of business efficiency is the ability to discriminate between individual cases; to choose the more popular or more efficient method. But a great deal of the work of civil servants arises because of the need to administer the Government machine in a way that will seem fair to the public. The noble Lord, Lord Pilkington, has just drawn our attention to a quotation from a Report by eminent civil servants making this very point. A member of the public who feels that he has been badly or unfairly treated can complain
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to his Member of Parliament, who then takes up the case with the Minister; and if the Member is dissatisfied with the Answer he gets, in an extreme case the whole matter can be debated on the Adjournment of the House. Rightly or wrongly, the only acceptable defence of what has been done is that it was fair between individuals; not that it was the cheapest or the most efficient way to do it. The appearance of slowness, of sticking to precedents, in keeping the files straight, and many of the other things that go under the general heading of "red tape", is all an expression, not of the incompetence and rigidity of the Civil Service, but of what our democracy requires from its democratic institutions.
Of course, my Lords, there are great areas of Governmental work which are mainly of a business kind and where management in the business sense is required. This was recognised long ago in the setting up of the Coal Board, Electricity Boards, the Air Line Corporations and so on. The Report makes only a passing reference to the possibility of hiving off new fields of this kind to existing areas, because the Committee considered the reorganisation of the structure of government to be outside their terms of reference.
It is unfortunate, however, that the members of the Committee do not seem to have drawn in their own minds, and applied to their own conclusions, the basic distinction that I have been trying to bring out between management by some agreed and objectively determinable criteria and management when the direct responsibility is to satisfy Ministers and Members of Parliament who are constantly trying to see into the future in terms of votes and elections. I do not mean that Ministers, Parliament and the electorate are indifferent to such things as efficiency and good management. Of course they are not. These are factors that have to be taken into account. But they are only two of a large number of factors which have to be weighed up by political leaders, mixed up with others of a very different kind—fairness, prestige, local or national prejudice, the emotional appeal of a particularly distressing case or area, and so on.
What then, my Lords, is the most important quality needed by the civil servant who has to administer a Department

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and advise a Minister? The essential quality, I would submit, is that of judgment. The quality of judgment, while it cannot in the last resort be defined, except in terms of itself—you either have it, or you do not have it—requires a mind which is both wide-ranging and exact, and a great deal of experience, which will enable the individual concerned both to identify all the relevant considerations and to weigh them properly in his own mind.
I believe that our present Civil Service has in this respect done extremely well, by the combination of choosing the best brains and subjecting them to training on the job. The problems of government are complex, and are increasingly so. Therefore, the first aim in recruitment of administrators must be to try to attract young men and women of the highest intellectual quality. The good candidate who has read a "relevant" subject should be acceptable without the need for any bias in the selection procedure. To give a positive advantage in terms of marks would, I submit, facilitate the entry of those who might fall short of the intellectual quality that the job demands. Specialised knowledge soon becomes outdated; it is no substitute for basic ability.
LORD SHACKLETON: If I may interrupt the noble Lord, I think he used the words, a "candidate who has read a relevant subject". I wonder what he would say is an irrelevant subject. I am not sure whether he is not going a long way to agree with the Fulton Report on this. I am just interested.
LORD PLOWDEN: I do not think so. For "relevant" I have taken the definition given in the Report. I cannot quote the actual paragraph, but there are a number of subjects which are described under the shorthand equivalent for "relevant". What I was trying to say was that if any candidate takes one of the subjects described as "relevant", and is good enough, he will obviously get into the Civil Service, and I think it would be wrong to give any bias in the way of extra marks in favour of people studying those subjects. What I was making clear was that the Civil Service requires young men and women of the highest intellectual quality. Preference for "relevance" would, I believe, almost certainly deter from applying many of the able candi-
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dates who have studied "irrelevant"—or perhaps I should say "not relevant"— subjects, and who would feel that they were unfairly handicapped.
Most of the young men and women who enter university do so without any clear view of their future careers. There is a strong tendency for young people to continue with the subject in which they do well at school. If, therefore, tie Civil Service is to be recruited largely from graduates who have read "relevant" subjects, it is, I submit, likely to force some young people to specialise while still at school—something which is quite contrary to advanced educational thought. And, even more dangerous, it will reduce the size of the field of candidates applying at a time whop the Service needs to attract as much talent as it can. Therefore, I suggest that this preference for relevance is something that should be strongly resisted, and I am happy to find myself in the good company of a minority of the Committee. I was happy, also, to hear that the noble Lords, Lord Snow and Lord Robbins, take this view, because they are much better qualified to express it than I am.
I am also strengthened in this field by the experience in my own company, which is highly orientated towards technology. Over the past five years we have recruited over 500 graduates, of whom about one quarter were Arts graduates. This greatly widened the field from which we were able to choose. I think exactly the same applies in the Civil Service.
There are many points that I should like to make on the detailed recommendations, but I will confine myself to four. I agree with the unanimous recommendation of the Committee that in future as many as possible of the administrators should be numerate, which I take to mean being reasonably at home in applied mathematics and in the nature, usage and limitations of statistics. This, more than anything else, would help them to understand the basis of the advice which they should get, and I hope will get, from specialists. The Report alleges that there is now a bias in favour of what it calls "the amateur". The remedy proposed is that there should in future be a real bias in favour of the recruitment of particular kinds of specialists. But I am sure that it would be quite

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disastrous for administrators to think of themselves as engineers, economists or sociologists. This would be to substitute a real bias to remedy a fancied one. I think also that the Report is right in saying that civil servants are moved about too frequently and that they should stay longer in their jobs. They should certainly stay in a post not only long enough to learn about its complexities but long enough to apply this knowledge to the job itself for a reasonable length of time.
I support the Report in its recommendation that there should be a unified career structure, although I share some of the apprehensions of the noble Lord, Lord Crook. I do not think that this would greatly alter the kind of people who become administrators. As was pointed out earlier this afternoon, movement is already much more free than the Report suggests. I think the figure is that at the beginning of 1967 rather more than 38 per cent. of the Administrative Class, including five Permanent Secretaries, started in other classes of the Service. But this unified structure would make it easier for specialists who turn out to be good administrators to move into the management side. When it comes to the point, I doubt whether a great many of the best specialists would wish to make such a move; but nearly all of them, as they reach responsible positions in their own field, would welcome, and should have, more active participation in the making of general policy decisions where their interests and skills are concerned.
In this connection, I was much struck by the Report of the Working Group on the "Brain-Drain", who recommended that industry should make much greater use of the scientific career ladder to ensure that talented technologists and scientists should be able to rise to the top in their own disciplines and not have to transfer to general management early in their careers because that is the only way in order to go up. I am sure that this was correct in the case of British industry, and I believe that if that recommendation were adopted by the Civil Service it would make the Service a happier place for specialists and would improve its decision-making.
My last point concerns the structure of Government. Civil servants have a double
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responsibility: to the particular job which they are doing, and to the Government and the nation; that is, to the job in its context of national policy. The Fulton Report tends to concentrate on the first of these and proposes changes which, as members of the Committee see it, would make the administration of Departments more efficient, so that each job taken alone is done better. But I think that positive policy planning and adequate advice to Ministers on general trends is a field in which Whitehall is weak; I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, on this point. More attention should be given to the machinery for doing this and to the resources needed, in men and women with time to think, if it is to be better done.
The suggestion in the Report that there should be a unit for policy planning in each major Department, and that the brightest of the younger people should work there, is part of the solution, and I welcome it. But I am quite sure that the head of such a unit should not have the almost independent position in relation to his Permanent Secretary which the Fulton Report recommends. It is neither desirable nor workable. In my own experience, Permanent Secretaries do not suppress unconventional ideas coming up to them; nor do they settle all-important matters closeted alone with their Ministers. Quite the worst thing for efficiency and morale is to have any suspicion of ministerial favourites, with conversations taking place which never reach the ears of those whose work is involved. Individual policy planners, I believe, should be co-ordinated more effectively than is done now. The Treasury and the Foreign Office have some responsibility for co-ordination in their own fields, and this I believe should remain.
But the Cabinet Office is the only part of Whitehall which is truly impartial and has direct responsibility to the Cabinet as a whole. I believe that it could, and should, fulfil this all-comprehensive role. But if it is to do so it would need more staff than it has at present, and with longer periods of service. For two years, which is the present norm, gives time to learn the job, but is not long enough to do it. If the Service is to achieve the objectives laid down for it—more training, civil servants' remaining longer in the job, better performance—I am quite

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sure that it must have some margin in numbers: either more people or less work for the same numbers, and I would sincerely hope the latter. At present the senior ranks are grossly overworked.
I have been critical of the Report because I believe that the Committee have missed a great opportunity. This I consider was partly because they misunderstood the relationship of the Civil Service to the political environment in which it has its being, but equally because their terms of reference precluded them from considering the whole structure of government without which a proper understanding of the Civil Service the country needs is impossible. In conclusion, my Lords, I want to welcome the appointments of Sir William Armstrong and the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, as the First Permanent Secretary and the first Minister of the new Department. We can be quite sure that the changes that have to be made, and which the Civil Service knows have to be made, will be done under these two men with wisdom, sympathy and objectivity.
8.48 p.m.
LORD FULTON: My Lords, I subscribe to the doctrine recently expressed in this House by the noble Lord, Lord Shawcross, that an occasions such as this the Chairman of the Committee does not put himself forward as the advocate of the Committee's Report. This imposes a restraint on him and his colleagues if they are Members of the House—a double restraint. In the first place, one should not pursue the argument where it goes, however seductively the ground-bait is laid, particularly as it was in the maiden speeches to which we listened with such pleasure this afternoon. I think one can cope with that aspect of the matter. It is more difficult, and requires a greater measure of restraint, not to pursue points where one suspects that the Report. has been misread or misunderstood, or even where what it has said has plainly been forgotten. But I propose at this late hour, if for no other reason, to consult the comfort of the House and not to take up points which, however interesting, have emerged in the course of this debate to-day.
I should, however, like to say on behalf, I am sure, of my colleagues as well as myself, how much I am indebted to
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the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, not only for his own comments, which are based on a very wide experience of government, local as vied as national, in this country, but also for providing the occasion when so much that is instructive and useful has been added to the discussion in our Report on the future of the Civil Service.
Let me say first of all that all the members of the Committee were greatly encouraged by the decision of the Government to accept the main recommendations of the Report, and in particular those about the establishment of a Civil Service Department, the open structure, and the Civil Service College. We were naturally greatly pleased that our suggestion had been accepted, that the Prime Minister should retain his present responsibilities with regard to the Civil Service, and we were pleased by the appointment of the noble Lord the Leader of the House as the Minister in charge of the new Department The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has great and relevant experience of administration to bring to bear on his new work, and we think it is everyone's good fortune that Sir William Armstrong should have been chosen to be the first Permanent Head of the new Department. Taken together, these are most auspicious beginnings and offer a guarantee that the tasks ahead will be pursued with wisdom and effectiveness.
Our Report was never seen by us as a blueprint. It will obviously need creative interpretation. I am sure that its future is now under the control of those whose handling of their responsibilities will constitute an important chapter in the history of our public life.
I expect that I should say a few words about Chapter I, particularly in view of the regrettable and enforced absence from the debate, through illness, of the noble Lord, Lord Simey. He would no doubt have made clear in his speech, as he did in his dissenting note to Chapter I, that the contents of that chapter will for long be a matter of some dispute. All that I think I should say now is that we studied a great mass of evidence, written and oral, over two and a half years; that we considered carefully what we should say, and that, despite Lord Simey's arguments, we wrote Chapter I as we did. I would only ask that it should be read in the context

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of the Report as a whole, with an eye to the evidence that has been published, especially the contents of Volume 2, in the light of our appreciation of the virtues of the Civil Service (which is contained in Chapter I and elsewhere), and that individuals should then form their own judgments. I would add, too, a plea which I think is almost certainly superfluous: that whatever verdicts are reached by individuals about Chapter I, our recommendations should be examined on their merits as a basis of changes that have become necessary if one looks, as we felt obliged to look, to a period ahead of not less than a quarter of a century.
I said that I would not take up particular criticisms made in the Press or in other discussions that have taken place before to-day. But one line of criticism seems to me to raise an issue of general importance and to deserve a comment. It has been said that this is a "with it" report—and there have been echoes of that sentiment in this House this afternoon; that it borrowed slogans; that it borrowed stereotypes; that it borrowed ideas currently in the Press seven years ago; that it has collected the contemporary gimmicks and expedients and applied them to the Civil Service. Such a complaint is not an uncommon one these days. As a dialectical technique it has its points, and I am afraid that we too often use it. For instance, to dispose of the stirrings of the young, and their proposals for altering the present order of things, we describe their suggested remedies as "gimmicks" and think that we have disposed of the matter. But as a form of argument it neglects to take account of the existence of the formidable problems which face us, as the noble Lord, Lord Pilkington, has so eloquently stated, and which insistently demand solutions.
We cannot evade the reality of the large, deep issues which face contemporary man and society—issues of an intractability unknown in human experience. The world has never had to cope with problems of administration under the pressure of a rate of change comparable with that of to-day, and it is an accelerating rate of change all the time. To give pejorative names to various means suggested for meeting this situation is not to dispose of the problem itself. It is there, and it must be faced. We must be substantially ahead of our times
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or we shall be found to be far behind them.
It may then legitimately be asked: what are the proposals in the Report that are relevant to the solution of this problem of not being out-distanced by change? At this point I must absolve my colleagues of any knowledge of, or responsibility for, what I am about to say. For myself I would venture to prophesy that the part of the Report which will do most to help the Civil Service to face the tasks falling to it in our fast-changing society over the decades ahead is the proposal for an open structure. It has been called a mere expedient, albeit a neat one, to abolish the 47 general classes and the 1,400 special departmental classes now composing the Civil Service, by substituting for them one single class. Rather than calling it an expedient I would choose to regard the open structure as fundamental to the development of our thinking over these two and a half years, and I believe that in ten years' time it will be seen to be so.
A great deal can be said about it. I am glad that it has the blessing of the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, but I will emphasise to-night only one main ground for holding this view. Most simply, it will remedy the rigidities which stand in the way of using to the best advantage all the diverse talents that are needed to solve the problems that are with us now and that lie ahead, and to solve them in time before change again overtakes us and makes the solutions obsolete.
We are not at present using our specialists—notably, for example, our scientists and our engineers, as well as they could be used. We found that to be incontrovertible. They have a contribution of their own to make within the Public Service, in meeting changes of which they have a special kind of understanding. Our proposal for the open structure is designed to remove legacies from the past which prevent us from drawing strength from these and other comparable insights and skills. For the same reason, we have not been able to draw the best out of our younger age groups. We simply cannot afford not to use youth to prepare for the next stage. They discern and understand what that stage is likely to be for only a short time themselves before they too I become outdated. I would say, from

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another experience, that the Vice-Chancellor of a University who, in 1963, thought himself, or was thought to be avant garde, is a fortunate man if by 1968, he can lay claim legitimately to that title any longer. We shall neglect these needs to deal with the problems of change at our peril.
That is why I, for my part believed, and I believe it still more now, that we were right to recommend the abolition of all artificial divisions, the vertical divisions, which separate different groups of experts from one another, as well as the horizontal ones, which impose an outdated and wasteful hierarchy, made outdated by social and educational change. Of course, we have been warned of the great difficulties that stand in the way of this reform. These difficulties undoubtedly exist, and I am sure they will cause trouble, but modern management disposes of the techniques and the tools to overcome them. We would indeed be shortsighted to refuse ourselves access to remedies because we are unwilling to use the tools which could bring them about, and thus ro release powers waiting to be used.
My Lords, I am in danger of doing what I asked should not be done: to emphasise one aspect of our Report and findings and thereby to distort what we hoped would be a coherent and balanced set of proposals to answer our own questions. These were: what sort of people should civil servants be in the future? How should they be educated, trained and developed in their early years? How can a structure be devised that will enable their work to be organised flexibly, as changing needs require, and foster the full development of talent of every kind? I was myself reinforced in my view of the desirability of the open structure, that it did involve job evaluation. I know that that is a term of art, but inherent in it is the possibility of building permanently into the fabric and habits of mind of the Service as a whole a system of self-evaluation and self-adaptation, which is already present but greatly needs to be reinforced if our present and our future needs are to be met.
My Lords, I have said elsewhere—and I should like to repeat here to-night— that in the course of our work our conviction grew that there are vast numbers of civil servants, of every rank, whose
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strong desire is to serve the public with efficiency and humanity, to serve the Government elected by the people, and to promote through their work the basic aims and objectives of the nation. Our task was to suggest means by which they would be helped to do these things. We believe, as we said in our final paragraph:
"We have seen that the Service has men and women with the ability, vision and ent lusiasm needed to carry our proposals through to success ".
That is our tribute to the past, as well as our salute to the future.
9.5 p.m.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: My Lords, I am sorry I had to leave your Lordships' House after the admirable maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp—I returned only a couple of hours ago, after an unavoidable public ceremony. I apologise to those noble Lords whose speeches I have missed. I shall read them to-morrow.
Having been a civil servant for 28 years, I welcome the boldly written Report of the noble Lord, Lord Fulton and his colleagues, a Report which one might expect from someone who was once an Exhibitioner at Balliol. It was a former Master of Balliol, Doctor Benjamin Jowett, who was a member of the Northcote-Trevelyan Committee over a century earlier, and reading both Reports together, one can detect a certain continuity of thought.
There are only two points on which I wish to comment, and both are concerned with the costs involved in the implementation of the Report. The first is the adoption of a single salary scale. It has many advantages, but the result may well be an unexpected and alarming it crease in the Government's salary bill. A similar step was taken recently in Israel. The single salary scale looked all right on paper. They first carried out a job analysis; all civil servants doing work requiring similar skills should receive similar wages. But when the individual civil servants were fitted into the new scales, the civil service associations exerted such pressure that each civil servant who entered the new scales came in at least one grade higher, and sometimes more. The final additional bill i was very much higher than that expected.

