Lords Sitting of 18 February 1969

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

MOTOR VEHICLES AND YELLOW HEADLIGHTS
THE EARL OF DUNDONALD: 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, with a view to reducing the accident risk, particularly on motorways, they have further considered making the use of yellow headlamp bulbs or yellow headlamp glass compulsory on motor vehicles.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, R.A.F. (LORD WINTERBOTTOM): My Lords, the evidence suggests that no advantage would be gained by making yellow headlamps compulsory.
THE EARL OF DUNDONALD: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his brief reply. I should like to ask him one or two supplementary questions. First, is the noble Lord aware that tests conducted by the Road Research Laboratory in 1954 were not carried out in fog or mist, and only in simulated rain conditions; secondly, that in that Report yellow beams were considered by the majority to be less glaring than white, and also that in simulated glare conditions, yellow lights were stated to give better visibility? I take this information from the Road Research Laboratory Report 1954.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I was not aware of the way in which these particular tests were carried out. If the noble Lord will allow me, I will raise these points with the Road Research Laboratory and let him have their comments upon the effectiveness of the test.
LORD NUGENT or GUILDFORD: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that a certain mystery overhangs this situation? Is he aware that the Road Research Laboratory used to take the view that there was no benefit in the use of yellow lights for anti-dazzle purposes but have now changed their view and regard it as having a benefit? Would the noble Lord let us into the mystery? Would he ask the Road Research Laboratory to give us a clear statement of all the pros and cons, and to say what has caused them to change their view and what advice they can give as to which kind of bulb would be best in the general interests of safety on the road?
LORD WINTER BOTTOM: My Lords, I will certainly ask them to "come clean".
LORD TREFGARNE: My Lords, has the noble Lord, or have the Government, considered evidence from European countries, in particular France, where I understand that yellow bulbs are mandatory?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I think it is significant that only France among European countries has decided that yellow light is better than white under adverse conditions. This does not mean to say that the majority is always right, but it may mean also that the British view is right in this matter.
THE EARL OF DUNDONALD: My Lords, the noble Lord has kindly said that he will look into this matter and write to me. Will he please take into account that at present we are dealing with Mr. and Mrs. Average Motorist, with cars of an average nature, which possibly are not fitted with fog lamps, with an expanding car population, and with an increase in motorways?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I most certainly will.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: Mir Lords, would not my noble friend agree that any form of filter is extremely good for reducing the quantity of light.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, one of the factors is that the number of lumens (as I believe they are called) emitted by a yellow headlight is substantially lower—I believe 20 per cent. lower—than that emitted by a white light.

RITUAL SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS
2.40 p.m.
BARONESS STOCKS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will take steps to promote an impartial inquiry into ritual slaughter, in view of conflicting statements and widespread concern in this matter, and in view of a recent statement by the President of the British Veterinary Association that his Association would be prepared to service such an inquiry.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords it appears to Her Majesty's Government that the subject is one on which, on the basis of existing knowledge, no agreed conclusion is likely to be reached. Scientific authorities have always held, and still hold, conflicting opinions on whether ritual slaughter is more or less humane than other permitted methods. In these circumstances it does not seem that any useful purpose would be served by a Government inquiry.
BARONESS STOCKS: My Lords, am I right in thinking that the last inquiry in this country was in 1933 and that it was held by the Royal Veterinary Association: in which case would it not be a good thing to let them loose on it again? They might at least come to a conclusion in the light of the latest knowledge on this matter, of which apparently there is now a great deal circulating.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, there is now a good deal of conflicting information circulating. The matter has been discussed on several occasions since the date mentioned by my noble friend, and so far it has not been possible to get any agreed basis of fact on the matter.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, would it not be a grave disservice to this country to set up an inquiry into such a highly emotive issue and one which touches very deeply the religious susceptibilities of large sections of our community?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, with all due respect to my noble friend, I think that I am better advised to stick to my
688
words: that no useful purpose would be served.
BARONESS STOCKS: My Lords, is it not a fact that controversy is at the moment raging? It is important to find out whether there is some means of settling it. After all, it is a long time since an inquiry was held, and much has happened since.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I understand that the matter was raised in "Any Questions" on the radio, but I would not have said that that necessarily meant that controversy was raging. Different views have been expressed but, as I have said, there is no agreement among scientific opinion on this matter. All the different views and opinions are known to the Minister, and if any authoritative body wished to set up an inquiry themselves the Government would be glad to give them what service and assistance they could.
LORD JESSEL: My Lords, would the noble Lord suggest to the noble Baroness that she might read the debate which took place in this House on this subject some two years ago?
LORD BESWICK: Yes, my Lords, there was such a debate in this House on December 3, 1962. I read the debate with great interest this morning and would recommend it to my noble friend.
BARONESS STOCKS: My Lords, I am prepared to believe almost anything that is said in this noble House, but there may be expert views which, perhaps, on some particular subjects are beyond it.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, whatever may be the argument for or against this method, would it not be rather unfortunate to add to existing racial tensions by stirring up religious tensions on such a highly controversial issue?
BARONESS STOCKS: My Lords, is it not possible that if only we could get some agreed conclusion, religious tensions would be diminished rather than increased? Because there is great danger at the present time of religious tensions being increased by the fact that large numbers of people believe that a certain form of slaughter is cruel.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I absolutely agree with my noble friend. If we

689
could get an agreed conclusion it would do much to damp down this controversy. But the prospect of getting an agreed conclusion is not very clear.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the vast majority of the more liberal-minded Jews in this country are themselves heartily against this practice and that it is only a very small body of the Board of Deputies and the more orthodox Jews who insist on its retention?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I remember that that point of view was expressed very strongly by my noble friend Lady Summerskill in the debate on December 3, 1962, but it was a view which was not agreed to by other very liberal and very eminent Jewish Members of your Lordships' House.
BARONESS STOCKS: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that fairly recently there has been some controversy in the Jewish Chronicle on the subject of the actual technique of slaughter?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am not denying anything that my noble friend says. Of course there is controversy. The trouble is that the controversy includes people with different points of view, and all the information that is brought by one side is controverted by information brought from the other side. In these circumstances there seems little purpose to be served in having a Government inquiry.

MOTOR VEHICLE REGISTRATION BOOKS
EARLS FERRERS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will reintroduce the practice, which existed previously and which has now been discontinued, of stamping vehicle registration books with the expiry date of the licence at the time when the road fund licence is issued.]
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, the stamping of licence expiry dates in registration books served no particularly useful purpose, and in certain circumstances
690
was misleading. It also took up unnecessary time in the hard-pressed licensing authority offices. After consultation with interested organisations the process was discontinued in May, 1967. We do not intend to reintroduce it.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his reply, but I am also a little disappointed by it. I am grateful to him for telling us that this is done in the interests of economy, but is he aware that to some noble Lords it will seem the most absurd economy that the mind could possibly conjure up? Also, is he aware that owners are encouraged to run their vehicles unlicensed at the moment, because the only way of determining whether or not their vehicle is licensed is to go out and inspect the disc displayed on its windscreen? But as vehicles are designed to move very frequently this can be either impossible or inconvenient, and probably both.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I do not quite see the point the noble Earl is making. I think the true licensing position is recorded in the taxation office, so the authorities know when the tax runs out. Therefore it can easily be determined from the records whether or not a licence has been issued. If an individual came back and wanted a duplicate, the information for that, and for the issue of a new registration book if the original one is lost, is all in the office.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that it may be in the taxation officer's office, but it is not in the office of the owner of the vehicle?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, we do not all have offices. Those of us who have one motor car administer that from our own writing desk. If a man is running a major fleet of lorries he will have his own proper recording system.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, may I ask one further question? Is the noble Lord aware that the practice now is to stamp the log book with a stamp which says, "No further stamp is required"? If the Government are going so to stamp log books, could they not stamp them with a stamp saying when the next stamp is going to be required?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I am getting into deep waters. All I can

691
say is that the log book is probably stamped once with the form of stamp mentioned by the noble Earl, and that is a once-and-for-all operation. A splendid calculation has been made on this subject. There are 20 million licences, and if we had an operation of stamping them annually with the actual dates of the operation and allowed 10 seconds for that operation, it would take 60,000 man hours. As I said, this is a load off the hard-pressed licensing offices.
LORD PARGITER: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that this matter might be disposed of by altering the layout of the log book?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, that is another question.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, will the noble Lord say what one can do if one has the misfortune to have one's road fund licence stolen, and one does not want to drive the car after the licence has expired? What can one do if the licence is not there and there is no entry in any log book?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I have had my troubles, too, and I have always found the licensing authorities extremely helpful. I am certain that if one writes in and explains the situation, they will give the necessary information which will enable one to remain within the law.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, can the noble Lord say how much money the Government reckon they have saved as a result of the introduction of this practice and of saving 60,000 man hours?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I think it is not a question of saving money. It is a question of not increasing staff as the pressure on the licensing offices grows.
LORD AILWYN: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that one useful result of carrying out my noble friend's idea would have been that I could not have had my licence endorsed a fortnight ago?

BAC 311 AND EUROPEAN AIR-BUS PROJECTS
2.49 p.m.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: 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 the BAC 311 project is yet sufficiently advanced to allow it to be considered as an alternative to the European air-bus project; and whether, if it is chosen, European collaboration could result.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, proposals for the BAC 311 project have been received from the British Aircraft Corporation and are being evaluated in the United Kingdom alongside the A 300B proposals. The Government are not yet committed to support either project, but if we decide to do so we shall hope that it will be on a basis of collaboration with Europe.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that reply, may I ask what the Government now consider is the minimum number of orders from airlines before an air-bus project can be considered as a viable or commercial proposition?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, obviously the numbers that airlines are prepared to purchase of either aircraft would be a major factor in making a decision. The figure was 75 for the original A 300 proposal, but I think I can say that at the moment there is no definite figure which is reuired for the A 300B.
LORD TREFGARNE: My Lords, can the noble Lord confirm my definite impression from his original Answer that the Government will not support the BAC 311 unless it is revamped as a cooperative venture with some European concern?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I do not think the noble Lord should draw that conclusion from what I said. If the BAC 311 attracts orders, then obviously it will have a good case for support.
LORD TREFGARNE: My Lords, would not this therefore go against the Government's original acceptance of the

693
Plowden recommendation that Britain should not again embark on a major transport aircraft project by itself?
LORD BESWICK: Yes, my Lords, it would go against that recommendation if one wants to interpret it rigidly; but on the basis of experience there is no reason why the United Kingdom Government should not support a United Kingdom project if it appears to be getting world airline support.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, could the noble Lord say whether the Government are still funding the British share of the development of the A 300B?
LORD BESWICK: Did the noble Earl say "funding" or "fumbling"?
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: Financing.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, at the moment, if the A 300B goes forward, we shall of course be committed to a share of the cost.

BARNSLEY CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 2ª, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
CALDERDALE WATER BILL [H.L.]
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I do not intend to move the Second Reading of this Bill this afternoon as I understand that an Instruction is likely to be proposed to refer a matter to the Select Committee to which your Lordships will probably refer the Bill.
SAINT MILDRED, BREAD STREET BILL [H.L.]
Read 2ª, and referred to the Examiners.
SAINT STEPHEN, CLAPHAM PARK BILL [H.L.]
Read 2ª, and referred to the Examiners.

LOTTERIES (GREATER LONDON COUNCIL) BILL [H.L.]
2.53 p.m.
Loup WNDLESHAM: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Last summer, when speaking on the Second Reading of the Gaming Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, speaking for the Government, explained that the Bill aimed at curbing the evils of uncontrolled, commercial gaming; and when gambling has previously bean discussed in your Lordships' House, as it was on a Motion moved by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester in May, 1966, it has usually been with commercial gaming, and the age-old problems of controlling the gambling urge, that your Lordships have been concerned. By contrast, this afternoon we have before us a Bill which outlines the benefits that could be obtained from a strictly controlled, non-commercial public lottery. Therefore the reasonably familiar problems which are associated with the sort of "hard" gambling that can take place in gaming clubs, casinos and betting shops does not arise in this instance.
Although your Lordships have not recently considered the desirability, of a lottery conducted for public purposes the need to find new sources of public finance has led Members of the House of Commons to do so twice in the last twelve months. In February, 1968, the House of Commons gave a Second Reading to a Private Member's National Lottery Bill, introduced by Mr. James Tinn; and in July the Government themselves held a test of opinion in the course of the Finance Bill, to which I shall refer later. So this Bill can hardly claim to break fresh ground.
My Lords, there have been lotteries in this country, large and small, for private and public purposes since Elizabethan times. The construction of Westminster Bridge was financed by five lotteries in the 18th century, while the Sloane and Harleian Collections, which formed the nucleus of the British Museum, were purchased with the proceeds of the British Museum Lottery in 1753. All these were considered quite respectable, and I am told that sometimes even Archbishops were patrons. Nevertheless, partly because of abuses, lotteries fell into disfavour, both in Britain and the United

695
States, in the 19th century. At the same time, growing prosperity, which resulted from industrial innovation, enabled the generation of wealth in a form which could be taxed for public purposes. So the need for lotteries as a special form of public finance diminished. Since that date, small-scale lotteries open to the public for the support of bazaars, sales of work and certain charitable or sporting activities have been restored to legality, and the conditions under which these can take place are set out in Part III of the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963.
Where this Bill differs from many, if not all, of the more recent proposals is that it originates in a determined attempt by the largest local authority in Britain to expand its sources of revenue. Like many other local authorities, the Greater London Council and London boroughs (which would also benefit under this Bill) are at present chronically short of money. The G.L.C. have a statutory obligation to provide the essential local services, such as roads, housing and, through I.L.E.A., education. But in addition to these primary obligations the G.L.C., and the L.C.C. before them, have always recognised their responsibilities to support and to encourage a wide range of artistic and cultural activities, as well as to provide for recreational facilities and amenities in the nation's capital. The serious situation has now been reached where some of these activities, which are so important in the social structure of life in a large city, are in jeopardy because of lack of financial support. I thought of giving some examples here, but I have decided that it is not necessary to do so. There is a great deal of ground to cover in what I hope will be a reasonably short speech, and I believe that Members of your Lordships' House will have in their own minds many cases of where money is needed. This may be one of the few points on which there will be no argument this afternoon.
The root of the problem is that, because of the continuing economic crisis, local authorities find themselves in a financial straitjacket in which it is inevitable that the obligatory local services which they are bound to provide by Statute must take priority when decisions are made on spending—and I think that when we read the accounts to-morrow of the decisions announced
696
this morning by the Finance Committee of the G.L.C. we shall see how true this is in the case of the Greater London Council. Therefore, as a result, those purposes to which an element of option applies are at risk of being left out.
My Lords, it is one thing in politics to recognise a problem—and I think that we have probably been on common ground in this analysis—but it is quite another to come up with a proposed solution. This, to its credit, is what the Greater London Council have done. After many months of work a scheme has been prepared for a public lottery, to be held not more frequently than once each month. The lottery would be closely supervised by the elected members and the officers of the Council, and any conscientious objections of staff would be respected. Representatives of the London Boroughs would also be invited to sit on the special lotteries committee to be established by the Council. So therefore the integrity of the administration, and the absence of any possibility of private gain—these have been two of the main traditional objections to lotteries in the past—can be discounted in this instance.
It is difficult to make an estimate of the yield, but on the basis of overseas experience the G.L.C. have calculated that it is not unrealistic to anticipate that a sum of the order of £225,000 per month (after deduction of prizes and administrative costs) could be raised by these means. Tickets might be in 10s. units, split into 2s. shares. The proceeds would be held in a "special projects fund", quite apart from the remainder of the Council's finances, which could be used only for the purposes set out in the Bill. The proposal for a lottery on these lines and the details of the scheme, have been debated by the full Council and approved on a free vote by large majorities on three occasions last year. The London Boroughs Association is also supporting the G.L.C.'s plan.
This Bill, therefore, is to give effect to the proposal which has been agreed by a majority of the G.L.C. If it is passed it will, under Clause 4(2), which is a crucial section, enable financial assistance to be granted from the special projects fund for certain specific purposes and only for these purposes. These are:

(a) the support or encouragement of artistic, educational or cultural activities or

697
amenities, including the preservation or maintenance of buildings or sites of architectural, historical or other public interest;

(b) the provision, maintenance or improvement of places or facilities for recreation including specialised provisions for young people or for the improvement of the visual amenity of any part of Greater London;

(c) the provision, maintenance or improvement of youth, community or welfare services or for the care and upbringing of children and young persons or their education and training for citizenship.

That is the end of Clause 4(2). If I might express a purely personal hope it would be that within these limits the Council would not confine themselves only to the support of existing institutions and organisations, but would adopt a creative grants policy, seeking out and building up new and worthwhile initiatives which would be likely to benefit the people of London.
Clause 4(3) gives one other category of aim to which the Council can make grants from this special projects fund. That would also enable the Council to make a contribution for the alleviation of suffering or hardship brought about by a disaster occurring in any part of the United Kingdom. Under their present powers the G.L.C. cannot, for example, make a grant to a disaster fund such as that set up after the Lewisham train crash in 1957.
My Lords, that, in outline, is the case for the Bill, and I believe it to be a strong one. What are the objections? There seem to me to be only two tenable lines of argument against the Bill: The first is that lotteries are wrong in principle and harmful in their effects, and the second is that although lotteries are acceptable in principle and useful as an additional source of public finance, this Bill is not the right way to introduce a public lottery. Let us call these the arguments of principle and the arguments of expediency. Objections on moral grounds must of course be respected. They have been advanced with consistency over a number of years in Parliament by Members such as Sir Cyril Black. I do not want to elaborate now, partly because others who are to speak later in debate are much more qualified to do so, and partly because in my own mind I find it difficult to distinguish between a lottery that is acceptable for a charity jumble sale or church bazaar,
698
but which is considered to be wrong when it is conducted on a larger scale, although for similarly desirable purposes. My Lords, the argument, "It's all right if it's just a little one" does not apply to civil or criminal wrongs. Breaking into the coin box of a public telephone and stealing 30s. is just as much an offence in the eyes of the law, and society as a whole, as the Great Train Robbery. There is no difference of principle, of culpability, at all The difference is only one of scale.
All noble Lords who are taking part in the debate will look forward to hearing from the Minister of State, Lord Stonham, the Government's attitude towards this Bill. It is helpful that he has offered to speak near the middle of the debate so that what he has to say can be taken into account by some noble Lords who will be speaking after him. In the two debates in the House al Commons last year the Government maintained a position of strict neutrality, although the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who spoke from the Government Front Bench on both occasions, declared himself to be personally in favour of the principle of a national lottery. In the debate on Mr. Tinn's Private Member's Bill in February, Mr. Harold Lever said that the proposal for a national lottery was not regarded by the Government as a Party political matter. At the same time he acknowledged that there were differences of opinion within the Labour Party on the moral questions raised by lotteries. In case it should be thought that I am making a Party point, let me say at once that I am sure there are differences in all Parties, on an issue such as this. It was obvious that there would be differences, and it is right that there should be.
After a Division in the House of Commons on February 2 on the Private Member's Bill, the National Lottery Bill was given a Second Reading by 69 votes to 17. The Bill was not proceeded with because the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced later that a free vote on the subject would be held during a debate on the Finance Bill. The Government duly included a clause authorising the promotion of a national lottery in the Finance Bill. This clause was debated in July of last year, and was deleted on a free vote by 188 votes to 72. Those who voted

699
in favour of a lottery included the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and other Treasury Ministers, the President of the Board of Trade, the Leader of the House and the Government Chief Whip. The Home Secretary was opposed and two Welsh Ministers were opposed.
During the debate the clause received a great deal of criticism on the ground that the profits of a national lottery would go into the Consolidated Fund, and that the Treasury would decide their destination. The principal speeches against the proposal were concerned at the lack of specific purposes to which the profits of a lottery would be allocated. Other points made were the risk that a Government lottery might increase gambling, and there were objections on moral and religious grounds.
Subsequent to this debate, which took place on July 1, the Home Office informed the Greater London Counci that
"the objections of principle seen by the House to a national lottery apply with equal force to any lottery promoted by a public authority. The Home Secretary would, therefore, feel bound to oppose any measure which the Council might introduce to enable them to raise money by this means".
This reply from the Home Office does not seem to have been based on a careful reading of the debate. The heart of the G.L.C.'s proposal, as I have explained, is that the proceeds of a lottery would go into a special projects fund, which could be used only for the purposes set out in Clause 4(2) of the Bill. Thus, the main objection which was raised in the House of Commons debate—that once the proceeds of a national lottery had gone into the Consolidated Fund they might never emerge again—has disappeared. Nor is it easy to detect any differences so far as morality is concerned between a national lottery, which the Treasury had contemplated as a way of finding additional funds for national purposes, and a local government lottery, which the G.L.C. have proposed as a way of finding additional funds for local purposes. It seems to me that the moral objections on each proposal are identical.
There is one other argument, which was not put forward in another place since it would not apply to a national lottery but which might well come up in your Lordships' debate this afternoon.
700
This is the argument that if this Bill became law, if the G.L.C. were authorised to run their own lottery, a flood of other local authorities might come forward wishing to do exactly the same and it would be undesirable to have competition in this way between the local authorities all over the country. This is a danger, but it is one which I think can be answered in two ways. The first is that under Clause 3 of the Bill the G.L.C. scheme can be joined by any other local authority that wishes to do so. Some local authorities have indicated a willingness to do this. They would join with the G.L.C. and share in the proceeds of the lottery, which would be spent in their own area. The alternative, which on balance I prefer, is that the present Bill should be treated as a test case.
If it is agreed that a public lottery is a legitimate way for local authorities to raise additional funds, the Government might consider in the next phase authorising a small number of regional lotteries. Each of these could be on the lines of the G.L.C. proposal. The Home Office could ensure that there was no undesirable competition between them in the amount of prizes offered, commission for sellers and so on, by requiring the regional lottery boards to register their schemes in conformity with a standard set of Home Office regulations. Since London is already a region and the London Boroughs would be associated with this scheme, the lottery in London could be treated in the first year as an experiment. Then, if none of the undesirable consequences that have sometimes been forecast had been detected, the Government could consider extending schemes similar to that run by the G.L.C. to the new regional authorities, when they have been established following the Redcliffe-Maud Report.
The large charities, particularly the health charities, might feel that they should share in the proceeds of a lottery. My own inclination would be against that and would be to encourage the charities to continue to base themselves on voluntary appeals. These have the advantage of closer identification with the work of the charity and can lead to participation in other ways besides contributing towards their funds. Although I appreciate that this is a point that

701
may be argued both ways, the fact remains that the large charities are raising many millions of pounds each year —at the moment one of the cancer charities alone is raising nearly £2 million —to continue and expand the magnificent work they are doing. There is no similar success story to point to when it comes to the financing of the amenities and recreational facilities set out in Clause 4 of this Bill.
If I have one overriding hope for the debate this afternoon it is this: that your Lordships will discuss the subject with an open mind. On an emotive matter like this it is easy for any of us to convince ourselves that our own line of reasoning is the only one that is based on morality and principle. Yet no one can claim a monopoly of virtue. There are differences between the Churches, between the Parties and within the Parties, and between many thinking men and women. Some of those who in their own lives set a standard of humility and integrity that is a constant example to those whose business it is to preach have views that conflict with the terms of the proposed Amendment which will be moved in a moment.
We shall look forward to hearing from noble Lords who will speak in the debate, but I think your Lordships might be particularly interested to hear from one noble Lord who is always listened to with great respect and who unfortunately cannot be present this afternoon. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who is Chairman of the Parole Board and well known for his work for young people, has given me permission to quote from a letter in which he writes:
"I warmly support local authority lotteries to finance local community projects, which would otherwise remain unfulfilled. I am particularly concerned about the failure to realise outstanding amenities for the leisure of young people, with all that this can mean in terms of social attitudes. This Bill, and its effect in establishing precedents for other local authorities, makes excellent use of an inevitable human urge. Indeed, it will do far more good than harm".
I should not be moving this Bill in support of the G.L.C's plan if I thought that the degradation and ruin that can follow from compulsive gambling was likely to be the result. Nor would I add my voice-to any proposal which I thought might lower the standard of public life. On the Opposition Benches, just as much
702
as on the Government side of the House, we are concerned with these things. No one wants to encourage the spread of large-scale gambling in an uncontrolled way, but the fact remains that millions of decent, respectable people each week enjoy spending some part of their leisure time doing football pools and visiting bingo halls. That is the analogy to keep in mind, I would suggest, as we debate this Bill, and not the commercial exploitation of human weakness that occurs in gambling clubs, casinos and betting shops.
Why should not some part of the very substantial spending on pools be directed into a public lottery of the kind envisaged by the G.L.C.? Even if an increase of spending were to result, this would be no argument against the Bill; it would rather be a form of voluntary taxation which was accepted by the people who bought the tickets and which would, in its turn, have the effect of supporting cultural and recreational facilities that the public has repeatedly shown itself reluctant to finance out of the rates. Let us not forget that the quality of life depends at least as much upon the adequate provision of facilities and amenities of this sort as it does upon arguments about morality. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª.—(Lord Windlesham).
3.20 p.m.
LORD SOPER LORD SOPER moved, as an Amendment, to leave out all the words after "That" and insert instead:
"this House, considering that the inducements to gambling are already excessive, declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill which would allow a public authority to take the lead in introducing large scale lotteries into this country, and on principles which, it' accepted, would make it impossible to deny the same opportunities to a multitude of other authorities and to charitable, cultural, welfare and sporting organisations of all kinds."
The noble Lord said: My Lord s, what I would seek to do in pressing this Amendment is to deal with two aspects of the kind to which reference has already been made, that which is a matter of principle and that which is a matter of contingency.
Let me begin by expressing the gratitude of the House for the measured and tranquil presentation of the case for the Second Reading of this Bill to which we have just listened as also for the presentation at least of some of the questions which have to be asked; and if I intend to show, or try to show, that the noble Lord has, in fact, not faced the consequences or the factors either in principle or in contingency; if it seems to me that a great deal of what happened hitherto is reminiscent of the swimming bath where most of the activity is at the shallow end, that is in no way a commendation of my own case but represents, I think, the need for an inquiry which must begin in depth.
My Lords, there is a very good case against gambling as such. It is an appeal to self-interest; it puts a premium on selfishness; it is an appeal to irrationality. Those who are preoccupied with chance are less likely to take a reasonable view of the world in which they live. It is a vast institution and in that institution there are many inducements to crime. No one would wish to dispute the fact that there is a close association between gambling and criminal activities of many descriptions. To those of us who have some experience of social matters, it would be idle to deny that gambling, as a vast institution within the community, tends to produce a great deal of unhappiness and is responsible, at least in part, for many other social evils.
I believe that those who take the Christian point of view would have in principle to deny that it can ever be a good thing to promote or to seek to promote public welfare by the use of one of the sins, particularly the one of selfishness. I accordingly invite those in this House who subscribe to the socialist case to believe that no socialist ought to subscribe to gambling, on the principle that the allocation by chance of sums of money, large or small, is the very antithesis of what a socialist ought to believe about the distribution of wealth. But I am well aware, as the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has already stated, that there are divergences of opinion and that not all would take the view that I hold: that it would be a good thing if gambling did not exist as an institution within the community at all.
My Lords, the case against this Bill does not rest on any absolute ethic with regard to gambling. Gambling is a fact within the community, like death and taxes; and, so far as I can see, it is a fact which will remain in the community for a very long time to come. Responsible government, whether at a local or a national level, must approach this problem and deal with it rationally. It must seek to control it, recognising that gambling, whether it is inherently good or bad, is beset with many dangers and is likely if it gets out of hand, to produce many evils. It could be argued, and I wish to argue it now, that this particular Bill will tend to increase the volume of gambling which is already competing in its overall comprehensiveness in this country with Las Vegas; and if, indeed, this kind of lottery were now introduced into the community in which we live, we should have "gone bingo", so far as the opportunities and inducements to gambling are concerned.
In 1960, the Churches Council on Gambling took it upon themselves to make careful investigation as to what was likely to be the results of the extension of gambling in the betting shop and in gaming. There was a rapid increase in the total volume of gambling of all kinds. That has now flattened out; but it would. I think, be imprudent to suppose that it a further extension were now offered of gambling as an inducement, it would not be responded to in very much the same way as response was made to the introduction into the fiscal system of premium bonds. It is interesting to recollect that when the Prime Minister felt it necessary to cast some kind of virtue upon premium bonds he solicited the help of an ex-President of the World Sunday School Council—who I very much regret to say was a Methodist—to give some kind of appearance of sanctity, or at least of respectability, to that particular form of gambling. A new category of gambler was created by that process. It would seem to me to be beyond dispute that if this further inducement is offered—and if the respectability which the noble Lord has endeavoured to put on it is recognised—another new constituency will be created; and whether or not that new constituency will be as wicked in its subscription to this form of gambling as the wickedness of others, it will nevertheless be true that this particular group

705
may start with the soft drug of national or local lotteries but may well escalate to the hard drug of more compulsive gambling.
Our community is already wide open, as no other communities, so far as I know, are wide open—and it was interesting that the noble Lord did not introduce the question of other countries and their national lotteries. It was very prudent of him, because they include national lotteries only under a system of the most careful scrutiny of other forms of gambling and the reduction of gaming clubs, as in France, to a very modest level. It is possible also for an enlightened community to make fiscal use of the Scriptural doctrine of making the wrath of man praise God. Indeed, there is in my judgment nothing inherently wrong in a country seeking to profit from the evil behaviour patterns of its citizens, or the dubious behaviour patterns of its citizens, by turning to good account financial operations which otherwise would be turned to bad account. What has to be asked here is whether a further extension of this proposition is justifiable, not only to make "the wrath of man praise God" but to cause evil to increase that grace may abound. This seems to me to be an entirely different proposition.
For centuries now, every Royal Commission, and not least the Royal Commission of 1949–51, was quite satisfied that, whatever other arguments might be made for little gambles, they were undesirable as part of the fiscal system. And, with respect, the noble Lord was wrong in his analogy of size. It is not the size of the gamble that is important; it is the fact that the gamble for a hospital or a church is locally and voluntarily undertaken, whereas the gamble that we are now considering is one that would be part of the fiscal system of the community as such. Here it seems to me is a vital question which must be faced squarely. I do not believe that it does anything but debase the fiscal system of any community when the raising of funds for genuinely good purposes is put to the hazard of private interest. I think it can be shown that the end here does not justify the means, but the means will finally determine and produce the end. I are therefore asking your Lordships to look with disfavour upon any attempt of the community, as such, through its
706
official local or central bodies, to seek to promote good, as in Clause 3 of this Bill, to seek to teach the virtues of citizenship, out of the profits of greed. I do not believe that that is a sensible or a profitable adventure.
Now, my Lords, what of this particular Bill? It is a miserable document for a number of reasons, alike for its imprecision and for the calculated results that may follow from it. Whatever may be the virtues or vices of a rational lottery, here is a local lottery masquerading in the clothes of a national lottery. Here is an attempt on the part of the Greater London Authority to do something which, in effect, will prod ace results that roust be regarded as deleterious to the welfare of the community. I noticed in one (until last week) of the more reputable Sunday newspapers the suggestion that there is an element of spite on the part of people on this side of the House and in another place because of what happened to the old London County Council. I can, to a certain extent, understand that. The noble Lord on the Woolsack and I were appointed to aldermanic seats an the L.C.C., and almost immediately afterwards the Government of the day brought in a Bill to get rid of the L.C.C. This is, of course, a case of post hoc propter hoc, and I will not develop it. Nevertheless, it needs to be said, as the noble Lord did quite rightly say, that this is no Party measure; it has nothing to do with people of particular complexions in the new Greater London Council. It is a matter, as I see it, of whether a general principle which has been shown to be doubtful and, in my judgment, highly morally dubious can be expressed in such local terms as to make it respectable.
What is going to happen? I think, if I may say so, the noble Lord skirted cursorily over the argument as to what will be the proliferation of lotteries if a local authority such as the Greater London Council are enabled not only to promote their own lottery but to get into some kind of cahoots with other local bodies or persons for the promotion and sharing of profits. What is going to be the end of this process? The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, entertains the pious hope that we stall be sensible about it. I have never been

707
impressed by the sense of those who are ultimately irrational in the processes of gambling. What is much more likely to happen is that other people will look at this matter with greedy eyes. And I speak as a churchman who has sinned in matters of bazaars where, as your Lordships know, the Devil generally gets at least one stall. I know very well that there is a capitalist infusion always in bazaars—and that is why we have got rid of them now. I would have nothing to do in future with the old-fashioned and, I suppose, the more or less venal sins that are committed at bazaars. But surely there is something completely hopeless in the idea that if this became a successful lottery, nobody else would want to get in on the act and muscle in on the proceeds. Of course they would. Just think, my Lords, of the multitude of sleazy operators and agents and those who will come knocking upon the doors of all kinds of organisations with good intentions and say, "We will help you to make vast sums of money". It will open the door to a whole body of nonproductive hangers-on in a community where there are too many of them now.
One could develop these arguments at greater length, but I hope that in a short speech I have, at any rate, tried to present a moral case which, if it is not regarded in absolute terms, necessarily in this particular situation will tend to provide greater inducements in a community which is already, to some extent, morally and in other ways impoverished by the vast amount of gambling, running at a turnover of £4,230 million a year. I hope that I have also been able to say something about the inadequacies of a particular Bill which opens a door very widely, is imprecisely drawn and will encourage all kinds of people, as yet unseen. This Bill is in principle dubious. This Bill is socially undesirable. This Bill is practically unworkable. I hope that your Lordships will toss it out. I beg to move.
Moved, As an Amendment to the Motion, "That the Bill be now read 2ª", to leave out all words after ("That") and insert ("this House, considering that the inducements to gambling are already excessive, declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill which would allow a public authority to take the lead in introducing
708
large scale lotteries into this country, and on principles which, if accepted, would make it impossible to deny the same opportunities to a multitude of other authorities and to charitable, cultural, welfare and sporting organisations of all kinds.")—(Lord Soper.)
3.35 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON: My Lords, since the questions involved in the Amendment and in the original Motion are of general social importance, I believe that at least one of the Bishops in the Greater London area should say something from these Benches. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, put forward his Motion with great persuasiveness: indeed, fairly recently, when we had the opportunity of a private discussion, he almost persuaded me to follow him, because I find myself with no clear mandate as regards the opinion of the Christian bodies.
I have the privilege of being the Chairman of a body called the Greater London Churches Consultative Group, which includes representatives of every Christian Church in the Greater London area. We discussed this question somewhat briefly: in fact, from the chair I thought that the discussion had better be brief, because it was quite clear we were not going to agree. The noble Lord, Lord Soper, has said that the Churches are not of one mind on this subject. Many of them hold strongly that gambling is wrong in principle, and that this G.L.C. Lotteries Bill is therefore totally wrong and should be resisted at all costs. Other Churches do not take the same view. I tested opinion in my own diocese, and I got as many opinions as the people I asked. But I was left with no mandate, and I do not even know what my brother Prelates behind me feel on this subject—though if I were betting I would make a small bet that we should differ.
As I thought about the Bill and the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Soper, and tried to reduce the arguments for the proposed Bill to their simplest form, it seemed to me that they were these. First of all, the people will gamble anyway, and therefore it is the duty of the State to control the extent of gambling and to divert its profits from commercial interest to public advantage. Secondly the profits of gambling

709
could and should be used for social purposes, as this G.L.C. Bill proposes, and in this way a means which was perhaps dubious might be justified by the good end which it would achieve. The noble Lord, Lord Soper, has already said some strong words about ends and means, and I will not go over that again in principle. Admittedly, people do like a flutter, and I cannot myself believe that, unless gambling is carried to excess, it is a very wicked thing (perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Soper, and I may not be quite of one mind on that point), though there is evidence, and distressing evidence, that some people do become compulsive gamblers, and the unhappiness created for their families and those who depend upon them should be avoided at all costs.
Therefore, my Lords, I ask myself whether the State or a public authority should do anything which might encourage further gambling. Even if the State did not feel it right to prevent individuals from gambling if they wished to do so, ought the State, as it were, to encourage them in that process? And is there any reason to believe that this proposed G.L.C. lottery would, in fact, divert money from the commercial interests—from betting offices and gaming clubs? Surely, it would divert it from bingo only if the prizes were bigger. If it is to have any effect in controlling the use of the instinct to gamble, I fear very much that, in practice, they will have to raise the stakes in order to get the custom; and if they raise the stakes there will be less money available for the good purposes for which the Bill is designed.
I do not find myself very much influenced in favour of the Bill by the excellent causes for which the profits are to be used. Of course we need to spend far more money on facilities for recreation, especially for youth, on youth community or welfare services and for cultural activities and amenities. But if these matters are so important, then surely they should be paid for by the ratepayer as part of his contribution. I cannot see any justification for leaving these vital things—and I would agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, wrote in the letter which was quoted—to the chance of people's being sufficiently interested in a particular lottery to produce enough money at some particular time to enable a project to be carried out. I think that anybody who
710
was planning the social amenities of the Greater London area, even with a special fund for the purpose, would find himself on very unsure ground in making a longterm plan for what recreational facilities could be afforded.
Reference was made to the tact, of which we are all well aware, that there are in church organisations for raising money some forms which come rather under the heading of gambling. I exclude, of course, those occupational hazards of the clergy of guessing the number of peas in a bottle or Blessing the weight of a cake which one does not want in order to support the funds of a bazaar. But raffles, tombolas, biagos—I myself have always set my face firmly against any of those for charitable church purposes or in any church bazaar. I believe they are totally wrong in principle. If the boiler has burst or the slates have fallen off the roof and the congregation is in difficulties to repair the boiler or to put the slates back again, it ought to give voluntarily and not try to persuade other people to give for the wrong reasons.
However this may be—and it is not a point on which everyone would take the same line as I do—it seems to me that the excellence of the objects in this Bill cannot justify the use of means which are any way dubious or doubtful. My own conclusion, therefore, is that this proposed lottery cannot be justified for its end purposes. Like any other form of gambling, it is a very inefficient way of raising money. It could be socially dangerous to some individuals; and if it is dangerous for only twenty, is it right to encourage it? For a public authority to encourage the raising of funds in this way is, I believe, if not immoral, at any rate inexpedient, and I hope that your Lordships will support the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Soper, rather than the original proposal.
3.44 p.m.
LORD COTTESLOE: My Lords, I was sorry that the right reverend Prelate, for whom I have the greatest regard, should, after balancing rather precariously between one side and the other, have come down on the side on which he did. I myself warmly support this Bill, and if the noble Lord, Lord Soper, chooses to divide the House on his

711
Amendment, as no doubt he will, I hope that your Lordships will defeat it. Attempts have sometimes been made to draw a distinction between gambling and lotteries, but there can be no doubt that lotteries are in fact a form of gambling, and we all recognise that there are many people who hold, deeply and sincerely, objections to gambling of any kind. I respect their scruples, but, even though I am myself, as it happens, about as completely lacking in the "gambler's itch" as any one of your Lordships could possibly be, I do not share those scruples.
Public lotteries have a highly respectable history. I have been told that there were at one time public lotteries in this country of which the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury were two of the trustees. Whether or not that is so, we have in recent years readily adopted the system of Premium Bonds, and as between a Premium Bond, where one may hope to gain a disproportionate sum without risking anything at all, and the lottery, where one loses one's original stake but hopes to gain in the place of it a large sum—well, if morality is in question, I am not sure that the Premium Bond is not the more disreputable of the two.
Certainly State lotteries are a well-established practice in Australia, in the State of New York, in Israel and elsewhere, and I doubt whether, as a nation, we are entitled to regard ourselves as either more or less immoral than the peoples of those States. No one is obliged to take part in a lottery, and I do not think that objection to lotteries can in practice now be sustained if the arrangements for their conduct are satisfactory and if the purposes to which they are applied are good ones. The arrangements specified in this Bill are unexceptionable and the purposes are admirable.
If I may speak for a moment about one of the purposes specified in the Bill, I particularly admire the good work that the Greater London Council, and the London County Council before them, have done for many years in fostering the Arts. Since the War they have, at their own expense, or rather at that of the ratepayers, built the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Hayward Gallery, and they have undertaken to provide one-half of the cost of
712
the National Theatre building that will complete the great national centre for the Arts on the South Bank—something that will be without a rival in any capital city in the world. That is a tremendous achievement for a local authority, even for the greatest local authority in the world, and a marvellous example to others.
Apart from these great capital developments, they have subsidised drama and music on a very substantial scale. They have commissioned works of art for housing estates and for schools; they have organised those open air exhibitions of sculpture that have been one of the most appreciated features of recent years. This is work that probably we all should like to see greatly extended; but the fact is that at the present time, far from its being extended, it is being seriously constricted by the present economic situation and by the requirements of purposes for which the rates must certainly be applied as a priority. I can well understand the reluctance of the Greater London Council to apply large sums from the rates at the present time to such purposes as music and drama which are of interest only to a small minority, though a rapidly growing minority. This Bill, if it is approved, will enable them to enlarge that work.
I recollect the advice that I once heard given by the mayor of one of the metropolitan boroughs to the borough council when, for the credit of the borough, she wanted them to pass unanimously a resolution which she knew was repugnant to a few of them. What she said was: "I know that some of you disagree with this resolution but the council are going to approve it and I want it approved unanimously; so those of you who do not agree with it had better just stay away". My Lords, that is the course that I would commend to those of your Lordships who may perhaps believe that they have reasons for not wishing to support this Bill. I hope that the Amendment will be rejected and the Bill approved, without dissent.
3.51 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My Lords, I am sure that your Lordships are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for the clarity with which he introduced his Bill, and for explaining the scheme which

713
the Greater London Council propose to introduce, if they are given the general powers contained in the Bill. Your Lordships have also listened with interest to my noble friend Lord Soper, who in moving his Amendment to the Motion for Second Reading, with his usual, almost unparalleled, eloquence, adduced powerful arguments to indicate the serious objections of principle to the Council's proposals. Since then we have listened to a speech by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London against the Bill, and to one by the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, for the Bill.
These four excellent but opposed speeches have enabled your Lordships to put the Bill, as it were, in its proper context. My purpose in intervening fairly early in the debate is to inform your Lordships of the attitude of the Government to the Bill. I am speaking for the Government as a whole in recommending that the Bill should not be read a second time, and recommending your Lordships to support the Amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Soper.
I should like first to re-state the position as it is at present in this country regarding lotteries. The existing law is contained in Part III of the Betting, Gaming, and Lotteries Act 1963, which declares all lotteries to be unlawful, subject only to certain very minor exceptions. These exceptions allow private lotteries among members of a society or people working or resident on the same premises, provided they are only advertised internally and no tickets are sent through the post. Lotteries may also be promoted for charitable, sporting or cultural objects, provided that the total value of the tickets sold does not exceed £750 and no prize exceeds £100. These provisions are based on recommendations made by the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming, which sat between 1949 and 1951. The Commission considered that it would be undesirable for the State to make itself responsible for the provision of gambling facilities, by permitting or supporting a State lottery. They also considered that large-scale lotteries not conducted by the State were objectionable, as my noble friend Lord Soper indicated, because there would be no logical or equitable grounds for restricting
714
the right to permit lotteries to certain selected organisations.
My Lords, you will see at once that the Royal Commission, after considering all the evidence, condemned in advance large-scale lotteries of the type now proposed by the Greater London Council in this Bill. And surely you will agree, my Lords, that the Royal Commission were right. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, said that lotteries for public purposes have been considered respectable in the past. He said that in 1753 lotteries for public purposes were considered quite respectable. So were public hangings, but we have moved some way from those times. I was rather astonished to hear the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, support this point of view.
The 1949–51 Royal Commission condemned this Bill in advance after thinking about it for over two years, and I can assure your Lordships that the G.L.C. are by no means the only body which would covet this opportunity. Indeed, if we were to pass this Bill there would be no grounds on principle or consistency on which it could be denied to other local authorities, at al levels. Every great city or conurbation would demand its lotteries. And the demand would not be confined to the larger local authorities. Once the principle was conceded, it would be impossible to deny the right to promote lotteries to every county, county borough, urban district, rural district and even parish council. But that is not the end of the matter. The right could not be denied to charitable., sporting or welfare organisations of all kinds; or to those wishing to raise funds for the hospitals, medical research or any other praiseworthy and disinterested object. Indeed they would consider (with some justification) that they had a prior claim. The principle having been conceded, the way would be open to a host of lotteries, all competing against each other in the size of the prizes, or the chances, on offer.
In a great many respects the re is a difference between the British way of life and the life of most other countries. One of the things which I have never felt was attractive about many Continental countries was that there was a chap selling lottery tickets on virtually every street corner. That sort of thing might well

715
happen in this country if this Bill becomes law.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, may I interrupt the Minister for a moment? I suppose he has in mind France, and in particular Paris. Would he not agree that in effect one is there considering a national lottery, which is desirable to some people; which is employing disabled people to sell these tickets and in that way is doing some good? It is not hard gaming because in effect quite a number of people feel sorry for these disabled and unemployed people and will often buy a lottery ticket in order to help the person selling the tickets.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I should not have thought that was a desirable way of helping people who were handicapped: to raise a lottery in order that they might have the job of selling tickets. I should have thought that in a civilised, modern society we could have provided for unfortunates in a more satisfactory way. What I am saying is that this is a situation which could happen in this country—in our England. It is an intolerable situation.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord, but if he is moving away from the point of proliferation I must intervene. I can hardly believe that he has finished on this aspect because what he is saying bears no relation to the proposal I put forward in moving the Bill. The noble Lord says that any local authority down to a rural district council could come forward and that it would be impossible to distinguish between that authority and the G.L.C. I would remind the noble Lord that I made a specific proposal that the G.L.C., which is already a regional authority, should be treated as a pilot or test case. Then, if the system worked in a desirable way, the Government could consider grouping local authorities who come forward with similar proposals into several regional schemes; and I said that each of these should operate on standard rules. That seems to take care of the argument which the noble Lord has just advanced.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I do not want to be discourteous, but I would point out to the noble Lord that according
716
to the list I have here he has two more opportunities to speak and there will therefore be ample chance for him to reply to any points. But since he has raised this matter I must remind him that we are dealing with a Bill, and what I have said is far more the logical outcome of this Bill, if it is enacted, than anything the noble Lord has said. He can shake his head, but I am dealing with the Bill.
I must make the point, because even my noble friend Lord Soper said that this was a local lottery masquerading in the clothes of a national lottery. I should not like your Lordships to think for a moment that the lottery which the Greater London Council are proposing in this Bill is a local one confined to London, because Clause 3—and we are dealing with the Bill; we are not having a Wednesday debate, but are considering possible legislation—empowers the Council to enter into arrangements with any bodies or persons to act as their agents, and by this means to secure the cooperation of other local authorities, who would then be entitled to participate in the benefits. That means that the Council would thus be able, under a scheme of their own devising, to sponsor a lottery on a national scale every month.
The noble Lord predicted that they would raise £225,000 for charitable purposes every month. This is a national lottery by a local authority. The Council would thus be able to sponsor a lottery on a national scale every month, but a national lottery under a scheme of its own devising, and one over which neither the Government nor Parliament had any control whatever and on which we could impose no limits whatsoever. If we passed this Bill we should be giving power to a local authority to organise a national lottery.
My Lords, while the merits of a single State lottery may be debatable—I personally am opposed to it—surely few would agree that such unlimited powers should be given to a local authority, even one of the standing of the Greater London Council. I would draw your Lordships' attention to the debate which took place in another place on July 1 last when an opportunity was given to pronounce on the principle of a State lottery during the Report stage of the Finance Bill. On that occasion, on a perfectly free vote, another place decided by a substantial majority

717
against a State lottery, albeit one promoted for charitable, cultural and other deserving purposes. Their decision was reached by no fewer than 188 votes to 72 —some five to two, in racing terms—which is a very substantial Parliamentary majority.
Some of your Lordships may consider that the decision in another place on that occasion was reached because Members did not have a particular scheme before them. But that is exactly what we are asked to consider now. The Greater London Council have not put before us in this Bill any particular scheme; they have not included a detailed scheme in the Bill we are now debating. I know that in introducing the Bill the noble Lord. Lord Windlesham, told us what is intended should be provided. But we are dealing here with permanent legislation, and your Lordships will observe that under subsection (3) of Clause 1 a scheme may be amended at any time merely by resolution of the Council. Whatever the immediate intentions of the present Council may be, what we are being asked to give to-day is a blank cheque for the future.
I do not think it was because of any uncertainty of intention that so many Members voted against a State lottery last year. It is my conviction that many Members saw serious objections to the State itself providing any form of gambling and so acquiring a vested interest in its promotion—objections which would apply even more to local authorities than to central Government. I believe that Members were even more seriously concerned about any further increase in the heavy and increasing volume of gambling which is a regrettable characteristic of British society to-day. At the time of the debate the Government genuinely wanted to test the opinion of Parliament and were prepared to keep an open mind on the issues involved, which, I repeat, were largely moral issues. But the principle having been pronounced upon in Parliament, after such a free and wide-ranging discussion, the Government feel bound to respect the clear majority views expressed on that occasion. It would be quite incompatible with those views for them to do other than oppose this Bill which raises very much the same issues of principle but in a less favourable context.
718
My Lords, there is just one other point that I would mention before I pass from the earlier debate. If you have studied it you will recall that a number of Members were concerned about the possibly adverse effect on football pools of a State lottery, and also whether pool betting duty would be charged on a State lottery. My Lords, the terms of paragraph (c) of Clause 6 of this Bill will not have escaped your attention; and you may well ask why lotteries promoted by the Greater London Council should be exempted from pool betting duty. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, will tell us when he comes to reply. No doubt one of the reasons is to try to divert custom from pools so that the G.L.C. lotteries can compete successfully with them. Your Lordships will know that it is no part of my purpose to-day to support the pools' interests; I merely point to the proposed inequality of treatment. But it is my purpose, and duty, to point out to your Lordships that the introduction of large-scale lotteries would certainly have a serious effect on the small charitable lotteries which are already lawful under the 1963 Act, and which provide many worthy local causes with a considerable part of their income.
So far, I have been expressing the Government's attitude to this Bill. But perhaps I may now be allowed to speak more directly from my personal convictions—convictions which have, however, been largely formed and tempered from my experience as a Home Office Minister concerned with gambling in all its manifestations. That experience has led to the firmly held conviction that for many people gambling is akin to, and as harmful as, a drug. Geoffrey Green, The Times football correspondent, who frequently demonstrates that soccer reports and literature are not incompatible, wrote last Saturday:
"those who enjoy a weekly flutter on the pools will no doubt be issued their opium through the fatuous and arbitrary medium of the pools guess-work panel".
The drug purveyors supply the market even though no games are played.
My Lords, I believe that the Greater London Council hope that their efforts would not lead to great overall increase in gambling but would attract some custom from other forms of gambling such as the pools. This is a vain hope.

719
All past experience points to the fact that the introduction of any new form of gambling results in an increase in the total volume. Just think what has happened in our country in the last decade. Consider some of the new developments—one could almost weep. Over 15,000 betting shops; 1,200 gaming clubs; a gross proliferation of "one-armed bandits"—and a single "one-armed bandit" can show a profit of several thousands of pounds a year. Then there are the bingo halls outside which one sees the only really long evening queues in the country, and not a few people playing every afternoon and every night. None of these developments has affected the pools. All of them have increased the volume of gambling. We cannot regard with equanimity proposals for a new major gambling medium, particularly when we know that those who are attracted to betting shops, football pools, bingo, and the "one-armed bandits" will often be the same people who will be most attracted to participate in lotteries for large prizes. Incidentally, they are also often those who can least afford it; who find that in attempting a winning coup to ease their lot they are financially worse off than they were before.
The outlays on each of the various forms of gambling, individually small as they may appear, amount collectively to substantial sums and can have a considerable cumulative effect on a family budget. As my noble friend Lord Soper said, recent reports have estimated the annual turnover on gambling in this country to be of the order of £2,000 million per annum. I have worked this out. It is an average of £3 per family per week. This is a staggering figure which strongly supports the view of my noble friend that we already have too many inducements to gambling. My Lords, we fought hard and successfully last year in the Gaming Act to bring gaming, including bingo, and "one-armed bandits" under strict control and to cut out excessive profits. Even so there are those who think we did not go far enough and are concerned, for example, that children are getting addicted to amusement machines. Next week, or the week after, we have a Bill to consider in regard to that matter and to cut it out. Surely in
720
the face of such action and having regard to such concern, we shall not to-day agree to provide a new form of gambling which could only lead to an even greater volume.
Admittedly substantial financial benefits would accrue initially to the Greater London Council and other participants. None would deny that the profits would be used for worthy purposes, although the Council must expect criticism about their order of priorities when they come to allocate their resources. Undoubtedly the prizewinners will rejoice at their newfound affluence. That is always the public image which those who promote gambling of whatever kind wish to project. Pools' takings always increase when someone wins a quarter of a million and drop when there is a succession of Saturdays with a plethora of drawn games and low dividends. The big carrot is the lure.
It is for this reason I suggest to your Lordships that we should ponder very carefully the philosophy that an activity such as gambling, with the social dangers inescapable from it, is to be justified, and indeed fostered, on a scale far surpassing that of incidental amusement, as a major fund-raising activity for desirable causes of whatever kind. I have heard that argument advanced, in one form or another, to excuse almost every type of gambling. Your Lordships heard it used last year to justify casino gaming, which has been represented in this House as virtually the sole support of live entertainment, as an important factor in the balance of payments, and much else. I myself believe that if Parliament were to accept that principle a most damaging precedent would be established which would soon enough be widened. And I say this because I do not believe that an effective distinction can he drawn between large-scale lotteries and betting or gaming; a principle accepted for one will certainly be pleaded for the others. A lottery cannot be regarded as a minor form of gambling, separable from others, when prizes of such magnitude are on offer.
It is, of course, always tempting to regard gambling as a magic talisman by which large sums of money can be conjured out of nothing to be spent on educational, cultural or welfare purposes. But look at the other side of the coin,

721
the unhealthily disturbing effect that the sudden acquisition of a large sum of money can have on the lives of ordinary people, and the unhappiness that sometimes arises. I say this to draw your attention to the serious problem of the compulsive gambler and in doing so to pay tribute to the excellent work that is being done by Gamblers Anonymous in conjunction with the Churches' Council on Gambling. I read the report only last week or the week previously of a recent conference in Manchester on the subject, Compulsive Gambling and Delinquency, in which the Secretary of the Churches' Council described compulsive gambling as a destructive condition which involved the nation in a considerable loss of skill and energy. Many other experienced people here pointed to the menace. It seems that gambling is now more acceptable than it was and that there is something in the whole climate of modern society which encourages people constantly to seek and seize opportunities of obtaining "something for nothing". This is the crux of the matter that we are being asked to decide, because it is precisely this attitude of irresponsibility, damaging to society as to the individual, which this Bill would help to foster.
Doubtless the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, and some noble Lords will say I am overpainting the picture. They would not think so if they sat at my desk every day and saw the cases I see. I say, with unhappy certainty, that any increase in the facilities for gambling will have serious social consequences of the kind which I have mentioned this afternoon and to which my noble friend, Lord Soper, who has a lifetime's experience in social work, has drawn attention. We should be wrong to be persuaded that large-scale lotteries were a good thing simply because the profits were put to good causes. As the right reverend Prelate said, if we want these things, let us pay for them out of our rates and taxes. It is perhaps a bitter medicine, but a lot healthier for us.
The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, said that the local authorities found themselves in a financial straitjacket from which there is no escape. They may have created their own straitjacket by their election promises. I would suggest that as local authorities they should tackle their responsibilities in the proper manner
722
if they have to charge more for things which are absolutely necessary then they should charge more, and not come out in this way and try to do it in the manner suggested. Do not let us wil-fully ignore the deleterious effects of the "something for nothing" attitude which so often leads to crime and violence and to the human suffering that is caused by excessive gambling. My Lords, I. personally, as a man, see day after day many cases of why people are in prison. It is not always gambling, but that is one of the roots and one of the problems, and I really cannot without emotion contemplate any proposal of this kind which would add to the facilities. I know that in my later remarks I have been expressing my own opinions, but they have been based on my experience as a Home Office Minister.
Let me end now by making it unmistakably clear that the Government as a whole are opposed to this measure, and in a couple of sentences let me say why. In the Government's view a national lottery could only be considered at all if it were a single State lottery and if Parliament on a full vote considered it desirable. Parliament has firmly pronounced against such a lottery and the Government consider that decision binding upon them. Leaving that as de, and even, if that is possible, disregarding all moral issues, the Government consider that there can be no justification for giving a monopoly in large-scale lotteries to any one organisation or authority and, that being so, this Bill would, is effect, be the first step towards a competitive gambling chaos. For these reasons, the Government strongly recommend that this Bill should be rejected.
4.19 p.m.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, we have listened with great cam to the vigorous opposition to this Bill that has just come from the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. There is no doubt at all about his feelings towards it. He says that it is a question of more gambling, worse gambling, this having a terrible effect on every member of the public. But I notice we have been told little in his speech about premium bonds. We were told that it was very bad for anyone to get a large sum of money without working for it. I am longing to win £25,000 next week with my premium bonds, but I probably

723
shall not. We are interested in it. The amount has been raised to £25,000—I think in the last year. It seems that I have been waiting a long time for it. There are also many smaller sums, and many of us derive pleasure from the idea we may perhaps win. We may perhaps plan how we are going to spend it.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, if the noble Baroness will allow me to interrupt, I would point out that there is a difference between buying premium bonds and gambling. If you gamble and do not back a winner, you lose your stake; with premium bonds you cannot lose your stake; all that happens is that you forgo the right to a dividend for the sake of a prize. There is a considerable difference, although I wish the noble Baroness all the luck in the world.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord wishes me luck, and I wish him luck, too, if he has any bonds. But I think there is a great connection between the two, because the whole time you are losing the interest on your stake which is going to the Government. You can be disappointed as many of us have been. We can say that we have had nothing from the premium bonds and that we will take our money out. You can take it out and you will not pay your premium or your stake money, whatever you like to call it, to the Government. I think there is very little to choose between the two.
The noble Lord, however, has gone beyond that. He spoke very little about premium bonds, but about the idea of gambling among people as a whole. He mentioned "one-armed bandits"; he mentioned how many betting shops there are, and all the rest of it. I may be peculiar, and I daresay I am, but I see a great difference between actual betting, and taking—call it gambling if you like —shares or gambling in premium bonds or a lottery. You are not being drawn in to pay more and more as you might be in betting; you are not being drawn in to go on to try to get your money back. There are only certain occasions on which you can get your ticket for a lottery, and I cannot imagine that many people will be going around trying to get several tickets. Tickets are to be 10s., with units of 2s., and somehow I do not feel that there will be many people wanting
724
to collect a good many tickets in order to make the sum larger. I think we are much nearer to what the noble Lord called the smaller scale of lotteries which are at present legal, and the various forms of raffles and so on that we know of in bazaars to-day.
It may be said, "You are saying that the result of getting the money would be so advantageous". Of course we are. I think it would be a wonderful thing if we could get some extra money for all the things that we know we want so badly. But we cannot. We simply cannot take any more out of rates and taxes—I think that is perfectly clear. At the present time it simply cannot be done, and here is a chance—I am delighted by it—of getting some money, and getting it, not painfully but painlessly in order to provide what is required for these various amenities.
We are told that that would be wrong, that we ought to pay; that if we want things, we ought to pay for them. Well, we know we shall not. We would get very little money anyhow. After all, we have to be a little bit realistic and consider the interests that people have.
Many people waste money. I waste money—I am sure not very much, but any I can waste I am sure I do waste—and I am sure that most people do. At the same time, we look around and can perhaps find some money for what I call entertainment, amusement. And in this I would put the lottery. Quite apart from the fact—which I put first—of the strong desire to get money for certain projects, I would put next the fun of it. The project may give you great excitement and no money. It might (but somehow it does not happen very often) give you a large prize. I would say that the money was what we might call "entertainment money".
I know that I shall be told, "But everybody is not like that. There are some people who must go on, who must get more money, save it up, somehow or other, in order to spend it on these things". I sometimes wonder whether all our brethren and all our sisters are quite so stupid as we make them out to be. I do not think that we ourselves are really very much better than a great many of the people we are talking about. There are a few, I grant, who might want to try to get from these lotteries

725
something they could not get in any other way; but if they want to get a fortune or a great deal of money I am quite certain of one thing: they will go to something else and not to the lottery. I think the lotteries are so designed that we know they are going to be worked honestly.
I have been through the Bill very carefully. I had thought of speaking of the Bill this afternoon, but everybody has spoken about whether there ought to be a Bill or ought not to be a Bill, so I have had to cast away my notes. However, there is a Bill, and that Bill, if carefully studied, does show a real interest in certain projects that would be helped, and would be helped very considerably. People may say to me: "Well, you might do this; but think what other local authorities, what other bodies, what other associations would then want to run lotteries". My reply to that is: "Let them; let them get together and see what they can do if they want to. I cannot see the harm." Probably many of them will find that they want only the small lottery that is already allowed. That would be sufficient for them. Others that wanted a bigger lottery probably could not run it on their own, but they would be perfectly willing to join with somebody else.
I was told by a friend of mine that we were putting forward this proposal because we wanted to "down" the football pools. Nothing will "down" the football pools—we know that: they will go on. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, talked about this country being rather different from other countries (I think he was probably speaking of France) where lottery tickets are sold in the streets. We could have a rule that they are not to be sold in the streets. But, my Lords, are we very much different, or are we just trying to be superior? Have other countries got our pools system, on the size that we have it in relation to the size of our population? I doubt it. I have tried to find out, but I have not been able to make quite certain. Each country has what it particularly wants, and what has grown up.
I hope that this Bill will be passed. We can improve it in various ways—and there are several things that I should like to see done in a different way. No longer, as I said, is this a debate on the Bill;
726
it has become a debate on whether these lotteries are to be classed, not with premium bonds, not with football pools, but with all the biggest and worst betting and gambling in the country.
4.29 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF PORTSMOUTH: My Lords, much of what I intended to say has already been said by the noble Lord, Lord Soper, and by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, and I want only to try to make five points which lead me to support wholeheartedly the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Soper. There have been two or three references to the lotteries which were held in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the fact that the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury of the time were patrons of them. I think it is a matter of historical fact that those lotteries were made illegal for the simple reason that they produced such disastrous social consequences. For that reason alone that form of lottery in this country was made illegal. The fear that, in agreeing to a further lottery, we shall be merely repeating the mistakes which were made by our forefathers makes me altogether against this Bill.
Secondly, I hold the view that there is no kind of harmless gambling. One can point to the raffles and lotteries at church bazaars, and so on, though I think it is fair to say that, by and large, so far as my own diocese is concerned, with the growth of understanding in what Christian giving means, those forms of raising money are largely disappearing. The problem which I find over gambling for money prizes is that the prizes themselves tend always to increase and grow, and that the only reason why people enter for the lottery is that they want to get something for nothing. We have seen an example in the growth of the prize in premium bonds, and I have no doubt that the sale of premium bonds has gone up since the £25,000 prize was introduced. I can foresee a situation in which, with the proliferation of lotteries—this is bound to happen in all parts of the country—we shall find one authority vying with another in its prizes, ever increasing them and producing what, to my mind, will be an utterly disastrous state of affairs in our society.

727
Thirdly, I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for reminding us that if this Bill went through it would be going back on the 1963 Act and on the recommendations of the Royal Commission. This, to me, was the overwhelming reason why I wanted to vote against the Bill. It was a deliberate attempt to go back on legislation which Parliament had already passed in order to provide a loophole for this particular activity, and I believe that that would be quite disastrous. Fourthly, the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham made the very attractive suggestion that this Bill might be used as a pilot scheme and that, at the end of it, if no undesirable results were apparent it should be allowed to go forwards. But supposing those results are undesirable, how can one stop something which has already begun? Can we go back on legislation of this kind? And, in the long run, who is to judge whether the results have been desirable or undesirable.
Fifthly, and lastly, I have to ask myself the question whether this is the kind of way in which a responsible, adult society conducts its affairs. Is it right that money for public expenditure should be raised by this particular so-called harmless gimmick of a lottery? I doubt it, and, however good the cause for which that money is required, I doubt if this is the right way to get it. I have sympathy with every single one of the purposes to which the money raised from such a lottery would be put, but I think it is worth remembering that a great deal in each field which is here enunciated has been achieved, and is being achieved, all over the country through voluntary giving. Theatres have been built through voluntary giving; certainly recreational centres, youth centres and all sorts of other amenities have been provided through voluntary giving; and I believe it to be entirely wrong to use this particular means of raising money for the amenities which society needs. Therefore I personally very much hope that this Bill will not be accepted by your Lordships' House and that the Amendment will go through.
4.35 p.m.
LORD ILFORD: My Lords, I do not intend to detain your Lordships for many moments. This is a Bill about which
728
everything can be said quite shortly. Speaking for myself, I have never been able to see anything morally wrong in gambling. I am fortified in that view—or in that error, if it be an error—by the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of London, who told us that gambling was not a very wicked thing. I am grateful to him for having fortified my own conscience about something over which, from time to time, I have wondered whether or not I have been misguided or wrong.
I believe that it is not gambling itself which is a social evil. Looking back over a fairly long experience of poverty, I will not say that gambling itself is one of the major causes that brings people to poverty. I do not think it is. There are many other, much more potent forces. It is the abuse of gambling which is harmful and which is a social evil, and one cannot protect the population against the abuse of gambling. They have got to protect themselves. It is true that we sanction facilities for gambling in the betting offices. I myself do not believe that the betting offices have increased gambling; nobody knows how much gambling went on in the streets before the betting offices were introduced. But, of course, there is nothing to be said for the man who gambles with the housekeeping money and who at the end of the week cannot pay the rent. That happens, and we cannot stop its happening except by a moral approach to the population. I think that it is useless to try to prevent that from happening simply by trying to restrict the facilities for gambling. A person who gambles in that way is not going to be attracted to a share in this lottery. This is not the sort of gambling in which a man who would gamble away the housekeeping money is likely to be interested, any more than he is interested in premium bonds. I think your Lordships could safely say that this is a type of gambling which will not lead to the social evils with which other forms of gambling may be concerned.
I was rather astonished to hear the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, on behalf of the Government, condemn this Bill so wholeheartedly. Only last year the Government introduced into the Finance Bill a clause which would have made it possible to promote a national lottery. I do not know whether there has been a change of heart or a change of mind, but

729
it seems to me to be quite inconsistent with the attitude of the Government towards this Bill to-day.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but I would point out that there was a free vote in the other House on that Bill on July 1. Some members of the Government voted for the Amendment, others voted against it.
LORD ILFORD: If the noble Lord will be a little more patient, I am coming to that. It is true that when the clause was debated in the House of Commons, on a free vote, it was defeated—not by a very large majority, but it was defeated. I am told that one of the reasons why it was defeated was that what was proposed there was that the proceeds of the lottery should be paid into the Consolidated Fund for the benefit of the Treasury. The House felt that if this new form of finance was to be adopted, the proceeds ought to be used for different purposes rather than the normal proceeds of taxation. Judged by that standard this Bill gets through. The Bill proposes, as the House of Commons appeared to want, that the proceeds of the lotteries should be devoted to the purposes which several of your Lordships have enumerated during the debate, which I suppose everybody is agreed are purposes of great social and cultural value to the people of London, but which are purposes for which there is no justification at present in spending the ratepayers' money.
This Bill has been condemned upon two grounds. It has been partly condemned because of its contents. The criticism of the Bill on that ground does not seem to me to have gone very far. I think it was the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London who said that this was not a very efficient way of raising money. I do not know, but, at any rate, the Greater London Council think it is, and the question for us this afternoon is not whether or not it is efficient, but whether the Greater London Council ought to be given an opportunity of testing it and seeing whether it is an efficient way of raising money.
A much more serious criticism has been directed not at the Bill itself, but at the consequences which it is thought may flow from it. I do not myself share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Soper,
730
that this is going to open the door—he had a splendid phrase—"to unproductive hangers-on". I am not quite clear what class of person the noble Lord had in mind.
LORD SOPER: My Lords, I was thinking of the manipulators of finance.
LORD ILFORD: My Lords, I do not think many financiers would buy tickets in this lottery. I think they know somewhere better than that to put their money. Before I conclude, I ask your Lordships to disabuse your minds of much that has been said about the probable consequences of this Bill. I should not like to say that they have been exaggerated, but they have certainly been overstated. Let us pass the Bill and see how it works as an experiment—because that is what it is—before we condemn it too roundly, and before we predict that it is going to lead to all the alarming consequences which have been delineated by some of its opponents this afternoon.
4.43 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, assumed, if I heard him aright, that my noble friend Lord Stonham was out of step with Government policy about a national lottery. Therefore it may be of interest to the House if I read a very brief passage from the reply to the debate on the Amendment on July 1 in the other place, where the Financial Secretary said this:
"We have no Government view on whether we should or should not have a national lottery. Hence the free vote."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 1/7/68, col. 1181.]
I myself happen to disagree with my noble friend Lord Stonham. I should be in favour of a national lottery run by the State, so long as one knew its terms and its precise details. But, unlike many previous speakers to-day, while I am in favour of a national lottery I am against the particular kind of lottery envisaged under the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham. And, taking to heart what the noble Baroness, Lady Horsbrugh, said, I shall try to confine myself to the Bill itself.
I think we must all be very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for introducing this Bill which has given the House an opportunity to discuss the whole merits of a non-national or local lottery, as I might perhaps describe it.

731
But I must come down on the side of my noble friend Lord Soper whose Amendment I shall support. The Bill sets out certain general indications about the lottery that is envisaged, but it gives no precise details beyond saying that no more than one lottery shall be promoted in a month. This is, in fact, a kind of enabling Bill. All the details, all the hard facts, all the guts of it, are to be brought in later by the G.L.C., under what is described in the Bill as a "scheme". In actual fact it is difficult to know what one is passing in legislation of this form.
There is nothing in the Bill about the price of the tickets. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, said that they would be 10s.; and I have seen that sum mentioned in the Press. He also said that the prizes in a month would amount to £225,000. I have seen other figures in the Press. One was £255,000 and another was £10,000 a month. But of course I entirely accept what the noble Lord has said. There is nothing in the Bill, however, about the prizes. There is nothing about how the prizes are to be allotted; and, even more important, there is nothing about the proportion of the proceeds to be given over to prizes. There is also nothing about the ratio of expenses, including promotional expenses, to total proceeds.
All these important details are to be dealt with under the so-called "scheme". None of them will be subject to Parliamentary approval, and whatever form the scheme itself may take when it has been worked out, it can also be amended or revoked by any subsequent scheme, as my noble friend Lord Stonham pointed out. I therefore suggest to the House that we are being asked to-day to pass some unusually vague legislation, and to give the G.L.C. what is virtually carte blanche to conduct a large-scale lottery in any form it likes. As my noble friend Lord Soper has said, it is a miserable Bill in its imprecision.
I am also concerned about the implications of Clause 3, dealing with the agreements. This clause allows the Council (and this was confirmed by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham) to farm out the promotion and conduct of the lottery to any person or body, including any local authority. Therefore the lottery could be run in co-operation with other local
732
authorities not only in the G.L.C. area; and in fact I think the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, rather hoped that this would happen after the experimental period of one year was over. It is therefore certain that people from all over the country would compete in this lottery. It would become virtually a national lottery though in another guise, but the proceeds would be only for the benefit, wholly or partly, of Greater London bodies, or of persons living and working there.
Then there is the matter of the projects. These are described in Clause 4(2), and of course they are all very worthy in intent. But I agree with previous speakers who take the view that it is undesirable that projects of this kind should have to depend on lotteries for their financing. Also, it might produce an excuse for local authorities to opt out of their responsibilities in this field. I agree absolutely with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, who said that such projects should be provided by the ratepayer. The point, really, is how important one regards these matters. If you approached them only from a materialistic point of view, you would probably find that you could not afford them, as seems to have been the case with the Nine Elms Library at Wands-worth. But if you were to regard them as amenities in a fuller and perhaps more civilised sense, then you might find that the money spent on them was well worth while.
My Lords, I should like now to touch, very briefly, on the possible effects of such a G.L.C. lottery on the national Exchequer. This point, I think, has not so far been dealt with in detail. I believe it is the Government's view that if there is a national lottery run by the State a duty similar to the pool betting duty should be levied on it. This was mentioned by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury during the debate on July 1 in the other place, and is reported at column 1185. I feel sure that this is right, because it is clear that some people would move their patronage from the pools to the lottery, with a consequent loss of revenue to the Exchequer, if both were not taxed equally. On the other hand, the lottery envisaged in this Bill would not be required to pay any tax to the national Exchequer at all. In fact, this is specifically excluded under Clause 6(c).

733
Lastly, my Lords, I agree with other speakers over the question of creating a precedent. I feel sure that if London, our capital city, has a lottery, other cities will wish to follow suit—and there is really no reason at all why they should not. And if other cities follow suit, why should not other local authorities, large and small, also run lotteries? And how could the Government resist applications from charitable organisations and worthy societies of all kinds? The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, said he thought that many of these would not need to resort to lotteries, but a very different situation might arise if we had a plethora of lotteries, large and small, up and down the country. I feel sure that in that event many of these charities would feel the need to demand their own lottery.
The last Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming dealt in paragraph 393 of their Report with this question of large-scale lotteries not conducted by tit, State, and they concluded—quite rightly, I think—that they had received no evidence that the promotion of large public lotteries of this kind should be permitted. For these reasons, while, as I said at the outset, I am not against a national lottery run by the State, I am against a local lottery run by one particular corporation, the G.L.C., as envisaged in this Bill; and for this reason I support the Amendment of my noble friend Lord Soper.
4.53 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I have come to the opposite conclusion, and I wish to say shortly why I propose to vote for the Second Reading of this Bill. May I deal at the outset with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, when he mentioned the debate in another place last July? He said, quite rightly, that that debate ended with a free vote, but I think the point that many of my honourable friends had in mind was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I think other Treasury Ministers, voted in favour of it—an action which they certainly would not have taken had they thought that there was anything particularly wicked about lotteries.
While I listened, as I always do, to the sincere, emphatic and reasoned view of the noble Lord, Lord Soper, and of the right reverend Prelates, perhaps I
734
may say, as one who very long ago studied moral philosophy at Oxford, that I always concluded, as I think my friend Quintin Hogg concluded—and I think he once expressed this view in this House—that we really ought to bear in mind the philosophical principle known as Occam's Razor; that is, Entia non multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, which in English means that entities must not be unnecessarily multiplied. I think that what applies to entities also applies to sins, and that we ought not constantly to seek to invent new sins. I have no reason to think that taking part in a lottery for a good purpose is sinful.
The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, and the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said that we ought to be bound by the view of the House of Commons last July, but that view, of course, was expressed on a totally different measure, and we do not know the view of the House of Commons on this present measure. We shall know that if we give it a Second Reading and a Committee stage—and I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, that many of his points seem to me more appropriate to the Committee stage than to Second Reading. I think many lotteries—some of them, I think, have been quoted this afternoon—have led to very happy results. I think that the British Museum was involved in one. I rather think that we owe Guy's Hospital to another, but I may be wrong on that. I think I am right; I think that a great deal of the original funds for Guy's Hospital came from a lottery. Anyhow, there is no doubt about the good purposes which may be served by this method of raising money.
That brings me to my main point, which nobody on either side has yet raised this afternoon. What I think we ought to do is to compare this method of raising money by the local authority with other methods of raising money by the local authority. We are not proposing that the Greater London Council shall not be able to raise money by a loan. The moral thought that I wish to put before the House is that this way of raising money is considerably more honest than the usual method of raising money by a loan in a depreciating currency. My Lords, if this Bill gets a Second Reading and passes into law, anybody who pays money for a chance in the lottery of the

735
Greater London Council will know exactly what he is doing. He will almost certainly lose the money that he stakes, but it will serve, in part, very good purposes; or he will win a prize in the currency with which he is familiar.
Contrast that with what happens when the Government or local authority contract a loan in sterling. I think, my Lords, that that should be borne in mind. The wretched person who subscribes is often told that he is making a good bargain. The Government or the local authority do not bring specially to his or her notice that he will be repaid, if at all, in a sadly depreciated currency, and will lose a great deal of the money that he lends. Compared to the morality indulged in by the Government and local authorities in raising money in a depreciating currency by the promise of interest over a long period, the method proposed in this Bill seems to me to be honesty itself.
My Lords, these facts will not be without their influence when I record my vote this afternoon. It is said—I do not know—that the Bill might have unfavourable results or influence on bingo or the pools or the "one-armed bandits". So what? I do not mind adversely affecting any of those interests, if it be so; but we simply do not know how they will be affected. I suppose I must have it on my conscience that in the past I have joined in appeals to contribute to national savings. I persuaded myself—and I think that at times there was some ground for my belief—that Governments possibly intended to tackle the problem of inflation and that the money lent might ultimately be repaid. Now, from the experience of a long lifetime, I know better. I know that few Governments—and certainly not this one—have the slightest intention of dealing with the great swindle of inflation; that when they borrow money there is not the slightest intention of repaying it at the value at which it was borrowed. If it were only for the example of honesty set by this Bill, I should vote for its Second Reading.
5.0 p.m.
LORD JESSEL: My Lords, I do not think any of your Lordships will be surprised to hear that I, with my past bad record, support this Bill; because in March, 1965, I introduced a Bill of a very
736
similar type. The purpose of that Bill was to authorise a sweepstake, some of the proceeds of which would be used to save Aintree racecourse and the Grand National. At that time it had been announced by Mrs. Topham, who owned Aintree, that she could not carry on and that in 1966, the following year, the last Grand National would be run. Her Majesty's Government were against my Bill; but I am glad to say that on Second Reading I carried it with a substantial majority. It was lost in another place, but I like to think that the publicity engendered by my Bill did something to save Aintree and the Grand National; for subsequently arrangements were made which enabled Aintree to carry on and enabled us to have an annual Grand National.
Just before the introduction of my Bill the Daily Express carried out a public opinion poll. They asked two questions. The first question was this: "Would you, in general, approve or disapprove of the idea that we have a State lottery in Britain, if the proceeds went to some good cause—for instance, hospitals, medical research, playing fields or such like?". The answers were as follows: 88 per cent. approved and 12 per cent. disapproved. The second question was this: "If there were a lottery once a month with tickets at the rate of 10s. each, how often do you think you would buy a ticket?". The answers were as follows: 19 per cent. said "Every time"; 60 per cent. said "Sometimes"; 21 per cent. said "Never".
My Lords, I see no reason why the answers to those questions if they were in relation to this Bill would be very different to-day. And if that is the case, surely it is fair to conclude that the vast majority of the people of this country are in favour of it. Most of them would buy a ticket sometimes, but not every time. Nobody can call that excessive gambling. The noble Lord, Lord Soper, who moved his reasoned Amendment against the Second Reading of the Bill is clearly against all gambling, as I think he is against all drinking—a counsel of perfection in this imperfect world. Like him, I know many cases of people mined by gambling. The man who spends his afternoons in the betting shop chasing the money that he lost on the first race; the man who spends hours glued to the

737
"one-armed bandit"—these are the addicts, these the people who need protection; not the man who buys a 10s. ticket once a month.
At this hour I do not propose to go into the details of this Bill. They were clearly described by my noble friend Lord Windlesham. They seem to me to be quite sensible and practical. I agree that perhaps we can improve the Bill a good deal in Committee; but that is no reason for not giving it a Second Reading. To me the objects of the Bill appear to be worth while, the social implications quite harmless. I will certainly vote against the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Soper.
5.7 p.m.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, I feel some gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for moving this Bill. I am a youth leader and I feel considerable gratitude to anybody who gives a kind thought to the very rickety financial position in which the youth movement always stands. For that reason I say, "Thank you"; but, "Thank you— no!". As a youth leader, I would much rather not have this money. It is true that financially we in the youth movement have our problems. They are quite endemic and I have long come to the conclusion that it is our duty to have our problems. I believe that if we had money in our pockets it would mean that we were not doing our job. It is our duty to spend all that we have and perhaps a little more. So, we are, as a movement, chronically broke. Nevertheless, I do not think that we should be helped by money produced in this way.
There are a number of times in the course of a day when, sitting around the fire in our club barge, chatting with the kids, all sorts of subjects come up. I have to give my opinion on many matters affecting young people, their lives, their futures, what they should do, what they should not do, why they should do so, or why they should not. I feel that a powerful weapon will be wrenched from my grasp if I can be countered with the argument that the Government are gambling. If the Government are gambling, then I will find it very much more difficult to explain to these young people why they should not. And so it is that the noble Lord will excuse me if
738
I say, as I have said before, "Thank you, no!".
My Lords, I am well aware that in the past Governments used to gamble; that all sorts of things were considered right in the past which are now considered wrong. There was a time when badger baiting and bear baiting was considered right. I well remember the nicer parts of the old rules at Eton, where I was educated. I remember a master discovering a wonderful old rule which said that no boy resident in the college should keep within the precincts of the college badgers, bears or a wife. Why "wife" was included in the list I do not know. Apparently the head boy was allowed a wife; but badgers and bears were clearly excluded by the college for those within its precincts because it was felt that they were bad for the students. And I consider, for exactly the same reason, that we should not raise money in this way, especially for this purpose. The noble Lord, Lord Conesford, with whom I agree heartily on some matters, asked what sin it was and whether it was a new sin that we were trying to suppress. It is not a new sin, my Lords, it is an old sin: the sin of leading the young and innocent into temptation. That is a very old sin. For that reason, and because these things were mentioned by noble Lords, I decided to speak in this debate.
5.10 p.m.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, earlier in the debate the Minister seemed critical of the employment by a State-controlled agency on the Continent of poor or physically handicapped persons to sell State lottery tickets. I agree with him that that in itself cannot be a reason for justifying this Bill, but I see little difference between having, as we have in our streets, large numbers of kind persons voluntarily selling flags and so forth for charitable purposes, and having poor persons selling lottery tickets for worthy causes. But, be that as it may, the noble Lords, Lord Stonham and Lord Soper, may be surprised to hear that I shall support the rejection of this Bill, though not entirely for the same reasons as they might have.
I would stress that I am definitely in favour of a State-controlled or a national lottery as run in France, where every week one has an opportunity to win a

739
million new French francs. There may be temptations in buying in France a lottery ticket for large prizes, or a tenth of a ticket, but I do not think that that temptation could occur once a week. I do not think, either, that it leads any Frenchman to compulsive gambling. I do not think there is any record to show that the people there are tempted in that way. In effect, I think that with a lottery of that kind, a State-controlled lottery, one is tempted from time to time to chance one's luck, and that is about all there is to it. I do not consider any moral element whatsoever is involved.
I am very sorry not to be able to support my noble friend Lord Windlesham, but I feel that to some extent this Bill constitutes the thin edge of the wedge so far as lotteries are concerned. I do not think that it is a pilot scheme so much as the means whereby one could get a proliferation of lotteries in this country. If one takes the example of our gambling clubs and casinos, of which the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, is well aware, it was through the introduction of what I consider rather regrettable legislation that we are now plagued with gambling clubs and casinos. If we passed this Bill, I feel that numerous lotteries could be set up all over the country within the next few years.
Another reason why I regret opposing the Bill is that it is sponsored by a Conservative-controlled council. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Soper, that Clause 3 is widely drawn and that it is somewhat undesirable, in that it empowers the Council to enter into agreements with any body or person to act on the Council's behalf in the promotion and conduct of the lottery. I do not agree with the noble Lord that it may tempt financial wizards, and so forth, to take an interest in the matter, but it may tempt publicity and marketing interests to take an interest and to bring pressure to bear on the Council. I was rather surprised that, in effect, the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, should be against a State lottery, especially, as was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Clitheroe, when we have premium bonds. I suppose one could say that the premium bond draw provides a temptation, and it could be considered by some to be morally wrong to buy premium bonds because one could
740
win £25,000. As the Government accept premium bonds, I feel that all the members of the Government should accept the idea of a State lottery, which the premium bond draw is in effect.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord was in the Chamber when this matter was raised before, but I made the point that the essence of gambling is that if you do not back a winner you lose your stake. With premium bonds you retain your stake all the time; you only forgo a dividend for the sake of participating in the possibility of winning a prize.
LORD DERWENT: Or gambling.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, I take the noble Lord's point. I still feel that there can be no compulsion about buying a lottery ticket; though I agree with the noble Lord that there may be a slight difference in respect of premium bonds in that you retain the bond.
I hope this Bill will not be accepted. I am sorry to say that, because it is a Conservative-sponsored Bill to some extent. On the other hand, I hope that the Government will take another opportunity soon to endeavour to promote a State-controlled lottery, for I believe that it would not lead to compulsive gambling. It does not seem to have had any disadvantages in France. It has not increased the amount of hard gambling there, and the lottery is of great benefit to hospitals.
5.18 p.m.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, as your Lordships came to the House this afternoon I expect you saw on the news posters that the G.L.C. rate is up. An enormous extra sum has had to be asked for from the ratepayers of this city; and of course, in those circumstances, which all of us have probably had a hand in at one time or another, it is always the fringe activities which suffer. You have to continue with the basic services which stem from Acts of Parliament and the costs go up all the time. The rates have to go up, too. The difficulty we are in nowadays is that we all want these fringe activities to be better supported, whether it be the youth movement or the Arts or any of the purposes which I understand the G.L.C. has in mind.

741
My Lords, you can do what many Governments have done: starve these fringe activities when they ought to be given money, simply because you are frightened of putting up rates and taxes too much. You know that there are limits to the amount which the public will stand. Therefore you cast round and say, "How do we get some money?" That question has come up in many a vicarage. I know in my constituency how often I have been out on the lawn and been asked to take tickets in a raffle which had been organised because it was not possible to get the money for a very worthy cause. I could point to a large number of denominational schools (I will not mention the denomination) which would never have been built but for the financial aid derived from gambling. I really do not think that the moral problem is one that right reverend Prelates can put easily, because we know that, when pushed to extremes, there are few people like the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, who says that he does not want money for his youth club if it comes from a lottery. I respect him for his point of view, but there is a large majority of people who, if they have something which they know they can do but do not know where they will get the money to do it, would be prepared to have a lottery.
I entirely agree with him in wishing that money for these purposes did not come from any form of gambling. It would be far better, for example, if the Government would allow contributions to charity to rank as deductions from income tax. The system in America is infinitely better than the one here, and I only hope that one day we shall have it. But if we are really concerned about these cultural and social activities and have to increase the rates to meet the cost—the sum of £75 million is mentioned in connection with the G.L.C. rates—what are we to do? The G.L.C. say that, in spite of the fact that their ordinary expenditure is going up all the time, they would like to do more in these fields, and here they are trying a new experiment. I do not like it. I do not like the idea of the G.L.C. having a lottery. But I would vote for the Bill in order to give a hearing to the really urgent need to find voluntary sources of funds for this work which very much needs to be done.
5.22 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, if, by leave of the House, I may, speak again at the end of the debate your Lordships will be relieved to know that I shall not claim any further right of reply even though my name appears on the Order Paper once more. We have noted the deep differences of opinion in the debate this afternoon. But it is interesting that, from whatever side of the House the speeches have come, the debate h is been exactly balanced—seven speakers in favour of the Bill, and seven speakers against.
Some of the opponents of the Bill have tried to steer a rather unhappy course between saying that the proposal was wrong in principle, and that it would not work out in practice. I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, about some of the details of the proposed lottery. I avoided going into this matter because I thought the House would prefer to stick to the central issues raised by the Bill on Second Reading. If the Bill receives a Second Reading we can go into the detail of the scheme in Committee. A scheme for the lottery has been drawn up in draft by the G.L.C., and can be debated at a later stage when it can receive a rather different form of consideration.
The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, made it clear that the Government as a whole had abandoned the position of neutrality taken up in another place last year. The noble Lord, Lord Conesford, made the point that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer had made the speech on July 1 in another place which we have heard to-day from the Minister of State, there could have been no free vote and no division of opinion of the sort that occurred on the Finance Bill Division. On that occasion some members of the Cabinet voted one way and some the other. Regrettably, we have seen the Government depart from this principle of complete neutrality to-day, and come down unequivocally in favour of the House rejecting this Bill.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I did not say anything of the kind. What I said then, and I repeat, is that the Government found, on the perfectly free vote in another place for the purpose of deciding the view of Parliament, that

743
Parliament rejected by 188 to 72 votes a proposal for a State lottery. I said that they felt bound, and feel bound now, to observe the wishes of Parliament, and that those wishes are quite incompatible with the principle of the noble Lord's Bill. Therefore the Government advised the House to vote against it.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I wish the noble Lord would not use the expression "Parliament". Parliament did not reject the clause. The House of Commons rejected it. We are still perfectly entitled in this House to have a debate of our own in order to decide on a measure of our own. I regret that the noble Lord was not able to inform the House, as the Financial Secretary to the Treasury did in another place, that the Government maintained its position of complete neutrality. The Financial Secretary told Members of another place that he personally was in favour. I have no doubt that the noble Lord would have told us that he personally is against the idea of a lottery. But consistency would have been preserved. I regret that it has disappeared in this instance.
The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, made considerable play with the Government's policy towards gambling. He said that he sits behind his desk in the Home Office and sees some of the appalling consequences that can result from gambling. To me Government policy, as a result of legislation over the past ten years—not necessarily only by this Government, but by their predecessors too—is, on the whole, confusing and unsatisfactory. Parliament has allowed the really vicious forms of gambling to take place, whether intentionally or unintentionally. This is the compulsive gambling that can take place in gaming clubs and casinos and in betting shops. When the last Gaming Bill was before the House, the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said that we had to accept that the previous legislation in this field had not been effective. The promoters had got round the existing law and it was now necessary to have another shot at it. I doubt if the noble Lord would tell us that he is perfectly satisfied with the law as it stands to-day.
It is curious, then, that when this innocent and rather benevolent Bill comes to your Lordships' House the Government
744
turn round and fiercely oppose it. It is rather like a weak and ingratiating bully who joins a street gang in tying a tin can to his dog's tail, while a few minutes later preventing a small boy from giving a lump of sugar to a tame rabbit. The form of betting to keep in mind is the pools and bingo. If we can distinguish in our minds between these lesser activities, which I think most people find hard to condemn as gambling, and as wrong, and the type of gambling that takes place in the betting shop, gaming club or casino, then we shall see this Bill in proportion.
My Lords, that is all I have to say. The vote of substance comes on the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Soper. I would urge all noble Lords who support this Bill to vote against the Amendment. This is the only way —as we have heard the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, emphasise once again—in which the G.L.C. themselves see that they can raise the additional funds needed for amenities and recreational purposes. It seems to me a healthy, constructive and imaginative proposal and one that should be put to the test of a vote in your Lordships' House. The Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Soper, is essentially negative—I think he would accept that. He would like the situation to remain as it is, and not he changed in the manner described in the Bill. Therefore I ask all noble Lords who support the Bill to vote against the Amendment.
5.30 p.m.
LORD SOPER: My Lords, I would invite the House to support the Amendment, and I intend, with the permission of the House, to press it. I take advantage of the opportunity of replying to the debate to express my gratitude alike to those who have supported the Amendment and those who have opposed it for the quality of the contributions that they have made. If I do not refer to all the points, it is for two reasons: first, that it would take me too long; and secondly, that I have forgotten quite a number of them.
What I should like to do, first of all, is to thank my ecclesiastical brethren for the support that they gave me in this Amendment. When the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London first jumped into the river I was not quite sure which bank he was making for, but he ended

745
up on Canaan's side. I am intensely grateful to him, as I am to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, for the unanimity with which they pressed one of the substantial matters of this debate, which is nothing less than the fact that a responsible and adult public authority should behave in a responsible and adult way in seeking to raise money for those purposes which it regards as part of its civic duty.
I was not impressed, if I may say so, when the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, regarded these professed intentions in the Bill as fringe benefits. Perhaps I may read your Lordships some of the fringe benefits included in Clause 4(2)(c) of the Bill:
"the provision, maintenance or improvement of youth, community or welfare services or for the care and upbringing of children and young persons or their education and training for citizenship."
These, my Lords, are not fringe benefits. They are part of the normal traffic of enlightened administration, and ought, therefore, to be treated in a responsible way and not left to the hazards of private interests and greed.
The noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Horsbrugh, were bothered about premium bonds. The noble Lord, Lord Conesford, dazzled us with some Latin and Occam's razor, and perhaps I might refer to two Latin phrases, which come in the ecclesiastical discussion, but usually describe the difference between a premium bond and a lottery. It is a question of lucrum cessans, that is to say, the non-fruitability, as it was said, of money which is involved in the premium bond; whereas it is damnum emergens which is involved in philosophy. The noble Lord, Lord Conesford, will I am sure appreciate that distinction. Having complimented him by such a reference, may I regret that he did not go to Cambridge but to Oxford for his moral philosophy. For having told us of the fallacy of seeking to find new sins—and not succeeding, if I may say so, as the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, pointed out—he went on to commit, I thought, a rather unfortunate error in attempting to prove that a particular sin is to be counted as righteousness if you can find something that is worse. I find that unacceptable. The habits of a capitalist society (if this were another debate) would be regarded by
746
me as execrable in any case, but that does not justify, it seems to me, the even less unworthy but nevertheless sinful habits of philosophy.
I should like to say just a word about the support that I have received from those I could not perhaps count as full-blooded allies, on principle, but as cobelligerents—the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, and others—and to say how grateful I am to them for specifying particular reasons for having nothing further to do with this Bill, though they might, perhaps in moments of moral aberration be prepared to support a State lottery. This is a conditional piety which I gladly accept.
I found it difficult to see the dog from the rabbit in the particular illustration given by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, in his summing up, but what I think he was saying—at least, I hope so—was that this is not the worst of crimes, and, in fact, it would possibly be regarded by most people as more or less a trivial offence. What I wish to exemplify in the Amendment (and to which, if I may say so, no answers have been proffered by those who oppose the Amendment) is that in this particular Bill we are seeking to provide greater opportunities for what is already a substantial evil; that there is an excessive opportunity for gambling now, and that you do not remove the danger of it by saying that a particular bit of gambling that is now to be added is not as bad as the sum total of the gambles which are already permitted. I think that again is a very imperfect use of reason. This is an addition to the amenities already provided, which will calculatingly, I am sure, provide an increase of gambling as a whole; and, in principle, that which will now be done in one local authority, if this Bill goes forward, may well be copied in a rat race that can only contribute, I think, to general chaos and diminish progressively the amount of money to these very charities. I ought to declare an interest, because I should be one of the recipients of some of these charities; but, like the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, I would rather be without them, because I think that in the ultimate sense they will only contribute to a greater sense of insecurity rather than to a general sense of welfare.

747
Therefore, granting that there are many ancillary questions which still have to be answered about many of the ways in which we seek to fill our coffers and to provide services which are necessary, I still invite your Lordships to declare no further interest in this Bill, as being unsuitable even to the objects which
Resolved in the affirmative, and Amendment agreed to accordingly.
can be regarded as well worth while, and, in principle, a retrograde and not a progressive step.
5.36 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 76; