Lords Sitting of 5 March 1968

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

RHODESIA SANCTIONS
2.34 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what investigation has been made of the statement by President Kaunda of Zambia on February 15 that between January, 1966, and August, 1967, a total of 713,130 tons of oil, petrol and sub-products destined for Rhodesia were delivered at ports in Mozambique by ships sailing under eleven national flags, including the British flag.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD BROWN): My Lords, the document distributed by President Kaunda contains a list of 165 tankers of various nationalities. It in fact covers virtually all the tankers calling at Mozambique ports between January, 1966, and August, 1967. The document also gives figures for the tonnages of oil supplies unloaded by each vessel, but the aggregate total of 713,000 tons is only about one quarter of what, according to our information, was delivered to Mozambique ports, and in most cases the figures given for individual tankers are only a fraction of their capacity. However, in appears to have been suggested to President Kaunda that the figures in the document refer to oil supplies destined for Rhodesia.
This falls down on two counts. First, it is known that 49 of the tankers listed carried crude oil exclusively, and we know that no crude oil is getting into Rhodesia because the only refinery at Umtali is closed down. Secondly, the suggestion implicit in the document is that a fixed proportion of each and
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every cargo delivered to Mozambique ports over a period of twenty months found its way to Rhodesia. The implication is therefore that the figures in the document are a fabrication; that the document was planted on the Zambians; and that they have most unfortunately been taken in by it.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that very full reply, may I ask whether he would agree that the word "fabrication" is a little strong? Did not President Kaunda give many details? Do not the ships include 23 British ships? What investigation has been made of the cargoes of those particular ships and of the companies which they were serving?
LORD BROWN: My Lords, I am not suggesting for a moment that the fabrication has been done by the Zambians or President Kaunda, but on the best interpretation we can make of the evidence we have come to the conclusion that the document itself is a fabrication. The investigations done into the activities of British oil companies leave Her Majesty's Government satisfied that the British oil companies themselves are not supplying oil to Rhodesia.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he happened to see the television feature "World in Action" on October 2, which actually filmed the delivery to Salisbury from Beira of an article which was prohibited by sanctions, with the help of a London shipping company? May I ask him what checks are made at Beira, and whether it is not now time that a similar prohibition was enforced at Lourenco Marques where the greater part of this defeat of sanctions is operated?
LORD BROWN: My Lords, I did not see the broadcast in question. I know that there are many rumours, and I think one could use the word "fabrications", about the situation. As for the question of extending the Beira patrol to Lourenco Marques, that is a matter for the Security Council.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, would not the Minister agree that it is regrettable that there are so many bodies and individuals who are always willing to prejudge every issue, saying that Britain is wrong?
LORD BROWN: Yes, my Lords.
LORD ILFORD: My Lords, is the noble Lord able to say what agency was responsible for the fabrication of this document?
LORD BROWN: No, my Lords, I am not able to say. We do not know.

TAY ROAD BRIDGE BUS FARES
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: 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 the Tay Road Bridge Committee have been refused permission to reduce bus fares.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCOTLAND (LORD HUGHES): My Lords, permission has not been refused. The Bridge Joint Board submitted a proposal to reduce the toll for scheduled service buses from 10s. to 2s. 6d., on the basis that this would enable the bus operators to remove the surcharge of 7d. which they include in the passenger fares.
My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has informed the Board that he would be willing to accept arrangements based on a 5s. level of toll for these buses, which would enable the surcharge to be reduced, probably to 2d. I understand that the Board intends to submit a formal proposal of this kind, and I hope that the surcharge will be reduced at an early date.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, may I thank the noble Lord for explaining the complexities of this matter, which he has done very satisfactorily. May I ask him whether it is the case that there has been no Government grant towards the £6 million cost of building this bridge, and whether it is the case that local authorities, which have borne the whole of the charge, have so far succeeded in making the bridge pay for itself? If this is so, should it not be made more expeditiously easy for them
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to determine the level of toll charges on all classes of vehicles?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I remember that when the present Member of Parliament for Dundee, West was contesting the by-election, he was asked what assistance the then Government had given to the building of the bridge. The reply which he gave, which was perfectly truthful, was, "So far as I am aware, the only thing the Government have given is permission." Since then they have gone a little further. As the noble Earl is aware, in this case exceptionally, on the first loan, unpaid interest on the loan is not capitalised. The result of this would be that if in fact the charge were reduced to 2s. 6d., the resulting annual deficiency—something of the order of £20,000—would fall on the Exchequer rather than on the local authorities.
So far as the figures are concerned, we think that 5s. is a fair one. The usage of the bridge is in excess of the estimates, and it is from that point of view that the Secretary of State feels it is reasonable to reduce this particular toll charge. But if the Government had been prepared to go to 2s. 6d. and to accept responsibility for the £20,000—a difficult thing at this time—it would have meant that those people who were travelling across the bridge in buses were the only people in vehicles who were using the bridge free of tolls. We think that a charge of 2d. per journey per passenger is fair in relation to the charges that other people are paying for the use of the bridge.
LORD KILMANY: My Lords, while we welcome the fact that 5s. is a less severe charge than 10s., surely the noble Lord will bear in mind that the Forth Road Bridge would allow such vehicles through for 2s. 6d. Why should the toll for the Tay Road Bridge, which as the noble Lord has told us is doing better than was expected, be higher than the Forth Road Bridge toll?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I suggest, before the noble Lord, Lord Kilmany, commends so strongly the 2s. 6d. toll charged on the Forth Bridge, that he looks at the accounts of the Forth Road Bridge.

BOARD OF TRADE FLIGHT INSPECTORATE
2.45 p.m.
LORD VIVIAN: 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 agreement has been reached with the British Airline Pilots' Association as to the number of flight inspectors required to carry out their arduous and highly responsible duties; and whether their salary has been agreed.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the Institution of Professional Civil Servants is the staff association recognised to represent the members of the Board of Trade Flight Inspectorate for purposes of negotiation of salaries and conditions of service. It is the responsibility of management to keep under continuous review the number of officers in the Inspectorate required to carry out its functions, though it is open to the Institution to make representations on behalf of its membership. No such representations have been received from the Institution. Following a pay claim made by the Institution, the present salaries of the Inspectorate were introduced by agreement with effect from July 1, 1967.
LORD VIVIAN: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his fairly full Answer, may I ask him whether he could consider at an early date paying flight inspectors the same money as is paid to senior captains, in view of the responsibility which they have to take?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, that is really a separate question. I should have thought that the payment of salaries was a matter for negotiation. As I said, the present salary levels have been agreed with the appropriate staff organisation. As a matter of interest, however, I understand that the salaries of Flight Operations Inspectors are linked to those of Captains of B.E.A. Viscount aircraft.
LORD VIVIAN: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his answer.
LORD TREFGARNE: My Lords, could the noble Lord say whether the
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complement of the flight operations inspectorate is up to strength at this time?
LORD BESWICK: No, my Lords. There are difficulties, as the noble Lord will probably know, in recruitment of these very skilled people. But, in fact, there are 30 in post, another three are being recruited, and when they are in post the establishment will then be complete. In addition, there are, of course, 24 flight examiners with another five being recruited, and that, I should have thought, would be adequate for the tasks in hand.

MAGISTRATES AND ISSUE OF SEARCH WARRANTS
LORD GLADWYN: 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 consider advising magistrates that before issuing, on the sole basis of an anonymous telephone call, a warrant for searching a private house, a magistrate should satisfy himself that inquiries have already been made as to the character and police record of the householder concerned and the inherent probability of his being guilty of the alleged offences.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): My Lords, when deciding whether to issue warrants, magistrates act judicially and the Government have no power to instruct them as to how they are to exercise their judicial functions. I assume that the noble Lord's question refers to a recent case in which private premises were searched for drugs. In cases of this kind magistrates have statutory power to issue search warrants on being satisfied by an information on oath that there is reasonable ground for suspecting that drugs are on the premises. In this particular instance the information sworn by the police officer applying for the warrant had not disclosed that it was based on an anonymous message.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, would it not be a good thing if normally the police could disclose to the magistrate whether the information was based on an anonymous telephone call? If we are to accept the fact that magistrates have

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power to issue warrants on the basis of an anonymous telephone call, are we not opening a door for all the enemies of anybody to ring up the police and say that that person is hoarding drugs and his premises ought to be immediately searched?
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, is it not customary, when police officers give evidence on oath, that they give evidence on oath of facts which are in their own experience and not derived at second hand?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, in this particular case the information on oath was that the officer had received information "from a source which I believe to be reliable". It would not, I think, have occurred to a magistrate that it was likely to be an anonymous telephone call.
So far as the police are concerned, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary in another place has said that where there is anonymous telephone information the normal procedure is for inquiries to be made, and perhaps observation kept, in order to try to assess the reliability of information of this character. He added that he regretted that this procedure was not carried out, and the Commissioner has written to Lady Diana Cooper expressing his regrets. I understand that, in fact, on February 21 the local superintendent called on her, by appointment, to explain the circumstances of the search and to seek her assistance in tracing the anonymous caller. Then on February 23 the Deputy Commissioner called upon her and offered his apologies for the incident.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I was not attempting to accuse the police of any dereliction of duty. My intention was to suggest that sometimes, perhaps, magistrates do not always act in accordance with what is the right procedure. I hope, therefore, that the Government will still manage, somehow or other, to advise the magistrates concerned of the necessities of this case.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I must remind the noble Lord that the case is one in which the police did not follow the usual procedure, and the information which they swore and put before the magistrate, who I think is
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not to be blamed at all, was not in a form which could have led anyone to think that the information was simply an anonymous telephone call.

RHODESIA: DEATH SENTENCE ON AFRICANS
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question of which I have given Private Notice, namely:
"To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a statement about the Africans sentenced to death in Rhodesia."
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor will be answering this Question at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m.

ARGENTINE BEEF IMPORTS
2.52 p.m.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question of which I have given Private Notice.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the noble Lord has asked:
"Is Her Majesty's Government satisfied that there is sufficient justification for the lifting of the ban on imported beef which was announced yesterday by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food?"
The Answer is: Yes, my Lords. The decision announced yesterday was taken after the most careful consideration and taking into account not only the specific animal health factors but the wider economic implications of our national trading policy.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for both asking the Question and answering it for me so pleasantly. Is he aware that the lifting of the ban on Argentine beef imports is bound to shake the industry and the industry's confidence in the sincerity of Government policy with regard to the expansion of home meat production, and therefore to deter farmers from fresh outlay on this account; and that the industry is in no condition to stand additional strains after the devastating experience it has had in recent months? May I ask the noble Lord this question?

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Have the Government taken a calculated risk as to the effect on home production and in fact come down in favour of the other factors involved, such as the Argentine trade and the immediate level of beef prices here?
May I put a further, technical point to the noble Lord? With regard to the special stock of vaccine which was imported as a last line of defence last December, and which will lose its potency by about the summer, will the noble Lord say whether it is the Government's intention to renew this stock so that there will be this last line of defence throughout the period when the public inquiry under the Duke of Northumberland is being conducted?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord suggests that the decision announced yesterday will in some way upset the confidence of the industry. The fact of the matter is, as he will recognise, that my right honourable friend gave a most categorical assurance in the first place that the ban was a temporary one, and he undertook to review it by March 4, which was yesterday. So if it is a question of fulfilling obligations, I cannot really think my right honourable friend has failed in that regard. As far as the actual risk is concerned, the noble Lord will have read, I have no doubt, the report of the Chief Veterinary Officer, in which attention was called specifically to mutton and lamb; and it is because of the trouble which it is thought was caused by that imported meat that the continued ban relates only to mutton and lamb.
It is perfectly true, of course, that one had to weigh up certain risks (and there are risks, one admits) in allowing the continuation of imports from a country in which there is endemic foot-and-mouth disease. At the same time, one had to count the cost of insurance, and on the present information it was thought that the cost of complete insurance was excessive. As to the question which the noble Lord asked about the potency of the vaccine, I am afraid I cannot answer it now, but I shall certainly find out about this and let him know.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether there was not a clear undertaking on the part
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of the Government that there would be no action taken while the Duke of Northumberland's Committee was consider this matter; and will the Government not honour what was, I will not say an undertaking but certainly a very clear understanding? Surely there could be no point in appointing the Duke of Northumberland to inquire into this unless some attention was going to be paid to him. Secondly, have not the Government had from one of the highest veterinary authorities in the country a very clear opinion that it would be madness to import beef from the Argentine unless it was boned and without any offal?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I really am sorry that the noble Earl talks again to-day about honouring undertakings. It is not only unfair but inaccurate to say that there was an undertaking in this regard. The undertaking was to have a temporary ban. As far as the Committee of Inquiry is concerned, what my right honourable friend has said is that the Report made eventually by the Northumberland Committee will of course be given every consideration, and the question of a ban on imports will be reviewed in the light of that Committee's Report.
So far as the boning of meat is concerned, I know there are suggestions that the risk would be further lessened if beef were imported only after it was boned, but there is by no means a consensus of opinion among the veterinary surgeons on this point. There are many who say that there are other risks in the act of boning; that there is a possibility of other infection setting in during the course of the boning. The general view of the people best able to tell seems to be that it would not have helped the situation to limit the imports of meat only to boned meat.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord, if he will, to try to say something really clear to dispel the understandable impression which has been given, that this decision is one of the worst sort of compromise, which is always a temptation for a Government when there is a strong case that can be made out in two directions. Does he not see that to maintain the ban on lamb and yet to free beef, when cattle are generally

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believed, rightly or wrongly, to be more susceptible than sheep, is really something very difficult for the farming community and for the country to understand?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, for what it is worth, this is a point which occurred to me, and it was a point which I tried honestly to pursue. I am assured by the veterinary officers in the Ministry that the point here is that it is much more difficult to detect infection in sheep than in cattle, and that there is a greater risk of infection from imported mutton and lamb than there is from imported beef. Moreover, the action taken follows the report of the Chief Veterinary Officer, and as the noble Lord will know, if he has read that report, reference is made only to mutton and lamb.
LORD NUNBURNHOLME: My Lords, is it not the case that in the Argentine mutton goes through the same slaughterhouses as beef, and there is a risk of infection from the mutton to the beef? Yet you are still freeing beef imports from the Argentine to this country.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, it is the case that the sheep run through one part of the building and the cattle through another. But, again, this is one of the points that the mission and afterwards the veterinary officers' delegation going to Argentina will be able to look at.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, does the noble Lord mean to imply that the Government have done this without having fully ascertained that no beef animals are being slaughtered and their meat sent to this country from the same frigorifico from which have come these lamb and mutton carcases?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I do not know what the noble Lord means by "implying". What I am saying is that there is no evidence at all that we have had brought into this country any infected beef. There is a certain amount of circumstantial evidence that we have had infected mutton and lamb. The decision taken is to continue the ban on imported mutton and lamb.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, may I ask one question to clarify something in the Answer to the original Question? Do we understand
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that if the Duke of Northumberland's Committee found that beef was a cause of the infection, Her Majesty's Government would feel completely free to re-impose a ban; and could we say, therefore, that the relief of the ban is temporary until the Duke of Northumberland's Committee reports?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I hesitate to use the word "temporary" because I think it could be misleading. All these decisions are temporary in the sense that the Government, if new evidence comes along, can reverse a decision. The undertaking given here is that the Report from the Northumberland Committee will be given every consideration. If it were to report that it was unwise to import either beef or mutton then the Government would be perfectly free to reverse the decision which we are now discussing.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, may I ask whether the Chief Veterinary Officer at the Ministry has agreed with the Government's policy, whether they are acting on his advice and whether he now, despite his Report, says it is safe to import beef from an area where foot-and-mouth disease is endemic?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am surprised, after the experience of the noble Lord in the same Department as mine, that he should expect an answer to that question.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: My Lords, could the noble Lord tell me how many cases of foot-and-mouth disease; since the war which have definitely been established as being due to a particular cause have been due to imported beef, how many have been due to imported mutton and how many have been due to other causes? If the noble Lord cannot answer now, could he make a statement about it in the future, so that people in this country can judge whether the Ministry's action is really in the interests of the farming community of this country or purely a nasty compromise?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, if the noble Duke were to put down a Question, I should be happy to give him the fullest possible answer. It is true that there have been cases in the past of infection from imported beef. It is also

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true that the Administrations of those days were never concerned to ban imported beef.
LORD CARRON: My Lords, referring to the point made in answer to the first Question, may I ask whether the noble Lord could tell us if the Government are satisfied that the serious threat of cancellation of very important industrial contracts has been lessened by the decision that the Government have taken?
LORD BESWICK: Yes, my Lords, those considerations were covered in the original Answer when I said that the decision had been taken in the light of the overall trading policy of this country.
LORD GRIMSTON OF WESTBURY: My Lords, could the noble Lord answer the question by my noble friend Lord Balerno, in which he asked whether it was the case that the Government had lifted this ban before finding out if mutton and beef were separated in the Argentine before being exported here?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am not sure that that question was put by the noble Lord. If it was, I am sorry if I did not answer it. The fact is that there is a separation on purchase; there is an agreement, as I understand it, that all meat—mutton, lamb and beef—should be exported only after proper inspection in the slaughter houses in the country of origin. It is this sort of point that will be considered by the delegation now going to the Argentine.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that it would make more sense if all meat from this specific frigorifico had been banned from entry into this country?
LORD BESWICK: No, my Lords. This is a question which has been asked, I know; but in so far as the infection has this time been attributed to mutton and lamb, all mutton and lamb from this particular depot, No. 1408, will be banned, together with mutton and lamb from other slaughter houses.
THE MARQUESS OF ABERDEEN AND TEMAIR: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether the mutton is almost invariably frozen, whereas the beef is chilled? I venture to ask that question because for many years I had to deal
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with that trade and that was always the case. It might be hoped that freezing did something to do away with the infection.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the noble Marquess is probably right as to the different treatment which different meats receive. I think, however, that the effect is probably the reverse of that which he suggests.

COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRANTS (No. 2) BILL [H.L.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw from the Order Paper the Commonwealth Immigrants (No. 2) Bill. Your Lordships will remember that in the event it was not necessary to move this Bill.
Bill, by leave, withdrawn.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That Standing Order No. 41 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with for the purpose of taking the remaining stages of the Transport Holding Company Bill this day.—(Lord Shackleton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

AIRDRIE COURT HOUSE COMMISSIONERS (DISSOLUTION) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Considered on Report.

SUNDAY ENTERTAINMENTS ACT 1932
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion Standing in my name on the Order Paper. This is one of the usual Orders made under the Sunday Entertainments Act.
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 Skipton be approved.—(Lord Bowles.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES (ADDITIONAL METRIC WEIGHTS) ORDER 1968
3.9 p.m.
LORD BROWN: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. This is a comparatively simple draft Order. The pharmaceutical industry has decided to change over at an early date from the use of the apothecaries series of weights to the use of the metric series in the dispensing and compounding of drugs. The Order, if approved, will add four small metric weights to the list of those which can be lawfully used for the trade. These additions will facilitate the weighing operations of pharmacists and assist them in changing over to the metric system. Continued use of the apothecaries series of weights is not, however, affected by this Order.
Moved, That the Draft Weights and Measures (Additional Metric Weights) Order 1968, laid before the House on 6th February, be approved.—(Lord Brown.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, may I ask a question on this Order? These new weights will come under Paragraph 5 of Part V of Schedule 3 to the 1963 Act, and paragraph 6 deals with carat weights. Is there any reason why the opportunity should not have been taken to include the same alteration with regard to the carat weight, which jumps from 2 carats to 5 carats?
LORD BROWN: My Lords, I think I am right in saying that the pharmacists deal in drachmas, scruples, and grains, and not in the other weights mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. This is quite a specific request from the pharmacists. A general approach to metrication is not intended by this Order: that will come in another form later, probably not in the form of a separate Order.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, may I ask whether any specific arrangements will be made to keep these two measures apart? So far as I can see, the apothecaries weight contains grains, which is shortened to "gr." and the metric system contains grammes shortened to "g". It seems to me that, with the normal writing of the normal physician, there is room for a good deal of muddle, and possibly fatal consequences.
LORD BROWN: My Lords, the remarks of the noble Lord will be duly noted.
On Question, Motion agreed to

NEW TOWNS (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
House in Committee (on Recommitment).
House resumed: Bill reported without further amendment; Report received.

TRANSPORT HOLDING COMPANY BILL
House in Committee: Clauses agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been dispensed with (pursuant to Resolution), Bill read 3a, and passed.

NATIONAL LOANS BILL
House in Committee: Clauses and Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.

REVENUE (No. 2) BILL
House in Committee: Clauses and Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.

AGRICULTURE (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) BILL
3.19 p.m.
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Your Lordships will probably be familiar with the general structure of the Bill, and to save your Lordships' time I will go straight on to a brief description of the clauses of the Bill. Part I, which deals with the welfare of farm animals, follows the Report of the Committee of Inquiry under the chairmanship of Professor Rogers Brambell. The Committee reported in December, 1965, and after considering the views of interested organisations the Government announced on August 5, 1966, their conclusions on the Committee's recommendations. These conclusions did not in any way impugn the farming industry's concern for animal welfare. Indeed, the Government share the Brambell Committee's view that the great majority of farmers are fully conscious of the importance in live-stock husbandry of the well-being of their animals.
The Government's conclusions took into account the dearth of scientific knowledge on many aspects of the welfare of animals, particularly their reactions to environmental conditions. In this situation it would be wrong to enforce any standards involving capital outlay when such standards might need early revision. There are some welfare matters which could be the subject of regulations now, but the main approach will be a flexible one based on codes of practice and other forms of official advice. I shall have more to say about the codes later.
Clause 1 will make it an offence to cause unnecessary pain or unnecessary distress to livestock and provides exemptions for research. The broad intention here is to protect livestock whilst being bred or reared on agricultural land. The clause covers distress resulting, for example, from prolonged periods of discomfort. Clause 2 will provide powers to make regulations, particularly in relation to accommodation, dietary matters, and undesirable methods of restraining and marking animals or of interfering with the normal exercise of their senses and faculties. The regulations would be the subject of prior con-
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sultation with all interested parties, including farmers' organisations, and would require an Affirmative Resolution of each House of Parliament. Clause 3 permits the production of official codes of practice for the benefit of farmers and others concerned with looking after livestock. The Government set great store by these codes because they will form an essential part of the flexible approach which underlies Part I of the Bill. We believe that the majority of farmers will welcome the advice and guidance in them. As a preliminary step, the Farm Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, in consultation with many other experts, is compiling the draft codes and these will be widely circulated to all interested parties for comment, prior to submission to each House of Parliament for approval. Although the recommendations in the codes will form the main source of guidance on livestock welfare, farmers will be able to receive additional help and advice on the spot from the State Veterinary Service.
Clause 5 will make it possible to require the use of anaesthetics for specified operations on farm animals. The relevant regulations will be subject to prior consultation with all the interests concerned, including livestock producers. Clause 6 contains the usual provisions on power of entry for persons authorised by Ministers or by local authorities. The responsibilities of local authorities will be confined to feedingstuffs and dietary matters. All other inspection work will be undertaken by persons authorised by Ministers. In particular, the examination of livestock and the taking of biological samples will be confined to authorised veterinary surgeons. In Part I of the Bill we have sought what we believe to be an objective and flexible approach in the field of animal welfare and I trust that this approach will commend itself to your Lordships.
I turn next to Part II of the Bill, which is concerned with tenant farmers who are dispossessed, sometimes at very short notice, in order that their land may be used for development or some other non-agricultural purpose. I think it will be generally agreed that the growing demands for land for housing, roads, reservoirs and a host of other non-agricultural uses have brought particular hardships for

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the tenant farmer. Our population is expanding, and we cannot go on without new houses and factories and all the services which go with them. We can, however, ease the tenant's immediate difficulties during the period when he is reorganising his life and work as a result of dispossession. It is the purpose of Clauses 9 to 14 to do this, by providing for payments to be made by landlords to assist in the reorganisation of the tenant's affairs.
Clause 15 deals with a rather separate problem. It seeks to remedy an injustice arising from agricultural tenancy agreements which contained a clause allowing the landlord to resume possession of the holding, or part of it, for some specified non-agricultural purpose. Where such clauses operate, the tenant may have to leave the farm at two or three months notice instead of the one to two years which is the normal period of notice for an agricultural tenant; and as the law stands at present, he will receive no compensation for the profit he would have made during the longer period of notice. Clause 15 provides for him to be compensated for this loss.
Now I come to Part III of the Bill, which applies to Scotland only. Its purpose is to restore to the nearer relatives of deceased tenant farmers in Scotland some measure of the security which they had under the Scottish Agricultural Holdings Act 1949, but which they lost under the Agriculture Act 1958. The provisions in the Bill steer a middle course between the present position and that which held before the 1958 Act. It gives the successor to an agricultural holding a much greater degree of security than he has had since 1958, while making it easier than it then was for a landlord to regain possession of his holding if he has good grounds for doing so. I have the feeling that certain noble Lords already have points which they may wish to put on this clause and I propose not to stand unnecessarily in their way but to leave my noble friend Lord Hughes to deal with this part of the Bill, together with any Scots points arising from Part II.
Part IV deals with two problems of land drainage finance; the drainage charges levied by river authorities and drainage rates levied by internal drainage boards. First, drainage charges. River
1238
authorities obtain most of their revenue from the general ratepayer by precepting on local authorities. Agricultural land does not pay general rates, but the Land Drainage Act 1961 enabled river authorities to obtain a comparable contribution from it by means of drainage charges based on Schedule A assessments. Unfortunately serious difficulties were met in raising the charge on a Schedule A basis and these were made worse by the abolition of Schedule A tax. Consequently only five of the twenty-nine river authorities have raised a drainage charge. Clauses 21 to 29 of the Bill therefore seek to make it easier to raise drainage charges by changing the basis of assessment from Schedule A to acreage. All the interests concerned accept that acreage is the only practicable alternative. The charge is relatively small—at present rates of precept, the highest general drainage charge on the new basis would be just over 1s. per acre. But as a flat rate charge could be unfair to the poorest land, we propose to exempt rough grazing land from the charge and to charge commercial woodlands at only one-fifth of the full rate. Clause 22 also makes the general drainage charge more closely equivalent than at present to the contribution of the general ratepayer through the precept.
Clauses 30 to 36 deal with drainage rates levied by internal drainage boards. There are about 370 boards which operate in low-lying areas where there are special drainage problems. Drainage rates are also levied on agricultural land on the basis of Schedule A assessments. Since most of these assessments have not been revised since 1935 serious anomalies have arisen in the distribution of the drainage rate burden. The Bill therefore gives drainage boards powers to determine a new annual value where this is desirable in view of changes in circumstances since the last valuation. The new value will, of course, have to be in line with those of comparable properties in the district.
Finally, Clause 37 enables the Minister to pay grant to river authorities on land drainage improvements which they undertake on behalf of farmers on watercourses which are too large to qualify for a farm ditching grant but are not maintained by a river authority or internal drainage board. This will ensure that facilities are available to farmers in

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any part of England and Wales to secure drainage improvements with the aid of Exchequer grant. The provisions in Part IV have been welcomed by all the interests concerned. In view of the importance of drainage for efficient agricultural production I am sure they will also command the approval of this House.
I should like to mention some of the more important matters in Part V. First, there are provisions in Clauses 38 and 39 for stabilising the returns on bacon curing. These clauses give statutory effect to the proposals which were announced last April by my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture. They will enable the Government to make payments to the industry when returns on bacon are low in relation to the cost of pigs, and to collect a levy when conditions are more favourable. The aim, which has been generally accepted, is that over a period payments and levies should be broadly self-balancing.
In Clause 40 we are asking for powers to pay grants on break crops for cereals. Noble Lords will recall that a grant for aiding field beans, starting with the 1968 crop, was heralded in the 1967 Price Review. A scheme will be introduced once the Bill becomes law. Some amendments are contained in Clause 42 and Schedule 5 to the existing legislation on plant varieties in the light of experience of the working of the 1964 Act and the requirements of the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. The Convention, already ratified by Her Majesty's Government, is expected to come into operation by the late summer, and we must be in a position to give it full effect. It lays down an agreed system for giving rights to plant breeders, very similar to that already in force in this country, and provides for the compulsory use of the registered name of a protected plant variety.
We also seek, in Clause 43, to widen the exemptions from the restrictive trade practices legislation given to certain cooperative associations by the Agricultural and Forestry Associations Act 1962. We consider that the Act, which was in-
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tended to remove a possible hardship, is too limited in its application for present day purposes. We accordingly seek to extend the scope of the Act to include certain fisheries associations and any genuine co-operative associations whose object is to assist its members in their agricultural, fisheries and forestry businesses. Finally, we seek to ensure that the restrictive trade practices legislation shall not stand in the way of those who wish to co-operate in production matters.
Clause 44 follows a recent agreement in principle between the employers' and workers' sides of the Agricultural Wages Board for England and Wales on the important question of a statutory wages structure, although many details have still to be filled in. It is proposed that the structure would provide, in addition to a basic minimum rate as now, a number of higher minimum rates applicable to workers possessing particular skills or appointed to positions of special responsibility. These premium grades would be defined in the Orders of the Board. Within this framework, provision would be made for certain marginal cases concerning the entitlement of a particular worker to a particular grade to be settled by the agricultural wages committee for the county in which the worker is employed. This function the committees are well fitted to undertake, but the Agricultural Wages Act does not provide them with the necessary powers. I am sure that Clause 46 will be of interest to all those noble Lords who enjoy and care for Kew Gardens, which is now developing its country extension at Wakehurst Place. This clause deals with regulating the admission of the public to these very lovely gardens at Wakehurst Place.
It is just an accident of the Parliamentary Calendar that we shall be having to-morrow an announcement about the most important event in the agricultural year—the Annual Price Review. In the meantime, it is my pleasure to commend this Bill—which I feel to be a useful and constructive measure—to the House with absolute confidence. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Hilton of Upton.)

RHODESIA: DEATH SENTENCE ON AFRICANS
3.35 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, with the permission of the House and the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, may I now reply to the Question of which my noble friend Lord Brockway has given me Private Notice; namely:
To ask Her Majesty's Government if they will make a statement about the Africans under sentence of death in Rhodesia.
On March 2 petitions to Her Majesty the Queen for the exercise of the Royal Prerogative of mercy were lodged on behalf of the three men. These petitions drew attention to the very long periods—from two years and five months to three years and two months—for which the men had been lying under sentence of death, as well as to the threat that had been made that they would be hanged despite their intention of appealing further to the Privy Council. An application on behalf of two of the men I was in fact lodged with the Privy Council on the same day as the petitions to the Queen. Having considered the petitions, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State advised Her Majesty to accede to them, and it was announced late on March 2 that the Queen had done so, thus commuting the penalty for the offences for which they had been convicted from death to life imprisonment. Subsequently, applications were made to the Appellate Division in Salisbury for perpetual interdicts restraining the carrying out of the death sentences. Those applications were refused yesterday.
The final appellate court for Rhodesia is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and it is for them ultimately to lay down what the law is. The views expressed by the Appellate Division in Salisbury cannot be regarded as conclusive. The position is that, as my right honourable friend explained in another place yesterday, the delegation of the exercise of the prerogative of mercy to the Governor of Rhodesia in the 1961 Constitution did not divest Her Majesty
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of Her Prerogative which she may exercise on the Secretary of State's advice.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, is my noble and learned friend aware, first, that I thank him for his statement, and, secondly, that I do not want to say a word which will further endanger the lives of these three men or the 107 other applicants who are now under sentence of death? May I therefore content myself by asking whether Her Majesty's Government will keep the House informed about developments in this serious case?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Yes, my Lords. My latest information is more or less that the so-called officer administering the Government has now received a petition for clemency from these men, and the so-called Cabinet of the régime has been this morning considering the position.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I, too, would not wish to say anything that could worsen an extremely grave situation, both for the men concerned and for Rhodesia. Am I correct in thinking that the three men petitioned Her Majesty, that the Commonwealth Secretary was then constitutionally bound to offer advice to Her Majesty on the petitions which she had received, and that Her Majesty was then constitutionally bound to act on that advice?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Yes, my Lords; both the propositions put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, are correct. The constitutional position in relation to prerogative, including the prerogative of mercy, where there is a Governor, your Lordships may find set out at some length in a Statement made by the then Home Secretary on August 11, 1947, in another place on the advice given by the then Lord Chancellor and the Law Officers, with which advice I concur.
LORD RATHCAVAN: My Lords, can the noble and learned Lord say whether, before this advice was given to the Queen, the Governor of Rhodesia was consulted in any way?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary is at all times in full consultation with the Governor.

AGRICULTURE (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) BILL
3.40 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, to return to the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, may I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hilton of Upton, for the concise and lucid description he gave us of this miscellaneous Bill and its various Parts. It is, of course, an Agriculture (Miscellaneous) Bill. It contains a number of minor measures, most of them welcome, but I hope the noble Lord will not take it amiss if I say that it seems curiously irrelevant to the needs of the industry at the present time. The Government are not coming forward with something which might give the boost that the industry could do with. No industry could make a greater contribution to the needs of the nation at this time in increasing home production, thereby reducing imports, and thereby improving our balance of trade.
The noble Lord—indeed all noble Lords—will recognise that our present system of guaranteed prices makes an automatic break on expanding production, because all Governments feel the necessity to keep the total cost of this system within a bracket of about £250 million to £300 million per annum, because the cost must fall direct on the taxpayer; and this inevitably has some deterrent effect on expansion. I am sure that we shall hear to-morrow of the big increase in costs and the Government's headache in trying to balance this particular problem. I would hope that if the noble Lord and his noble friends come forward with another agriculture Bill next year, it might be one which would change the system of price support to the same system as our Western European neighbours have, that of import levies, which would get us out of this annual difficulty, and so, I believe, help us get the expansion we all want. We shall hear to-morrow from the noble Lord, when we hear about the Price Review, what the plans are for the future.
To return to the Bill itself, the noble Lord, Lord Hilton, has described to us Part I and how it is to give statutory effect to the Report of the Brambell Committee, set up by my right honourable
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friend Mr. Christopher Soames. The noble Lord has admirably explained to us the rather complicated machinery set out in Part I. In effect, this section of the Bill amounts to a rudimentary Factory Act for intensively kept livestock. For myself, I have no complaint. I feel that this is a reasonable thing to do. We have to accept the fact that the modern trend in livestock management is towards intensive systems, not only for chickens and pigs, but increasingly now for cows, sheep and cattle. The fact is that these systems give better results; they are more economic and have lower costs.
On the other hand, we are—and I can proudly say it—a nation of animal lovers, and it is only natural that people should want suitable safeguards for our livestock, to ensure that their conditions of health and welfare are all they ought to be. This, I am sure, is right in principle; and I am also sure that it would be, and indeed should be, supported by every farmer. At the same time, it is necessary, I suggest, to recognise that intensive systems of livestock-keeping are repugnant to many people. Many people with nice feelings would like to see these systems abolished altogether. I would suggest that it is Parliament's duty to keep the right balance between these feelings, which in my judgment go much too far, and the rare exception of the farmer who would neglect or ill-use his livestock. I make the point advisedly—that such a farmer is the rare exception—because livestock which are ill-used and badly kept will not thrive; they will suffer mortality and will not make a profit. It is thus against the farmer's own personal interest, his own financial interest, to practise forms of management which cause stress or ill-health.
The structure of this Bill seems to me to follow a sensible, practical structure, with the codes of practice, which will not have statutory sanction, and the regulations, which will have regard to the observance of the codes of practice and, where prosecutions are concerned, will provide the evidence. I confess to the noble Lord, Lord Hilton, that I should have liked to see in the Bill a specific obligation on the Minister to consult with those representing livestock producers, such as the National Farmers' Union, rather than the very general terms that are used. However, I feel sure that in practice they

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will be consulted, though it would be nice to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, when he winds up, that this is the Government's intention when codes of practice, and indeed regulations, are contemplated.
A practical point on Clause 6 which I should like to mention at this stage relates to the powers of entry for the supervision provided for by this particular clause. These powers of entry are of course essential in order to ensure that codes of practice and regulations are properly observed, but I think it is most necessary that there should be adequate safeguards against the spread of infection. The fact is, as many noble Lords will know, that all intensive systems of livestock management are vulnerable to various forms of virus and bacterial infection. Foot-and-mouth in cows and cattle we all know all too much about after recent months. But there is also virus pneumonia in pigs, and fowl pest and infectious bronchitis and mareks in poultry. All these infections are virulent; they are carried by shoes, by clothes, by hands, and can easily be carried from one unit to another unless the very strictest hygiene regulations are observed. In research institutes, of course, workers are obliged to go through shower baths and change their clothes, and so on. This is not practicable on the farm, where a shower would undoubtedly be cold. Nevertheless, various simple safeguards can be observed, and they really are essential if an inspector going from one farm to another is to minimise the risk of carrying infection from one intensive unit to another.
The provision in the Bill is that the Minister of Agriculture will have inspectors, who I imagine will be veterinary surgeons. They, of course, fully understand the risks involved and, I am sure, take all necessary precautions, especially with livestock. But the local authority inspectors might not necessarily be so fully trained. I should like to see in the Bill a requirement that the local authority inspectors also should have veterinary qualifications. This is a point I should like to raise on the Committee stage and I may put down an Amendment to that effect. It is a most important point. Apart from great harm to individual farmers, disrepute may be
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brought to the whole administration of the Bill unless we ensure that this point is adequtaely covered.
I have one further point on the administration of this clause. The Minister of Agriculture, whoever he is, the present one or a Minister in the future, in establishing codes of practice and regulations must take great care to keep the balance right in the standards he requires. This is particularly so in regard to livestock, where there are considerable imported supplies coming into this country with which the home producer has to compete. It obviously would be absurd if we established standards of housing and management which considerably increased the cost of production, if our farmers then had to compete with imports produced under very different conditions. So here again, reality must be kept in perspective. However, let me say to the noble Lords that, in general, I feel it is right and necessary that this legislation should go on the Statute Book, but it needs to be administered with full understanding of the factors involved.
Part II I certainly welcome. This is the part that gives an extra four years' compensation to the dispossessed tenant farmer whose farm is going to be used for some development, such as house building, road building, school building, or whatever it may be. I am sure this is a wise and a fair move, and I particularly welcome the fact that I understand the money will be tax free, so that he will have the maximum chance to start again somewhere else. But I think I should be right if I said that as the landlord has to pay this, sooner or later it is bound to work its way through into the purchase price for land, and therefore eventually will end up in higher prices.
Part III is the only part which I feel is really controversial. As the noble Lord, Lord Hilton of Upton, has told us, this part deals with the law with regard to succession for tenant farmers in Scotland. Surprisingly, it was introduced only at Committee stage. It seems to be rather an afterthought, and I wondered whether it was being introduced to stem the tide of Scottish nationalism, but no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, will tell us about this later.
Clause 18 seems to me to be going very far when it fixes an automatic succession

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from the tenant farmer to his near relatives, which includes adopted children. This seems to me to open a very wide door. I make this point because it not only affects Scotland but could well affect England in the future. If the Government penalise the private landlord too heavily, the attractions of agricultural land investment, which to many people already seem largely irrational because there is a low return, will eventually disappear altogether. This will not happen immediately; it may take one hundred years to do it—say two or three generations—but agricultural land investment and tenant farming will disappear.
The tenant farming structure has served well. In England and Wales about 50 per cent. of our farmers are tenant farmers, and the fact is that most farmers prefer to be on this basis. That is the view of the National Farmers' Union of England and Wales. Farmers can make very much better use of their money by investing in livestock, machinery, and so on, than they can by investing it in ownership of land, which gives them only about a 4 per cent. return. On the whole this method has worked extremely well for the farming community of England, and I am sure it is in the long-term interest of the agricultural industry for this structure to continue. I hope the Government will proceed with great caution in Scotland, because I do not think it possible for there to be, for long, one law in Scotland and another law in England. My noble friends from Scotland will have something to say about Clause 18 as it applies to Scotland, but I fear the long-term implications for England as well.
Part IV, on land drainage, is quite non-controversial. It is entirely welcome, especially by the river authorities—and here I should declare an interest. I am President of the Association of River Authorities. I was sitting in their Executive Council this morning and they were all making the most polite remarks about the Government (which must be very welcome); the Government had done just what they wanted. The 1961 Act is based on a Schedule A assessment and in practice has proved pretty well unworkable. This Bill now changes the basis of assessment to an acreage basis
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which, as the noble Lord rightly says, is the only practicable method of assessment.
It has certain snags; one must be clear about that, and I think they are inevitable, but to some extent it will shift the incidence of a drainage charge from the good land to the less good land. When the assessment is on the Schedule A basis that is of course related to the annual value of the land, and the best land would pay more per acre than the less good land—usually, the lowland more than the upland. Now we are putting it on the flat rate basis, the total incidence of the drainage charge, and to that extent it will be borne more by the upland than the lowland farmers, and doubtless they will tell us so from time to time in the future. Nevertheless it is the right thing to do. The existing system really is unworkable. The change proposed for the drainage boards in setting up the assessment machinery is also welcomed; as the noble Lord said, it was badly needed.
With regard to the several minor improvements in Part V, referred to by the noble Lord, I would refer to only one; that is, Clause 40, which provides grants for break crops. Noble Lords who are farmers will know how valuable this is. It is already in action for beans. This is in areas where root crops—potatoes or sugar beet—for one reason or another cannot be grown. The modern trend is continuous cereal cropping, which runs into all kinds of pest problems with regard to weeds, viruses, and so on, and a reasonably paying crop like beans, which can be used as a break crop, is a most valuable piece of practical husbandry. I would only ask that the noble Lord, Lord Hilton of Upton, will consider including rape seed for oil, which looks as if it could make an equally valuable contribution. I have no further comment to make on the Bill itself, which contains a number of useful improvements to farming legislation. I have much pleasure in welcoming the Bill.
3.58 p.m.
LORD NUNBURNHOLME: My Lords, I feel great diffidence in addressing your Lordships on this Bill after the two quite excellent speeches, one by the noble Lord, Lord Hilton of Upton, in introducing the Bill and the second by

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the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford. By and large, this is an admirable "tidying up" Bill. However, there are certain omissions from Part IV which I should like to deal with later, but there is also the incentive omission mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, for increasing agricultural production. In these hard times, when hard currency is difficult to come by, we ought really to encourage our farmers to produce more and so reduce the importation of food from abroad. How we are to do this I do not know, but if the notes are issued they stay in England—they are not going abroad—and therefore I think agriculture can stand a certain amount of inflation for home production.
In Part I of the Bill I welcome Clause 2(1)(b), which enables inspectors to inspect the food given to animals on the farm. I especially welcome this clause in the light of the Minister of Agriculture's statement that he was going to allow Argentine beef from now onwards. It is very very important that not only the food which is given to the stock but how it is treated should be inspected, and if you can stiffen up this clause in any way, so that bones shall be boiled and no swill can avoid being boiled on the farm, all to the good.
I thoroughly approve of Part II. Part III deals with Scotland, which I know nothing about, but certain other noble Lords will give us the benefit of their views on this subject. We now come to Part IV. As a member of an internal drainage board I have a great deal to say on this matter. The internal drainage boards are excluded from the charges on upland land, but I feel that the upland lands must be examined very carefully. If you are going to have a universal charge on the upland land, people farming on the downs in Kent and Sussex, and I daresay on the Yorkshire wolds, will feel that they are very hard done by if they have an acreage basis where their water percolates into the chalk and in only a very minor degree overflows into the rivers and ditches. The drainage charges on the uplands, as I read the Bill, are mainly for taking over additional main rivers and maintaining them. In the case of my own county we have not taken advantage of the 1961 and 1963 Acts because the amount obtainable barely covers the cost of the collection; and there must be
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many counties in the same position. Also we do not want to take over any further main rivers. I understand, however, that in Lincolnshire these charges have been extensively used for considerable improvement in watercourses and new cuts; therefore one has to regard this portion of the Bill on a regional view, not purely a river board or county view.
I come to my last point, which I think is very important. The newly constituted river authorities under the 1963 Act more or less entirely leave out agricultural representation, and I cannot help feeling that if these drainage charges are going to be levied on the agricultural population they should have equal representation with the urban population. There is one other point here. The authorities have, by statutory right, many water authority officials and civil servants on the Board, and I feel that these civil servants should be excluded from voting. I do think, however, that there is a case for the internal drainage boards to be further represented. I should like to hear what the Government reply is to this question, and if they cannot produce a satisfactory one I should like to move an Amendment.
4.5 p.m.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, I certainly welcome this Bill on the whole, but—I am sure the noble Lord. Lord Hughes, will know what I am going to say—I shall have something to say about Part III; I cannot say I welcome that. On Part I, I thoroughly agree with everything that my noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford said. Of course, Part I does not go quite as far as everything said in the Brambell Committee, and it probably would not go as far as all animal lovers might like, but on the whole I think it goes quite as far as all rural animal lovers like. I differentiate rural animal lovers from urban animal lovers, who of course have the same motives of kindness but not the same practical experience.
Clauses 1 and 2 are the important clauses in Part I. The Brambell Committee say:
"Intensive husbandry should not in itself be regarded as objectionable and may often benefit the animals."
I heartily agree with that. We are very inclined to think that animals like to roam the range and have perfect freedom, but an animal in its natural state

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has a perpetual struggle to find its food, to find shelter, and often it suffers an extremely unpleasant death. Part I of this Bill, on which I congratulate Her Majesty's Government, so far as I have read and understood the clauses, will provide animals with these three requisites: plenty of adequate, wholesome food; shelter, and protection from violent and painful death by their enemies. If these requisites are coupled with the other regulations laid down in Part I, the domestic farm animals in Great Britain will, I think, become the most contented members of the community.
As I have said, there are those who in these matters are more moved by emotion than by logic. People are often inclined automatically to equate intensive husbandry with cruelty. To take the case of Merino sheep, if you give them free range they have a great struggle for existence and would far prefer to be in a lush pasture. But if you put them in a lush pasture, what do they do? They proceed to eat themselves to death. Therefore, I should like, by that instance, to try to explain to urban animal lovers that all animals do not appreciate free range, because speaking now of wild animals and animals in their natural state, there is too much danger associated with it and it is too much of a struggle. If they have plenty of food and shelter they are far more content.
Before leaving Part I, I should like to point out one aspect of Clause 2 which will be of great help, but not as regards intensive husbandry. I am now thinking of hill farming, and especially farming on the poorer hill lands. Under our system of subsidies often farmers on these hill lands are tempted to overstock. They over-stock by gambling with the winter. Things may go all right if there is a mild winter, but often we get a severe winter, and if that happens I have known several instances where great cruelty occurs, because these farmers have not enough food to feed their animals and they may be loath to buy fodder at the high prices prevailing in, for instance, February and March. Thus, there is starvation. I have witnessed this and it is most cruel. I sincerely hope that under the penalty clause of this Bill such people will be severely dealt with,
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and that the inspectors of the area will be alive to this disturbing factor.
My noble friend Lord Nugent has already made the other point that I wished to make on Part I, but I should like to re-emphasise it. When this Bill becomes law it will be most unfair if farmers in this country have to compete with intensive husbandry from abroad. I think they should be safeguarded as far as possible from overseas competitors, who presumably have no restriction placed upon them regarding intensive husbandry, like battery-hen farming and such methods.
Turning to Part II, I warmly support this section. I am extremely pleased to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Hilton, that this payment of four times the rent to tenants who are to be dispossessed for the development of land for building is not to be subject to tax. I was rather frightened that it might be, but I am very glad to hear the noble Lord say that that is not so. I am rather confused by Clause 15. I understand that if the land of a tenant is required to be taken over in less than the twelve months, he should be compensated for the loss of profits that he would have made had his land not been taken over at that short notice. I do not quarrel with that at all. But how is one to assess those profits? I agree that this is more a Committee point. But are they to be assessed on three years' balance sheets or something like that? The clause seems a little vague.
Now I come to Part III, which has to do with Scotland. I cannot welcome that Part. It really surprises me that a Socialist Government should try to bring in legislation to make tenancies hereditary. Surely this is an extraordinary departure from their usual theories. You could describe this as land confiscation with no compensation. I quite agree that there are certain safeguards here, but the question is: are they worth the paper they are written on? Clause 18(2)(a) says that the Scottish Land Court shall consent to a notice to quit the land if the hereditary successor does not appear to have sufficient training in agriculture or sufficient experience in the farming of land. Clause 18 then goes on to mention in subsection (2)(a) the words "with reasonable efficiency." Here again, we have that very nasty word "reasonable".

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It may sound all right on paper, but when it is put into practice I can foresee that very few hereditary successors will be given notice to quit under that paragraph.
Paragraph (b) of subsection (2) mentions the situation where in the opinion of the court a holding is not capable of
"providing full-time employment for the individual occupying it and for at least one other man."
Of course, one could stretch out that paragraph a great deal in practice. Further on in the paragraph there is the other arrangement affecting amalgamations of land, where the Land Court might allow notice to quit. But if one reads on, one sees on page 17:
"Provided that, notwithstanding that they are satisfied as aforesaid, the Court shall withhold consent to the operation of the notice if in all the circumstances it appears to them that a fair and reasonable landlord will not insist on possession."
There again one see that word "reasonable", which is a very difficult word to assess when one comes down to practical applications.
I am afraid that great injustice will be done if that clause becomes law as now drafted. After all, the landlord's son or his grandson might want to farm, but under this clause the landlord's family will never be able to get the farm back. They will have lost the farm for ever. A young man who wants to farm will now find it almost impossible to get a farm. Farms are hard enough to get anyway. Farming will become a closed shop. There is also the question of capital investment. It will probably be all right on the rich farms on the East coast of Scotland where, no doubt, the tenant will be able to provide sufficient capital, but on the poorer farms in the Highlands I cannot see the tenant providing the capital to keep up the buildings. I have tried one or two repairing leases, with completely peppercorn rents, but one finds that the tenant does not keep up the buildings. I am afraid that, especially on the West Coast, if the capital of philanthropic landlords—and one can only call them philanthropic—is denied to the farms, all the steadings and fences would deteriorate and in about 15 to 20 years' time the whole of the Highlands would be a land of ruined steadings. I suppose the Government could provide all the capital to tenants for their repairs
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if they brought in legislation to that effect, but that would be quite absurd, because one would only be displacing one set of landlords to create another set of landlords—that is to say owner occupiers—who would be entirely dependent on Government capital. I object to Part III. I hope that we can alter it in Committee. For instance, why should an adopted son or daughter have the farm where there are no blood relations? I think that that will have to be altered in Committee.
I have no objections to the remaining parts of the Bill, and on the whole they are very sound, but I cannot emphasise too much that Part III will came great injustice and will be quite impracticable in regard to the poorer land. Therefore I sincerely hope that the Government will have second thoughts about this matter, because if they do not I foresee disaster. These poorer types of tenants in the Western Highlands are rather like those in the West of Ireland, in that they are inclined to put off till to-morrow what they should do to-day. To-morrow never comes. If the tenant is to be responsible for repairs one will find that repairs are never done and that the farm will run down and down. I know farmers who will pass a fallen gate every day of the week and never even think of putting it up—and if they do put it up, they will probably nut the back of an old bedstead in its place. I feel that in regard to the poorer farms the Government will be making a great mistake if they pursue this legislation.
4.30 p.m.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, I should like to join with my noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford in welcoming the first Part of this Bill. I think it is important that a result of the Brambell Committee should be interpreted and put into action, and that it should be put into action in this manner. I think the line the Government have taken, of putting forward a code of practice, is in the best interests of the industry, and one hopes that the code will be applied in the manner the noble Lord, Lord Hilton of Upton, has indicated. I support my noble friend in saying that we must be careful about the importation of meat from animals produced abroad under conditions which, under this Bill, will not be tolerated in this country. I do

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not know what can be devised to ensure this but, just as we prevent the exportation of bad animals, so we ought to be able to prevent the importation, in competition with our own animals of animals raised under conditions not allowed in this country.
There are two small points in this Part of the Bill to which I wish to draw your Lordships' attention. The first point, which arises on Clause 6, was mentioned by my noble friend, and concerns the person authorised by the Minister or the local authority to enter upon land for the purpose of inspection. I would reinforce what my noble friend has said about adequate disinfection beforehand. This is tremendously important, especially as there are herds which, at great cost, are free from all sorts of diseases. I refer particularly to those herds of pigs which are free from the infectious pneumonia virus which, once it breaks out, is impossible to control and is very easily carried.
I intend at the Committee stage to move an Amendment with regard to the words in subsection (3) of Clause 6:
"a person authorised … to enter upon any land—
(a) shall if so required produce evidence of his authority ".
I should like to remove the words, "if so required". It ought to be essential for an inspector from the local authority to produce evidence on his arrival at the farm that he is authorised to go on to it. The farmer is not always there when inspectors and such people arrive, and the herdsman may be somewhere else. Somebody must he sought out and informed that the inspector is there, before he goes on to the land. The inspector from the local authority should not be able, as I understand the clause as it stands would permit, to go right on to the land and all over the place without the owner's knowing that this was happening.
The second point I want to make on this Part of the Bill concerns Clause 8, which contains a definition of livestock. Clause 8(1) says:
"… 'livestock' means any creature kept for the production of food, wool, skin or fur or for use in the farming of land or for such purpose as the Minister may by order specify."
The subsection refers to "any creature", but the word "creature" is applied
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equally to the human species and to animals. In the past I have had some difference with the Government about the use of the word "animal" in relation to the animal world. I notice that we have a right reverend Prelate here, so one might ask his opinion of the interpretation of the words of the Godly Bishop Ken, when he wrote:
"Praise Him all creatures here below."
My conclusion has always been that when one sung those words one meant the human creature, as well as the animal creature; and in literary use the word "creature" applies equally to man and to animals. I suggest that the Government might take a second look at this word, and substitute "animal" for the word "creature". The word "animal" is only rarely applied to man, except in an opprobrious, derogatory or contemptuous manner.
The most ancient association of man with the word "animal" that I have been able to discover goes back to Aristotle, who stated that man is not an animal; but there was an adjective before "animal"—the word "political". Reverting to the hymnary, the lines,
"All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small"
mean that this clause would apply equally to bees; and bees live in a degree of congestion considerably greater than some of the animals for which legislation is deliberately being made. There are also the silkworms. There are silkworm farms, and they too would come under the Bill. I wonder whether the Government are aware of this point. To extend it a little further, the earthworm is an absolutely essential animal for the proper fertility of the soil: we cannot do without the earthworm, and the more earthworms there are in pastureland the more fertile is that pastureland. So there is greater congestion than ever against which it might be possible to take action.
I should like to suggest to Her Majesty's Government that they might return to the word "vertebrate". If the Bill said, "'Livestock' means any vertebrate animal," I think that would make the position very much clearer.
LORD KILBRACKEN: My Lords, is not man a vertebrate animal, and therefore does not the noble Lord's original objection still hold?
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, man is not an animal. I was trying to make that point. Normally, the word "animal" is rarely applied to man. If I may say so, the animal kingdom ceases with the primates.
LORD KILBRACKEN: He is not here.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, regarding Part III of the Bill and the succession to tenancies, I have very great misgivings about allowing an adopted child to succeed to a tenancy. It would be perfectly possible for a farmer to pass on a tenancy by adopting a son for that purpose, though there might be no other genuine connection at all. One has heard of cases of sons being adopted quite late in the lives of both the father and the son.
I am interested in the grant for the break crop. I think that is a very good grant and it is a constructive item in this Bill. I have some misgivings about the bacon subsidy. The bacon subsidy has been an excellent emergency measure, but it is a pity it ever had to be imposed. I believe that up to date it has cost over £5 million, and I should greatly regret it if this were enshrined in this Bill and the Government then thought they had got the bacon industry on to its legs. Something more long-term is needed for the bacon industry than is contained in the Bill.
My Lords, with regard to the Part of the Bill dealing with plant varieties, Clause 42, there is a point here which I found somewhat confusing. I take it that the opening part of the new clause, put in as an amendment to the Plant Varieties and Seeds Act 1964, is intended to ensure that when a person sells a plant with a registered name he must use that name and no other. I cannot think of any other definition. But, having read the "gobbledygook" in which those thoughts or intentions are enshrined, I think something could be done to make this new, amending clause more intelligible to the ordinary plant breeder and horticulturist.
There is one, I think, very grave omission from the Bill. It applies particularly to Scotland. I very much regret that the Government have not taken the opportunity in this Bill to do something to ease the confusion which exists in Scotland
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among farmers on the subject of what buildings are liable for rates. There have been a series of cases. They started, of course, quite rightly, with the highly-intensive factory farms which were put into the valuation rolls; but the new cases which certain district valuers are putting up now are leading to its being extremely difficult to determine what are the buildings on a farm which are liable to be derated and what are otherwise. It is the greatest of pities that this has not been cleared up.
I would agree with my noble friend Lord Nugent when he says that the expansion of agriculture is at the present moment a vital necessity, bearing in mind the state of our economy and our present difficulties. It is a pity that the opportunity has not been taken with this Bill to do more to give confidence to the farmer; and, while one should not object to getting a crumb from the Governmental table for agriculture, one hopes that those responsible for the Bill are not kidding themselves into thinking that they are producing something very wonderful for the farmers.
4.44 p.m.
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, I defy any noble Lord to make a Second Reading speech upon the Second Reading of this Bill. It covers so many and so wide a variety of things that inevitably one must behave almost as if one were in Committee. Generally speaking, like other noble Lords I think that this is a useful Bill. There are certain things in it which I think could be cleared up and straightened out, perhaps in Committee, not only in this Bill but in others, possibly the Finance Bill. There are other things which I think are not in the best interests of the agricultural industry, and I shall say something about them.
First of all, may I deal with Part I of the Bill? Lord Nugent's likening of this clause to a mini-Factory Act for animals I thought was rather good. But I do not follow him in saying that, in general, farmers will not follow practices which are bad in themselves and are likely to produce bad results for animals in order to get profit because there will not be any profit. I am afraid this is not true. I remember as a child being taken to look in the attic of a farmhouse where

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there was a curious device for stuffing turkeys. You put the nozzle of this thing down the turkey's throat and you wound the handle. This churned in predigested food, which had already been prepared, and it built the turkey up to a size which otherwise it would not have been willing to reach. I cannot believe that this was in the best interests of the turkey, but the farmer no doubt thought that it was. I am not quite sure how the best pâté de foie gras is produced now, but it used to be said that it was produced by nailing the goose's feet to a board and stuffing it up until its liver degenerated. As I say, this is the sort of thing which we farmers, if left to ourselves, are very apt to do unless we have mini-factory inspectors sitting on top of us telling us that we must not.
Nevertheless, having said that, I think the Government really must make an effort—and I follow the point of the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, here—to consult properly. When I say, "consult with the industry properly", again I follow the noble Lord's point. It is not enough just to consult the N.F.U. Consultation does not mean consulting with particular lobbies: it means consulting with people who really know the facts, and I think that very often the Government have failed to do this. They sometimes listen to a particular lobby—all Governments, I suppose, must do this—but they do not pay enough attention to cross-examining experts before they bring in legislation. I hope they will do that with regard to the Brambell Report.
With regard to Part II, again I think this is admirable. There has arisen the curious anomaly that although agricultural tenants have virtually a leasehold for life, on paper it is only an annual tenancy, so they were being compensated only for what in fact existed on paper, and this is unfair. I think this new arrangement goes some way towards putting that matter right. Nevertheless, it raises certain matters which I should have thought were fairly easy to put right. There is the question of the extreme complexity with which the whole thing will have to be managed. First of all, there is the question of the Clause 10 exceptions. It is Clause 11 for Scotland. This seems to me to be a curious upside-down way of doing the thing, and
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I should have thought the Government could overcome that problem. Secondly, it now means that this particular kind of compensation applies to all notices to quit, whether in fact this extra compensation was intended or, indeed, is fair or not. So you will have the position in which the landlord, in order to serve a valid notice, has virtually to serve notice for everything in the Agricultural Holdings Act 1948, and in this Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, too.
There is a limit to the amount of complication you can have in the standard forms for giving notice to quit. At the moment, if a landlord wants to give a notice to quit, or if a tenant wants to serve a counter-notice, he can fairly easily get out of Scammell or Jackson, the standard textbooks on the subject, the form that he requires. But under this new Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, you are going to get a state of affairs so complicated that nobody will know quite how to serve a notice at all. I think that this is undesirable, and that it should be straightened out.
Also, under the clauses dealing with additional payments to tenant farmers, there are anomalies about betterment levy which I think ought to be straightened out. As I understand it, at the moment a landlord cannot accept that extra compensation which he is paid on top of his base value in arriving at betterment value. That ought to be a fairly easy matter to put right. The same anomaly exists where part of a holding only is required for development, but where the holding is of such a size that you have to sell the whole lot. These are anomalies which it should not be difficult for the Government to sort out.
Then we come to the question of Part III, the "hereditary tenancies", perhaps jokingly so called. First let me say that I know nothing about Scottish law. I do not know at all conditions as they affect landlord and tenant in Scotland. Further, may I say that on this issue I am not entirely in agreement with some of my honourable friends in another place. But I cannot help thinking that were this clause to be passed so far as Scotland is concerned and then come to apply to England, it would not be in the best interest of, at any rate, English agriculture. I know that this Part deals only with Scottish agriculture; but I

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cannot help feeling that mutatis mutandis, the same thing applies: what is not good for English agriculture is not good for Scottish agriculture.
The reason is this. We have reached the stage now where more than half of the farmers in this country are owner-occupiers and they are in great difficulty with regard to the whole question of capital. An owner-occupier has to find two lots of capital: his working capital, on which he earns what any commercial man earns—say something between 12 per cent. and 15 per cent.—and another amount, perhaps the slightly bigger one, for his land, on which he earns something like 1½ per cent. The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, said it was 4 per cent.; but most organisations dealing with land ownership put it as low as 1½ per cent. of the capital value. That, in the conditions prevailing to-day, of capital gains tax and of betterment levy, means that it is extremely difficult for the small man to find capital for both things. There is this state of affairs now, where more than half the farmers in this country are owner-occupiers. There is a slight feeling that this may have been a mistake and that it is asking too much of anyone to have to divide one block of capital into these two parts.
One may have a swing-back to the old landlord and tenant system, which served us very well in the past and in which one kind of man with one kind of expertise provided one part of the capital (that is, the land and the fixed equipment) and another kind of man provided the working capital and worked the land. This system operated well in the past; although there has been a swing away from it. I suggest that there may be a swing back again, because of the difficulties of owner-occupiers with regard to the capital side of their business. It would not help, in the agricultural industry as it is now, if we were to give another knock on the head to the poor landlord and tenant system, and this proposal must inevitably do that.
If you are going to penalise landlords—and it is a penalty to suggest that there should be hereditary succession in tenancies—then you are going to find that landlords will be unwilling to let farms at all, or at any rate will do so only to old men who have no relations.
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I cannot believe that that is a good thing. I and my family have been landowners for a long time. We frequently let land to the sons of tenants; but we let it to those sons because they are the best available tenants for us. That happens very often; but it is an impossible state of affairs to have to accept the system of hereditary tenancies. It is almost impossible to find reputable arguments for keeping hereditary Peers in this House. Some of them are quite good; some of them one does not wish to be unkind to and say, "Out on your head now". So one thinks in terms of phasing it out. But these are not arguments for hereditary succession to anything—I mean arguments of hardship; neither are they arguments for hereditary succession of tenancies. It is interesting to note that the National Farmers' Union in England has not thought it to the best interests of English agriculture that there should be this system in England. It seems to me amazing that their Scottish equivalent do think so in the case of Scotland. I am sure it would be a mistake. I do not see that it is in the best interests of agriculture.
My Lords, I have nothing but good to say about Parts IV and V. Again, there are certain Committee points with regard to Part IV which may have to be straightened out, but apart from that the general principle seems to be a good one. The Bill covers so many other points, from plant breeding to bacon curing and subsidies, which I do not know where to stop. But I think I have said enough, and with what I have said, in general, I give the Bill a welcome.
4.56 p.m.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, although this Bill is given the title of an Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill it nevertheless contains some very important chapters and there is really not much difference in weight between it and the Bill we had last year which, I suppose for reasons of status, was given the title of an Agriculture Bill. But I fear there is not much in this Bill designed to help the country's more immediate economic problems.
The year 1967 has not been an easy year for the Minister of Agriculture, any more than for the farmers. The Minister has had the negotiations in regard to our joining E.E.C.; he has had the troubles

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of devaluation; he has had the trouble and expense of foot-and-mouth disease; and he is still in the terrible dilemma of what to do regarding importing meat from the Argentine. Then we must also remember that he is a member of a Government whose reputation is steadily declining. That last, I think, probably explains the more political provisions in this Bill and the bid to win the votes of the adopted sons and daughters of Scottish farmers. If the law of adoption in Scotland is as easy as their law of marriage—it is not very difficult to get a wife there—then with a little ingenuity they might be built up into quite a substantial corps.
With regard to the different chapters of this Bill, first Part I, I hope that when the various schemes are designed they will avoid persecution of the many in the efforts that will have to be made to ensure that the few ignorant or wilful men who try to get round these regulations do not, in fact, get away with it. There is always a danger, when regulations are drawn to compete with the few, that a quite unnecessary burden is put on the many and at the same time an organisation is built up which costs the taxpayer a great deal of money and achieves very little in the end.
Turning to Part II, I have no complaint at all at the proposal for a higher rate of compensation when farm land is taken in circumstances as set out and converted to various industrial uses. I think this proposal is entirely right, but I want to make just a few comments about forestry, which is of a somewhat different nature from other development envisaged by this Bill. First, I should like to ask this question. Are the Forestry Commission, who are of course agricultural landlords on a very big scale, in exactly the same position as any private landlord?
Secondly, with regard to land which is to be planted with trees, we can say that such proposals generally concern either very large areas or very small ones. When very large areas are under consideration, it probably means that a whole farm or large parts of a farm will disappear. I would not quarrel about the proposals in the Bill being operative in these cases. But one of the needs of this country, particularly since we are
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having ever fewer hedgerow trees, is to plant up the many small banks and wet patches on farms up and down the country which are quite useless for agriculture—they produce virtually nothing. There are many cases where such small areas as these have been planted; and they are always planted by private owners, because the Forestry Commission could never be interested in such small areas. But if, before planting such a plot of five acres or so, which would be of very small value for agriculture, it became necessary to pay compensation on the scale now written into the Bill, it is quite certain that thousands of such small areas would not be planted but would remain bare and useless. Here we should note, too, that when these small woods are planted it is generally done as much for the benefit of the farm, because of shelter. I hope that during the Committee stage we can look at this again to see whether it is not possible to have a difference in procedure regarding small areas which are useless for agriculture but which, if planted with trees, would bring an advantage to farms.
My Lords, turning to Part IV of the Bill, which relates to drainage, I am very glad to see that there is to be substantial amendment of the 1961 Act. I say that in spite of my affection for the 1961 Act, since I served on the Standing Committee which dealt with the Bill. In a sense it was of course a transitional or stop-gap Act, and the main figures in it were based on compromise agreements between the many interested parties. That does not mean that the passing of the 1961 Act did not represent a substantial step forward, but it was a measure which most of those who worked on it, seven years ago, knew was not the sort of Act of Parliament which would have a very long life. When it comes to the Committee stage of this Bill I intend, my Lords, to ask a number of questions, and I give notice now to the Minister concerned. I apologise in advance to the noble Lord, Lord Hilton of Upton, for the amount of "homework" which may be involved. I do not think that it will mean so very much for the noble Lord, because he knows a great deal about this subject; and if my memory is correct he was a member of the Standing Committee in 1961 and has long been closely associated with drainage legislation and practice.

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Lastly, turning to Part V, I should like some information about the the subsidy for what are called "break crops". Looked at from one angle, a subsidy for break crops would appear to be a bonus for bad farming. Those who have robbed the land by planting a succession of white straw crops are to be given a subsidy to help them repair the damage which they have done. That is how the subsidy will appear to many people, and I should like the noble Lord at least to attempt to dispel it when he replies to the debate.
Looking round the country to-day, my Lords, one wonders what crops there are which are not subsidised in one way or another or at some time or other. Perhaps one is entitled to-day, on the eve of the Price Review announcement, to think a little about the problems that the Minister may have had to face. I hope that he has resisted the temptation to allow our support system to become still more complicated. The administration of the agriculture support system has become so complicated that very few people understand it fully and many have to employ professional help in finding their way through the regulations, in the same way as, without necessarily being very rich, we have to employ professional help in order to have our tax case represented to the Inland Revenue.
I am sure it is true that every Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food starts off with the fundamental thought that when he makes changes in the support system he should do so as far as possible, in a way which simplifies the system. But he comes under pressure, first from this group and then from that, and attempts are made to persuade him that it would all be fairer if only he would accept a minor variation here and another variation there. Then, at the end of the Price Review negotiation—possibly in order to get the acceptance of a package deal—some of these variations are allowed to creep in. Here in this Bill, it seems, we have one such, and I must press the Minister to tell us what is the thinking behind this decision to pay subsidy on break crops, and why it has been necessary to introduce this further variation into what has become an all-too-complicated system.
5.5 p.m.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: My Lords, I think that if this Bill had remained in the state as that in which it was first introduced in to another place, neither the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, nor I need have come South last night; and that, I am sure, would have been a convenience for us both. But as another place did make several substantial changes in the Bill, we both felt that our journey was absolutely essential.
As you may have gathered, my Lords, I shall confine my remarks almost entirely to Part III, but I should like to say just a word or two about Part II. I wish mainly to say that I agreed with everything said about Part II by my noble friend Lord Inglewood. I am convinced that heretofore tenants have been very badly treated when a part or the whole of their farm, but particularly a part, has been taken for some reason or other by compulsory purchase. I fully understand the reasons why the Government wish to put forestry on the same footing, as obviously, from the point of view of a tenant farmer, it can be just as annoying if part of the land is taken to be planted as if the land is taken in order to build a motorway or for some such purpose.
If the Government seriously wish to encourage private forestry—and I admit that there are moments when I wonder whether they do—I must say that I think this will be another difficulty chat is being put in the way. Because, my Lords, tenant farmers will be very reluctant to give up land for forestry purposes if they consider they may have the chance of getting four years' rent as compensation by hanging on to the land and becoming rather awkward. In many cases the trees that would be planted would benefit not only the landlord but also the tenant. The difficulty, of course, is that, on the whole, landlords want to plant very large shelter belts, because only if they plant a really large area does the operation become economic, whereas tenant farmers are generally interested only in small shelter belts in order that they may retain the maximum amount of land for grazing purposes. I should like the Government to look again at the position of forestry in relation to Part II of the Bill. I fully realise that it is a difficult problem, and it may be

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that the Government have found the fairest answer. I would not argue this point very hard. Nevertheless, I think it will make one more difficulty for private forestry, and that will be a pity.
Turning to Part III, my Lords, I think it very strange that the most controversial clauses in the Bill should be introduced after the Second Reading in another place. I am sure that if a private Member tried to do that in your Lordships' House, he would be told that it was not within the thesis of the Long Title and that it would therefore be out of order to introduce these particular clauses into the Bill. I do not know how the Government got over this difficulty. It seems to me that it would have been better had the change in the law of succession been introduced in a separate Bill and if all the interested parties had been consulted before it was done. There was, I think, a deplorable lack of consultation with one of the interested parties before these changes were made.
It seems to me that the proposed change in the law of succession will have three main disadvantages—and here I agree very largely with what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Henley. In my opinion, the differences between England and Scotland regarding agriculture do not extend to the system of tenant and landlord, and the disadvantages enumerated by the noble Lord which would apply in England if this became part of the English law, would also apply in Scotland. They are, my Lords, the difficulty that will be experienced by a young man who wishes to enter farming in getting a farm to tenant, and, secondly, that landlords will tend, when existing tenants leave, to take farms in hand or let them to elderly tenants who are unlikely to have any children.
Thirdly, with the present rate of death duties, even on a comparatively small estate, many of these farms will become very under-capitalised, because the new tenant will have to pay death duties when he inherits the lease and will be extremely loath to give up what is obviously a certain asset—his sitting tenancy of a farm. I do not think that this will be in the best interests of farming, but it is a minor point compared with the other two; that it will be difficult for new blood and new thinking to enter the industry as
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tenant farmers (it needs a lot of capital to enter as owner-occupiers) and landlords will tend to take farms in hand when they probably already farm a sufficient amount.
I realise that we are fighting a vain battle to try to get the Government to omit Part III of the Bill. They told the Scottish Farmers' Union that they were going to put this Part in. I presume they wish to win a few votes in the agricultural constituencies, but I cannot see how this in the end will make any great difference to their future. I wonder whether the Government would consider reversing the whole of Clause 18(2)(a), so that the onus of proof would be put on the near relative to show that he or she would be a competent and efficient farmer, rather than on the landlord to show that the tenant would not be a competent and efficient farmer. As we all know, it is extremely difficult to prove something that someone is not going to be. I think this change would be a great help. Obviously, there are landlords who would still be reluctant to let farms to young couples who had a lot of children, because they would not be likely to get their farms back for two or three generations, but at least they would be more likely to look with favour on young and efficient people trying to enter the industry.
What I find really extraordinary about these provisions is that they do not apply to England. I should think, in view of the fact that we are trying to enter the Common Market, that it would be desirable to get the law in England as close to that in Scotland as possible. But the English N.F.U. does not want this. May I quote the last half of paragraph 64 of a paper by the N.F.U. of England and Wales, entitled Tenure of Farm Land, because I think it puts the situation far better than I possibly could:
"While we well understand the feeling of a father who hopes to hand over the farm to his son and continue the tradition which may well have lasted for several generations, there is no reason why the son, whatever his familiarity with the farm, should have a prior claim in law over others with more experience and greater competence. The day has passed when the mere fact of having been raised on a farm gives one enough experience to manage it efficiently. The fact of having been born a farmer's son does not of itself provide the degree of managerial capacity, business acumen, practical application and sound judgment which

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the more exacting demands of modern farming require of successful farmers. Hard though it may seem upon the older generation of farmers, we cannot feel that a special case on behalf of their sons stands any chance of successful pleading, although we hope that all landlords and agents will give particular consideration to the son's hopes, and recognise that confidence in succession gives many older farmers a strong incentive to maintain and improve the farm as though it were their own."
Whoever in the English N.F.U. wrote that cannot know the Secretary of State for Scotland, or he would not have put in that bit about special pleading. The only thing that encourages me about Part III of the Bill is that presumably the Government have now given up their idea of reforming this House and we hereditary Peers will be able to succeed to a place in your Lordships' House automatically if we satisfy the Committee for Privileges that we will act our part here with reasonable efficiency.
5.15 p.m.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: My Lords, I should like to make a few comments on Part I of the Bill, which deals with the welfare of livestock. I was struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said. There must be horrible people in England, and had I known there were such people I would not have lent him my shirt, as I did a few years ago in Paris. If the provisions of the Bill were carried out as they seem to be stated, I should be quite happy about the position in Scotland. I think that farmers there have nothing to fear. So long as there are people who like animals and spend their time looking after them and taking a pride in them, as 90 per cent. of Scotsmen do, then the other 10 per cent. can get what is coming to them and I hope they get it hard.
I think it is essential that the advisory services of the three colleges of agriculture and the N.F.U. should be consulted by the Departments, because it is no secret that the scientists and eminent doctors in some of these colleges are dead against Professor Brambell. They have said they would have nothing to do with the original Report. That point was made to me and renewed three days ago by one of them. So it might put things in proportion, which is all I am asking, if more than one scientific opinion were required. Within that framework, I would say that these provisions
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are excellent. I should like to repeat what everybody has said: that if we import from overseas, from Europe and the Argentine, food which is produced under conditions which we condemn here, and buy it at the cheapest price, it is a great act of hypocrisy. I do not know what can be done about it, but I hope something will be done.
So far as Part II of the Bill is concerned, the division of forestry and agriculture worries me a little because many leases prohibit the resumption of land for "agricultural purposes" but do not prohibit it for forestry. So far as I can see, a clear distinction is not made in the Bill and forestry is treated as agriculture, which is what it is, but there may be some mix-up with existing leases in force in Scotland.
Coming to Part III of the Bill I am not so hot under the collar as my noble friends about the question of security of tenure. There are several things that give me pleasure. One point already mentioned is the violent swerve towards the hereditary principle which has suddenly been taken by the Socialists. Not all farmers' sons wish to carry on in a jolly hard industry. Lots of them would like to go and sit much nearer bingo and have a soft job in the city. Another thing which gives me great contentment is this. I think it is worth while to compare the N.F.U. brief on this matter with the actual words in the Bill. The N.F.U. say categorically:
"It should be remembered that a farm which is unable to provide employment for two men is not to be protected by the new provisions where a landlord wishes to amalgamate it with another unit."
That is cut and dried, but the Bill is not. If that was in the Bill in language which any Scotsman could understand, then I should not worry.
But so far as I can see, you have a good definition—I think it is 600 man days as being a two-man farm—and you have the normal conditions with which you have to comply with the Department. I suggest that it is unnecessary to have anything other than the right of appeal to the Land Court. In this way it could be decided far cheaper, far quicker and certainly far easier through the machinery which the Government have already set up. If the tenant disagrees, give him the right to appeal to the Land Court.

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I think there is an enormous amount of complication in the Bill which is quite unnecessary. It is not desired by the Farmers' Union, at least according to their brief. I am a member of the North-Eastern Area Executive of the Farmers' Union, and have been for a long time, and I am sure they mean what they say: that they do not want to perpetuate small uneconomic farms in any circumstances. I do not see why that should not be followed in the Bill. I should think, according to the Bill, that the tenant farmer could tout his holding round. He could offer it first to his oldest son, and if he says, "I do not want it", he could then offer it to his next son, then to his daughter and then to his daughter-in-law. I do not think that is what is meant, but it would be utterly undesirable. If it is turned down by the heir, that should be that. The possibility of handing it on to anybody you can find is entirely undesirable. This may not be what the Bill means to do, but that is what I think it does. On the question of adoption, in proper circumstances I have no objection to a farm going to an adopted child, but I believe that the child should have been adopted fifteen years before and should be of age before the place is handed over to him. With that proviso, I see nothing wrong with this procedure.
Then I come to Part IV—I shall say nothing about Part V, because I do not understand it. I should like to know whether the Forestry Commission are going to be assessed on one-fifth of their forest area, or whether there will be some sort of swindle and a formula produced which does the local authorities out of the cash which they ought to get. I hope that the Forestry Commission will pay up the same as we all do.
It seems to me to be a little hard when you consider that the roofs, roads and concreted spaces of a housing estate are well over 90 per cent. impervious, and are the reason for the cost of the drainage, or a very large amount of it, and the local authority pay a very small amount. It seems rather hard that the landward area, which gets no benefit from this, should pay on a high scale. I think that the Government could look at existing classifications of their own. They have classified hill land; they have
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classified livestock rearing areas. All the work is done, and all they have to do—they have assessed one-fifth for forest areas—is to say that one-half or one-third, or something like that, for these other classifications, which would be a far fairer share of the burden. Again, the burden of an upland farmer is the same as the burden of a man in the rich lands down in the low ground. I do not think that is just, and that would be an easy way out of it.
In the upland farms we spend a lot of money keeping watercourses clear, for which we get no grant. For example, I have on my own little bit of land a tractor and a man working the entire winter. On top of that I am to be levied, or may be, for drains. I think there will be a good deal of grumbling, and I may well be grumbling, too.
5.24 p.m.
LORD BANNERMAN OF KILDONAN: My Lords, I should like to express two or three opinions, quite shortly, on one particular section of the Bill, which is the Scottish section. I am glad to follow the noble Viscount, Lord Stonehaven, who has not been so completely against this section of the Bill as previous noble Lords who have spoken. They seem to be worried that these provisions might rub off on to England. These are specifically clauses applying to Scotland, and noble Lords should not be worried. There was a far more severe Agriculture Bill, which came during the time of the Socialists in 1947–48, which gave continuity to the farming industry in Britain, and possibly did more to raise production in agriculture than any other single factor did. Continuity of tenure in agriculture is valuable, not only for the fact that it produces more food, but because it keeps people on the land and families do not disappear from the land as they are doing.
The noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, was worried that this very reasonable security of tenure would worry people in England. Under the old Socialist Act the pendulum was undoubtedly swung completely away from the landlord in favour of the tenant. In those days the landlord could not sell his farm, because he could not realise its true value, public market value, due to the fact that there was a sitting

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tenant with complete security. We all felt that that was an injustice, and I feel that a semblance of this injustice still remains under this Bill. The fact that the heir is secured to follow on is a good thing, but if it affects the selling price which the farmer may hope to get from a farm, then I think there is hardship, so far as the landlord is concerned, and this Bill should contain some provision to get rid of this hardship. I see no reason at all why this hardship cannot be dealt with in this Bill.
There is a fair rent in Scotland, determined by the Land Court. There is no reason why a fair selling price, the market price, could not also be determined by the Land Court; and that would be the price at which the landlord would sell the farm, or which he would expect to receive for his farm. There would be an onus on the successor in the tenancy to buy the farm, if he so wished, at that open market price; and if he was not prepared to do so, then I say that he would do better to give up the farm. That is all I am going to say in favour of the landlord. I think that the question of whether or not the farm is let to elderly tenants does not affect the issue. There can be adoption for the elderly tenants who could work against such a clause.
The other thing that worries me is the term "amalgamation". I am not sure that in agriculture I like the term "amalgamation". There are small units of agriculture in Scotland, family units, which, although they are not big economic units, are valuable, not only for the production of food but for the production of families; and in the past that was the most important product that came out of our Highlands and Islands area. When I listen to the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, I know that he is connected with Mull, and that there is regard for him as a landowner there. I know that owing to the situation that has existed in Mull, and in great areas of the Highlands, agriculture and the people have disappeared, until an area such as Mull is the most desolate island in the whole of the Western Hebrides.
This occurred under a system whereby landowners owned the land. It is high
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time to recognise that land is valuable when it is farmed in continuity and continuously by the men nearest the soil. That is why the Scottish N.F.U. support Clause 3 of this Bill, and that is why all Scotsmen believe that security of tenure in agriculture is a good thing, with the safeguards which I have referred to relating to the landowner. This principle should be adhered to, and the Government should be congratulated upon having swung the pendulum back again. It was right over on the left in 1947; it was carried right over to the right in 1957, and then we had a landlord Agriculture Act. This Bill is at least a compromise between the two. For that reason, when it secures the unit on the land and gives the farmer the confidence to put his lime and manure on his land for years ahead—looking ahead for years to come for his sons—it is good for the sons, it is good for the land, and it is good for the people.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, may I make one point before the noble Lord sits down? He called Mull the most desolate island. With due respect, he cannot know his facts, because Mull is one of the most heavily stocked sheep-farming areas in the whole of the Highlands. In fact, compared with the position before the war, the amount of livestock carried on Mull is two and a half times as great as before. True enough, the population has gone down, but that is due to economic causes and the different standard of living. It has nothing to do with the landlord. Before the war a man was paid 30s. a week; now he is paid £15 a week. And so, of course, one has to produce far more to pay that wage and one cannot employ so many men—
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, may I be allowed to ask whether the noble Viscount is asking a question? If not, I would remind him that last week, after certain exchanges, we decided that this form of irregular debate is not desirable.
LORD BANNER MAN OF KILDONAN: My Lords, may I say one sentence?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, the noble Viscount having been called to Order, it would be quite wrong to permit the noble Lord, Lord Bannerman of Kildonan, to go into disorder also.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, the noble Lord having been asked a question—the noble Viscount said, "Before the noble Lord sits down", the noble Lord not having sat down—he is surely entitled to reply to the point made in the interruption.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I quite agree. I think we agreed that if a noble Lord was asked a question before he resumed his seat he could reply to it. The whole point here is surely that the intervention from the noble Viscount could scarcely be described as a question.
5.34 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, what the noble Viscount was doing was making a second speech because he disagreed with some of the things the noble Lord, Lord Bannerman of Kildonan, had to say about Mull. I can understand the noble Viscount's point of view, but it is not the way that it should be expressed. If he had started off by saying, "Is it not a fact…?", or something like that, he might have put himself in order, but he did not do that; he did not ask a question.
I should point out at this stage that I am not replying to the debate; I am intervening only on the subject of that part of the debate, dealing with Part III of the Bill, which applies to Scotland. I think it would be helpful if I added a little to what my noble friend Lord Hilton of Upton said in introducing the Bill. A number of noble Lords have indicated that their enthusiasm for Part III is not as great as the Government's, and it has been suggested that in fact we have not consulted people properly about this. I wish to dispute this contention. One of the first things that happened after the 1964 General Election was that various organisations in Scotland sought to meet the new Secretary of State, and the Scottish N.F.U. was one of these organisations. This I remember because I was at this particular meeting in about November or December, 1964.
One of the points which was put forward most strenuously on that occasion by the Scottish N.F.U. was that in 1958 (to use the phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Bannerman) the pendulum had swung too far in the opposite direction, and that some legislation was necessary
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to put the matter right. There have been various meetings and representations since 1965; there has also been correspondence. No one can suggest, the point having been represented to the Government so forcibly at the end of 1964, and now being brought into legislation in January, February and March, 1968, that the Government have exactly rushed in and that the matter is being dealt with in an ill-advised way. In fact, the Government have spent a great deal of time on this matter, because they accepted the fact that experience had shown that the 1948 legislation went too far in favour of the tenant; it went too far against the landlord, and we wanted to be quite sure that, in remedying the admitted defects of 1958 in going in the other direction, we did not just create a new set of injustices.
In another place, on Committee stage it was suggested that the Government were still making the matter too wide, and at Report stage the Government introduced an Amendment on the subject of efficiency and experience which went at least part of the way to meet the points made by the Opposition. I admit quite freely that it did not go all the way, but that was because we felt that they were asking too much. The proposals, therefore, which we have put forward are in the Government's view calculated to give a fairer deal to competent successors to tenancy than was provided by the 1958 Act.
In meeting what we felt was reasonable criticism against the pre-1958 position, namely, that it was likely to result in the freezing of smaller, unsatisfactory-sized units, we have provided that the landlord should be able to obtain possession of the smaller type of holding which was not capable of providing full-time employment for two men, if he planned to amalgamate it with another holding. I would suggest to the noble Viscount, Lord Stonehaven, that if he looks at this again he will find there is nothing particularly complicated about it. It is a straightforward way of going ahead with the amalgamation and it will not present the National Farmers' Union with any difficulty in practice.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: My Lords, would the noble Lord allow me to interrupt him? I am not against that at

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all; all I was saying—and it is probably because I have read the Bill incorrectly, and it is difficult to understand—was that I felt it would be far better and simpler to use the existing machinery for amalgamations that the Government have produced, vulgarly known as the "golden handshake", rather than require them to incur the time and expense of going to the Land Court. Nevertheless, I suggested that if the tenant was aggrieved he might appeal to the Land Court.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I would remind the noble Viscount that the difficulty in what he suggests is that the "golden handshake"—or the "silver handshake", according to the value one places on it—is entirely voluntary. The amalgamation and the handshake arise only if the holder of the small unit is willing to give it up; but in this case the amalgamation will be a compulsory one, which the owner wishes to undertake but the potential successor is opposing. After all, if he is not opposing there will be nothing to go to the Land Court about. This is going further than the ordinary amalgamation machinery, in the interests, in this case, of the landlord owner.
I should like now to come to some of the other points that have been made in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, and the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, all touched on the point of the adopted son or daughter, and they all had some misgivings about this provision. There need be no misgivings about it. The law of Scotland in relation to succession has been altered to give the adopted son or daughter the same rights of succession as a natural son or daughter. It would be quite improper if in this particular instance we were to say that an adopted son or daughter was not to have the ordinary legal rights. This is the simple reason why this provision is in the Bill. The rather fanciful suggestion that Scotland is so infested with farmers determined to plague the landlords that, in anticipation of their own death and the fact that the landlord is going to sell the land, they will go around looking for someone to adopt, merely for the purposes of frustrating the landowner is really not tenable. I do not know in fact whether there is any tenancy farm in Scotland where the farmer has an adopted
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son or daughter. I suspect that there may be, but I do not really know. However, I do not suppose there are many, and I would point out that the number of farms which come up for letting is comparatively small.
This brings me to touch on the point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene, and Ferrard, that this provision would dry up the number of farms available for letting. I would not deny that it may reduce the number to a small extent, but we ought not to exaggerate its effect. At present, many landlords allow a tenant's son or other relative to succeed to a holding, and the fact that this Bill may become an Act is not going to alter the attitude which these landowners would have taken in any event. We do not know exactly how many farms become available, but it would seem that the number become available for letting in a year is somewhere between 35 and 60, and it seems unlikely that a high proportion of these are cases in which the landlord has given a successor an incontestable notice to quit. That has been said by the noble Viscount, Lord Stonehaven. In not every case where a farmer dies does his son—or any other relative, for that matter—wish to succeed. After all, this will not compel someone to take up the tenancy; it is merely to give an opportunity where someone wishes to take up the tenancy; and can show that he is a fit person to get it.
VISCOUNT MASSE REENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord, may I ask what is the position of the landlord's son if he wants to farm and all the landlord's farms are let and all the tenants have successors? It would seem that then the landlord's son has no chance of ever getting any land.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, the noble Viscount is not as well aware of the rights of landowners as I should have expected him to be. If a landlord has a son who wishes to farm he may apply, under Section 26(1)(d) of the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1949, to the Scottish Land Court for consent to dispossess a tenant, on the ground that greater hardship would be caused to the landlord by not getting possession than would be caused to the tenant by losing his holding. So in this case what the

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Land Court has to decide is where the greater hardship lies. It may be that it will be difficult for a landlord in these circumstances to prove that there is greater hardship, but the noble Viscount gives up too readily if he is making out the case that it is impossible that this should ever arise.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: My Lords, does the noble Lord not think that if the tenant's son or daughter has this right they will tend to take advantage of it, and thereby stay on the farm, when perhaps they are not really interested in farming but are perfectly entitled to within the provisions of Clause 18 of this Bill? Possibly one way to avoid this might be to adopt the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Bannerman of Kildonan.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I do not think so. I subscribe to the view, which has frequently been expressed, that there are many easier ways of earning a living than by being a farmer. I am certain that sons or daughters who wish to succeed to a tenancy in those circumstances will do so because they are genuinely interested in farming, and not because they are under any illusions that it is an easy way of getting a living.
The noble Viscount also suggested that the provisions of Part III would be unworkable on poorer land. I do not think that is the case, because it is likely, in the first instance, that these would be the smaller units not employing more than two men, so that there are grounds for seeking an amalgamation. It also assumes that the landlord will stop investing capital in all such holdings. After all, a "reasonable" landlord—if I may use what the noble Viscount called a "nasty" word—is expected to do a certain amount of investment in the property which he is letting, and it surely is quite unreasonable to suggest that because tenancies are to continue there is not going to be further reasonable investment in the farm.
The noble Duke suggested that Clause 18(2) should be reversed to put the onus of proof on the tenant. I should like to point out that this is hardly necessary. It is only if the landlord is objecting to the tenancy arising that there is a case to go to the Land Court in the first
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instance, so that the action must be initiated by the landowner. But once it goes to the court, the court must look at both sides. We all know that the Land Court operates with a little more informality than some of the other courts of the country. They will look at it both ways, both seeking to consider how the landowner has proved inefficiency or how the prospective tenant has proved efficiency. I think it will work both ways.
I was a little amused that the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, and the noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl, raised the question that the Government suddenly had been converted to the hereditary principle. I would remind both noble Lords that this is not something new. After all, what we are seeking to do in part in this Bill is something which we did in 1948, and we were not more enthusiastic about the hereditary principle for law-makers then than we are now. We were enthusiastic then and are still about the rights of families, and if there is any business in this country which is more firmly tied as a family unit than farming I do not know what it is. It is reasonable that the proper rights of families in farming should be looked after to some extent, and that is what the Bill does. It goes no further than that. The unfortunate thing is, like it or not, that there is a certain element of the hereditary system in families. That is as far as we are going in this Bill.
If I may sum up what the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, said, he was not objecting really to the extension of tenure in the Bill. Much of what he was saying was in objection to tenancy as such, and the logical conclusion of his argument is that all farming should be done by the owner of the land and that no man should have a farm unless he owns it. That may or may not be a desirable thing, but it certainly is not a practical proposition at the present time.
The noble Lord, Lord Balerno, touched on the subject of rating of agricultural subjects, and in regard to the present situation, shall I say that I find it difficult to disagree with him when he says it is chaotic? But, unfortunately, if there is to be an alteration it is not an alteration of agricultural law, it is an alteration of valuation law which is necessary; and while one can put many matters

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into an Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, to start altering the valuation laws is, I suggest, and I think the noble Lord will immediately agree, going just a little too far.
I have said more than once in this House that I am not a Scottish Nationalist in the sense that members of the Scottish National Party are, but if ever I was in danger of applying for membership of that Party it was this afternoon when I was listening to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, and to a certain extent the noble Duke. I can well understand the noble Lord, Lord Henley, as an English Peer, preferring the views of the English National Farmers' Union in relation to farming conditions in Scotland, but I certainly take the strongest exception when he goes on to suggest that if something is good for English agriculture it must by the same token be good for Scottish agriculture, particularly when he prefaced it by saying that he did not know anything about Scottish agricultural conditions or tenancy. But when he went on to say, "The English N.F.U. do not want this system, and it seems to me amazing that the Scots should", I almost went out and wrote for membership of the Scottish National Party then, but I realised I was allowing myself to be driven by illiberalism into insanity.
LORD BANNERMAN OF KILDONAN: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree there was another Liberal opinion?
LORD HUGHES: Yes, my Lords; and if the noble Lord, Lord Bannerman, wants me to make forecasts I would say that for every member of the Scottish National Party in Scotland who quotes his views on land tenure there will be 100 who will quote Lord Henley's views against the Liberal Party. That was bad enough coming from the noble Lord, Lord Henley, because, after all, he is English and he has a perfect right to prefer English conditions to Scottish conditions. But when the noble Duke read from the memorandum of the English N.F.U. and said that this was a reasonable thing, and did not read a single word from the document of the Scottish N.F.U., which expresses the contrary opinion very forcibly indeed, then he certainly has no qualifications even to apply for membership of the Scottish National Party.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: And I might point out that I have no desire to do so.
LORD HUGHES: That is a more reasonable expression of opinion than what the noble Duke said about the Scottish N.F.U. views. There were some rather surprising things said about the Government's ideas in putting this provision in. I am always happy when I see that the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, is to make a contribution, because I can always extract a crumb of comfort from it. He said that the Government was declining rapidly, and then he suggested that perhaps our reason for our interest in adopted sons or daughters was to help to recover the situation in Scotland. If our position in Scotland has only declined so little that the proportion of 35 to 60 farmers who may get tenancies in a year and who also have an adopted son or daughter can put it right we have little to worry about.
LORD INGLEWOOD: The noble Lord seems very sensitive.
LORD HUGHES: I only wish to give the noble Lord credit. I always give the noble Lord credit for helping Her Majesty's Government; I did so last time, and I will continue to give credit where credit is due. It was also suggested, I think by the noble Duke, that the reason for our doing this was that we were seeking to get the votes of tenant farmers in Scotland. I would say quite honestly that if we could get the votes of tenant farmers in Scotland we would not despise them, but I would add that I am not terribly optimistic. Everyone has said that what we did for the farmers in 1947 was more than was ever done by any Government, but the number of farming votes it brought in did not bring us a single constituency. So I am not terribly optimistic that the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1968 is going to swing Scottish farmers behind us in one body. It may bring one or two in, but it is not going to win us many constituencies.
This is a simple measure of justice which has been introduced into a Bill on farming, not right at the beginning, because the Government's intention really had been to introduce a simple Bill at the appropriate stage in which to put

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this provision. But then after the Miscellaneous Provisions Bill was put forward it was realised that this was a perfectly proper vehicle through which it could be done, and could be done much more quickly than waiting for the opportunity of yet another small Agriculture Bill. It does not do everything the tenant farmer wants, or everything the landowner wants. In so far as it is perhaps nearly a halfway house between the two points of view, we think it is something that will be fairer than what was done in 1948 and in 1958, and with good will on both sides, which I am certain will be forthcoming, the 1968 provision may have a longer life than the 1948 or 1958 ones.
6.0 p.m.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, I am sure the whole House will agree that the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, always introduces a certain flavour into any debate, and I again congratulate him to-day on his performance. My only comment on his performance is that perhaps what we read to-morrow will not be quite so good as what we heard to-day. Along with other noble Lords I welcome this somewhat ragbag of a Bill. I find myself in a slightly awkward position, because prior to the beginning of the Second Reading of this Bill I had prepared three-quarters of my speech on Part III of the Bill, not knowing that I was going to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hughes. I think it would be discourteous of me to raise any further points on this Part. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, will welcome this.
I would, however, as a Scot, just say that I entirely agree with my noble friends on this side of the House, that such a measure does nothing to help to improve either the efficiency or the productivity of Scottish agriculture, and I hope that the Government will reconsider this matter and will be persuaded in Committee to withdraw it. The other comment that I should like to make is that the Government have indeed done us a great honour to-day on this small Bill by putting up three Front Bench speakers. I am only sorry to see that none of their Back Bench speakers was prepared to follow them.
Although I welcome the Bill, I must confess, as a practising land agent, that
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this type of legislation often proves a nightmare to follow. It deals with such a galaxy of varying subjects, some of which I personally feel should have been dealt with in their own legislation—here, of course, I refer to Part II of the Bill, to tenant's compensation. I think it would have been far better if that Part had come under a proper agricultural holdings Bill.
Along with other speakers, I naturally welcome Part I of the Bill, dealing with the welfare of livestock, and I look forward to seeing what regulations the Minister proposes to make. My only regret in regard to this Part of the Bill is that neither this House nor another place has seen fit to provide time to debate the Brambell Report. Such debates could have been quite useful to the Minister when drafting the regulations. My noble friend Lord Nugent commented earlier that it is Parliament's duty to keep the right balance in these factors. Whereas such a system of farming often increases productivity, I would put forward three suggestions whereby I believe Part I of the regulation could be enforced.
The first concerns the system of rearing veal calves. I was particularly interested to note in the Brambell Report that evidence was taken from a farm near Henley which I myself have visited and seen. The method of veal production on this farm is, I think, common to many other producers. It is where the young calf of four days old is put into a small crate with slatted floors, and from that moment on until it is slaughtered some twelve weeks later it never leaves the crate and is restricted to standing or lying down in that one position. I am sure its diet is splendidly scientific, but it includes no roughage and it lives on a high protein gruel. I believe it is a system which should be abhorred by those generally interested in livestock welfare. I believe it is the nearest thing to an inhuman factory system you can get.
The second point I would comment on is the system of intensively reared broiler chickens. As I understand it, the Brambell Report came down against debeaking and for the minimum requirement of 12 square inches per bird. In my experience in managing such a broiler unit both these points could be challenged, and I should be happy to give the noble Lord

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evidence of this later should he require it. The third point in regard to the Brambell Report to which I should like to draw attention is the present laxity in the methods of both castration and the slaughter of animals. I believe that often there is unnecessary suffering to animals in this respect, mainly because farmers have been used to a certain system of castration or of slaughter all though their lives and they see no reason to alter their system now because of a certain new set of regulations. I hope that the Minister will study both practices and improve on them.
Turning briefly to Part II of the Bill, I personally welcome the additional compensation that will become payable to displaced tenants. In this House I asked an Unstarred Question on this particular subject some two years ago, at a time when a good deal of acquisition of land was going on for a new town in Buckinghamshire. I remember that the noble Lord, Lord Champion, who replied for the Government on that occasion, was most sympathetic to the case. My only comment on the provision, which I think is a good one, is that I believe that the compensation should be geared to the rack rent of the farm and not to the existing rent. I know that this point was argued in another place, and I hope we may have an opportunity of taking it up again on Committee. In my opinion, if we uproot a farmer and his family and take away his livelihood we should give all the financial assistance we can.
There are two small points on Part II of the Bill that I should like to raise with the noble Lord, Lord Beswick. The first arises where a tenant is farming under licence. Here I am thinking of Section 2 of the Agricultural Holdings Act 1948. I am sure the noble Lord will recall that under licence a tenant does not have the same security of tenure, but he can, of course, go on farming under licence year after year, with the approval of the county agricultural executive committee. I should like to ask whether he will be entitled to similar compensation under Part II. The second question that I would ask under this Part is whether, in the event of part of the farm being taken back for non-agricultural use and the tenant deciding that the remainder of the farm is an uneconomic unit, he is allowed to claim the full compensation
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on the land not necessarily required for non-agricultural use.
One small but important clause in the Bill, which I think only the noble Lord, Lord Hilton of Upton, mentioned, is Clause 44. This clause deals with the Agricultural Wages Committee. I am pleased to see that at last those involved in land, in agriculture, are to be rewarded for their efforts; and I hope that in future there will be less disparity between the farm staff on the farm and those who work in industry. As this is a miscellaneous provisions Bill, I hope I may be excused for mentioning one subject which is not specifically mentioned in the Bill but which concerns the farming community—it is the question of farm mortgages. The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, will know that the chief source of farm mortgages is the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation. At the present time and for the last nearly two years the rate of interest on an agricultural mortgage for farmers has been high. I think at present it is approximately 8 per cent.
The point with regard to this mortgage is that whereas the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation offers a mortgage over, say, 40 years on a repayment basis, the farmer at the time of taking out a mortgage finds that his interest is constant. It is but a small inducement for any farmer to take out a long-term mortgage at the present high interest rates. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to comment on this matter and perhaps some improvement could be incorporated into the Bill. I would end, as have other noble Lords, by confirming my support for the Bill. I hope that the reference by the noble Lord, Lord Hilton of Upton, to to-morrow's announcement of the Price Review is in anticipation of good news for an industry which has served the country so well in the past and which now deserves some new encouragement.
6.10 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has shared one difficulty with his noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford. Both of them, on behalf of the Opposition, were unwilling to oppose this Bill, but both were unable to be unduly enthusiastic about it. I thought that they contrived to achieve the sort of balance which we want to see when we apply the provisions of Part I

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of the Bill. I should like to take up the noble Earl's offer to let me have the information about veal production, and I was interested to hear what he said about the debeaking of broiler fowls; there was also the other point he made about castration. Those are matters which might well be profitably discussed on Committee stage.
The noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, said that the Bill was curiously irrelevant. With respect, I thought that that was a rather strange description of this Bill. "Incidental", possibly; but not "irrelevant", Incidentally this brings much valued reform to the agricultural scene, but it is in addition to other provisions which this Government have brought in to assist the farmer. I will resist the temptation put before me by the noble Lord to discuss the relative merits of a dear food system in the Common Market, as against the support prices in this country. I think that he will agree that, no matter what basic agricultural policy we have, we shall still need to have regard to the welfare of animals, fair play to the displaced tenant farmer, a proper system of drainage charges, and other things contained in this Bill—not to mention the supervision of the gardens at Wakehurst Place. I shall leave what was said by some noble Lords from across the Border, since I thought my noble friend Lord Hughes dealt more than adequately with their criticisms, though I have no doubt that we shall be hearing much more about these problems at a later stage of the Bill.
I was gratified to hear the general welcome which was given by Lord Nugent, by Lord Kinnoull, by Lord Balerno, by Lord Nunburnholme, and by most noble Lords who have spoken to Part I of this Bill. If there had been any doubt whatever about the necessity for something of this sort, those doubts would have been dispelled by what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Henley. However, the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, and the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, expressed some doubt about the position in which the farmers in this country would be left, when competing against farmers overseas, who possibly do not have to adhere to, or meet, the same standards which one might expect will be contained in the regulations when approved. There may well be a
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point here, although social differences in other countries probably have much greater effect on price levels than any farm animal welfare regulations are likely to have. But the Government accept that there is a point here. Of course, in practice any effect which these regulations, when drafted, will have will be spread over many years. Moreover, in regard to white veal, which was a possible import mentioned in another place, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has given an undertaking that the other Governments concerned overseas will be consulted to ensure that there is no unfair competition there.
I was rather surprised to hear the thoughts of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, on some of these matters. I may be allowing myself to jump to wrong conclusions, but I felt that he was saying we were assisting the farmer rather too much in respect of the grants for break crops. There was an inquiry from my noble friend which was rather contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, said. The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, asked me whether it would be possible to extend this grant to other crops. Again, my right honourable friend has given an undertaking that the possibility of extending this scheme to other crops will be considered. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, if I understood him aright, asked me why should we give this kind of assistance anyhow. My Lords, we all know that there is very special value in rotation of this kind, and I should not have thought that anyone would argue against the fact that field beans would improve the fertility of the soil.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, I do not want to pursue this in detail now. Of course, the introduction of certain crops in rotation improves the soil, but from my reading of the Bill this grant appeared to be a grant to help people to repair damage which they themselves had done. I was also expressing the general thought that there appeared to be no end to the farming operations, in one direction or another, which attract some help. I feel, as I am sure does the noble Lord, that this is a trend which one would like to see reversed.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, certainly there are occasions when one thinks that there is no end to the assistance

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that can be given to the farming community; although I am bound to say that I hope that this thought expressed so well by the noble Lord will be echoed to-morrow when we are discussing the Statement to be made on the Farm Price Review.
The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, and the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, asked about the qualification of the inspectors who would go on to the land in order to satisfy themselves that they conformed with the regulations. I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, if these officers would be qualified veterinary officers. The Ministry inspectors will, of course, be qualified vets, although they may take their technical assistants with them. In regard to local authority officers, they will be concerned only with feeding-stuffs. I should not have thought that any such qualifications would be needed there, but if there is still a difficulty about this then we can perhaps discuss it when considering the Amendment which the noble Lord has promised us. I can assure the noble Lord that the Departments concerned will issue an advisory circular to local authorities stressing the necessity of having, if not professionally qualified people, at any rate people who would observe the sort of code which the noble Lord has in mind.
I was also asked about establishing the identity of officers who are to make inspections on a farmer's land; I was asked whether identification ought not to be mandatory. Well, the wording of the Act requires these persons to establish their identity if they are asked. I should not have thought that, in practice, we shall have any trouble about that, but if the noble Lord has any point which he thinks might be further discussed, perhaps we could look at it on Committee stage.
The noble Lord, Lord Nunburnholme, asked about representation on the river authorities and suggested that those who pay charges should be represented, especially the farming community. When a draining charge is raised an additional member is appointed to the authority to represent the draining charge payers. It would not, of course, be right to give the agricultural community equal representation with the local authorities, because, after all, it
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will be the local authorities who will still contribute the major part of the bill. But where we are dealing with the farming community, it is very likely that the local authority representatives will include farmers or people allied to the farming industry. Moreover, the land drainage members will normally include representatives of the farming community, and in that capacity, too, as members of the internal drainage boards they will sit upon the river authorities. As I understood him, the noble Lord went on to criticise the practice of civil servants voting on these river authorities. I am afraid that I could not quite understand the point he was getting at, because there are no civil servants on them as such.
LORD NUNBURNHOLME: My Lords, the Minister has power to appoint so many members on the river authority.
LORD BESWICK: Certainly he does, my Lords, but not necessarily civil servants. Possibly what the noble Lord was thinking of was the representatives of the water undertakings. There may well be representation there, but I should have thought it was proper that, in that case, they should have the right to vote. The noble Lord also asked me about the drainage charges. I should emphasise that this is a purely discretionary charge. No river authority is obliged to I raise it, although we hope that many will do so since there is certainly a good deal of work still to be done.
The noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, asked in a reference to affairs South of the Border how profits will be assessed in reckoning compensation under Clause 15 in Part II of the Bill. The actual amount will be a matter for agreement between landlord and tenant. If they cannot agree, then the dispute can be referred to the Lands Tribunal in compulsory purchase cases, or to arbitration when the dispossession is by notice to quit. I understand that the assessment of such compensation under the compulsory purchase code—that is, in cases of compulsory dispossession—takes into account recent years' profits and the current farming practice in relation to the holding. If a tenant thought his assessment was unfair he could appeal to the Lands Tribunal.

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The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and also the noble Viscount, Lord Stonehaven, asked whether the Forestry Commission will be liable for payments under Clause 9. The answer is, Yes. They will have to make payments in exactly the same way as a private landlord or, for that matter, as a public authority. Part II applies to them all. The noble Lord, Lord Balerno, had a most intriguing Committee point about the word "creature". I must get the Parliamentary draftsman on to this, and see whether there is anything in the point which he made. He also asked about the registration of a plant variety. I am bound to confess to him that I find this one a little difficult. I should like to study what he said, and either I will write to him or we will again come back to that at Committee stage. I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, about the question of compensation, which he thought would possibly deter landlords from planting trees.
LORD INGLEWOOD: On small areas.
LORD BESWICK: He said that the landlord may want to plant a bank of trees, but if he has to pay compensation under Part II he is unlikely to plant. But if they are shelter belts, which I think the noble Lord had in mind, then they would fall within the definition of "agriculture" in the Agricultural Holdings Act, and the landlord would not in that case be obliged to make the new payments. If, however, the parts of land involved are the small wet patches, which I think the noble Lord described, then the payments would be based only on the rental value of the land and, judging by his description of the land, the amount of money involved would be very small indeed.
The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, asked about tenants on licence under Section 2 of the Agricultural Holdings Act: and whether they would be entitled to the new payment. The answer is, No. The new sum is not payable when there is no entitlement to disturbance compensation, and licensees under Section 2 are not so entitled. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, had one or two points which I thought were better left until the Committee stage. But he asked me a question which perhaps I might deal with
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now, about the betterment levy, and whether there was a liability on the part of landlords in relation to Clause 9 payments. The Land Commission are understood to take the view that where the landlord pays the new sum to an outgoing tenant he will not be able to add it to the base value of his interests for levy purposes when he comes to sell the land for development. Questions of liability for betterment levy are the responsibility of the Land Commission, and an Agriculture Bill cannot legislate away existing liabilities. A landlord is not, however, obliged to sell with vacant possession, though he will no doubt do so where, as will generally be the case with sales for development, he thereby gains enough on the sale price to leave him well in pocket after paying the new sum to the tenant and discharging his tax liabilities as well.
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, I am not quite sure that I accept the noble Lord's assurance that there is no injustice, because I suspect that there is an injustice here and that it ought to be put right. But I agree with the noble Lord that this cannot be put right in this particular Bill, and it is really a matter for a Finance Bill.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord. He has made his point and I have no doubt that it will be considered by others. Another point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Henley, and by the noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl, was about the application to England of the better parts of the law applying to Scotland. I may just add—although my noble friend Lord Hughes dealt with most of this—that the desirability or otherwise of providing greater security for the near relatives of deceased tenant farmers in England and Wales will be discussed with interested agricultural and professional organisations, as part of the general review of agricultural holdings legislation now in hand. I hope that noble Lords from North of the Border will be satisfied that justice is eventually to be done South of the Border. I hope I have dealt with most of the points that have been raised. Possibly I have not dealt with some of them, but perhaps we can return to them at Committee stage, or if there are some which I can deal with before that I

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will certainly write to the noble Lords concerned.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

THEFT BILL [H.L.]
6.30 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Stonham.)
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I do not want to ask your Lordships to reject this Motion, but I should like to protest against the very short time which has been given between the Second Reading stage and the Committee stage of this Bill. I appreciate that the fortnight or so that we have had is a very usual period in connection with ordinary Bills, but this Bill is a Bill of outstanding importance and an exceedingly difficult one to which to draft Amendments. It may be said that a great part of the Bill was already in the important Report of the Law Revision Committee on this subject, and that is true. But there are in the Bill before Parliament at the present time some important clauses, particularly Clause 6, which are not in the draft, and the reasons for them, I think, have not been made as clear as they might have been. But, quite apart from that, the rather inarticulate mass of the citizenship affected by this Bill—and it affects tremendously a very large number of people—who are not really capable of reading Reports of Law Revision Committees, may have spokesmen, and they certainly have not had the opportunity to master the complications of the Bill.
I think that on Second Reading it was generally accepted that, by and large, this is a very valuable contribution, and I do not think that anybody feels that even small parts of it should be rejected altogether. On the other hand, it was made quite clear that there are a number of aspects of the matter which are very much open to objection and which, arguably at any rate, could very well be amended and improved at Committee stage. This really ought to have persuaded the Government, I think, to give longer time before the Committee stage.
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In the Press and from the university law schools a quite substantial amount of anxiety has been manifest over these last weeks. I have had a number of letters from teachers of criminal law in university law schools asking for elucidation of points, which I obviously am not able to give to them; and without the assistance of a pretty skilled draftsman it is extraordinarily difficult to put down Amendments to a technical Bill of this kind. Personally, although this is not perhaps of great importance to your Lordships' House, I have myself not been in a position to give detailed attention to the Bill; and, as it happens, this is a week in which I have long-standing engagements which will prevent my taking very much part either in the Committee stage to-night or, as I understand it will be, the adjourned Committee stage on Thursday.
My second point is that it is altogether wrong that, in the case of a Committee stage of this importance, pretty well the whole of a day should not be given to the discussion of the Amendments. We have important Amendments before us, and here we are, at half past six in the evening, after a longish day, with a comparatively small House. I suggest that a Bill which affects the liberties of such a very large section of the community ought not to be pushed forward in this very hurried way. One appreciates that this is a section of the law which is in very great need of reform, and that it has had to wait a long time. Nevertheless, a great deal of damage can be done in the very last stages if, in an understandable anxiety to get the Bill on to the Statute Book before the end of the Session, too much urgency is shown and the work which ought to be done very carefully, and I think with a measure of slowness, is pushed through late in the evening on a number of rather latish sittings. I therefore hope that after to-night, at any rate, it may be possible to give your Lordships a better opportunity to deal with this Bill in detail, and with the close scrutiny that it deserves, and also that a rather longer period may be allowed before the Report stage is taken. Undoubtedly there are a number of people who have given a very great deal of close thought to this problem, especially in the university law schools, who would like to have the opportunity, through the means which are at their disposal, to

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place important criticisms before your Lordships' House.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, is suggesting that we should not take the Committee stage to-night or not, but in support of his plea that we should be allowed plenty of time for this Bill I should just like to say one or two words. I think it is very important that we should get this Bill right. For some of us it is inconvenient, to say the least, for reasons of public business, to take part in a Committee stage which starts before 4 o'clock and I think it is very important that those who have to administer the criminal law should be able to take part in the discussions upon this Bill in Committee. That means that one has to start after 4 o'clock if one can, and I hope that the Government will arrange that. I also hope that the proceedings will not go on too late into the evening.
This Bill is a very important Bill, but I do not believe there is tremendous urgency to get it through; we are carrying along quite well as we are. The great thing is to get it right. I hope that the noble Lord will allow quite an interval between the Committee stage and the Report stage, so that we shall have an opportunity to consider the position in the light of our discussions. I believe that this would facilitate the progress of the Bill.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, much though we should regret the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, I hope that the House will proceed to the Committee stage now, and will do as well as it can.
LORD CHORLEY: I should like to make it clear that I was not asking your Lordships to refuse the Committee stage to-night, but that I just wanted to make my protest and the plea that there should be a longer period a little later on, so that we can get down to an intensive study of the Amendments that are needed. It would be very useful if a group of Peers could be formed, on a non-Party basis, with the advantage of a draftsman provided by the Government to help us in drafting Amendments. It is certainly not right that an important Bill of this kind should depend on the accident of some of the people who are
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interested in it having some skill as draftsmen.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I do not disagree with the noble Lord, but I wish to say just two things. First, I would support the plea that we should have a comparatively long period between this stage and the Report stage of the Bill, if that can be arranged, because I believe that there are a considerable number of views to collect, to assimilate and to turn into Amendments. The second thing I would say is by way of paying a tribute. It so happens that during the preparation of the Amendments on this Bill your Lordships' House, in another capacity, has been considering a criminal matter, and the result of that has been that practically every book of any relevance has been out of the Library and in court. I should like to pay tribute to our librarians for their incredible skill in somehow obtaining the necessary books, at any rate for me so that I could draft the Amendments. I think they have done a very good job, and I am most grateful to them.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, it is perfectly right, and indeed valuable, that my noble friend Lord Chorley should have made his protest on this point. Your Lordships will appreciate that the arrangement of business is not a matter for me, and also that we have a very crowded legislative programme. I would say, however, that it is 19 days since Second Reading, which is not an unreasonable time for the tabling of Amendments. That is easily borne out by the fact that your Lordships have accumulated no fewer than 70 Amendments on the Marshalled List; so that, if one or two law professors have been to some extent inhibited, this is a matter for which I, at least, can be devoutly thankful.
I would, in reinforcement of that, point out to your Lordships that because of the delay between First and Second Readings the Bill has actually been printed and before the House since January, which has allowed something like six weeks for the consideration of possible Amendments. With regard to the late hour for discussion, I have the greatest sympathy for my noble friend, because in the last week I have had more bedtimes than bed. Therefore, I can speak feelingly in this matter. But I want to

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emphasise to your Lordships the great importance, in the case of a Bill of such major importance as this one, which the Government attach (this is the point made by the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne) to the presence of the Lord Chief Justice and the Law Lords, if they can be here. Therefore, while every endeavour will be made to bring on further Committee stages as early as we can in the day, I think it would be generally accepted that they ought to come on after 4.30 p.m. in order to ensure that we have the attendance—
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: —and not going on too late!
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I agree about "not going on too late" With regard to that, I want to state quite firmly that there will be no tendency at any time to curtail the discussions on this Bill in your Lordships' House. We know that there will be no filibustering. If more time is needed, then more time will be provided; although more days may be necessary. With regard to the time interval between the end of the Committee stage and the beginning of the Report stage, as some of your Lordships are aware I have always held the view that there will have to be a substantial Report stage on this Bill. The Report stage will, in fact, be finality in regard to many of the discussions that we start in Committee and there will have to be a necessary interval. That is a matter for the Chief Whip and "the usual channels". I am sure that the representations that have been made will be fully respected and that we shall endeavour to meet what is obviously the general wish of the House in this matter. I hope that now we may proceed into Committee.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD ST. HELENS in the Chair.]
Clause 1:
Basic definition of theft
1.—(1) A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and "thief" and "steal" shall be construed accordingly.
(2) It is immaterial that the appropriation is not made with a view to gain, or is not made for the thief's own benefit.
6.43 p.m.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE VISCOUNT DILHORNE moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "permanently". The noble and learned Viscount said: I beg to move the Amendment standing in my name on the Marshalled List. I should like to say at the outset that this Amendment raises a considerable issue. It may be that this Amendment and perhaps many others in my name, is not drafted to the satisfaction of the Parliamentary draftsman. It may be that in some instances some consequential Amendments will be required if an Amendment is accepted; but I have put down these Amendments with a view to raising the points to which I consider that this Committee should give serious consideration. I should like to echo the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, in saying that this is not a Party measure at all. Whatever view we may express, I think we all have the same objective, to try to make this Bill as good as possible.
For many years—I have not looked back during the 19 days to see for how long—it has been an ingredient of the offence of larceny that to constitute the offence there must be an intention permanently to deprive. This Amendment, by seeking to remove the word "permanently", raises the question whether in modern times it is either necessary or desirable that to establish the offence of theft the prosecution should have to prove in every case an intention permanently to deprive.
The sub-committee of the Criminal Law Revision Committee, which drafted this Bill, decided, so we are told in page 5 of their Report, that
"it would he necessary to make far-reaching changes in the present law."
And they said, in page 6, that
"…it was necessary to go back to first principles to consider what were the essential elements of the offence and to reconstruct the law relating to it accordingly,"
As the Committee said in paragraph 33:
"The important element of them all"—
and they are referring to the offences of larceny, embezzlement and fraudulent conversion—
"is undoubtedly the dishonest appropriation of another person's property—the treating of 'tuum' as 'meum'."
I entirely agree with that.
Your Lordships will appreciate that that conception, treating tuum as meum, does not necessarily involve an intention permanently to deprive. Is it not really maintaining—this is the question I pose—an unnecessary refinement in our law to be required to prove not only that there has been a dishonest appropriation, but also that it has been done with the intention to deprive the owner permanently of that article? If someone dishonestly appropriates something belonging to you, would it not be surely the normal use of the English language to say that it has been stolen and that the man who takes it is a thief? If someone takes your car and drives it away when he has no right to do so, surely you and most car owners would say that the car had been stolen. But that would not be right under the present law. It would not be right for you to say that unless you could establish that it had been taken with the intention of permanently depriving you of it. If a man has taken your car away and has deprived you of it, he has probably caused you a very great personal inconvenience, to say the least—and if it were a question of calling witnesses on this, I would call my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross who I hope will speak later. But if a man has done that, and that alone, you should not call him a thief because in strict law that does not suffice to show that he had the intention permanently to deprive you of your car.
It was because of this requirement of the law that years ago, I think it was after the Road Traffic Act of 1930, the taking and driving away of a car without the owner's consent was made a criminal offence. It was made a criminal offence because of the difficulty of establishing theft; because you could not prove, when the man had taken your car, that he had the intention permanently to deprive you of it. In some cases the person who took a car was charged with stealing petrol because he had used it, and he was convicted of that offence. That is how that offence came into existence. This Bill, as the Committee will see, keeps that as an offence in Clause 12. The Committee recommended not only that that should remain an offence, but also that it should be an offence to take away
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vessels—and we have passed an Act to provide for that.
Is it necessary to make special provision for the dishonest appropriation of goods without an intention permanently to deprive as distinct from the dishonest appropriation of them with such an intent? I ask whether it really is necessary that this distinction should be maintained in view of the modernisation and simplification—as I hope—this Bill is intended to achieve. I notice in the Committee's Report that an extract is printed in page 19 from the draft criminal code prepared for Jamaica as long ago as 1877 by Mr. Arthur S. Wright who later became a distinguished judge and a great authority on the law.
Paragraph 183 of that code which is set out in the Report reads as follows:
"'A person is guilty of stealing if he dishonestly appropriated a thing of which he is not the owner.'"
Surely that is a very good definition. That is very similar to the definition contained in this Bill, except that this Bill requires an addition that it must be done with an intent permanently to deprive the owner. I understand, and the noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong, that under the law of Canada there is no need in relation to theft to prove an intention permanently to deprive, and that law has been in existence for some time. I hope that either now or later the noble Lord will be able to say whether or not serious social consequences have ensued from that. I have not heard of any, and I doubt whether any have.
Of course, for lawyers such as myself, brought up on the definition of larceny which is contained in the Larceny Act, now to abandon the requirement of proof of an intention permanently to deprive represents a very considerable change from what we are all accustomed to. At the same time I do not believe that the lawyers' definition of theft, of stealing, as commonly used, accords with the meaning attached to the words by the vast mass of the British public. I pray in aid, too, the authority of Mr. R. S. Wright and his definition of stealing, which shows that at least at that time he did not think that this refinement of having to prove such an intention was really necessary.
This question was considered by the Committee in paragraph 56 of their Report—one short paragraph on what is, I think, a fundamental question in relation to this branch of the criminal law. They rejected the view which I am putting to your Lordships and gave a number of reasons on which I should like to make some observations. Their first reason, which will be found in that paragraph, was that in their view:
"… an intention to return the property, even after a long time, makes the conduct essentially different from stealing."
Does it? Surely the conduct of the accused is the same in both cases. In each case he has dishonestly appropriated someone else's property. The only difference is that in one case he has done it with the intention of permanently depriving the owner and in the other case that intention was absent or cannot be proved to exist. But surely his conduct is the same, and surely to the person who has suffered the loss of the property the consequences are the same. So I do not find it possible to agree with that reason for rejecting the Amendment that I am now putting forward.
Then the Committee advanced a number of reasons which, I am sorry to say, do not convince me. They say, and your Lordships will see it in paragraph 56, that this change
"… might moreover have undesirable social consequences."
Again I put the question—because it is pertinent when you are considering what reality lies behind this—has the Canadian law had any undesirable social consequences? The Committee go on in the next sentence of their Report:
"Quarrelling neighbours and families would be able to threaten one another with prosecution."
I find it remarkable to think that, because of a change in definition, quarrelling neighbours and families would be able to threaten one another with prosecution. They can do that now. They are not deterred from doing so by the lawyers' definition, by Parliament's definition, of the word "theft". If this Amendment were accepted I do not think that there would be any real risk of an increase in such threats.
The paragraph goes on:
"Students and young people sharing accommodation who might be tempted to borrow
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one another's property in disregard of a prohibition by the owner would be in danger of acquiring a criminal record."
That is another way of saying that they might be prosecuted and convicted. Is that a good reason? If there is a dishonest appropriation by a student or a young person, is not that conduct which should be condemned? If the requirement to prove an intention permanently to deprive were dispensed with, it would still be necessary to prove that the appropriation was dishonest. If a man borrowed his neighbour's mowing machine without his neighbour's consent, but in the belief that his neighbour would not object to the borrowing, surely no one could say that was a dishonest appropriation. There would be no risk of a conviction and, I should have thought, really no risk of a prosecution. The same applies in relation to students and young people.
The paragraph continues:
"… it would be difficult for the police to avoid being involved in wasteful and undesirable investigations into alleged offences which had no social importance."
Why should it be assumed that, following this change which I am recommending, the police would be more involved than they are now in wasteful and undesirable investigations into alleged offences? I do not know. If this change were made, I do not believe that people would more readily accuse their neighbours, or any other people, of stealing or of being thieves. I do not believe that is the case at all. Is dishonest appropriation without an intent permanently to deprive an offence which has no social importance? I should have thought it had very great social importance. I pose this question: does the social importance of the conduct of the accused really depend upon whether or not an intention permanently to deprive exists? I cannot find the reasoning in this paragraph—I am sorry to say it—at all satisfactory or at all convincing.
I should like your Lordships to consider what the effect would be if this change were made; a change for which I have already indicated that there is at least one precedent. If the change were made, Clause 12 of the Bill would become unnecessary; and so would Clause 11, the extraordinary clause devised to give protection against the loss of things like the Goya picture from

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the National Gallery and where it is accepted that there was no intention permanently to deprive. It is a clause which is applied only to certain categories of buildings which satisfy certain conditions, but the effect of that clause is to make conduct which is not accompanied by an intention permanently to deprive none the less criminal.
If you take the word "permanently" out of Clause 1(1), as I see it Clause 11 becomes wholly unnecessary; and you get rid of the very tiresome and, I think, erroneous distinction between the types of premises from which the valuable picture, or whatever it may be, is borrowed, and dishonestly borrowed. We get rid of that and of Clause 12 as well. If I may make this criticism of the Bill, so much of it seeks to deal with particular legal problems, very often of a considerable refinement, which have emerged in the course of the years, at the expense of considering whether any changes should be made in relation to the principles which have run through this branch of the law. I make no apology for saying that what I am proposing is a substantial change, but I believe that it will lead to a very real simplification and modernisation of this branch of the law.
May I ask your Lordships to look at Clause 15(3) which creates an offence of "criminal deception". This does not require proof of an intention to permanently deprive, and that is recognised in paragraph 56 of the Committee's Report. But contrast that paragraph with Clause 15(1), which also makes criminal deception an offence. In that case, for the deception to be an offence it has to be proved that there is an intention of permanently depriving the other person of the property. So that in this very clause two criminal offences are created—reconstituted, if you like—one requiring proof of intent and the other not. Where is the logicality of that? Where is the principle behind all that? Where, I would ask, is the "far-reaching change" to which the Committee referred on page 5 of their Report?
If the change I propose is made, I would think (though I am not certain, because I am not quite sure that I fully understand the clause) that Clause 6 also becomes wholly unnecessary. That, as it stands, is a pretty curious clause. It
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defines what is meant by permanent deprivation of property. The rubric is: "With the intention of permanently depriving the other of it", in inverted commas, but the clause does not contain that sentence at all. The substance of the clause deals with what amounts to permanent deprivation.
I suppose it will be argued that if what has happened does amount to permanent deprivation, then it is to be inferred that what was done was done with the intent permanently to deprive. Under the clause as it now stands, conduct which substantially amounts to complete usurpation of property will be permanent deprivation. I ask this: if someone takes a noble Lord's car away from outside the Peers' entrance does not that substantially amount to usurpation of his property? And if it does not, why does it not? The clause goes on to say that it is immaterial that one does not finally lose the property. If Clause 6 is meant to have the meaning I think it is meant to have, that supports my case that we do not want the word "permanently" at all in Clause 1.
But when we come to the Amendment which the Government propose to table to add a new subsection to Clause 6, it becomes even clearer that a temporary usurpation of property will require in certain circumstances to be treated in the courts as involving more than permanently to deprive. We shall come on to that when that Amendment is called, but it all seems to me very illogical and unduly complicated. Therefore I press the Government to give serious consideration to the question whether we cannot, even now, make a radical and significant improvement to this Bill by leaving out the word "permanently" from Clause 1 and making the necessary consequential Amendments.
The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, who I am sorry to see has already had to leave the House, referred to university lawyers. I do not know whether your Lordships read an interesting article which appeared some time ago in The Times from lawyers in the University of Kent. I thought that a great deal of what they wrote was sound sense. In particular, I was delighted to find that one of their major criticisms of this measure was that in the definition of theft was found retained the words "with

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intention permanently to deprive". I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 8, leave out "permanently".—(Viscount Dilhorne.)
7.7 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I have heard my name referred to by the noble and learned Viscount, and I trust that it will not be thought that the circumstances which befell me last night have resulted in my so losing the necessary detachment of mind that I cannot approach this matter in a proper way. The noble and learned Viscount has made a number of very sound points. As I understand it, paragraph 56 of the Report, to which attention has already been drawn, says that one of the matters which this complete reappraisal is intended to comprehend is the social consequences—and, I would think, the social importance—of the elements of the crimes with which this Bill deals.
I suggest to the Committee that what is of paramount social importance in the case of theft is the effect upon the victim, and not the precise intent which the thief may have had at the time. I think that Clause 6 does recognise this, or at any rate recognises that the final outcome of the course of conduct into which the thief has entered is not really material. It may well be that in a number of cases what the thief does is a matter upon which he has formed no intent at the time. He takes whatever it may be, and does not decide whether he will give it back or not. In nine cases out of ten, I do not suppose he cares. He just takes it, and when he has finished with it he puts it down conveniently to hand; and whether the owner gets it back has nothing to do with it at all. In fact I am not at all convinced that the question of his intent has anything to do with the true essence of this offence at all.
If we look at this from the point of view of the victim, I think that this becomes even more apparent. It will rejoice your Lordships' hearts to hear that not only was my car removed but so were my notes on the Theft Bill, and this will no doubt greatly accelerate the course of this Commitee stage, although it may make me fairly incoherent from time to time, for which I apologise in advance.
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But it really does not matter to me whether I get the notes back next week or not at all. What I wanted was to have them to-day; and if I do not have them to-day, it is of no consequence whatever what may happen to them in the future. That seems to me to be the type of social consequence about which we ought to be talking. If that is so, I wonder whether the Committee really weighed up the tests quite correctly in their paragraph 56.
I should like to know, also, whether the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, could explain what is the underlying philosophy which says "permanently" as to the intent in Clause 1—this is a point made by my noble and learned friend—and then proceeds, most earnestly and now continuingly, to qualify it in Clause 6: because if this does not detract from the whole point of putting in "permanently" in Clause 1, I do not see what it does. And if it is detracting from the degree of permanence in Clause 1, then I cannot understand why we should have permanence in Clause 1 at all. It seems that these philosophies are contradictory and either the one or the other must prevail I suggest that my noble and learned friend is right, and we should try to see whether we cannot do without permanence in the law of theft. In saying so, I hope I have disabused the noble Lord of any concept that I, who have been brought up upon the definition in the larceny Act, am quite incapable of abandoning it.
LORD PARKER OF WADDINGTON: As has been said many times, this is an important Bill, and it is equally important that we should get it right. This definition of "larceny" has, so far as I know, always been part of our Common Law and our Statute Law. I believe two things: one is that reform should not be done for the sake of reform, but only if one is certain that what one is putting instead is better than what is there already. I hope your Lordships will accept this. I do not believe any of your Lordships thinks I am reactionary; I believe I have shown progressive tendencies in your Lordships' House. But that is a cardinal principle.
My second belief is this: that if the matter is left to a high-powered Committee, there must be overwhelming evidence if their recommendations are going to be

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discarded. Just think what we have here. It is always invidious to mention names or to make distinctions, but here we have some of the most famous current criminal lawyers among the Judges and ex-Judges, and members of both branches of the profession, barristers and solicitors, and academics well represented. From March, 1959, until April, 1966, they have been weighing the evidence in these matters. Who are we to-day, even the most eminent lawyers among us—and I pay full respect to the noble and learned Viscounts, Lord Dilhorne and Lord Colville of Culross—in a matter of minutes to say that it would have been better if they had recommended something else?
By all means let us interfere if we are convinced that what they have recommended is utterly wrong. But merely to say that they might have done it a different way, or maybe perhaps it would have been better if they had done it a different way, is, I venture to think, neither here nor there. The matter has been left to them, not to a Committee constituted of the noble Viscounts, who might have come to equally good and different recommendations. Here we have these recommendations, and unless we are satisfied that what they have recommended on any particular issue is wrong, I think that we should accept it: and on this Amendment I am utterly unconvinced that they are wrong.
LORD WILBERFORCE: I should like to support the Amendment, and I do so with the due respect that one owes to the Committee. At the same time, we are here; we have a duty to do our best in relation to the recommendations; and if we are not to give of our best to the Amendments suggested one wonders what purpose this Committee stage fulfils. Personally, I support this Amendment on the grounds that the clause, as drafted, does not really give effect to what the Committee themselves are quite rightly trying to do. What they are trying to do in this definition of "theft" is to simplify and modernise the law, and to bring into one simple definition a number of miscellaneous offences. That is the merit, and the great merit, of the Committee's proposals. All I understand that the noble and learned Viscount's Amendment is doing is carrying that process a little
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further, in the same spirit exactly of simplification, trying to get rid of superfluous elements and of later clauses, one of which, one may remark, Clause 11, was not recommended by the Committee but has crept in at a later stage.
This definition arises from the original definition of "theft" in Section 1 of the Larceny Act, which, as your Lordships know well, was related to the concept of taking. It says:
"A person who takes and carries away anything capable of being stolen with intent at the time of such taking permanently to deprive the owner thereof…".
That is where "permanently to deprive" comes from. The Committee, very rightly, have decided to discard the concept of possession as being confusing; to separate these different branches of the law into different compartments, and to substitute this much simpler and more generalised definition which we find in Clause 1. We do not have "taking" any more. But it was, of course, in connection with the taking that the intention to deprive permanently was relevant. Now the Committee have suggested to us the much more general, and to my mind acceptable, concept of dishonest appropriation. That is what now constitutes the heart of theft and of other offences which formerly were given other names and which are now brought in under the general description of "theft".
With "dishonest appropriation", you now have "appropriation" and not "taking" coupled with dishonesty. Why is it necessary to add the ingredient of "intention permanently to deprive", which will have to be proved by the prosecution in any cases where they wish to establish theft, in addition to proving dishonesty, and in addition to proving appropriation? Why is it necessary to have this extra element? As I think the noble and learned Viscount made clear in the latter part of his remarks, the defect of this approach is very well shown when one looks at Clause 6, which is the clause about usurpation, because it becomes obvious that once you talk about "permanent deprivation" you run the risk of leaving out of the concept of theft a great many important crimes and important interferences with the property or possessory rights of owners. Therefore it is necessary to complete—if it is a completion—the definition in Clause 1 by that in Clause 6 by saying that a

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complete usurpation as against a person of the property is treated as deprivation; and if you appropriate property, and intend such usurpation, you are to be treated as having the intention of permanently depriving a person of it.
The noble Viscount has pointed out that the clause is very difficult to understand: it refers to "a complete usurpation as against him of the property". If that is saying anything it is trying to say that you are to be within the definition of theft, not merely if you deprive somebody completely of his property, but if you deprive him essentially of the benefit of it, of the use of it, of the right of enjoyment of it. In that case, why not say so? Why not enlarge the definition in Clause 1 so that it does that without the additional element?
The fact is that this approach via appropriation, permanent deprivation, plus usurpation, is not really essentially the modern approach which the Committee would have us adopt. It is related to old concepts of taking chattels out of somebody's property, taking sheep and so on, and does not fit in with what the Bill is trying to do, or ought to be trying to do; that is, enlarging theft to cover all sorts of economic appropriation, appropriation of intangible benefits, which are now far more important than sheep were in the nineteenth century, or coins out of somebody's pocket.
If your Lordships will look at Clause 4 you will see that property is now, quite rightly, defined as including
"money and all other property, real or personal, including things in action and other intangible property".
One has to think of things like business secrets, all sorts of ways of enjoying property, getting benefits from them; and if one is to relate the conception of theft to those matters, then it is quite misleading and inappropriate, I suggest, to start off by saying "permanently deprive" and then to meet the obvious difficulties you run into by Clause 6, which talks about "usurpation as against him".
I sum up what I am endeavouring to put in this way. The Committee which produced this excellent Report have seen that it is necessary to widen the conception of theft so as to embrace every kind of asset, every kind of enjoyment, every kind of benefit, to bring under one
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umbrella all kinds of appropriation so long as they are dishonest. That is absolutely right, and is why the Bill in its form is progressive. What they have not, I venture to think, seen is that, once that is adopted, the additional conception of permanent deprivation is unnecessary; or if they have seen it, they have seen it by way of a double approach—Clause 1 and Clause 6—instead of by a single and simplified approach such as would be achieved if the noble and learned Viscount's proposal were adopted.
I shall not say any more about the other classes. I am entirely with the noble Viscount in thinking that, by removing this element, one would greatly benefit the Bill by being able to dispense with Clause 11 and possibly other clauses. But my main reason for supporting the Amendment is that subsection (1), as it stands, is conceptually out of tune with what the Committee are trying to do, and it would make the Bill more intelligible, more general and more progressive if we were to go with him and take out these words.
7.24 p.m.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: Although I am stepping into a "basinful" of lawyers, I do not apologise for that. I think that sometimes these debates need a certain amount of ordinary everyday life injected into them. I rise to support the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, and just to quote a small case of which I have had experience in the course of my youth work in the last few weeks. A young man removed—I will not say "stole", because that seems to be begging the question in this case—a bicycle pump from a boy's bicycle and went off with it. After a certain length of time the boy required the pump to pump up his bicycle tyres, but had to buy a new pump. In other words, he had suffered at least the loss of the cost of a new pump.
The police are now going after the young man concerned, who, luckily, is known, and when they find him they may be able to "have him up" for stealing the pump. But at the present moment, and in future if this Bill goes through as it is, the young man will be able to turn to the police and say, "Oh no. I only borrowed that bicycle pump. I am going to give it back some time". What do the police do then? Do they prosecute

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him for stealing the pump although he has told them that he was only borrowing it? I should like an answer to that question.
Suppose that the police say, "Oh, we can see you are only borrowing it, so we cannot have you up for stealing it. Goodbye. We leave you to continue to enjoy the pump for a little longer". How does the owner ever recover the pump from the young man? Does he have to go to a civil court, at enormous expense, to recover the cost of a 4s. 6d. bicycle pump? Obviously he is not going to do it. He is deprived of the pump. The only thing he can do is to have the young man up for theft, and then the court will return to him, in their judgment, either the pump or its cost. Otherwise, I do not see how he is ever to recover the pump or its value. For this reason, I strongly support the Amendment of the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne.
LORD CONESFORD: I rise very briefly to support this Amendment. My noble and learned friend Lord Dilhorne, and my noble and learned friend Lord Wilberforce have stated the case so cogently that it is unnecessary to add very much. I can only express my mild astonishment at the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice, who, after a very formidable display by my noble and learned friend Lord Dilhorne, and before the impressive display by my noble and learned friend Lord Wilberforce, said that we should not make this Amendment, not because he gave us a single argument against it, but because he said it had been rejected by a Committee. I must say at once that I have an immense respect for that Committee. But if respect for a Committee were a ground for not considering the merits of an Amendment in Parliament, then we ought really to revise our procedures rather drastically. We ought to say that any law reform recommended by a strong legal committee should be passed without a Committee stage. I really cannot accept that argument.
I speak, of course, before the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, who may produce arguments that we think have great weight and tell against this Amendment; but I think we ought to be given reasons. If I may say so, one of the things that
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predisposes me in favour of this Amendment is noticing what the Bill finds necessary owing to the fact that we have these words about permanently depriving.
I find Clause 11 of this Bill one of the most ridiculous clauses I have ever seen in a suggested Act of Parliament. I cannot think of any particular reason why a picture in the National Gallery should be protected but a picture in my house should not. I do not follow the argument. Why is it so necessary to protect one picture and not the other? I agree that the picture in the National Gallery is in all probability of infinitely greater value than the picture in my house. Nevertheless, if I have a work of art in my house, why should somebody be at liberty, supposing it is somebody who has gained access to the house perfectly legitimately—
LORD STONHAM: Will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt him? He has given a precise example of the reason for Clause 11. If it is a picture stolen from his house by a burglar it will be with the intention permanently to deprive. If someone stole a Goya from the National Gallery it may not be with that intention.
LORD CONESFORD: The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, I think, is quite wrong. I was not supposing a burglar; I was supposing that somebody who quite legitimately was in my house, for a similar reason that was held to actuate the man who stole the Goya, decided it would be a very good idea to remove my picture. I should be without any protection under Clause 11, and might be without any protection from the criminal law as long as we have these words about "permanently depriving", because the story that was put up by the gentleman who removed the Goya might equally be put up by the gentleman who removed a picture from a private house to which he had originally obtained legitimate entry. If I am entirely wrong my error can no doubt be pointed out, but it seems to me that cogent reasons against this clause have been given by my noble and learned friend Lord Dilhorne, they have been supported by my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross, and very strongly supported, with reasons which commanded my complete assent, by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce.

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If I may, I feel bound to call attention again to the article from the academic lawyers in The Times, who pointed out that this requirement of permanent deprivation was not a requirement in the law of many civilised countries. My noble and learned friend Lord Dilhorne also mentioned the provision drafted by R. S. Wright, and I think we want an answer to this. I speak, as I have said, before we have heard the Government's reply, but the complication of our law that is involved by our having this requirement is very great. I suppose, having learnt my law a long time ago, that I have perhaps an exaggerated respect for the Common Law, and the Common Law when embodied in a Statute; and, of course, the requirement of permanent deprivation is very ancient indeed. But for the reasons given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, when we are simplifying the whole of the criminal law on the subject I think we ought carefully to consider whether we should not get rid of this requirement.
LORD MORRIS OF BORTH-Y-GEST: Whatever your Lordships may think about the views of those of us who sit on these Benches, I hope you will at least not feel that they are marred by any dull and barren uniformity. Greatly as I respect always the views of the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, I must confess that on this occasion I find myself in entire agreement with all that was said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Parker, the Lord Chief Justice. We can make words mean what we would like them to mean, but I suggest that to adopt the suggestions of the noble Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, would be to give the words "theft" and "stealing" not only meanings entirely different from those they have always possessed, but meanings entirely different from those which are recognised by members of the public.
The case has been put of a car being taken. Somebody leaves his car in one place and along comes somebody else who, without any sort of claim to take it, decides that for his own convenience, for his selfish ends, he will take it away, although at the time he fully intends to return it. He may be acting entirely dishonestly and he may be doing it to save himself trouble, and he may be causing
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infinite trouble and bother for the owner. He takes it away, uses it for his own purposes, and then he replaces it in exactly the place where it was before and in exactly the condition in which he found it. The owner may not even have known that it had been taken away. As I suggest, that is not what any of us regard as stealing. It is certainly not what is regarded in the Common Law as stealing, and that is an offence made under another clause of this Bill, and provision has already been made for that.
I very much sympathise with what the noble Viscount said, that this Bill might even be made much shorter, but it would be made shorter at the expense not merely of a fundamental change of our concepts but, as I think, by adopting notions that would not agree with the notions accepted by most people. We understand what is meant by "stealing", and to make some things stealing which everyone would feel is not stealing would, I think, not be a service to the law.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: Before the noble and learned Lord sits down, can he possibly tell the Committee whether such a case of a car being moved dishonestly and returned to the exact spot in exactly the condition in which it was taken has ever occurred?
LORD MORRIS OF BORTH-Y-GEST: I am not sure that it has ever occurred that pictures belonging to my noble friend Lord Conesford have been stolen, but surely we are allowed to put these illustrations in order to test the principle.
VISCOUNT BARRINGTON: I should like to speak very briefly, because I believe I am the only person who is not a lawyer who has spoken, with the exception of the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids. I should like to mention a case of which I have personal knowledge which seems to me, in the absence of an answer which we may get from the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, to confirm the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, and to justify what, as I understand it, this Amendment is aiming to do. This was not a case of a motor car, though, like some of your Lordships, I have suffered in that particular way. As I understand it, that would be covered by Clause 12. Nor did the incident that I have in mind take place in a public building, where it would have been

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covered by Clause 11, but in a flat next door to where my parents lived.
A young married couple had spent a considerable amount of money on furniture, pictures and carpets. They went away for a holiday, leaving behind them in the house as servants a married couple who had been engaged the previous week. Two days later the married couple who were acting as servants, with the assistance of the porters in the flat, had a large number of the more valuable items taken downstairs and put in a furniture van, on the understanding that they were wanted in the country. So far as I know, that was the end of the story. The servants were not entitled to do this by their employers. I suppose if it could be proved that they had subsequently sold those goods that would be evidence that they intended permanently to deprive the owners of them. If they had argued that they had no intention of doing that but wanted to set up house themselves, and that they found this a cheaper way of doing it than buying furniture; and intended, after a certain number of years, that the goods should be returned, would that have been "theft" under this new Bill? If not, would it have been an offence of any kind, and, if so, what offence would it have been? I am asking this merely for clarification.
7.40 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: I think I showed prescience earlier on in suggesting that we should have a full Report stage. I am quite sure that this has now been indicated. I am content to speak to this Amendment, which emphasises the great importance of the Bill, and I think it also emphasises what I said earlier in response to my noble friend, Lord Chorley, that we would devote all necessary time to a full consideration of this Bill. Before I heard the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chief Justice, I had intended to say three things about the Government's general attitude to Amendments to this Bill. The first thing is that we put the greatest possible weight on the Criminal Law Revision Committee's recommendations, which they have reached after discussion in depth over a period of years. A later speaker to my mind, misquoted the noble and learned Lord, Lord Parker of Waddington—not that he is not used to that. I
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took down as far as I could what he said, and perhaps I may repeat it, so as to get it right, because it is exactly my view of this. I may be paraphrasing; I do not know. But it is important that we should get it right. Reform is acceptable only if what we propose to put in its place is better than what we have. What we have at the moment is this Bill, based very closely on what the Criminal Law Revision Committee recommended.
I was not quite sure that I understood the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilber-force, when he said that the clause as drafted did not carry out the Committee's intention. Except for Clause 6 and Clause 11 we have accepted virtually unchanged the Committee's intentions, and therefore it seems extraordinary at this stage to hear that we have not carried out the Committee's intentions when they did this very job. So in considering Amendments we attach the greatest possible importance, I think rightly, to what this very high-powered and important Committee, which sat for years and considered these things very carefully indeed, thought. The second thing is that the Government support the Committee in their desire to start from a new basis and to free us wherever possible from reliance on Case Law, much of it very old. I think that is an objective which we should bear in mind in considering the Amendments that come before us.
Thirdly (and this has great relevance to what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, said), in this Theft Bill we do not wish—and it does not arise on this Amendment—if it can be avoided, to widen the offence of theft to such an extent that it includes perhaps analogous offences which are not theft, which are not stealing. The reason for this is very plain. This, in our hope, is the beginning of the building up of a code of criminal law, a new criminal code, and this is the Theft Bill. Therefore we hope that these (things will be considered, certainly when, later, we come to Amendments which are quite definitely not concerned with theft, and I hope your Lordships will not press that those should be included in this Bill.
The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, said something to the effect that "If our Amendments are not drafted in a way to satisfy the Parliamentary

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draftsman, we hope they will not be turned down on that account". I am surprised he thought it necessary to say that. Although it would be my duty to point out that an Amendment was technically faulty, this has never been any reason for not accepting something in principle, and perhaps giving assistance where needed.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: I made that observation after observations by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley; it was in consequence of those observations that I made that remark.
LORD STONHAM: I am even more surprised that the noble Viscount made those observations on this particular Amendment to leave out "permanently". There cannot possibly be anything wrong with that Amendment.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: One never knows. I think I have heard it suggested that if we took out the word "permanently" it would be better to take out also the words "with the intention of depriving the other of it", because that is covered by "appropriation". I did not feel confident that I had done it right.
LORD STONHAM: I am glad to have elicited that explanation.
Noble Lords have referred to Clause 11, Clause 12, Clause 4 and Clause 6 to illustrate the point with regard to this particular Amendment, and I do not object to that. But it prompts me to say that if it is the case that acceptance of this Amendment to remove the word "permanently" from this subsection would involve also the removal of three clauses, and possibly even substantial sections of the Bill, I certainly think that at this stage it would be unwise to do so. I think we ought to discuss this aspect.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: The only thing about that is that we should be removing two clauses that were not dealt with by the Criminal Law Revision Committee, and both of which have been put in by the Government since. Only one clause is really in point.
LORD STONHAM: I am expressing my own point of view on this, and certainly on the first count I should not agree that these three clauses should be removed.
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The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, asked me one or two questions to begin with. He asked me whether in Canada, where they had legislation of the kind that he would like to see, there had been any serious social consequences. I do not know the answer to that question at the moment. I am making inquiries and will let the noble Viscount know when I hear. With regard to the question of Jamaica, the legislation referred to by the Committee, at page 19, was not enacted.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: I never suggested that it was. It was cited by the Committee, as an obviously authoritative text. I was adopting that because they cited it, and said that it did not contain this ingredient.
LIRD STONHAM: The noble Viscount will know that I am not trying to make clever points; I am merely trying to get to an understanding. I was even trying to find the note that I had on that particular point. I cannot find it but I do know what the point is. It is that the Committee do not quote the whole Code and we are not aware whether there is written into it a permanent intention to deprive; and therefore I cannot answer that particular point.
The noble and learned Viscount quoted extensively from paragraph 56 of the Committee's Report, and I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I also quote extensively, because this is the whole crux of the argument. As I see it, the argument is this: if Lord Dilhorne's Amendment were accepted, if "permanently" were taken out of the definition of theft, it would in all circumstances—and I hope noble Lords will appreciate this—be theft to appropriate property belonging to another even if the intention was only temporarily to deprive the other of it.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: With great respect to the noble Lord, that would not be right. There must be a dishonest appropriation: that is essential.
LORD STONHAM: Assuming that it is dishonest—I accept that. The noble and learned Viscount is not proposing to take out the word "dishonest". I am dealing only with the word "permanently", which is the only change we are considering. If there were

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a dishonest intent and the word "permanently" were taken out, then it would be theft in all circumstances, even if there were only a temporary intention to deprive the other of it. I submit, and I quote in aid the Committee, that this would be a major extention of the law of theft, going far beyond what the Bill does or is intended to do.
As I see it, on the one hand, where there is a dishonest intent if we take out the word "permanently", then every case is theft, whereas the Committee thought that that would be wholly wrong when it could be shown that there was intended only temporary deprivation. May I then read to your Lordships paragraph 56:
"Owing to the requirement in Clause 1(1)…that there should be an intention of permanently depriving the owner, temporary deprivation of property will not be stealing."
They are talking about the law at present.
The paragraph goes on:
" At present it is not stealing, nor is it any other offence except in special cases where it is made so by statute, such as taking and driving away a motor vehicle contrary to Section 217 of the Road Traffic Act 1960."
This Bill follows precisely the same process, because under Clause 12 of this Bill we have offences comparable to those under the Road Traffic Act, of taking away a car.
Then the Committee go on to say:
"We considered whether temporary deprivation of property in general should be included in theft or made a separate offence under the Bill. There is certainly a case for making temporary deprivation punishable in circumstances in which it may involve dishonesty comparable with that involved in theft and may cause serious loss or hardship. The taker gets the benefit of the property without payment, and the owner is correspondingly deprived. The property may be lost or damaged, or it may be useless to the owner by the time it is returned. It is also arguable that theft should be extended to cover temporary deprivation because the general offence of deception under Clause 12(3) which is discussed in paragraphs 96 to 100 will cover deception in order to obtain property temporarily".
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: The noble Lord should realise that that is Clause 15 of the Bill that we have here.
LORD STONHAM: Of course I know that, and I knew that the noble and
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learned Viscount knew; and I imagine that every noble Lord did.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Yes, but with great respect to the noble Lord, this debate is going to be widely read, I trust, and I hope that when we read out of this Report we shall quote the clause in our Bill rather than the clause in the draft Bill at the end, because the further you go on the more confusing it becomes.
LORD STONHAM: I accept what the noble Viscount has said, and I am sure that will clarify the position. But I am reading from the Committee's Report, and therefore it would appear in Hansard as a quotation and I cannot alter it there, except that I may add words to make the meaning quite clear.
The Report goes on:
"But the Committee"—
this is a most learned and powerful Committee—
"generally are against extending theft to in dude temporary deprivation or creating a general offence of temporary deprivation of property. The former course seems to them wrong because in their view an intention to return the property, even after a long time, makes the conduct essentially different from stealing."
The noble and learned Viscount does not agree with that. He thought that it amounted to the same thing. But there is this difference in law at present, and what is proposed in this Amendment is therefore a major change in the law which the Government are not prepared to accept, and which, on the advice of the Lord Chief Justice, we certainly should not accept unless we are absolutely convinced, and the Committee is absolutely convinced, that what is now proposed is better than what we have in the Bill. Certainly there is no evidence to suggest that it is. In fact, the Lord Chief Justice actually used those words. He said that he was utterly unconvinced with the argument put forward by the Amendment.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest agreed with him. He said, "We can make words mean what we like them to mean, but to give the words 'theft' and 'stealing' meanings entirely different from those they have always had and the public have always understood them to mean, would be wrong."

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I think I have quoted the noble and learned Lord correctly. With this I entirely agree.
But the point is this. Here we have this most important Committee working for all these years coming up with these conclusions and then we have a discussion in Committee in your Lordships' House, a most highly informed discussion, apart from my contribution, and there is disagreement. The noble and learned Viscount and a number of his colleagues are of one opinion, and the Lord Chief Justice and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, and, if I may say so in that context, myself, are of another opinion. Surely this is a case where it would be utterly wrong for this Amendment to be persisted in.
The noble and learned Viscount asked: are there likely to be any social consequences such as the Committee refer to? I would submit that of course there are. You may have a case where you have borrowed your neighbour's lawn mower, although you knew that he would object to your borrowing it. You do not have any real intention of keeping it for a long time; but he could say that you did, and the penalty could be 10 years. You might say, "That is ridiculous; no judge or magistrate would award 10 years". But in the view of the Bill it is not theft if there is an intention only temporarily to deprive. That is why the word "permanently" is so important. My noble friend behind me raised the point about the bicycle pump. But he would have a civil right, and it does not follow, because a person has a civil right, that we should reinforce it by a massive criminal law with a penalty of 10 years and say, "This is theft". I do not think that the criminal law should be extended in this way.
Then the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, argued that it is illogical to include the requirements of permanent deprivation in Clause 1 but to cut down the effect by Clause 6, where you give, as it were, exceptions. But we do not agree at all. We think it is entirely logical to provide the exceptions of Clause 6.
LORD WILBERFORCE: I was not complaining that it was illogical. What I was saying was that the Government in Clause 6 have completely departed from what was recommended by the Committee in paragraph 56, and therefore it is use-
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less, I would suggest, for them now to appeal to paragraph 56 and say they are carrying out the recommendation. They are not.
LORD STONHAM: With respect to the noble and learned Lord, I cannot accept that the Government have completely departed from it. It is certainly true that the Criminal Law Revision Committee regarded Clause 1 as quite sufficient definition and that the courts would understand it. With respect again, they seem to have been proved wrong by the discussion we have had here to-night, and therefore the Government were right to add this clause, which in my view clarifies the position and makes it much clearer.
But we are on the Amendment of the noble and learned Viscount to remove the word "permanently", and the Government think it would be wrong to remove that word because it would have a fundamental and most undesirable effect on the Bill, and on the law as the Criminal Law Revision Committee said it is and thought it should be. In our view, Clauses 11 and 12 deal adequately with serious examples of temporary deprivation. We think that it would be quite wrong to bring under "theft", willy-nilly, a multitude of minor happenings, many of which in the public view would not amount to stealing at all. So although I have been extremely grateful for the discussion and shall consider everything that has been said with the utmost care, between now and Report stage, I cannot agree that the Amendment should be accepted.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: I have listened with the greatest interest to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. I must confess that I was sir gularly disappointed by it. Lord Stonham spoke about the long time which had existed for considering Amendments to this Bill. Well, he has had a very long time to prepare his speech in reply to this Amendment, and has had ample notice. What has he done? He has just based himself on paragraph 56 of the committee's Report and on nothing else. I will come to that in a moment.
First of all, may I express my thanks to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, to my noble friends Lord Colville and Lord Conesford, and to the

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noble Lord opposite for the support which they gave to this Amendment. Lord Stonham's argument, such as it was, is completely defeated by the Government's inclusion of Clause 6, which was not recommended by the Committee at all. That is a complete departure from this principle of an intent permanently to deprive. That invalidates his own argument.
I also pay tribute to those who devote a great deal of their time to serving on committees, such as the Criminal Law Revision Committee. Any Lord Chancellor or former Lord Chancellor is always very grateful to those who add to their ordinary labours work of that sort. But I could not for one moment adhere to the proposition or give it support that because distinguished people are prepared to serve on such a committee one should accept without consideration whatever they recommend. That would mean Parliament delegating to outside bodies some of the functions which it is Parliament's duty to perform, and it would not be right for Parliament to do that. It is the task of Parliament to examine the reasons put forward by distinguished committees like this committee, and to see whether they are right and sound. That is what I did in moving my Amendment. I dealt with every single argument raised in paragraph 56. It is no answer to what I put forward for the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, to read to the Committee paragraph 56 of the Report. Of course, I treat what the Lord Chief Justice says with the greatest respect. But what did he say? It really amounted to this: that if you have a committee of this sort, you should accept what they have proposed. He was quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, as saying that one should not make change unless change is for the better. I entirely agree, and because I myself am satisfied that this change would be for the better in criminal law in England, I put down the Amendment.
The only other noble and learned Lord who spoke was my noble friend, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest. It is to my mind extremely interesting that his rejection was confined to one particular ground. He did not deal with the application of this definition as amended throughout the criminal law. He did not in any
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way try to contend that it would not lead to simplification. He did not argue that it would lead to hardship or, as the Committee suggested, to serious social consequences. His objection was quite simple. To him, and perhaps to most lawyers, "stealing" means taking and carrying away with the intention permanently to deprive. I do not believe that is true of the great British public; I do not believe that that is the normal use of the English word. That was the reason why my noble and learned friend did not like this Amendment, because he said you could make words mean what you want them to mean. You can define theft to mean anything, but he did not think that it meant what I believe the ordinary British public think it to mean when they find anything of theirs has been, to use a colloquialism, "pinched". They do not even apply their minds to whether it has been taken away with an intention permanently to deprive.
I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that of course this means a major change; I do not deny that it is a change of principle. But reading through the Committee's Report—and I say this with great respect to them—they have proposed some pretty fundamental changes, but I think that by the time they came to paragraph 56 they rather suffered from a loss of nerve. I am very disappointed by the noble Lord's reply. He said quite positively that the Government were not prepared to accept a change. He did not say there would be any consideration given to it. After the debate we have had to-day I think that this change is right. I remain of that opinion, and, in view of the answer which we have received, I would ask the Committee to carry the Amendment.
LORD STONHAM: I only want to say—
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: May I say one further thing, which I forgot to mention? There is one question with which I should like the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, to deal—I should have liked the Lord Chief Justice to deal with it—and it is this. It is very important that a summing-up to a jury should be very clear to them. If I read the Bill aright, this is what will have to be said to the jury in every single case of theft.

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You will have to tell them about dishonest appropriation and what that means. Then you will have to say to them that there must be an intention permanently to deprive. You will have to go on to say: "You have to be satisfied that there is an intention permanently to deprive". But as the Bill stands you have to go on to say, "But you may convict if you think that, although not intending permanently to deprive, the accused intended complete usurpation of the property". That may be a change which satisfies the Lord Chief Justice's criterion of a change for the better. I beg leave to doubt it, and I think that if this language is left as it is it will lead to a great deal of confusion and a great deal of litigation.
LORD STONHAM: I want to say only two things. The first is on a point of detail. I think that the noble and learned Viscount and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, were wrong in suggesting that we had departed from the Committee's advice in regard to Clause 6. In paragraph 58 of their Report the Committee clearly speak of applying special cases, and they say at the end of the paragraph that they considered a provision in the Bill dealing expressly with these cases, but decided that it would be very difficult to frame
Resolved in the affirmative, and Amendment agreed to accordingly.
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: I understand that it would meet your Lordships' convenience if we now adjourned consideration of the Committee stage. I
because they could not cover all the cases without being elaborate. That is very different from saying that what we have done in the Bill is a contradiction.
The other point I would mention is in regard to the noble and learned Viscount's observations on my remarks. Naturally I regret it if he found them unsatisfactory or disappointing. I cannot withdraw my view that I regard this as a fundamental and important Amendment which the Government could not accept in Committee but I said, and I meant, that I would study the whole debate between now and Report stage. That must be within the noble Viscount's recollection. I cannot of course give any undertaking in the matter except to say that I shall study it. But that I will do, as I said I would. Indeed, it is my intention to do so with any Amendment that is raised during the Committee stage, where we do not reach a conclusion which is satisfactory to those who move it or to those who listen.
8.10 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 1) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 19; Not-Contents, 15.

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Henley, L.

St. Davids, V.

Barrington, V.

Iddesleigh, E.

Somers, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Jellicoe, E.

Strange of Knokin, Bs.

Brockway, L.

Mar, E.

Wade, L.

Colville of Culross, V.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Wilberforce, L.

Conesford, L. [Teller.]

Raglan, L.

Worcester, L. Bp.

Dilhorne, V. [Teller.]

NOT-CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Gardiner, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Rhodes, L.

Beswick, L.

Hilton of Upton, L. [Teller.]

Segal, L.

Blyton, L.

Morris of Borth-y-Gest, L.

Shackleton, L. (L. Privy Seal.)

Bowles, L. [Teller.]

Parker of Waddington, L.

Stonham, L.

Burden, L.

Peddie, L.

Strabolgi, L.

therefore move that the House do now resume.
Moved, That the House do now resume.—(Lord Hilton of Upton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and House resumed accordingly.

IMMIGRANTS: CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS AND WAR SERVICE
8.17 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY LORD BROCKWAY rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will extend political asylum to those who refuse military service in other countries on conscience grounds. The noble Lord said: My Lords, quite honestly, I had not expected the previous debate to end so quickly. I think it will be accepted that to-day there are many people in all parts of the world, and particularly young people, whose minds and consciences are disturbed by the problem of participation in war. This arose particularly after the use of the first nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More recently, the doubt of people about participation in war has arisen from the conflict in Vietnam. Large numbers of people have not only read of the appalling occurrences in Vietnam but have witnessed them on television. This has led to a very wide view, not only in our own country but in all the countries which can read about these things or see television, that war itself is now becoming such a crime against humanity that it is insupportable in the conscience of the world.
In this Question I am suggesting that our Government should extend political asylum to those who object on conscientious grounds to participation in war, should they reach this country. There are now very many countries which provide some form of exemption to conscientious objectors. Sweden and the Scandinavian countries do so; this country does so; America does so. Someone suggested at an earlier stage of our proceedings to-day that I did not speak for Britain, although I was speaking for the policy of the Government. In this instance I want to speak very emphatically for Britain. Our laws regarding conscientious objection are the most liberal in the whole world. It is true that during the last war, when conscription was imposed, a number of objectors were rejected by tribunals and then, after periods in prison, were recognised as genuine. But, on the whole—and I speak as one who was chairman of the Central Board for Conscientious Objectors in the last world war—our provisions for con-
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scientious objectors were fairer and more equitable than those in any other country.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of our exemption of conscientious objectors was that it was not limited to those objecting on grounds of religious belief. It was not even limited to those who were opponents of war in all circumstances. It also allowed political objectors when the tribunals felt that for the man appealing it was, indeed, from the depths of his being, a matter of right or wrong. I took the test case on this issue. I took many cases. There was one case in which an Indian had not an objection to all war but had an objection to fighting for this country in a war for democracy when his own country was denied the democratic right of self-government. The appeal tribunal felt that this was, to him, so much a matter of being a decision that was right or wrong that they recognised him as a conscientious objector and exempted him. I want to pay my very great tribute to the tolerance and feeling of liberty of this country, that we should have extended the rights of conscientious objectors in that very broad way.
I am asking to-night that the principle of conscientious objection should be accepted as a ground for political asylum as a general principle, but, quite clearly, to-day it applies most to the boys in the United States of America who are now being conscripted for the Vietnam war. My Lords, I was present two years ago at a meeting which I think has moved me more than any since the last world war. It was a meeting of students at Ann Arbor University in Michigan. There were 100 of these students, and they all expected to be called up for service in the Vietnam war. There were religious objectors there; there were objectors on moral grounds other than religion; and there were political objectors whose objection was deep. For them, again, it was an issue of right or wrong. What was so impressive in that gathering was that the religious objectors said, "We will not take advantage of the American law, which allows men to be exempted on the ground of religion but which does not allow anyone whose objection is not on religious grounds, even if it is on moral grounds, and certainly not if it is on political

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grounds, to be exempted". There, the religious objectors said, "We will, equally with the others, when our draft cards come for service in Vietnam, tear them up"; and, as one knows, hundreds of these boys have done so. They have done so when the penalty is five years' imprisonment, and already some of those penalties have been imposed.
My Lords, the tribunals in America are very often acting in a narrow sphere. There is one boy in England at this time who did great service, inspired by the idea of serving the community, in the American Peace Corps. His objection to service in Vietnam was a religious objection to war. When he got to the tribunal he was denied exemption because he belonged to the Episcopal Church—that is, the Anglican Church of this country, and the Anglican Church has not declared in principle against all participation in war. He therefore was not even judged on his own religious objection: he was judged on the ground that the Church to which he belonged had not declared that view.
I am asking that these boys—and not only these boys, but all others in this country who have this conscientious objection to military service, whether it be religious, moral or political with this depth—shall be regarded as political refugees and have political asylum here. I want to acknowledge that our Government have been very generous and very liberal in granting political asylum to many refugees. I suppose that in the last three years I have dealt with about twenty people who have escaped from South Africa—opponents of apartheid—and who, if they were to return, would be liable to imprisonment, and perhaps death. There is only one of those cases that I have taken up with the Home Office that has not been accepted by the Home Office. I want to pay my great tribute to that fact. The Home Office is very ready indeed to give political asylum to those who come from Communist countries.
I need not say to my noble friend that I have the deepest sympathy with those who refuse to obey the dictates of apartheid and with those who are refugees from it in South Africa. I hope that I need not tell him that because of my great belief in personal liberty I have the utmost sympathy with refugees from Communist countries who come here. But I
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say quite sincerely that the deepest reason for disobeying the laws of a country in response to ideals and loyalties which are greater than those to one's own rational laws—deeper than opposition to apartheid, deeper than opposition to the totalitarianism in Communist countries—is the growing belief among thousands of people to-day that war has become so appalling that no human being with a conscience should be ready to participate in it.
When I raised this matter recently on a Starred Question, my noble friend replied that these men would be treated as ordinary immigrants; that their cases would be treated on their merits; that they would not be given political asylum, but would not be sent back to America; and that they would be given the opportunity to go to America or to other countries at the end of the period during which they were allowed to remain here. I am a reasonable person and I accept even that as some assurance. But I should like that assurance to be very definite to-night. I have a particular reason for asking this. I am asking my noble friend, when he replies to my Question, to say, quite categorically, that no man will be returned to America on the ground that he is refusing military service. I want him to say that categorically, because that is what he said a few days ago in answer to questions which were put. I have reasons for asking for a categorical statement to-night.
Secondly, I ask him whether he will repeat what he said in answer to questions which I put, that these men will be given the opportunity, if they so desire, to go to another country—to France, where they will not be proceeded against; to Sweden, which very generously recognises them as refugees and gives them the right of asylum—and that they will have the opportunity, at the end of whatever term for which they have been permitted to remain in this country, to go to one of those other countries. But, thirdly, and most persistently, I beg my noble friend to recognise conscientious objection to war and to a particular war. I wonder how many young men in this country, if they were conscripted to fight in the Vietnam war, would feel it right to go. I wonder how many of them would feel in their very souls that they would be doing wrong and denying what was finest in

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their own ideals. There would be thousands. I am asking my noble friend to appreciate that this action, which is based on conscience and principle, in the sense of one's being right or wrong, is the deepest of all grounds on which any nation which has pride in its liberty should provide asylum to those from another country.
My Lords, I want to conclude by saying this. I wonder whether America appreciates that the beginning of the United States was based on conscience; that the settlers who went there—Roman Catholics, Protestants, Quakers—went to those 13 British Colonies because their consciences could not accept the restrictions upon religion which were imposed in this country. America had its beginnings in those old conscientious objectors. I say to our own Government that it would be fair reciprocity if to-day, when young men in America are being compelled to do what they believe to be wrong, we were prepared to receive conscientious objectors from America, just as the American shores received our conscientious objectors at an earlier time.
My Lords, I make that appeal as sincerely as I possibly can. I believe that in the long run the reality of the civilisation of any country will be based more than anything else upon how far it appreciates the sense of right and wrong in its individuals, upon how far it gives those individuals the opportunity to live with their consciences and upon how far it is prepared to receive those from other countries who are animated in that way. I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name.
8.40 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, I should like to press the argument which the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has put forward in asking this Question, because I think—and I know I share this opinion with a number of other noble Lords, including the noble Lords who usually inhabit these Benches—that it is a matter of principle. It is of course obvious that we must mention to-night the position in Vietnam, but it is very important that we should not get led into arguments pro or anti the American stand. It is something fundamental that we are trying to say about
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the status of a certain class of refugee. The tradition of Britain in the past in this respect has, with very few black spots, been honourable, and the Wilson Committee quotes the practice as being:
"to grant an application for political asylum only if it is reasonable to suppose that the result of refusing entry would be the return of the alien to a country in which he would face danger to life or liberty, or persecution of such a kind as to render life unsupportable for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular group, or political opinion."
There appears to be very little doubt that in the situation we are talking of, Americans who wish to evade conscription are subject to loss of liberty if they return home; and it is also, I think, quite definite that this is because of a political opinion and not because of what we would normally designate as a crime. Clearly Britain does regard the attitude of America, to take the present example, as in some way defective. Britain is a signatory to the Council of Europe resolution of January 26, 1967, which lays down that
"persons liable to conscription for military service who, for reasons of conscience or profound conviction, arising from religious, ethical, moral, humanitarian, philosophical or similar motives, refuse to perform military service shall enjoy a personal right to be released from the application to perform such service".
Secondly the same resolution goes on to say that:
"this right shall be regarded as deriving logically from the fundamental rights of the individual in democratic rule-of-law States…"
These rights have been guaranteed in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This particular resolution also allows for alternative non-military service which could be offered to those who do not wish to serve military service.
It seems to me that the resolution from which I have just quoted is important, because it shows that we do not just regard this option of declining military service as something which can be allowed in some countries and not in others. Of course it is not for us to interfere in the internal workings of another country, or to seek to interfere, but it shows that we regard it as stemming from a fundamental human right and therefore something which we ought to uphold whenever we can.

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My Lords, this is the main point. I do not wish to pursue the particular cases which are arising at the moment, except to put three very short points. First, this is a war which has never been declared by the country which is conscripting these people, and I think that would be a reinforcing reason. Secondly, as we have heard, the grounds on which conscientious objection is allowed in the United States have been narrowed since 1948 to those who believe that there is a superior being, a God, loyalty to whom overcomes other obligations. As a Christian, I feel that this arrogance in saying that atheists and agnostics cannot have loyalties and beliefs, and ethical beliefs, which go beyond some of the laws which may be put on them by their country, is a very wrong one.
Thirdly, I should like to point out that the National Selective Service Director in the United States, in a memorandum of October 26, 1967, has called on all draft boards to review all classifications of persons not involved in activities construed as not being in "the best national interest". This is direct persecution of those who, for political reasons, oppose this war.
I should like to join the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, in appealing to Her Majesty's Government to make it clear that we will offer political asylum to these people, and that we regard this as a basic human right, as I maintain we said when we subscribed to that resolution at Strasbourg.
8.47 p.m.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: My Lords, may I, very briefly, support the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, in the position which he has taken in this matter. I myself was in the Army in the last war and had no objection at all to our fighting that war; but I can imagine many circumstances in which I should have conscientious objections to fighting a particular war. In fact, there was a time, when I was still on the Army Emergency Reserve of Officers, when the question of whether I should refuse duty in the case of a call-up in a particular instance was present in my mind. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will take a sympathetic view of the question. I speak as a member of a Church which has
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recently very strongly asserted the sovereignty of the conscience in a Christian.
8.48 p.m.
LORD GRANVILLE OF EYE: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend the Minister of State whether, when he replies, he will explain something of the religious grounds for exemption in the United States of America? I believe that Mr. Cassius Clay is at present facing imprisonment and his objection is on so-called religious grounds. May I also ask whether my noble friend will tell us if these young men concerned have been given the opportunity to serve in the Peace Corps, because I believe there is in existence an organisation which is called the Peace Corps and which gives them an opportunity to serve if they object to taking part in a war as combatants?
8.49 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My Lords, my noble friend Lord Brockway paid tribute to our method of dealing in this country with those who have a conscientious objection to military service. I am not asked to deal with that to-night, I am asked to say whether Her Majesty's Government:
"win extend political asylum to those who refuse military service in other counties on conscience grounds."
The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, quoted the Wilson Committee with regard to political asylum, and I think that for the purposes of the record, and in order to give as complete an answer as I can to my noble friend, it would be well if I first defined the doctrine and the nature of political asylum.
Political asylum is the right of the receiving State to give asylum. There is no right in an individual to receive it. There is a right to give it, but it is, technically a right of the receiving State as against the State of the national. It is at the discretion of the receiving State how it shall exercise the right. This country traditionally has exercised this right so as to give asylum to the victims of oppression. We have done so for very many years, and are proud of the way we have done so. In considering applications, our practice is to grant asylum if it is reasonable to suppose that the result

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of refusing admission to a foreign national will be his return to a country in which, on grounds of politics, race or religion, he will face danger to life or liberty, or persecution of such a kind and extent as to render life insupportable. This is well-established practice, and Her Majesty's Government see no reason at all to vary it. The fear of persecution must be well founded, and the persecution which is feared must amount to more than a penalty imposed for a breach of the law. In other words, it has to be shown that the penalty imposed on an individual by the legal processes of his country, and which may be awaiting him if he is forced to return, amounts to persecution and not just to punishment.
My Lords, it follows that where, in a democracy, a man seeks to evade the military service to which he and his fellow countrymen are liable, and is thereby vulnerable to criminal proceedings, such a situation cannot be regarded, in itself, as satisfying the criterion for political asylum. A foreign national with a conscientious objection to military service should make his case for exemption to the authorities of his own country. In the last week or so my noble friend has asked me questions about individual citizens from the United States and has referred cases to the Home office. He has also referred to the hundreds of these young people we met together. This also answers the question put by my noble friend Lord Granville of Eye about Cassius Clay. Under the United States Military Selective Service Act 1967 no one is to be liable to combatant service who, by reason of religious training and belief, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, that is exactly the point. In America any exemption is limited to those who have a religious objection, and even in those cases exemption is not always granted. The moral objector who is not religious has no right of exemption in America.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, if my noble friend will allow me to make my speech, he will find that I shall deal with this point. This is one of the difficulties we have in Question and Answer, and when my noble friend suggested it, I welcomed the idea of making a full statement. I cannot comment on the religious
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training and belief, but that is the first leg of the law. The second is that "religious training and belief" is not to include essentially political, sociological or philosophical views, or a merely personal moral code. Thirdly, claims to conscientious objection are to be examined by a local board, with a right of appeal to the President if the local board is not unanimous; and fourthly, if the claim to a conscientious objection is made out, the applicant is to be assigned a non-combatant service in the armed forces, or if conscientiously opposed to such service, to civilian work contributing to the national health, safety or interest.
Under American law, therefore, there is proper provision for assessing claims of conscientious objection to military service; for the hearing of appeals; and for assignment to non-combatant or civilian service in lieu of military service. That probably covers the question my noble friend asked about the Peace Corps. It would appear, however, that a person who objected to serve in a particular war, as opposed to all wars, would not be exempt on grounds of conscientious objection, whatever his motives. However, we would not regard this as a ground for political asylum in default of evidence that those whose claims to exemption are rejected are persecuted, as opposed to being punished. The penalty under American law for evasion of military service is imprisonment for up to five years and a fine of up to 10,000 dollars. There is a right of appeal to higher courts. No one is to be tried by court-martial unless he has been inducted for training and service.
It is the case—and this is my noble friend's point—that a claim to conscientious objection in the United States can be based only on religious training and belief, and this would exclude non-believers whose conscientious objections might in some other countries be regarded as valid. In Britain we have no definition of conscientious objection, and it is left to local tribunals and to appellate tribunals to be arbiters of conscience, no grounds being barred, whether religious, personal or humanitarian.
My noble friend Lord Brockway is asking, in effect, that the British law in respect to conscientious objection should

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be applied to foreign nationals, and that if their country's law is different from ours, they should be granted political asylum if they come to Britain. I was asked to deal with this sympathetically My noble friend has indicated just how sympathetically we deal with cases but what he now asks is not possible. The fact that a different criterion is applied by some other country in determining the validity of an appeal on grounds of conscientious objection cannot be regarded in itself as providing ground for political asylum unless there is evidence to show that those whose claims to exemption are rejected are persecuted, as opposed to being punished. I emphasise the words "in itself", because if there were other circumstances, as there could be, it might well be that a person who was a conscientious objector might be granted political asylum, but not solely because he had a conscientious objection to military service.
My noble friend asked me two questions. The first was: could I say categorically that no man would be returned to the United States on the ground that he has evaded military service? The provisions of Part 2 of the Visiting Forces Act 1952 for the arrest and handing over of deserters do not cover persons who are not members of the United States Forces. A person who has merely failed to report after being called up for service and is therefore not yet a member of these Forces is not liable to arrest under the provisions of the Visiting Forces Act. I hope that is clear to my noble friend. As I told him on a previous occasion, and as I now repeat, the fact of conscientious objection is neither a ground for refusing admission in this country nor for enforcing departure; and it is not a ground for granting political asylum. We are prepared to consider an application for admission, or a request for an extension of permitted stay, on the basis of the proposals put to us in their relation to normal immigration policy. Many young foreigners come here for study and are freely admitted, provided that they are following a full-time course of bona fide studies and are able to maintain themselves while here. Others may be working here in employment approved by the Ministry of Labour, or be here simply as visitors because they have the necessary financial
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resources. We consider applications sympathetically in the light of the circumstances of each case. But to give the general assurance about political asylum asked for by my noble friend would not be possible, for the reasons that I have explained.
There is one final point. My noble friend asked me whether the people he described were free to go to other countries if other countries would take them. Of course they are free to go. I have said that there is nothing to stop them from leaving this country and going to another. That is entirely up to the other country. We shall not prevent them from going. They are perfectly free to go if they wish, or they are free to stay here, provided that they satisfy the normal Immigration Act procedures, which we think are fair for them and fair for other people, and which will be administered without fear or favour.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down—I do not want to abuse Parliamentary procedure—I should just like to ask for some information. When he says that no man will be returned to America because he has not yet become a member of the Armed Forces of America—I understood that to be the reason—would he say that that applies to someone who has been rejected by the tribunals, who has been drafted and has torn up his draft card? Is he not then subject to the American military laws, just as in this country those of us who were conscientious objectors in the First World War were regarded as part of the military as soon as we had been handed over to them?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am not an expert on United States law but my understanding of the position is that the Act under which we should proceed would be the Visiting Forces Act, 1952, Part II—that is, in regard to members of visiting forces over here. This is where our jurisdiction lies in this country. My understanding of the position is that a person who has merely failed to report after being called up for service, and is therefore not yet a member of those forces, is not liable under the provisions of the Visiting Forces Act to arrest.
In the case to which my noble friend referred, the young man had been to two tribunals and to the High Court. Whether

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he had actually been called up, I do not know. Therefore, it is impossible in an individual case like that for me to answer the question. But certainly, on the face of it, and in the terms of the
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Visiting Forces Act, if he had not been called up, we should have no power to send him back to the United States.
House adjourned at five minutes past nine o'clock.