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On page 78 of the Report, the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, and his Committee, propose further careful inquiry before carrying the proposals into effect. I hope that the additional cost of a single salary scale will be carefully calculated before the proposals are implemented.
If the increased cost is unacceptable there is an alternative way of unifying the Civil Service. All you have to do is to throw open the top positions to everyone in any scale without necessarily integrating the scales. It merely means abandoning the idea that no one can give orders to anyone paid more than himself. There are already cases of highly paid specialists working under the direction of less well paid generalists. Why not make this a common practice? In any case, it is difficult to fit some professionals into a single scale. For example, doctors, who require long years of training, come in much later than the ordinary B.A.s. They need higher initial salaries but smaller promotion steps later.
The second point also deals with costs. I do not see any provision in the Report for curbing the constant expansion of the Civil Service. More civil servants are constantly being added to carry out the additional duties imposed by new legislation. But little attention is paid in the Report to the need for the continuous pruning of existing establishments. For example, a loophole is discovered in the regulations of some departments, and that loophole is used by a large number of people. The gap is closed by legislation, and staff are appointed to enforce it. A great deal of work is involved at first, but gradually the public realise that the loophole is no longer available, and the work dies down. But the staff continues to be employed, in case the work rises again, and the result is that many civil servants are underemployed.
No department likes to admit that it has more staff than it needs. It is sure that it will need more later, and it takes so much time to get Treasury approval and recruit the staff that the excess staff is kept, even though not fully employed. Of course, a few should be kept to do spot-checks and to make sure that the rat-holes are not used; but it is no use watching all the rat-holes all the time. The rest of the staff should be deployed elsewhere. No machinery exists that I know
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of, or is proposed in the Fulton Report, to carry out this perpetual pruning. There are organisation-and-methods staff employed in nearly all Departments, but they act largely when they are invited. Their job is to make the existing staff more efficient or to replace it by machines, but they are not empowered to recommend the abolition of staff when the work for which the staff was appointed is no longer there. Departments hardly ever agree that the work they do is unnecessary, and it requires much greater aut4ority to battle with departmental heads.
Parliament and the public are increasingly restive at the creeping inflation of the Civil Service. In my opinion, what is needed is a high-powered Commission and an inspectorate, perhaps under the supervision of Parliament itself, to make periodic checks of the work done by every unit, man by man, register by register, form by form. This is already done in the more enterprising businesses. For example, Marks and Spencer, which had 25,000 employees, wanted to reduce their prices, but found that their overheads were increasing. They appointed a top-level committee—an internal committee, not management experts—under the chairmanship of the Chairman of the Board, the late Lord Marks, and they queried everything in the business. They cut out an immense amount of paperwork. It is very interesting that two big firms found different solutions. Lyons were one of the first firms to employ computers, and Marks and Spencer tore everything up. As a result, the latter firm reduced their staff from 25,000 to 20,000, and reduced their prices. They took considerable risks, but those risks were found to be justified.
My Lords, I submit that something of the same vigour is needed in the Civil Service. Many Civil Servants have been sent to study what happened in Marks and Spencer, but I have not noticed any great pruning resulting in the Civil Service; and this subject is not mentioned in Lord Fulton's report. The Fulton Report itself recommends additional staff. For example, it sets out on page 98 the Civil Service College. At least this additional staff should be balanced by equivalent reductions elsewhere. My noble friend the Leader of the House, who is in charge of implementing the

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Fulton Report, will, I hope, see that this is done. He will then have a much easier time in getting the rest of his proposals accepted by Parliament.
9.14 p.m.
LORD BRIDGES: My Lords, may I first of all offer my hearty congratulations to the makers of the three excellent maiden speeches we heard to-day. I must also offer an apology that I had to be absent from the House for part of the debate although I heard all except four or five speeches. I came here meaning to say a lot of things, but I think nearly all of them have been said and I do not need to say them all over again. I would, however, like to mention some of them, perhaps in rather staccato fashion. I admit I came here determined to say something about Chapter 1. As the afternoon went on I hoped it would be unnecessary to say anything. I think I must say, however, that if, in some other capacity, I had been a member of the noble Lord, Lord Fulton's, Committee I would certainly have joined the noble Lord, Lord Simey, in signing his minority report.
The other thing I want to say is that whether it is right or wrong, Chapter I certainly caused a great deal of resentment and ill feeling in the Civil Service. I hope that resentment will be largely, if not entirely, dispelled by the many true and admirable things which have been said in defence of the Civil Service. I will say no more about Chapter 1.
We have heard a great deal about the cult of the amateur, the generalist and all that. We have heard very little about the qualities of this mythical creature. The noble Lord, Lord Bowden, said his chief quality was judgment. Another noble Lord emphasised quite rightly his power of communicating, particularly with Ministers, putting things down shortly and briefly in an understandable way. Another quality, I think, is that of quick analysis. In an appreciation in The Times two days ago of that great public servant the late Alexander Cadogan there was a sentence which throws a little light on this. It said:
"This capacity of his to do the essential minimum in any given situation, to go directly to the Lean of the matter, to the heart of a problem and decide what action was appropriate was perhaps Cadogan's outstanding characteristic."
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I used sometimes to think that the top administrators ought to be described as having the professionalism of the layman because they have a real skill and qualification, although it is not the same as the professionalism of a doctor or a lawyer, a chemist or an engineer, nor have they the same professional qualification as Lord Fulton and his Committee rightly wish should be studied by civil servants.
One point on recruitment. I should like to record my emphatic agreement with those who think that the chief need of the Civil Service is to be able to recruit the ablest people, and it is a mistake to have this preference for relevance This may result in recruiting into the Civil Service some very able people who have not the necessary background. They must be given that background for the particular jobs they are to do by means of courses, but that can be arranged.
May I make a point about the t-aining which is to be given to civil servants on entry into the administrative Civil Service. I gather that they are to be divided into two groups, those who are to study financial and economic matters and those who are to study social background. Whether that is the right division of duties I do not know. But one feature of the scheme I dislike very much. Apparently once a man has been trained as, say, an economist and financier, he will always have to serve in an economic or financial branch either in his own Department or another. If a man is given social training he will always serve in a social branch. That seems to be thoroughly bad. It will make it impossible for anyone to know the work of a Department as a whole; and it will mean that those trained as financiers or in the social side will never be allowed to serve in the same branch as colleagues trained in the type of work.
With regard to the new Civil Service Department, I think I have come to the conclusion it is inevitable, but that it should be recognised that if you set up this Department its relation to the Treasury would be very important, for this reason. You cannot draw a clear line between what you decide to do and how you decide to do it. If you do try to draw a very clear, and logical line, you will get endless troubles and nonsenses between the Treasury and the Civil Service Department.

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I do not quite like the business which is set out in the Report about the rather arm's-length relationship which it is suggested should exist between the Treasury and the new Civil Service Department. Up till now there has been a good deal of healthy communication between the branches of the Treasury which deal with staffing and those which deal with policy. Each saw the Department from a different point of view; and a good deal was got out of that. With respect, I do not think that that problem has been sufficiently thought out. I think it requires further study.
Then I admit to being puzzled about the unified grading structure. Clearly there should be artificial barriers preventing, let us say, scientists or engineers from being promoted to administrative posts in charge of branches dealing with their own speciality; but you cannot have a service in which everybody is freely transferable to any other post. You cannot take a lawyer and put him in charge of a tax inspector's office, and you cannot take a doctor and put him in charge of a research branch in chemistry. In fact, what you really want to do, as I see it, is to remove artificial barriers to the promotion of people in the various specialised ranks to administrative posts, either administrative posts in charge of specialist departments or administrative posts in charge of Departments as a whole. That is a desirable and a right aim. But I do not see what you get out of calling it a single unified structure and trying to reduce the number of grades in the Civil Service to some arbitrary low figure.
I do not think it follows that the organisation of work of the Civil Service in, say, a tax office and a scientific research branch ought to be identical or, indeed, that every aspect of Civil Service work must be organised on the basis of the same number of grades. That may be a matter which I have not understood properly, but I think it needs a good deal further thought; otherwise it might prove to be rather a white elephant. Let it be quite clear that this business of working out a single, unified grading structure may sound nice and simple, but it will be most complicated to do and would probably cost a certain amount of money. Even if you succeeded in setting it up,
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there would be continuous pressures to depart from it.
There is one other point I want to make which, so far as I know, no other noble Lord has mentioned, certainly not while I have been in your Lordships' House. It is the proposal that not more than two eminent outsiders should be appointed to the Committee which is to advise the Prime Minister on senior appointments in the Civil Service. I cannot see any reason for that. Indeed, I should think that it would cause a great deal of trouble.
I would make one final remark. I have not yet paid any tribute to Lord Fulton and his Committee for the enormous amount of work they have done and the material which they have collected and which I am sure will prove the basis of a useful series of reforms. But, with respect, I rather think that their Report would have been easier to handle and more acceptable if it had been directed more to the general aims, the general directions in which the Civil Service should move from now onwards, and to the sort of changes which were required, rather than to trying to work out something which is really like a detailed blueprint for what is an extraordinary big, far-reaching, long-term scheme of reform. I think that a certain number of the criticisms that have been made to-day, with a great many of which I agree, really arise from the Committee not having resisted the temptation to deal in too much detail with such a large and comprehensive organisation as the Civil Service. Perhaps your Lordships think that that is a rather impertinent remark for me to make, but I believe I am the only living person who has served as Secretary to three Royal Commissions.
9.25 p.m.
BARONESS BIRK: My Lords, may I add my congratulations to the three maiden speakers, and also appologise for having had to be out of the Chamber for part of the debate. Having heard—and I shall read to-morrow those that I have missed—the speeches of the very distinguished ex-civil servants who have spoken in the debate to-day, my experience of a short spell as a temporary assistant principal is such a humble one that I think I shall forget it very quickly. And it is as an outsider, rather than as an insider, that I welcome this Report

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with its extraordinarily stimulating turnout of so many traditional cupboards. I welcome it particularly because some of its proposals, especially those for a unified structure, for more short-term appointments in the middle and higher grades, and for a Civil Service College, together with its emphasis on flexibility and mobility, should make it both easier and more attractive for women to go into the Civil Service.
I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, describe the open structure as being, in his opinion, the most important of the recommendations and the one that would cut down rigidity most. The Committee's reference to the Civil Service as a particularly enlightened employer of women, making no ostensible discrimination in pay or prospects, is well justified. This is not mentioned in the main Report, but in paragraph 14 of Volume 2, and all through the Report refers scrupulously to both men and women.
However, what I find surprising is that in considering a modern structure of the Civil Service, which involves social as well as organisational changes, any discussion of the changing pattern of women's working lives has been entirely omitted. To-day 95 per cent. of women can expect to marry, and on the whole they marry younger than they did. Married women comprise nearly two-thirds of the total female labour force, and nearly one-third of university places go to women, and one hopes to see this increase. I understand that when Volume 3 (which includes the survey of students) is published it will show that a larger proportion of undergraduate women than men think of the Public Service as a career, and, further, that in any class or grade in the Service women are better qualified in a formal sense than their male counterparts. The table in Volume 4, Memorandum No. 17, seems to substantiate this if one compares the number of certified appointments with the number of applications. Yet there appears to have been except during the war years, a decline, sometimes absolute and sometimes comparative, in the number of women graduates coming into the Civil Service; and in the higher grades of the administrative class, to-day two-thirds of the women are single.
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I accept completely the difficulty of combining a career in the higher echelons of the Civil Service with a home and children, but I cannot believe that this is the entire answer. I feel that the Civil Service is not selling itself as a career to qualified young women. There is still too much of the "either/or" aura about it. By that I mean that in the old days either women married or, if they went into the Civil Service, it was taken by them and by other people that they would remain single. Secondly, I think that, in spite of the facilities for women to come back to the Civil Service, it is not very easy for them (I will not go into detail as it is well known, I am sure, to everybody here) to get back into the middle and the higher grades; and so far as late entrants are concerned, the present ban on late entry into the Executive Class cuts out women who in increasing numbers to-day are ready to take up a new working life once their careers as wives and mothers are no longer full-time. Many of them have fifteen to twenty years of working life ahead. This is the contemporary working pattern of women's lives to-day, and I feel fiat the unified structure would enable these women to enter the middle grades of the service and would enable a great deal of ability to be utilised that is now lying fallow through lack of opportunity.
In the magazine with which I am associated, we recently carried out a project in order to try to help women who wanted either to retrain in work that they had taken up before marriage, or to find their way back into some other sort of work. The response was extraordinary. It was quite clear that there is a great need in the 30 to 40 age group, sometimes up to 45, but the opportunities are far from sufficient and the availability of information about such opportunities for these women is even worse. Two-thirds of those who wrote to us had been trained in a career, but found it hard to find either a way in again or a way into a different career.
The majority were prepared to train or retrain. They did not expect to go in at the top, and were quite conscious that the gap in their working lives through domesticity would create difficulties and need a great deal of adjustment. But they wanted to do something which had

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some relevance to their ability and competence. Moreover, the fact that they had been engaged in the work of running a home and looking after children meant that they were adaptable and could cope in a practical way. They were very realistic and far more inclined to undervalue rather than to over-value themselves.
In the Government Survey which was carried out in 1965 by the then Ministry of Labour, but which has only recently been published, it was found that more than a fifth of working women and a third of those wanting to return to work were willing to train. Many women want opportunities where they are able to deal with people. We found this and we are not unique in discovering it. There must be considerable scope in the social service departments for mature women to come in and do a very useful job, once they have received some of the necessary training. As the Report points out in Volume 2, legislation creates a great deal of case work both in the industrial and in the social fields.
One of the problems to-day for the woman who wants to return to work, apart from all the other tax, domestic and insurance difficulties, is the shortage of vocational courses. In this respect I feel that the Civil Service College should be able to provide for the mature woman student refresher courses, and a range of residential, day and correspondence courses. This obviously will take some time, but it should be planned for. In order that there should not be too many geographical barriers, it might be possible in future for some of these courses to be undertaken by local authorities, so that a wider range of women would be able to use them.
One of the functions of the Civil Service College would be that of research, and we need to know a great deal more about the possibilities of part-time work. Part-time work is often regarded as a "last ditch", and people adopt a conservative attitude towards it. Although in many jobs it is quite impossible to organise work on a part-time basis, I feel that, with a positive attitude and proper organisation, very much more could be done part-time than is being done at present. Many banks, for example, organise part-time work, on the basis of
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a fortnight on and a fortnight off. Many firms which at first resist part-time work, find, having tried it out, that with teamwork it can succeed. Many women who start in part-time work are able to take up full-time work, once their family commitments allow them to do so.
My Lords, married women form the largest potential reserve of trained labour available to our economy. Therefore, unless they are persuaded, encouraged and helped to return to work, the investment in their education will continue to be a loss in economic terms. In human terms it means that there are a great many frustrated and unhappy women. Bearing in mind the other plans and forward-looking proposals in the Fulton Report, the Civil Service now has the opportunity to give a lead to industry and the professions, in the same way as it has given a lead by setting an admirable example in its policy of equal pay—an example which, unfortunately, has not been universally taken up.
9.35 p.m.
THE EARL OF ARRAN: My Lords, may I be allowed the very briefest of interventions? I have not been able to attend the House for much of this afternoon, and I only dare to speak at all because I like to think, perhaps presumptuously, that I represent the middle class of the Civil Service; indeed, I was a member of it for over 10 years. I refer of course to the Executive grade. To-day, your Lordships have heard speeches from Ambassadors, from Permanent Under-Secretaries, from Treasury chiefs—I have never known such a collection of nabobs. May I now speak as a former cypher clerk who eventually reached the rank of H.E.O. or, perhaps, S.E.O.—I forget which? May I speak, respectfully of course, about my former bosses or super-bosses? In other words, may I speak just about paragraph 192 of the Report and nothing else?
As your Lordships know, that paragraph says that civil servants are at present organised in a large number of separate classes. The Report recommends that classes as such should be abolished. I wholeheartedly agree. If ever there were class distinctions to be found they were, or are, to be found in the Civil Service. I wonder whether your Lordships know of the snobbery based not on birth but on grade which exists, or has existed, in

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the Civil Service, even after the war. I wonder whether your Lordships know of the distinctions between Administrative and Executive grades. I wonder whether your Lordships know what it means to be what is called "below the salt"
I would say from experience, both in the Home Departments and the Foreign Service, that the sooner the ridiculous walls between the grades are pulled down the better it will be. They are purely arbitrary and have nothing to do with merit. A man, possibly from Winchester, passes the examinations and becomes "Admin". He remains "Admin" until his retirement or until he misconducts himself. Next in service are the Executive Officers—the "trogs"—and below them the Clerical class, only they happen to have a union which is quite powerful, and they have to be handled with kid gloves. To listen, as I have listened, to an Ambassador speaking to one of the Consuls in his own territory, or a Principal speaking to a Senior Executive Officer is, or was, an exercise in patronising insult which is in my experience unparalleled.
Finally, there is the Treasury, God bless the Treasury! We never met the Treasury, but they were there all the time ominously controlling our affairs. They were like a "Fleet in Being". They never fired their guns but they were omnipresent. We were told, "The Treasury will not like that", and that was that. Were they good, were they bad, were they clever, were they stupid? We never knew. The country never knew. They were the faceless ones, and they had the power. They still have the power. It is time that we, the people, got to know our lords and masters. It is time that the barriers which divide class from class, grade from grade, were abolished and for ever. It is time that the Civil Service ceased to be a secret service.
Personally, I welcome this Report which presumes to throw a light into our dusty although respectable corners. Knowing that my Balliol tutor, the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, was Chairman of the Committee, I had expected nothing else.
9.40 p.m.
LORD ANNAN: My Lords, I apologise for rising at this late hour, and, particularly, I apologise for having been
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absent during part of the debate for the very same reason as the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, was absent—an unavoidable engagement. I rise for two reasons only. The first is to say that although I cannot claim to speak officially for universities, I am quite sure that universities would be appalled if the majority view on the relevant subjects were adopted as Government policy. I think that there is a very strong feeling in universities about the careers open to talented boys or girls who come in to do history or classics. Indeed, I think the boy who came at the top in the Civil Service examinations this year is an historian. It would be intolerable if such boys and girls, who had made decisions at 18, found themselves in any way handicapped in the later three years. It really would be something that would enrage university opinion; and, whatever the reasons may have been for the majority taking that view, I hope the Government do not follow them.
The second reason I rise is partly in defence of the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, in this way. I was "needled" by the very brilliance of Lord Plowden's speech. I think it was an exceedingly brilliant speech because, while admitting that there were many things with which he agreed in the Report, nevertheless he produced so many instances which came from his great experience of industry and the Civil Service as to why change might in fact not be so desirable as the Report suggests that he made me think: What is being argued here? One of the points he made, for example, was that the Civil Service must have a reputation of fairness with the public—and, of course, one could not agree more. Naturally, this is essential. Yet if one is trying to rationalise the aircraft industry, for example, it is hopeless to try to be fair. Unavoidable decisions have to be taken between one thing and another. Often these decisions are taken mainly on grounds of efficiency, but sometimes it may be on grounds of politics.
When I tried, during this debate, to sum up my own feelings about Chapter I, which has been such a bone of contention, I found myself in agreement with the critics of Chapter I and in sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Simey. But I think that Chapter I was in fact not formulated properly. It is not

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amateurism in the Civil Service which is the vice. You have only to have any experience of the Cabinet offices, of a great range of Civil Service jobs—not necessarily the managerial ones—to realise how expert, how professional is their handling of this kind of business. But what does seem to me to be partly true of the Civil Service is a kind of conservatism with a small "c". This kind of conservatism is endemic in our national life. The universities in which I serve could not, in some ways, be more conservative. You have only to attend a meeting of a university Senate, when changes in academic policy—and major changes—are being discussed, to see how even the most radical of one's colleagues in a national political sense turn out to be the most conservative in terms of the politics of the academy.
This, as I say, is something which has also occurred in industry, though industry is changing, I should like to say, far more quickly than academic life. But in the Civil Service one sometimes detects this reluctance, not to look two years ahead (which it seems to me the Civil Service is brilliant at doing) but to look ten years ahead. If I might just cite some examples of this, the noble Lord, Lord Helsby, in his notable maiden speech, referred to the fact that recruitment to the Civil Service has changed, and that at the time of the Robbins Report it suddenly became apparent that we could no longer recruit a small élite, as it were, from Oxford and Cambridge, and the Executive Class from the grammar school-leavers. With all respect, I thought that that was a prognosis which might have been made a great deal earlier.
Again, turning to the other remarkable maiden speech, that by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, she referred to her apprehensions about the Civil Service College. I, too, have certain apprehensions about this, in that I hope there will not be a dissipation of resources in teaching. I hope that the Civil Service College idea will be geared in with universities and with business schools. Nevertheless, this seems to me to be one of those things which we shall find in ten years is as necessary as, for example, the demand which was made way back in the early 'fifties, that Departments should
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have built into them research units—a scheme which has only in recent years come into being. Much of our administration was handicapped in the 1950s, very largely due to resistance to ideas of this kind. That is the only point that I want to make. Perhaps I can make it more succinctly by saying that although I greatly admired Lord Brooke's formulation of the problem as he saw it and his view of the limitations in the Report, I thought that the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, was more in line with what must be done if we are going to use this Report, which is a great and valuable document, as the springboard for the next ten years.
9.46 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I should like first to thank the number of noble Lords who have put an extra responsibility upon me by indicating a certain amount of trust in my capacity to act as the Minister—the day-to-day Minister, or whatever you may call it—of the new Department. Nor at the moment, if I may say so, am I going to discuss the name of the Department. I think that first it would be right—and I am sure the House would agree that it is not idle praise—to say how very impressed we have been by the three noble Lords who made maiden speeches. I must admit that I was so anxious to hear certain of them that I personally asked them to speak; and I am glad that I persuaded the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, to come to make her maiden speech. It was tremendously impressive, and I really think we are frankly impressed by the civil servants in your Lordships' House—although I shall, in a moment, have something to say which I hope they will not take amiss.
May I say that what impressed me about the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Helsby—a man who comes from the Department which has been particularly criticised, the then head of this great Civil Service—was the restraint and common sense that he put into his speech. His modesty also deeply impressed me. When we come to the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, we know that there has always been a certain mobility both in his thinking and in his career. It was a characteristically stimulating speech. We shall wait to see what he has to say about his Royal

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Commission; but we are very pleased with those features. I think noble Lords may genuinely feel that they have contributed a great deal.
This brings me to the general weight of the contribution of our other civil servant Peers. We are beginning to get very near to those passionate discussions which reach their maximum heights of violence only in academic circles. Perhaps one can call this a "furor consularis" or an "odium bureaucraticum". I apologise for what is really a distasteful, if rather justified, use of monkish Latin. I do not think I have felt quite the same weight of opinion since the debate on the British Museum; and on that occasion I felt that the Trustees were almost representative of some other sovereign country. Indeed, I have been a little concerned about the noble Lord, Lord Annan, who, I was beginning to think, was showing signs of certain conservative—with a small "c" —qualities. I was relieved to find that there are still rebellious elements in him.
I should like to say one thing straight away which I think is important. I would say this specially to the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud. I am quite prepared in my personal experience—and I am sure my colleagues would be also—to repudiate any scurrilous, if that is the word, allegations of any general tendency of the Civil Service to sabotage Ministers. I cannot speak with personal knowledge of particular cases. It is always very difficult to say what sabotage is. It may be that some noble Lords think that the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, has been engaged in sabotage, and there may be occasions where arguments and resistance, in the eyes of some, amount to this. But I am quite sure that every Minister must, and does, accept that the Civil Service serves its masters the Ministers, if I may say so, with a fidelity which occasionally may almost pass all understanding when one thinks of what they are asked to do. I hope, therefore, that I have made the position clear. As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said when challenged with some of these statements, if certain things were going on of a kind which should not be allowed to continue, the Minister in question was not fit to be a Minister. I hope, therefore, that I have got that particular point straight.
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On the other hand, my position is not one which might be described as the defence counsel for Fulton. I admire the restraint of the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, in the face of a certain amount of provocation, because I thought that some noble Lords were a little less than fair and, indeed, that they fell into the very error of which they accused the Fulton Committee itself. The noble Lord, Lord Plowden, whose experience is so very wide, has also moved rapidly. He is the personification of the value of mobility to an even greater extent. I once boasted to him that I had never held a job longer than nine years—whether I shall manage nine years as a Minister is another matter. The noble Lord, Lord Plowden, averaged about six years, and there is, I think, in his person, evidence of the great value of this mobility. He suggested that the Fulton Report encouraged the notion that civil servants should be free to speak in public, even in disagreement with their Ministry. I think that if he looks at the relevant paragraph, which is paragraph 283, he will find that the Committee did not say anything of the kind.
I doubt whether most of us would disagree with the particular proposition contained in that paragraph. It is arguable that certain words or meanings were attached to Fulton, and this brings me to the fascinating subject of preference for relevance. I am going to be exceedingly careful on this. I think it important to make absolutely clear—and I agree with all those noble Lords who said it—that the first requirement for civil servants, and particularly for those who will fulfil the most important or the most difficult roles, is the quality of ability and integrity, however that may be assessed. But I wonder whether we are not making rather heavy weather of the use of the word "relevant". I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Plowden, nearly gave the case for Fulton away by saying that providing people had taken the relevant subjects at university, and if they had the other qualities, they would be suitable. We are now arguing about what is relevance. I am not sure that it does not narrow down even further as to whether Greats represent relevance.
The noble Lord, Lord Balerno, made a number of interesting points on this matter. It may be that certain scientific

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disciplines are more suitable than others. I remember being told always that zoologists made good personnel officers and better administrators than physicists, although it may be that the areas of uncertainty that now come into the science of physics may have produced a greater humility than perhaps we saw among some physicists some years ago. It still does not stop them from demanding the greater part of the scientific budget. It really is a question of what relevance is. There is a real danger here. After all, the selection process already takes relevance into account. This is where we are coming to almost one of the narrowest points of argument, and I do not want to be drawn too deeply into it because there are real dangers.
All I would ask is that people will take this calmly, and I would beg them to speak to their friends the Vice-Chancellors and say: "Do not rush off on this particular proposition. Read it half a dozen times, and redraft it as you may wish". Clearly the Government at some time will have to arbitrate in a way which will still ensure as the Fulton Committee recognised, that the most important thing is to recruit outstandingly able men and women whatever the subject of their university degree. This we can all agree on. I think, therefore, I will leave this particular point.
LORD ROBBINS: My Lords, I do not want to be contentious, but would the noble Lord elucidate the significance of the sentence in paragraph 82(a) which says:
"Method I, should, as at present, be primarily a written examination. The papers candidates can offer, however, should be restricted entirely to those with a direct relevance to the problems of modern government."
Of course there is Method II, but this certainly does exclude people who are specialising in subjects not relevant to the problems of modern Government.
LORD PLOWDEN: My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, I do not want to be controversial, but when the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, challenged me in my speech I was unable to refer to the particular paragraphs. If he looks at Appendix E, paragraphs 24 and 25, and paragraphs 76 and 77 of the main Report, he will find there is definitely an indication, no matter how carefully you read
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it, that there is going to be a preference for relevance. The noble Lord has given an assurance that he accepts that this is a difficult subject, and that what really matters is to get the greatest number of the best possible brains.
LORD SHACKLETON: One of the charming aspects about the Fulton Committee Report (some may think it a defect) is that there is really something in it for all of us. There are particular aspects in the argument, and I admit the point about Method I. But the fact is that, to a large extent, we select for relevance. I do not know that one would regard somebody who was trained and came forward as a medical student with a medical training as automatically the sort of person you would he bringing into the general administration.
This brings us back into this terrible argument about amateurs and generalists. One of the most important requirements in a civil servant fulfilling the roles we are now talking about (and we are talking about 2,000 people and not the 450,000) is the ability to express himself clearly in the English language. I, as a Minister, find of special value the people who can draft beautifully and clearly. This also seems to be relevant. I think this illustrates the dangers of this particular controversy. I can only say that I have noted most carefully the arguments, and I am certainly at this moment not pronouncing the Government's view on this matter, because we are only too well aware of the dangers that are involved in this.
But I did feel there was a little bit of unfairness to the Fulton Committee. It may well be that they asked for it; it may well be that this was in fact a desirable thing because at certain moments a certain shock stimulates people into thinking and into facing issues which they might not otherwise be will-ling to do. As to that much maligned and so economically-run body, the Treasury, I think it is remarkable how much the Treasury manages to do with such a relatively limited staff. It may be that it has tried to do too much, but there is no doubt that it has accepted the main recommendations which the Government have already accepted and is pressing on.

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I should now like—I am sorry that I was distracted, but some important points were made—to say something about the Civil Service Commission. The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, and others have referred to the importance that there should be freedom from political pressure in the selection of individuals. I must admit that I think we tend to-day to be unduly fearful both of corruption and indeed of political pressures which were features of a bygone age. When I became a Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, and others will know this —I took over my predecessor's Private Secretary, the staff, and even his driver. Actually, my predecessor had to persuade his driver to go on working for me. We take this for granted, and we know perfectly well that when there is a change of Government the secrets of the previous Administration are kept; and Ministers, I should have thought, would never have dreamt of questioning that in due course our civil servants who looked after us will preserve our secrets. This seems to illustrate that there is an acceptance to-day that undue political pressures will not operate in the selection of individuals.
But the Commissioners will continue—this is in direct reply to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn—to be appointed by Order in Council; they will continue to make an annual report to Parliament. There is no intention at all of changing what certainly was a very important feature of the NorthcoteTrevelyan reforms. But the Committee felt (and I must say that I think this is perfect sense), and the Government accept, that in the policy of recruitment to the Service—that is, in the question of the numbers and types of people, in the standards of education appropriate for various levels, in liaison with the universities and other bodies—in these matters, as distinct from the examination and selection of individuals, there is at present some overlap between the duties of the Commission and the Treasury; and this can be removed by embodying the Commission in the new Civil Service Department and having the First Commissioner, when acting in this capacity, as one of its Deputy Secretaries. My Lords, I think we can improve on the present organisation without any sacrifice of the proper impartiality and independence. Certainly,
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it is the intention of the Government, and I am sure I can say this for any Government, in fact to preserve this aspect.
Now may I briefly say something on the Civil Service College. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, questioned the need for, even the practicability of, the proposed Civil Service College. I think she has underrated what has already happened in the world of training in the Service in the last four or five years. Whether we like it or not, under the noble Lord, Lord Helsby, and others, we are virtually advancing to the point where we have a college in one form or another. The Centre for Administrative studies, to which I referred, with a considerable range of improved courses for other civil servants, including some senior ones, already has provided the nucleus. And, of course, a training college, one way and another, is now something normal in all large organisations. I should find it very surprising, and there would have to be most powerful reasons, if the Civil Service should not have such a college.
The dangers which have been pointed to are ones of which the Treasury, or the new Department (as it will become) are only too well aware. It is important that it should not be too inbred. There are dangers in this, but this sort of institutional training with a large organisation must, I think, generally be accepted. It has existed for years in the Services; industry is also slowly catching up, with this sort of thing, and I can only say to those who have anxieties about this matter that those anxieties are understood, but I think we shall be able to avoid the dangers.
There has been some discussion on the machinery of Government. The noble Lord, Lord Sinclair of Cleeve, made some interesting remarks, but I do not think it is possible for me to comment on them to-night. Again, it is extremely relevant, and I suspect that this is likely to be a matter that the new Department will have to bear in mind. I personally would hope that the new Department will do so. This would be consistent with the thinking of the Fulton Report of only Ministers will allow them the resources and they can have the time to do some further thinking ahead—rather more years ahead than in fact they are accustomed to think. Whether this will

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be done by the policy planning groups or the senior policy advisers it is difficult to say.
Here again, on the relationship between the senior policy adviser and the Permanent Secretary and the Minister, I do not see any difficulty. If I may express a personal opinion—because this is one of the matters that have not been processed—it would not really occur to me that the senior policy adviser would not be working within the general framework of the Department and with the Permanent Secretary as his nominal chief. But, of course, in most Departments the relationships between Ministers and their advisers of various kinds are not constrained by the need always to go through the Permanent Secretary. But on any major issue of policy the one man whom, above all, you would expect to consult (and if you did not think he ought to be consulted you ought not to have him as your Permanent Secretary) is the Permanent Secretary. I do not see much difficulty over this, and to this extent I think this aspect of the Fulton recommendations will need a little more examination. With the right sort of Secretary and the right Minister I see no difficulty, any more than there is difficulty with the programme evaluation group which they have in the Ministry of Defence to-day, and which is a model of this.
The noble Lord, Lord Balerno, was bound to stimulate me on the question of selection. I have already made plans to visit the Civil Service Selection Board, and the noble Lord may be interested to know that I have arranged for at least one member of the Fulton Commitee to visit the R.A.F. Selection Centre at Big-gin Hill, where I think it is important to make a comparison. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Crook, that certainly it will be necessary to study more deeply certain aspects of the American system. The Fulton Committee worked at very high speed; they had not time to spend weeks visiting, but many of the Fulton recommendations will need to be looked at again, re-evaluated and retranslated. They have thrown out a great number of important recommendations, the majority of which are acceptable to the Government as they are to most of the Civil Service.
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On some of the difficulties that have been raised I would say that it is certainly the intention of the Government to consider carefully what has been said, and particularly what the noble Lords, Lord Snow and Lord Robbins, have said in regard to method No. 1, and these comments will be borne in mind.
It was interesting to hear the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, giving a new definition of generalist, and I think we ought to be thankful to the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, for providing so many topics which will be worthy of continued discussion and controversy for many months to come. Certainly, I shall not stick my neck out and attempt to give the definitions which at some stage will be necessary, although I do not doubt that they will change in subsequent years.
I would like to remark, in conclusion, that I regret I did not hear the speech of my noble friend, Lord Taylor, since my note on it says that he was rather ruder than usual. It says "Not very helpful", and that he was rather rude about it. I know him so well that I can only apologise to him for not being here to receive those remarks, because I am sure it must have spoilt the effect of what were probably some light-hearted criticisms. I made very clear at the beginning that I had a difficult speech to make, and it was too early for me to say anything very positive or very much. The object was really to open the debate.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, I should like to apologise to my noble friend for being rude. I really was sorry after I had said it. I must say I regret I said it, particularly in his absence.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am rather shocked to hear that he was rude! I must say something to him, however, on the subject of personnel management. There is a subject to-day which is called personnel management. It is possible to have good establishment officers and bad establishment officers. There are some who have treated the job very seriously, and in some Departments it has not been treated as seriously as it should be. There is scope for improvement, but I would not, at this stage, say that you could possibly find

1193
anyone better to do personnel management than what might be called a generalist. My own experience is that it was better to take generalists and train them as personnel managers than to take so-called trained personnel managers.
My Lords, I regret that I have spoken longer than I should. I wanted again to emphasise some of the other important aspects, particularly this question of the accounting system and its real relevance. The noble Lord, Lord Pilkington, made that point. In management there is not very much of this, either in a great deal of industry or, even less, in the Government service, expect that from time to time we shall be reporting on this matter. I am grateful once more to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, for introducing this subject, and I can assure noble Lords who may be concerned for the Civil Service which they have served so well that some of their fears are unjustified, and perhaps in a few months' time they will find that to be so.
10.14 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, at the outset of our proceedings I dared to hope that by devoting a day to a discussion of the Civil Service and the Fulton Report we might serve a public need. I never dared to dream that we should have so penetrating and so memorable a debate upon the public service. For my part, I can but thank with all my heart the very many Members of your Lordships' House who have contributed to the debate, among them men most distinguished in the service of our country.
The Leader of the House has developed the debate with two speeches from the Government Front Bench, and I hope that reciprocally the debate may help him to develop Government thinking. In the light of it all, he may feel that the Prime Minister went too tar in his announcement on June 26 in stating that the Report would stand comparison with the historic Northcote-Trevelyan Report of more than a century ago. But the noble Lord will have noted that a good many of the practical recommendations of the Committee have received widespread endorsement to-day. There has been virtual unanimity here that the tone of
1194
the Report was less than fully fait to the Civil Service; and yet let us conceive it possible that the tone of our debate, taken as a whole, may have been less than fair to the Fulton Report.
There are four speeches which I want to claim my right to mention. The noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, gave us a speech which we shall long remember for the singular freshness of its thought and language and delivery. Then there was the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Helsby, to whom we should all feel most particularly indebted for his knowledge, profound as well as detailed of the present day civil service and of its post-war history. We also had the brilliant speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, of whom I found myself thinking, not for the first time, that if only she had not been our first woman Permanent Secretary she might have been our first woman Prime Minister, though she would have found it hard to settle in any Political Party, and I doubt whether she has any regrets. And, fourthly, I would refer to the admirable self-restraint of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, and his faultless Parliamentary propriety. It was indeed courageous of him to speak as he did towards the end of a debate charged with many criticisms of the tone of his Committee's work. He was absolutely right to drive home upon us that we must all be addressing ourselves not to what has happened in the last twenty years but to what is going to happen in the next twenty, with the rate of change in the world growing faster every day. Only by keenness of mind and flexibility of mind shall we keep up with the rate of change.
My Lords, to me an outstanding feature of this debate has been its unequivocal assertion of the ultimate value of fineness of mind and the exposure of iconoclasm dressed up as advanced thinking. I have never wavered in my belief that we possess the best Civil Service in the world, and that it is cnly by recruiting the best brains to it, and by seeking out and applying to it the best techniques, that we shall keep it so. I wonder whether we can all agree for tonight to leave it at that. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, with drawn.

SWAZILAND INDEPENDENCE BILL
10.20 p.m.
House in Committee: Clauses and Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of July 15), Bill read 3a, and passed.

OVERSEAS AID BILL.
House in Committee: Clauses agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of July 15), Bill read 3a, and passed.

SOCIAL WORK (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
10.21 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCOTLAND (LORD HUGHES): My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Amendments to the Social Work (Scotland) Bill be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Amendments be now considered.—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[References are to Bill 138 as first printed for the Commons]
[No. 1]
Clause 1, page 1. line 13, leave out "counties of cities", and insert "large burghs".
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, with the leave of the House I beg to move that this House cloth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 1 to 56 en bloc. But perhaps it would be for the convenience of the House if I spoke generally to the effect of the whole body of Amendments which another place have made to this Bill.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord will allow me. Perhaps he would refer only to Amendment No. 1 at the present time and speak to that. I do not know what my noble friends may wish to do. They may have a point to raise on one of the Amendments between Amendment No. 1 and Amendment No. 56. But if the noble Lord would speak to Amendment No. 1 first, that would give other noble Lords the opportunity of speaking in general, if that would be convenient; and then, if it so turns out, so far as I am concerned I should not object to what he is now proposing.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I am quite happy to do as the noble Lord wishes. I had not thought that doing it in the way I proposed would stop anybody from raising any point. However, I beg to move that the Commons Amendment No. 1 be agreed to.
I invite your Lordships to consider the Amendments made to the Social Work (Scotland) Bill in another place and to
1198
agree to the Bill as now amended. Your Lordships will have noticed that when the Bill was considered in another place it was given a general welcome, as indeed it had been by your Lordships. There has been no appreciable dissent from the main purposes of the Bill. Although some of its provisions are controversial, the main points of controversy have not been about whether it was desirable to make changes in the existing provisions, but rather about the precise nature of the changes which ought to be made. Many of these points are, of course, the subject of the Amendments whi:h are now reported to your Lordships. It might be helpful if I say a few words about each of the main points on which Amendments have been made.
Your Lordships will remember that when the Bill was presented to this House it provided in Clause 1 that the large burghs as well as the counties and cities should be local authorities for the purposes of the Bill. After a good deal of debate on the various considerations involved in this matter, your Loidships decided to exclude the large burghs. This matter was considered also in another place, with the result that one of the Amendments made restores the large burghs as local authorities under the Bill.
In another place, consideration was given to Amendments which, while retaining the large burghs as local authorities under the Bill, would have had the effect of limiting the number of such authorities either by fixing a maximum number in the Bill or by setting a minimum population below which a local authority would not exercise functions under the Bill. It was recognised, however, that none of these Amendments could be made effective unless the Secretary of State were given powers to require local authorities to combine in certain circumstances for the purposes of the Bill, and it was not thought desirable that such compulsory powers should be adopted. My honourable friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State had, during the discussions in another place, consultations with representatives of the local authority associations, who were able to give him an assurance that in the entirely new circumstances presented by the Bill individual local authorities

1199
would be willing to consider on their merits the arguments for combinations of local authorities, on a voluntary basis, to ensure that the functions laid on local authorities by the Bill would be properly and effectively carried out. In the light of this assurance, it was judged that the size and number of local authorities discharging functions under the Bill should be left to be worked out in the light of such consideration by individual local authorities, the guidance to be issued by the Secretary of State in pursuance of Clause 5 of the Bill and the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Local Government, Scotland, when these are made known.
My Lords, it has been clear throughout consideration of this question that whether or not large burghs should be local authorities under the Bill was a matter of judgment between two conflicting sets of arguments. My right honourable friend has reached and made known his judgment, and that has been endorsed in another place and expressed in the Amendment which is now reported to your Lordships. I hope that at this stage your Lordships will agree that that Amendment should stand.
The other main point of controversy at earlier stages of the Bill was whether or not the new social work department which will be set up under the Bill should discharge the present responsibilities of the probation service. Bearing in mind that the new department must in any event discharge these responsibilities in relation to children, and that this means that the new department will be responsible for something like half of the total current workload of the probation service in Scotland, your Lordships decided that Clause 27 of the Bill should provide that the new department should assume all the responsibilities of the probation service. In another place Clause 27 has been amended in minor ways, but its main effect remains as your Lordships decided.
I might perhaps make only brief comments at this stage on a number of other matters on which Amendments made in another place either change or extend the provisions of the Bill. Clause 12, which is the key clause placing on the local authority a duty to promote social
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welfare and to provide the necessary services and facilities for this purpose, was a little difficult to comprehend and a number of criticisms of the drafting of the clause were made. The noble Lord, Lord Balerno, laughs at that. I think that it is rather an understatement which I have made.
This clause has been extensively amended in another place. Its substance has been changed only marginally, and I am sure your Lordships will agree that it is now much easier to understand and will, therefore, be easier for local authorities to put into effect. Amendments have been made to provide that the phrase "person in need will apply only to Clauses 12, 13 and 14. The main result of these Amendments is that the local authority will have power under the Bill to provide residential and other facilities for persons who do not fall within the definition of "persons in need". There is, therefore, no doubt that such facilities can be made available for such people as unsupported mothers and persons on probation. I am sure your Lordships will agree that this is a substantial improvement.
Purely as a matter of drafting, Clause 19 is now left out. Most of the provisions of this clause were really covered in Clause 89 and were therefore unnecessary. The remaining subsection (that is, subsection (2)) of Clause 19 is added as an additional subsection to Clause 15, where I think it sits more happily. The Amendment to Clause 35 makes clear that representatives of the Press will have a right to attend children's hearings. This has been a difficult point on which to reach a conclusion. It is essential that children's hearings should be able to conduct their business in an informal way and to discuss personal, and sometimes quite intimate, matters with children and their parents. This will be very difficult if a large number of people are present. Again, it is essential that children and parents be protected against sensational publicity. On the other hand, there is a legitimate public interest, not only in the measures which are taken in relation to children who are delinquent or who are brought before a children's hearing for other reasons, but also in relation to the working of the new system of children's panels once it has been introduced. After discussions had been held with

1201
representatives of the Press, my right honourable friend reached the conclusion that it would be right to give the Press the opportunity to observe the children's hearings in action, and this conclusion is given effect in the Amendment to Clause 35. The provisions of Clause 58 will, of course, safeguard the child against the publication of any matter which might identify him. Children who in future appear before the court for any reason will continue to be protected against undue publicity, as they are now (under the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937, as amended).
In your Lordships' earlier discussions of the Bill there was some discussion of the powers given to a children's hearing to issue warrants for the detention of a child. Amendments made in another place simplify the Bill's provisions in this regard. They also introduce a provision that a child detained under a warrant issued by a children's hearing must be brought before a hearing as soon as practicable, and in any event may not be detained under that warrant for longer than seven days. This may be the best place for me to mention that the Amendments to Clause 37 cover the situation of inspectors of the Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, so that they will continue to have the same power to safeguard children in the future as they have now, although the subsequent procedure is somewhat altered by the setting up of the new system of children's panels. A new power is given to the sheriff by the insertion in Schedule 1 of a new provision in the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act, 1937, which will enable the sheriff to commit a child for residential training. This latter power is almost a precise equivalent for the present power of committal to approved school, which disappears under the Bill.
Clauses 56 and 57 are intended to provide a bridge between the children's hearing and the courts by giving powers to the court to obtain advice from children's hearings and to remit cases to children's hearings. Their drafting was not, however, entirely clear and it was decided to redraft the two clauses completely. The new Clause 56 deals with children (as defined in Clause 30) who are prosecuted for offences. It empowers the court, in the case of a child who is
1202
not subject to a supervision requirement, either to remit the case to a children's hearing or to ask for the advice of a children's hearing. In the case of a child subject to a supervision requirement it requires the court to seek the advice of a children's hearing: after having obtained the advice of the children s hearing the court may either dispose of the case itself or remit the case back to the children's hearing. The word "court" means here the sheriff court or High Court. Other courts are excluded by Clause 31(1).
Clause 57 deals with young people between 16 and 17½ who are prosecuted for offences but who are not children as defined in Clause 30. The court is empowered to seek advice from a children's hearing about such young people. If that advice is that the young person should be remitted to a hearing, the court may so remit him. Otherwise the court may dispose of the case itself. In Clause 57 the word "court" means any criminal court other than the High Court or the sheriff court considering cases on indictment.
Schedule 6 is changed considerably from that at present in the Bill and it may be helpful if I explain the reasons for the changes. Part IV of the Bill, which deals with registration, will probably come into operation before Part III, which provides a new system for dealing with children in trouble. It is at this later stage that approved schools should be brought within the registration system provided for in Part IV. The re wised paragraph 1 provides accordingly. The revised paragraph 2 contains the provisions which will continue to apply to existing approved schools for a transitional period after Part III of the Bill comes into operation, and will so continue until the approved schools can be brought within the new system.
The new paragraph 3 deals with contributions in respect of children in care. Paragraph 4 clarifies the ways of bringing before hearings children who are subject to certain court orders when the new system is brought into effect; and the new paragraphs 5 and 6 cover children whose cases are in progress at that date either in relation to criminal proceedings or to care and protection proceedings. Paragraphs 7, 8 and 9 provide for the continuation of remand

1203
home and probation grants to cover transitional expenditure.
A number of provisions of the Health Services and Public Health Bill overlap with provisions of the Social Work (Scotland) Bill. In these cases it is probable that the former will be put into effect at an earlier date, but as the provisions of the Social Work (Scotland) Bill are wider they should be the substantive ones. It is necessary to amend the Health Services Bill for this purpose.
Clause 10 of this Bill enables the Secretary of State and local authorities to give financial and other assistance to voluntary organisations. It overlaps to some extent with two clauses in the Health Services and Public Health Bill, but these two clauses are not entirely superseded as the services which may be assisted under them include some (for example, family planning) which do not come within the scope of the Social Work (Scotland) Bill. The clauses in the Health Services and Public Health Bill relating to home help and to accommodation and welfare of old people are comprehended in the wider provisions of the Social Work (Scotland) Bill and should accordingly be repealed. As a consequence of the changes made by the two Bills it is no longer necessary to keep in force Section 26(1) and (5) of the National Assistance Act 1948, which relate to the provision and inspection of accommodation.
A number of other Amendments, in Part VI of the Bill and elsewhere, are designed to ensure that the present situation in relation to parental responsibility for financial contributions to the maintenance of children in care, and also the provisions for contributions by other people to the cost of residential provision, will remain as they are now.
The last point to which I should perhaps draw your Lordships' attention is that one clause and one Schedule have been added to the Bill which will have the effect of amending the provisions in Scotland of the Children Act 1958. These Amendments improve and extend the responsibilities of the local authority towards those children in their area who are cared for by persons other than their parents or guardians. Your Lord-
1204
ships will remember that the complementary Act—the Nurseries and Child-minders Regulation Act 1948—was substantially tightened up by amendments made in the Health Services and Public Health Bill. The new clause and Schedule close a gap between the provision of the 1948 and 1958 Acts.
The Amendments made in another place are, apart from those dealing with the topics I have already mentioned, almost entirely of a technical nature and are either consequential or are concerned purely with matters of drafting. I hope that after consideration of these Amendments your Lordships will feel able to agree to them, so that the stages of this Bill can be completed and that we can look forward to the addition to the Statute Book of this eminently valuable measure to which many people in Scotland are looking with hope and confidence as a considerable step forward in the development of better social services. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment (No. 1)—(Lord Hughes.)
10.39 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for having given us a summary of the effect of this very long list of Amendments. They are indeed numerous. There are 314 of them in all—209 to the Bill itself, and 105 to the Schedules—and the time is twenty minutes to eleven. They look a pretty formidable array but, as the noble Lord has said, most of them consist of comparatively minor improvements to the Bill, and some of them are, indeed, very minor. I think I can say that, so far as I am concerned. I certainly agree that they improve the Bill.
There are one or two cases where explicit provision is made in the Bill for what the noble Lord assured us at an earlier stage would happen anyway. Amendment No. 52 is an example, which specifically provides that nothing in the Bill
"shall authorise the exclusion of bona fide representatives of a newspaper or newsagency".
I am sure that this explicit provision will add to public confidence in the new proposals for children's panels, even although, as the noble Lord said, Clause

1205
58 forbids any reference in newspapers or broadcasting that would in any way lead to the identification of the child or of his school.
My Lords, there are quite a few Amendments stemming from Amendments to Clause 5 to leave out the words "in need". The noble Lord said that this change would give the local authorities more latitude in providing help for people who need accommodation but who do not come within the definition, and for my part I welcome that. Am I right in thinking that the expression "persons in need" is now used only in those clauses which enable local authorities to make available assistance in cash or kind, or to provide or secure the provision of suitable work, or to provide home help?
LORD HUGHES: Yes, my Lords.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am much obliged to the noble Lord. Then, if this is so, I wonder whether, to avoid confusion, it might not be better to alter the sub-title covering Sections 15 to 26, which reads:
"Special provisions as to care of children in need."
Would it not be better to leave out the words "in need" there, too? I believe this can be done without any formal Amendment to the Bill because it is in only a sub-title. I think it might help in the arrangement of the Bill.
Some of us will regret that the Commons were unable to prevail on the Government to make any concession to the probation service as such. The noble Lord was good enough to tell us what happened in the discussion on this point in another place, and it would not be in order for us, I think, to go into that, as there is no further Amendment on the subject. But more of us will be sorry—and I think the figures show this—that the Commons have disagreed with the Amendment that we made to confine the definition of local authorities for the purposes of this Bill to county councils and councils of cities. However, we derive comfort from the outcome of the consultations which the noble Lord told us the Secretary of State has been having with representatives of the local authority associations and from the assurance which, I understood, the Secretary of
1206
State was given: that local authorities would be willing to consider combining on a voluntary basis for the purposes of the Act.
I also gathered from what the noble Lord said that the Secretary of State would be giving them guidance (that was the word he used), though it was not quite clear to me from what he said whether such guidance would be given before the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Local Government were announced or whether the local authorities would still be left to carry it out on a voluntary basis. The noble Lord's remarks on this point were necessarily compressed and perhaps understandably vague. But it may be that he will be willing to clarify them a little further. I dare say he would agree that when the Royal Commission's recommendations come along the whole question wi.1 have to be examined.
There are advantages and disadvantages, of course, in having compulsory powers. My own view is that the Government have been right to dismiss the idea of using compulsory powers to get the local authorities to do what it seems to me even the Government think they would be wise to do. I think that would be wrong. On the other hand, I think the time may well come when the thoughts which the Government first had will be realised. Personally, I still feel that the Government's first thoughts on this are to be preferred. Anyhow, my Lords, I think the point is that there is nothing which is final or irrevocable about this decision.
That being so, I would not recommend my noble friends to resist the Amendment the noble Lord is now moving, or, indeed, the first two Amendments. Nor would I recommend them to resist any of the others. There are two small points on which I put down Amendments. Apart from them I can tell my noble friends that I have looked at the rest of the Amendments as carefully as the comparatively short time available permitted. I believe that they do improve the Bill. I should also like to drank the noble Lord for having written to me explaining the main changes, and for the trouble that he has taken throughout with this Bill in keeping the House informed of his views and for having

1207
discussed some of them with me this morning.
The only other comment I should like to make in passing is that this is perhaps the sort of essentially non-political Bill which in future could be taken in Committee upstairs—if that is the right geographical expression—should the experiment made on the Gaming Bill in recent weeks be judged upon reflection a success. Subject, therefore, to any points any of your Lordships may wish to raise, I should be happy to agree to the Amendments being taken en bloc with the exception of Amendments Nos. 57 and 96.
10.47 p.m.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, I will not delay the House as we are speaking on this Bill at so late an hour. But I cannot let the matter of the large burghs go without one last protest. I feel strongly about this matter. During the whole time we have been building up the child care and probation services in Scotland we have tried hard to do so in the counties and the counties of cities. One of the main reasons for this was, I think, the great difficulty in getting trained personnel. In the child-care service we have 35 areas with either fully trained personnel or people who were trained on the job. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, will persuade local associations and the large burghs not to do so; but it may be that there will be as many as 56 local authority areas in which services will require to be staffed by trained personnel—and they simply do not exist in Scotland.
We all want this Bill to be a success and the only way it can be so is if we can get the people to run the services. This is a very difficult service and one in which I am deeply interested. The noble Lord, who is very persuasive, has persuaded us that the Government will do the best they can to get voluntary amalgamations of different areas, and so perhaps my rather pessimistic view of a possible 56 areas will not materialise. I hope that it will not. I think it likely that when the local authority reorganisation takes place we may find that the figure of 35 will be cut down to an even smaller one. But that is pure specula-
1208
tion. I think it unlikely that the figure will be larger. The important thing is the trained personnel; and as they are in very short supply I hope that the noble Lord will do all he can to get local authorities to combine.
I wish also to say to the noble Lord that I hope that when the Bill becomes an Act it will prove successful and that, in so far as I can, in my capacity as a local government person, I shall do everything possible to see that the area in which I live co-operates. We are indebted to the noble Lord for the way in which he has handled the Bill. I am sorry about the timetable but that was not his fault. I hope that it will prove to be a successful Act of Parliament.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I am grateful for what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn and by the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood. Perhaps I may be allowed to reply first to the noble Baroness. It is very unusual for her to be pessimistic. I do not remember her ever being pessimistic before. She was not pessimistic about the railways the other day—
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: No, just angry.
LORD HUGHES: —but on this occasion she is unusually pessimistic. I am certain that she will be happy at the end of the day when she finds that her pessimism was not justified. That may well turn out to be so in the discussions which take place, although I should not like the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn to press me about how we shall go about it. This is the sort of thing where the greater the degree of informality we can get in the months that lie ahead the better the chances that amalgamation will take place. I should not like to rule out the possibility that under this system of having a potential 56 authorities, through amalgamations, we may turn out to have fewer authorities than if we had confined the matter to the counties and the cities.
I think that is the only point on which the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn asked me a question, about whether it would take place before or after the Wheatley Commission reports. We do not think that there is a great deal of time before the Commission makes its report and

1209
the time factor may turn out to be comparatively unimportant.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
[Nos. 2–56.]
Clause 1, page 2, line 6, leave out subsection (4).
Clause 1, page 2, Line 17, leave out "7(1)(e) thereof" and insert "7(1) thereof so far as relating to the".
Clause 1, page 2, Line 22, at end insert "or to health visiting".
Clause 1, page 2, Line 23, at end insert—
"( ) On the date of the commencement of Part III of this Act the functions of education authorities in relation to the establishments which immediately before that date were approved schools and the children resident therein shall be transferred to the local authorities in whose areas the said children are ordinarily resident or, in the case of children who have no ordinary residence in Scotland, such local authorities as the Secretary of State may determine."
Clause 2, page 2, line 33, at end insert—
"( ) Part IV of the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937,"
Clause 2, page 2, Line 34, leave out "and" and insert "to".
Clause 5, page 4, line 31, leave out "in need".
Clause 5, page 4, line 36, leave out "in need".
Clause 5, page 4, line 37, leave out "in need so".
Clause 5, page 4, line 39, leave out "in need".
Page 5, line 1, leave out "a person in need being".
Page 5, line 1, line 7, leave out "in need".
Clause 6, page 5, line 21, after "authority" insert "or a voluntary organisation or other person".
Clause 6, page 5, line 22, leave out paragraph (b).
Clause 6, page 5, Line 41, leave out "persons in need" and "any persons to whom the authority or organisation has made available advice, guidance or assistance in pursuance of this Act, or who may require such advice, guidance or assistance".
Clause 6, page 5, line 46, leave out from "establishment" to end of line 46 and insert "in respect of which the person carrying on the establishment is registrable under Part IV of this Act".
Clause 7, page 6, line 23, leave out "person to be the".
Clause 7, page 6, line 24, leave out "person to be the".
Clause 7, page 6, line 29, leave out "as respects" and insert "on".
Clause 9, page 7 line 18, at beginning insert—
"( ) The Secretary of State may provide courses of training for persons with a view to, or in the course of, their employment or the use of their services for the purposes of this Act."
Clause 10, page 7, line 38, leave out "sums" and insert "grants"
Clause 10, page 7, line 40, leave out "those sums" and insert "such grants".
Page 8, line 8, at end insert—
"( ) On the commencement of this Act, the power of the Secretary of State to give financial assistance and of local authorities to give financial and other assistance under sections (Financial assistance by the Ministry of Health and the Secretary of State to certain voluntary organisations) and (Financial and other assistance by local authorities to certain voluntary organisations) of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968 shal1 cease in so far as any such assistance may be given under this section."
Clause 12, page 8, line 23, leave cut "in their area"
Clause 12, page 8, Line 25, leave out first "in" and insert "for"
Clause 12, page 8, Line 29, leave out from beginning to end of line 23 on page 9 and insert "such assistance may be given to, or in respect of, the persons specified in the next following subsection, in kind or in cash subject to subsections (1B) and (1C) of this section.
(1A) The persons specified for the purposes of the foregoing subsection are—

(a) a person, being a child under the age of eighteen, requiring assistance in kind, or in exceptional circumstances in cash, where such assistance appears to the local authority likely to diminish the need—

(i) to receive him into, or to keep him in, care under this Part of this Act, or

(ii) of his being referred to a children's hearing under Part III of this Act;

(b) a person in need requiring assistance in kind or, in exceptional circumstances constituting an emergency, in cash, where the giving of assistance in either form would avoid the local authority being caused greater expense in the giving of assistance in another form, or where probable aggravation of the person's need would cause greater expense to the local authority on a later occasion.

(1B) Before giving assistance to, or in respect of, a person in cash under subsection (1) of this section a local authority shall have regard to his eligibility for receiving assistance from any other statutory body and, if he is so eligible, to the availability to him of that assistance in his time of need.
(1C) Assistance given in kind or in cash to, or in respect of, persons under this section may be given unconditionally or subject to such conditions as to the repayment of the assistance, or of its value, whether in whole or in part, as the local authority may consider reasonable having regard to the means of the person receiving the assistance and to the eligibility of the person for assistance from any other statutory body."
Clause 14, page 9, line 37, leave out "domestic" and insert "home".
Clause 14, page 9, line 38, leave out "imminent or".
Clause 14, page 9, line 42, leave out "domestic" and insert "home".
Page 10, line 6, at end insert—
"( ) On the coming into operation of the provisions of this and the last two foregoing sections, the provisions of sections (Home help and laundry facilities), (Extension of power, under the National Assistance Act 1948, of local authority to provide accommodation elsewhere than in premises managed by them or another such authority) and (Promotion, by local authorities, of the welfare of old people) of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968 shall cease to have effect."
Clause 15, page 10, line 33, leave out "is" and insert "are".
Page 11, line 3, leave out from "may" to "three" in line 4 and insert "within".
Page 11, line 3, line 11, at end insert—
"( ) Where under the last foregoing subsection a local authority take over the care of a child from another local authority, that other authority shall where possible inform the parent of the child that the care of the child has been so taken over."
Clause 16, page 11, line 13, leave out "as respects" and insert "with respect to".
After Clause 18, insert the following new clause—
Amendment of Children Act 1958, 1958 c. 65
".The Children Act 1958 shall have effect subject to the amendments set out in Schedule (Amendment of Children Act 1958) to this Act."
Leave out Clause 19.
Clause 21, page 16, line 9, at end insert—
"( ) Arrangements may be made by a local authority under this section for boarding out a child in England or Wales or for maintaining him in any accommodation in England or Wales which a local authority in those countries is authorised to use for that purpose by virtue of section 13 of the Children Act 1948."
Clause 21, page 16, line 10, leave out subsection (3).
Clause 22, page 16, line 22. leave out "persons" and insert "person".
Clause 24, page 17, line 7, leave out from "they" to first "of" in line 8 and insert "ceased to be".
Clause 27, page 18, line 23, leave out "sitting in their area "
Clause 27, page 18, line 33, leave out "the".
Clause 27, page 18, line 42, leave out from "it" to end of line 43 and insert "by such date, as he may require, to the Secretary of State for his approval".
Page 19, line 12, after "thereof" insert—
"(d) arrangements for the keeping of adequate records and statistics regarding the performance of functions under this section".
Clause 30, page 20, line 23, leave out paragraph (c) and insert—
"(c) a child whose case has been referred to a children's hearing in pursuance of Part V of this Act."
Clause 31, page 20, line 34, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
"(2) The case of any child liable to prosecution in respect of any act committed or omission made, but against whom proceedings have not been instituted before the commencement of this Act, shall be dealt with in accordance with the law as in force after the said commencement."
Clause 32, page 21, line 20, leave out paragraph (h).
Clause 32, page 21, line 22, leave out paragraph (i) and insert—
"( ) he is a child whose case has been referred to a children's hearing in pursuance of Part V of this Act."
Clause 33, page 21, line 34, leave out "their children's panel" and insert "the children's panel for their area".
Clause 34, page 22, line 9, leave out "in their area" and insert "for their area, and such accommodation and facilities may be provided, in the area of another local authority."
Clause 35, page 22, line 22, at end insert "or shall authorise the exclusion of bona fide representative of a newspaper of newsagency".
Clause 35, page 22, line 41, leave out "subsequent appeal" and insert proceedings arising therefrom;"
Clause 37, page 24, line 1, leave out from "Where" to "has" in line 2, and insert "any person"
Clause 37, page 24, line 6, leave out from "or" to "may" and insert "any person authorised by any court or by any justice of the peace"
Clause 37, page 24, line 9, after "1937" insert "or any offence under section 21(1) of that Act".
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 2 to 56.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments (Nos. 2 to 56).—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[No. 57.]
Clause 57, page 24, line 15, leave out "officer" and insert "the person authorised as aforesaid or the occupier of the place of safety".
10.52 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 57.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment (No. 57).—(Lord Hughes.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am slightly puzzled by this Amendment. We have

1213
already had one, Amendment which we have passed so that subsection (2) now reads:
"A constable or any person authorised by any court or by any justice of the peace may take to a place of safety any child in respect of whom any of the offences…has been or is believed to have been committed…".
It goes on:
"…and any child so taken to a place of safety or any child who has taken refuge in a place of safety may be detained there—"
and so on. It finishes up:
"and where a child is so detained the constable or"
and so on. Then we come to Amendment 57, with which the subsection will read:
"the person authorised as aforesaid or the occupier of the place of safety shall forthwith inform the reporter of the case."
This was an Amendment made without discussion in another place. It is always desirable to lay a duty upon a particular person, and the Amendment to the Commons Amendment of which I have given notice would lay the duty to inform the reporter of the case upon the person who brought the child to the place of safety whether that person is the constable or "the person authorised as aforesaid". I can quite see that this would leave a bit of a gap where the child has taken refuge in the place of safety on his own initiative. The difficulty is that you are laying a statutory obligation on the occupier of the place of safety without any sanction. You are really saying to the occupier of the place of safety: "Please tell us." That is all you are doing; you cannot do more. Who is going to look at the Act to find out whether they should inform the reporter of the case as soon as the child arrives there? What will almost certainly happen is that the person concerned will ring up the police, which will be the same thing as if the police had brought the child to the place of safety.
My Lords, what I do not like particularly is the idea of laying a statutory obligation on parties in this way. In many cases they are not the sort of people who will know that they have this obligation, because the place of safety may not have been used by the child before. It might be the local doctor's house, or somewhere like that where the child has taken refuge. As I say, I do not particularly like this.
1214
Nor do I like the fluffing of the responsibility here for informing the reporter of the case. It says that in the case where the constable brings the child to place of safety it is the responsibility of either the constable or the person to whom the child is brought. I think this is untidy and, in my view, it is not good legislation. Of course, there may be no other way of expressing it.
I have put down this Amendment to the Amendment to draw attention to what appeared to me when I read this through yesterday to be a rather odd form of procedure. My Amendment will lay the responsibility firmly on the person who brings the child to the place of safety; and I think one could be quite certain that when a child comes to a place of safety under his or her own steam (if I may put it that way) the parents will be notified, and this would bring into operation what is required.
The only other point I would m ration is that it is difficult to see what the occupier of the place of safety is it forming the reporter about when it is said that he must inform him of "the case". He is merely informing him that a child has arrived on his premises, which is hardly "the case". I beg to move.
Amendment to Commons Amendment (No. 57) moved—
Leave out ("or the occupier of the place of safety").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, the way in which the noble Lord has spoken to his Amendment leaves one in no doubt that he is quite clear about all the circumstances with which this clause deals. I must admit, quite frankly, that if one were seeking to put this in terms of perfect law we should not have lone it in this way. I think the best defence, however, is that it is fairly good common sense. Of course, one knows that the law and common sense are no; always exactly the same thing. The circumstances are really these. There may be three different lots of people involved in a transaction. There is the constable, the authorised person, and in each case there will be an occupier. If there is a constable or an authorised person involved, it will be the normal procedure —and I would doubt whether it would ever vary from this—that the constable

1215
or the authorised person would do the reporting.
As the noble Lord himself envisaged, there could be a case where a child was not brought by anyone but took refuge of its own accord. In these circumstances there are only two people who could take some step to bring it to the notice of the reporter. One is the child itself, and it would not be reasonable to place a responsibility on the child to report that it had taken refuge. The only other person who could do this in these circumstances is the occupier; and I am in complete agreement with the noble Lord that what is almost certain to happen is that the occupier will report the event. He probably might get in touch with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children or he might get in touch with the police, and they in turn then will take the necessary steps.
I think that that is all that is necessary. I do not think that there is any defect in the proceedings because if the person in fact does not do this there is no sanction that can be taken against him. After all, if he does not do it he has the child, and so in the ordinary course of events, unless he wants to be stuck with it in perpetuity, he is going to tell somebody about it sooner or later. So I do not think that any sanction is needed against the occupier.
Theoretically there is the possibility that the constable would leave it to the occupier and the occupier would leave it to the constable, or the authorised person would leave it to the occupier and the occupier would leave it to the authorised person. That situation will not arise, because in any case where either a constable or an authorised person is involved they know quite clearly that it is their job to take the necessary step. It is only in the case which the noble Lord envisaged, of a child putting itself in refuge of its own accord, that this point is likely to arise.
I must admit that there was an alternative to the way we have done this. We could have had a very complicated drafting procedure, which the occupier probably would not have understood. It would have made it quite clear to a lawyer the way that things should be done, but we could not be absolutely
1216
certain that that in turn would not need to be the subject of a drafting Amendment some time next year. So I think it is better to leave it as it is. I must admit that it will probably offend Lord Drumalbyn's sense of tidiness of the way things should be done, but I think that in this case we have chosen the most satisfactory of the courses reasonably available to us. I hope, therefore, that he can withdraw his Amendment to the Amendment.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I thought I ought to raise this point if only because, had these words been in the Bill when it first came to this House, I am sure I would have raised this point then. Well, it is not a perfect world. This is quite a good Bill now, I think, apart from the major blemish we have already dealt with; and, although this point does in a way stick out a little as a sore thumb, nevertheless I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment to the Commons Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
[Nos. 58–95.]
Clause 37, page 24, line 16, at end insert—
"( ) A child shall not continue to be detained under the last foregoing subsection—

(a) where the reporter considers the child does not require compulsory measures of care, or

(b) after the day on which a children's hearing first sit to consider his case in pursuance of the next following subsection, or

(c) for a period exceeding seven days".

Clause 37, page 24, line 18, leave out "the last foregoing subsection" and insert "subsection (2) of this section".
Clause 37, page 24, line 18, after "40(3)", insert "or 47(1)".
Clause 37, page 24, line 20, after "shall" insert "wherever practicable".
Clause 37, page 24, line 21, leave out "on" and insert "not later than in the course of".
Clause 37, page 24, line 31, after "renewed insert "on one occasion only".
Clause 37, page 24, line 33, leave out subsection (5) and insert—
"(5) In this section any reference to a justice of the peace includes a reference to a sheriff and to a magistrate".
Clause 39, page 25, line 25, at end insert—
"( ) Where the reporter has decided that no further action on the case is required or has taken action in pursuance of subsection (2) of this section he shall not thereafter take action under subsection (3) of this section in relation to the same facts."
Clause 40, page 25, line 30, at beginning insert "Without prejudice to the provisions of section 42(1) of this Act"
Clause 40, page 25, line 36, after second "case" insert "in whole or in part"
Clause 40, page 25, leave out "and determined"
Clause 40, page 25, line 42, leave out subsections (4) to (6) and insert—
"(4) For the purpose of the last foregoing subsection, or where a child fails to attend at any hearing of his case, a children's hearing may, at the instance of the reporter on cause shown, or, as the case may be, of their own motion, issue a warrant for the apprehension of the child if satisfied of the necessity for such a course, and any warrant so issued shall be authority for bringing him before a children's hearing and for his detention in a place of safety.
(5) A child shall not continue to be detained under the last foregoing subsection—

(a) after the day on which a children's hearing first sit to consider his case in pursuance of the next following subsection, or

(b) for a period exceeding seven days.

(6) Where a child is apprehended in pursuance of subsection (4) of this section, and he cannot immediately be brought before a children's hearing, the reporter shall, wherever practicable, arrange a children's hearing to sit not later than in the course of the first lawful day after the apprehension of the child.
(7) Where a children's hearing, before whom a child is brought are unable to dispose of his case and have reason to believe that the child may not attend at any hearing of his case or at any proceedings arising from the case or may fail to comply with a requirement under section 43(4) of this Act, they may issue a warrant requiring the child to be detained in any place of safety for such a period not exceeding twenty-one days as may be necessary.
(8) On cause shown a warrant authorising detention under the last foregoing subsection for securing the attendance of a child at the hearing of his case, or at any proceedings arising from his case, may be renewed on one occasion only for the period mentioned in that subsection on the application of the reporter.
(9) A warrant of apprehension issued under this Part of this Act may be executed in like manner as a warrant of apprehension of an accused person issued by a court of summary jurisdiction, and any enactment relating to the execution of a warrant of apprehension issued by a court of summary jurisdiction shall, with any necessary modifications, apply in relation to the execution of a warrant of apprehension issued under this Part of this Act as it applies to a warrant of apprehension issued by a court of summary jurisdiction."
Clause 42, page 27, line 5, leave out "have been" and insert "are".
Clause 42, page 27, line 7, at end insert—
"( ) It shall be the duty of the chairman of a children's hearing who have made a direction under the last foregoing subsection to explain to the child and his parent the pur-
1218
pose for which the application to the sheriff is being made and to inform the child that he is under an obligation to attend the hearing of the application, and where a child fails to attend at the hearing of the application the sheriff may issue a warrant for the apprehension of the child and any warrant sc issued shall be authority for bringing him before the sheriff and for his detention in a place of safety until the sheriff can hear the application, but a child shall not be detained under this subsection for a period exceeding seven days or after the sheriff has disposed of the application."
Clause 42, page 27, line 8, leave oft "the last foregoing subsection" and insert "subsection (2) of this section".
Clause 42, page 27, line 9. after "chambers" insert "within twenty-eight days of the lodging of the application".
Clause 42, page 27, line 13, leave out subsection (4).
Clause 42, page 27, line 17, leave out "grounds have not" "and insert" none of the of which the application has been made has".
Clause 42, page 27, line 19, at end insert "in respect of those grounds".
Clause 42, page 27, line 21, after "that" insert "any of".
Clause 42, page 27, line 22, leave out "have" and insert "has".
Clause 42, page 27, line 26, leave out "case" and insert "application".
Clause 42, page 27, line 29, leave out from "Where" to second "a" in line 30.
Clause 42, page 27, line 35, leave out from "shall" to end of line 37 and insert ", unless they decide to discharge the referral, direct the reporter to make application to the sheriff for a finding as to whether any of the grounds for the referral have been established, and the provisions of this section relating to an application to the sheriff under subsection (2)(c) thereof shall apply as they apply to an application under that subsection."
Clause 43, page 28, line 7, leave out from "aforesaid" to end of line 18 and insert "a children's hearing may require a child to attend or reside at any clinic, hospital or establishment during a period not exceeding 21 days.
(5) Where a child fails to fulfil a requirement made in pursuance of the last foregoing subsection it shall be the duty of the reporter to arrange a children's hearing to consider the issue of a warrant for his detention under section 40 of this Act."
Clause 44, page 28, line 31, at end insert "and the place may be a place in England or Wales where arrangements have been made in that behalf."
Page 29, line 4, leave out "sitting in" and insert "for".
Clause 45, page 29, line 23, leave out "shall" and insert "may".
Clause 47, page 30, line 11, leave out "within a stated period".
Clause 47, page 30, line 15, at beginning insert "Unless the context otherwise requires,".
Clause 48, page 30, line 23, leave out from "recommends" to end of line 24.
Clause 48, page 30, line 28, after "making" insert "or continuing".
Clause 49, page 31, line 22 leave out from "to" to the end of line 23 and insert "the children's hearing for reconsideration of their decision or discharge the child from any further hearing or other proceedings in relation to the grounds for the referral of the case".
Clause 49, page 31, line 26, leave out "further appeal against that decision" and insert "appeal against a decision to continue the supervision requirement, which was the subject of that appeal, made on a subsequent review".
Clause 49, page 31, line 32, at end insert—
"( ) Where a child or his parent appeals under this section against a decision of a children's hearing in relation to a supervision requirement the child or his parent may make application to a children's hearing for the suspension of the requirement appealed against, and it shall be the duty of the reporter forthwith to arrange a children's hearing to consider the application and thereafter the hearing may grant or refuse the application."
Clause 50, page 31, line 34, leave out "with leave of the sheriff" and insert "by way of stated case on a point of law, or in respect of any irregularity in the conduct of the case".
Clause 50, page 31, line 37, at end insert "or further".
Clause 50, page 31, line 39, leave out subsection (2).
11.3 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, with the leave of the House I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 58 to 95.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments (Nos. 58 to 95).—(Lord Hughes.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[No. 96]
Clause 50, page 31, line 42, leave out "for leave to appeal" and insert "to state a case for the purpose of the foregoing subsection".
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 96.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment (No. 96).—(Lord Hughes.)
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved as an Amendment to the Commons Amendment:
At the beginning of the words left out by the Commons insert the words ("to the sheriff").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, Amendment No. 96 leaves out the words
"for leave to appeal", so that the sentence:
"An application to the sheriff for leave to appeal—"
becomes:
"An application to the sheriff"—
to state a case for the purpose of the foregoing subsection—
"shall be made within a period of twenty-eight days",
and so on. This follows upon Amendments that have already been made, leaving out the words "with leave of the sheriff", which was Amendment No. 93. The clause now reads:
"Subject to the provisions of this Section an appeal shall lie to the Court of Session"
and the words "with leave of the sheriff" are left out and in place of them is put in:
"by way of stated case on a point of law, or in respect of any irregularity in the conduct of the case".
When I saw this I thought that the words "to the sheriff" should be left out also in subsection (3), so that it would simply read:
"An application to state a case for the purpose of the foregoing subsection shall be made within a period of twenty-eight days".
That seems to me to be logical. I beg to move.
Amendment to Commons Amendment moved—
At the beginning of the words left out by the Commons insert the words ("to the sheriff").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I think this is a case where the words ought to remain. The stated case needed as a basis for an appeal to be considered can be made only by the sheriff. Therefore an application for a stated case must be made to the sheriff, and that is what the clause says.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, in that case, if it is only the sheriff who can make the stated case, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment to the Commons Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question. Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
[Nos. 97–314.]
Clause 50, page 32, line 1, leave out from "decision" to end of line 2.
Clause 50, page 32, line 6, leave out subsection (5) and insert—
"(5) No appeal shall lie under this section in respect of a decision of a children's hearing imposing a supervision requirement where the sole ground of the objection to that requirement is that the treatment prescribed thereby is inappropriate for the child".
Clause 51, page 32, line 9, leave out from "to" to "the reporter" in line 10 and insert "a children's hearing for reconsideration of their decision".
Clause 51, page 32, line 15, leave out "(7)" and insert "(8)".
Clause 52, page 32, line 19, leave out "best".
Clause 53, page 32, line 25, after "hearing" insert "or of an application made in pursuance of section 42 of this Act".
Clause 54, page 32, line 31, leave out "held" and insert "heard"
Clause 54, page 32, line 32, leave out from "hearing" to end of line 33 and insert "for the area of another local authority".
Clause 54, page 32, line 35, after third "the" insert "other".
Clause 54, page 32, line 36, leave out "of that other area".
Clause 55, page 33, line 9, after "this" insert "Part of this".
Clause 55, page 33, line 12, after "this" insert "Part of this".
Leave out Clause 56 and insert the following new clause—
Reference and remit of children's cases by courts to children's hearings.
".—(1) Where a child who is not subject to a supervision requirement is charged with an offence and pleads guilty to, or is found guilty of, that offence the court—

(a) instead of making an order on that plea or finding, may remit the case to the reporter of the local authority to arrange for the disposal of the case by a children's hearing; or

(b) on that plea or finding may request the reporter of the local authority to arrange a children's hearing for the purposes of obtaining their advice as to the treatment of the child.

(2) Where a court has acted in pursuance of paragraph (b) of the foregoing subsection the court after consideration of the advice received from the children's hearing may, as it thinks proper, itself dispose of the case or remit the case as aforesaid.
(3) Where a child who is subject to a supervision requirement is charged with an offence and pleads guilty to, or is found guilty of, that offence the court shall request the reporter of the local authority to arrange a children's hearing for the purpose of obtaining their advice as to the treatment of the child, and on consideration of that advice may, as
1222
it thinks proper, itself dispose of the case or remit the case as aforesaid.
(4) Where a court has remitted a case to the reporter under this or the next following section the jurisdiction of the court in respect of the child or person shall cease, and his case shall stand referred to a children's hearing.
(5) Where a court has remitted a case of a child or person as aforesaid a certificate signed by the clerk of the court stating that the child or person has pleaded guilty to, or has been found guilty of, the offence to which the remit relates shall be conclusive evidence for the purpose of the remit that that offence has been committed by the child or person.
(6) Nothing in the provisions of this or the next following section shall apply to a case in respect of an offence the sentence for which is fixed by law."
Clause 57, leave out Clause 57 and insert the following new clause—
Reference and remit of cases of certain young persons by courts to children's hearings
".—(1) Where a person who is rot subject to a supervision requirement but is a person over the age of sixteen, and is not with six months of attaining the age of eighteen, is charged summarily with an offence and pleads guilty to, or has been found guilty of, that offence the court on that plea or finding may request the reporter of the local authority to arrange a children's hearing for the purpose of obtaining their advice, as to the treatment of the person, and on consideration of that advice, the court may as it thinks proper, itself dispose of the case or, where the hearing has so advised, remit the case to the reporter of the local authority for the disposal of the case by a children's hearing.
(2) Where a court has remitted a case under the foregoing subsection the provisions of this Part of this Act shall apply to that person as if he were a child."
Clause 58, page 34, line 13, leave opt "and to Northern Ireland".
Leave out Clause 59.
Clause 61, page 35, line 23, leave out "that person" and insert "the person in charge of the establishment".
Clause 61, page 35, line 31, leave out "any such regulation".
Clause 62, page 36, line 5, leave out "in need" and insert "for the purposes of this Act".
Clause 62, page 36, line 7, after "registered" insert "or premises in respect of which a person is required to be registered".
Clause 62, page 36, line 19, leave out "fifty" and insert "one hundred".
Clause 63, page 37, line 6, leave out "in need".
Clause 63, page 37, line 31, leave out "such a fine" and insert "a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds".
Page 38, line 6, after "this" insert "or the last foregoing".
Clause 65, page 38, line 39, leave out "section 63" and insert "this Part".
Page 39, line 17, leave out "the said section 63" and insert "this Part of this Act".
Clause 67, page 40, line 18, after "persons" insert "accommodated or".
Clause 68, page 41, line 14, leave out "(3) and (4)" and insert "(4) and (5)".
Clause 68, page 41, line 20, leave out "places" and insert "place".
Clause 68, page 41, line 21, leave out "are" and insert "is".
Clause 68, page 41, line 22, leave out from "believe" to "registrable" in line 23 and insert" is being used as an establishment in respect of which the person carrying it on is".
Clause 69, page 41, line 36, after "care" insert or under the supervision".
Clause 70, page 42, line 6, leave out "placed" and insert detained".
Clause 70, page 42, line 8, at end insert "or by virtue of rules made by the Secretary of State under section 45 of this Act".
Clause 70, page 42, line 10, after "Kingdom" insert "or".
Clause 70, page 42, leave out "or the Isle of Man".
Clause 70, page 42, line 22, after "unwilling" insert "or unable".
Clause 70, page 42, leave out "placed" and insert "detained".
Clause 70, page 42, line 23, leave out "disposal of his case" and insert "reporter has considered, in pursuance of section 37 of this Act, whether the child may be in need of compulsory measures of care".
Clause 70, page 42, line 24, after "hearing" insert "for the consideration of his case or".
Clause 70, page 42, line 30, leave out "has" and insert "have".
Clause 70, page 42, at end insert—
"( ) In this and the next following section any reference to a child absconding includes a reference to his being unlawfully taken away".
Clause 71, page 43, line 1, after "Kingdom" insert "or the"
Clause 71, page 43, leave out "or the Isle of Man"
Clause 71, page 43, line 3, leave out "of this subsection line 4, leave out "escaped" and insert "absconded"
Clause 71, page 43, line 6, leave out "of this subsection"
Clause 71, page 43, line 7, leave out "other"
Clause 72, page 43, line 14, leave out "subsection (1) of"
Clause 73, page 43, line 31, leave out second "of" and insert "not exceeding"
Clause 73, page 43, line 40, leave out "a supervision order is made" and insert a case is disposed of"
Clause 75, page 44, line 35, after "44" insert "and send notification of that requirement in accordance with section 73(1)(b) of this Act"
Clause 75, page 45, line 20, leave out "made" and insert originally made under section 44 of this Act"
Clause 75, page 45, leave out "except that" and insert—
"Provided that—
(a)"
Clause 75, page 45, line 22, leave out "it" and insert "the order under this section"
Clause 75, page 45, line 24, at end insert—
"(b) the contributions to be made in respect of him under section 90 of the said Act of 1933 or under section 126 of the said Act of 1950 shall be made by such council as may be named in the order under this section, being the council within whose district his parent proposes to reside or is residing at the time of the order."
Clause 76, page 45, line 43, after "Northern Ireland "insert" under Part III of the Children and Young Persons Act (Northern Ireland) 1950 or Part I of the Education Act (Northern Ireland) 1948,"
Clause 76, Page 46, line 16, at end insert "or both"
Clause 76, Page 46, line 18, leave out "this Part" and insert "section 73"
Clause 76, Page 46, line 20, leave out "under the said Part and insert" for the purposes of section 74 of this Act"
Clause 77, page 46, line 35, leave out attendance of the child at the hearing" and insert "transfer of the child to the place notified to them by the reporter"
Clause 79, page 47, line 8, after "sixteen" insert years of age".
Clause 79, page 47, line 10, leave out "while he is over fifteen" and insert "if he is over sixteen years of age".
Clause 80, page 47, line 20, at beginning insert—
"( ) Subject to the provisions of the following subsection."
Clause 80, page 47, line 23, after "care" insert", or under the supervision"
Clause 80, page 47, line 30, at end insert—
"( ) Where a contributor is for the time being residing in England or Wales or Northern Ireland contributions payable by him under the last foregoing section shall be payable to the local authority having the care or supervision of the child."
Clause 81, page 47, line 33, leave out "the sheriff" and insert "any court of summary jurisdiction"
Clause 81, page 47, line 36, after "order" insert "on any contributor"
Clause 81, page 47, line 43, leave out "the sheriff" and insert "any court of summary jurisdiction"
Clause 81, page 48, line 1, leave out "resident" and insert "residing"
Clause 81, page 48, line 3, leave out "sheriff" and insert "court"
Clause 81, page 48, line 19, leave out "it is made" and insert "the child is a maintainable child"
Clause 81, page 48, line 20, leave out "it" and insert "that requirement"
Clause 81, page 48, line 25, leave out "the sheriff" and insert" any court of summary jurisdiction"
Clause 81, page 48, line 26, leave out "person liable" and insert "contributor"
Clause 81, page 48, line 28, at end insert—
"(7) Where a contributor resides in England or Wales or Northern Ireland this section shall have effect as if for any reference to a court of summary jurisdiction having jurisdiction in the place where the contributor is for the time being residing there were substituted a reference to a court of summary jurisdiction having jurisdiction in any place within the area of the local authority having the care or supervision of the child."
Clause 82, page 48, line 36, leave out "the sheriff" and insert "any court of summary jurisdiction".
Clause 82, page 48, line 43, leave out "such a decree and insert "a decree for aliment".
Clause 82, Page 49, line 3, leave out subsection (4) and insert—

"(4)(a) In this section the local authority concerned means the local authority which may make application for a contribution order in respect of a child under the last foregoing section;

(b) where the father of a child is resident in England or Wales or Northern Ireland, subsection (2) of this section shall have effect as if for the reference to a court of summary jurisdiction having jurisdiction in the place where the father is for the time being residing, there were substituted a reference to a court of summary jurisdiction having jurisdiction in any place within the area of the local authority concerned.

Clause 83, page 49, line 15, after "residing" insert ", or, as the case may be, the local authority having the care or supervision of the child to whom the order or decree relates".
Clause 83, page 49, line 17, after "order" insert "or decree".
Clause 83, page 49, line 18, after "area" insert "or, as the case may be, when the authority were not entitled to sums payable under the order or decree".
Clause 83, page 49, line 24, after "order" insert "or decree".
Clause 84, page 49, line 26, after "84" insert "(1)".
Clause 84, page 49, leave out from "is" to "is" in line 27 and insert "by virtue of a supervision requirement removed from the care of any person and that person".
Clause 84, page 49, line 30, leave out "the sheriff" and insert "any court of summary jurisdiction".
Clause 84, page 49, line 35, at end insert—
"( ) Where the person in whose care a child has been residing is for the time being residing in England or Wales or Northern Ireland the foregoing subsection shall have effect as if for the reference to a court having jurisdiction in the place where that person is residing there were substituted a reference to a court of summary jurisdiction having jurisdiction in any place within the area of the local authority having the care or supervision of the child."
Clause 85, page 49, line 42, leave out "the coming into operation of this Act" and insert "transfer".
Clause 86, page 50, line 24, leave out second "officers".
Clause 87, page 51, line 31, after "person" insert "ordinarily"
Clause 87, page 51, line 32, after "authority" insert ",and in this subsection any reference to another local authority includes a reference to a local authority in England or Wales"
Clause 87, page 51, line 36, at end insert—
"( ) In determining for the purposes of subsection (1) of this section the ordinary residence of any person or child, any period during which he was a patient in a hospital forming part of the hospital and specialist services provided under Part II of the National Health Service Act 1946 or Part II of the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1947 or in the case of a child, any period during which he resided in any place as an inmate oft school or other institution, or in accordance with the requirements of a supervision requirement, supervision order or probation order or the conditions of a recognizance, or while hoarded out under this Act or under the Children Act 1948, the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 or the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937 by a local authority or education authority shall be disregarded."
Clause 88, page 52, line 8, leave out "of the said Act of 1948".
Clause 88, page 52, line 11, after "organisations)"insert" and sections 42 to 44 of the said Act of 1948 (which make provision for the mutual maintenance of wires and husbands and the maintenance of their children by recovery of assistance from persons liable for maintenance and for affiliation orders, etc.)".
Clause 89, page 52, line 35, leave out "per son" and insert "local authority".
Clause 89, page 52, line 42, leave out "is" and insert "was at the material time".
Clause 89, page 52, line 44, leave out "person" and insert "local authority".
Clause 89, page 52, line 45, at end insert— "A father who is making any payment to a local authority by virtue of any order or decree under Part VI of this Act shall be regarded as a parent for the purposes of this section."
Clause 90, page 53, line 5, leave out "the appeal tribunals established by" and insert "any appeal tribunal established under".
Clause 95, page 54, line 39, leave out "persons in need" and insert "the purposes of this Act".
Clause 95, page 54, line 39, leave out from first "not" to end of line 41.
Clause 95, Page 56, line 21, leave out "persons in need" and insert "the purposes of this Act".
Clause 95, Page 56, line 22, leave out from first "not" to end of line 23.
Clause 95, Page 56, line 23, at the end insert "school age" has the meaning assigned to it by section 32(1) of the Education (Scotland) Act 1962,".
Clause 95, Page 56, line 24, after "order", insert "in relation to an order".
Clause 95, Page 57, line 13, at end insert and to any enactment of that Parliament passed after this Act and re-enacting the said enactment with or without modifications."
Clause 96, page 57, line 29, at end insert "but".
Clause 98, page 58, leave out line 3.
Clause 98, page 58, line 4, at end insert "Sections 87 and 88".
Clause 98, page 58, leave out lines 8 to 10.
Clause 98, page 58, leave out line 13 and 14.
14.
Clause 98, page 58, line 15 at end insert "section 97".
Clause 98, page 58, line 18, leave out from "Islands" to "sections" in line 19 and insert "that is to say".
In the Schedules: before Schedule 1 insert the following new Schedule—
"AMENDMENT OF CHILDREN ACT 1958
1. After section 1 there shall be inserted the following section—
'1A. In Scotland, without prejudice to the provisions of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968, it shall be the duty of every local authority to secure the welfare of children within their area who are foster children within the meaning of this Part of this Act and, where the local authority consider such a course to be necessary or expedient for the purposes of this section, they shall cause the children to be visited from time to time by their officers, who shall give such advice as to the care and maintenance of the children as may appear to be necessary'.
2.—(1) In section 2(1), for the words 'for maintenance' to the word 'month' there shall be substituted the words 'is undertaken for a period of more than six clays beginning with the day on which the child is received into that care'.
(2) In section 2(3), after paragraph (e) there shall be added the following paragraph—
(f) who undertakes his care for a period not exceeding one month beginning with the day the child is received into that care, unless—

(i) the person during the year immediately preceding the date of receiving into care has had the care of one or more foster children for periods which in the aggregate exceed three months, or

(ii) the number of continuous periods, which exceed six days beginning on the day of receiving into care, throughout which a particular child or any child was in the care of that person in that period of one year exceeds three.

(3) Section 2(6) and (7) shall be omitted.
3. In section 9, after the word 'foster-child' there shall he inserted the words for reward'."
Schedule 1, page 59, line 13, at end insert "sitting summarily".
Schedule 1, page 59, line 16, at beginning insert—
"( ) In section 40(1) for the words ' apparently under the age of seventeen years ' there shall be substituted the words who is apparently a child'."
after" 40(2)", insert "for the words 'apparently under the age of seventeen years' there shall be substituted the words who is apparently a child', and".
Schedule 1, page 59, line 17, at end insert "other than a police station".
Schedule 1, page 59, line 18, leave out second "subsection" and insert "subsections".
Schedule 1, page 59, line 20, leave out from "child" to "in" in line 27. and insert "has been detained under this section and is not so liberated as aforesaid and it is decided not to proceed with the charge against him a constable shall so inform the reporter of the local authority for the area in which the child is detained, and the child may continue to be detained".
Schedule 1, page 59, line 29, at end insert—
(4) A child shall not continue to be detained under this section—

(a) where the reporter considers the child does not require compulsory measures of care, or

(b) after the day on which a children's hearing first sit to consider his case in pursuance of section 37(4) of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968, or

(c) for a period exceeding seven days."

Schedule 1, page 59, leave out "the said Part III" and insert "Part III of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968".
Schedule 1, page 59, line 30, leave out paragraph 4 and insert—
"4.—(1) In section 41, for subsection (1) there shall be substituted the followig sub-section—
(1) Any court, on remanding or committing for trial a child who is not liberated on bail shall, instead of committing him to prison, commit him to the local authority in whose area the court is situated to be detained in a place of safety chosen by the local authority for the period for which he is remanded or until he is liberated in due course of law:
Provided that in the case of a child over fourteen years of age it shall not be obligatory on the court so to commit him if the court certifies that he is of so unruly a character that be cannot safely be so committed, or that he is of so depraved a character that he is not a fit person to be so detained.
(2) In subsection (2), for the words 'young person' where first occurring there shall be substituted the words 'child over fourteen years of age', and where secondly occurring there shall be substituted the word 'child'."
Schedule 1, page 60, line 5, leave out sub-paragraph (3).
Schedule 1, page 60, line 7, at end insert— "In section 44, after 'child' where first occurring there shall he inserted the words 'under fourteen years of age'."
Schedule 1, page 60, line 8, leave out from "section" to end of line 14 and insert "46(1) for the words 'child or young person', in both places where these words occur, there shall be substituted the words a person under the age of seventeen years'."
Schedule 1, page 60, line 14, at end in-sert—
"(1) In section 47(1) leave out the words 'until he can be brought before a juvenile court' wherever occurring.
(2) After subsection (1) there shall be inserted the following subsection—
( ) A child shall not continue to be detained under the last foregoing subsection—

(a) where the reporter considers the child does not require compulsory measures of care, or

(b) after the day on which a children's hearing first sit to consider his case in pursuance of section 37(4) of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968, or

(c) for a period exceeding seven days." at end insert—

"In section 48, for the words 'any child or young person' there shall be substituted the words any person under the age of seventeen', and far the words the child or young person' there shall be substituted the words the person'."
Schedule 1, page 60, line 18, after "Act" insert "and section 49 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933".
Schedule 1, page 60, line 44, leave out from "and" to end of line 3 on page 61 and insert "for the words child or young person' in both places where these words occur there shall be substituted the words a person under the age of seventeen years'."
Schedule 1, page 61, line 11, leave out second "a" and insert "the".
Schedule 1, page 61, line 12, at end insert—
"After section 5S there shall be inserted the following section—
58A.—(1) Where a child charged summarily before the sheriff with an offence pleads guilty to, or is found guilty of, that offence the sheriff may order the child to be committed for such period not exceeding two yearn as may be specified in the order to such a place as the Secretary of State may direct for the purpose of undergoing residential training, and where such an order is made the child shall during that period be liable to be detained in that place subject to such conditions as the Secretary of State may direct.
(2) A child detained pursuant to the directions of the Secretary of State under this section shall, while so detained, be deemed to be in legal custody.
(3) Any child so detained as aforesaid may at any time he released conditionally or unconditionally by the Secretary of State, and any such child conditionally released shall be liable to recall on the directions of the Secretary of State and if he fails to comply with any condition of his release he may be apprehended without warrant and taken to the place from which he was released."
Schedule 1, page 61, leave out lines 22 and 23 and insert "For section 67. there shall be substituted the following section—"
Schedule 2, page 62, line 25, leave cut from beginning to "such" and insert "A local authority may pay the members or possible members of the children's panel and members of the Children's Panel Advisory Committee for their area".
Schedule 3, page 62, line 38, after "bearing", insert "or of an application to the sheriff for a finding".
Schedule 3, page 62, line 44, leave out "best".
Schedule 3, page 62, line 44, after "child", insert "and grants a legal aid certificate".
Schedule 3, page 63, line 1, leave out "the Court", and insert "it appears".
Schedule 3, page 63, line 2, leave out "is of opinion".
Schedule 3, page 63, line 4, leave out from "that" to end of line, and insert "the child or his parent should receive legal aid in the particular".
Schedule 3, page 63, leave out lines 6 to 8.
Schedule 3, page 63, line 24, leave out from third "the" to end of line 25, and insert "dependants of either"
Schedule 3, page 63, line 29, leave cut from "sheriff" to end of line 30.
Schedule 3, page 63, line 33, lea le out "where"
Schedule 3, page 63, line 41, after "parent", insert "in such civil proceedings as aforesaid"
Schedule 4, page 64, line 43, leave out "tribunals" and insert "the panel".
Schedule 6, leave out Schedule 6 and insert the following new Schedule—

TRANSITIONAL PROVISIONS
Registration of existing establishments
1.—(1) Until the expiration of a period of two years beginning with the commencement of Part IV of this Act, or until registration is effected or refused under the said Part IV, whichever of those three events first occurs—

(a) a registration in respect of any establishment under any enactment repealed by this Act shall for the purposes of this Act be deemed to be a registration kept by a local authority under section 63 thereof, and

(b) a registration in respect of any establishment (other than an approved school) not required under any enactment immediately before the said commencement but required thereafter shall for the purposes of this Act be deemed to be kept as aforesaid by a local authority so long as there is no change of user.

(2) Notwithstanding the coming into operation of the said Part IV, the provisions of the said Part shall not apply in relation to approved schools until the commencement of Part III of this Act and thereafter, until the expiration of a period of two years beginning with the said commencement or until registration is effected or refused under the said Part IV whichever of these three events first occurs, a registration in respect of an appoved school required under the said Part IV shall, subject to the provisions of the next following paragraph, be deemed to he kept by the Secretary of State under that Part.
(3) Before the expiration of the period of two years mentioned in either of the two foregoing sub-paragraphs, the persons responsible for the management of any establishment deemed to be registered as aforesaid shall, if they intend the establishment to continue for the purposes in respect of which it is so deemed, make application for registration in accordance with the provisions of the said Part IV.
Approved schools
2.—(1) The following enactments shall, notwithstanding the repeal or exclusion by this Act of any such enactment, continue to have effect, with any necessary modifications, in relation to establishments which were approved schools immediately before the commencement of Part III of this Act until such time as the Secretary of State otherwise directs, either generally or in regard to any particular establishment—

(a) The Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937: sections 83(2) and (3) and 85(1), 2(a) and (c) (surrender of certificate of approval of approved school and classification and administration etc. of approved schools); section 107(1)(a)(i) and (b) and (2) (exchequer grants and expenses of the Secretary of State);

(b) The Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1963: sections 21 and 22 (directions as to management of approved schools and constitution of managers).

(2) Until such time as the Secretary of State makes a direction under sub-paragraph (1) of
1232
this paragraph in respect of an establishment the payments made by a local authority under this Act in respect of the expenses of carrying the Secretary of State shall from time to time prescribe.
(3) Until such time as aforesaid any contribution or sums received by a local authority by virtue of any order or decree made under Part VI of this Act, or deemed to be so made, in respect of a child, in an establishment shall be paid to the Secretary of State, but subject to such deductions in respect of the services rendered by the authority as may be prescribed.
Contributions in respect of children taken into care
3. After the commencement of Part II of this Act and until the commencement of Part VI thereof, Part III of the Children Act 1948 shall have the like effect in relation to children taken into care under section 15 of this Act as it had in relation to children taken into care under section 1 of that Act.
Approved school orders, fit person orders and supervision orders
4.—(1) This paragraph applies to children who immediately before the commencement of Part III of this Act were in any of the following classes, that is to say children who are—

(a) subject to an approved school order,

(b) committed to the care of a fit person under an order of a court,

(c) under a supervision order,

(d) subject to an order of committal to custody in a remand home.

(2) Subject to the next following sub-paragraph, a child to whom this paragraph applies shall, on the coming into operation of the said Part III, continue to be subject to any such order as aforesaid, and any provision of any enactment applying to the operation of the order and the treatment of the child shall, notwithstanding the repeal or exclusion by this Act of any such provision, continue so to apply.
(3) It shall be the duty of such local authorities as may be prescribed by the Secretary of State, by such date, and in such circumstances and in such cases as may be so prescribed to arrange for children to whom this paragraph applies to be brought before a children's hearing for the consideration and disposal of their cases under Part III of this Act, and on the disposal of a case the order relating to the child shall cease to have effect.
(4) The provisions of the last foregoing subparagraph shall apply in the case of a child over the age of sixteen years who has not attained the age of eighteen years, but where a child has attained the age of eighteen years, on such date as the Secretary of State may prescribe, the order relating to the child shall cease to have effect.
Jurisdiction of courts
5.—(1) Subject to the next following subparagraph, on the commencement of Part III

1233
of this Act, for the purpose of continuing the jurisdiction of courts in respect of children and young persons who before the said commencement have been charged with an offence, and in respect of children and young persons whose cases have been disposed of but where the courts have continuing functions at the time of that commencement arising from the form of disposal, the provisions of any enactment relating to those courts and cases in them shall, notwithstanding the repeal or exclusion by this Act of any such provisions, continue to have effect in relation to those courts and to those cases.
(2) In the case of a juvenile court constituted under the section 51 of the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937, the provisions of the foregoing sub-paragraph shall apply until such time as the Secretary of State otherwise directs, and on any such direction being made any question arising from the imposition of an order of such a court shall be dealt with by the sheriff having jurisdiction in the former area of that court as if the order had been made by him.
6. On the coming into operation of the said Part III the jurisdiction of a juvenile court in relation to the care and protection of children shall cease, and any case of a child under the age of sixteen years which was before the court under that jurisdiction immediately before the said commencement shall stand referred to the reporter of the local authority in whose area the child is ordinarily resident, or, where his ordinary residence is not known or is furth of Scotland, to the reporter of the local authority in whose area the circumstances arose which brought his case before the court.
Remand Home Grant
7. Until such time as the Secretary of State may direct, section 107(a)(iii) of the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937 shall continue to have effect.
Probation Grant
8. Until such time as the Secretary of State may by order direct, section 75(3)(a) and (b), (4) and (5) of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1949 shall continue to have effect.
Interpretation
9. In this Schedule the following expressions have the meanings assigned to them—
"approved school" means a school approved under section 83 of the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1947.
"approved school order" has the meaning assigned to it by section 110(1) of the said Act of 1937.
"remand home" has the meaning assigned to it by section 78(1) of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1949.
"supervision order" has the meaning assigned to it by section 72 of the said Act of 1949.
Schedule 7, page 68, line 2, leave out from "proviso" to "Part II" in line 4 and insert "after the word '1948' there shall be inserted the word or'."
Schedule 7, page 68, line 8, leave out from "and" to "Part II" in line 10 and insert "after the word '1948' there shall be inserted the word or'."
Schedule 7, page 68, line 12, leave out from "90(6)" to "Part II" in line 14 and insert "after the word 1948' there shall be inserted the word or'."
Schedule 7, page 68, line 24, at end insert—
".—(1) In section 87(1), for the words from "to an approved school" to the end of the subsection there shall be substituted the words "to such place in Scotland as the Secretary of State may direct for the purposes of undergoing residential training, and after his transfer to that place may be deal with and shall he subject to the provisions of this Act and of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1963 as if the order sending him to the school in England or Northern Ireland were an order for committal for residential training made under section 58A of this Act made upon the same date, and as if the order were authority for his detention for a period not exceeding the period for which he might be detained under the approved school order or, as the case may be, the training school order made in respect of him.
(2) In section 87(2) to (4), any reference to an approved school in Scotland shall to construed as a reference to a place in respect of which the Secretary of State has made, or may make, a direction under subsection (1).
(3) In section 87(3), the words from approved school as' to the end of the sub section shall be omitted, and there shall be substituted the words to such place in Scotland as the Secretary of State may direct for the purposes of undergoing residential training, and after his transfer to that place may be dealt with and shall be subject to the provisions of this Act and of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1963 as if the order were an order for committal for residential training made under section 58A of this Act made upon the same date'.".
Schedule 7, page 68,line 25, leave out "For section 101(2) there shall be substituted" and insert "After section 101(2) them shall be inserted".
Schedule 7, page 68, line 27, leave out "(2)" and insert "(2A)".
Schedule 7, page 68, line 29, at end insert—
".—(1) In section 103(1), for the words whether charged with an offence 07 not' there shall be substituted the words charged with an offence',
(2) After subsection (1), there shall be added the following subsection—
'(1A) The court in making any inquiry in pursuance of the last foregoing subsection shall have regard to the application of the provisions of section 30(1) of the Social. Work (Scotland) Act 1968 but an older or judgment of the court shall not be invalidated by any subsequent proof that the court was not informed that at the material time the person was subject to a supervision requirement or that his case had been

1235
referred to a children's hearing under Part V of that Act'.
(3) After subsection (4), there shall be added the following subsection—
'(5) In subsections (1) and (2) of this section, references to a child or young person charged with an offence shall be construed as references to a child within the meaning of section 30(1) of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968'.".
Page 69, line 7, leave out "Part I" and insert "section 1(4)".
Page 69, line 7, line 10, leave out section 1(4) of that Act "and insert" that section".
Page 69, line 7, line 14, at end insert—
". In section 32(1), at the end there shall be inserted the words', and in this subsection any reference to another local authority includes a reference to a local authority in Scotland'.".
Page 69, line 7, line 15, leave out paragraph 12.
Page 69, line 7, line 27, leave out paragraph 14.
Page 69, line 7, line 36, leave out paragraph 16 and insert—
"16.—(1) In section 1(4), after the words 'Secretary of State', there shall be inserted the words ' and in this subsection any reference to another local authority includes a reference to a local authority in Scotland'.
(2) In subsection (5), after the words 'probation order', there shall be inserted the words 'or supervision requirement', and after the words 1937', there shall be inserted the words or Part II of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968'.".
Page 69, line 7, line 40, at end insert—
". In section 13(1), at the end, there shall be inserted the words and arrangements may be made under this subsection for boarding out a child in Scotland, or for maintaining him in a residential establishment provided, or the provision of which is secured, or which is registered, under Part IV of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968'.".
page 70, line 13, leave out "in rules made by the Secretary of State" and insert by Act of Adjournal".
page 71, line 4, after "authority insert" for the words other than a juvenile court' there shall be substituted the words 'other than a court whose procedure is regulated by rules made under section 52(2) of the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 19371".
Page 69, line 7, line 19, leave out subparagraph (2) and insert—
"(2) For subsections (3) and (4), there shall be substituted the following subsections—
'(3) Where any person is committed to a local authority or to a remand centre under any provision of this Act that authority or centre shall be specified in the warrant, and he shall be detained by the authority or in the centre for the period for which he is committed or until he is liberated in due course of law,
(4) Where any person has been committed to a local authority under any provision of this Act, the court by which he was committed, if the person so committed is not less than fourteen years of age and it appears to the court that he is unruly or depraved, may revoke the commitment and commit the said person—

(a) if the court has been notified that a remand centre is available for the reception from that court of persons of his class or description, to a remand centre; and

(b) if the court has not been so notified, to a prison'.".

Page 69, line 7, line 23, leave out from "person", to second "the" in line 24 and insert "under sixteen years of age who has been committed to prison or to a remand centre under this section".
Page 69, line 7, line 25, after "prison" insert "or a remand centre".
Page 69, line 7, line 34, leave out "definition—" and insert "definitions—'local authority' has the same meaning as in the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968'.".
page 72, line 7, at end insert—
"In section 8(1), after the words the Children Act 1948' there shall he inserted the words' or section 82 of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968'.".
Page 69, line 7, line 8. after "29", in-Bert"(1)".
Page 69, line 7, line 8, leave out from
"(1)," to "for" in line 10 and insert "after paragraph (a) there shall be inserted the following paragraph—(aa)".
Page 69, line 7, line 14, at end insert—
"(2) In subsection (2) after the words 'forty-three', there shall be inserted the words 'or the said section 81'.
In section 16(2)(b), after sub-paragraph (v) there shall be inserted the following sub-paragraph—
'(vi) a contribution order under section 81 of, or a decree or an order made under section 82 of, the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968'.".
Page 69, line 7, line 16, leave out paragraph 30 and insert—
"Any reference to the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937, however expressed, or to any provision of that Act shall be omitted.
Valuation and Rating (Scotland) Act 1956
32.—(1) In section 8(1) in paragraph (b), after the word 'authority', there shall be inserted the words 'or to a local authority'.
(2) For paragraph (c), there shall be substituted the following paragraph—
'(c) of any structure belonging to a local authority or voluntary organisation being a local authority or a voluntary organisation within the meaning of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 and supplied in pursuance of arrangements made under the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 for the use of any persons who are blind, deaf and dumb

1237
or who suffer from mental disorder of any description and ether persons who are substantially and permanently handicapped by illness, injury or congenital deformity or such other disabilities as may be prescribed by the Secretary of State under that Act' ".
page 72, line 31, after "1968", insert "and for the words 'that section' there shall be substituted the words 'the said section 1 or as the case may be, the said section 15'".
page 73, line 2, leave out "section 5(3)" and insert "or by virtue of sections 5,".
Page 69, line 7, line 2, leave out "and 60" and insert "60 and 61".
Page 69, line 7, line 11, leave out "section" and insert "subsection".
Page 69, line 7, line 24, leave out from "6(b) to "the" in line 25 and insert "after the word '1937' there shall be inserted".
Page 69, line 7, line 30, leave out "15" and insert "16".
Page 69, line 7, line 37, leave out "for" and insert "in".
page 74, line 17, leave out "(e)".
Page 69, line 7, line 19, leave out from "7(1)" to end of line 24 and insert "after the words 'shall include', there shall be inserted the words the ascertainment of mental deficiency in any person not of school age within the meaning of the Education (Scotland) Act 1962'.
(1A) In relation to the aforesaid persons the purpose for which arrangements are authorised or required to be made by a local authority under the said section 27(1) as read with section 1(4) of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 shall include the following, that is to say—"; and paragraph (e) shall be omitted".
(2) In subsection (2) for '(1)' where secondly occurring there shall be substituted the word '(1A)'".
Page 69, line 7, line 26, at end insert
"or"
Page 69, line 7, line 39, at end insert—
"In section 57(3)(b), after the word 'child', there shall be inserted the words under sixteen years of age'".
Page 69, line 7, line 40, after 59(1)", insert "for the word 'home' there shall be substituted the words 'residential establishment', and".
page 75, line 5, leave out first "(1)".
Page 69, line 7, leave out lines 6 to 9.
Page 69, line 7, line 20, leave out "(2)".
Page 69, line 7, line 21, leave out "definitions" and insert "definition".
Page 69, line 7, leave out lines 24 and 25.
Page 69, line 7, line 26, leave out from "111," to "the" in line 27 and insert "after the definition of 'hospital order' there shall be inserted".
Page 69, line 7, line 29, at end insert—
"Health Visiting and Social Work (Training) Act 1962
In section 3(5), after '1948', insert 'or under any re-enactment of any of the provisions of the said Parts of the said Acts of 1947 and 1948 contained in Part II of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968.'".
Page 76, line 3, leave out from first "of" to end of line 4 and insert "an establishment or residential establishment within the meaning of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 and the certificated teachers employed therein in the provision of primary, secondary or further education'.".
Page 76, line 3, line 14, at end insert—
"(b) in definition 42. for the words from 'not include' to the end of the definition there shall be substituted the words an establishment or residential establishment within the meaning of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968'".
Page 76, line 3, line 19, leave out paragraph 60 and insert—
"60. In section 55, the words from 'section 88(5)' to 'Scottish Act' shall be omitted and after '1948' there shall be inserted the words or section 23 of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968'".
Page 76, line 3, line 22, at beginning, insert—
"(1) In section 57(2), any reference to a juvenile court shall, in relation to Scotland, be construed as a reference to the sheriff sitting summarily in respect of an offence by a child.
Page 76, line 3, line 30, at end insert—
"In section 29, for the words 'approved school' there shall be substituted the words detained in any place under an order made by virtue of section 57 or 58A of the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937'".
Page 76, line 3, line 40, leave out subparagraphs (1) and (2) and insert—
".—(1) In section 11(1), in paragraph (a), after the word 'authorised' there shall be inserted the words, 'or, as the case may be, his or her residence in a residential establishment is required' after paragraph (a)(ii) there shall be inserted the following head—
'or

(iii) by a supervision requirement made under section 44 of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968,',

and after the words 'the school', there shall be inserted the words 'or, as the case may be, the residential establishment', and in paragraph (b), for the words the said Act of 1937' there shall he substituted the words the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937' and after paragraph (b) there shall be inserted the following paragraph—
'(bb) during which the child is liable to undergo residential training under committal by virtue of section 58A of the said Act of 1937 and is not released under that section;',
and after paragraph (c) there shall be added the following paragraph—

1239
(cc) during which the child is accommodated by virtue of rules made by the Secretary of State under section 45 of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968'.".
Schedule 8, page 77, line 21, column 3, at beginning insert—

"In section 21(2), the words from 'may take' to the end of the subsection."

Schedule 8, page 77, line 23, column 3, at end insert "and in subsection (2), the words or taken to a place of safety' and the words 'or the person by whom he is taken to the place of safety, as the case may be'.
In section 47(1) the words 'until he can be brought before a juvenile court' wherever occurring'.
Schedule 8, page 77, line 35, at end insert "and in subsection (4), the words 'under this section, or'".
Schedule 8, page 77, leave out line 41.
Schedule 8, page 77, line 42, leave out "98" and insert "86 Sections 88 to 98".
Schedule 8, page 77, leave out lines 44 to 48.
Page 78, leave out lines 21 to 23.
Page 78, 23.
Page 78, line 28, at end insert "Section 26(1) and (5)".
Page 78, leave out lines 44 and 45.
Schedule 8, page 77, page 79, line 41, column 3, at end insert", so far as relating to the modification of the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937".
Schedule 8, page 77, line 42, at end insert—

"15 & 16 Geo. 6. & 1 Eliz. 2. c. 61.

The Prisons (Scotland) Act 1952.

Section 18(1) to (3A).

In section 32, in subsection (3), the words 'who is not less than seventeen years of age', and subsection (4)."

Schedule 8, page 77, line 53, column 3, at end insert "and section 12(3)".
Schedule 8, page 77, line 53, at end insert—

"6 & 7 Eliz. 2. c. 65.

The Children Act 1958.

Section 1. Section 2(6) and (7)."

Schedule 8, page 77, page 80, line 3, column 3, at beginning insert "Section 4(3)(b)".
Schedule 8, page 77, line 29, at end insert "and in the definition of' place of safety' the word 'or young person' first occurring".
Schedule 8, page 77, line 31, at end insert "for persons suffering from mental disorder".
Schedule 8, page 77, leave out lines 37 to 39.
Schedule 8, page 77, leave out line 42 and insert "Section 58".
Schedule 8, page 77, leave out lines 51 and 52.
Schedule 8, page 77, line 52, at end insert—

"1968. c.

The Health Services and Public Health Act 1968.

Section (Home help and laundry facilities.

Section (Extension of power, under the National Assistance Act 1948, of local authority to provide accommodation elsewhere than in premises managed by them of another authority).

Section (Promotion, by local authorities, of the welfare of old people)."

Schedule 8, page 77, page 81, column 3, leave out lines 49 and 50 and insert—
"In section 11, subsection (1)(a)(ii), in subsection (1)(c), the words 'or an order under section 73(2) of the said Act of 1937', and in subsection (2), the words 'or the said Act of 1937'".
11.7 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, with the leave of the House I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments (Nos. 97 to 314).
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Hughes.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, that is quite a "mouthful", but I raise no objection.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned at eight minutes past eleven o'clock.