Lords Sitting of 15 April 1969

Preamble
Reassembling after the Easter Recess, the House met at half past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Newcastle.

NIGERIA: O.A.U. AND PRIME MINISTER'S VISIT
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper. May I add that it was tabled many weeks ago.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have informed the Organisation of African Unity that the purpose of the Prime Minister's visit to Lagos is to encourage an international arms embargo, a cease-fire, a meeting of both sides without pre-conditions, and the opening of a mercy corridor for relief, in order to bring the Nigerian/Biafra war to an end and to alleviate hunger.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister had discussions in Addis Ababa with His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Ethiopia who is Chairman of the
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Organisation of African Unity's Consultative Committee on Nigeria and with the Secretary General of the Organisation of African Unity. He explained the British Government's thinking on the steps necessary to achieve a settlement and gave a full account of his talks in Lagos, on which he has reported fully in another place.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend, may I ask whether he is aware that I am among those who do not regard the Prime Minister's visit to Lagos and Addis Ababa as fruitless, despite the failure to meet Colonel Ojukwu? May I particularly ask this question? In view of the meeting, of the African Heads of State at Lusaka to-day, and the meeting of the Consultative Committee to prepare for mediation in Nigeria, will Her Majesty's Government indicate to those African representatives our full co-operation in their efforts to bring this war to an end?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I do not think any special initiative needs to be taken, because all countries in the O.A.U. know of our concern and our willingness to help if we were asked.

IMPORT DEPOSIT SCHEME
2.38 p.m.
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, whether, in view of the failure

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import levy scheme to produce the desired results, they will now consider imposing import quotas on unnecessary manufactured goods and luxury goods generally.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD BROWN): My Lords, I do not agree with the noble Lord that the import deposit scheme has failed to produce the desired results. While it is true that we cannot put a figure on the effect of the scheme, we believe that it is achieving its purpose, which was to produce a marginal but nevertheless significant effect on imports and thus accelerate usefully the improvement in our balance of payments. Her Majesty's Government do not believe that import quotas, whether general in coverage or applied as the noble Lord suggests, to "unnecessary manufactured goods and luxury goods" are desirable.
LORD BOOTHBY: But, my Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether it is not a fact that the balance-of-payments deficit continues, and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer expected it to be well over by this time? The situation is much worse than was anticipated by Her Majesty's Government. Since excessive imports, rather than falling exports, are the primary cause of this continuing balance-of-payments deficit, is it not a fact that this problem can be solved in an international context only by agreements covering both monetary and trade policies with other countries? I am merely asking whether the Government would take an initiative in this direction.
LORD BROWN: My Lords, the import figures, reading the three-monthly moving averages, have gone like this since July, 1968: 640, 640, 654, 655, 656, 657, 650, 651, 656. Those are very steady figures—
LORD BOOTHBY: On the wrong side.
LORD BROWN: It has to be remembered that this steadiness has taken place in the presence of the rising level of activity in this country, which would normally have been expected to increase those imports. In the second place, were we to begin considering the restrictions which the noble Lord suggests, of the import of unnecessary manufactured goods, et cetera, it has to be remembered
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that many of our exports would fall into that category when exported overseas, and we could certainly expect retaliation; we could certainly be taking a part in putting international trade on that slippery slope which led to such disastrous results in the 1930s.
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, if the noble Lord will forgive me for adding this, we could hardly expect to derive great satisfaction from contemplating a steady figure of deficit year after year; and that is what we are getting now, according to the noble Lord himself.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that he is to be congratulated, and so are the Government, on resisting the suggestion that unilateral import quotas should be put on by this country? Further, is the noble Lord aware that this would be bound to lead, as he said, to the slippery slope and to retaliation throughout the world, and is therefore very much to be voted against?
LORD NUNBURNHOLME: My Lords, would the Government consider that in future imports must be related to exports, all imports and exports paid through a central bank and the balance against us withheld until exports equal imports?
LORD BROWN: My Lords, in my view that would be a grossly retrograde step; one that would lead to similar measures by other countries and would lead back to the position of the 1930s which would he so dangerous to international trade.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, does not the noble Lord think it rather anomalous that anybody who has £3,000 can walk into a shop and buy a Mercedes Benz, while anybody who has £60 cannot spend it in Germany?
LORD BROWN: My Lords, I am afraid I really have not quite grasped the import of the question. I wonder whether the noble Lord would mind repeating it.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, is not the noble Lord trying to say that the travel allowance is only £50 but one can buy an imported car? However, is not the real answer that one can also buy British cars—Bentleys, Jaguars and others—in Germany?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I wonder whether I might have an answer from the Government.
LORD BROWN: My Lords, if the noble Lord cares to put his question quite simply, instead of asking it in riddles, I will do my best to answer it. I am indebted to the noble Lord on the Liberal Benches for clarifying the question, which frankly was put in very obscure terms indeed. I understand that the noble Lord is questioning the validity of the travel allowance limitation.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, if I may say so, I will remember in future that the noble Lord is a simple man.
LORD BROWN: My Lords, I am grateful for the compliment.

GIBRALTAR AIRWAYS FLIGHTS
LORD BETHELL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the fact that nearly 6 per cent. of Gibair flights between Gibraltar and Tangier were during 1968 cancelled for technical reasons, as compared with an overall B.E.A. technical cancellation rate of less than 1 per cent., they will use their influence with B.E.A., who are part owners of Gibair, to improve the reliability of this service, if necessary by providing a newer aircraft.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the way in which B.E.A. exercise their minority interest in Gibraltar Airways is a matter for their commercial judgment. The noble Lord may be interested to learn, however, that during 1968 B.E.A.'s co-operation with Gibraltar Airways has resulted in a marked improvement and the figure for the full year quoted by the noble Lord conceals the benefits which were derived later in the year from certain engine modifications and the stocking of a greater volume of spares.
LORD BETHELL: My Lords, may I thank the noble Lord for that reply and ask him, by way of a supplementary question, whether he is aware that certain uneconomic flights are run and subsidised by B.E.A.; namely, the flights between the Scottish mainland and the Scottish Islands. Is there not at least as good a case for Gibraltar in its present beleaguered state to have this reliable link subsidised by B.E.A.?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, whatever flights are operated by B.E.A. in the Highlands is a matter for them to determine, but in this particular "hop" of 30 miles it really is a most uneconomic proposition and I am not sure that it is fair to expect B.E.A. to subsidise it.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, I apologise for asking a question which although it concerns Gibraltar is a little outside the main Question. I should like to ask whether Her Majesty's Government would make a further application to the Portuguese Government with a view to obtaining landing rights at Faro in Southern Portugal, for the purpose of diversifying flights from Gibraltar for the benefit of the people of Gibraltar, as such an agreement was in the past refused by the Portuguese authorities.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, without commenting on the proposition that this would make the airway more viable commercially, I would say that if Her Majesty's Government are to exercise any intervention of this kind they would have to be approached in the first place by Gibraltar Airways.
LORD TREFGARNE: My Lords, in view of the fact that the public at large tend to judge Gibair's standards by those of B.E.A., may I ask whether the noble Lord would consult B.E.A. with regard to the possibility of leasing a more modern turbine aircraft to Gibair, so that the image of B.E.A. is not damaged as perhaps it is being at the moment?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, B.E.A. have a minority holding in this company and I believe they would be delighted to lease them a turbine aircraft. The question is, who would pay for it?

SOUTH-WEST AFRICA: BRITAIN AND U.N. RESOLUTION
2.47 p.m.
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 how the British representative in the United Nations Security Council voted on March 20 on the resolution condemning South African policy in South-West Africa.]
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government's representative at the Security Council, the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, abstained on the resolution but explained this course of action in a speech on March 20 which is available in our Library.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend may I ask him, first, who abstained with the British delegation on the Security Council; and, secondly, while the earlier failure to vote for the resolution might be justified on the ground of the action's being ineffective, in this case was it not a general statement of principle which our Government should have supported?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I understand that the other country on the Security Council which abstained was France. In regard to the second supplementary question, it is true that a fair proportion of the resolution was a statement with which we did not disagree, but it did call upon possible action by the Security Council, and in our view this was not a resolution that we could support.
LORD BROCKWAY: Yes, my Lords, but was not the action possible in the future, and dependent on circumstances; and would it not have been better for Her Majesty's Government to indicate the almost unanimous opinion in this country against the apartheid policy of South Africa?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, if my noble friend will read the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, I think he will be quite satisfied that the views of Her Majesty's Government were
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Well and truly expressed. It may be true that the resolution might call for future action, but it was an action that we did not believe it was possible to bring into effect, and for that reason we did not feel we could support the resolution.
LORD GRIMSTON OF WESTBURY: My Lords, could the noble Lord tell us whether the resolution called for the use of force in the future?
LORD SHELPHERD: No, my Lords; it did not call for the use of force.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, may I ask one simple question, which is also on a point of order? Do Her Majesty's Government really believe that it is fair, in dealing with what started as a simple question from the Front Bench, to enter into assumptions which cannot be fairly dealt with without a full-dress debate in this House? I suggest that it is really, however concealed, a breach of the Rules of this House, that one must not turn a Question into a debate or assume, as has been clearly stated, that the majority of people in this country are against the policy of South Africa in South West Africa, which to my knowledge is totally untrue.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, I must say that I think the noble Lord has also succeeded in breaching custom. I thought that to-day we were moving rather more expeditiously than usual.

BOURNEMOUTH CORPORATION BILL
Read 3a, and passed.
DERBY CORPORATION BILL
Read 3a, and passed.
TWEED FISHERIES BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE BILL
Returned from the Commons on Friday, March 28, with certain of the Lords Amendments agreed to and certain

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other Amendments disagreed to, with Reasons for the said disagreement; the said Amendments and Reasons printed, pursuant to Standing Order No. 45.

DECIMAL CURRENCY BILL
Brought from the Commons on Friday, March 28, last, and printed, pursuant to Standing Order No. 45: Bill read 1a.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, in rising to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper, I should like to say that if your Lordships agree to this course the Second Reading of the Decimal Currency Bill, of which we have just had the First Reading, will be taken after we have dealt with the Representation of the People Bill. I beg to move.
Moved, That Standing Order No. 41 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with for the purpose of allowing the Decimal Currency Bill to be read a first and a second time this day.—(Lord Shackleton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

CUSTOMS DUTIES (DUMPING AND SUBSIDIES) BILL [H.L.]
House in Committee (on Recommitment):
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.

BETTING, GAMING AND LOTTERIES (AMENDMENT) BILL [H.L.]
2.55 p.m.
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Lindgren.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL in the Chair.]
Clauses agreed to.
Schedule [Amendments of Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963]:
LORD LINDGREN LORD LINDGREN moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 2, line 11, at end insert—
(" . In sub-paragraph (3) of paragraph 15 of Schedule 3 after the word 'sub-paragraph' there shall be inserted the words for each track'.")
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 1. I understand that this Amendment is necessary following the proposed alteration made by the Bill to paragraph 14 of Schedule 3 of the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963. Noble Lords who are familiar with that Act will remember that it deals with the 104 days racing on tracks which are licensed in each area by the licensing authority for that area. The effect of the Amendment will be to preserve the existing rights of track betting licence holders when they unanimously desire that the betting days they require shall be fixed by the licensing authority. I apologise for having put the Amendment down, but I understand that it is one which is required in order to give effect to the real intention behind the Bill. I beg to move.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): As my noble friend Lord Lindgren has explained, this Amendment is consequential on the Amendments made in the Bill to subparagraph (1) of paragraph 14 of Schedule 3 to the 1963 Act. It may help the Committee if I refer first to those Amendments and their effect. Paragraph 14 of Schedule 3 to the 1963 Act contains the main requirement that local authorities shall fix betting days for their area, and as my noble friend's Bill would amend it paragraph 14 of Schedule 3 would read thus:
"Subject to the provisions of this and the next following paragraph, each licensing authority shall, not later than the end of May in each year, fix for each licensed track within their area one hundred and four days in the period of twelve months beginning with 1st July in that year as betting days, that is to say, days on which betting facilities may be provided on each such licensed track …"
As the Committee will realise, the change effected by the Amendments is to require the local authority to fix 104 betting days, not for the area as a whole, but for each

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track. The betting days would, in consequence, not be the same for the whole area. If this change were made, consequential Amendments would be needed to paragraph 15 of the Schedule, and this is my noble friend's intention with the present Amendment.
Paragraph 15 of Schedule 3 to the 1963 Act contemplates either agreement by all the tracks in an area to the days to be fixed, or disagreement. My noble friend, of course, referred only to agreement, but it certainly allows for disagreement as well. If there is agreement, the local authority is required to fix those days. But in the new situation created by the Schedule to this Bill, where days are to be fixed not for the area but for individual tracks, the agreement will have to relate not to one set of betting days but to betting days for each track. As my noble friend proposes to amend it, sub-paragraph 3 of paragraph 15 would then read as follows:
"If, within one month from the date of the publication of the said notice, the licensing authority receive a notice in writing signed by all the holders of track betting licences in force in respect of tracks in their area stating that the signatories unanimously desire that the betting days in the period in question should be the days specified in the notice given under this sub-paragraph for each track, then, if those days are days which might lawfully he fixed under paragraph 14 of this Schedule as the betting days for that period, the authority shall fix the days so specified as the betting days for that period."
This Amendment moved by my noble friend is not satisfactory, not because it is inherently bad but because the changes made in the Bill to which this Amendment is consequential are themselves unsatisfactory. The objection to the provisions of paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Schedule are not simply that consequential drafting Amendments such as this one have been omitted; it is that the changes they make go to the whole root of the provisions of paragraphs 14 and 15 of the Schedule to the 1963 Act. The difficulty is illustrated by this Amendment. if it were made, it would follow that a failure by all the tracks in the area to submit a notice
"stating that the signatories unanimously desire that the betting days … should be the days specified in the notice … for each track"
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would be because tracks disagreed with days the other tracks wanted. It is this change in the nature of the disagreement which would make the role of the local authority impossible.
The policy given effect by the existing law is that there shall be 104 betting days in an area, which shall be either those on which the tracks agree or else those determined by the local authority after hearing any representations from the tracks. These representations can relate to the inconvenience to themselves of all or any of the days to be fixed for the area. But if, as would be the case under the Bill, the local authority had to concern itself with the objections tracks might have to the days the other tracks wanted, it is difficult to see what guide lines it could follow in arriving at a decision. And although issues of local amenity, such as traffic and noise problems, might arise, they would fall to be determined by the local authority only if there was a disagreement among the tracks. But local amenity issues are rarely likely to lead to disagreement and so the only matter which could properly justify local authority intervention would normally not arise for their determination.
While the policy of allowing tracks to have different betting days in any particular area is one about which the Government remain neutral, the structure of the existing law is not such as to be readily susceptible of piecemeal amendment, and this part of the Bill, even with the Amendment of my noble friend which the Committee are at present discussing, could not be allowed to reach the Statute Book in its present form. But I would emphasise that the same objections do not apply to the other proposal which forms the subject of the next Amendments we are to discuss. If at a later stage my noble friend were to withdraw the proposal concerning betting days, then the remaining proposal, an important one for its financial implications, might well have a fair chance of success in another place. But I must advise the Committee that the present Amendment does nothing to cure the inherent defect in the drafting of the proposals in the Bill which concern betting days. On that advice, my noble friend may feel that his best course would be to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD SANDFORD: I must confess that I am not entirely convinced by the arguments just adduced by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that it is impracticable to make this small Amendment so that local authorities and the greyhound racing tracks in their areas may decide among themselves on which of two days a week greyhound racing can take place at each respective track. But the answer he gave to the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, is a trifle complex. I personally should prefer to study it at leisure and wait and hear what the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, has to say. We have another stage, and we can perhaps return to it then.
LORD LINDGREN: May I first say that I am most grateful to my noble friend for setting out the objections so far as his Department is concerned. As the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, has said, the objections stated by my noble friend take quite an amount of assimilating, but at least a statement has been made and those who are interested will be able to read it to-morrow and see its effect. As I understood my noble friend, it is the case that while I am assuming that tracks in each licensing area will be in agreement, there is a possibility of disagreement as between one track and another, and that would cause some difficulty. I am quite prepared to accept that in this world everything that ought to be does not necessarily exist and that folk who ought to agree about all sorts of things sometimes disagree, even in politics, let alone at dog tracks. Having done my best in preparing this Amendment, in conjunction with those responsible for the Bill, I do not know whether it would be in order if I were to ask my noble friend to suggest a form of words which would be suitable and would meet the requirements of his Department.
LORD STONHAM: May I interrupt, in response to the invitation of my noble friend? I could not suggest a form of words which would amend the Bill in the manner suggested by my noble friend this afternoon, which in a way would be rather tinkering with what is required. May I put it this way: that it would be a perfectly valid proposition for the tracks to say, "We are satisfied with 104 days, but we want to have them precisely when we want them"? That would be a perfectly fair proposition to put forward.
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But even if it were agreed, two points arise. It would mean fundamental amendment of the 1963 Act, which we could not do in the time at our disposal. It may also prove highly controversial. The advice that I have given to my noble friend is in the belief that if improvements are to be made by means of a Private Member's Bill in this Session of Parliament, it would be convenient to proceed on the one matter on which there is general agreement and which may therefore stand a quite fair chance of success in another place.
LORD LINDGREN: I am most grateful to my noble friend for that intervention. I had understood him to say in his earlier statement that on the question of separate days for tracks the Government were neutral, but it appears that they are neutral with a bias. As I have been brought up in an atmosphere in which it is always better to get something rather than to lose everything, and in view of what my noble friend has said in regard to the further Amendments, I ask to leave to withdraw the first Amendment which I have moved.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
3.8 p.m.
LORD LINDGREN LORD LINDGREN moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 2, line 14, leave out ("prescribed") and insert ("specified in an order made by the Secretary of State by Statutory Instrument").
The noble Lord said: If it is for the convenience of the Committee, I should like to deal with Amendments Nos. 2 and 3 together. They are related and we can have one discussion to cover the whole arrangement. As noble Lords will appreciate, under the 1963 Act the deduction that can be made on the Tote to cover general costs at a racing track is 6 per cent. That is definitely in the Act, and it cannot be varied except by another Act of Parliament. The intention of this Bill is to give the Home Secretary the power at his discretion to vary that 6 per cent. if he is convinced that such a variation is necessary. I understand the Amendments are necessary because it is desirable, purely from the procedural aspect, that the Home Secretary should have power not only of variation but of revocation as well. As I understand it, this form of words is now required in Acts of Parliament of this nature. I beg to move.
LORD STONHAM: As my noble friend explained, taken together these Amendments rectify the defect to paragraph 3 of the Schedule, which would give the Secretary of State power to change the amount of the "hold back" by order, by substituting for what is in fact the inadequate power to "prescribe" a power to make such a change by order made by Statutory Instrument, which is the proper power and the stronger power. As my noble friend has mentioned, the opportunity has been taken to include the standard provision for varying or revoking the order. Therefore, these Amendments rectify a defect and round off in the proper way the power which it is proposed to give the Home Secretary, and I would advise the Committee to accept them.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD LINDGREN: I beg formally to move Amendment No. 3. In doing so, I should like to express my appreciation of the attitude my noble friend has taken in regard to these Amendments.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 14, at end insert (" . and at the end of paragraph 3 of that Schedule there shall be inserted the following:
'Any power conferred by this paragraph to make an order shall include power to vary or revoke the order by subsequent order'.")—(Lord Lindgren.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule, as amended, agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported, with the Amendments.

REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE BILL
3.12 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Reasons for disagreeing to certain of the Lords Amendments to the Representation of the People Bill be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Reasons be now considered.—(Lord Stonham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS REASONS FOR DISAGREEING TO CERTAIN OF THE LORDS AMENDMENTS
[The references are to Bill (29) as first printed for the Lords. The Commons Reasons are printed in italics.]

LORDS AMENDMENT
After Clause 14, insert the following new Clause:
Place of work qualification in local government
(" . A person shall be qualified for election to and membership of a local authority provided that throughout the twelve months preceding the last day for nomination of candidates for the relevant election he shall have had a principal place of work within the area of the authority.")
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:
Because it contradicts the principal that the sole qualification for candidature, as for the franchise, at local government elections should be residence within the local government area. It is upon this principle that Clause 15 of the Bill abolishes the non-resident qualification for voting, and also for candidature, at local government elections and also the property qualification for candidature at such elections.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I beg to move that the House doth not insist on its Amendment No. 11 to which the Commons have disagreed. Of the 36 Amendments made to the Bill by this House, the Commons have disagreed to only two. This is one of them. It was moved in Committee here, with his customary eloquence and persuasiveness, by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor and, against my advice, was carried on a Division. We were glad, on the Report stage of the Bill, to accept another Amendment put down by the noble Lord, but on this occasion he is not pushing at an open door; and I hope to satisfy your Lordships that there is good reason why this particular door should remain closed.
Your Lordships will be aware that one of the most discussed provisions of the Bill (Clause 15 of the Bill as first introduced in this House) is that giving effect to the Government's firm view of principle that residence should be the sole qualification for standing for a local authority as also for the local government franchise. Clause 15 accordingly abolishes the nonresident qualification for voting, and consequently for candidature at local elections. It is not, however, my purpose to discuss the merits of Clause 15, which has been accepted by both Houses of Parliament. I will concentrate on the Amendment before the House.
The effect of the Amendment would be to introduce into electoral law a new alternative non-resident qualification for election to a local authority based neither on the

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ownership of property nor on the occupation of property, but on "principal place of work". Stemming as it does from a recommendation of the Maud Committee on the Management of Local Government, whose Report was published in 1967, and stemming also front Lord Brooke of Cumnor's Amendment, it can be said to have a highly respectable parentage. It is not, however—the Amendment, that is, not the parentage—one which commends itself to the Government. This was made clear at the outset of the proceedings on the Bill in another place. On Second Reading there my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland made clear the Government's view that—
"what we want is identity and local representation"
whereas with this qualification, the qualification proposed in the Amendment,
"we would not get local representation"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 18/11/ 68; col. 1026.]
An Amendment to the same effect as that now before us was defeated at the Committee stage in another place, after full discussion and on a Division, by 240 votes to 226, arid when the Lords Amendments were considered in another place the Amendment now before us was again rejected on a Division, by 228 votes to 202.
It is true that the Commons have no monopoly of interest in the arrangements for local government elections, but the record which I have cited shows that in this particular matter the elected representatives of the people have accepted the Government's view that residence alone should be the qualification for candidature, and have reiterated their acceptance, after the opportunity for further consideration, afforded by the passage of the Amendment in this House. The plain fact is that, given the principle underlying Clause 15 of the Bill as introduced in your Lordships' House it would be inconsistent, not to say contradictory, to introduce a new non-resident qualification for candidature; and this is the ground on which the formal statement of the Commons Reasons for disagreeing with the Amendment is based.
There are, however, other grounds for regarding the proposed new qualification as undesirable. The qualifications for candidature deriving from the ownership
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of property or from the possession of the non-resident franchise were of long standing. They were, in fact, the last remnants of the property basis for the franchise, and their abolition completes the process (already accomplished in the case of Parliamentary elections) of doing away with it. The proposed qualification—an entirely novel one—does not, it is true, turn on property: but it is not so much property as the basis for a qualification that the Government find undesirable here as the fact that the qualifications conferred by property have been non-resident ones; and on this score the Amendment now before us is, in the Government's view, wrong in principle.
Much has been said of the loss to the quality of local government that will follow the abolition of the nonresident qualifications deriving from property. In the Government's view, the case on this ground has been grossly overstated; end, in any event, if loss there is, the Opposition will have no monopoly of it. Be that as it may, the object of the Amendment is no doubt to compensate for that loss. The question is, however, whether this is not a serious case of over-compensation. 'The non-resident qualification conferred by property was limited to a quite small number of persons. A "principal place of work" qualification would be vastly more widespread. Too much need not be made—I certainly will not make too much of it—of the argument that the principal place of work qualification could lead to a local authority being swamped by persons who, though working in the area of the authority, live outside it. The possibility does exist, however, and is by no means a theoretical one, particularly in the case of smaller urban authorities containing one or two large concerns drawing, perhaps, as many as half their employees from surrounding rural areas. And it is in urban areas, as I pointed out when we considered this Amendment in Committee, that there is far less, indeed very little, difficulty in finding suitable candidates. Indeed, if the Amendment were to stand it might well increase the difficulty which does exist in some cases of finding suitable candidates in rural areas.
In the light of what I have said, I hope your Lordships will now see that the

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Amendment is open to serious objections. The qualification for candidature at local government elections which it would introduce is an entirely new and untried one which, in certain areas at any rate, might well distort the pattern of local government. It contradicts the whole principle—an important one—on which Clause 15 is framed. And, finally, it has been considered, reconsidered, and on both occasions rejected by another place. I trust your Lordships will accept that rejection, and will refrain from insisting on this Amendment. I beg to move that this House doth not insist on the Amendment to which the Commons have disagreed.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on the said Amendment.—(Lord Stonham.)
3.22 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, those whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad. There is no objection of substance to this new clause, approved by a majority of more than two to one in your Lordships' House. It is an act of madness on the part of the Government to have put their Whips on to drive their supporters into the Lobby against this proposal, on a Division in which this Government, who started their career three years ago with a clear majority of 100, could muster a majority of only 26. That shows fairly clearly what Government supporters in another place think of this matter, because the absentees from that Division Lobby are obvious. The noble Lord has explained most courteously the purely theoretical reason for which the Government have got the Commons to reject this new clause. The Commons reason is because it contradicts a principle. They might well have added, "because the Government think nothing of a unanimous recommendation made by the Committee under the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, which they themselves set up".
We should not discuss these matters in the abstract. Let me revert to a specific case which I ventured to quote at an earlier stage of the Bill. I cite it again because I know there is an idea prevalent that the people who will be excluded if this new clause is not agreed to will be "old-stagers", people who are
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really past it but who are hanging on. I wish to revert to the case of a young man who wrote to me, having been elected to his local borough—a small non-county borough—at the age of 23. I say, all honour to a man for seeking to go on to the local council at that age! Within a few years he was elected mayor—I believe he was at that time the youngest mayor in the country—and he has now served on that council for ten or eleven years. But as his family increased he had to move, and he moved just outside the borough boundary to a slightly larger house. If the Government imagine that all borough boundaries are wisely drawn they must think again. In many places it is hard to say, until one receives one's rate demand, on which side of the local government boundary line a particular house is situated. In this case I have no doubt that the man being himself a councillor was well aware that he was moving out of the borough, but he was not moving to a distance, and his whole interests and his place of work remained in that borough. To his utter surprise this man now, at the age of 35 or so, will be excluded from the local government work in which he has already distinguished himself.
It is no good the Government saying that after their day's work is done people can go off to some distant town to a meeting of the rural district council. It is not possible to do so, and if people are to take part in public work a very large number who are busy all day must take part in it in the neighbourhood where they themselves earn their daily bread. This man concluded his letter to me by saying:
"I would respectfully ask your Lordship's help and active support in persuading the House of Lords to reject this unfair provision, especially in view of the anticipated reorganisation of local government and the existing difficulties at present experienced by all Parties in finding suitable young candidates who are prepared to take an interest in council work."
The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, made no reference that I can recall to the anticipated reorganisation of local government, yet we all must realise that that is likely to bring within local government areas fringe neighbourhoods which are now just outside them, thereby reversing the position and making such men as this once again able to serve. But the Government, true to their theoretic principle, will no doubt be proud of themselves

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that for a period of three years or six years they have excluded a valuable man or woman from local government.
In the debate on March 27 in another place the Home Secretary used as an argument that,
"it would be possible to have a council made up of people who live outside the area".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 27/3/69, col. 1838].
No doubt it would. It would be possible to have a council made up of left-handed cretins if the electors had so decided. But the decision rests wholly with the electors. All this talk by the Government about swamping the area is incomprehensible to me. At elections you can swamp an area with votes, but you cannot swamp an area with people who have no votes. All that this Amendment does is to enlarge the field of choice for those resident electors who wish to have the best possible man or woman to represent them. It seems to me highly improbable that any electorate would wish to be represented exclusively by people who live outside the council's area. But it seems to me highly probable, if a man or woman has already given good service on the council and happens now to live outside the area, though he or she works within it, that the electors would still wish such a person to represent them.
The Government are seeking not only to reverse a decision of your Lordships' House, but to smack in the face the Redcliffe-Maud Committee. The Redcliffe-Maud Committee's finding was unanimous, and I propose to read it. It says:
"Many people may have just as much interest in the area in which they work as in the area in which they live, and this should be recognised. The effect of the law is to exclude some people who might be valuable candidates for election to local authorities, particularly in urban areas."
What is the Government's comment on that? The Government's reaction is this. They say, "Many people may have just as much interest in the area in which they work as in the area in which they live, but this should not be recognised. If the effect of the law is to exclude some people who might be valuable candidates for election to local authorities, particularly in urban areas, what is that to a Socialist Government?" My Lords, that is the situation with which we are faced. We cannot lose this Bill for the sake of this
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new clause, but I regard the action of the Government as disgraceful.
LORD POPPLEWELL: My Lords, I am very surprised to hear the vehemence with which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, has opposed this recommendation by the Commons. When all is said and done, the Commons are the best authority to deal with this matter. They are the people who will be affected by this procedure. It is in the election to their House; and they are the custodians of what they think is right by way of the representation of the people. Therefore, I am surprised at the noble Lord's vehemence. It indicates that it is not just the principle with which he is concerned: it is because the Government have exploded a myth. It is because the Government have gone against something that this House attempted to do. Having removed the residential qualifications previously in the Bill, by the Amendment which was carried in this House they sought to impose another type of qualification which has never been accepted in the past. That was done very deliberately in the hope that, having removed the bias that was there by way of the residential qualification, and having approved a working representation, this House would redress some of the privilege that had gone with that type of qualification in the past. When Lord Brooke opened his remarks he really indicated his feeling in connection with this—that it was because it was once more pricking the bubble of privilege which had been there previously.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, if the noble Lord will forgive me, may I tell him that I care for local government; I believe in local government. I am not in the least concerned with privilege.
LORD POPPLEWELL: I accept that the noble Lord has a wonderful record in local government—and so have others. Others of us have a very good record in local government. I accept all that he says and feels about local government; but I am not speaking about local government itself. I am speaking about the people who serve on local government. This is a privilege which this House tried to institute, and I am delighted that the Commons have thrown it out. I think

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this improves the Bill from when it left this Chamber.
3.34 p.m.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I am rather sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, is persisting with this Amendment, which runs right across the view which has been expressed by another place. He rather reminds me of the old sergeant-major who said, "Don't do as I do; do as I say", because I want to resurrect the ghost of Mr. Henry Brooke, who was a member of the Cabinet which introduced the London Government Bill some years ago. What did that Bill do with regard to the county in which I was then Chairman of the County Council—namely, Essex? It cut that county in two. There were many people from the London boroughs which he absorbed into Greater London who were members of the Essex County Council. Many of them had served there for very many years, and they wanted to continue to serve. But the Government of which the then Mr. Henry Brooke was a member—and a very distinguished member—said, "No; you have got to go to London. You cannot continue in Essex, despite the fact that you have been a member of the Essex County Council for scores of years and despite the fact that you may journey each day from Barking to Chelmsford in order to earn your daily bread". What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander; and if the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, was on that occasion content to say that people should vote where they lived, and should stand for the councils where they lived, and that the place where they happened to work had no relevance whatsoever, what right has he to come along now and try to convince this House the other way round?
Let us look for a moment at the way it would operate. I know my County of Essex. I know that there are 30,000 or 40,000 people who are employed at Ford's and who journey to Ford's every day. Some of them journey from other boroughs—like Barking and Ilford—which are now in London, but thousands upon thousands of them come from boroughs and rural districts which are in Essex—places like Thurrock, Basildon, Chelmsford Borough, Chelmsford Rural District and so on. If 20,000 or 30,000
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of those people were to be regarded as being eligible to stand for election and to vote for the council which is now known as Dagenham and Barking, surely it would completely unbalance the standing of the people who are residents in that borough. The people who are resident in the borough should surely be the people to say whom they want on their local council.
I could not agree, my Lords, with one of the noble Lord's closing remarks. That was to the effect that people who work outside their district council area cannot possibly manage to serve on that district council. I myself did it for many years, and many of the members of my Billericay Council, now Basildon Council, were people who worked in London all day but who had sufficient interest in the affairs of their local council to get away from work early in order to attend its meetings. My Lords, I think we should be doing something which is quite contrary to the democratic instincts of our system of local representation if we were to allow people who are virtually foreigners to participate in the work of what is essentially the local council. I hope that, on reconsideration and reflection, the noble Lord will not try to press this Amendment.
LORD ST. HELENS: My Lords, I should like very briefly to support my noble friend Lord Brooke. I thought that the argument which he produced was full of common sense and logic. The noble Lord, Lord Popplewell, said that it was the Members of another place who were affected. This seemed to me an absolute mis-statement. The people who are most affected in this issue are the electors, and that is why I so much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, when he says that this is denying the electors the widest possible choice of their representatives.
I do not know much about local government; I have never been in local government. But while I was a Member of another place I naturally came in touch with it a good deal. The local government I came in touch with was that in South London. The specific case of which I am thinking, and to which I should for a moment like to call your Lordships' attention, is the case of a busy borough where some men make

25
Money—perhaps they own shops, or other premises—and then, as they get a little older, move out of the borough. In South London they generally move to places such as Streatham or Wimbledon, where they have a little more by way of country amenities. But their work is still in the borough; they have worked in the borough for a great many years, and they know the borough extremely well. What is more, they are efficient and effective men, and they are just the sort—
LORD PARGITER: But the borough is no longer good enough for them to live in.
LORD ST. HELENS: I am afraid I did not hear the noble Lord's intervention, but what I was going to say was that these men are extremely useful on the council. Their heart and soul is in the council, and they know the borough—and this applies to men of both Parties. Therefore, I think we are doing the boroughs an extreme disservice by taking away from them the service of really successful and efficient men.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord for one moment? This Bill, in the provisions in Clause 15, has taken out the property qualification. They take away the franchise which those people to whom the noble Lord is referring have enjoyed and which enable them to sit. We are all agreed about that. They would not be able to sit anyway. What is now proposed by this Amendment is to bring in a vastly larger number of people.
LORD ST. HELENS: I will not pursue the point, because my noble friend Lord Brooke has made it. But the main point about this is that we are denying to the electorate a wide choice of men and women to represent them, and this, I think, is a disastrous thing to do.
THE MARQUESS OF ABERDEEN AND TEMAIR: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Brooke has given an example of what happened to an individual. I can say what happened to me. Many years ago I was engaged in a large factory—in fact I was chairman of it, and spent my whole time there. I lived just outside the boundary of that borough; it was a few hundred yards walk into the borough in which my works were
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situated. The matter of residence arose when there was a question of my becoming a member of the council, for although I worked all day in the borough, I was resident just outside it. The way I overcame the difficulty was this. Immediately adjoining my works and inside the borough there was a field of about two acres. I was able to buy those two acres and therefore qualified to become a member of the council. And in fact I was chairman of it.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I wish to answer very briefly the point (which seemed to me to be a very bad one) made by the noble Lord, Lord Popplewell. He said that we who supported the Amendment which the Commons have now rejected were doing so in the interests of a privilege. But whose privilege? The only privilege that we are promoting is the privilege of the electors to elect whom they wish to elect. What is wrong with that? The noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, who often makes speeches with which I agree, said on this occasion that we were concerned with the qualification of the electors. That was a misreading of the Amendment before us. It does not concern the qualification of the electors at all.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I also went on to mention the qualifications of the people who sat on the council.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I know that the noble Lord went on to raise that other point. But the Amendment is concerned only with the question of who can stand for election and be elected. I hold the extraordinarily old-fashioned view that the electors ought to be given the maximum liberty to elect the people whom they wish to elect. I have not served on a local government body, but I did serve for many years in another place. I never lived in the constituency that I was representing; but they knew at the time they first elected me that I was not in a position to go and live in the place I represented. They did not regard that as a disqualification.
There are many, on both sides of the House, in another place who do not live in their constituencies. What, I wonder, is the special merit of denying to the local government electors this ability to elect the people whom they

27
wish to elect. As I understood my noble friend Lord Brooke, he was not proposing that we should insist on this Amendment. But I think it a great pity that when the present Government are replaced by a Conservative Government—and the early replacement is that for which the whole country is longing—we shall have to take up so much of our time in simply reversing some of the follies that the present Government are perpetrating. I must warn the present Government that they are following a bad example. The people who go furthest in denying the electors' ability to choose as they want are the Communists. The Communists say simply: "You can have elections; but you must not vote for anybody except a Communist or a person approved by the Communists in advance." That is the most extreme limit of this doctrine. But approaching that, in various degrees, you have other limitations on the ability of the electors to choose. I believe that all those disabilities are wrong in principle. I share the contempt of my noble friend Lord Brooke for the Government's action.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, would not the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, agree that he made one mistake when he said that Members of the other place were not necessarily resident in the place they represented? They represent Britain. So far as I know, it is a necessary qualification, in order to stand for Parliament in this country, that one should be resident in Britain. I have always thought that that was so. I should have thought that the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, and his friends would be very angry indeed if somebody were to put down an Amendment to enable people who were not resident in Britain to be elected to another place. Surely that is the parallel with this case. Is not the noble Lord confusing the matter?
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, may I answer this point? I do not think I was confused. I adopt and agree with the famous speech of Burke to the electors of Bristol. The noble Viscount is not saying something I do not know when he tells me that the Member of Parliament is not simply representing his constituents. I think he does represent
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them, but is not their delegate. I do not think that anybody on either side of the House misunderstood me.
3.46 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I do not wish to detain the House, but there are one or two points that I think I owe it to the House to deal with. First, in view of some of the speeches—particularly that of the noble Lord, Lord St. Helens—I ought to make it clear that this Bill as it stands now, unquestioned by the Opposition, abolishes any right to vote, or to stand as a candidate, that is based on the ownership or occupation of property. All the cases cited by the noble Lord, Lord St. Helens, were based on either the ownership or occupation of property—as indeed was the case cited by the noble Marquess, Lord Aberdeen. So let us get that out of the argument. The argument is about a totally new principle which has never been in this kind of legislation before, a totally new qualification for standing as a candidate; namely, that a man should qualify as a candidate in accordance with his place of work. This is new.
THE MARQUESS OF ABERDEEN AND TEMAIR: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? I spoke of a small field; but immediately houses were built on it by men working at the works.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, that does not invalidate the point I was making to the noble Marquess. His chairmanship was based on his occupation or ownership of property. Furthermore—and this is not in dispute; the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, is not going to dispute it—this is an entirely new concept—
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I am not going to dispute that; but I am a little surprised that this Government, of all Governments, wishes Parliament to reject an idea simply and solely because it is a new idea.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear!
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, it is astonishing how noble Lords—and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde—will cheer an absolute non-starter. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, is such an experienced campaigner that he knows precisely at which point to get up and

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precisely which kind of false point to make. We all enjoy it, but I am sorry that noble Lords behind him were deluded by tactics of this kind into voicing " Hear, hears!" and that kind of thing.
Of course, the Government are not opposed to this Amendment simply because it is an entirely new concept. The point I want to make is that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said that our rejection of a totally new and untried concept was an "act of madness''. I cannot accept that at all. He said, rightly, that he cared for local government. We all care for local government. It is because the Government care very much for local government that they are determined that the right to be a representative in local government should rest on the point where a person lives. The noble Lord spoke about a young man who became a member of a local authority at the age of 23, and eleven years later suddenly discovered (after eleven years on a local authority he must have been a remarkable representative if he did not know before) that he would not be qualified if he moved outside the area. The point which the noble Lord made was that these persons are busy all day and cannot go to a distant place to serve on a local authority. My Lords, the "distant place" is where they live. They are going there in any case.
Finally, the noble Lord made a good deal of play about what he called the Government forces in another place having to be whipped up to win a small majority. There were four Divisions on that day, and in the Division on this point there was a majority of 26. The voting was 228 to 202. There were two other Divisions on that day on the Decimal Currency Bill, which had nothing whatever to do with this matter, and was not a very highly controversial measure. In one of those Divisions the Government had a majority of 22—the voting was 102 to 80; on the other, they had a majority of 15, the figures being 91 to 76. This must have been a bad day for majorities, but it was certainly not an unduly small majority, although perhaps majorities were smaller than usual on that day. It cannot be disputed that the Amendment that was passed in your Lordships' House did give another opportunity for reflection. The other place did reflect: they again re
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jected the Amendment by disagreeing with us, and I again urge your Lordships that we should accept that disagreement and not persist in the Amendment.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT
Schedule 1, page 22, line 5, leave out paragraph 2.
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:
Because it is desirable that at Parliamentary elections polling stations should remain open for as long as reasonably possible to enable electors to vote.
3.53 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on its Amendment No. 18 to which the Commons have disagreed. This is the other of the two Amendments—there were only two out of the 36 Amendments which your Lordships made to the Bill—to which the Commons have disagreed, and I ask your Lordships to acquiesce in that disagreement. Like Amendment No. 11, this Amendment was moved by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, at the Committee stage in this House and was carried on a Division. But the Division was very small: the Contents numbered 72 and the Not-Contents 69. There was a very narrow margin of three votes.
I would draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that in introducing the Amendment the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, quite clearly indicated that:
"this is clearly a matter on which those in another place should have the final word."
The noble Lord went on to say that this seemed to him:
"an outstandingly clear case for the Second Chamber to act in such a way as to afford time and opportunity for further consideration of the matter."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11/2/69, col. 343.]
Further time has been afforded and further consideration has been given to the matter in another place, with the result that on a Division the Amendment, which had already been rejected on a Division in Committee in another place by 170 votes to 110, was again taken to a Division and was again rejected, the voting being 235 to 202.
I am not going to say anything further either for or against the Amendment, except this. There is a case against

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longer hours on the grounds of administrative difficulty—that was fully made out and I fully acknowledged it on behalf of the Government. There is also the fact that when considering polling hours at Parliamentary elections the Speaker's Conference recommended no change in the law. Throughout, however, the view of the Government, as was made clear in their White Paper, Conclusions on the Review of the Law Relating to Parliamentary Elections, has been that it is in the interests of electors that at Parliamentary elections the poll should continue until 10 p.m. instead of closing, as at present, at 9 p.m. One result of the change may well be that in many areas where the count now takes place on the evening of the day of the poll it will have to be postponed until the following day. This, too, I acknowledged in Committee. The Government are prepared to accept this as part of the price—although I doubt indeed that it is a "price"—for ensuring that the interests of the electors themselves prevail, and that at Parliamentary elections polling stations shall remain open for the longest possible reasonable hours. By their votes those in another place have expressed approval of the Government's view in this matter and have reiterated that approval after a further opportunity afforded to them of considering the Amendment made by this House. I trust that in this instance your Lordships will agree that the views of those in another place, like the interests of the electors, should prevail. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on the said Amendment.—(Lord Stonham.)
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I have no intention of going back on what I said in Committee, namely, that this is a matter on which another place should have the final word. It is for them, I am sure, to determine finally the procedures under which they and future Parliaments should be elected. I would, however, be grateful if before this short debate ends the noble Lord could indicate at what date the Government propose to bring into force this change in the law. That is a matter of importance; it is of considerable interest to millions of people, as the Government could discover by inquiring of the B.B.C. and In
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dependent Television, because huge numbers of people now stay up to hear the election results, not only at General Elections but at by-elections. All that will be put back for a further hour, to the great annoyance of millions, and I think it is desirable to know when this change is going to take place.
Clearly, on the Government's argument it should take place as quickly as possible; otherwise they must share the responsibility of keeping some people from recording their vote. As I said on Second Reading, I believe that the total additional number of votes cast will be infinitesimal. Although some will vote between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., the vast majority of those who do would have been able to vote before 9 p.m. had they wished to do so. A case could always be made out for putting the hour as late as one likes, by saying that some people would come along wishing to vote after that hour. But, of course, the critical question is whether, had they wished, they could have voted before that time.
The Commons Reason for disagreement is as follows:
"Because it is desirable that at Parliamentary elections polling stations should remain open for as long as reasonably possible to enable electors to vote."
My Lords, everything depends on the interpretation of the word "reasonably". The great majority of people who were consulted on this proposed change in the law believed that the existing hours were reasonable. But if one is going to press the argument, as the Government do, that the maximum opportunity should be given to everybody to vote, why is it reasonable to say that a person can vote at one minute to ten but not at one minute past ten? The word "reasonably" could be interpreted as supporting termination at eleven o'clock or midnight just as well. Hitherto it has been universally accepted that the reasonable closing hour is nine o'clock.
In another place the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, seeking to justify disagreement with the Lords Amendment, said:
"There can be no argument against the idea of allowing an extra hour in which people may go to the poll."
"There can be no argument against the idea…!" That shows the arrogance

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of this Government, because it had already been declared in a White Paper presented to Parliament that the all-Party Speaker's Conference, a very authoritative body, had considered the matter and had unanimously reported that there should be no change. They found that the balance of argument was in favour of the closing hour remaining at nine o'clock. Now this imperious Government, setting aside the Speaker's Conference, slapping it down, just as they slapped down the Maud Committee in relation to the previous Amendment, dismiss all the consideration given by the Speaker's Conference and say that "there can be no argument against" this proposal. I do not seek to establish your Lordships' House in conflict with another place on this matter, which is so closely concerned with the arrangements for elections to another place, but the action of the Government being, as I am quite convinced, in conflict with general public opinion as well as with the unanimous conclusion of the all-Party Speaker's Conference on this matter, shows that the sooner we have another Government the better.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, the noble Lord has asked me a question, but first I should like to deal with his point about what is reasonable. He spoke of a minute after ten but, of course, a time has to be fixed. The words in the Commons' Reason for disagreement are
"…remain open for as long as reasonably possible to enable electors to vote".
All sorts of considerations come into that. There is the question of staff, which is one of the most important and which we deployed considerably. As for the date of the coming into operation of the extended polling hours, the noble Lord will appreciate that a lot has to be done and new polling cards have to be printed, but it is expected that it will probably be possible to bring the extended polling hours into operation for any election after February 16, 1970.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

NUCLEAR INSTALLATIONS BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
REDUNDANT CHURCHES AND OTHER RELIGIOUS BUILDINGS BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
TATTOOING OF MINORS BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

DECIMAL CURRENCY BILL
4.4 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, decisions to establish the foundations of our new decimal system were embodied in the Decimal Currency Act 1967, a Id the second Decimal Currency Bill now before the House deals with those matters which the law must cover in order to effect the change-over from the old currency to the new. We have attempted to make this Bill as straightforward as possible. The White Paper (Cmnd. 3889) endeavours to explain in simple terms how the main provisions of the Bill relate to the decisions that have already been taken and the Explanatory Memorandum sets out clearly the fields where legal provisions are required. I do not intend to take the House through the various steps already outlined in the White Paper or to explore in depth each of the more technical points which the Bill has to cover. My aim to-day is to outline the general principles underlying the Bill and to draw attention to the practical results that the Bill aims to achieve.
Moving from the present currency to the new involves no more than a change in the coinage for cash transactions and a change in the units for accounting. There is, for example, no need for the law to dictate how contracts should be amended where this can be achieved through mutual consent of the parties; or how future contracts should be written. The change-over cannot take place overnight because of the physical impossibility of instantly adapting or replacing all those machines which now accept £. s. d. coins or record transactions in £. s. d. But it is not desirable that the two currencies should remain side by side for any length of time. Experience with

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similar changes elsewhere shows that once the new coinage becomes legal tender, nearly everybody is anxious to use it exclusively and get the period of dual-currency working over as quickly as possible. The Decimal Currency Board's view is that a maximum of 18 months is a reasonable estimate, but in the event it may prove shorter. The Board will advise the Government on this matter and there are powers in the Bill to bring the dual currency period to an end in law.
During the change-over, it must be possible to effect the exact settlement of a debt in either the old or the new currency. This will be possible by using coins, since the coins of the old currency will be legal tender until the end of the change-over period. An important characteristic of the period of dual-currency working is that as long as it lasts it will be possible to settle both £.s.d. debts and decimal currency debts exactly. At the end of the change-over, the old penny, threepenny bit and sixpence will have disappeared from our purses and many prices will have been expressed in £.p. for some time. It is likely that debts then outstanding will be for amounts where the maximum difference, of one and one-fifth of an old penny between old and new currency equivalents, will be negligible in relation to the total due. It is proposed in the Bill that the whole new penny conversion table in Schedule 1 of the Bill should apply to £.s.d. amounts payable after the end of the change-over.
There is no need, nor would it be practicable, for the law to control the conversion of retail prices of goods and services to the new currency. We believe that official guidance is good enough. This has been done through the publication of a new halfpenny conversion table in the White Paper. The Decimal Currency Board has already disseminated this table and so have many private organisations. The public will see it everywhere on Decimal Day. The Government, however, do not expect there to be any general abuse of the decimal conversion of prices. Experience elsewhere and competition here support this view. In the final analysis, apart from ordinary shopping situations, the majority of contracts and agreements which require payments to be effected fall into two
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categories: those which require periodical payments to be made—insurance, and hire-purchase, for example—and those which specify a price per unit in cases where a single unit is never charged—for example, electricity, gas and rates.
For periodical payments of £.s.d. amounts, the Bill allows the debtor to pay the exact £.s.d. amount in cash during the change-over, or at his own choice an amount in the new currency according to the table in Schedule 1. There is no doubt that the vast majority of the public will wish to forget about the old currency as soon as possible and choose the second option. In neither case will the creditor gain or lose, as the differences in the table in Schedule 1 balance out over large numbers of payments.
For contracts which already use the price of a unit, such as electricity, the amount to be paid by the customer is already the result of a calculation and finally rounded up or down to suit the existing coinage. There is no need to change this method after decimalisation, whether one uses the existing £. s. d. amount per unit in calculations, together with a conversion of the final amount, or whether one initially converts the £. s. d. amount per unit to decimals on the exact equivalent basis that one old penny equals five-twelfths of one new penny. These simple principles are already well understood by industry, and it is an important part of the role of the Decimal Currency Board to disseminate them at all levels.
The Government propose two exceptions to the broad principles which I have outlined. One is for the millions of small industrial assurance policies of the penny-a-week type. After a careful examination of the problems involved, the Registrar of Friendly Societies and Commissioner for Industrial Assurance have agreed with the societies and companies a scheme which preserves the interests of the small contributor. The legal basis for the scheme is in Clauses 6 and 7 of the Bill. The other exception is for those amounts which are specified in existing Acts of Parliament and their subordinate legislation. These are covered by Clauses 10 and 11 in the Bill together with Schedule 2.
I have dealt so far with those principles behind the Bill which affect coinage and

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cash transactions. As I have said, decimalisation will also change the unit of account. This involves mainly technical and specialised considerations, but one aspect is familiar to many, and that is payments which are made through the banking system. Much has been learnt in this field from the experience of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. We know that although banks could not work in both currencies it is possible for them to effect a complete change-over, if not overnight at least in a flatter of days. This is why the Bill provides for an extended week-end during which the banks will supply a limited service while attending to the conversion of their accounts, procedures and machines. When the banks open on Monday morning, the 15th February, 1971, they will be fully equipped to work exclusively in the new currency for all the documents and cheques which they normally handle.
The Bill provides the legal background for the banks to follow this plan of instant change-over, but they will of course continue to receive and supply such old £.s.d. coinage as the public may wish to handle. I understand that a measure of commercial flexibility will be applied by the banks for those who might be forgetful of details, much as they now do when some of us persist in writing our January cheques with the previous year's date. This immediate and complete change-over by the banks will be the most powerful single incentive for the country to turn fully decimal as quickly as possible.
My Lords, let me now deal with the way the change-over will affect the individual citizen in the ordinary transactions of everyday life. The first point is that the individual citizen need not bother too much about the details of the law, or about conversion tables and so forth; common sense can be his main guide. As I have just said, we shall need to remember that cheques written after "D-Day" must be written in the new currency, and the banks will be at pains to remind their customers of this when the time comes.
But more important than cheques are cash transactions. Here the essential point to remember is that during the change-over period those who sell goods or services will sell them either at a
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decimal price or at an £.s.d. price, but not at both. Once a shop or a bus company has gone decimal, their prices or fares will be decimal prices only; those who have not yet gone decimal will be dealing in £.s.d. prices and fares only. It will not be open to a customer to walk into a decimal shop and decide that he prefers to pay an £.s.d. price. The shopkeeper may be prepared to deal with him on this basis to retain his goodwill; but this will be exceptional, not the rule. This does not mean that people will have to carry separate stocks of the coins of both currencies. All they need to remember is that sixpence in the old currency is exactly equivalent to 2½ new pence, and if they always tender high in sixpenny multiples they can always be given the exact change. If everybody remembers to tender high in sixpenny multiples most of the problems will disappear. The Decimal Currency Board will be at great pains to impress this point on retailers, and on the public in due course.
Finally, perhaps I should touch briefly on our position on compensation. The Government never contemplated a general scheme to cover decimalisation costs, and this was made clear when the decision to introduce a decimal currency system was first announced. It was, mentioned again in the White Paper of 1966, and also when the first Decimal Currency Bill was considered by Parliament. On the question of compensation in special circumstances, the Government made it clear that they had a completely open mind and would leave the whole issue for examination by a completely independent and impartial body. The Decimal Currency Board, whose members have been drawn from the main fields affected by decimalisation, were given the task under the Decimal Currency Act 1967, but were deliberately given no directive from the Government on how to approach this problem. They have carried out their work quite independently.
The Board finally satisfied themselves that no scheme for special compensation could be devised which could he based on clear defensible principles. Furthermore, such a scheme could not be administered fairly and soundly. Equity is the keystone of any compensation scheme, and the Board were finally convinced that there were no principles which could justify meeting all or some

39
of the decimalisation costs of one particular group or groups and not those of other groups. They recommended, after long study of the general problem of the change-over and the detailed representations submitted to them, that there should be no compensation in any circumstances, and the Government consider that the Board's view on this matter ought to be accepted.
What I have said so far still leaves questions unanswered. Many of them will be dealt with in the course of our later consideration of the Bill. But there are also others with which the Bill does not deal, and does not need to deal; and on those the Decimal Currency Board has given, or will be giving, detailed guidance. Let me emphasise again, my Lords, that the Government's aim in this Bill is to provide a sensible framework for the change-over. Much depends on getting this framework right, but much more depends on careful and thorough planning by all concerned in the time that remains before "D-Day". I should like to think that we in this House can send out a message of encouragement to those upon whom the burden of the day-to-day work of conversion will fall. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Beswick.)
4.18 p.m.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, this Bill gives effect to the machinery of decisions which have for the most part already been taken and carried out by Parliament. I think that most people in this country, or at least most people in Parliament and in business, are in favour of having a decimal currency. There are a great many different points of view as to exactly how it should be carried out, and I have regretted from the beginning that the Government should have taken so rigid and authoritarian a view about this as they have always done. I am not going to reopen at any length the questions that we have already debated, but I think it was a great pity that the question of whether to have a 20s. or a 10s. pound was forced through with the Government Whips, and that neither House of Parliament was allowed to have a free vote upon it. This is a question which I should have thought
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was eminently suitable for a free vote, particularly since opinion, as expressed even in the Halsbury Report, was so evenly balanced.
Some of us thought that the Minority Report by two of the members was right, and even the Majority Report said that in their view the 10s. pound would be more convenient, but they came down in favour of the 20s. pound on grounds of the international prestige held by the pound. Some of us did not agree with that. It was rather a surprise when the matter came to be debated in Parliament that the Government announced that they were not recommending this because of the international prestige of the pound at all and that they did not accept this argument of the Majority Report of the Halsbury Commission. What argument they did accept or based their decision upon was not quite clear.
One irritating disadvantage of this 20s. pound is that one has to have an extra place of decimals, because the new penny of 2·4 pence is too large for the convenience of small shoppers. So we had to have what is now going to be called the "new halfpenny", which is the equivalent of 1·2 pence in our present currency. That is now going to be the smallest unit. Of course, we should all agree that that was necessary. Under the 10s. system it would have been also the smallest unit of denomination and it would have been the penny, and we should not have had this extra place of decimals.
The excuse which the Halsbury Commission gave on that point was that very soon this coin would not be needed in any event. They seemed in two minds as to whether this was because inflation was bound to go on or because everybody would get so rich that people would not bother about so small a sum as 1·2 pence, and that in about thirty years' time we could therefore take this new penny of 2·4 pence as the smallest coin which we would condescend to bother about; anything less being beneath the notice of our affluent society. That was the optimistic view. The pessimistic view was that inflation would go on. In the last four and a half years I think I am right in saying that prices have risen by 20 per cent. already, and of course if the process continues like this for another twenty years at the same rate,

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then it is true that this new halfpenny will be worth so little that it will probably be discarded. But I do not think that that is a very good reason. It is a counsel of despair; that we are going to have so much inflation in any event that we may as well have a top-heavy currency, because in another 25 years it will be worth only half as much anyhow. I have always been rather antagonised by that argument. We should have had also the advantage of being in line with everybody else who has adopted a decimal pound, in South Africa, Australia and in New Zealand. They have all had this 1·2 penny as the lowest denominational coin.
The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, also mentioned the question of compensation. I think the question of compensation would have been very much less troublesome and in fact very much less necessary if we had had enough sense to adopt the 10s. pound; there would not have been nearly so much loss in expense of conversion, particularly in regard to automatic machines. The only coin that would have been different from the present coinage would have been the new halfpenny, 1·2 pence, the penny as it would have been called under a 10s. system, and then we should have had the sixpence which would have been 5 cents; the shilling would have been 10 cents; if we had wanted 20 cents we should have had the florin, and 25 cents or the "quarter" would have been the half-crown, and so on. But now the situation is much more complicated and the associability is much less, and all the expense of changing over is going to be much greater, so the need for compensation is very much more. I am sorry to see that the Decimal Currency Board have announced, after very careful consideration, that the task is beyond them and that they cannot recommend that any compensation be given. I think that that is very hard on a great many small shopkeepers who have fairly expensive machines, cash registers and sometimes even small computers and calculating machines, which last for twenty years—and those of them who have renewed their capital outlay on this lately will suffer a very great hardship if they should have to do it all over again.
However, now that we have taken these decisions we must make the best of them; and I am not sure that the Government
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are making the best of them in this Bill. I have looked very carefully at their arguments about the sixpence, which is going to be prolonged only during the period of transition or possibly for a year or so beyond that. After that it will be phased out. I think there an: many reasons against doing that. I quite agree that the sixpence under the pound/cent decimal system will not neatly fit in with even decimalisation because, instead of being 5 cents, as it would have been on the 10s. pound, it would now with the 20s. pound be 2½ cents, so we have the half-cent again. But we have it anyhow as the halfpenny. I do not think it would add any greater complication—if we are going to have the halfpenny anyhow—to allow the 2½ cent coin to continue, which will in fact be the old sixpence. The advantages of this would be many. An enormous number of sixpences are in circulation. We should save a great deal of expense in minting new coinage if we let them go on; and there would be much less loss in changing the automatic coin machines, so many of which are now adapted to the use of sixpences. And I think it would tend to prevent certain rises in prices which might otherwise be inevitable as a result of this change. To take telephone calls, it is very difficult to see how they are going to be adapted to the new system without charging more than sixpence as the basic amount after the sixpence has been abolished.
Finally, the Bank of England itself is quoted by the Halsbury Report, which I was looking at just before I came into the Chamber. This Report by the Bank of England is quoted on page 234, which points out that one great advantage of the pound/cent system is that the sixpence can be continued if it is wanted. We could continue the sixpence or the florin or the shilling or all of the denominations, as well as the new halfpenny and the new penny. But this fact, which I think weighed with some people in supporting the pound/cent system, has now been discarded, and we are told that the sixpence is ultimately to abolished. I should like in conclusion to appeal again to the Government, if it not too late, to reconsider this matter and to reflect upon the inconvenience to the public which may be caused by the abolition of this coin—I will not say particularly in Scotland, but it is supposed to be used to an even greater extent there than it is here It

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would be a great convenience, both to the small shopper and to the small shopkeeper. If the sixpence were to be continued I think it would tend to prevent a rounding up in prices of all kinds of small commodities, and I hope that the Government will not continue to think in terms of very grand and high finance, as they so often do, but that they will not be too proud to "sing a song of sixpence."
4.30 p.m.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, in the course of his speech the Minister referred at one point to certain things which we had learned from Australia and New Zealand. What we ought to have learned from Australia and New Zealand and the other great countries of the English-speaking world are the enormous advantages of the 10s. system over the £ system.
I could well have understood its being said that we in this country understand the advantages of a decimal currency but we think that it is not worth while for this country to take the plunge, having regard to the fact that we have what has been for a very long time a reserve currency, well understood throughout the world. This factor might have been one which could have led us to say that in our particular case decimalisation is not vitally necessary. But, we having decided to take the plunge, I think it is a matter of the utmost regret that we did not plump for the 10s. system. I do not believe that the ties that bind together the great English-speaking peoples of the world are so strong that we can really afford to throw away this wonderful opportunity of coming into line with them in the matter of currency. However, it is not much good going on like this, because I know that this battle has been fought and has been lost. I was, however, very surprised when the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, in a discussion on the last business, referred to the Decimal Currency debate that we had in this House as a "not very controversial matter". My recollection is that this was one of the most controversial matters that we have discussed in this House for a long time.
The only matter of detail in this Bill that I wish to speak about at any length is Schedule 1, which is the Table for converting existing shillings and pence into the new pence. I should have thought
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that it stuck out a mile that if you had shillings and pence to convert into a new currency you would convert the shillings and then you would convert the pence, particularly having regard to the fact that the shilling is an exact figure in the new currency, the shilling being five new pence. I should have thought that there could be no question that this was the way to do it. But no; Schedule 1 is not based on the shilling; it is based on the 2s. and everybody has to learn a conversion table, not of pence up to a shilling but of old pence up to 1s. 11d.
So the situation is this: that supposing you have an awkward sum like 13s 7d., instead of saying "13 x 5", which gives you the new pence for the shillings, and then dealing with the 7d.—well, most people would be able to remember the 7d. in the new pence—according to Schedule 1 it is to be put on a 2s. base, so you have to multiply 12s.—but I am getting rather muddled, which just shows how difficult it is going to be. You have to take six times 2s. and then you have converted 12s. of the amount. Then you have 1s. 7d. left, and you have to look up 1s. 7d. in the Table—because it is pretty sure that unless you are a bank clerk or something like that you are not going to be able to memorise 1s. 7d. in the new pence—and you find out that it is 8 new pence.
My Lords, what is the purpose of all this? So far as I can understand it, it simply arises out of the fact that to convert 6d. into the new currency it is rounded up from two-and-a-half new pence to three new pence, and correspondingly when you get to 1s. 6d., that is rounded down from 7½new pence to 7 new pence. As I understand the argument, this evens things out. You have a rounding up of the 6d. and a rounding down of the 1s. 6d. That might be all very well if we were all born either creditors or debtors, like men and women, and we remained creditors or debtors for the whole of our lives. But in fact of course what happens is that we are all creditors at one moment and debtors the next, so that any rounding up of a 6d. or rounding down of 1s. 6d. will be evened out not by meticulous accuracy in a 2s, table but because we shall all gain and lose on the swings and roundabouts anyway. I should have thought it was quite unanswerable that

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this Schedule, based on the 2s. unit, will not do, and that the only sane and sensible way to do it is to convert the shillings and then to convert the pence. Then you have only to remember up to 11d. on the conversion tables and you have not got the appalling business of trying to remember what 1s. 7d. converts into in terms of new pence, without having to look it up.
My Lords, I am sorry to go into such detail on Second Reading, but I think this Table will be a headache for people in the early stages of the transitional period, and I hope that as this Bill goes through we shall get a change from the 2s. base to the shilling base for conversion.
4.37 p.m.
LORD JACQUES: My Lords, with the permission of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, has changed places with me on the List. I would compliment the Government, first, on facing this problem of the decimalisation of the currency, and then on the preparatory work which is being done. At the present time we have seven coins and a 10s. note which gives us eight units of currency below one pound. In the future it is proposed that we should manage with only six—we are discarding the half-crown and the sixpence. I want to state in some detail the case for retaining the sixpence.
The shilling is a key coin in our present currency. It is a key unit of currency because there are 20 to the pound and it is equal to five per cent. of the pound. We found it convenient to have a unit of currency, namely the sixpence, equal to half the value of the shilling. Now all we are doing with the shilling is changing its name. We are changing its name to "five new pence". It will still be worth one-twentieth of a pound; it will still be a key unit of currency, and I suggest that as in the past it has been very convenient to have a coin equal to one-half of the value of the shilling, it will continue to be convenient to have a coin equal to one-half of the value of the five new penny coins. If we do not have such a coin it means that if we are asked to tender a 5-cent coin for a purchase and we have not got one, we shall have to find three coins, instead of two, to replace it. At the present time we can tender
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two sixpences, but with the new coinage we should have to tender two units of new pennies plus one unit of the new penny. In the retail trade many of our goods and services are sold in quantities which are related to the value of sixpence. If we do not have a coin equal to the value of sixpence we shall have a choice of doing one of two things: either to change all the quantities, or, secondly, to use more coins when the quantities are bought. That seems to us to be change for the sake of change.
In addition, we have thousands of meters and machines which use the sixpence. We have them in connection with the telephone, in connection with the purchase of stamps, in connection with car parking, in connection with travel tickets, on the Underground, for example, and in connection with the purchase of food. If we are not going to have a 2½ new pennies coin, then these machines will all have to be either scrapped or completely rebuilt. That seems to us to be adding cost unnecessarily in the transition period. We are not asking for a new coin; we are asking for a coin that is already in circulation.
Then I would direct the attention of the House to the fact that before "D-Day" we shall require many more sixpences than we have to-day. With the present currency, using the minimum number of coins, and making up every amount from one penny to 19s. 11d. you use only 24 sixpences in total, for the simple reason that once you get to 2s. 5d. and 12s. 5d., respectively you can commence using the half-crown. But as from January next year there will be no half-crown. To do the same exercise—that is to say, to make up all amounts between one penny and 19s. 11d.—it will be necessary to use not 24 sixpences but 120 sixpences, because we shall have lost the use of the half-crown. It will be necessary to use five times as many sixpences. Therefore, after January next year either we shall have public inconvenience or there will be more sixpences in circulation because of the withdrawal of the half-crown. We suggest that there should be more sixpences in circulation, that they should be marked 2½ new pence and that they should remain in circulation.
This Government and their predecessor have gone to a great deal of trouble to

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create machinery for consultation with industry, and they have also encouraged industry to set up its house to be able to consult with Government. In distribution we have the National Economic Development Council for Distribution. Its advice on this subject is quite clear, quite concise and quite reasonable. It is as follows. The sixpence should not be de-monetised unless and until objective research in the transitional period has shown that it is redundant. This advice is confirmed by all the trade associations engaged in the retail trade, who are solidly behind the Development Council in this particular advice. It may be that this advice clashes with the advice of the bankers—I do not know. But if it does, I would remind the Government that the bankers handle coins in bulk and the retailer handles coins in small amounts. Thousands of coins such as sixpences circulate for years in the retail trade without ever seeing a bank. Therefore on this particular question the relevant industry for consultation is, I submit, the retail trade, and they have made their position perfectly clear.
This is not an issue of policy; this is an issue of practical convenience. I suggest that if ever there was an issue on which the Government should be prepared to listen to, and accept, the advice of the industry concerned, this is it. I hope that, in replying to the debate, my noble friend will be able to tell me that the advice of the industry will be looked at again, and that unless reasons much better than have so far been given can be found the advice of the industry will be accepted, and that we shall continue to have a coin equivalent to the sixpence.
Before closing I should like to comment on the question of compensation. I can see the Government's difficulty in regard to compensation, but I would plead for what is technically known as free depreciation. Many machines will have to be scrapped, because of decimalisation of the coinage, before finishing their expected life. That means that the owner of that machine will have to find new capital to purchase a replacement. In the ordinary course of business he would not be allowed for tax purposes the cost of that new machine immediately; he would get an allowance made to him over a number of years, five, ten or fifteen
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years, according to the nature of the machine. But he has to find the capital for that replacement because of decimalisation, and he has to find it there and then. I suggest that, as a matter of equity, he should be allowed the cost of the machine as a charge for income tax purposes in the year in question, so that he will pay less tax in that year, which will help him to meet the capital cost of the new machine. In the long run the Exchequer will not lose anything. It merely means that the man who has to replace his machine because of the act of the Government in decimalising will have the cost allowed wholly now, instead of being spread over a number of years. That, I think, is equitable, and I would plead with the Government to give it further consideration.
LORD CLITHEROE: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down may I make one comment on what he has said? He referred to the clearing banks, and I should like to say on behalf of the clearing banks that they have not made any representations to the Government against having a sixpenny or 2½ cent coin. They are quite willing to handle whatever coins the Government produce. They have no contrary view with regard to this. The noble Lord rather suggested that the banks were against having a sixpenny or 2½ cent coin. That is not so.
LORD JACQUES: My Lords, I did say that I did not know. Might I suggest that, having heard such a good case made out for the sixpence, the clearing banks might consider it and support the retail trade?
4.48 p.m.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Jacques speaks with intimate knowledge and in an official position for a very large retailing movement which also represents consumers, as the Co-operative Movement has always done. I only want, from the point of view of the Consumer Council, of which I am Chairman, to say that we share his view completely over this particular question of the sixpence. I do not want to discuss anything else in this Bill, which otherwise we think a very good one. The arguments have already been put and are not improved by being put again.

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There is very little I can add to what my noble friend has said, and what was said from the other side originally on this point, but I think it is worth noticing one's own experience. I looked into the window of a mens' outfitters yesterday afternoon, and 11 out of 13 items were priced at a price ending in sixpence. If the price is going to be 2½ pence it will not stay there. It may be rounded down a halfpenny or up a halfpenny, but our belief is that it is likely to be rounded up the full 2½ pence to the full shilling. I think that there is an inflationary cost-raising danger in doing away with the sixpence. Although one cannot prove that it will happen, I believe that it is extremely likely.
The only other point I would make is that the situation has arisen in South Africa, where the "tickey"—a coin not dissimilar from the sixpence—persisted for a very long time, and the public made it clear that they wanted to go on using it. All I need say is that although it is not the business of the Government to force any particular coin on to the people, neither is it their business to deprive people of the use of any particular coin until there is good evidence that it is not required. It is too soon to say whether the sixpence, two and a half pence, will be popular or not. Please, let us try to see, and not pre-empt the position as the Government's present proposal does, by announcing that we are going to abolish the sixpence 18 months after "D-Day."
4.50 p.m.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I fear that in attempting to reply to the discussion that has taken place so far on the Second Reading of this Bill it is unlikely that I will satisfy noble Lords who have spoken. During the Easter Recess I re-read the debate which took place originally on this subject, when certainly two noble Lords who have taken part this afternoon, the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, quite forcefully expressed their views for a completely different system. The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, has reiterated his support for the ten-shilling system, so whatever I say he will perhaps be still heavily in favour of this system and will go down, as it were, to the end of the discussion on the Bill insisting that this would have been a better system.
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Leaving that for the moment, I think we must agree that the Bill is presented to your Lordships as a framework for the change-over and that some of the points which we have been debating may in practice well not prove to be as complicated as they have been made to sound. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, that the Schedule which appeared to cause him some concern is intended for accounting and not for shopping transactions. I have already discussed the system of the new currency with a number of housewives who are the people who will be dealing with the cash transactions, and inevitably they did exactly what the noble Lord suggested: when the figure was 13s. 7d. they multiplied 13 by 5 and then dealt with the pence separately. So whatever conversion table is offered I think people will naturally evolve their own system of dealing with it.
The practice of rounding-up is not uncommon. Rounding up has gone on for a long time. I would say at this point that it is important not to assume, as perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, did, that prices necessarily go up. I have had a number of dealings with traders, both wholesalers and retailers. They are not rogues, and we should be doing them less than justice if it should go forth from this House that we felt that necessarily prices would be rounded up. I feel perhaps that London Transport might set the tone by rounding down, so that we get a 5d. fare on the Red Rovers, as some people are rather aggrieved that they have to pay 6d. for what in their view is a 5d. fare. There seems to be no reason, looking at Australia and New Zealand, why traders should not play fair on this. Indeed, I think this will cause the housewife to look more acutely and carefully at prices during the change-over period. I feel that we must not assume that rounding-up will necessarily cause inflation in prices. This would be a reflection on traders.
The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, made the point about the conversion of coin-operated machines, suggesting that the ten-shilling system would not have involved so much expense. I am advised that in some cases the cost of converting business machines, such as cash registers, would have been greater because more figures are involved. But this is something which we shall see as time goes on.

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I should like to pay a tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, for what I know to be his really practical experience in retail trade. But I wonder whether I dare suggest to him that all traders were not so unanimous as he seemed to suggest in supporting the retention of the sixpence. Some quite large multiple traders have come down in favour of the present system of conversion. It is not entirely true to say that when the half-crown is demonetised we shall need more sixpences. I have been doing a little arithmetic during this time, and I have had to do it rather rapidly. But the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, will be reassured because there has been quite a lot of research on this, and it is a fact that two-thirds of the sixpences now used in transactions arc used in pairs: in other words, for shillings. So the Board are urging that there should be more shillings. I believe that if your Lordships were to look in your pockets at this precise point of time you would find that you have more large coins than small ones. Again, I have been doing a little research into this. The shop assistant counts up and not down (the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, will know what I mean by this), so that in fact we tend to use the large coins where possible rather than the small ones.
So far as the question of the sixpence is concerned I feel that I must spend a little time on this because at least four noble Lords who have spoken to-day have spoken firmly in favour of it. The sixpence will die a natural death. It will not disappear immediately at the point of the change-over. Great stress has been made of the point that the sixpence is a popular and useful coin, that it is of convenient size and so on, and that its withdrawal is going to have an adverse effect. The Government are convinced that by the end of the change-over period the sixpence will have ceased to be a useful coin.
We are by nature a conservative race, and therefore we tend to accept the sixpence as always having been part of our currency. But it seems that there is no reason why we should continue to assume that we must have a coin of this size. To include it in the new decimal currency would involve yet another half. I know that the noble Lord, Lord
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Airedale, did not particularly like the half in the first instance, and I am quite sure that he would not want to see another half included yet again in our new currency. When I taught mathematics I was always anxious to impress upon my pupils that one had as few fractions and decimals mixed as possible—in other words, you thought in decimals or you thought in fractions. I am sure that with his great interest in figures the noble Lord would be the first to agree that since we have already accepted a half in deference to some pleas, we do not want to compound this by adding also two and a half into this currency, which can be quite straightforward. We have to get over this idea that we must always think in terms of existing currency.
LORD JACQUES: Would my noble friend object to 2·5?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: The figure 2·5 is two and a half. But I think that the noble Lord will agree with me if I say that while I do not object to it the more you bring in 0·5 the more you are breaking down yet again. One of the great advantages of the decimal currency, as the noble Lord will appreciate, is that it will speed up cash handling and addition and subtraction. Therefore, if we complicate it by breaking down we shall destroy, as it were, the value of the system.
I think those of your Lordships who have been in other countries know how quickly one converts to the currency of the country. I remember the last time I was in France. It was said that you could always tell the British because they would stand in front of the shops with little bits of paper calculating in their own currency the price of the goods in the window. But after three or four clays one starts to think in the currency of the country. I believe this is exactly what will happen and that we shall not any longer think back to these halves.
So far as the question of the machines is concerned, I wonder whether sometimes we tend to over-emphasise that matter. The actual number of machines at the moment operated by sixpences is 1·7 million, which is not such a vast figure as might be supposed. We have already had the assurance that at any rate telephone calls can be adjusted to the new pence; we can have shorter calls

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for less money. I should not think that there is anything very wrong in having smaller chocolate bars in order to meet the value of the new pence we shall put into the machine. There is nothing wrong in this; this has been done before. I am quite sure that most caterers have got round the question of not raising prices; of giving you three sandwiches where they gave you four before. There is nothing wrong in this; this is a simple economic adjustment which I am sure the machine owners can handle.
The fact is that at this point of time we have to recognise that during the change-over there will be the question of handling the two different coinages. But knowing the British people as I do, I am confident that this is something they will cope with as they always have. There has never been any real objection to the idea of decimal currency. The previous debate seemed to me to range really on whether it was to be the ten-shilling unit or to be the pound unit. As the Bill progresses, I am quite sure that we shall again have some very useful comments from those noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, and I should like to suggest this Bill as a framework for change-over and commend it to your Lordships for Second Reading.
On Question. Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

STUDENT GRANTS AND PARENTS' CONTRIBUTIONS
5.2 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY LORD GARNSWORTHY rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the fact that regulations under which parental contributions are assessed in determining student first degree and comparable awards are inequitable and unfair towards parents who are tenants, as compared to house-purchasers, they will consider making a review of those regulations. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. The regulations which determine what contribution a parent is called upon to make when a son or daughter receives a student grant or award for First Degree or comparable courses at universities and further education establishments are
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based on recommendations of the Anderson Committee who were appointed in 1958 and who reported in 1960. In assessing what the parental contribution shall be certain items of expenditure are accepted as allowances against gross income. Among these charges are mortgage interest and all other interest payments allowed for tax purposes. Nothing at all is allowed the parent who is a tenant for the rental he has to pay; therefore that places him at a disadvantage compared to house purchasers.
That many of these tenants feel unfairly treated is hardly surprising, and I have raised this matter on a number of occasions with the local authority on which I serve, only to be told that the regulations are issued by the Department of Education and Science. At the beginning of this year I persuaded that authority, the Surrey County Council, to take the matter up with the Department, and in a reply dated February 20 they were told:
"…given a system of parental contribution, the most satisfactory procedure was to base the calculation on income computed as for tax purposes and, as a general principle, to follow the practice of the income tax authorities so far as allowances are concerned."
That, of course, is the substance of the recommendation of the Anderson Committee in paragraph 208 of their Report, Grants to Students.
I myself wrote earlier in the year, as my noble friend Lady Phillips will know, and received a somewhat similar reply. On March 5 I raised the matter in this House by way of a Starred Question asking whether the regulations could be amended to ensure some allowance, in assessing parental contributions, for rent for those who live in rented accommodation. The reply I was given again drew attention to income tax procedure and stated:
"Any departure from this principle would increase public expenditure and cannot be considered now."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5/3/69; col. 147.]
My Lords, I do not know whether anyone had any idea at all how much money would be involved, but if it is a considerable sum it would seem to me at least that a section of the community is bearing a very unfair burden. If it is not a great amount of money that is involved, then I think it is something that ought to be

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righted, and indeed could be righted at no great cost. I appreciated in the reply my noble friend gave me on that occasion that she promised to convey to her right honourable friend the views then expressed, although at that time she held out little hope of any major change. I hope that to-day I do not appear to be impatient in pressing the matter again and asking whether consideration can be given to undertaking a review of the regulations.
May I say I take the point mentioned by my noble friend Lady Phillips on March 5 that for a family of three with a net income of below £900 no parental contribution is payable, so it is fair to claim that up to that figure there is equitable treatment. However, I can see no good reason at all why a sense of equity and fairness should begin or end at any arbitrary figure on the income scale. I may have missed some strong argument, but at the present time—and I hope I may be forgiven if I appear impertinent because I should not wish to give any offence at all—I have the impression that administrative convenience may well be the strongest and possibly the only reason for maintaining the present practice.
My Lords, whereas there may have been some case for differentiating between those who paid rent and owner-occupiers when Schedule A tax was payable, since that tax was abolished in 1963 there is now a somewhat different, indeed a very different, position. It is worth stressing that the house purchaser already enjoys income tax relief on the interest portion of mortgage repayments, and if my noble friend Lord Arwyn had been present this evening I think he would have reminded the House that other interest payments, including interest on bank overdrafts, are also allowed not only as reliefs for income tax but also to secure reductions in parental contributions for these student awards.
But I wish to concentrate on the present unfair position of the tenant, and I should like to illustrate the point I am trying to make. If a parent pays £500 a year rent for his home, he secures no allowance at all for that rent when the parental contribution towards the student grant is assessed. But if he is paying, say, 7 per cent. interest on £4,000—that is to say,
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£280—his contribution is reduced by £28 a year, or over a three-year period a total of £84. If his interest payments are greater than the figure I have mentioned, then the reduction is still more, since there is a reduction of £1 for every £10 interest found.
There are many people who to-day are paying quite high rentals, and so far as I can gather from the Guardian of last Saturday there are likely to be many more, for it was reported that tenants of a row of new council houses built by the London Borough of Camden will have to pay a total rent of between £13 and £14 a week. I would mention in passing that the rateable value of those properties has been assessed at £300. There are also many who face substantial rent increases. Indeed, I have here a copy of a letter addressed by the Greater London Council to a tenant who has leased a house from them, as he had done from the L.C.C. for some 12 years before, at a rent of £170 a year. He is now offered by the Greater London Council a newly drawn-up agreement, and the rent is to be increased in three stages. Because of the Prices and Incomes Act 1968 the increase is limited to £26 in the first year; in the second year another £90 is to be added, raising the rent to £286, and in the third year it is to go up a further £89, making a new rental of £375 a year—an increase of over 120 per cent.
Incidentally, the tenant is to be called upon to pay all rates, taxes and assessments and to insure the premises against loss or damage by fire in the sum of £4,500. Under the present regulations that tenant cannot expect his rent to be taken into account in assessing his liability to contribute towards student grant for his child. Your Lordships will be well aware that the majority of the Anderson Committee, as set out on page 59 of their Report, took the view that parental contributions should be abolished. As yet this has not been conceded. For my part, I am this afternoon seeking only a minor amendment of the regulations to ensure that those who pay rent shall get some allowance for it in assessing their contributions.
May I offer as a constructive idea the suggestion that gross rateable values might be used as a basis for an allowance for parents who pay rent? If that is

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not a perfect solution, at least it offers something a little more fair than the present inequitable arrangement, and it would have the merit of being easy to administer. I hope that my noble friend Lady Phillips will at least be able to indicate when she replies that the matter will be considered sympathetically so that one may feel it unnecessary to press the matter further than this Question this afternoon.
5.12 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, for having raised what is an important matter, which goes slightly further than he has taken it to-night. He has eloquently shown that there is a very definite case of injustice here, and that the present arrangements do not work out equitably. I shall not re-cover the ground on that, but I should like to ask the noble Baroness to comment on two extra points.
First, I would ask: is this just administrative convenience, or is there a kind of social engineering behind the present arrangements? If so, it seems to me that it is possibly misconceived. These arrangements militate against the people who pay rents, and while I think that all sides of the House are in favour of a property-owning democracy, and would like to see more house-owning, there are fairly good reasons at the moment why we should not discriminate at all against the person who pays rent. One of those reasons is that we are trying, and the Government have been trying very hard for some time, to have a shake-up in British industry which means mobility of labour; and labour, of course, is more mobile with more rented houses. The second reason is that with a housing shortage—and this is possibly one of the most important factors in Britain to-day—greater use of rented accommodation can mean that there is not the under-occupancy which there is when one or two people are left in big houses after other members of the family have moved. There is much more mobility of housing in that way. So there is a case for saying that if there is any kind of social engineering it is misconceived. I should be interested to hear the comments of the noble Baroness on that.
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My second point may be thought to go slightly wider than the Question, but I hope your Lordships will bear with me for a moment, as I think it bears on it sufficiently strongly and, indeed, urgently. I refer to the whole question of parental contributions when the age of majority is changing to 18. It appears to be quite inequitable and silly that grown-ups, who do not legally any longer come under the power of their parents, should be put in the position where a grant which is given to them largely by right, if they have certain qualifications and can get a place in a university, should be entirely dependent upon whether or not their parents are willing to pay the contribution. This seems totally unjust with the change in the age of majority.
Therefore, I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to say whether Her Majesty's Government are thinking of reviewing the regulations in toto—not just this one point, which I entirely agree is unsatisfactory, but the whole system which I think is now seen to be absurd and will have to be abolished sooner or later. Although it will be expensive, there is surely a good case for reviewing the arrangements now and making them as equitable as possible as soon as possible.
5.17 p.m.
LORD PARGITER: My Lords, before my noble friend Lady Phillips replies I hope that I may be permitted to intervene briefly. I accept that the present position with regard to regulations is infinitely better than it used to be when the local authorities could do just as they liked. We know of the glaring inequalities in those times between enlightened authorities and backward authorities, in the treatment of children in their areas. I know of many cases in different parts of the country where quite brilliant children were deprived of a university education because local authorities were not willing to pay reasonably towards it, and the burden fell on parents who could not afford to pay. So that regulations are here to stay; and it is quite right that they should be. It is also right that there should be equality throughout the country about the way in which parents are treated.
I support what the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, has said about the

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reduction of the age of majority to 18, and the logical effect of the age of consent being 18 for all purposes except education, where it becomes an age of non-consent, with the grant being dependent on whether or not the parent is willing to make a contribution. I believe that a good deal of the present unrest among students is due to their resentment at being dependent on parents' contributions. But whatever is done must be fair as between one section of the community and another. To say that someone buying a house is entitled to relief but that a person renting a house is not entitled to it is basically unfair. It may well be that the gross rateable value could be taken as the basis upon which something could be done. May I suggest, to make the arrangements general and to avoid administrative inconvenience, that the gross rateable value might be taken as the basis for all purposes, whether buying a house or renting it? If it is a matter of getting some sort of basis for the two, each person should be treated the same. However, the method is not particularly important, so long as the principle is admitted that those who pay rent are entitled to the same consideration as those who pay mortgage interest. The matter should be considered in that light.
I know that the regulations are reviewed every three years, and it may be said that nothing can be done in the interim. I hope that this excuse will not be used because, after all, the regulations can be reviewed, if the Government so wish, when they are ready to review them; and if they are willing to say that, quite apart from the major issues which must be involved in the question of the reduction of the age of majority to 18, they are prepared to do something to remedy this particular inequality, so that all people may be treated reasonably alike, it will be helpful to many people at the present time.
5.21 p.m.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, for again asking his Question. I salute the way in which he has held to this. Were I sitting where he is sitting, I am quite sure that I should in fact pursue the same course; but standing where I am standing, I am sorry that
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I am perhaps going to disappoint him. This seems to be an afternoon for disappointing people in reply.
I should like to dispel at once the idea which has been put forward by, I think, each of the noble Lords who has taken part in the discussion, that this is purely a matter of administrative convenience. I think I must remind your Lordships that the individuals who made up this very important Committee which considered the grants to students are not the kind of people who would be concerned purely with administrative convenience. They were concerned totally with the question of grants for students, and they gave this matter a great deal of thought. As the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, mentioned, they made several other recommendations in connection with the parental contribution.
But the Committee considered whether rent should be taken into account, and concluded that there was not sufficient reason to depart from the general principle. I will not repeat the relevant section of the Report, as I did on the previous occasion, because those of your Lordships who have studied this question will be well aware of it. Nevertheless, I think it is important to reiterate what I believe I said before to the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy; that is, that questions of income tax practice are, of course, for Treasury Ministers. The rationale of the differing treatments accorded under the Income Tax Acts to payment of rent and mortgage interest is as follows. Mortgage interest is one of a number of annual charges on income for which allowance may be made for tax purposes. That it constitutes expenditure on the provision of housing is irrelevant. It may not be so irrelevant to the people who are being housed, but in connection with tax purposes it is irrelevant. Expenditure on housing, including rent, is taken into account by other means, and this is one of the factors which determines the standard levels of personal allowance.
So, as a general rule, the Department follow income tax practice, and any departure from this principle could have very wide repercussions and would involve additional expenditure, which cannot be contemplated at present. Whether this comes under the heading of administrative convenience or the economic situa

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tion, I should not like to hazard a guess. Detailed investigation into rent payments at various income levels and into the current pattern of income distribution among award holders' parents would be necessary to estimate accurately what the expenditure might be if allowance were made for rent. On present information, my Lords, the best estimate that can be made is that up to an extra £2 million would be involved in respect of students in higher education in Great Britain.
Because no parental contribution is payable if the net income after all allowances have been made is less than £900, the suggested change would not benefit parents at or below this net income level. In England and Wales, 60 per cent. of the occupiers of rented property are tenants of local authorities or new town corporations; and when their average income was taken there in 1967 it was shown to be £904. An important point to remember, when we are talking about equity, is that the charge the noble Lord wished to see might not, in fact, help the very group he is anxious to help. The best estimate that has been made of the cost of this (if we were to take, for instance, allowances for rent and rates, plus allowances for repayment of mortgage principal) is that we should have £2 million in respect of allowances for rent, £2 million in respect of allowances for repayment of mortgage principal and £1 million allowance for rates, giving a total of £5 million. I am sorry, ray Lords; but this would be a very substantial increase in public expenditure which cannot be considered at the present time.
The question of the logic of parental contribution in the light of the new age of majority is of much wider implication, and I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, would not expect me to give him a reply on this point. I am bound to say that the logic seems something from which one cannot escape, and I assume that my right honourable friend will be looking at this matter. But I cannot give the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, any further comfort at this point of time, as this is not the moment to increase expenditure, even though it be on a cause of this kind. What I can assure him is that I shall follow it up as I did before, and again take it back to my right honourable friend. It was looked at last time—no promise given
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here is ever disregarded; the Secretary of State always looks at anything of this kind—but, bearing in mind the very practical suggestions which the noble Lord has offered, I will see that it is again considered. I hope the noble Lord will accept that.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down I should like to ask her one point for clarification. I understood that the figure of £2 million which she quoted included rates as well as rents, and indeed it made reference to the position of people with a mortgage. I wonder whether at some time it could be broken down, so that we could really ascertain how much it would cost to mete out this measure of equity to tenants. Further, I hope that the; time may not be too far off when somebody will appreciate that this form can quite easily be altered, and that it would not be a bad thing if the Department of Education and Science had standards of its own and did not slavishly follow income tax practice, which is not always fair to everybody. I hope my noble friend does not mind my putting those points.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I accept particularly the point about the form. If I were to make a long speech on this subject I might be able to suggest simplication of many forms; but these practical points can certainly be taken back to the Department, and this I shall be very happy to do.

FOREMEN AND STAFF MUTUAL BENEFIT SOCIETY (APPLICA TION OF RULES) ETC. BILL
The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES informed the House that the opposition to the Bill was withdrawn: the Order made on February 27 last discharged, and Bill committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.

NATIONAL WESTMINSTER BANK BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and referred to the Examiners.
House adjourned at twenty-eight minutes past five o'clock.