Lords Sitting of 30 May 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 Manchester

ASBESTOS REGULATIONS
2.30 p.m.
LORD CROOK: 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 the date on which publication may be expected of the regulations as to asbestos.]
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity hopes to publish a Statutory Draft of the Asbestos Regulations later this year. I regret that I am unable to give him a specific date.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, does the Minister recall that the Report on this matter was issued over a year ago? Does he recall that the Chief Inspector of Factories who energised this matter retired in July of last year? Does he further recall that the Leader of the House, answering a debate on the Factory Inspectorate in this House in February, had in front of him a copy of the draft which he was ready to give to me? Finally, is it possible for the noble Lord to indicate to us who is frustrating the Government and the civil servants in issuing these Regulations?
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, I regret to inform my noble friend that I cannot tell him who is frustrating him and the House. I realise his keen interest in this matter, and, like him, my right honourable friend is aware of the great danger to the health of those who work with asbestos, especially those who work with blue asbestos. My noble friend will be pleased to know that during the last three years the amount of blue
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asbestos imported into this country has ben reduced from about 9,000 tons to about 1,200 tons. I can assure him that discussions on the Regulations are in an advanced state, and I will do my best to see that my right honourable friend is aware of the concern of my noble friend at the delay in publication. I am sorry that I cannot tell him the date, but I will see that they are published as soon as possible, and certainly within the next few months.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, while recognising that it is not my noble friend's fault that he has had to tell the House what he has today, may I ask whether he is aware that the policy he has indicated in his Answer is little less than inhuman? Is he aware that asbestosis is one of the most horrible diseases, accompanied by distressing symptons, and that eighteen months ago when we debated the matter of industrial diseases in this House I, with my noble friend Lord Crook, brought up the question of asbestosis? Three months ago we again raised the matter. On both occasions it was indicated to us that action was being taken, and now we are being told that these people who are in contact with asbestos which will give them this horrible disease must now wait until the end of the year before action is taken.
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, I am grateful that my noble friend does not hold me responsible for the delay. I am aware of the danger to those people who have to work with asbestos and also what it can lead to, because I have here the Memorandum of the Senior Medical Inspector's Advisory Panel dealing with problems arising from the use of asbestos. The fact that my noble friends have again raised this matter this afternoon will, I think, help to speed up the publication of these Regulations, which I quite agree we should have as soon as humanly possible.
LORD RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, during this inexplicable delay would my noble friend draw the attention of the Minister of Health to the fact that this is not only an industrial health problem but one that can become an embarrassment as a potential public health problem to people living in proximity to the operation?
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: Yes, my Lords.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, does not a question like that make it all the more important that responsibility for occupational health work should be transferred to the National Health Service and not kept in a separate department?
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, but really that is another question.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, speaking as one of the medical Members of the House, as others have already spoken, I should like to ask whether her Majesty's Government realise that this is one of the few preventable forms of cancer.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, since the noble Lord has referred to the reduction in the import of asbestos, can he inform us whether the Government propose to take steps to ban the use of blue asbestos?
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, that is another question. The figures I gave were that there had been a reduction in imports of blue asbestos from 9,000 tons to 1,200 tons during the past three years. It is not thought that to ban the use of asbestos is the right thing, but that we should reduce so far as possible its use, as has already been done in recent years.

CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL AGENTS: RESEARCH AND CONTROL
2.42 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will (a) transfer from the Ministry of Defence to the Medical Research Council responsibility for research into chemical and biological agents; and (b) initiate a proposal for international inspection and control of such research.]
THE PAYMASTER GENERAL (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, on the first part of the noble Lord's Question, the research to which he refers is
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primarily a defence matter, although important civil benefits are derived from it. The suggestion that the responsibility for it should be transferred from the Ministry of Defence to a body such as the Medical Research Council has been considered more than once but the change has been judged inappropriate. Her Majesty's Government see no reason to alter that view. On the second part of the noble Lord's Question Her Majesty's Government would like to see action taken to deal with biological and chemical weapons in the arms control and disarmament context. Proposals to deal with these weapons were included in the Western plan for general and complete disarmament tabled at the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee in 1962. We are now carefully considering the whole question of what particular arms control objectives we should pursue at the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee after the conclusion of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that full reply, may I ask him first whether he is aware of the growing concern of people that means of destruction are now being created which may be even more terrible than nuclear weapons? In relation to the first of the questions which I put, is not 75 per cent. of the work which is done at these research establishments medical arid remedial rather than defence? If so, why should not these places be transferred from the Ministry of Defence? In relation to the second question, one welcomes the fact of the disarmament proposals of 1962, but it is now 1968. Are Her Majesty's Government going to renew these disarmament proposals before a Geneva Conference?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, it is difficult to say which are the more terrible weapons, whether they are biological or nuclear. I am sure we should all agree that in certain circumstances both can be indeed terrible. On the point about the extent to which the work is civilian, it is certainly true that there has been an increasing amount of civilian work, and some of the work, especially in the microbiological department has a civil application, but the fact remains that it is defence against the use of such weapons with which this establishment is primarily concerned. I think we

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must face the reality that it would be most unwise just to ignore the threat and not take precautions and prepare oneself against such threats. This is a subject which, understandably, arouses deep emotion and a sense of horror, and I agree that it is most desirable to get agreement. But there are also other aspects of disarmament upon which we should like to see agreement.
LORD RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, does my noble friend realise, in relation to his reply pointing out that a great deal of the work of the Microbiological Institute is in fact concerned with civilian risks, that it is rather a matter of hypocrisy that this should still be kept under the Ministry of Defence, when in point of fact what is being dreamed up is weapons of destruction which are not disclosed, cannot be discussed and of which the public has at the moment no awareness at all? If the noble Lord really thinks that the activities of Porton, both in terms of chemical and biological matter, are in fact defence, then I suggest, quite seriously—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Speech!
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I can only say, with all the seriousness I can bring to bear, that this is concerned with defence, and it is defence for which we have to take responsibility.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, may I ask whether in relation to the first part of the Question, the Medical Research Council has been consulted, and whether indeed it would even be willing to take over this work, which I should have thought might be extremely harmful to the image of the Council?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, as I understand, it is true that there is a natural reluctance on the part of the Medical Research Council to be associated in this way. Of course, a number of distinguished medical scientists are concerned with some of the most constructive work that is being done there which has civilian application.

NIGERIA: SUPPLY OF ARMS
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will approach the Government of the Soviet Union with a view to obtaining an undertaking from all suppliers to stop arms to both sides in the Nigerian war.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords, it is greatly to be hoped that the talks now proceeding at Kampala will lead to agreement between the two sides on conditions for a cease-fire. But as I said yesterday, these talks are extremely delicate and there is a real danger that any unilateral move from outside could upset the sensitive basis on which they are taking place. Her Majesty's Government would be prepared to co-operate in a general standstill on further arms supplies if this were agreed between the two sides in Nigeria. Until then, it would be wrong for us to take a unilateral initiative of the kind the noble Lord has in mind.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for his Answer, may I ask whether he is aware that unilateral action is not proposed? What is suggested is that we should approach other Governments which also supply arms, and should come to an agreement. Is it not the case that the main supplier, now that Czechoslovakia has ceased to be so, is Soviet Russia, and a "black market" is coming to Lisbon? Have we not—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order, order!
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I am asking a question. Do we not have an agreement with Portugal which will enable us to stop the supplies from leaving Lisbon airport?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, for us to approach a foreign Government for the cutting off of supplies to a friendly Commonwealth Government to which we are a traditional supplier would be a unilateral act. Arms have been reaching both sides from a wide range of

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sources, Governmental and non-Governmental. I am sure the House will agree that international arms control is notoriously difficult to arrange, and an international arms ban which did not enjoy the support of two sides in a conflict would be virtually unenforceable. We should carefully reflect before undertaking any unilateral approach at this present moment, with the delicate conversations now taking place in Kampala.
LORD ROWLEY: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend what is in my view a somewhat different but relevant question; namely, in the event of a satisfactory and just agreement being achieved at Kampala, would Her Majesty's Government consult with other Commonwealth Governments with a view to organising joint economic aid to the Biafrans, to help them restore their devastated towns and villages?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this is clearly another question but, as I think has been said on other occasions, we shall have to see what we can do within the Commonwealth and perhaps in a wider field to see how we can repair the ravages of war, not only in Biafra but in Nigeria as a whole.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in the present context of Nigeria as an independent State it would be far better for us to say, "Get together; argue the case out", so that we shall not be charged with interference? Then if we are requested to come in to help we shall certainly do so.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I share the view of my noble friend. Clearly a solution in Nigeria that is to be lasting must be arrived at by both sides in Nigeria. On the other hand, whatever we can do, we will do.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, as my noble friend's answer is based on expediency, does he not also think there might be a moral case for stopping the arms?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I do not answer on the ground of expediency but only on the reality of the position.
THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that at present, according to latest figures,
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there are 600,000 people living in refugee camps in Biafra alone, and there is a deep and widespread concern in this country that delivery of arms sanctioned by this country should be stopped forthwith and every effort made to relieve the human suffering which is now reaching terrifying proportions in that country? Can the noble Lord give us an assurance that Her Majesty's Government are taking the initiatitve in both these respects?
LORD SHEPHERD: I regret, my Lords, that the right reverend Prelate was not present in a debate we had on this subject initiated by my noble friend, Lord Brockway, some time ago. The views of Her Majesty's Government in regard to the human suffering now taking place in Nigeria are well known. But the right reverend Prelate will appreciate that in this conflict there are two sides. Whether one side can be said to be more guilty than the other is always a question of view. At this present moment we are seeking a cease-fire in the first instance, and it is to this that we should now be bending all our efforts. We should do nothing that could prevent it.
LORD WILLIS: My Lords, can my noble friend tell the House how he squares concern with human suffering with the fact that we are continuing to supply arms to one side or the other?
LORD SHEPHERD: We have supplied weapons to a Government, a friendly Commonwealth Government. That is a responsibility of Her Majesty's Government.
A NOBLE LORD: It is a scandal.
LORD SHEPHERD: The noble Lord may say it is a scandal, but we have a duty so to order our business. We are doing all we can. We have sought from the very beginning not only to prevent this conflict but to bring it to an end. That is what we now have in mind.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, can my noble friend make any hopeful statement to the House on the progress of negotiations in Kampala?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, as I said in my original statement, a delicate situation has arisen in Kampala and I think we should leave it to those who are negotiating there and to Mr. Arnold Smith, the Secretary-General, to see what

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he can do. I could not—and I think it would be unwise to do so at this stage—make any observation on the progress of those talks, except to express a very great hope that sanity and understanding will be there.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while accepting that and that we all want it, may I ask the noble Lord whether he would relate this proposal to the present situation in Biafra? Is he aware that the International Red Cross has been refused permission to land medical supplies and food at Port Harcourt? How can we possibly go on to provide arms for the destruction of the people when they are not even allowed medical aid and food supplies?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, as the noble Lord will be aware, or at least should be aware, Port Harcourt is now in the hands of the Federal Government and therefore it is not available to Biafra. As to medical supplies and a general attitude to relieving suffering and avoiding unnecessary deaths, I have the greatest confidence in the Federal Government of Nigeria and also the military commands. The noble Lord may screw his face; but I have that confidence and I have reason to have that confidence.

ARTICULATED VEHICLES SAFETY DEVICES
LORD WADE: 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 introduce legislation compelling all articulated vehicles to be fitted with an anti-jack-knife device.]
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, jack-knifing has a number of causes and there are a number of ways in which the construction and brakes of a vehicle might be developed, or special devices fitted, to help deal with the problem. But none of these methods is yet fully proven; they need to be tested more extensively under a wide range of operating conditions before their efficiency can be fully established. Trials are in progress and the scope of these is to be ex-
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tended. Until they are satisfied that one or more methods are available which would effectively improve safety, Her Majesty's Government would not propose to introduce legislation requiring specific devices to be fitted. This may not be the best answer, and legislation now might inhibit other alternatives.
LORD WADE: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply. Is he aware that there have been a number of very tragic accidents as a result of the jackknifing of articulated lorries, and is it not true that there is a device now in operation which has proved successful in preventing these accidents? If there is to be legislation, and I hope there will be, can Her Majesty's Government give an assurance that this matter will be treated as one of urgency before further avoidable accidents occur?
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: Yes, my Lords, we are all aware of these tragic accidents caused by or where articulated vehicles are involved, but we ought to remember that all the accidents in which they are involved are not really caused by these particular vehicles. My right honourable friend is aware of that. All of us who are interested in the question of road safety are concerned that we should improve the situation so far as these vehicles are concerned, but, as I pointed out in my original Answer, many trials and tests have been and continue to be made, and until we get the right solution to this problem I believe it would be wrong to introduce legislation such as the noble Lord has advocated.
LORD PARGITER: My Lords, having regard to the very large and increasing number of articulated vehicles on the road would my noble friend say whether or not, if and when legislation is introduced, that legislation will be made retrospective?
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, I promise my noble friend I will draw this point to the notice of my right honourable friend.
LORD REDESDALE: My Lords, would the noble Lord be kind enough to give his opinion whether having lower bumpers on the back of some articulated vehicles would reduce accidents? Some very unpleasant accidents occur because of the high tail boards hitting windscreens

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and the car sliding underneath the bottom of the articulated section of the vehicle.
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, I regret I cannot give the noble Lord an official answer to that question, but I promise to draw my right honourable friend's attention to it.

RHODESIA: UNITED NATIONS RESOLUTION
2.59 p.m.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question of which I have given Private Notice; namely, whether Her Majesty's Government will make a Statement on the United Nations resolution on Rhodesia.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, my noble friend, Lord Chalfont, will be replying to this Question in a Statement which will follow a Statement on Forces' Pay which my noble friend, the Leader of the House, will be making at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m.
It may be for the convenience of the House if I remind your Lordships that, as will be seen from the italicised Notices on the Order Paper, we intend to take into consideration any message from the Commons concerning the Industrial Expansion Bill at a convenient moment after it has been received from the Commons.

MID-GLAMORGAN WATER BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
3.0 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, in rising to move the Motion which stands in my name in relation to the Report stage of the Sewerage (Scotland) Bill and the Committee stage of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Bill, may I say that I appreciate that this is a change on which one might have
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hoped for more time for consultation with the Opposition. I would stress my appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. These matters are always somewhat difficult. We consulted with a number of noble Lords, and if there are still some noble Lords who have difficulties on this matter, we should be very willing to think again. In other words, I should like to be as accommodating as possible.
Moved, That leave be given to the Lord Hughes to advance the Report stage of the Sewerage (Scotland) Bill, and the Committee stage of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Bill from Tuesday the 18th to Thursday the 13th of June next.—(Lord Shackleton.)
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, as the noble Lord is always so charming when eating humble pie, I find it difficult to be angry with him; but I hope that the business of this House will not approach anything like the situation in another place. Perhaps noble Lords opposite will look further ahead in their business, and on the next occasion consult the Opposition rather sooner than five minutes before the Sitting of the House.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, the noble Lord the Leader of the House was good enough to say that he had consulted certain quarters on this matter. I regret that he did not feel able to consult noble Lords such as myself and two other noble Lord; who have the only Amendments on the Marshalled List for the Report stage of the Sewerage (Scotland) Bill.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, one of the troubles is that we are slightly at the mercy of another place in adjusting our timetable. If it is the feeling of the House, I should be very willing to continue the consultations which we started last night. It is difficult to cover everybody, but I accept that we ought to have taken Lord Balfour's problems into account, and I promise to do so. If any difficulty arises, I will move another Motion.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

SUNDAY ENTERTAINMENTS ACT 1932
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, this is one of the usual Orders made under the Sunday Entertainments Act 1932. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department for extending Section 1 of the Sunday Entertainments Act 1932 to the Borough of Middleton be approved.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING BILL
3.5 p.m.
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Kennet, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Your Lordships will see that the Bill is a wide-ranging one and that its provisions will considerably affect the quality of life of the people of this country for many years to come. It is therefore an important Bill and one which we must have if the present planning system is to evolve in a way which is both effective and acceptable in a society in process of rapid social and economic change. In this context I would particularly draw your Lordships' attention at the outset to the quite novel provisions in Clause 3 and Clause 7 of the Bill, which give the opportunity for ordinary people to have a right to make their views known when structure plans and local plans affecting their daily lives are still at a formative stage. Too often nowadays people feel that whatever representations they may make to the planning authorities are brushed away because the planning authority feels that it will lose face if it changes the plan which it has announced, and the only effect of their objection to particular proposals is to harden attitudes. The Bill gives opportunity for the public to be involved and participate at an early stage before the planning authority is in any way committed, and in breaking this new ground the Bill creates the means to develop a more positive and effective partnership between planners and planned, between Government and governed, which could do more than anything else to improve what perhaps has not
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always been a happy relationship in this particular field.
Not only in this respect does the Bill look to the future. In other ways it proposes valuable developments of the structure established by the noble Lord. Lord Silkin, in 1947. I am sure that we should all like to acknowledge the great debt which we owe to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for the legislation which he introduced into Parliament over twenty-one years ago and which became the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. Nowadays planners are frequently a target for complaint. We complain because we know full well that the country enjoys a planning system which has been the envy of most other countries and we are rightly intolerant of less than the best results. Our standards in this matter are high and in part they are high because the noble Lord, by his legislation twenty years ago, put into our hands an instrument of the utmost importance and value. Those whose memories go back to the late 'twenties and the 'thirties will recollect the devastating spread of development which caused so much alarm in those years Were it not for the town and country planning system inaugurated by the noble Lord in the legislation which he brought in so quickly after the end of the last war, we should have much less to be proud of in our towns and in our countryside to-day. The fact that it is our business to consider amendment and improvement of the law on town and country planning is no reflection upon what was done in 1947. The Bill is not concerned to sweep away that system, but to adapt and build upon it in order to meet problems of an intensity and nature which could not have been foreseen at the time of the earlier legislation.
There are two main problems that now require attention. The first of these is that we are confronted not only with an unexpectedly large increase in the population, but also with a vast growth in traffic. The development plans required to be prepared under the current Act of 1962 are directly concerned with providing for the use of land in the planning authority's area, and although they may set out on paper the intended road network of an area, they do not give us a means of receiving into the development plan the now vital element of traffic and

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highway management policy which must go hand in hand with the sharing out of the land for particular uses if the full interactions of these policies are to be properly appreciated and dealt with. The second problem arises from the detailed nature of the development plan, which reaches right down to the allocation of particular sites, and presents all this detail for the Minister's approval. The burden of his involvement, I would submit, in settlement of this detail has grown almost beyond endurance. It is impeding the taking of the more important decisions presented by the plan. In the same way, too, many planning appeal decisions relating to cases of no significance outside their immediate area have to be taken as part of the main stream of business in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in Whitehall, and delay out of all proportion to the importance of the decisions, damaging in its effects, is far too common. The main objects of the Bill are therefore to make planning more relevant to the needs of a rapidly developing society, more flexible and, by reconsidering levels of responsibility and procedures, to make it much speedier in decision. These themes run through the successive parts of the Bill dealing with different aspects of the planning machinery. I do not intend to weary your Lordships to-day with a detailed explanation of all the 89 clauses and 8 Schedules to the Bill, but shall deal at this stage with only the main principles which it seeks to introduce.
First of all, the Bill establishes, on the basis of the recommendations of the Planning Advisory Group set up in 1964 by Sir Keith Joseph, a new development plan scheme. Its first characteristic is the distinction drawn between the "structure plan", that is, the policy document, the strategic element of the plan, which is submitted to the Minister for his approval, and the local plan, whose function it is to fill in the local detail in conformity with the broad policy and general proposals of the structure plan. In the ordinary case these local plans will be a matter for local adoption, and will not have to be referred to the Minister for his specific approval. The second characteristic of the new system is the breadth of the structure plan. It will embrace, within its statement of policy and general proposals, measures for the improvement of the physical environ-
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ment and the management of traffic and will be framed with more realistic attention to the resources likely to be available for carrying it out. The structure plan will be the bridge between regional economic planning and the detailed consideration of the use of land in towns and villages.
The local plans will be of various kinds. Some, flowing directly from the structure plan, will be concerned with the comprehensive treatment of "action areas"—areas in which within a few years of the approval of the structure plan a start will be made on comprehensive development, or redevelopment or improvement. These plans will deal with the core of the local authority's investment in urban renewal. Other types of local plan will deal with the general arrangement of uses of land in neighbourhoods within towns, as an aid to development control: and yet others will be designed to present particular policies, such as policies for the growth, or restraint of growth, of villages, for mineral working, and for provision for the recreational use of the countryside.
The devolution to local planning authorities of responsibility for these plans is accompanied by a number of safeguards. They will need to conform to the structure plan initially approved by the Minister, and the Minister has power to call in any local plan for his own consideration. The appointment of inspectors to hear objections to local plans will be a matter for the Minister in the first place. But as experience of the new development plans is gained, it may be considered right to turn to the power to be conferred by the Bill and to prescribe circumstances in which the planning authorities may make their own appointments, subject to the requirements of the regulations. A list of approved names should be established by the Minister, from which they have to make their choice. At every stage of the local plan procedure, the Minister, through his regional officers, and by receipt of cc pies of documents, will keep himself informed of the local situation.
There flow from the requirements, of the development plan a number of consequential changes which the Bill incorporates. The powers of compulsory acquisition under the Planning Acts have previously been dependent upon prior

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designation of the land, and the development plan is subject to compulsory acquisition. That procedure, envisaged as a means of giving public warning in advance of the probability of compulsory purchase of land, has not, however, brought the benefits expected of it. Part IV of this Bill accordingly abolishes the designation procedure and reshapes the compulsory powers under the Planning Acts so that they are not bound up with the plan as a document. It does not, of course, sever them from a direct link with the planning of the area. The case for acquisition will need to be demonstrated in the light of the plans which the local planning authority prepare, or of the planning objectives to which they are working, even though those plans do not in themselves state a need or an intention to use compulsory powers.
I now turn, my Lords, to the question of blight, for where there is forward planning there is always the difficult question of planning blight. The Bill provides for detailed alterations in the blight provisions of the 1962 Act in order to reflect the changed way in which the published proposals will be presented, through the new style of development plan. These alterations are consequential, but the opportunity is taken to make some other improvements in the working of the blight provisions in the light of experience over the last twenty years. What the Bill does not do is to make any change in the principles upon which the blight provisions are based, or in the basis of assessing compensation for any acquisition under the Planning Acts. These matters are the subject of review at the present time. The Chartered Land Societies and the Greater London Council have lodged with the Minister statements of their views upon the existing provisions and recommendations for their alteration. These, of course, affect a wide range of Government Departments as well as local authorities. Changes resulting from their consideration would be proper for a Bill devoted to compensation or compulsory purchase, but not to a Planning Bill of the kind we are considering to-day.
There are also a number of matters, important in themselves, but not consequential upon the new development plan provisions to which I must refer. The
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Bill gives the opportunity to seek means of speeding up the decision of planning appeals, which I hope will be generally welcomed. Under Part III the Minister may select classes of appeal for transfer to inspectors for determination. Two-thirds of the 9,000 or 10,000 appeals settled by the Minister each year involve no issue which it is important that he should himself determine. To transfer the determination of these straightforward cases to inspectors will relieve the main departmental channels of much business and should bring quicker decisions after the inquiry to some thousands of appellants.
Part V of the Bill concerns buildings of architectural or historic interest, and its proposals incorporate much of the thinking of the Preservation Policy Group of which my noble friend Lord Kennet is Chairman. The aim here is to simplify the present procedure for controlling works to listed buildings. Hitherto, anyone who proposed to demolish or alter a listed building has merely had to give notice of his intention and then wait to see whether the local authority or the Minister made a building preservation order to bring the works under control. The Bill will, in effect, put a blanket building preservation order on all listed buildings, by requiring express consent to be obtained from the planning authority for any demolition and for any alterations which would affect the building's character. And there will, of course, be the usual right of appeal to the Minister against a refusal of consent.
Another important provision in Part V is Clause 48, which removes the financial incentive that sometimes tempts people to allow historic buildings to fall into such a state of disrepair that their demolition becomes inevitable and thus makes room for a profitable redevelopment. In future, if a person deliberately neglects a listed building with this end in view the local authority will be able to buy it from him compulsorily at a price which ignores the prospect of profit from redevelopment. Here again, there will be a right of appeal against a proposed acquisition of this sort.
I turn now to Clauses 53 to 55 of the Bill. These clauses introduce a new means of investigating development proposals which are of national or regional

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importance or which raise unfamiliar technical questions. Public complaint is increasingly heard that the normal system of public inquiry does not enable a sufficiently through-going investigation of such cases to be made, and that the report reaching the Ministers who must take the decision is frequently insufficiently broad in its content and deep in its argument to give the Ministers a really sound basis for decision. The Bill would permit a case of this sort to be sent to a planning inquiry commission whose function it would be to carry out a two-stage process, first of investigation in depth and then of consideration of objections. The terms of reference of a commission of this kind can be made to include both the question of alternative sites in general, and also the examination of specific alternatives nominated by Ministers or brought in evidence by witnesses.
It is intended that the first phase of a planning inquiry commission's work will be conducted rather in the manner of a Royal Commission or a departmental committee. The second phase will be like the present local inquiry and the local planning authority, the applicant for planning permission, and the owners or tenants of agricultural land affected will have a statutory right to be heard. Of course, the commission will have power to hold an inquiry even if, in fact, none of these persons wishes to be heard. This second phase presents the advantage, as compared with the ordinary local inquiry, that it will be conducted in the light of the evidence which the commission have gathered in the first phase of their inquiry, and of their assessment of the realistic range of alternative possibilities for the siting of the development. All this material will be available to objectors, who will be able to frame their objections in what they regard as the most telling way. It is hoped that these two-stage proceedings will be altogether more to the point than has sometimes been the case with the large protracted local inquiries which have taken place into some major proposals in recent years. I should perhaps stress here that a planning inquiry commission is not empowered to decide cases. Its function is to investigate and enquire, and it will report to the responsible Minister or Ministers with
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whom decision continues to rest as at present.
I will not detain the House to-day with detailed comment upon the improvements in planning law and procedure made in the Bill. There will, I hope, be adequate opportunity for full discussion at a later stage of our deliberations. But I should comment, in passing, upon the greater effectiveness of planning control that will follow from Part II of the Bill, which improves the powers of enforcement available to local planning authorities. I believe it will be generally agreed that the present system tends to be cumbersome and slow-acting, in fact, offering many opportunities for procrastination, and an undesirably large proportion of justifiable enforcement cases, founder on technicalities. By the partial withdrawal of the four-year rule (which precludes enforcement action more than four years after the start of a contravention) and the introduction of the "stop notice" procedure to hold the ring while enforcement action is considered on appeal, the code can be usefully improved without creating insuperable difficulty for those wishing to convey land.
I also wish to draw your Lordships' attention to Clauses 61 to 63. These will be of particular interest in that they narrow the definition of what is the "operational land" of statutory undertakers and abolish certain rights previously enjoyed by statutory undertakers to be compensated as a result of adverse planning decision. I need not remind the House of recent instances in this field which have caused concern and difficulty.
My Lords, I hope I have not trespassed on your patience too long, but as I indicated at the outset this is an important Bill which I hope will be generally acceptable to the House in that it provides great opportunities to shape the Britain of the future by building on the firm foundations established by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, in 1947. I hope that he and all your Lordships will think this Bill a worthy and acceptable successor to that legislation. I am told by those who are in the happy position to know that being a grandparent is an even greater pleasure than being a parent, in that you have all the joy and none of the work. May I conclude by expressing the hope

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that the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, together with other noble Lords here today, will assist us in bringing his grandchild into the world by giving this Bill a Second Reading.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Baroness Serota.)
3.21 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, we all are glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, back in his place after his illness, and for his sake we regret that he did not have the privilege of introducing this important Bill; but I hope he will not think it in any way discourteous of me if I say that he could not possibly have done so with greater charm than the noble Baroness. This, I believe, is the first major Bill which the noble Baroness has presented to the House, and she has set herself and all her male colleagues a very high standard to live up to.
Indeed, she introduced the Bill so delightfully that some of your Lordships may have been led into thinking that it is an easy Bill. Believe me, that is a mistaken view. If any noble Lord is disposed to quarrel with me over that, I invite his attention to subsection (4) of Clause 74, for example—because I will not go into any of the complex provisions which will be found in the Schedules. Subsection (4) says:
"The said condition is that the use of each one of the buildings (excluding any which are exempt from this section) shall be restricted so that (whether in consequence of a change of use or otherwise) it does not at any time contain office premises having an aggregate floor space which exceeds the limit for that building specified in the condition, which limit shall (subject to subsection (5) below) he a floor space bearing such proportion to the building's total floor space as the prescribed exemption limit bears to the aggregate floor space of all the buildings (excluding any which are exempt from this section) for whose erection the planning permission is granted."
I doubt whether even the noble Baroness could accurately summarise that subsection in a few words, even with the help of algebra. No, this is not an easy Bill. I am not criticising it on that account, but it requires considerable background knowledge if one is to understand and interpret its provisions.
My Lords, this Bill received its Third Reading in another place at 6.56 a.m. on
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Thursday last—just a week ago. It had been extensively amended during its Report stage last week. In fact, five new clauses were inserted into the Bill and many other Amendments were made. It was not unnatural that I asked the Printed Paper Office to be sure that I received a copy of the Bill before the weekend because I knew I would have to speak about it to-day. Now the Printed Paper Office always shows all of us the utmost courtesy, but they had to inform me that it would not be possible for them to comply with my request because the Bill would not be available in the Printed Paper Office itself until Monday. My Lords, I really must register a protest against the pressure that is put upon us in ways like this. It is yet another symptom of the overloading of Government business which is so apparent this summer, and of the consequent pressures on all concerned. I spoke on the Countryside Bill about the pressure on the Parliamentary draftsmen, and I suspect that there is equal pressure on the printers. I must say with all the force that I can command that this is not the way to produce sound legislation. That is what we are all here for, in both Chambers of Parliament: to do our utmost to produce sound legislation. I submit that at the present time we are not getting the assistance and co-operation which we all are entitled to receive in that respect from Her Majesty's Government.
I am prepared, though with reluctance, to assist the Government to obtain a Second Reading of the Bill today; but I fancy that its late availability may well be the reason why comparatively few noble Lords, have ventured to put their names down to speak to-day. I really do not blame them, because it was almost useless working on the Bill as reported from the Committee in another place, so extensive were the changes made on the Report stage. This late availability will certainly be the reason why some speeches to-day, including my own, will not cover the whole of this important Bill as fully as one would wish.
As I say, I am prepared to help the Government to obtain the Second Reading of this Bill to-day, but my noble friends and I will not be prepared to start on the Committee stage until Amendments—important Amendments—foreshadowed by the Government on the

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Report stage in another place have been tabled here and we have had proper time to consider them before the Committee stage begins. It will be within the recollection of a number of your Lordships that our proceedings on the Countryside Bill were gravely handicapped by the necessity to consider lengthy Amendments and new clauses at virtually no notice. That, indeed, is the reason why a number of Amendments on Third Reading appear in respect of that Bill to-day. I urge the Government most strongly to avoid a repetition on the Town and Country Planning Bill of the difficulties under which they compelled us to work on the Countryside Bill.
My Lords, despite all the frustrations involved in planning, and all the popular abuse which is often hurled at the heads of planners, I want to pay tribute to-day to the general quality of the results achieved by the planning system in this country. The person who is first and foremost responsible for that system is the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and in my opinion we are extremely fortunate to have him with us on the consideration of this Bill, because his opinions and his suggestions will, I am sure, be of value. My praise for his 1947 Act does not extend—I know he will understand—to the development charge provisions of that Bill, but, much as I disliked those, I have no doubt at all that a great deal that is good in our countryside, and to some extent in our towns, to-day is due to his initiative and persistence in 1947.
I wonder whether he would agree with me—I think that possibly he might—that in these last twenty years our country planning has been more successful than our urban planning. We have a tight hold on the preservation of the countryside. I know that complaints are made from time to time about detailed mistakes or aberrations, but having had some experience in administering planning I, for one, realise that there is stricter planning control on building or development in the open country than the vast majority of people realise. So often one received complaints from somebody who could not understand why he was not allowed to build a house in the country in a place where there was no other house within sight. One had to explain to him that the reason why there was no other house in sight was that twenty-five other people had wished to do what he was
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wanting to do and had had their planning applications refused. We no longer have advertisements appearing in the papers like that famous, though possibly mythical, one:
"Modern red brick bungalow with asbestos roof on unspoilt hill-top".
I think that the reason why the application of planning has been more effective in the countryside is that there it has been rather in the nature of static control; and as it turned out—I am not criticising the noble Lord, Lord Silkin—the 1947 Act system turned out to be better at its static control than at its dynamic planning. In these years of swift change it is dynamic planning which our towns and cities have needed. The most obvious illustration of that is that virtually nobody twenty years ago visualised the speed of growth of cars or the intensity with which traffic problems would build up in the cities. I remember when development plans were before the Ministry how clear it became that hardly a single big local planning authority, when it was submitting its first development plan, had had the slightest conception of the extent of the provision which it would be necessary to make for car parking in its builtup areas within the next five or ten years.
So, my Lords, we have Part I of this Bill, which is largely founded on the Report of the Planning Advisory Group set up by Sir Keith Joseph as Minister some four years ago. I am sure that it is right, at any rate for the towns, to seek more of a flexible system, more of a running system, than the development plans which tended to receive Ministerial approval some years after their submission and which were then supposed to be brought up to date at five-year intervals. We cannot, in our modern situation, plan by fits and starts in that manner. There is a story of two caterpillars. One was young and the other was old. The young caterpillar looked up into the sky and saw a butterfly. He said to the older caterpillar, "You don't catch me going up in one of those things." The older caterpillar replied, "It's little you know about development plans."
My Lords, it is little that most people know about development plans. That is the reason why one welcomes the provisions to which the noble Baroness referred in Clauses 3 and 7 of this Bill for trying to bring the public more into partnership with the planning authorities.

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I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, desired that in his mind when he was producing his planning system. But practically all of us would say that that has not worked out as successfully as one would have wished, and that the "we and they" relationship at arm's length has become too fixed. Certainly my noble friends and I will welcome all efforts that can be made, in the Statute or by administrative action outside the law, to bring it about that the local authority will explain, and explain continuously, to the public what they are doing in matters which affect the neighbourhood and will give the public as full an opportunity as possible to react favourably or unfavourably and to make their views and suggestions known.
In passing, I think I should say that not only Clauses 3 and 7 but also Clauses 4 and 6 were among those which appeared as new clauses at the Report stage in another place. That fact alone will make it appropriate for your Lordships to examine these important early clauses of the Bill with particular care in Committee. We all know that clauses which appear for the first time at the Report stage of a Bill in either House cannot get the same detailed examination in that House as those which were in the Bill originally and which have passed through Committee scrutiny.
For my part, I accept the value of the survey conception in Clause 1, and of the structure plan and the action area plans. All these are developed—and put into legislative language—arising out of the Report which I mentioned. I would invite the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, in winding up this debate, to explain precisely in what circumstances the Government think that local plans are going to he necessary outside the action areas. This is something certainly into which I should wish to go further in Committee. If we could have an early statement from the noble Lord on behalf of the Government I think it would be helpful. One of the reasons underlying this whole effort to change and improve planning procedure is to streamline it and to avoid the overloading of which everybody nowadays is conscious—certainly, everybody who has had to wait for a decision on a planning appeal. For that reason we ought not to put anything into the Bill
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which is not proved to be necessary. Everybody can see that the local plan for an action area is imperative. It seems to me that we should ask ourselves to what extent local plans are going to be necessary except where early development or re-development is expected—and that, of course, is in an action area.
My Lords, I welcome the improvements made in another place in defining the categories of persons who should hold inquiries into local plans. In the Bill as originally introduced they might be members of the staff of the local authority concerned. The Minister has now been brought into this. Although those persons will not be officials of the Ministry, nevertheless the Minister will have power to ensure that they are not persons under the control of the local authority itself which is submitting its own plan to the inquiry and exposing it to examination and objections. What I am not wholly clear about is this. What happens to the report of that person who conducts an inquiry into objections to a local plan? It goes to the local planning authority, presumably. Is the local planning authority then required to publish it? Is the local planning authority required to submit it to the Minister? It will be a key document in all this. I should think that full publicity was required for it.
I pass on to Part II, the enforcement provisions, on which I think that all the points which I have to make can be reserved for the Committee stage. I have no Second Reading observations, except to say how much Clause 15 was improved by the action of the Standing Committee in another place which insisted broadly speaking, on a differentiation between breaches of planning control on the constructional side and breaches on the user side.
Part III concerns appeals, and here I fully accept that some change is necessary. A few years ago appeals to the Minister were running at the rate of 14,000 a year. I believe that now they are down to 10,000 or so a year, but the overburdening of the Ministerial machine causes quite intolerable delays, and I am inclined to think that this is the principal single cause of the frustration which people feel about planning, and against planners, at the present time. During my time as Minister I was concerned to see whether I could find a

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solution for this, and that was seven years ago. It appeared to me that if one was going to make a change, one must aim at a system which would combine speed with absolute impartiality. The virtue of the system of appeals to the Minister is that it has maintained a splendid reputation for impartiality. I remember discussing the possibility of other forms of appeal with various professional people, and in a sense it was reassuring to find how many of them, while cursing the delays in getting planning appeals settled, were reluctant that we should switch to any other form of appeal, such as a regional appeal tribunal, simply because in their view it might not always sustain the reputation for absolute impartiality which appeals to the Minister had gained.
I know that my noble friend Lord Ilford wishes to probe some of the principal provisions in Part III. I shall want to question the Government closely about how they propose to draw the line between those appeals which will be settled and finally determined by a person appointed by the Minister and those which will come to the Minister himself. I understand that over 97 per cent. of appeals are determined by the Minister now in accordance with the recommendation of the inspector who has heard the appeal. That certainly suggests that it should be possible to find a system which would give equal satisfaction while cutting out the very grave delays which result from all these inspectors' reports having to be processed in the Ministry. Yet quite clearly the fact that in some 3 per cent. of the cases the Minister does not determine in accordance with the inspector's recommendation proves, at any rate to me, that there is a part for the Minister to play; and some of these appeals involve matters of such major controversy that I am sure public opinion would not be prepared to settle for anybody determining them except the Minister. Therefore the task before the Government is to decide what criteria they will apply in sending certain classes of appeal to somebody appointed by the Minister. I trust that they will go slowly in the first instance and choose only the obvious categories, such as single houses, until they have more experience of how it works.
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It will be a new task for those we have hitherto described as the Minister's inspectors. Hitherto they have simply been hearing the case and making a recommendation; it is the Minister who has had to act in a quasi-judicial capacity. I have heard a person acting in a quasi-judicial capacity described as one who is midway between being as sober as a judge and as drunk as a Lord. I am not sure whether I should have quoted that in your Lordships' House; after all, it is a cynical description of those who have to perform quasi-judicial functions. I think that we shall have sufficient people capable of doing this, but, as I say, it will be a new job for them. I understand that their actions will be subject to investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner, the Ombudsman; I gather that that was stated in another place. I assume there will be no degree of Ministerial responsibility, and thus, where a planning appeal is determined by somebody other than the Minister, it will not be possible to ask questions in Parliament about the decision, as is, of course, possible now in all planning appeal determinations by the Minister himself.
My Lords, if there is no degree of Ministerial responsibility the Government must take care not to pass on to these independent persons the determination of appeals which, though seemingly quite small, are going to be highly controversial locally. I recollect that in my time there was an appeal about whether a line of private garages should be built somewhere. One might think that a small and minor appeal, but the issue had become a kind of local cause célèbre on which the most violent feelings were roused on both sides, not on Party lines but between two groups of local people who thought either that it should or that it should not be done. For my part (this is perhaps masochistic on the part of an ex-Minister) I do not think it is right that the odium of decision in that kind of locally controversial case should fall on anyone but the Minister himself.
I pass to Part IV—"Acquisition and disposal of land." This is a Part of the Bill which we certainly shall wish to examine searchingly in Committee, particularly Clause 26, which gives a pretty wide list of cases where the Minister may authorise a local authority to acquire

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compulsorily any land within its area, and Clause 27, which empowers the Minister of Public Building and Works to acquire compulsorily any land necessary for the public service. This is extremely wide, and to the best of my knowledge up to the present the Minister of Public Building and Works has not had powers to acquire compulsorily.
Clause 28, as I read it, extends to all local authorities possessing compulsory purchase powers the opportunity to use the vesting procedure which hitherto has been available only to the Land Commission. We shall certainly want to inquire why this is thought to be necessary, because there are considerable objections to that vesting procedure. In this part of the Bill we come also to blight, which was referred to by the noble Baroness. Clause 30 purports to widen the conditions under which a householder can protect himself against blight on his property by requiring a public authority to purchase. I cannot help asking, does Clause 30 go far enough? I do not think it does. It refers to blight caused by a structural plan in force or a local plan in force. But do not the Government realise that blight settles long before that? Blight settles on a property the moment a public authority publishes, or even mentions, development proposals affecting a certain area of land. We saw that very clearly in London in the case of the motorway box where, the moment it became known that the Great London Council were planning the motorway box and were clearly thinking of demolishing a large number of houses in the indicated area, blight settled onthosehouses straight away and has caused considerable suffering.
On Tuesday last in your Lordships' House the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, answering a supplementary question of mine, said:
"… there is existing legislation by which owner-occupiers of houses which are on the provisional line of a 'box' may serve purchase notices on the local planning authority when they cannot sell except at a reduced price, …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28/5/68, c. 1033]
I know that he was answering a supplementary question outside the scope of his own Department, but I think that it is not correct to convey, as his statement appeared to me to convey, that the
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moment a local authority indicates provisionally that a new road may come somewhere, the blight provisions in the 1962 Act come into operation instantly. I am not aware of any compulsion on a local authority to accept a purchase notice until the plan has been confirmed. What worries me is that here again Clause 30 does not seem to me to guarantee protection against blight to householders until the structural plan or local plan is actually in force. This, of course, though related, is a separate matter from the question of compensation. The noble Baroness said that there was a study going on of that. I can only say that the sooner it is completed and we have fresh compensation legislation the better, because I have no doubt whatever that in certain respects our present compensation arrangements operate unfairly to individuals.
Part V of the Bill relates to buildings of architectural or historic interest. I take it that a listed building means a building in Grades 1 and 2, and does not extend to buildings in Grade 3. I hope that at some stage the Government will explain to us what recourse is available to the owner of a building which he thinks ought not to be included or to have been included as a listed building. This Bill can make matters more onerous for the owners of Grade 1 and Grade 2 buildings than they have been before, and therefore it is right that the interests of the owner, as well as those of the public, should be considered.
I remember when I was responsible receiving a letter of complaint from no less a person than Lord Beaverbrook. It was a typical forthright letter about some farm buildings of his which he thought had been unreasonably listed as being of historic or architectural interest. He fundamentally disagreed and wanted to know why money was being wasted on this listing. Fortunately, I had a good and convincing answer. Whether it actually convinced Lord Beaverbrook I do not know—one could never be quite sure about that. But just that recollection of mine brings home to me how strong might be the feelings, not only of the Beaverbrooks but of all kinds of people, if they discover that by owning a building of architectural or historic interest, they will, under this Bill, have incurred obligations greater than they thought.

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We all agree that the preservation of important buildings must be secured. I have known of one or two quite astonishing cases of fine buildings which have been deliberately neglected by their owners. That is a shocking thing. I welcome therefore the provisions under the Bill which will make it less easy to allow a fine building to decay. If one has been inside some of these buildings which were well worthy of preservation, had they been caught in time, and seen what decay can do to beautiful rooms and ceilings, one must welcome the additional powers granted here.
I think that noble Lords in all quarters of the House will welcome the provision for planning inquiry commissions. It is this kind of inquiry that we ought to have had into the Stansted problem from the very beginning. I submit that it is this kind of inquiry that we ought to have as quickly as possible into the London motorway box. And I see no reason why these new provisions should not enable us to have for the first time far-ranging inquiries under proper statutory procedures, whereas hitherto we have had to investigate matters much too individually, and out of the general context which is relevant to the problem.
Incidentally, Clause 54(3) provides for a single inquiry into development on different sites by a public inquiry commission. I cannot for the life of me understand how, if sites are at a distance from one another, the public inquiry commission will be able to fulfil its duty under Clause 55(1) to hold a local inquiry in these circumstances, unless the word "local" is going to be extended rather surprisingly. The Bill also provides for the delegation of planning functions to officers of the local authority, and I think that this is right. I do not think that the whole of local government in the planning field can be carried on without that kind of simplification, though clearly the nature and scope of the delegation needs to be examined.
The Bill sets limits for the duration of planning permissions. I know that this is a controversial matter in some quarters, but I think it is proper to do so. The Bill does something—but only something—to avoid a repetition of the Abingdon gas-holder case. Perhaps I go too far in saying that—all it will do is to lessen the intolerable expense to a local
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authority. I think that in Committee we shall want to know from the Government why statutory undertakers should be placed in any privileged position as compared with others, and why they should have the power, if they are refused permission to do what they want to do, to put 50 per cent. of the hypothetical loss they incur on to the local rates.
There are a good many other minor points that I welcome in the Bill, but there is one major point on which, in conclusion, I should like to press the Government—that is, in relation to footpaths. The Government's White Paper, Leisure in the Countryside, said, in paragraph 47:
"… in the Government's view a more radical reform may well be needed, to provide a legislative framework which would permit the development of a system of footpaths and bridleways, some based on existing routes, but others newly created, which would to more suited to modern needs."
My Lords, I entirely agree. The Government appear to have done half the job, but not the other half. They appear to have taken steps to transfer responsibility from the highways authorities to the local planning authorities, but seem to me to have shirked the further action which is recommended by the Gosling Committee for creating a new and more effective system for doing this. I understand that the Government's explanation is that the Gosling Committee's recommendations are unworkable. In my view, considering that the general purpose is accepted by almost everybody, it is now up to the Government to think out a workable system, because I am quite sure that we ought not to leave the footpath arrangements where they are. The time has come to get rid of some old footpaths which in modern times are no longer serving any useful purpose, and maybe to create other new footpaths which are really needed. I think that the farming community would be willing to co-operate if they felt that both aspects of this matter were being seriously tackled by the Government.
The Government are in a difficulty with this Bill in relation to the Royal Commission on Local Government. They have created that difficulty for themselves by not being willing to settle the future of local government themselves, and by referring it to a Royal Commission. We all know that there may be a good many years before legislation follows, arising

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out of the Report of that Royal Commission when it is received later this year. I think the Government would agree that it makes the timing in this Bill strangely difficult, when none of us can foresee what the future pattern of local government will be. Well, we must make the best of it, and we, for our part, will try to help to improve the Bill in Committee.
I should like, in conclusion, to pay tribute to the hard work which was clearly done by Ministers in Committee and on Report in another place to meet suggestions and criticisms put forward by the Opposition. It is a shining example of how the work of this House can be facilitated if there is a proper Committee stage in another place. What we are going to see, I fear, in the next few weeks is how the work of this House is hampered and protracted when the Government have not allowed time for proper consideration of other Bills in Committee elsewhere. But, for my part—and I feel sure that I can speak for my noble friends—I want to see this Bill on the Statute Book. We shall have a number of suggestions and criticisms to put forward in Committee, but we are anxious to continue to examine the Bill in the co-operative spirit that was so apparent on both sides in another place.

RHODESIA: UNITED NATIONS RESOLUTION
4.3 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (LORD CHALFONT): My Lords, I beg leave to repeat a Statement which has been made in another place by my right honourable friend the Commonwealth Secretary in answer to a Private Notice Question on the United Nations resolution on Rhodesia. The Statement is as follows:
"As the House knows a meeting of the Security Council on Rhodesia was called to deal with the situation created by the illegal hangings. A draft resolution was tabled on April 18 by the African and Asia members of the Security Council. It envisaged the use of force and measures against South Africa and Portugal. On April 23 we presented our own draft resolution to the Council. It was explained to
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the House by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary on the following day and the text included in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
"Since then discussions have been continuing in New York and these discussions have now led to a unanimous resolution. We did not sponsor it—nor did the Afro-Asians—but the whole Security Council without exception have given it their vote. I think it is a considerable achievement that it has been possible for the Council to adopt unanimously a complex and detailed resolution touching on many of the national interests of United Nations members. This is impressive testimony to the refusal of the international community to accept the illegal régime and its objectives for Rhodesia.
"I will circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT the text of the resolution that has now been passed. We have throughout made it clear that we cannot contemplate the use of force to solve the Rhodesian problem and that we are not prepared to engage in an economic confrontation with South Africa. There is nothing in the resolution that conflicts with our position on these essential points. Most of the detailed provisions of the resolution are based on the earlier United Kingdom draft. As my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary explained to the House on April 24, the main effect of these provisions will be to make sanctions more comprehensive, to block methods of evading sanctions and to require other countries to place the same prohibitions on trade with Rhodesia as we have applied to our own trade.
"One new paragraph requests States
'to take all possible further action under Article 41 of the Charter to deal with the situation in Southern Rhodesia',
while another
'emphasises the need for the withdrawal of all consular and trade representation in Southern Rhodesia'.
In his explanation of vote on these paragraphs our Permanent Representative at the United Nations, my right honourable and noble friend Lord Caradon, made our position clear in the following terms:
'We have to bear in mind the special responsibility of the United Kingdom as

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administering authority. That responsibility has been recognised and emphasised in the resolution itself. It has been accepted in our consultations that we will retain our Mission and communications with Rhodesia'.
"The resolution contains some additional paragraphs of a political character. These paragraphs are consistent with the policy of Her Majesty's Government which is based on the six principles to which both sides of the House are committed. Nothing in these paragraphs places any restriction on Britain, beyond what is contained in the six principles themselves, to discharge her responsibilities towards Rhodesia as she thinks best. Nothing in these paragraphs condones the use of violence. Her Majesty's Government maintain their opposition to violence as a means of solving the Rhodesian problem. Our whole policy, indeed, has been to give the people of Southern Rhodesia all the moral and material assistance we can to enable them to shape their future in a peaceful way.
"The House will of course have a full opportunity to debate the legislation which will be necessary to give effect to a number of provisions of the resolution."
That, my Lords, is the end of the Statement.
Following is the text of the United Nations resolution:
"The Security Council
"Recalling and reaffirming its Resolutions 216 (1965) of 12 November, 1965, 217 (1965) of 20 November, 1965, 221 (1966) of 9 April, 1966, and 232 (1966) of 16 December, 1966.
"Taking note of Resolution 2262 (XXII) adopted by the General Assembly on 3 November, 1967,
"Noting with great concern that the Measures taken so far have failed to bring the rebellion in Southern Rhodesia to an end,
"Reaffirming that, to the extent not superseded in this Resolution, the Measures provided for in Resolutions 217 (1965) of 20 November, 1965, and 232 (1966) of 16 December, 1966, as well as those initiated by member States in implementation of those Resolutions, shall continue in effect,
"Gravely concerned that the measures taken by the Security Council have not been complied with by all States and that some States, contrary to Resolution 232 (1966) of the Security Council and to their obligations under Article 25 of the Charter, have failed to pre-
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vent trade with the illegal régime in Southern Rhodesia,
"Condemning the recent inhuman executions carried out by the illegal régime in Southern Rhodesia which have flagrantly affrented the concience of mankind and have been universally condemned,
"Affirming the primary responsibility of the Government of the United Kingdom to enable the people of Southern Rhodesia to achieve self-determination and independence, and in particular their responsibility for dealing with the prevailing situation,
"Recognising the legitimacy of the struggle of the people of Southern Rhodesia to secure the enjoyment of their rights as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations and in conformity with the objectives of General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV),
"Reaffirming its determination that the present situation in Southern Rhodesia constitutes a threat to international peace and security,
"Acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter,
"1. Condemns all measures of political repression, including arrests, detentions, trials and executions which violate fundamental freedoms and rights of the people of Southern Rhodesia, and calls upon the Government of the United Kingdom to take all possible measures to put an end to such actions:
"2. Calls upon the United Kingdom as the administering Power, in the discharge of its responsibility to take urgently all effective measures to bring to an end the rebellion in Southern Rhodesia, and enable the people to secure their enjoyment of their rights as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations and in conformity with the objectives of General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV):
"3. Decides that, in furtherance of the objective of ending the rebellion, all States Members of the United Nations shall prevent:

"(a) The import into their territories of all commodities and products originating in Southern Rhodesia and exported therefrom after the date of this Resolution (whether or not the commodities or products are for consumption or processing in their territories, whether or not they are imported in bond and whether or not any special legal status with respect to the import of goods is enjoyed by the port or other place where they are imported or stored):

"(b) Any activities by their nationals or in their territories which would promote or are calculated to promote the export of any commodities or products from Southern Rhodesia: and any dealings by their nationals or in their territories in any commodities or products originating in Southern Rhodesia and exported therefrom after the date of this Resclution, including in particular any transfer of funds to Southern Rhodesia for the purposes of such activities or dealings:

"(c) The shipment in vessels or aircraft of their registration or under Charter to their nationals, or the carriage (whether or not in bond) by land transport facilities across their territories of any commodities or products

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originating in Southern Rhodesia and exported therefrom after the date of this Resolution;

"(d) The sale or supply by their nationals or from their territories of any commodities or products (whether or not originating in their territories, but not including supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, educational equipment and material for use in schools and other educational institutions, publications, news material and, in special humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs), to any person or body in Southern Rhodesia or to any other person or body for the purposes of any business carried on in or operated from Southern Rhodesia, and any activities by their nationals or in their territories which promote or are calculated to promote such sale or supply;

"(e) The shipment in vessels or aircraft of their registration or under charter to their nationals, or the carriage (whether or not in bond) by land transport facilities across their territories of any such commodities or products which are consigned to any person or body in Southern Rhodesia, or to any other person or body for the purposes of any business carried on in or operated from Southern Rhodesia.

"4. Decides that States Members of the United Nations shall not make available to the illegal régime in Southern Rhodesia or to any commercial industrial or public utility undertaking, including tourist enterprises, in Southern Rhodesia any funds for investment or any other financial or economic resources and shall prevent their nationals and any persons within their territories from making available to the régime or to any such undertaking any such funds or resources and from remitting any other funds to persons or bodies within Southern Rhodesia except payments exclusively for pensions or for strictly medical, humanitarian or educational purposes or for the provision of news material and in special humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs.
"5. Decides that all States Members of the United Nations shall:

"(a) Prevent the entry into their territories, save on exceptional humanitarian grounds, of any person travelling on a Southern Rhodesian passport, regardless of its date of issue, or on a purported passport issued by or on behalf of the illegal régime in Southern Rhodesia; and

"(b) Take all possible measures to prevent the entry into their territories of persons whom they have reason to believe to he ordinarily resident in Southern Rhodesia and whom they have reason to believe to have furthered or encouraged, or to be likely to further or encourage, the unlawful actions of the illegal régime in Southern Rhodesia or any activities which are calculated to evade any Measure decided upon in this Resolution or Resolution 232 (1966) of December 16, 1966.

"6. Decides that States Members of the United Nations shall prevent airline companies constituted in their territories and aircraft of their registration or under charter to their nationals from operating to or from Southern Rhodesia and from linking up with any airline company constituted or aircraft registered in Southern Rhodesia.
"7. Decides that all States Members of the United Nations shall give effect to the decisions set out in operative paragraphs 3, 4, 5 and 6 of this Resolution notwithstanding any contract entered into or licence granted before the date of this Resolution.
"8. Calls upon all States Members of the United Nations and of the Specialised Agencies to take all possible measures to prevent activities by their nationals and persons in their territories promoting, assisting or encouraging emigration to Southern Rhodesia, with a view to stopping such emigration.
"9. Requests all States Members of the United Nations or of the Specialised Agencies to take all possible further action under Article 41 of the Charter to deal with the situation in Southern Rhodesia, not excluding any of the measures provided in that Article.
"10. Emphasises the need for the withdrawal of all consular and trade representation in Southern Rhodesia, in addition to the provisions of operative Paragraph 6 of Resolution 217 (1966)."
"11. Calls upon all the States Members of the United Nations to carry out these decisions of the Security Council in accordance with Article 25 of the United Nations Charter and reminds them that failure or refusal by any one of them to do so would constitute a violation of that Article.
"12. Deplores the attitude of Governments that have not complied with their obligations under Article 25 of the Charter, and censures in particular those States which have persisted in trading with the illegal régime in defiance of the Resolutions of the Security Council, and which have given active assistance to the régime.
"13. Urges all States Members of the United Nations to render moral and material assistance to the people of Southern Rhodesia in their struggle to achieve their freedom and independence.
"14. Urges, having regard to the principles stated in Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, the States not member nations of the United Nations to act in accordance with the provisions of the present Resolution.
"15. Requests States Members of the United Nations, the United Nations Organisation, the specialised agencies, and other international organisations in the United Nations system to extend assistance to Zambia as a matter of priority with a view to helping her solve such special economic problems as she may be confronted with arising from the carrying out of these decisions of the Security Council.
"16. Calls upon Member States and in particular those with primary responsibility under the Charter for the maintenance of international peace and security, to assist effectively in the implementation of the measures called for by the present Resolution.
"17. Considers that the United Kingdom as the administering Power should ensure that no settlement is reached without taking into account the views of the people of Southern Rhodesia, and in particular the political Parties favouring majority rule, and that it is acceptable

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to the people of Southern Rhodesia as a whole.
"18. Calls upon all States Members of the United Nations or of the Specialised Agencies to report to the Secretary General by August 1, 1968 on measures taken to implement the present Resolution.
"19. Requests the Secretary General to report to the Security Council on the progress of the implementation of this Resolution the first report to be made not later than September 1, 1968.
"20. Decides to establish, in accordance with Rule 28 of the provisional rules of procedure of the Security Council, a committee of the Security Council to undertake the following tasks and to report to it with its observations:

"(a) To examine such reports on the implementation of the present Resolutions as are submitted by the Secretary General.

"(b) To seek from any States Members of the United Nations or of the specialised agencies such further information regarding the trade of that State (including information regarding the commodities and products exempted from the prohibition contained in operative paragraph 3(d) above) or regarding any activities by any nationals of that State or in its territories that may constitute any evasion of the measures decided upon in this Resolution as it may consider necessary for the proper discharge of its duty to report to the Security Council.

"21. Requests the United Kingdom, as the administering Power, to give maximum assistance to the committee, and to provide the committee with any information which it may receive in order that the measures envisaged in this Resolution and Resolution 232 (1966) may be rendered fully effective.
"22. Calls upon all States Members of the United Nations, and of the Specialised Agencies, as well as the Specialised Agencies themselves, to supply such further information as may be sought by the committee in pursuance of this Resolution.
"23. Decides to maintain this item of its agenda for further action as appropriate in the light of developments."
4.6 p.m.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, for having repeated that Statement. As I made clear, and as I think other noble Lords who sit on this side of the House made clear on the previous occasion when this policy was announced, we believe that it is wholly wrong and will be entirely counterproductive. In particular, I find it almost ludicrous that the Security Council
"reaffirms its determination that the present situation in Southern Rhodesia constitutes a threat to international peace and security".
The wording is rather odd. It might almost seem that they are determined that they are going to see that it constitutes
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a threat to international peace and security.
I should not have thought, my Lords, that stopping people travelling from Rhodesia was going to help anybody in any particular. All it does is to isolate all Rhodesians from outside induence. That, surely, cannot be a good thing, and in some cases I should have thought, too, that it would be very inhuman and extremely unfair. Incidentally, are we allowed to travel to Rhodesia? If we travel to Rhodesia shall we be considered to have given help and encouragement to the Rhodesian régime? And will our passports he taken away from us if we go to Rhodesia? Does the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, really think that otherwise this resolution will have any effect, particularly since we all know that South Africa and Portugal will not pay the smallest attention to it?
May I also ask the noble Lord, referring to page 5, paragraph 13, of the copy of the resolution which I have (I think it is the same copy as the noble Lord has) whether he will tell your Lordships what it means when the resolution
"urges all States members of the United Nations to render moral and material assistance to the people of Southern Rhodesia in their struggle to achieve their independenee and freedom".
Does it mean that Member States of the United Nations are being encouraged to send arms to terrorists to fight against Mr. Smith's régime?
Finally, may I ask the noble Lord (I apologise for all these questions) what legislation is contemplated, and when it will be discussed by this House?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, perhaps I may deal with these questions first. I should like, first of all, to deal with what I think is the most important question the noble Lord put to me. It refers to the operative paragraph 13 of the United Nations resolution, which deals, as he rightly said, with moral and material assistance to the people of Southern Rhodesia. I think the suggestion that this implies that States members of the United Nations are empowered or encouraged by this paragraph to send terrorists and arms into this area is a suggestion most unworthy of the noble Lord. Of course, it does nothing of the kind. Our policy has always been to

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render moral and material assistance to the people of Southern Rhodesia—the noble Lord knows that well—and, so far as we are concerned, we see nothing in that operative paragraph which could possibly condone the use of violence. And may I make it clear, before the noble Lord intervenes, that had we thought that it condoned violence we should not have voted for the resolution.
LORD CARRINGTON: Then, my Lords, may I ask what it does mean? Since there is a complete embargo on all trade with Southern Rhodesia, how can you provide material assistance?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, the question of moral and material assistance to the people of Southern Rhodesia is a simple continuation of the policies we have been implementing since this crisis began. There is no change implied in this. I beg the noble Lord not to try to read into this some kind of blank cheque on the part of the Security Council for the use of methods of violence to solve the Rhodesian problem. We are against the use of force; we are against the use of violence. I repeat that had we thought that this paragraph condoned it, or implied it, we should not have voted for the resolution.
I will now deal with the other points raised, though not necessarily in the order in which they were asked. So far as the effect of this resolution is concerned, about which the noble Lord is pessimistic, I must confess that I do not share his pessimism. We do not, of course, expect any immediate results from this resolution; it will take time to have effect. But we have no doubt whatsoever that the result of the resolution will be to increase very considerably the economic pressure on the illegal régime. I think that they are fully conscious of this themselves. I hope and believe that the resolution will create a situation in which a more useful dialogue, a more useful discussion, can take place.
So far as the reference to the United Nations is concerned, I suppose one should not be surprised at this kind of reference to international action. I can only say that sanctions of the kind we believe to be right in his case need international action to be effective. In our
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judgment, and the judgment of the Security Council, the continuation of the present situation in Rhodesia, whatever the noble Lord may say, constitutes a threat to the peace, and in such a situation international action is envisaged in the Charter of the United Nations.
So far as travel is concerned, I will not try to answer the noble Lord's specific question about who will be allowed to travel to Rhodesia, and what will happen to them if they do. I can only say that we shall implement fully the terms of the United Nations' resolution. The noble Lord raised the important question of legislation. Legislation will be in the form of an Order in Council, which will be laid as soon after the Whitsun holiday as possible. It will, of course, be a matter for Affirmative Resolution in both Houses.
LORD WADE: My Lords, on behalf of my Liberal colleagues, may I thank the noble Lord for repeating this Statement. I welcome the fact that unanimity was achieved at the Security Council. In order to make our position quite clear in the simplest terms, may I ask the noble Lord whether he would agree that this matter is now the responsibility of the Security Council; that Britain is clearly under an obligation to carry out the terms of the resolution, and that it would only make a difficult situation worse if Britain were in any way to give the impression of dithering between carrying out the terms of the resolution and not doing so?
LORD CHALFONT: Yes, my Lords; of course that is the Government's position.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, would not the Minister agree that in this, for us, painful problem of Rhodesia, if we were to dissociate ourselves from the 15-nation Security Council resolution this would only mean that we should have most of world opinion against us, and this would in no way help us in future in the possibility of negotiating a just and honourable future for Rhodesia?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that intervention, with which I unequivocally agree.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I do not propose to continue what is begining to have the appearance

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of a debate. I understand that we are to have an opportunity for that at a very early date, and I hope that this House, both by its speeches and by its actions, will show what we feel about this resolution. But I should like to ask Her Majesty's Government just this one question. Do they realise that their action in putting before the Security Council, or assisting towards the putting before the Security Council, these very far-reaching measures, without any prior consultation with either House of Parliament in this country, will be very much regarded here in all circles as further evidence of the complete contempt which the Prime Minister has always shown for both the British Parliament and the British people?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Marquess for one part of his intervention, which was to say that he would not continue the debate. So far as the second part is concerned, of course I reject utterly the suggestion that this shows any contempt whatsoever for Parliament. I can assure the noble Marquess that had this resolution not been put forward—and I think he should allow us to pay a considerable tribute to our Representative in the United Nations for its form—a resolution might easily have been put forward, and accepted, which would have pleased the noble Marquess and the Government much less.
LORD ROWLEY: My Lords, I agree with the Statement my noble friend has made. In view of the debate that is contemplated, would it be possible for the Government to consider publishing a White Paper containing all the economic facts in relation to the imposition of sanctions since sanctions were first imposed, and also including the record of some of the members of the United Nations who apparently do not altogether follow the dictate of the Security Council to carry out sanctions?
LORD BOOTHBY: Hear, hear!
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I take note of what the noble Lord has said, and I will pass this suggestion on to the appropriate quarter.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord would help me, and perhaps other noble Lords, by telling us what material assistance we have hitherto given to the people of Southern Rhodesia, and what material assistance we have in view for the future. I do not understand it.
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I think this is the sort of question that would be better dealt with when the House debates the matter, as it will have an opportunity to do shortly after the Recess.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, leaving aside the broader issues for debate, may I ask my noble friend this question? He used the words "unanimity in this decision", which is very interesting. Does that mean that the French Government, which previously has taken the view that the United Nations had no responsibility in this matter, has now changed its view?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I do not want to go too deeply into motives. I can only say that the Security Council decision was unanimous, and France is a Member of the Security Council.
LORD GRIMSTON OF WESTBURY: My Lords, when we come to the debate next week, would the Government be good enough to explain, as they are always claiming to be motivated by the highest moral considerations in the whole of this matter, how it comes about that they will in no circumstances be drawn into a confrontation with South Africa, which country will certainly break these sanctions; and how they can square that with this claim to be motivated by the highest moral principles?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I see no conflict. I repeat that in the whole of the Rhodesian policy, and certainly in connection with this resolution, we are motivated by the principles which have always motivated our policy towards the Rhodesian crisis. I should like to issue one word of warning. There seems to be a rather positive move towards a debate next week. I am not quite sure whether the usual channels will be able to arrange that.
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK: My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that, when this House has this debate, it would be helpful, if we are talking about the people of Rhodesia, to know exactly to whom we are referring? Are we referring to that small minority to whom the noble Marquess refers, the white minority, or are we referring to the coloured majority, many of whom are in prison without trial or without charge?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I think we are in danger of widening this question into a debate. But, of course, when we talk of the people of Rhodesia we mean all the people of Rhodesia, not any one part of the people of Rhodesia.

TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING BILL
4.20 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER: My Lords, may I first pay my personal tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Serota, for the clarity and charm with which she has presented this Bill—the first Bill which she has had the responsibility of presenting to this House. On behalf of the Churches represented on the Churches Main Committee I should like to give a general welcome to this Bill. One of the outstanding features of the present day in this country is the widespread movement of population. New towns are springing up, town centres in existing areas are being re-planned, and whole sections of slum property are being pulled down and the residents moved to new estates. All these changes involve re-planning by the Churches of their provision for the spiritual and social needs of the community. The new system of structure and local plans set forth in this Bill is an attempt to streamline the planning arrangements with a view to saving time and possible administrative complications. Any move in this direction will be welcomed by the Churches.
In order to keep pace with these new developments the Churches are keeping their local arrangements under constant review. In nearly every diocese there is an area interdenominational committee representing all the principal Churches in that area. New towns have their special committees, while in the case of some of the more important areas special bodies have been set up to maintain close con-
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tact with the planning authorities and to carry on consultations between all the Churches. As an example I might quote the Greater London Consultative Group, set up by the Bishop of London to maintain close contact with the Greater London Council. A similar body has been set up by the Diocese of Southwark, called the Department of Religious Sociology, which has broadly the same purpose. These are only general examples of a good many arrangements which have been made towards greater planning and œcumenical arrangements in the local areas served by the Churches.
If these local bodies are to work effectively it is absolutely essential that there should be early and close contact with the planning authorities responsible for structure and local plans. To some extent this point has been met by the new clauses introduced by the Minister at Report stage in another place. But these clauses do not go far enough. It is not sufficient to provide the Churches with information about plans already formulated. They should be given an opportunity, at the stage where the plans are in process of being framed, of making known their views and helping to plan for the provision of church buildings or community centres on sensible lines, wherever practicable sharing projects and buildings on a partnership basis, as we are seeking to do in my diocese. We understand that a committee is at present sitting, under the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, to consider public participation in planning, and the Churches have lost no time in making their views known to this committee. We hope that the evidence submitted will be closely studied and that local planning authorities will be urged to take the Churches into close consultation at the earliest possible stage.
I now pass to one or two points in the Bill, which I will deal with as shortly as possible. I have already referred to the importance of early consultation in regard to planning, and I do not think there is any need to say more in regard to Parts I and II of the Bill. The main concern of the Churches is with Part V, which deals with buildings of architectural or historic interest. This Part of the Bill imports new provisions restricting the demolition or serious alteration or I extension of listed buildings. The Bill

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provides that these new provisions shall not apply to ecclesiastical buildings used for ecclesiastical purposes; that is to say, in general, churches, but not ministers' residences. There has been a movement in some quarters to repeal this exemption in favour of ecclesiastical buildings which, as the House may know, has existed for over fifty years. Naturally, the Churches have this matter under constant and close consideration, and at this very time there is a Commission sitting, under Professor Arthur Phillips, with the authority of the Church of England Assembly to consider the whole relations of the Church of England to the planning law of the country. Naturally, I cannot forecast what conclusions this Commission will come to, nor can I say whether the other Churches will revise their opinions. At the present time, however, there is no indication that the Churches Main Committee would in any way wish to see this exemption withdrawn or diminished. They will, therefore, be bound to oppose any proposal to amend the Bill in this respect.
This brings me to what is perhaps the most important point in the Churches' case. Churches exist primarily for the purpose of public worship, and this implies a congregation. If, owing to movements of population or for other reasons, the population has diminished or disappeared, the church in most cases becomes redundant. In that event, it ceases to qualify for the exemption in favour of ecclesiastical buildings in ecclesiastical use and becomes subject to all the provisions of Part V of the Bill.
The normal course that Church authorities would adopt would be to dispose of the church building which was no longer required and to use the money to provide a church in a new housing area or elsewhere where it is urgently required. At this stage, however, they may find that consent to the demolition and sale of the church building is refused. What then is to be the position of the church authorities? It is doubtful whether they have the power to maintain the building as an ancient monument, and in any case the question of financial support would arise. Contributions from the Historic Buildings Councils, even if they were forthcoming, are hardly likely to be adequate.
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So far as I understand this Bill the only remedy is to claim that the property has become "incapable of reasonably beneficial use" and to serve a purchase notice on the local authority to buy the property. Unfortunately, it is notoriously difficult to say that a church building is "incapable of reasonably beneficial use". It can be uses for a large number of secular purposes, and, in any event, before making such a claim the church authorities would hive to satisfy themselves that no other denomination could use it. To some extent, the Church of England have met this problem in the Pastoral Measure which recently came before this House for Affirmative Resolution. There still remain, however, the buildings of the other Churches, many of which are involved.
Accordingly, I should like to appeal to the Government to consider this problem seriously, and in particular to see whether there is any way in which the words "reasonably beneficial use" can be explained and clarified. This could probably be done by making it clear that "reasonably beneficial use" is confined to the particular Church or denomination owning the property. In that case, all that would be required would be for the church authorities to prove that the church had ceased to be of any use to them in that particular locality, owing to movements of population, or for other reasons; it would not be necessary to show that there was no other secular or religious use to which it could be put. I can assure the Minister that this is a very real problem and involves the whole pastoral work of some of the Churches represented on the Churches Main Committee. They are particularly disturbed by the prospect that, as a result of the movement of population to which I have referred, they might be left with redundant churches which could not be demolished and sold and for which a purchase notice was rejected. I hope very much that the matter will be carefully looked at, and if the Churches Main Committee can be of any assistance, we shall be only too glad to discuss the question with the Minister or his officials.
My Lords, I think I have said enough to indicate the points in the Bill which are of special interest to the Churches; but, in general, I would repeat what I said at the beginning, that this Bill, which

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is an attempt to simplify and expedite the planning of new areas, has the support and good will of the Churches as a whole.
4.30 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, may I first of all thank both my noble friend Lady Serota and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, for the flattering, all too flattering, remarks that they made about the part that I played 21 years ago in connection with planning legislation. It is a good thing to be remembered with friendliness after all that period. There is a good deal of legislation passed 21 years ago that one would not think of in such complimentary terms, and it is nice to know that this legislation is still remembered in even more friendly terms than it was at the time when it was introduced; because I remember that at that time it was stated that nobody understood this legislation except myself and that even I had forgotten what it was all intended to be. But to-day it is, I think, regarded almost as a model of clarity compared with some of the legislation that we have been receiving of late. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, could find any parallel in the 1947 Act to the extract that he read from one of the Schedules to the present Bill. But of course we have not finished with the Bill yet, and perhaps we can clarify it.
May I also congratulate the noble Baroness on her first effort in introducing a major Bill, and particularly in following the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, on the Countryside Bill in making it reasonably short. I think that she succeeded in explaining the relevant parts of the Bill, and those to which it was important we should have our attention drawn, without going into a large amount of elaborate detail, which would be quite unnecessary on a Second Reading speech.
After that, it would be rather churlish of me to complain about the speed with which this Bill has been introduced into this House. But I do think it unfair to noble Lords that a Bill of this complexity and length should have been introduced only three days after the Bill has become available. It could be said that we had an opportunity of reading the original Bill and could have gone through the Report of the Committee stage, and
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that we could have read the Report of the Report stage. But I would draw the attention of the House to the fact that the Committee stage of this Bill was spread over 24 sittings. The Bill was drastically amended, and it was physically impossible in the short time available to go through this Committee stage.
On the Report stage there were 244 Amendments, many of them introduced by the Government, and I would say, at a rough guess, that more than half of those 244 were either accepted on the subject of an undertaking that they would be considered and dealt with during the proceedings in this House. In these circumstances the Bill that comes up to us to-day is a very different Bill from the Bill that was first introduced and the White Paper upon which the original Bill was based. I am not complaining of the noble Baroness, nor of the noble Lord, Lord Kennet. It is not their fault; nor that of my noble friend, Lord Beswick. I am not making a complaint about them.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, will my noble friend excuse my intervening for one moment? Had he been to discuss with us the difficulties, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, was good enough to come and discuss them, I should have explained to him, and I hope that I could have convinced him, that the present arrangement was, in the long run, for the greatest convenience of the House. The essential thing with a complex Bill of this kind is to give adequate time between Second Reading and Committee stage, and I am now hopeful that, as a result of our taking the Second Reading to-day, we can ensure that there is a satisfactory interval of time before we discuss the Bill on Committee stage. I put it to the noble Lord, whose influence is very great in this House, that the best service he could render to us is by putting these points to the other side of the Palace, not only to members of our Party, but, if I may delicately phrase it, members of his family.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I can assure the noble Lord that that part of the matter has already been attended to. But I am not so much concerned to-day with the convenience of my noble friend and of the business here as with the personal convenience of those who are taking part in the debate. I find myself in very great difficulty in saying anything

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worthwhile (I know that I have not done so so far) about this Bill, in view of the short time that we have had it available. I associate myself again with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, in the hope that we shall have adequate time to study any Amendments which the Government propose to put down, either at the Committee stage or at later stages of the Bill. We are bound to have a considerable number of Amendments, both in Committee and on Report, and we are not really serving any useful purpose to this House at all, in spite of all the flattering remarks that have been made about me personally, if one has not the opportunity of studying all that is being done and expressing a judgment on it. That is all I want to say on the personal side.
I welcome this Bill. I fully appreciate that after 21 years amendment to our planning procedure really was necessary. I should have preferred that it had awaited the time until the Government could legislate on the Report of the Royal Commission on Local Government, because I am quite certain that one of the essential things about our planning machinery is that a change is necessary in the formation of local planning authorities. I am quite certain that so long as we have our existing local planning authorities, with the system of delegation to the district councils, we shall continue to have an intolerable amount of delay in our proceedings.
May I deal first with this question of delay, because that was put in the forefront of the speech of the Minister in introducing the Bill in another place? He set out four matters with which he wanted to deal, but said that he thought the most important was the intolerable delay in getting decisions. This delay he took upon himself largely as a responsibility of the Ministry, but in fact a large amount of delay is incurred by the local authorities themselves. I know many cases, and I have had a considerable experience in recent years, where it takes from nine to twelve months before a planning application is actually dealt with by the local planning authority itself. One of the reasons is that there is this system of delegation to district councils: their views have first to be obtained. Quite often the views of the district council are not those of the local planning authority, and differences have, if possible,
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to be resolved, and the result is a great deal of delay.
I hope that in due course we shall have a more sensible system of local planning authorities, possibly on a regional basis, which would at any rate enable one body to give a decision and not have it referred from one body to another. I quite realise that it is going to be a long time before we can get legislation, and I am not in the least complaining that the Government have introduced legislation to-day to deal with what has become a really urgent problem.
I have referred to the delay caused by local authorities. But the delay caused in appeals is even more intolerable. I see that in another place the Minister referred to a period of some nine months from the time when an appeal is lodged to the time when the decision is given. I wish that were true. It is more likely to be double that period. From the many experiences that I have had (I am sorry again to refer to my experiences, but they are relevant), it may be as long as two years from the time when an appeal is lodged with the Minister to the time when the decision is given. Anything that will curtail that period will be most welcome.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, referred to the fact that the number of appeals has gone down from (I think he said) 14,000 some years ago to 10,000 in the last year. That is not surprising. In view of the delay in getting a decision a great many people have come to the conclusion that an appeal is not worth while and are prepared to put up with what they may regard as an injustice. But that is not the way in which we want to conduct our system of planning. We do not want people to labour under an injustice because they feel that the delay and uncertainty are intolerable. The Bill provides a number of means by which this delay can be reduced, but it does not deal with the delay by local authorities themselves, and, as I have said, that represents a quite substantial part of the delay. Without wishing to criticise local authorities harshly, I feel that many of them are unduly and exceptionally finicky about their approach to planning.
I regard our system of civil liberties in this country as one in which a citizen should be entitled to do what he likes with his own property, unless it is clearly

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against the public interest that he should do so. I understood that to be the whole basis of the control of development: that a man can carry out any development he likes if it is not against the public interest. I should have been prepared to give the developer the benefit of any doubt. If there is a genuine doubt as to whether a particular development is against the public interest, then I think he should be allowed to develop. Indeed, the only justification for refusing permission should be that to develop would be injurious to the public.
But, my Lords, that is not the spirit in which our town planning has been conducted. Indeed, I doubt whether it is entirely the spirit in which it has been conducted at the Ministry. If there is the slightest reason, the slightest case, for doubting the desirability of any development, then it is refused. Development is refused, for instance, because in fifteen years' time there may possibly be a need for road widening. I should not myself have thought that was a justification for refusing development to-day. But that is frequently what happens now; and if we want to improve the planning situation, I think that we must change our outlook on this matter and be prepared to give planning approvals much more readily, taking the risk, if need be, of having to pay compensation at some later date because we need to carry out certain improvements.
I should like to associate myself with practically all the preliminary observations which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, made about this Bill and the various matters which he thought would require close examination. I must say that I admire the diligence with which he has been able to go through the Bill—which is more than I have been able to do—and to pick on points which he thought would require attention. He expressed the hope that I would take part in the Committee stage. I can promise him that I shall, although I do not promise that I shall always agree with him.
Clause 3 of the Bill provides for a new form of development plan—the structure plan and the local plan. I must confess that I have some doubt as to what the structure plan really amounts to. What sort of a proposal are we going
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to get? On the face of it, Clause 3(3) looks to me much too vague. If, as the Minister said in his opening speech, it is desired to induce more people to participate and take an interest in planning, and to express their views about it, then the substance and content of a structure plan ought to be made much clearer.
There is to be a written statement of a very general character indeed, and it could be accompanied by drawings—not elaborate drawings or plans, but some kind of pictorial statement. But statements of a general character like that are not going to be conducive to people taking a close interest, and if we really want people to come forward and say what they think of the structure plan, they have to appreciate how it is going to affect them, and there must be a certain amount of definiteness about the plan which will enable them to make fairly detailed criticisms.
If you say, for instance, that a road is necessary from A to B, and this is part of your structure plan, it is of no great interest to anyone— except perhaps in the case of Oxford, where there are amenity considerations—unless people know exactly where this road is going to be. That is the difficulty of distinguishing between the structure plan and the local plan.
One of the difficulties that we are going to be faced with may well be that people have not objected to or commented on a structure plan because they had some doubts as to how it would affect them, or because it was not clear. Then, when they have received the local plan they have found that it did affect them. But they have been already committed by the structure plan, and not having objected to that, they are not in a position to object to the local plan. I may develop this matter at a later stage, but if the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, can clear my mind about the distinction between these two types of plans, I shall be very much relieved.
I agree with all the criticisms that have been made about the nature of the development plan under the present legislation. It has become much too rigid and, as has been stated in another place by a number of speakers, it is a fact that in many cases it takes so long to get approval of a development plan that it is

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already out of date by the time the approval is given. I take it that the structure plan will be a much more flexible instrument and that it will be possible to put forward further structure plans from time to time and to review them without the detailed formality attaching to the present development plan. If that is so, it will certainly be an improvement.
I do not want to go right through the Bill. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, that the 1947 Act was much more successful in dealing with the control of the countryside than with control of urban areas. He has given some of the reasons for that. It is perfectly true that the control of the countryside is a much simpler matter. It is largely a question of negative control, whereas the development of urban areas is much more difficult in view of the tremendous growth in population and traffic. I am a little doubtful whether this local plan is the real answer to the problem and whether it will be possible, even by a combination of the structure plan and the local plan, to foresee many of the difficulties that are going to face us in the coming years, to deal with them and to give the public an opportunity of commenting on them. I think that those clauses of the Bill will require a good deal of examination.
Finally, I welcome the new form of inquiry which has been set up, the Planning Inquiry Commission under Clauses 54 and 55. If we had had that form of inquiry in existence at the time of Stansted we should have saved ourselves a great deal of heartache and should have been much further forward than we are to-day in the provision of a third London airport. I think it should work. At any rate, I compliment the Government on their courage and initiative in having put the proposal forward, and we shall examine it more closely as the Bill proceeds. I must express my apologies to the House for the rather scrappy nature of my remarks, but I have not had the opportunity of going through the Bill as I should have liked. I hope that in the course of the later stages the Bill will get the full examination which it deserves, and which is essential if we are to make a success of town planning in the future.
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Our system of town planning has received compliments from all quarters. It has been stated to be one of the finest in the world and we want to enable it to continue to be so in the future. Everything will depend on the quality of the legislation which passes through this House in connection with this Bill. Therefore I emphasise again—and I am very glad my noble friend the Leader of the House is here—that we must have the fullest possible opportunity of examining the Bill and ensuring that it gets the greatest amount of discussion and consideration. I am much encouraged by the manner in which it has been received by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. There has been no element of Party politics in this. He has given it, as I believe, an objective examination, and I hope that the further proceedings of this Bill can be conducted in the same spirit.

FORCES' PAY
4.57 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, with permission—I am sorry it is at this late hour—I must repeat a Statement which my right honourable friend, the Secretary of State for Defence, has made in another place about Forces' Pay. His words are:
"In accordance with the standing reference of Forces' Pay made to the National Board for Prices and Incomes under Section (3)(1) of the Prices and Incomes Act 1966, the Board has made a First Report (No. 70). This recommends that pay should be increased by 7 per cent. with effect from 1st April, 1968, which is two years since the last increase; and that this increase should be treated as a global sum within which the Ministry of Defence should be free, subject to the usual Treasury agreement, to make appropriate adjustments and minor changes in pay scales. The Board also recommend that the out-of-quarters marriage allowance should be increased by 3s. a day for all ranks.
"The Government accept these recommendations, and these increases in pay and marriage allowance will be paid as soon as practicable.
"The Government welcome the Board's intention to undertake a

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thorough-going review designed to examine the feasibility of evaluating Service jobs and comparing them with those in civil life by methods which will reduce to the minimum the necessity for subjective judgment; and, as a related question, to examine the basic structure of Service pay and allowances, having regard to the implications of possible changes for manpower policies (Chapter 1, paragraphs 2 and 3 of the Board's Report). The Government have asked the Prices and Incomes Board to complete their review within a year in order that, consistently with current incomes policy, any new system of pay that may be desirable in the light of this review can be introduced as soon as practicable.
"The review will take into account the questions in Chapter 4 of the Report regarding the pay of doctors and dentists in the Armed Forces."
That is the end of the Statement.
LORD THURLOW: My Lords, we are grateful to the Leader of the House for this Statement. I should like to ask him one or two questions. First of all, regarding the 7 per cent. increase with effect from April 1, can he tell me how it is related to the comparable civilian rates; and if this examination of the feasibility of evaluating Service jobs is carried out, whether any alteration in pay, by way of further improvement, will be retrospective? Secondly, can the noble Lord tell us whether Service pensions are included. Here I must declare a considerable interest. Thirdly, can he tell us what the total cost of this increase of pay, and possibly pensions, will be? Finally, can he inform us whether the local overseas allowance is affected by this review?—because when I recently went to the Rhine Army there was considerable worry about the fairness of the interim L.O.A. additions.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I hope that I can answer the noble Lord's questions. I am not in a very strong position to give him an answer as to the extent to which this pay increase accurately reflects increases in civil pay rates to achieve comparability. Under what might be called the crude application of the Grigg formula, it does not match up to the full amount which would suggest
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even an increase of up to 10 per cent. But the noble Lord will note that the Board are to carry out a review in the course of this year which would establish whether those criteria are appropriate. Various consequences may then follow.
Clearly, I cannot tie the Government to the action which they will take on any recommendation, or indeed say whether any increase will be paid retrospectively. I share the hope of the noble Lord in this matter, realising also that this may have some bearing on his own personal interest in the matter of pensions. I congratulate him on being 7 per cent. richer as a result of this review. The total cost of the increase in pensions is £1·7 million—but I do not think that is all going to the noble Lord! The total cost of the present increase in pay and marriage allowance will be £27 million.
The noble Lord asked me about L.O.A. in Germany. I am afraid I cannot answer that question. He will have noted that, quite apart from the particular increase which has been announced, for the out-of-quarters marriage allowance, there is certain flexibility within the total amount as to how this money is to be allocated. I have a number of figures before me as to how it works out in regard to particular individuals, but I will not take up the time of the House by reading them out. I would only say that a representative increase for a married private living out of quarters could come to as much as 11 per cent. or 35s. The point about L.O.A. is noted, and no doubt it will be taken into account.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord two questions? The first relates to recruiting for the Services. Are the Government satisfied that this mere 7 per cent. increase will be a sufficient incentive to bring up the numbers of recruits to something like what is necessary in certain branches of the Services? Secondly, in regard to the comparison of Service jobs with those in civil life, where there is a major discrepancy will the Service jobs be brought up to comparability with the civil jobs, and will this increase then be included in the overall adjustment as stated at the beginning of the noble Lord's statement—in other words, would it be included in the overall adjustment or would it be additional to it?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, on the first point I cannot say that I, personally, regard the recruiting figures as very happy at the moment. As usual, the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, has put his finger on a matter on which he will find a good deal of sympathy, particularly from Service or ex-Service Ministers. We shall just have to see whether this does the trick. Clearly, these are the sort of national factors which the Incomes Board will have to take into account in establishing appropriate rates. It is not only a matter of comparability, but also a matter of recruitability which has to be taken into account.
I was not sure about the noble Lord's point on comparability. In regard to the present increase, there will be certain adjustments, but they will not necessarily be of a very wide range; nor will the Government themselves, in regard to particular areas of pay increases, be able to do very much in the way of adjustment in terms of comparability. I hope that the further review which will take place later this year will focus more precisely on that point. I am afraid I have not perhaps fully understood the noble Lord, or perhaps have not even given the proper answer. But if it is not satisfactory and there is something more to be added to it, I will let him know.

TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING BILL
5.5 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, it is always a privilege to hear the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, in a debate on town and country planning. It is less of a privilege to have to follow him, since one feels rather like an undergraduate following a professor. I should also like to add my support to the general plea that this Bill should be given plenty of time for the various stages through this House. It is an extremely complex Bill and the planning laws will be even more complex when it is passed into law.
I would give a general welcome to the three main objectives of the Bill; namely, the speeding up of decisions, the improvement in the quality of decisions, and the proposal to allow more people to become involved in those decisions.
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However, I personally believe that these objectives will be difficult to achieve under the Bill as at present drafted, and I hope that there will be some revision during its various stages in this House.
Anybody with any experience of planning applications and appeals must agree with the first main objective of the Bill, the need for quicker decisions. The present system of planning appeals is an almost exact parallel to this Government's legislative programme. It is the malaise of overloading the system, which leads to a strangulation of progress and ultimate collapse. How the Bill hopes to achieve the need for quicker decisions was explained to us by the noble Baroness, Lady Serota. It is a system with a two-tier structure—a phrase which seems to ring a bell. It is the second half of this two-tier structure, the local plan and the method of appeal against a planning refusal under such a plan, which has led to a certain amount of concern and which I should like to raise to-day.
The main concern is in relation to Clause 22, as to the way in which the local authority will be able not oily to refuse a planning application in the first instance, but to appoint their own inspector to hear the appeal. One knows that there are safeguards in the Bill, in Clause 20, under which the Minister can call in such an appeal, but where, when, and on what grounds appears to be most vague. For example, could the appellant appeal to the Minister for a Ministry inspector to hear the appeal? And where a local authority undertakes planning for its own use, would an appeal go to the Ministry inspector?
No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, will have seen a letter in The Times last January, in which the Chairman of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England described the planning appeal proposals under the Bill as repugnant to the British sense of justice. I would not go so far as that, but I feel that decisions on planning appeals could easily become open to suspicion and doubt as to their fairness, for the simple reason that the local authority inspector, however fair he may be, will find it difficult, because he has been appointed by the local authority, to convince any aggrieved party that he is totally unbiased.

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Another interesting comment on the local appeal system was made in page 48 of the Report of the Planning Advisory Committee, under "Planning Appeals." The view was expressed that more appeals from planning refusals under the local plan could well result from this Bill because, unlike the old development plan, the local plan will not have the authority of ministerial approval behind it. If there are more appeals—and there could well be—the result must surely be a large increase both in public expenditure and, most important of all, in the local rates.
The second fundamental objective of the Bill, public participation in planning, is one with which I am sure few people would quarrel. I do not think one can put the objective better than to repeat the words of the noble Lord's right honourable friend on January 31 in another place. He said:
"I want people to have a much better chance of being involved in the planning of the area they live in and of influencing it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 31/1/68, col. 1362.]
Because I know that this was not just a lip-service paid by the Minister, and that it is the earnest objective of the Bill, I feel that I should advise the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, that during the Committee stage I plan to try to strengthen the Bill even more towards that objective by introducing an Amendment whereby the planning application requirement will include notification to the parish council in whose area the application is involved.
There are a number of sound reasons for this, of which I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, is aware. In the first place, a new development in a country village has a much more striking effect on the surroundings than a similar development in an urban setting. A second practical reason is that those living in a village are often in a much weaker position in regard to planning applications and decisions than those living in a town. The reason for that is that members of the rural district councils often represent two, three or even four parishes, and although they are acutely aware of their own parish they are sometimes less familiar with other parishes. This is borne out by recent examples of planning decisions which clearly show that members of planning committees were not fully conversant with
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the sites under discussion. I have two examples of this. There is the example of a sewerage system in Lincolnshire which was passed by the council. It was later discovered that the land was waterlogged, although the local inhabitants knew about it before the application was passed. The scheme was eventually abandoned having cost the taxpayers £9,000, yet at no point was the parish council consulted. The second example is in regard to a housing scheme in Berkshire, where the architect designing the scheme went to great pains and considerable cost to preserve certain trees. Again, the local inhabitants knew that those trees were due for felling anyway, because they were diseased and dying, or even dead, and yet again the parish council was not consulted.
At the present time, in 60 per cent. of the countryside, through the county councils there has evolved a practice whereby applicants have to notify parish councils. That demonstrates two important factors: first, that notification to parish councils does not gum up or slow down the process of planning; and, secondly, that the majority of county councils consider that such a procedure is an important part of the system of planning and a method of ensuring that local people have a say in local planning. For obvious reasons, I do not wish to advance any further arguments to-day in favour of this case. But I earnestly hope that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, will be able at a later stage to accept this concept which, I am sure, as a countryman must be dear to his own heart.
There is one other question which I should like to ask the noble Lord, and that is on the future of Green Belts. As I understand it, some time ago the noble Lord's right honourable friend announced that there would be no further extension of Green Belts until local authorities could first show that proper provision had been made in their areas for housing needs. But, against this, many local authorities have awaited ministerial approval of their Green Belt proposals for many years; in fact, for almost a decade.
As the noble Lord knows, the Green Belt represents to many people a certain security of planning and a certain sanity of planning, in addition to helping to

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check the sporadic expansion of towns and cities. But it is at present in a very unsatisfactory position, in that the Minister is apparently not willing to approve Green Belt proposals. I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, if he can say whether the Minister intends to continue with this concept of Green Belts, and, if so, when he intends to approve the various outstanding Green Belt proposals.
I should like to end by repeating my doubts about whether this new Bill will really achieve the streamlining and the quality of decision which it sets out to achieve. It will certainly lead to many more appeals under local plans, and in many cases to dissatisfaction with the new appeal system. As town and country planning affects the lives of every one of us and, in the words of the White Paper,
"shapes the conditions in which we live together".
I hope that this Bill will be given the most careful consideration and scrutiny as it passes through this House.
5.17 p.m.
LORD ILFORD: My Lords, I should like to preface what I have to say tonight by joining in the expressions of appreciation, congratulation, or retrospective congratulation, whichever is the right word, which other speakers have offered to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin. I am sure we are all very glad to see him in his place to-night. I saw a good deal of the Act of 1947 in its early years. It was a most bold and imaginative venture. It has served this country well for twenty years, and even if it is now getting a little out of date that does not detract from the merits which it brought to national planning in the past.
We are getting into the habit of speaking of the Act of 1947 as though that was the first attempt to bring under comprehensive planning control all the land in this country. That of course was not the case. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, recalls the Act of 1932 as clearly as I do. That Act sought to bring all the land in the country under effective planning control. It failed because it was too timid and because it was administered at too low a level, which meant that in many cases it was not administered at all. The Act of 1947 has, I think, proved to be unsuited to the
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conditions of to-day because it is too rigid. There is not a sufficient flexibility in the administration of the development plan; and I think it is that defect, which was pointed out by the Planning Advisory Group, which this Act seeks to remedy.
My Lords, the noble Baroness, when she introduced the Bill this afternoon, spoke of it as a very important Bill; and indeed it is a Bill of first-rate importance. It is a complicated Bill which requires much closer study than your Lordships have been able to give it hitherto. During the passage of the Bill in another place a great many assurances were given at different stages by the Minister in charge that the Government would look again at a number of provisions in the detailed Parts of the Bill. Of course, one welcomes those assurances, but they make it rather difficult to discuss this Bill tonight in any detail, because in many cases one does not know what the final provisions of the Bill are likely to be. Accordingly, I do not propose tonight to venture into criticism of the details of the Bill, or indeed to explore them at any great length. We shall have opportunities to do that later.
The Bill in its general aspects is welcomed, I think, by the local authorities. There are, of course, certain detailed criticisms which they will desire to make at a later stage, but generally speaking I think the Bill is acceptable to the local authorities. The Bill is to be carried out by the local planning authorities. As I understand it, what is called the structure plan will be carried out by local planning authorities, which means county councils and county boroughs. Local plans are also to be carried out by the local planning authorities, and all the authorities below the county councils and below the county boroughs appear to be excluded altogether. That seems to me to be a matter of regret. I should have thought that this was an opportunity when use could very profitably be made of the services of the non-county boroughs. I am fortified in that impression by the fact that the Planning Advisory Group recommended that the local plans should be made for urban areas having a population of 50,000. If 50,000 is to be selected as the unit to be covered, or as an approximation of the

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size of area which will be covered, by the local plan, I should have thought that use could have been made of the non-county borough. The non-county borough might well have been made responsible for the preparation of the action plans and of local plans, leaving the structure plan to the county council.
I agree, as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, pointed out, that there is delegation by the county authorities to the non-county boroughs and to the urban districts, but it is not a satisfactory form of delegation because the decision has to come back again to the county council; and that, of course, adds still further to the delay in getting a final decision. I see no reason why a non-county borough having a population of, say, 50,000 or 60,000 should not be made the authority responsible for the local plan. I should have thought that another advantage of that arrangement would be that it would stimulate local interest, which is one of the purposes which the Minister has in view in this Bill. The fact that the local council were the people responsible for preparing the plan would have made a useful contribution to the amount of public interest taken in its preparation. My Lords, there it is; and I hope, though without very much real confidence, that the noble Lord may to-night give me some encouragement that at a later stage we may amend the Bill so as to make it possible for the non-county boroughs to play the part which they are anxious to play.
Now I turn from the administration or the Bill to the question of appeals. The present system of appeals is this. An appeal against a decision by the planning authority is heard by an inspector of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. He is, of course, an official. He hears the evidence and takes a note of the parties' cases, but he does not decide the appeal. His recommendation goes to the Minister, and it is the Minister who gives the decision for or against the appeal, basing himself upon the material which the inspector has collected. That means that there are two minds at work on the solution of an appeal. But I have always felt a little uneasy about these appeals on planning matters, and I feel still more uneasy at the proposal that the inspector shall be the person who not
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only takes the evidence but gives the final decision. I do not think it is right that in matters which frequently involve large sums of money the final decision should be given, without any right of appeal, by a single individual.
At one time the Ministry considered setting up a local tribunal. I would not advocate that. I think it would be difficult to staff a local tribunal; and there are other reasons why I think that proposal would not be successful. In fact, it was condemned by the Royal Commission on Tribunals. But what the Minister was considering then was something rather different from what I am drawing attention to to-night. He was considering circumstances in which the hearing of an appeal would be before a local tribunal and the decision would be given by them. The proposal was rejected, and rightly rejected. But it is not right, in my view, that there should be no appeal from the inspector. I am quite sure that every tribunal does its work better if there is an appeal from its decision; and that, I think, applies with force to the hearing of these planning appeals.
My Lords, I make no reflection upon the inspectors. I have known many inspectors of the Ministry, and have appeared before them on many occasions. They are not, of course, lawyers, and they are not men who have been trained in hearing evidence and in the collection of material. But they do their work well, and I think they are generally respected by those who have to appear before them. But still the fact remains that the decision is the decision of a single person, without any appeal; and that, I think, is fundamentally unsound and fundamentally wrong.
I have one other matter which I desire to put to the Minister. The Bill provides that the amount of compensation which is payable under the present law to statutory undertakers if in fact they sustain loss by reason of planning decisions shall be reduced; and I welcome that. I see no real reason why a statutory undertaker should be given a special position in regard to these matters. Why should he be entitled to compensation when an ordinary person is not? I think it would have been much better if the Bill had gone

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a stage further and had said that the whole question of paying special compensation of this sort to statutory undertakers should be brought to an end.
My Lords, I should like to go a little further than that. One knows that statutory undertakers sometimes claim that they are not bound by town planning restrictions. I do not know. It is a question whether they are or are not. But it is quite clear that the Crown is not bound by statutory provisions. Crown proposals are not subject to local town planning consent. I think it would be much better if they were. There is no reason why a building erected by the Crown, or by one of its agencies, such as the Post Office, should be free from the planning control which would be applied to another applicant. It may be that the right way would be to do what I believe is done in some Departments today: that is, that the views of the planning authorities are ascertained by the Planning Departments and their views are respected. If they express views against the proposed development then the Department do not carry it out. When I was concerned to obtain premises for the public service I was quite free from town planning restrictions but I always consulted the planning authority. If there was an objection to what we proposed to do then we treated ourselves as ordinary applicants and gave up the project. That is the right way for a Government Department to act.
I should like to see planning control extended not only to statutory undertakers—if they are not subject to it at present—but to the Crown as well, perhaps in some modified form by voluntary arrangements between the different Departments involved. I have only those three points to put to the Minister tonight. I am sure that this Bill is a necessary one and a very welcome one. It will, I think, be readily accepted by the general public, and it will certainly be readily accepted by the local authorities.
5.32 p.m.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE: My Lords, I apologise for speaking when my name is not on the list. The fault is not mine; I sent my name in, but it failed to get on the list. Three or four minutes will suffice for me to make the single point that I am concerned with to-day. The Bill has had a
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general welcome, and I shall not repeat other people's comments. I am interested in one point only, the point covered in Clauses 3 and 7 on public participation in planning—which is a very important idea and one which so far in this country has not reached a very advanced stage. Planning has fallen into some disrepute among the public because of its grievous delays; and one of the main objects of this Bill is to speed up the process. In this we are all behind the Bill. But as you speed things up, so you increase the danger of riding roughshod over objectors. What I like about the Bill is that it seems to me to be making a real effort to avoid doing this. Although it may be possible to improve the Bill in Committee, it shows willing in this most important aspect.
My Lords, we must provide for this opportunity for objectors all along the line—and the line is getting longer every day. First of all, there is the regional planning council. Then there are the structure plans described in the Bill, the occasional action areas and, finally, the local areas. It is essential that in each case the authorities should give an opportunity for objection; and the Bill lays down that in the structural stage and in the local stage they must take steps to secure that "adequate publicity is given". Just what that means is not, I think, made clear. It is here that the whole process could break down. The less people understand things, the angrier they get. The truth is that as things grow more complex and difficult, ordinary people react in the classical way of Pavlov's dogs who, as your Lordships will remember, continued to react accurately in distinguishing between stimuli as they got closer and closer until, finally, they were so close that the dogs went to sleep. I feel that there is a real danger that the public concerned with these complex affairs will become apathetic. We must guard against this.
I hope that we may get some real guidance from the Skeffington Committee, whose appointment we all welcome, and who were referred to in another dace on the Second Reading. The Committee has asked for evidence; but its setting up has been overshadowed by serious international crises, and I am afraid that it may have failed to get the publicity it deserves. It has, I think, approached one or two interested bodies; but we do not

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know which bodies. I should have preferred to have seen the Committee seek evidence more widely and more definitely than I believe it has.
My Lords, I should like to support—and at this stage with the due proviso that one may change one's views later on—the suggestion of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, of an Amendment in relation to parish councils. I think that in country areas this is important; though I doubt whether it will do much good in the urban areas. There is only one local authority—I think it is Bristol—that has considered communication with its citizens important enough to warrant a fully-fledged department of public relations. I think others will have to follow suit.
I should like to suggest one thing that I think the local authorities might be expected to do to bring their plans to the attention of the public. There should be in every major town and city an information department to publicise the council's activities and to handle the complaints, questions and suggestions of the citizens. It should be an important part of community life, situated in an accessible part of the town possibly in the shopping centre. It should not be pushed down into a local authority basement. We had an instance of this in my own area in the country where a village plan was brought to the women's institute and exposed for criticism—of which it received a great deal—for a week or two. In a country village this, I think, is adequate; but in a town I do not think it is. I feel that the citizens would be more likely to find out what the local authority intends to do, and get a chance to lodge their objections to it, if they could go to a centre of this kind and see a clearly marked and illustrated map describing the project. That is the only point I have to make. It has been a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Silk in who was my M.P. 35 years ago in Peckham, and to follow my noble friend Lady Serota on introducing her first Bill. I wish it every success.
5.40 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (LORD KENNET): My Lords, the structure of town and country planning in this country is indeed old. For the sake of historical interest, I should like to remind your Lordships of the 1932 Town and Country
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Planning Act, the first Town and Country Planning Act ever to be passed by a British Parliament. I have just been looking at the Second Reading debate on that Bill, and I find that a Conservative Minister of Health proposed that there should be a system of compensation for those whose interests in the land were reduced by planning decisions, and that there should also be a levy on those whose interests in the land were increased. He proposed that the compensation should be paid by local authorities, and that the land levy—"betterment levy" as he called it—should go to the local authorities and not to the centre. This was a Conservative Minister introducing, as he said, a Bill which had been prepared by his predecessor, a Labour Minister. Thus far have we come. I wonder how easily we can imagine in present circumstances a Conservative Minister proposing that local authorities should levy a betterment levy. The Conservative Minister in question was my father; the Labour Minister was the father of my right honourable friend the present Minister—thus do the wheels of history turn.
My Lords, before going further let me congratulate, as many noble Lords have done, my noble friend Lady Serota on the skill and calm with which she introduced this enormous Bill—and it is enormous. When the Clerk said, "Lord Kennet" and my noble friend rose, I, like many of your Lordships, no doubt, was relieved. But here it is, and I am left to "catch the bits" at the end of what has been an extremely worthwhile debate. At this stage, I should like to extend an invitation to all Members of your Lordships' House. This invitation will, I hope, appear on the all-Party Whip; but let me extend it now verbally, because I think many of the difficulties which have been expressed by various speakers about understanding what is on can be solved by means of this invitation. It is that any noble Lord interested in this Bill should come to my Ministry on the morning of Thursday, June 13, and look with me at an exhibition, which we have arranged, of idealised, theoretical plans of the nature of those which can be expected to be brought forward under this Bill. Those who come will see a typical structure plan, a typical local plan and a typical action area plan, and they will be able to see how these plans interrelate.

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I turn now to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. He complained, as did other noble Lords, about the short period between the introduction of this Bill and its printing and Second Reading. He said that if he had had a longer period to consider the Bill it would have been better; but I must say that I found his speech so full, and showing such a complete grasp of everything in the Bill, that I shudder to think what it would have been like had he had longer to consider the matter. Seriously, my Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on what he was able to say about it after this admittedly rather short period.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, complained about the complications of the Bill and read out one example. Here, of course, we are up against a familiar point. I admit that it is complicated, but I would say to the House that, like all land law and planning law, it has to be complicated because we are not dealing only with small and simple people who wish to do small and simple things; we are dealing also with highly expert and utterly irresponsible land speculators, backed by enormous capital resources, who are able—as is any citizen, if he can afford it—to hire the best legal advice. It is simply no good for a Government to pass an Act, and then to say, "Whoops! Sorry, we had not thought about that one" when someone gets through the net with a clearly anti-social development. It is the need to consider the least socially minded citizens of the country, who are often backed by the biggest financial resources, that leads to the inevitable complication of measures like this.
I feel that on the whole we have had a rather short debate, given the size of the measure before us, and for that reason I hope to be able to answer a great many of the points which were made. I apologise in advance for the fact that I shall speak at some length in order to do this. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, asked what was the need for local plans other than for action areas which clearly needed one to show precisely what is going to be done. What need was there, he asked, for local plans in other places? My Lords, the need is that it will be in accordance with these local plans that development will he controlled. It will be by reference to these local plans that the answer, "Yes", or "No", will be
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returned to a given application for planning consent. This I shall be able to make clearer to interested Members of the House on June 13 if, as I hope they will, they accept my invitation.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, asked what happened about local plans when the local planning authority appointed inspectors to carry out a public inquiry into an objection to them. He asked, does the local planning authority have to publish the inspector's report? Does it have to send the inspector's report to the Minister? My Lords, the answer in both cases, is, "Yes, it does", though the responsibility for the decision thereon is not that of the Minister but of the local planning authority. So the Minister will always know what is going on, and this will enable him to decide whether and when to bring into effect the powers which the Bill gives him in this respect.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, spoke of the overburdening of the Whitehall machine, and I agree with him. This is one of the reasons which underlies the introduction of this Bill—one of several—but it is an important reason. The Whitehall machine is grossly overburdened. We have heard mention of delays of up to two years in getting decisions as being not uncommon. I do not think that is so in the majority of cases, as was said by my noble friend Lord Silkin. Nine months is still the average normal time, but there are cases of two years and I might tell the House that if we had not introduced—
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, is my noble friend saying that the average is nine months? I wish he would look at that again. I am prepared to agree that the minimum period is nine months, but the average is considerably more.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, let us agree that the time ranges between nine months and two years. I am afraid that without notice I cannot engage in a debate about what proportion of the cases fall at which end of that spectrum, though I could with notice.
My Lords, if we had not introduced this measure, with its provisions for devolution, it would have been necessary just about to double the staff that the Minister has at his disposal for the settlement of these questions. In the

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present climate of opinion in which all sides of British political life agree that it is important to prevent the proliferation of central bureaucracy, that was one of the main reasons for the introduction of this Bill. According to what canons, and in what way, are those inspectors' appeals to be settled by the Central Government inspector to be separated from those to be settled by the Minister himself? The criteria which will be brought to bear on this are complex, but I will not hold up the discussion now by outlining what we have in mind. If any noble Lords are in doubt about this, I suggest that they put down probing Amendments at the Committee stage and I can give a fuller answer.
It will be a gradual procedure: only the simplest and most obvious categories of cases will be delegated in the first place. One hopes that more categories may be delegated as time goes on and experience builds up. The point about this is that, as the House knows, 97½ per cent. of planning appeal decisions by the Minister confirm what the inspector recommended. In 97½ per cent. of cases, the crawling over of the inspectors' reports by the central bureaucracy is unnecessary. We hope to build up this system gradually, though I think it may be unlikely to reach 97½ per cent., but when so much time is being wasted, we have to make a beginning and give responsibility to these inspectors, who without doubt have the confidence of the public and all parties who are engaged in these matters.
The noble Lord also asked about ministerial answerability for appeals which under the Bill are to be settled by the inspector and not by the Minister. The Minister will be answerable in Parliament for the overall operation of powers conferred on him and delegated to the inspectors under the Bill. Secondly, he will be answerable in Parliament for the general planning policies under which the inspectors operate in the exercise of their delegated functions. He will not be answerable for the rightness or wrongness of this or that decision taken by an inspector in the delegated area. This fact in itself will be a great incentive for the Minister not to delegate farther and faster than is justified by the general opinion of the way things are going.
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The noble Lord also asked about cases which, although they may be quite small, arouse violent local feeling. One provision we have in mind here is that an inspector who starts out on a case which he thinks he may be able to settle himself, and then finds that it is something of a hornet's nest locally, will be able to report to the Minister that in his view the case ought to be settled in accordance with the old procedure. He will turn in a report and a recommendation, and the Minister will settle it. Equally, the Minister, who will know what is going on, can direct an inspector to submit such a case to him for decision.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, also asked about the compulsory powers being given to the Minister of Public Building and Works. I think his point was that the Minister had had compulsory powers for some time and they were being extended. That is not so. I know that in another place, at a late hour at night or at an early hour in the morning, there was a great fight about this, but as a matter of fact the Minister has not had compulsory purchase powers.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, that was not what I sought to say. I said that I thought the Minister had not these powers but that he was now being given them in almost all forms over almost the whole field of other departments, and that this was a question noble Lords would wish to probe. It may be right, but it is quite a substantial change.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, the matter was surrounded with some confusion in another place. The question of the Minister's powers is analogous to the compulsory powers of the Post Office. In order to save time now, I would suggest to the noble Lord that if he is in any doubt about whether what is being done is the right thing, he might be so good as to put down an Amendment and we can thresh it out on Committee Stage.
The noble Lord also asked about listed buildings, and what recourse an owner might have against the listing of a building if he thought that it had been improperly listed and the value of his interest in it had thereby been decreased. What should he do if he thinks his building is not worthy of inclusion in the list? This question will not strike him

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in any real sense unless he wants to demolish or alter his building. Then, presumably he will apply for a consent under the new procedure in the Bill. If he obtains consent, the question is answered. If he is denied consent, he can appeal against that refusal, and among the grounds on which he can appeal is the ground that a mistake was made and the building ought never to have been included in the list. An inquiry could then be held and the matter determined in accordance with the normal canons of planning law.
The noble Lord raised the question of local inquiries after the setting up of the new proposed planning inquiry commissions. He asked how can it be, if a commission is to compare the desirability of various alternative sites for a development, that there is only provision for one local authority at the end. The point of the first part of the inquiry will be to decide which is the best site, and when that has been settled there will be a local inquiry to take into account the interests of the people who are living on the site and beside it, and to see that all is done in the justest possible manner. If the noble Lord is not content with that proposed procedure, if he does not believe that the planning inquiry commissions can pin it down to one front runner after the general inquiry, no doubt he would consider putting down an Amendment to allow more than one local inquiry to be held at the end. I neither commend nor advise against this course.
Lastly, the noble Lord complained in general terms about the relationship between this Bill and the forthcoming Report of the Royal Commission on Local Government. I admit that this was a problem that the Government had to face. Much of this Bill depends on the devolution of powers and their devolution only to local authorities who are competent to exercise them. If the Royal Commission come up with a recommendation that there should be fewer but larger and more powerful planning authorities, then one would expect that a greater proportion of planning authorities would be competent to exercise the new devolved powers. But there is no certainty about what the Royal Commission will recommend.
In the meantime, there remains the pressing problem of the 10,000 appeals a
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year, the overloading of the Whitehall machine and the delays. Moreover, it is clear that there are already certain local authorities which are large enough and competent enough to exercise these delegated powers. It seemed to the Government right, therefore, to proceed with this Bill, whatever should be the recommendations of the Royal Commission. What appears to be unlikely is that the Royal Commission will recommend anything which will make this devolution appear less sensible than it does now. The degree of increased sensibleness which might arise out of the recommendations of the Royal Commission is all that is at stake—in other words, there seems to the Government to be no justification to wait to see what they recommend.
I turn now to the intervention by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester, who spoke of the desirability of early consultation in the drawing up of plans between local planning authorities and persons affected—and, of course, in this field the Established Church is a "person affected"; that is the way planning law describes it. He spoke of the Committee chaired by my honourable friend Mr. Skellington, and of the difficulty of establishing beneficial use, or that there was a possible beneficial use, for a redundant church. I have one or two points to make about that. First of all, I am not sure that I go all the way with the right reverend Prelate about the difficulty of establishing lack of beneficial use. I believe that in four of the five cases in the last year it his been possible to establish a lack of beneficial use, and that seems to be a reasonable proportion.
Secondly, in all his speech he made no mention of the Pastoral Measure and the redundant churches' fund to be set up under it on the Church's side, or of the corresponding London Churches Bill which the Government will introduce to play their part. The most valuable redundant churches will no doubt go this way. Of course, I do not deny that there will be others, and that there are churches here for that "affected Person" which is the Established Church. I would remind the right reverend Prelate that not too long ago he wrote to my right honourable friend the Minister asking whether a deputation from the Churches' Main Committee would be

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acceptable on this point: my right honourable friend replied that it would, and he and I look forward to that meeting whenever the Churches' Main Committee wish to pursue the invitation.
I turn now to the speech of my noble friend Lord Silkin, whom I and the whole House always hear with the utmost attention upon anything to do with planning, because if he was not actually Abraham in this respect, he was at least the re-founder of the line of planning law in this country. I am coming to the nice bit in a minute. He complained about the short gap between the printing of the Bill for the benefit of this House and its consideration to-day. It is true that this was short. But the Bill was not guillotined in another place, and it will not be guillotined here; and his Bill was when he introduced it. So I hope he will tolerate the shortcomings of a later generation dealing with these complicated matters in the matter of hurrying the Bill forward. We all have to operate under the exigencies of Parliamentary speed. He had to do the same himself when he was introducing his great Bill of the 'forties.
My noble friend gave what I consider was a formidable catalogue of the reasons for this Bill. I think I have never heard the shortcomings and outdatedness of the present system more fully and authoritively indicated than they were by my noble friend. He spoke of the delay, not at ministerial level but at local level. I hope that some of this delay, which of course the Government must admit, will be able to be avoided by the proposal to permit the devolution of decision on certain classes of planning appeals by local planning councils to their own officers. This is a matter which arises out of the recommendation of the Working Party on the management of this matter, with which my noble friend is familiar, and, like the proposal to allow the Ministers' inspectors to settle certain cases, this proposal merely reflects the reality of the situation.
A large proportion of local planning applications are determined by the local planning council on the recommendation of an officer without discussion, without details presented, without any argument; it is a pure rubber stamp. In practice,
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the councils have that degree of confidence in their officers, and I think they are right to do so. It seems only managerial common sense to go one further and give statutory sanction to the right of an officer of a local council to determine certain carefully controlled categories of planning applications without reference to elected members at all. I should emphasise that all these categories, both at local level and at central level, will be most carefully controlled and most gradually introduced, and that the senior body, be it the local council, as in most cases, or the Minister in the central appeal cases, will be fully informed throughout of what goes on, and will be able to change the arrangements back to the former ones at the drop of a hat if they think the new system is giving rise to abuses.
My noble friend Lord Silkin complained of the delay imposed by the to-ing and fro-ing between the county councils and district councils. When I listened to this, I thought very much about the points which I assumed (and it turned out later that I rightly assumed) the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, was going to make about parish councils. It is difficult to get this matter right. If, as my noble friend says, there is already delay imposed by consultation with district councils, how much more delay would be imposed by adding a third layer, from county council to district council, district council to consult parish council, parish council to inform district council, district council to inform county council, appeal to the Minister. That would go against the whole purpose of this Bill, which is to speed things up in the interests of natural justice, which in itself contains an element of decent expedition.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, could the noble Lord explain that last statement?—because, as I explained in my short speech, certain procedures by county councils already take in the fact that applicants have to give notice to parish councils, anyway, and this in no way causes further delays in the process.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I should be very reluctant to accept the statement that reference to a parish council in no way delayed a decision. Reference to anybody always delays a decision, does

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it not? But perhaps I may come to that when I come to the part of my remarks dealing with the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull.
My noble friend Lord Silkin asked whether the citizen would be in a position to object to a local plan under the Bill if he had not objected to the structure plan. Yes, of course he would. That is a point that I hope to go into more fully on June 13. But the structure plan is going to be rather vague as regards places. It will be purely diagrammatic. It may well be that the man looking at the proposed structure plan will not have a clue whether his own interest is affected by it or not. He simply will not be able to make it out, because it will be a small-scale map and a general statement. When it comes to the local plan the degree of precision will be greatly increased and he will be able to see whether his own interest is affected. It would be quite unjust, of course, to say that his vagueness on the first occasion precluded him from making representations about the precise proposal on the second, which did affect his interest; and that will not be the result of the present Bill.
I come now to Lord Kinnoull's intervention. I think he may have been confusing two things. He may have been confusing the right of the local planning authority to appoint its own inspector to hear objections against local plans with the right of the local planning authority to appoint its own inspector to hear appeals against planning decisions. The former is in the Bill; the latter is not. There has been a good deal of talk about local authorities being judge and advocate in their own courts. This talk, the importance of which I recognise, must be confined only to the question of local plans, and nothing else. This is the place where the local planning authorities will themselves appoint a person to hear objections and will consider the report of that person and will themselves decide. The present procedure for appeals to the Minister against planning decisions remains unchanged, except in so far as the Minister may delegate certain categories of decision to his, the Minister's, inspectors, or appointed persons. I do not know whether that removes the noble Earl's doubts, but I hope it does. This does not run across the whole field of any decision given by a local authority; only that one part of the field, the draw-
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ing up of the local plan after the structure plan, which is itself subject to confirmation by the Minister.
Lord Kinnoull inquired also about Green Belt policy and where we stand on that matter. It is not affected by the present Bill. I would rather concentrate attention on the Bill to-day. If he is worried about that, I think we could have a useful Unstarred Question or debate about it at a later time. Then he came to the vexed question of parish councils, the role of the parish councils in the drawing up of these plans. This is a difficult conundrum for any Government to face, because I think that any decent and human Government, whatever their political complexion, must have the utmost regard to the opinions of citizens organised in the smallest possible groups. That is what we mean by "grass roots"; and nothing at any time, and especially the present, could be more important than that. But we have to weigh against that the natural and healthy desire of all persons concerned to pay attention to the grass roots, the equally natural and healthy desire of all persons concerned, and certainly the Government, to introduce an element of speed into these decisions which will correspond with natural justice.
I do not know what the noble Earl thinks, but for myself I think one could not require copies of this and that to be sent to the parish council, then to have a pause while the parish council meet and consider them and formulate their views and send them back, and then another pause while the planning authority consider the parish council's views. We could not introduce this procedure without reverting to a very large measure of that delay which we hope to get rid of in this Bill. It is as simple as that. That is not to say that the Government set their face against the parish council coming in on it at all; we do not do that. We think that in a given area or in a given class of case it will be light for the parish council to come in. But it seems to us that the best judge of the class of case will be the planning authority itself, which is, after all, democratic and may well contain members of the parish. If it does not, it might do so. I would ask the noble Earl: do his parish councillors stand for the county council or for the district council when

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they have delegated planning powers? I hope they do. If they do not, they are on a weak wicket in dealing with this matter.
There is nothing in this Bill, there is nothing in the present law, which precludes the local planning authority from entering into voluntary, non-statutory arrangements with parish councils, or some of them, in their area, for consultation in the way the noble Earl has in mind. For my part, I think it will be better to continue with that freedom for voluntary arrangements between the two tiers we are talking about in this field, rather than to introduce a rigid requirement that at every stage one has to inform the parish council of a proposal and then wait until their views on it are received. I admit that it is difficult, but I myself am convinced that that is the right way to do it.
I turn now to Lord Ilford's speech. On the first question he raised of control of Crown development, the procedure for consultation with local planning authorities—this relates to Circular 100, which I think he knows better than I do—is not affected by the present Bill. I might just remind the House that Circular 100 deals with a kind of shadow planning procedure. In this case "the Crown" may mean certain Departments of State—I suppose the Ministry of Defence is the one we think of most easily. If it is the Crown or one of those Departments which proposes development, it does not have to go formally for consent to the local authority as a private developer does, because there is a certain inherent unseemliness in requiring it to do so. It is no more than that, and I expect the noble Lord would agree. But what it does is to let everybody know what is proposed, and if the local planning authority do not like it they hoist a flag of objection and the matter is then discussed, under the provisions of this Circular 100, which I think has worked pretty well. The matter is then discussed between the applicant for planning permission and the local authority, and the Minister of Housing and Local Government holds the ring. That means that in fact the Minister of Housing and Local Government has a pretty potent last say in what happens, exactly as he has with the public planning procedure, under the planning law
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which we are now amending. The arbitration will remain in future where it is now. I hope that that explanation contents the noble Lord on that point.
Lord Ilford also touched on the question of plan-making powers for district councils. The plan-making functions of these councils, as opposed to the control of development, never have been delegated under the present system at all. I am not quite sure whether the noble Lord was asking that they should be. It would appear to me difficult to do so, because normally speaking the second-tier authorities do not, in the nature of things, have the staff or the resources to draw up these rather complicated and sophisticated plans which are proposed under this Bill, any more than they did under the former one. They do, of course, in certain cases have delegated power to control development in accordance with the plan drawn up by the superior planning authority. The Bill does not propose to change that, and I should be reluctant to do it.
LORD ILFORD: My Lords, what I was suggesting was that non-county boroughs with a population of, say, 50,000 might draw up the local plans and the action plans.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, what the noble Lord says falls within what I said. They do not have it now. As to whether they should have it in the future I am not at all sure, because it seems to me that when we are delegating so much more power, as we are, to local planning authorities in order to make a running in this we should not make a change towards delegating planning powers to smaller local authorities than those which have them at present. This is the obstacle I see.
Thirdly, the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, turned to the question of delegation of appeals, and the question of inspectors being empowered to determine appeals, on grounds that two heads are better than one. I think I have touched on this suggestion before. It is true; but it is also true that 97½ per cent. of all appeals to the Minister are determined in accordance with the way the inspector recommended, and somehow we must avoid the proliferation of central bureaucracy which we should need if we were to continue with that. My noble friend

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Lord Donaldson spoke of the desirability of local planning authorities receiving information from the Departments to cope with these matters. I agree with what he said. It is very much a part of this Bill that the local planning authority should draw the public into its confidence, should discuss with anybody concerned the plans that they are formulating, whether they are structure plans or local plans or that variety of local plans which will be called "action plans", at all stages. There are many provisions in the Bill to that end.
I should like to put that into context. Some local planning authorities already do it. They are the best, and they have been showing the way. It is the intention of the Government that all local planning authorities should do it. That is one of the functions of this Bill: to ensure that all local planning authorities attain the standard of the best in the matter of consulting people about plans while those plans are being drawn up. Whether or not a given authority should set up a special information department to do this is something which should be left to it to decide, and indeed my noble friend did not suggest that it should be incorporated in the Bill. Nevertheless it is an interesting way in which it could be done.
In general I perceive that this Bill has obtained a wide measure of agreement from all sides of the House. Nobody is against it. Some people think that parts of it are wrong; some think that it goes too far in one or two respects, and others think that it does not go far enough, but nobody is actually against it and I am sure the House is right in that. This Bill will be the first landmark since the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 for which my noble friend Lord Silkin was responsible. I think our planning system may be the best in the world. It is impossible to assess whether it is or not, but it seems to me quite possible that it may be, if we compare the degree of subsection to public interest which we impose upon the degree of economic pressure for uncontrolled development which exists in this country. If we compare that balance with the corresponding factors existing in other countries I think we may find we have the best planning system in the world, and I am confident that when this Bill goes on
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the Statute Book we shall have an even better system than we have at present.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

JUSTICES OF THE PEACE BILL
6.23 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Justices of the Peace Bill, has consented to place Her interest, so far as it is concerned on behalf of the Crown, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a Third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

COUNTRYSIDE BILL
6.25 p.m.
Read 3a, with the Amendments.
Clause 7 [Power to provide country parks]:
BARONESS SEROTA BARONESS SEROTA moved, after subsection (2), to insert:
"Provided that a local authority shall not under this section provide accommodation, meals or refreshments except in so far as it appears to them that the facilities therefor within the country park are inadequate or unsatisfactory, either generally or as respects any description of accommodation, meals or refreshments, as the case may be"
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I must apologise for the absence of my noble friend Lord Kennet, who I think has gone out to get some well-deserved refreshment. Until he returns I will attempt to deal with the substance of this Amendment.
During the Committee and Report stages of the Bill the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, tabled Amendments which sought to circumscribe the powers of local authorities providing country parks in relation to the provision of accommodation, meals and refreshments. His original Amendment would have required the authorities to satisfy themselves

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that comparable facilities "in the neighbourhood" were inadequate or unsatisfactory. His second Amendment would have deleted the reference to the neighbourhood. These Amendments were resisted on the grounds that it was unrealistic and undesirable to prevent a local authority from providing a full range of amenities within country parks merely because there might be some comparable facility available somewhere outside the boundaries of the park.
This new Government Amendment is intended to meet the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, to the extent of ensuring that local authorities, when setting up and developing facilities within a country park, should not duplicate any existing accommodation, meal or refreshment facilities within the country park—for instance an established bed-and-breakfast business provided at farmhouses within the park, unless these facilities are either unsatisfactory or inadequate. I hope that this Amendment is acceptable to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, and I ask the House to agree it. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 9, line 5, at end insert the said proviso.—(Baroness Serota.)
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for having explained this Amendment, which is acceptable to me. As she said, I moved a similar Amendment, in each case in slightly different terms, on Committee and on Report, and the Government have now tabled an Amendment which substantially meets my point. I will only add that the other day I was criticised by a noble Lord opposite for taking up the time of the House excessively by moving similar Amendments on Committee and on Report. In this case my action has been fully justified, because by means of importunity I have, at the last possible stage, brought the Government round to my point of view, for which I am grateful.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 8 [Country parks: sailing, boating, bathing and fishing]:
LORD KENNET: My Lords, with the leave of the House I should like to present a whole series of Amendments—Nos. 2,
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3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 29, 31, 32 and 33. These Amendments provide, at the end of lengthy discussions, for the consent of any river authority having functions relating to the sea or other waters in question, and of such other authorities which under any enactment have functions relating to the sea or other waters in question, for that consent to be obtained by a local authority planning to do works in these waters or beside those waters connected with the setting up of a country park. I feel fairly confident that if the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, were here these Amendments would meet with his approval. He has made himself the champion of the river authorities in this matter. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 10, line 30, after ("with") insert ("and seek the consent of, any river authority having functions relating to the sea or other waters in question, and of").—(Lord Kennet.)
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford asked me to speak on his behalf and to apologise to the noble Lord and to the House for his inability to be here at this moment. He would dearly have wished to be here, but he has substantial responsibilities in connection with one of the new universities, as the noble Lord may be aware, and he was irrevocably committed to attending a meeting outside London. He has requested me to thank the noble Lord warmly for this series of Amendments. It is a matter which has been discussed on the previous stages of the Bill, but I understand from him that by this series of Amendments the Government have substantially met a point which he was seeking to establish. In the circumstances he said that he would not have wished to move Amendment No. 10. I would also add my own thanks to the Government in respect of this change in the Bill.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 10, line 34, leave out from ("effect") to end of line 35 and insert ("where any authority so consulted withhold their consent").—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 12 [Facilities in or near National Parks]:
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 4.
Amendment moved—
Page 13, line 41, after ("with") insert ("and seek the consent of, any river authority having functions relating to the sea or other waters in question and of").—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 5.
Amendment moved—
Page 13, line 45, leave out from ("effect") to end of line 46 and insert ("where any authority so consulted withhold their consent").—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 14 [Conversion of moor and heath in National Parks to agricultural land]:
6.30 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR moved, in subsection (1), after "if" to insert after consultation with the local planning authority and the Commission he is". The noble Lord said: My Lords, I never like to put down Amendments on Third Reading, but this is an Amendment to one of the new clauses which were tabled by the Government only just before we took the Report stage of the Bill, and it literally was impossible to examine it in detail before we had to add it to the Bill.
This clause concerns what we have been accustomed to call the Exmoor problem, and it is a solution, or part solution, offered by the Government, in the sense that it will enable the Minister, if he is satisfied that it is expedient, to make an order applying the section to any land in a National Park which appears to him to be predominantly moor or heath. I think all noble Lords who were present at the earlier stages of the Bill will be familiar with the general context. Because the type of case where the Minister may wish to make an order will very likely have been surrounded by local controversy beforehand, it appeared to me that it was desirable to indicate on the face of the Bill that the Minister should not take the step of making an order until he had consulted
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both with the local planning authority and with the Countryside Commission, who might take different views, and then only if he is satisfied, after this dual consultation, that it is expedient to act he should make his order. I appreciate that the noble Lord may say that this had already been implicit in the Government's mind. Nevertheless, bearing in mind that this is a field of possibly explosive controversy locally, it seemed to me desirable that the Bill should specifically require the Minister to consult both the local planning authority and the Commission. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 16, line 17, after ("if") insert the said words.—(Lore' Brooke of Cumnor.)
LORD FOOT: My Lords, may I, as one who has been particularly associated with this Exmoor matter, add a word of support for the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. I have always foreseen—and I have no doubt the Minister has—that where the Minister considered designating certain land he would automatically consult with the Commission and the local planning authority. Indeed, the likelihood is that he would act only upon the recommendation of the local planning authority. Nevertheless, it seems to me to be an advantage, as the noble Lord said, to write this into the Bill in order to make it explicit. I would support the Amendment.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, the purpose behind the Amendment is obviously very good, but it raises certain concrete problems which I should like to outline to the House. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Foot, said. Obviously, in the vast majority of cases, and as far as I can see in every case, the Minister will act only after being asked to do so by the local authority or the Countryside Commission, or both. Otherwise, how would he know that there was a problem going on? Let us imagine the tiny minority of cases where he is not asked, or where he is not formally asked. Statutory consultation—we are talking about statutory consultation—is a slow and portentious matter. Neither the Country-side Commission, nor, very likely, the local authorities concerned—and I ask the House to remember that we are talking not only about Devon and Somerset;

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we may be talking about others in the future—would meet very often; in the case of the Commission it may be every two or three months. Statutory consultation has to be referred to a full meeting, so it might mean three months' delay. It seems to me that in the context of the case where one is by definition acting quickly, to prevent someone who has not the public interest at heart nipping in and doing harm to the public interest, it would be unwise to write statutory consultation into the Bill.
Moreover, to do so provides many handles to those who may think they have been injuriously affected by the operation of a designation of this sort. They may go to court and say: "The Minister did not go through the hoops of statutory consultation in the prescribed way." For these reasons, I would advise the House against accepting this Amendment. But, of course, informal consultation, a quick go on the telephone to the chairman or to the offices of the Commission or to the county council will be done in every case, where it does not happen the other way round, which seems more likely. In the interests of speed to deal with what might be a rapidly developing situation, I hope the noble Lord will agree to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I am disappointed with the noble Lord's reply, because it seems to me a harmless Amendment. When he says that delays will be caused, I think it would be very much in the interest of the local planning authority concerned to ensure that there was no delay in replying; and as for the Countryside Commission, it is itself a creature of the Minister, and I should have thought that he could ensure that it put itself in a position to reply with rapidity. However, I do not think this is a suitable stage of the Bill at which to divide the House. What I want to establish is that the Minister will in no circumstances use his powers under Clause 14 without having been in contact with both these bodies. I understand from what the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has said that that will be the intention, and I am sure that future Ministers will be guided by his words. When I say "in contact with those bodies", I mean that he will
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have taken steps to obtain the views, formally or informally, of some responsible person in each case. That is the essential thing. It will of course be very much in his interest to do so.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I might perhaps formulate this more precisely. The Minister will always obtain the best possible view from the planning authority concerned and the Countryside Commission which is compatible with the need for speedy action in the case in question.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, in view of that more explicit statement, I think the noble Lord, Lord Foot, and I will both agree that the Amendment should be withdrawn. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD CHORLEY LORD CHORLEY moved to add to subsection (2):
"If before the expiration of the said period of six months the local planning authority serves upon the occupier of the land notice of an access order pursuant to section 65 of the Act of 1949, or of a compulsory purchase order pursuant to section 76 of the said Act, the occupier of the land shall not, by ploughing up or otherwise convert any of the said land into agricultural land before the Minister has confirmed or refused to confirm the said Order."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment deals with the same situation as the last Amendment. Your Lordships will remember that at the last stage the Minister in charge of the Bill went some distance towards helping us with this rather difficult problem of the ploughing up of Exmoor and other similar National Parks. I understand that discussions have been going on and that the Minister is prepared rather to fill out what he then said. I do not myself propose to make a speech in moving this Amendment. I propose just to put the ball into the Minister's court and formally to move the Amendment which stands in the names of my noble friends and myself. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 16, line 25, at end insert the said words.—(Lord Chorley.)
6.40 p.m.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, as it turns out, I am glad that this Amendment appears once again because it gives

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me the opportunity of saying something in more detail about this intensively difficult problem which we have discussed so often. The effect of the Amendment would be to prevent an occupier from ploughing, and so on, his land even after the expiry of the six months (I need not go all through the history again, because the House knows it and we all remember it) if the local planning authority have embarked on the procedure for making either an access order or a compulsory purchase order in respect of the land. The Amendment draws attention to what might at first sight seem to be a gap in the procedure in Clause 14 but, as I shall hope to explain to the House, the difficulty which it anticipates is, in our view, unlikely to arise in practice.
Perhaps it would be of assistance if I were to recapitulate how we envisage that the procedure under Clause 14 would work. In the first place, the Minister would have to make an order applying the section to an area of land in a National Park appearing to him to be predominantly moor or heath. We hope that it may be possible for agreement to be reached between the local planning authority and local agricultural interests about the area or areas of land to which such an order should apply. Once an order has been made, the occupier of any land to which it applied would not be able to plough up or otherwise convert the moor or heath into agricultural land until the expiry of a period of six months from his giving notice to the planning authority in the first place. Unless the planning authority were willing to allow him to plough up, they would try to make an access agreement with him under which, in return for a suitable consideration, he would agree not to plough up and to give access to the public. The effect of Clause 18 of the Bill is to enable the landowner to bind himself not to convert such land into excepted land at a later date by ploughing up. This the House will remember.
In the event of a failure to reach agreement, one of two courses will be open to the planning authority. They may either make an access order under Section 65 of the 1949 Act, or they may make a compulsory purchase order under Section 76 of the 1949 Act. At an earlier
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stage, the noble Lord, Lord Foot, raised a question whether the power under Section 76 could be used for this purpose. He suggests it might be argued that this section can be used only for the purpose of preserving access and not for the purpose of preserving moorland, and suggests that such an order could be defeated by showing that access could continue after the ploughing up. I hope that the noble Lord will follow me in this explanation, because the matter gets more complicated and yet more complicated, but I believe it is all right. I advise the noble Lord and the House that the Government's considered view, after consultation with their legal advisers, is that the powers under Section 76 would be effective for the purpose. To exercise the power, the local planning authority would have to be satisfied of two things. First of all, that the public should have access thereto for open-air recreation. The test is not merely access, but access for open-air recreation. If the nature of the recreation is to enable people to walk or ride over moorland, the recreation could be defeated by changing the character of the land. The second thing of which they have to be satisfied is that in the circumstances it is expedient that such access thereto should be secured by the acquisition of the land by the local planning authority. Again, in deciding whether it was expedient for this purpose, it will be relevant for the planning authority to consider whether acquisition was needed in order to secure access to the land "for open-air recreation". So that buttons itself up in a circle.
Turning now to the Amendment, the suggestion is that, after notice had been served of an access order or a compulsory purchase order, the landowner might proceed to plough up before the Minister had reached a decision upon the order. In practice the risk of this appears to us so remote that it may be ignored. A farmer would in any event be extremely unlikely to plough up unless he was assured that he would receive grant for doing so, and would be all the more hesitant if it seemed that the land might be acquired before he was able to obtain any benefit from the expenditure he had incurred in ploughing up. Until last year grants for ploughing up were payable by the Ministry of Agriculture, in some cases as of right, on proof that ploughing up

1311
had taken place. But now prior approval of the Ministry is required. Where a planning authority made an access order or a compulsory purchase order they would of course notify the Ministry of Agriculture. I have the authority of my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture to say that in these circumstances no decision would be taken upon the application for grant until a decision had been made upon the access order or compulsory purchase order.
It is for these reasons that I advise the House that this Amendment is unnecessary. I think it would be likely only to add to the anxieties of the agricultural community, and I hope that the noble Lord will not press it. I regret that my explanation has been complicated, but I am confident that Lord Foot, Lord Chorley and Lord Brooke will understand what is in mind, and I am confident that all ether noble Lords will, too.
6.47 p.m.
LORD FOOT: My Lords, I find that reply by the noble Lord rather like the curate's egg: gratifying in parts. It is encouraging and reassuring to hear him say that his Department are satisfied that if a landowner is unprepared to enter into an access agreement it is open to the planning authority under Section 65 to seek an access order, and under Section 76 to seek a compulsory purchase order. I will not argue that matter any further because it would be quite improper for me to argue a legal point with those who have been advising the noble Lord. I am therefore gratified to be assured by what he said about that. But I am afraid that I am not wholly reassured by what he had to say in the latter part of his speech, about the unlikelihood of a landowner who wants to go ahead with ploughing being able to get round the provisions of the noble Lord's new Clause 14.
The noble Lord said earlier in this discussion that this particular matter was in danger of degenerating into a private dialogue between him and myself which the rest of the House might not understand. May I briefly, in two sentences, review how we have come to this present position? The problem with which we have been trying to cope over this business of Exmoor is: how is it possible
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to prevent open moorland from being ploughed up where the claims of amenity and national interest should prevail over the farming gain by reason of the ploughing? The solution which those who have been assisting me have put forward was that we should bring land of this kind within the ambit of ordinary planning control and, subject of course to appeal to the Minister, leave it to the planning authority to decide whether the amenity interest should prevail over the agricultural interest.
The Government have advanced their alternative method, which is in three stages. It is, first of all, to allow the Minister to designate land, moorland and heathland, which he regards as of amenity importance (I am sorry to use the word "amenity" yet again: it is a hideous word, but it is very difficult to find another) as being open land. Then it requires that anybody who wants to plough it up shall give six months' notice. Then the third leg in the argument is that if there is a recalcitrant landowner or somebody who is not prepared to enter into an access agreement, there are these powers vested in the planning authority, either by means of an access order or by means of a compulsory purchase order, to prevent the public interest from being overridden.
The noble Lord says to-day that he is satisfied that, in practice, there will not be any danger of a landowner being able to get round this, and although the planning authority want to stop him ploughing there will be no practical possibility of the landowner's being able to avoid the effect of this proposal through the compulsory purchase order or the access order not being made within the requisite period of six months.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? This is unlikely to arise for a very concrete reason, which is new and which I have just told the House about; namely, that if the landowner does plough before a decision is reached he may not get his ploughing grant.
LORD FOOT: My Lords, I quite understand that. But what is the objection? If the Government are anxious to require of the landowner that he shall give six months' notice, and they are anxious that in proper places the planning

1313
authority shall have the power to make an access order, or a compulsory purchase order, in order to prevent the ploughing, what is the objection to writing it into the Act of Parliament, as is done under this Amendment, which is very simple and very straightforward? It says merely that once the six months' notice has been given by the landowner, if the planning authority decide that they cannot reach an agreement with him, and that they will want to make an access order or a compulsory purchase order, once they have given notice to the landowner that that is what they are intending to do he must not plough up until that matter has been resolved, either yea or nay, by the Minister. What is the objection to it? It makes the position quite straightforward.
May I suggest to the Minister that there are dangers in the course which he is recommending? However, before going into that perhaps I might just say this. Those who have been advising me, and who are very experienced in this matter—and your Lordships may remember that I am talking about the Devon and Somerset County Councils—have furnished me with an estimate of the length of time it takes to get an access order from the moment you start to go about it, and the length of time which it takes to get a compulsory purchase order from the time when you first start upon it. The information I have been given is that in the case of the access order the minimum period between the time the application for the order is made by the planning authority and the time the order is confirmed by the Minister, and the necessary notice of the confirmation is given, may be 22 weeks—four weeks short of the six-month period. That is the minimum period, in the calculation of these people, which is necessary; and in the case of a compulsory purchase order the minimum period required between applying for it and getting it is 26 weeks, which is precisely six months.
Therefore, there is this danger, as I suggest to the noble Lord, that in some cases, by pure accident, the local planning authority may have the intention of making a compulsory purchase order, or an access order, and then, because more than six months pass, they are thwarted in their intention and the landowner is able to plough, whereas in another case
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the order is obtained within the six months' period and the landowner is not able to plough. What could be more calculated to increase between the planning authority and the individual than that in one case a man gets the right to plough and in another case he is thwarted, purely by the accident of how long it takes to get the order? If it is really the intention of the Government to allow their policy, the one that they have devised, to work, I do press upon the noble Lord that this Amendment is quite innocent and a very simple way of obtaining that objective. I would ask him, even at this very late stage—though I recognise at once that throughout this discussion on Exmoor the noble Lord has gone a very long way to attempt to meet our cafe—to reconsider this point.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I should like to add my voice in this. I have been studying the matter as best I could during the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, and the noble Lord, Lord Foot, and for my part I cannot see any reason why this Amendment should not be added to the Bill. With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Foot, it may not be perfect in its draftsmanship, but if it goes back to another place as a Lords Amendment there is the opportunity there to improve the draftsmanship. I rather deprecate Divisions at this stage of what is essentially a non-controversial Bill, but we have not really heard from the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, what harm there would be if he accepted this Amendment.
6.57 p.m.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, with the leave of the House, if I can state the harm I hope that the noble Lord will be content. There are two harms, one major, one minor. Let me deal first with the minor. Suppose we extend the period as Lord Foot requires, supposing it is over-run, and there is no decision in a given case for eight months, ten months, or a year, that is a whole season during which the farmer has lost his ploughing, and the question of compensation arises. This complicates matters enormously. should we go that far. The major harm is this: that Lord Foot, during his remarks just now, said, in so many words, that his aim was to subject agriculture to planning control. But he knows as well as I do

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that this is a matter which has been hotly debated among those concerned for the last twenty years. I think he did say it. Is he going to say that he did not?
LORD FOOT: My Lords, if I said this, I certainly did not intend to. Earlier on I said that to subject agriculture in general to planning control would be bitterly opposed, and it is certainly no part of my proposal. What I was suggesting was that these areas of high amenity moorland might be brought within the ambit of planning control.
LORD KENNET: These areas of high amenity moorland are also desired by agriculturists to be agricultural, so we are at a dividing line and it is very "dicey" how far one goes. It seems to me that the major harm in doing it that way is that we do go over unmistakably and definitely, although on a small front, into the area of planning control over agriculture. That may be a good thing or a bad thing. Opinions will differ. Some Members of the House will wish it could happen; others will resist it to the death. But what is clear is that the Countryside Bill does not begin the process of planning control over agriculture; nor should it. That is not its purpose. Let us face that when we come to it. Maybe there is room for a Private Member's Bill to introduce planning control over agriculture, but that is where this issue belongs and not, I submit, in this Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Foot, asked what is the objection to doing it his way. I have given the noble Lord two objections which I hope will prevail. He has not said what objection there is to doing it my way. He has not said that he thinks farmers will go right ahead and plough, irrespective of whether they are going to get grants or not. We are talking about the top of Exmoor. Who is going to plough the top of Exmoor if he is not going to get a ploughing grant to do it? I think that is rather unrealistic.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I cannot say that I am completely satisfied, but I think I am rather more satisfied than the noble Lord, Lord Foot. The Government have gone quite a way towards safe-guarding the position, and the assurance given on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture about ploughing grants
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appears to be of substantial importance. I do not wish to press the Amendment at this stage. I beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 16 [Access to open country: rivers, canals and woodlands]:
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 8.
Amendment moved—
Page 19, line 23, after ("with") insert ("and seek the consent of, any river authority having functions relating to the river or canal in question and of").—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 9.
Amendment moved—
Page 19, line 27, leave out from ("effect") to end of line 28 and insert ("where any authority so consulted withhold their consent").—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 27:
Signposting of footpaths and bridle ways
27.—(1) A highway authority, after consultation with the owner or occupier of the land concerned, shall have power to erect and maintain signposts along any footpath or bridleway for which they are the highway authority.
(2) Subject to subsection (3) below, at every point where a footpath or bridleway leaves a metalled road the highway authority shall in exercise of their power under subsection (1) above erect and maintain a signpost—
(a) indicating that the footpath or bridle-way is a public footpath or bridleway, and
(3) A highway authority need not erect a signpost in accordance with subsection (2) above at a particular site if the highway authority, after consulting the council of the parish in which the site is situated, or as the case may be the chairman of the parish meeting, not having a parish council, in which the site is situated, are satisfied that it is not necessary, and if the parish council, or as the case may be the parish meeting, agree.
7.2 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM LORD CHESHAM moved, in subsection (1), after "bridleway" insert "or byway". The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 11, my remarks relate also to a long series of Amendments, namely, Nos. 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23. They cover the same point and collectively do one

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thing. I must echo what my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor has said in that I am a great hater of the practice of moving Amendments on Third Reading. However, in this instance I have no option, and I propose at a later stage, when we come to the question "That the Bill do now pass", to voice my dislike of this process in rather rounder terms.
Clause 27 provides that there shall he appropriate powers and duties on the part of the highway authorities concerned to provide signposts as required for footpaths and bridleways. There is no mention of the new category of byways which are to be created under the Bill. The object of this string of Amendments is to provide that appropriate powers and duties for such signposting will be laid upon highway authorities in exactly the same way as it is provided in the case of the other two categories, footpaths and bridleways.
During the Committee stage my noble friend Lord Howe proposed similar Amendments in regard to the signposting of what we now know as roads used as public footpaths, but he withdrew them when the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, for the Government indicated that arrangements would be made in the not too distant future to abolish the roads used as public footpaths, in accordance with the proposed re-classification which is now to be implemented under the provisions of Part III of Schedule 3 to the Bill. Eventually, and very hastily, these arrangements were made and the provisions introduced, but no arrangements appear to have been made for any Amendment to Clause 27 to provide for the signposting of this new category of byways.
If I have correctly interpreted Amendment No. 15, which I assume my noble friend Lord Brooke will move a little later, I understand that he is of opinion that it is necessary to provide signposting for the benefit of cyclists. It would perhaps be more necessary to provide appropriate signposting for the benefit of those who drive motor cars of various categories. I have heard it voiced on all sides in your Lordships' House in the past that the sometimes hapless and bemused driver should have a clear indication given to him of what he may or may not do. The purpose of this series of Amendments is to allow him to have such an
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indication. I believe that this is a reasonable provision to make, and this series of Amendments should commend itself to your Lordships.
While I am on the subject, may I refer to the fact that unfortunately the Government have been unwilling to do anything to deal with the signposting of the existing roads used as public footpaths until they are abolished. I shall be glad if the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, can assure me that there will be nothing to prevent the continuance of the existing practice of putting up cart track signs on such public roads used as public paths so long as they continue to exist. I should also like to know from him that the Government will give appropriate advice to local authorities about this matter, preferably after consultation with the organisations which have an interest in the affairs of vehicle users. My Lords, I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 28, line 16, after ("bridleway") insert ("or byway").—(Lord Chesham.)
LORD KENNET: My Lords, the idea is this, and I think it is reasonable. The R.U.P.P.s—that is to say, the roads used as public paths—are to be classified three ways. Some are to become footpaths, some are to become bridleways, and some are to become byways open to all traffic. Those that become footpaths or bridleways will be dealt with under Clause 27. I think the noble Lord has no objection to that. There remains the third class, those that become byways open to all traffic. It seems to the Government that the best thing is to let those be dealt with according to the same system which applies to all other ways open to all traffic, and that is by the Road Traffic Regulations Act 1967. So it is not that there is no provision governing the R.U.P.P.s which are re-classified as byways open to all traffic. What happens is that the provisions of that Act are attracted to them and they are then signposted in accordance with what happens in the case of other ways open to all traffic. The House will not wish me to go through everything in the Act, but it may be of interest to point out that along with the normal provisions that one would expect, it says:
"The Minister may give directions to a highway authority for the placing of a traffic sign of any prescribed type or authorised character specified in the directions; for replacing a sign so specified by, or converting it into, a sign

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of another prescribed type or authorised character so specified."
So one already has this procedure in the 1967 Act, which is subject to Ministerial directions which no doubt the Minister would be able to give if he were convinced there was a case.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I do not find the reply entirely convincing. There is a case for these roads, which may have been used for some time, to be signposted. It is not good enough to refer to an existing measure on the Statute Book which says that the Minister "may" do something. He may not. We are talking here of a thousand miles of such roads up and down the country. There may have been some which have been used in the past. If they are not now allowed to be used, then people who might otherwise use them should be told so. I do not think that is at all an unreasonable thing to ask. Having said that, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is going to say anything about the other question which I asked him?
LORD KENNET: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, of course the Road Traffic Regulation Act empowers the highway authority to make certain sorts of regulations about sign-posting on certain highways, and the reclassified R.U.P.P.s which become open to all traffic will then fall under that Act. This is not the only thing about which it is said the Minister may direct this or that. The noble Lord's Amendment must be based on a feeling that the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1967 is inadequate to cover the class of ways that he is talking about, but he has not said in what way that Act is inadequate. I hesitate to detain the House by reading out everything the Act allows everybody to do, but it is a very large battery of provisions.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I thought I had already dealt with the point about the Act saying that the Minister may do those things, and if my Amendment were accepted the duty would then be somewhat stronger. But in the circumstances I do not propose to press this point any further, if the noble Lord will deal with the rest of my inquiry.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I must apologise to the noble Lord, but I have forgotten it. Would he repeat it?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I should be delighted, and I do not blame the noble Lord in the slightest, because he has had a long afternoon. I asked him whether there was anything to prevent the continuance of the existing practice of putting up cart-track signs on roads used as public paths, so long as they continued to exist before reclassification under the Bill. I also asked him whether the Government would give appropriate advice to the authorities about this.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I do not know that cart-track signs are a legal entity, but the Government will certainly give advice on this matter to any local authority or highway authority which seeks it.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I do not think that gives me the assurance I need. No doubt the Government would give advice if anybody sought it. But I can see that I shall not get anywhere on this matter of clarification for the benefit of drivers generally. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
7.13 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I think this Amendment is self-explanatory. I moved an Amendment in identical terms on the Report stage, and on that occasion I withdrew it because the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said that if I allowed him to consider the matter between then and Third Reading that would be the most sensible plan. I hope it has turned out to be the most sensible plan, and that his consideration meanwhile will lead him to give a favourable reply. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 28, line 23, at end insert (", if it is a footpath available to be used also by cyclists, indicating that fact, and").—(Lord Brooke of Cumnor.)
LORD KENNET: My Lords, let me say in preface to my remarks, in response to the noble Lord's extremely brief and courteous motion of his Amendment, that in replying to him at an earlier stage I think I may have gone too far in saying that there were rights for cyclists on footpaths which would be unaffected by this Bill. Generally speaking there are not, but one needs to be cautious of any such statement because there is any

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amount of undetermined undergrowth of legal Statutes in this field.
The rights of cyclists on highways (other than such rights as will be exercisable over bridleways in pursuance of Clause 30 of the Bill) remain a matter to be determined in the circumstances of each case. Ignoring for the moment the definition of "footpath", the Amendment of the noble Lord would involve highway authorities in determining in each case, before erecting a signpost pursuant to the duty which Clause 27(2) seeks to impose, whether cyclists have a right to use the "footpaths". This would not be easy to determine, and it would be necessary to provide special machinery on the lines of Part IV of the Act of 1949 or of Schedule 3 to the Bill.
In doing all this the authorities would not be simply making an act of will, Yea or Nay, and asking, "Do we want cyclists on this footpath?" They would be giving expression to a hypothetical existing condition of the law. To do this is obviously very difficult, and if we accepted this Amendment we should in effect be imposing that burden on them. So I hope that, recognising the difficulty in practical terms for a local authority, the noble Lord will not insist on his Amendment.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I find this a rather extraordinary argument. If it is only right and proper, as it surely is, that it should be determined whether a footpath is available to be walked on by people on foot, why is it not equally right and proper that it should be determined whether or not it is available to cyclists on cycles? If it is available to cyclists on cycles, a sign should be put up to say so in exactly the same way as a sign has to be put up to enable walkers to know that it is a footpath which they may use. Why are cyclists being used as victims in an extraordinary uncertainty about the law which Her Majesty's Government are not prepared to have resolved?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I should also have thought that if it was reasonable for cyclists to be told where they could go, it was reasonable for motorists to be told where they could go.
LORD BROOKE CUMNOR: My Lords, I am grateful for the support
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which I have received for this Amendment. I must say that. I, too, found the explanation of the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, difficult to follow. He referred to a hypothetical existing condition of the law. If something is existing, then I fail to understand how it can be hypothetical. I think the noble Lord's advisers ought to do better than that next time.
I carefully avoided using the word "right" in my Amendment, because I realised that there might be some complication in determining whether there was an actual right for cyclists to go along a path. I used the word "available", because it seemed to me that there were probably certain paths which cyclists had used for years which nobody had showed any sign of stopping them using. So it would therefore be desirable that the cyclist who perhaps did not come from the neighbourhood should be alerted to that fact.
We all have a common interest in these days in getting cyclists off main roads where they are in danger, and where they may cause danger to other road users, and in encouraging them to go along paths which are available to them. However, I understand from the noble Lord that there is a legal difficulty about this, and I greatly regret it if my Amendment is not acceptable. I hope he will consider the possibility of advising the appropriate authorities that where a footpath is, in fact, available to be used by cyclists, it would be a good thing for them to make that fact known. That is my object, which I should have thought was entirely acceptable. I should also have thought that, without requiring anybody to enter into excessive legal complications, it would be quite reasonable for the appropriate authorities to take that action. I hope that the noble Lord and his right honourable friend will consider whether, by circular, speech or otherwise, that idea could be conveyed. I will not press the Amendment now because of the legal difficulties, bit I hope I have convinced the noble Lord and your Lordships that it really would be a practical advantage if something on these lines could be done. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, this and the next Amendment are drafting Amendments. I think they require no explanation. They were brought to the Government's attention by the Parish Councils Association. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 28, line 32, after ("meeting") insert ("for the parish").—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 28, line 34, after ("be") insert ("the chairman of").—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, under Section 126 of the Highways Act, 1959, highway authorities have at present a certain number of agreements with landowners about the maintenance of stiles, gates and so forth, on footpaths or bridle-ways which come under the highway authorities. The purpose of the present Amendment is to save those agreements which already stand from the operation of the reimbursement provisions for stiles, gates and so forth in the Countryside Bill now before the House. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 29, line 38, at end insert ("or if any conditions for the maintenance of the structure are for the time being in force under section 126 of the Highways Act 1959 (authority for erection of stiles etc.)")— (Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, this is a paving Amendment to the next Amendment, No. 26, so perhaps it would be to your Lordships' convenience if we could discuss them both together. Amendment No. 26 is, I think, self-explanatory. No less than 21 years ago the Hobhouse Committee recommended that wheeling a bicycle on a footpath, dismounted, should not be illegal in the absence of a by-law to the contrary. To the best of my knowledge that recommendation has never been acted upon by any subsequent Government. It seems a perfectly sensible amendment of the law to make, and that is why I propose it here. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 31, line 27, after ("this") insert ("and the next following").—(Lord Brooke of Cumnor.)
LORD KENNET: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he has any evidence that it is stated to be illegal or has been held to be illegal anywhere in the absence of a by-law to the contrary? I think everybody is agreed that one should be able to do this, but we in the Ministry have no evidence of people who are discontented and have a grievance because they have been prevented from doing it under the existing provisions.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, there is dubiety about this matter, because I am sure that otherwise the Hobhouse Committee would not have recommended it. I certainly cannot quote a case where anybody has been prosecuted for it in recent years. I am quite sure that there is uncertainty in the minds of cyclists as to whether they can do this or not. It may be that other noble Lords will be able to throw fresh light on it; but there does not seem to me to be any valid reason against amending the law if a very responsible Committee has recommended that the law should be clarified in this respect.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, if one noble Lord could throw light on it, it would be to suggest that people who push bicycles in those circumstances are tempted to get on them.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, that is a practical point, but as a member of the Hobhouse Committee—there are some survivors still—I think it is perfectly clear that this is an offence. I do not think the fact that the police have been sensible about not prosecuting so far is any argument to the contrary. It is like the case of a person pushing a bicycle along on a pavement by the side of a road, and certainly I have known prosecutions for that, very understandably. I should have thought that the legal situation was exactly the same. As this matter can be safeguarded by a very simple Amendment here, which does not give rise to any difficulty, I should have thought the Government might very well accept it.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, if I may speak again, is there any reason why this should not be accepted?
LORD KENNET: Only the general one, my Lords, that one must naturally be reluctant to clutter up a Bill with details saying that this or that is not permitted, or even that this or that is permitted. Should we not then have a clause saying whether it is permitted to carry a bicycle, or to push it with one wheel on the ground and not the other, or in which position one may carry it? And what about wheeling a tricycle, and so on and so forth? I confess to the feeling that at the end of the day you have to leave a certain number of questions simply uncovered by Statute Law, and I should myself prefer that this question whether or not, in the absence of a by-law to the contrary, a citizen has the right to wheel a bicycle on a footpath should be left blank in our Statute Law, just on the grounds of keeping it short. We have many complaints as to the cumbrousness of legislation and as to the excessive bulk of Statute Law, and this surely is a case in point.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, it surely is a well-known, recognised practice to introduce into a Statute a clause which says, "For the avoidance of doubt it is hereby declared that…"—and those words could then have been inserted. I should not have thought they were necessary, but if they had been surely there would have been no possible objection to the acceptance of this Amendment. Surely Her Majesty's Government can bend themselves to accept this Amendment.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, with permission, I should like to say that I can see no reason at all why this should not be incorporated in the law. I do not feel disposed to withdraw it. I think this is something which the noble Lord should allow to go back to another place. If in fact there they find it offensive, then I shall not create a constitutional crisis between the two Houses by seeking to stand firm on it; but I think I have sufficient support for refraining from withdrawing it and for seeking to secure that a decision on it is reached in another place.
LORD KENNET: Before the Question is put, let me say this. I do not seek to
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dissuade the House from sending, this Amendment to another place to see what they think about it. But in the debates which come before us let us remember the amount of time we have given to the question whether or not it shall be legal, in the absence of a by-law to the contrary, for a citizen to wheel a bicycle on a footpath; and if complaints are levelled against the Government about the excessive detail and number of provisions in Bills to be brought before this House, and if there is an argument about the amount of time to be provided fur the discussion of those provisions, I for one shall remember the discussion of the last few minutes.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNORMy Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 30 insert the following new clause:
Wheeling of pedal bicycles on footpaths
(". Any member of the public shall subject to any orders made by a local authority, and to any byelaws, have the right to wheel a bicycle, not being a motor vehicle, oil any footpath.")—(Lord Brooke of Cumnor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 35 [Exchequer grants for Lee Valley Regional Park]:
LORD KENNET: My Lords, this Amendment is what you might call "late consequential" on an Amendment that we passed earlier which provided grant towards the costs of local authorities incurred in acquiring land for the purpose of planting trees to preserve or enhance the beauty of their area. What the early Amendment did not do was to allow the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority to do the same thing. In the view of the Government they are on all fours with other authorities which now have that right and ought therefore to have it as well. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 37, line 18, at end insert ("for the purpose of planting trees on land in their area for preserving or enhancing the natural beauty thereof, and expenditure in 07 in connection with the acquisition of land for that purpose").—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
7.32 p.m.
LORD MERRIVALE LORD MERRIVALE moved, after Clause 45, to insert the following new clause:
Designation of areas of outstanding natural beauty: hearings
".—(1) This section has effect where the Commission makes an order under subsection (1) of section 87 of the Act of 1949 designating an area for the purposes of that Act as an area of outstanding natural beauty.

(2) Notwithstanding anything contained in section 87 of the Act of 1949 the Minister may not confirm an order under subsection (4) of that section nor vary an order under subsection (7) of that section so long as any representations made under subsection (2) of that section and not given effect to by the order as submitted to the Minister have not been withdrawn unless he has afforded to any person by whom any representation has been duly made and not withdrawn an opportunity of being heard by a person appointed by him for the purpose and he has thereafter considered the report of the person appointed to hear the representations."

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Amendment standing in my name on the Marshalled List. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, on Committee stage advised the rejection of an Amendment the main purpose of which was to allow a local inquiry to be held if there were objections, for instance, to certain marginal areas being included in a proposal to designate an area of outstanding natural beauty. The Parliamentary Secretary went on to say that the point at issue was whether or not the area in question was of outstanding natural beauty and that, in that particular context, the mineral extractive industries had no particular expertise to bring to bear on the subject. The noble Lord went on to say that if, at a later date, the mineral extractor is refused planning permission, he then has a right of appeal to the Minister; and that was the time for the Minister to take into account the needs of the mineral industry.
What I am asking now is that the Minister should take into account these needs when the Commission send the designation order to him with any representations that they may have received, by allowing any person who has made representations the opportunity of appearing before and being heard by a person appointed by the Minister. Such a hearing at that point of time would surely avoid duplication and difficulties
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and the delay inherent in an appeal to the Minister after a refusal of a planning application. It would also ensure that the reasons why the objections had been made were firmly on the record. I would add that the proposal which I am placing before your Lordships is in line with the provisions of Article 18 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Plans) Regulations, 1965 and with the provisions of Clause 4(3)(b) of to-day's Town and Country Planning Bill regarding structure plans.
As an example, I would mention how this proposed new clause could affect the Kent Downs Order which is now before the Minister and awaiting confirmation. If the Minister is willing to accept my Amendment there would then be an opportunity for a record to be kept at this point of time—and I stress that—that there were included in the area alternative reserve raw material areas to support new works which a company is proposing to erect at Northfleet. These works are to have a capacity of 3·6 million tons of cement per annum and they will be the largest cement producing unit in the United Kingdom. The available chalk supplies from the existing quarrying area will service these works only for the next twenty years. This could be extended for another ten years by permission to deepen the diggings, but, after that, to cover the economic life of the works that I have mentioned, further chalk areas to either the East or the West of the Medway would be required.
Would the Parliamentary Secretary not agree that it would be wise and opportune if the Minister were able now, when the Bill is passed, to consider and be au fait with all these matters prior to a confirmation of this particular Order? It may he that the Minister will agree to the deletion of certain areas in the Order. Be that as it may, I do not think that it changes the desirable requirement that some arrangement should be made for the parties to be heard so that there is put on record in detail the very reasons why exclusions are sought. The individual importance of each area for which exclusion is sought could also be discussed. Surely this conflict between amenity and the needs of industry, coupled with the fact of their very existence, should be carefully considered by the Minister when

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the Order is before him, with an opportunity for a hearing. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 45 insert the said new clause. —(Lord Merrivale.)
LORD KENNET: My Lords, in asking for the third time for a hearing for possible objectors, and especially the mineral extractive industry, before the designation of areas of outstanding natural beauty, the noble Lord said that such a hearing would avoid duplication and delays when the same matters came under consideration at the time of a planning application for mineral extraction in the same place. A different question is being examined on the two occasions. On the first occasion, the question under examination is whether or not the area is of outstanding natural beauty. On the second occasion, the question under examination is whether or not the mineral extractive company ought to be allowed to extract minerals in that place. The noble Lord also drew an analogy with the structure plans that we dealt with earlier this afternoon, where there is provision for an inquiry and a hearing. I do not know whether he was thinking of local planing. I expect he was. In any case, in these plans the question under examination is whether an area should be planned—
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, I was speaking of structure plans.
LORD KENNET: It is the same in both cases. There is a hearing in both cases. In those cases the question under examination is whether a given area should or should not be developed in the way proposed by the local planning authority. In that question, the livelihoods, the amenity interests and workaday interests of hundreds, thousands or millions of people may be involved. The question examined in the case envisaged by the noble Lord is still whether or not a given area, or part of it, is of outstanding natural beauty. This affects neither the interests not the workaday life of anybody, let alone those of a great mineral extractive company.
The noble Lord raised a question concerned with Kent. I am sure that he will not expect me to comment on a particular planning case. Let me take a hypothetical case. I think what worries
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him to-day is the little bit at the edge of an area of outstanding natural beauty which is not as beautiful as the rest but yet has a lot of lovely gravel in it. The noble Lord asks: "Why should not the company come along before it is designated and suggest that that part be left out?" The answer is because it will be equally easy for them to come along at the time of their own application for planning permission and make the same point, namely, that this bit is of less natural beauty than the rest and that there is a lot of lovely gravel there. And if those two facts are true—I have not the least doubt that they will be in the case of the kind of companies the noble Lord has in mind—they will be the more likely to weigh with the local authority, or in default of them the Minister, and he will be the more likely to give consent, which will be the purpose of the whole operation.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord is not able to agree to a hearing being held by the Minister when representations have been submitted by the Commission, rather than relying on the Minister rceiving an appeal at a later date, if the local planning authority does not agree to a planning application. I should have thought that it would be a great advantage to the Minister concerned, and to the industries affected, if, in effect, these representations and why they were put forward were on the record. For I still feel that they would alleviate delays at a later occasion, many years later; for then the local planning authority could get in touch with the Minister and would know that certain areas had—shall we say?—been earmarked by the company concerned so that some specific works could continue to be serviced.
I cannot see what harm there could be in having a hearing held by the Minister. Already he has before him the representations submitted by the Commission when they put forward their proposal for a designation order. I should have thought this was the time to hear the reasons why the representations were made. At the moment, so far as I can ascertain, the Commission receive these representations but do not go into any detail about why they were made, or consider, marginal area by marginal area, whether or not certain exclusions should

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be made. I understand that they just say to the company, "What you are asking does not fit in with our plan, which is to designate some particular area." My Lords, it is a very late stage in the proceedings on this Bill at which to try again to influence the Government. I have tried to do so in the past, but with those final words I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 49 [Interpretation]:
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 29.
Amendment moved—
Page 46, line 26, at end insert ("'river authority' means a river authority constituted by or under the Water Resources Act 1963 and the Conservators of the River Thames, the Lee Conservancy Catchment Board and the Isle of Wight River and Water Authority")—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 50 [Short title, repeals, Commencement and extent]:
7.43 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM LORD CHESHAM moved to add to subsection (3):
"except that Parts III and IV of Schedule 3 shall come into force on such day as the Minister may by order, made by statutory instrument. appoint and such an order shall not be effective until approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I put down this Amendment for two reasons. The first is that these provisions, as your Lordships know, were produced in the middle of the Report stage two and a half hours or so before your Lordships' House was due to sit. The Amendment is designed to ensure that these provisions have proper Parliamentary consideration. The time given has been deplorably short. The second reason is to enable proper and full consultation to take place with interested parties in varying respects, I do not know the full details about what consultations the noble Lord's right honourable friend may have held. I know of some, but none of them was with parties representing the interests of vehicle users, and certainly not the motoring organisations. I have said already that I shall deal with this at
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greater length a little later. If by any chance the noble Lord is going to refer to the letter that his right honourable friend wrote to me to-day offering such consultation, I will tell him—
LORD KENNET: My Lords, before the noble Lord tells me, may I say that I was going to refer to the letter but only to the extent of asking, I hope courteously, whether he had received it. I gather that he has.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I will give the noble Lord a courteous, "Yes". I tried to catch him in the corridor to tell him, but he was in a hurry, I think, to consult, and I was not able to do so. I hope that, equally courteously, I may say, "Yes, thank you, I did receive it." But I would also say that receiving an offer to consult at 1.15 p.m. to-day, the day that the Bill is due to receive its very last consideration on its way through Parliament, is to me absolutely no kind of an offer at all. For these reasons I have put down this Amendment. I believe it is one that your Lordships may well wish to accept. I think it one that will not cause delay but will afford an opportunity to give the proper consideration that such measures should have. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 47, line 3. at end insert the said words.—(Lord Chesham.)
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I am truly puzzled by the remarks of the noble Lord. What he did not do was to tell us what would be the effect of his Amendment. Let us examine together the substance of this Amendment, and then I will ask the noble Lord, if I may, to tell your Lordships' House what sort of consultation he wants. The effect of accepting the Amendment would be to defer the operation of Parts III and IV of the Schedule 3 until an appointed day made by Statutory Instrument—and so on. What do Parts III and IV of the Schedule do? They provide for the survey of roads used as public paths so that each road can be put into its appropriate category, as I described to the House at an earlier time. Is it the wish of the noble Earl that this survey should not take place; and, if so, why? Does he want the roads used as public paths to remain as they are? Does he disagree

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with the Gosling Committee's recommendation that they should be split up? If so, I can only suggest to him that it is rather late in the day to make a big "thing" of this. Or does he want them to be split up in different ways?—because that comes elsewhere in the Bill and he is not seeking to amend it. Or what is it that he wants to happen?
I am truly at a loss about this, and I think that I had better do no more at the moment than to ask him to enlighten your Lordships' House, and me, as to the purpose underlying his suggestion that this operation be put off until the Minister says that it ought to happen.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, before I answer that question, I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, can tell me at what earlier stage of the proceedings on this Bill I could have made a big, small or any kind of "thing" of this matter?
LORD KENNET: My Lords, all noble Lords are free to move Amendments at any point they wish, on Committee and on Report, as well as on Third Reading.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, these provisions were not in the Bill at the time of the Committee stage, they were introduced in the middle of the Report stage at two and a half hours' notice. At what stage could I have been expected to make any kind of "thing" of this, or move any Amendment to it? That is entirely the burden of my complaint. These matters have not been considered properly. In the normal way one would have expected that there would have been consultation with my own motoring organisation, as well as with others. This sort of consultation is normal. It is expected and usually carried out. It has not been done here. I have written several letters to the Minister concerned asking that there should be consultation on the matters dealt with in these new Amendments. Consultation has not been forthcoming until 1.15 p.m. to-day as the result of a rather sharp postscript I put on my letter. It is not good enough, and it will not do. The noble Lord should now understand exactly what I am trying to achieve.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I am quite unable to pour oil on these troubled waters. It seems to me that this is another difficulty arising simply and solely out of the habit of the Government of tabling Amendments to this Bill at the very last moment so that it is impossible for any of us to have time to consider whether they are acceptable. In this case, I feel some difficulty in going all the way with my noble friend because, if he will remember, his noble friend and mine, Lord Molson, warmly welcomed this part of the Bill when it was tabled, though he said that he had had no time to take it in and was dependent on the Minister's explanation. I hope that noble Lords opposite will not think that I am arguing this purely on Party lines. I believe that it is bad for legislation when we are called upon to consider substantial new Amendments with no notice at all. In these circumstances, it is completely understandable if my noble friend moves an Amendment designed simply and solely, so far as I can see, to give more time for examination of this. In this case, whether his Amendment is agreed to or not, Parts III and IV of the Bill will have to go back to another place to be examined. But I have the greatest sympathy with him, be cause this is a glaring example of the additional trouble being caused to your Lordships' House, which jeopardises good legislation, by the late tabling of Government Amendments.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, that really is only part of the story. I accept the noble Lord's correction: I was in error, and he could not have put down his Amendment earlier. What first happened was that on Committee stage I male a statement that an Amendment would be moved on Report. I gave a fairly full account of what the Amendment would be about, the tripartite division and the procedure by which this could be done in connection with map revision. I do not remember the noble Lord, Lord Chest am, saying anything about it at that time, but I speak subject to correction once again.
Let us look a little farther back. This provision was not brought out of a hat on Report stage in your Lordships' House. It is putting into effect one of the recommendations of the Gosling Committee, and that Committee was set up to inquire into all this, to take account of

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everybody's interests and ask all the relevant questions, whether or not they agreed with this, and what they wanted done. It is a fact, which the House should bear in mind, that the R.A.C., which I assume might have an interest in this matter, was invited to give evidence to the Gosling Committee and did not take up the invitation to do so. Therefore, if the Gosling Committee recommendation is unwelcome to the R.A.C., one might hold the view that it would be wrong for them to come in and object at this stage. But it is possible to overdo this emphasis on last-minute Government revision, which had been announced in advance, and which is following up the results of an expert Committee before which everybody was free to give evidence.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, it may be that the R.A.C. has an interest in this, but the noble Lord's argument seems to me to be regrettable. I was well aware of the evidence collected by the Gosling Committee. I was not aware until recently what was going to happen—and the noble Lord in his statement on Committee was not completely explicit about it. If he was explicit why did he not put an Amendment down then? He did not tell us what the Government were going to do. We have not had an opportunity to consider this properly. There are certain aspects which from the vehicle user's point of view are—I will not go so far as to say objectionable, but at least arguable. It has always been customary when there were differences of opinion to iron them out in consultation, for which I have been asking for some weeks, and which I have not been granted. It has not been possible to iron out these things since 1.15 p.m. to-day when consultation was first offered. I think that this is a procedure "up with which I personally cannot put."
LORD KENNET: My Lords, before the Question is put I should like to get upon the Record that I personally—and I speak for no one else—have seen no communications, letters, telegrams or any other form of communication, from the noble Lord asking for consultation on this.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, if the noble Lord will consult the Private Secretary to his right honourable friend, he can no doubt be shown the file.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, if I may have permission to speak again, we really are in deep waters here. Since the Amendment was moved, I have been reading again the OFFICIAL REPORT of the Proceedings on Report stage when the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, was, as he said, giving an account of this matter. When I complained that the Amendments had been available in the Printed Paper Office only two and a half hours before the House met, the noble Lord said:
"… may I say that of course it is not simply a question of drafting; it is also a question of consultation which imposes delay. This is a difficult decision for any Government to take. We could have brought this Amendment before your Lordships earlier, but that would have meant we should not have consulted everybody who ought to have been consulted in the local authority world, and the associations concerned, to the extent that they ought to have been consulted. It is an extremely complex matter, as I think your Lordships know from the complications which we have found in the discussion of it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21/5/68, cols. 629–630.]
When I heard the noble Lord say that, I assumed that the Government had consulted everybody, and that the length of those consultations was a principal reason why the Government had not been able until the very last moment to table their Amendments. Now it emerges from the debate on this Amendment, in spite of what was said then, that certain bodies who were obviously vitally concerned had not been consulted, and that is why we are in this trouble.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I have listened carefully to what has been said and I must confess, on what the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, has said, that I cannot help feeling considerable sympathy for him. I would also say that I do not think that sympathy is enough in the circumstances. Clearly we do not want to hold up the progress of this Bill. I think that what he would like is to find a way to ensure that, before this matter is settled one way or the other, there is proper consultation, and if it is possible to leave the matter open in some way, whether here or in another place, this will go some way to meet him. I know that my noble friend Lord Kennet has been considering this closely. I take careful note of what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, has said. I should not like him, or indeed any other noble Lords opposite, to think that when they make a point of this kind it falls on deaf ears.

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I think it is my duty as Leader of the House to have some regard to the rights of all noble Lords. In the light of that, I think that perhaps if the House were to give leave to my noble friend Lord Kennet to speak again it might be that he has some way in which he can help us through this.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, clearly there has been some breakdown and misunderstanding in communication somewhere. Let me repeat what I said. I have never, to my knowledge, refused to consult with any noble Lord on any topic about a Bill going through the House; nor shall I ever do so. It did not arise in this case, and for me it never will. But things do go wrong. Something may have gone adrift, and that being so, I think that probably the best thing I can do is to say that I cannot advise the House against accepting this Amendment, and this will be one means of obtaining time for the consultation which the noble Lord desires.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I am grateful for the conciliatory attitude of the noble Lord the Leader of the House, and to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, for what he has said. If there is any justification for what he said, I did not write to him I wrote to the Minister, which I thought I was perfectly entitled to do. It is with the Minister that I have been corresponding. I am most surprised to learn that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, does not know of this correspondence. If the House wishes to accept this Amendment. I hope it will do so, because, quite frankly, despite the help I am receiving from the Government here, I cannot see my way to withdraw it. The reason is that an offer of consultation after legislation has been enacted is not an offer of consultation at all. Consultation occurs beforehand, not afterwards. For this reason, I do not feel able to withdraw the Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 1 [Proposals submitted to statutory undertakers and other authorities]:
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 31, which is a consequential Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 48, line 7, leave out ("object") and insert ("withhold their consent").—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I beg to move the next Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 48, line 8, leave out ("and the objection is not withdrawn").—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 33.
Amendment moved—
Page 48, line 10, leave out ("objection") and insert ("grounds for withholding consent").—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 3 [Public rights of way]:
8.5 p.m.
LORD KENNETmoved, in paragraph 4(3) of Part II, to leave out all words after "shall" and to substitute: "cause a local enquiry to be held". The noble Lord said: My Lords I should like to discuss Amendments No. 34 and 35 together. They give effect to an under-taking which was given to the noble Lord, Lord Molson, on the Report stage, that the Government would consider amending the shortened review procedure in order to ensure that in a dispute about a right of way each side in the dispute would be accorded the same treatment. The effect of these Amendments will be that the Minister will cause a local inquiry to be held if objections are made to alterations affected by, or anything omitted from, the draft revision map and not withdrawn. In this way any person interested will be able to make representations to an inspector about the rights of way in dispute at any inquiry, which will be advertised in the normal way. This provides a fully balanced procedure for a public hearing of both sides of the case.
Paragraph 4 (5) of the Schedule is however retained, and I should explain this. It ensures that if the Minister does not simply say "Yes" or "No" to what is proposed. hut says something halfway between "Yes" and "No". or "on condition", or makes a new decision himself; if the Minister does anything he has not been asked to do by anybody in his decision, then he shall be bound,

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before making the decision final, to communicate with any person who may be affected. I think this is the complete picture. It is really analogous to the situation that prevails in planning law. One has everything here. You get the draft published. Anybody who is affected by what is proposed goes along and has his say. You then get a report and recommendation to the Minister, and he can take his conclusion there and then, so long as it is either "Yes" or "No", to what is proposed. If, on the other hand, the Minister, of his own judgment, takes account of anything else, and decides half-way, or something different again, he must communicate that decision to anybody concerned, and to anybody who may not have thought he would be affected at an early stage but who now is. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 55, line 44, leave out from ("shall") to end of line 47, and insert the said new words.—(Lord Kennet.)
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, as one of those who was concerned with this Amendment at an earlier stage, I should like to say that I am grateful to the Minister and to the Government for the course that they have taken.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, this is all part of the same point. I beg to move—
Amendment moved—
Page 56, line 4. leave out from ("by") to ("take") and insert ("the person appointed to hold the local enquiry").—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
8.9 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM LORD CHESHAM moved, in paragraph 9(1) of Part III, to leave out head (a) and insert:
"(a) a "byway" together with an indication whether it is open to all traffic or to specified types of traffic,".
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the reason for this Amendment is that it seems perfectly reasonable to think that there will probably be some roads used as public footpaths which will be well suited to some types of vehicles but not to others.
A good example of this, I think, would be something which might be suitable
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for motor-cyclists, but not for other classes of vehicles; or it might in some circumstances be suitable for motor cars, but not for any form of commercial vehicle. I think there should be adequate and proper provision to enable a suitable classification to be made in such cases, so that these restrictive categories of vehicles would be able to use the ways where appropriate, instead of just simply extinguishing all rights of way for vehicles. I see that, as the noble Lord pointed out before, provision is included for road traffic orders to be made under the Road Traffic Regulations Act 1967, This would, I think, permit restriction of the use of a byway open to all traffic to certain classes, but such action would be taken only after reclassification had been decided and the review had taken place.
Paragraph 11 seems to me undesirably limited in the way that it specifies matters to be considered when deciding whether or not a road used as a public path should be classified as a byway open to all traffic; and if a particular public path is assessed as being only suitable for use of motor cycles it would seem unlikely that it would then be classified as a byway open to all traffic, or that indeed it would be satisfactory if it were. The way the Bill stands, it seems here to be all or nothing. I think we require a broader definition, and that is what my Amendment sets out to achieve. My Lords, I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 57, line 29, leave out article (a) and insert the said new article.—(Lord Chesham.)
LORD KENNET: My Lords, the intention at present is that once the roads have been reclassified, if they ever are, as byways they will come within the existing highways law, as I said on an earlier occasion in another context, and it will be possible to make traffic restriction orders applicable to them under the provisions of the Road Traffic Regulations Act 1967. Orders limiting the type of traffic will therefore be considered separately, and signs indicating the restrictions in force will be displayed on the roads when the orders are in force. The existing public rights over each way, as well as the condition of the surface and width of way and suitability for traffic, will all be considered. I do not know whether that explanation meets the noble Lord's point or whether he would like

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to withdraw this Amendment and include the ground it covers in the consultations which we are to have.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I think I appreciate the point the noble Lord has made about this. But it seemed to me that the noble Lord had some doubt about whether this reclassification would take place, because I thought I heard him say, "When it takes place, if it ever does".
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I was referring only to the possibility, the remoteness of which we shall all be the judge, of whether the Amendment recently carried at the instance of the noble Lord would stand through the proceedings in the House of Commons and be acted upon by the Minister in such a way that these reviews did not take place.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I hope that no result of any consultation we might have would necessarily achieve that, because that is not what I am setting out to do. I am merely seeking to improve in certain respects the conditions in which this review would take place. What I am seeking to do at the moment is to make certain that what is in the Bill is not either open to all traffic or closed to all traffic. As the Bill now stands, it seems that there is no differentiation between the two. But if the noble Lord thinks that this Amendment will stand further scrutiny and consultations will iron out this kind of problem, I am prepared to accept that. But I do not know whether the noble Lord can say that, and I am sure I am not being impolite to him when I say that he is not quite sure if he can say that, either. Therefore, I am wondering whether I ought in fact to withdraw this Amendment.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I am not quite sure that I followed what my noble friend was saying just now. As I understand it, this is a proposal to amend words which were inserted in the Bill in this House. They will therefore, in any case, either in the form as printed now or in their amended form as my noble friend proposes, have to go for consideration to another place. It is an obvious fact that if any Amendment
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is sent to another place it can be further amended there, whether in the light of successful consultations or of any other initiative. It certainly would seem that honourable Members elsewhere, if they felt strongly that the words in the Bill were not the right words, and that they should be amended in some such way as my noble friend suggests, could equally well put down Amendments there. I venture to suggest that it might be better if, instead of seeking to amend these words, all of which are now in the melting pot, pending consultations, we were to send this Part III and Part IV to another place as they stand and let the work be done there following the consultations, which in my view are essential.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, let me be sure that I have this quite straight. We shall be sending from here, as I understand it, the Lords Amendments. Surely it would be better to accept this Amendment at the present and send it; then, if the due process of consultation indicates that this Amendment should not be accepted, all that has to happen is that the Commons do not agree with the Amendment. If after consultation the matter is so fixed, there will be no further trouble from me. Surely that is the way to do it. One thing I will say to the noble Lord is that, in view of the consultations he promises, I have no intention of being unreasonable about it or anything like that; I am merely trying to improve the Bill in certain ways, which I hope to do successfully as a result of the consultations. But I do not see that my objective is going to be achieved by withholding the Amendment now. I think it should be done the other way round.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, prima facie I would agree that it can be done either way with perfect correctitude, but, as a matter of fact, if this Amendment is carried there are a couple of later Amendments on to-day's Marshalled List which it will be impossible to move. So the noble Lord may feel it would be better to do it the way his noble friend suggested, in order to allow the two later Amendments to be considered when we come to them in due order.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, could the noble Lord quickly tell me to which Amendments he is referring?
LORD KENNET: I will tell the noble Lord as quickly as I can. They are to Schedule 3, page 56, line 45; and Schedule 3, page 58, line 41.
LORD CHESHAM: Could the noble Lord repeat that? I am a little lost.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, if I may speak again, with the greatest respect, I find this very hard to follow. We are debating an Amendment to leave out:
"(a) a 'byway open to all traffic',"—
LORD KENNET: My Lords, may I interrupt? I most profusely apologise. It should be the other way round. If those two Amendments are carried, we should not be able to carry this one. I apologise.
LORD CHESHAM: I did not move No. 36 for that very reason.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: If I may continue, my Lords—I was interrupted by the noble Lord— the issue is now whether we send back to the Commons
"(a) a 'byway open to all traffic',"
or
"(a) a 'byway' together with an indication whether it is open to all traffic or to specified types of traffic,".
It is clearly open to us to do either, and whichever we do the words will be open to examination and possibly further amendment in another place. I feel in some difficulty here. But my noble friend has had, I think, a limited success in getting the Government not to oppose his earlier Amendment, ensuring further consideration in another place. I gather from the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, that the Government see some real difficulty about this Amendment. I would therefore suggest that, even as a matter of diplomacy, it might be better for my noble friend, having put his views on record here, to leave the final wording entirely open to decision after the consultations, an object which he will completely secure if he were to withdraw this Amendment now.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I am sorry to be argumentative about this, but there is one thing I do not understand. Since, after the Bill leaves here, the only further stage in its progress is
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consideration of the Lords Amendments in another place, if we do not put an Amendment in now I do not see how—although I am willing to be told if there is a way—a fresh Amendment can be made.
LORD AIREDALE: Hear, hear!
LORD KENNET: My Lords, one has to keep one's head. Unless both the noble Lord and I are mistaken, this is an Amendment to a part of the Bill which was inserted in this House. All such parts of the Bill must be considered de novo by the House of Commons and can be amended there, in distinction to other parts which originated in the House of Commons and came through this House unscathed.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I think I can help. If this is sent back to us from another place with a disagreement, possibly with the noble Lord's Amendment made with an Amendment, provided it is relevant to the disagreement it will be open to the noble Lord to move an Amendment again. I hope I am giving the correct advice to your Lordships, but I think the noble Lord has not finished with this particular matter.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, all I am anxious about is that it is procedurally possible to get this Amendment in. I can see how it is procedurally possible to put it in and then to get it out, but I am not sure of the procedure the other way round. I should have preferred the former procedure, but if the noble Lord the Leader of the House assures me that in the circumstances it is possible that this Amendment, after agreement, could be moved in when this part of the Bill goes before another place, I am happy. But I want that assurance.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I think the last speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, put the matter beyond any doubt—that it can be dealt with when the Bill goes back to the Commons.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, in that case, and with the assurance given by the noble Lord the Leader of the House which I am taking as an assurance, I ask leave to withdraw—
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, if I may have the leave of the House

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to speak again before the noble Lord withdraws his Amendment, in absolute honesty, and tempting though it is to keep quiet, I wish I could be absolutely certain that I have given him the correct advice. This is a part of the Bill which has been incorporated in this House, and if the Commons accept it there will be no disagreement and it will not come back to this House. Although the noble Lord was good enough to say that he would withdraw, I feel that I must make the position clear.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: But, my Lord, it can be amended in another place, can it not?
LORD SHACKLETON: That is so, my Lords, and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, will be prepared to accept this. I was just a little worried that I might have misled him into withdrawing his Amendment, and that I should subsequently find that the advice I had given him was not entirely sound. I did not want to be guilty of that. None the less, I hope the noble Lord will feel inclined to let it go to another place.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, if I can take that as an assurance that it can be so amended, I will accept that course, otherwise it will be no good having consultations and agreeing to amend it. If we agree in consultation and the noble Lord is prepared to see that it is amended, I am prepared to withdraw—
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I think I must make one final comment on that. If, when the noble Lord comes to see me and my ministerial colleagues, we reach agreement, we would then invite the House of Commons to amend it, but nothing is absolute.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, that is all I want to know, and now I will have a further shot at withdrawing it. I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I beg to move that the further consideration of the Countryside Bill be adjourned for the purpose of taking a Message from the Commons into consideration.
Moved accordingly, and on Question, Motion agreed to.

TRANSPORT BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
HOUSING (FINANCIAL PROVISIONS) (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to.

INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION BILL
8.28 p.m.
Returned from the Commons with the Lords Amendments disagreed to, with a Reason for such disagreement.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Reason for disagreeing to the Lords Amendments to the Industrial Expansion Bill be considered forthwith. It may le for the convenience of the House if the main discussion (if that is the right description) takes place on the next Motion that I propose to move. I beg to move that the Commons Reason be considered forthwith.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS REASON FOR DISAGREEING TO THE LORDS AMENDMENTS
[References are to Bill (96) as first printed for the Lords.]

LORDS AMENDMENTS
Clause 2, page 2, line 21, after "form" insert "(other than the provision of equity capital)"
Clause 2, page 2, line 38, leave out paragraph (e).
The Commons disagreed to these Amendments for the following Reason:
Because they would alter the financial arrangements made by the Commons; and the Commons do not offer any further Reason trusting that the above Reason may be deemed sufficient.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, in moving that this House doth not insist on these Amendments, I would briefly draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that these are the Amendments which were carried in a Committee of the Whole House to Clause 2(2) and which deprive the Government of the power, if necessary, and by agreement a firm, to obtain equity shareholdings in private firms. We spent a long time discussing this matter in your Lordships' House and we had an interesting debate.

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On that occasion I prophesied that we had perhaps not seen the last of the Bill and that it might return to us. We have given another place every opportunity of considering these Amendments, and I must say, having been in another place during some of the proceedings, that I think they took full advantage of it—but that is an entirely neutral statement.
Your Lordships have heard the Message from the Commons, which hints that the Amendments infringe their privilege. We know that it is perfectly correct to send such Amendments to another place and that on occasion another place does accept them, but on this matter Erskine May advises us that this hint of privilege is generally accepted by the Lords and that such Amendments are not insisted upon. If I may say so, I am grateful to noble Lords whom I have consulted on this matter. There is a certain urgency in passing this Bill into law and the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn whom I consulted, and other noble Lords who took part in the debate, seem to be content to accept this. If there are any points noble Lords wish to ask I shall be glad to deal with them. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on the Amendments to which the Commons have disagreed.—(Lord Shackleton.)
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I hope that this will not happen often. Within the last hour I went to the Printed Paper Office to inquire whether the Commons Reason for disagreeing to the Lords Amendments to this Bill was available; and it was not available. Of course, I heard the Reason from the lips of the noble Lord the Leader of the House, from the Despatch Box, and after he had read out the Commons Reason I was courteously handed a copy of the Commons Reason for disagreeing to the Lords Amendments. It would be a sad business, in my view, if it became customary for Commons Reasons for disagreeing to our Amendments to be considered by us before those Reasons were made available to us in the Printed Paper Office. I am sure that it does not matter on this occasion, but Her Majesty's Government should realise that this is not the sort of thing which would he acceptable to us, except very rarely indeed.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, it I may reply to the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, this was a matter to which we gave careful consideration. I consulted noble Lords who were interested, and I fully accept that that is not the same as consulting the House. But this sort of thing is apt to happen just before the House rises for a Recess. As a general point, I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, and particularly where Amendments are of a complicated kind; but we had good reason to believe that that would not be the case here. I have taken note of what the noble Lord said. and on this occasion the House has certainly been tolerant, but I think the Government have not been guilty of discourtesy to the House. None the less, I take the noble Lord's point.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, perhaps I should have said that the Commons disagreed to these Amendments for this Reason:
Because they would alter the financial arrangements made by the Commons; and the Commons do not offer any further Reason trusting that the above Reason may be deemed sufficient.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COUNTRYSIDE BILL
8.34 p.m.
Further considered on Third Reading.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, the purpose of this Amendment is to remove certain words which might conceivably suggest that there are two kinds of bridle-ways, those closed to vehicular traffic ant those open to vehicular traffic, which of course would not be the case. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 57, line 30, leave out ("closed to vehicular traffic").—(Lord Kennet.)
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord for clarification on one point. In the event of a road used as a public path being reclassified as a bridleway, which with or without these words—and I am not arguing his Amendment—means that it is closed to traffic, what is the position of a landowner over whose land this traffic runs, and who was previously dependent upon it for his own

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farming purposes? It would mean that a road he has always been able to use would be closed to all vehicular traffic. Can the noble Lord say what the position would be?
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I cannot fully say, without notice of the question, but I can say in general terms that it is no part of the purposes of this Bill, anywhere along the line, to deprive landowners or anybody else of the right to get to their own houses and their own premises, out-houses, barns, or whatever it may be, by the means they have always used.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
8.35 p.m.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, the effect of this Amendment is that the ways shown on the map by any of the three new descriptions, when the roads used as public paths are split up, shall as from the date of publication of the definitive map in the special review be highways maintainable at public expense; and that any entry in the map describing a way as a "byway open to all traffic" will be conclusive evidence of the existence, at the date of publication of the map, of a public right of way for vehicular and all other kinds of traffic. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 57, leave out lines 36 to 40 and insert—
("(a) each way shown in the map in pursuance of this paragraph by any of the three descriptions shall be a highway maintainable at the public expense,
(b) subject to paragraph (c) below, any entry in the map describing a way as a byway open to all traffic' shall be conclusive evidence of the existence on the date of publication of a public right of way for vehicular and all other kinds of traffic.
(c) section 32(4)(c) of the Act of 1949 (position and width, and limitations or conditions affecting the public right of way, as shown in the statement) shall apply to any byway so shown as it applies to a footpath or bridle way.")—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential upon the Amendments we carried earlier about roads used as public paths in long distance routes. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 58. line 3, at end insert—
(" (4) In subsection (2)(a) and in subsection (5) of section 51 of the Act of 1949 (long distance routes) references to roads used as
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public paths shall include references to any way shown on a definitive map and statement as a byway open to all traffic'.")—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, this Amendment is intended to remove any shadow of doubt about the fact that a highway authority is riot requited to metal the surface of a "byway open to all traffic". I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 58, line 5, leave out from ("1967") to end of line 6 and insert ("or oblige a highway authority to provide, on a way shown on a definitive map as a 'byway open to all traffic', a metalled carriage-way, or a carriage-way which is by any other means provided with a surface suitable for the passage of vehicles.")—(Lord Kennel.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, this, I think, is a fairly self-explanatory Amendment designed to ensure that when it comes to consideration and the special review, the interests I mention in the Amendment will be properly consulted. In the circumstances, I must most strongly ask that this provision be put in, and I do so by means of begging leave to move the Amendment.
Amendment move—
Page 58, line 20, at end insert—
(" () Before producing proposals for re-classification of roads used as public paths, the authority shall consult organisations representing vehicle users about any proposals to extinguish vehicular rights of way.").—(Lord Chesham.)
LORD KENNET: My Lords, it would really be quite an unusual thing to require the surveying authority to consult with interested bodies before producing proposals. No doubt they will or not as they think fit. But this really does not concern Statute Law. Statute Law provides that when the surveying authority produce their proposals, then there is a four-month period during which everybody with any conceivable interest has an opportunity to come forward and give his views on the proposals. This is the ,time for the organisations which the noble Lord has in mind to make their case about a given proposal, and it would not be in accordance with what is done either in planning law or in other fields in this Bill to require local authorities to consult anybody, particularly before even publishing their draft. I hope that

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with that explanation the noble Lord may be content to let it rest on the public inquiry and representation period, as is usual.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I might. I am not content; I may let it rest, but I am not content to do so, particularly because I view with the gravest suspicion the next Amendment in the name of the noble Lord. I think that if we move out the provisions for representation or objection to be made about the reclassification of roads as public paths—the noble Lord proposes to move out that provision—and there will not be a public inquiry at this stage, I think that perhaps my Amendment should go in.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, if I may at this point, with permission, speak again, I am not proposing in my next Amendment that the House should move out the provision about a public inquiry. It is only because the Amendments which we have just carried, concerning the public inquiry in the shortened review procedure, will apply to this sort of case that sub-paragraph (5) of paragraph 11 becomes redundant. It is simply because what we have just carried into the Bill is attracted to this that I am moving to leave out that paragraph. So there will be a public inquiry here, have no fear, by Lords.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I wonder whether I could ask the Minister a question. Does the authority advertise. or in some way make known to interested organisations, its proposals for reclassification of roads, so that during this four months (if that is the period) the association have a proper opportunity of being aware that something is afoot, so as to have something about which to make representations? Is there adequate advertising of reclassification proposals?
LORD KENNET: My Lords, without having time to read through the Schedule, I believe the answer is Yes; they must advertise their proposals in this matter, as in others.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I am anxious to ensure that they do. There are in this country 1,200 authorities concerned with road affairs, and presumably 1,200 authorities—or maybe more, for all I know—who are going to be concerned
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in this review and reclassification. I should have thought that the acceptance of my Amendment would make certain that people concerned knew. We do not want 1,200 repetitions of this evening's procedure up and down the country.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, we do not indeed, if only because we should study the Bill, I think, a little more. There are not 1,200 highway authorities, and it is highway authorities we are talking about. It is in the Schedule that the proposals must be published in the London Gazette and in at least one local newspaper.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, this is the Amendment which removes the public hearing provisions, which, as I have just said, are rendered redundant by the Amendment we carried earlier. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 58, line 29, leave out sub-paragraph (5).—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD CHESHAM LORD CHESHAM moved, after paragraph 11 to insert:
() No roads used as public paths shall be reclassified until all special reviews have been completed and the Minister has approved the proposals, provided that such approval shall not be given until the Minister has consulted organisations representing vehicle users concerning the overall effects of the reclassification proposals throughout the country.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is a somewhat more important Amendment. It is designed to ensure that the national effect of the proposals—that is to say, the total mileage over the whole country and its interconnections on which the vehicular rights of way will be extinguished—will be considered as such before any re-classification becomes operative. It will he extremely important, because when individual cases are considered the national effect of the proposals as a whole on the facilities for vehicles for leisure, pleasure, business and sport will not be apparent unless the matter is looked at in this way. I am convinced that if we do not have this Amendment and the whole thing is done piecemeal, we run the risk of ending up in a proper muddle which may take years to sort out, because as tracks run from the area of one authority to

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another, each of which may take a different view and different actions, we run the risk of making the country in this respect look like a lot of spaghetti cut up in short lengths with a knife. This is a reasonable Amendment. The Minister would need consultation with the people who are referred to in the Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 58, line 32 at end insert the said paragraph.—(Lord Chesham.)
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I quite take the point of the noble Lord's Amendment, but I expect and hope that since he has already carried into effect an Amendment which makes the whole of this part of Schedule 3 dependent on an Order to be made by the Minister at a later date, and he has done it with the object of a general consultation about the provisions in the Bill which may at a later time be amended in another place, he may regard this point, too, as something which can be discussed between us and therefore be prepared on that basis to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, on that assurance, if the noble Lord is happy to include this matter among the subjects about which consultation can be arranged in the near future before further action is taken, I will indeed agree to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD KENNET LORD KENNET moved, after paragraph 11, to insert:
Survey begun after commencement of Act
"12.—(1) Subject to the provisions of this paragraph, paragraphs 9 and 10 above shall apply to an initial survey begun after the coming into force of this Act as if it were the first review so begun.

(2) In paragraph 9(1), as applied to the survey, for references to the draft revision and the definitive map and statement there shall be substituted references to the map and statement in draft, provisional and definitive form, and in paragraphs 9 and 10, as applied to the survey, road used as a public path' shall mean a way which in the opinion of the authority would, but for the provisions of this Part of this Schedule, have fallen to be shown, in the definitive map and statement resulting from the survey, as a road used as a public path."

The noble Lord said: My Lords, this applies the three new descriptions of "roads used as public paths" to any public rights of way survey begun after the commencement of the Act. For ex-

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ample, a county borough council, not having adopted the survey provisions of the 1949 Act, may decide to do so some time in the future. The survey should, of course, include roads used as public paths on the new basis. This Amendment simply enables that to be done. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 58, line 32, at end insert the said paragraph.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
8.48 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Countryside Bill, has consented to place her interest so far as it is concerned on behalf of the Crown, the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill do now pass.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Lord Kennet.)
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I think it was arranged in the normal way that the Third Reading debate should take place at this stage of the Bill. I have said, in moving Amendments, that there are certain matters about which A this stage I would speak at some length, but the progress of the Amendments which I moved tonight has been such that I do not think it is necessary for me to speak at length on these matters. I have said quite enough about my feelings in regard to the way that particular parts of the Bill have been handled in the House, and have spoken abundantly, the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, may feel, of my thoughts on the subject of the lack of consultation. I think that point is well taken and does not need any argument.
All I will now say, therefore, is that I am left with the belief that perhaps the Government have not appreciated the strength of the feeling which exists in the minds of, for want of a better term, we will call the motoring world. I would say to him. "Do not underestimate the strength of the feeling about this matter." Coupled with certain other occurrences over the last year or two, there is a fairly widespread feeling that the Government

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tend to adopt rather a cavalier attitude towards the motoring world. I am not going to make any more of it. I am trying not to overstate any kind of case. It may be that they get annoyed and resentful when some students throw bottles in the street. I do not think the motoring community will throw bottles in the street, but it does not mean that in these instances they are not left with strong feelings, and genuine feelings, of resentment and dissatisfaction. Having said that, my Lords, basically I wish the Government well with this Bill. If, up to now, I have had to consider it rather a half-cooked porridge of a Bill, I still wish them luck with it and a minimum of the subsequent, and what seems to me in some ways inevitable, indigestion.
8.52 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, a good deal has gone wrong during the progress of this Bill. I, for one, have not held the noble Lord, Lord Kennet to blame. I think other forces have been operating. There certainly seems to have been a very bad breakdown of communications somewhere in the matter with which my noble friend Lord Chesham is concerned, because he appears to have been in communication with the Minister and his communications do not seem to have been conveyed to the Parliamentary Secretary. That is, to me, inexplicable, but I, for one, as I have said, do not hold the Parliamentary Secretary to blame at all. I have already indicated those respects in which I hold the Government to blame
For my part, I should like to end these long debates on a friendly note. Though this Bill gives rise to hard feelings in some respects, it is not a Bill that has been regarded as controversial on Party lines, and I venture to think that your Lordships' House has done a great deal of good to it in its discussions. I do not know what view noble Lords opposite will take, but I should forecast that practically every one of the Amendments that we have made here will be acceptable in another place. This is an eminent example of the kind of Bill where, by constructive work, your Lordships' House can do great good to the Statute Book. I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, for all the trouble he has taken over my Amendments aid in answering my speeches,
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considering that only three days ago he was in bed with a high temperature. He has stuck it out extremely well to-day, and I think we should enable him to go home as soon as possible.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I speak at the risk of keeping him another minute or two in order to associate myself very much with what has just been said by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, and to send this Bill on its next stage with great gratification, because there is no question at all that this is a Bill of outstanding importance to the countryside movement. As the noble Lord has said, it has been tremendously improved during its passage through your Lordships' House. That improvement has to a substantial extent been due to the work which your Lordships have done here, but at the same time the Government have implemented promises made in another place, and they have not had a great deal of time in which to do it, but these implementations have given rise to much satisfaction. During the last few days I have had messages coming in from those who work in the National Parks up and down the country and from the different societies which have been doing their best to work with the Government in order to make this Bill a really first-class measure. That is very gratifying, and I hope will to some extent reward the Minister, who has given unflagging zeal and great courtesy to us all during a very gruelling period. His courtesy and patience has, I am sure, impressed all Members of your Lordships' House, and I should like him to feel that we are very grateful to him for what he has done.
8.56 p.m.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, perhaps I should not let the Bill go without saying my word or two. I think we have got a good Bill here. I am convinced that in almost all respects in which we have altered it we have altered it for the better. It has been an example of what one might call continuous legislation. One can do that on a non-controversial Bill, and I should like to compliment and thank the Members of this House—and none more than my noble adversary, Lord Brooke of Cumnor—for the part they have played in this process of continuous legislation. On certain occasions when there is a basic

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community of view on two sides it is safe to run after the Bill with Amendments until quite a late stage. In this one is trading on everybody's good sense and good temper, and I am very glad that it has paid off, and I am glad that the Bill has been improved in details right down to the last moment. Let me compliment the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cum nor, first of all for his unflagging patience, mitigated only by his sharpness of view, with which I am becoming familiar and the rest of your Lordships have been familiar longer than I have. I wish to thank all of those who have contributed in the multifarious stages of this Bill in order to improve it.
On Question, Bill passed, and returned to the Commons.

ROYAL ASSENT
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified Her Royal Assent to the following Acts and Measure:

Local Authorities' Mutual Investment Trust Act,

Export Guarantees Act,

Firearms Act,

Wills Act,

Trade Descriptions Act,

Air Corporations Act,

Housing (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act,

Industrial Expansion Act,

Mill Lane, Kirk Ella, Burial Ground Act,

All Saints, Streatham Act,

Holy Trinity, West Hampstead Act,

University of Salford Act,

Royal College of Art Act,

Christ Church with Saint Andrew and Saint Michael, East Green-wich Act,

Mersey Tunnel (Liverpool/Wallasey) Act,

Salvation Army Act,

Pastoral Measure.

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments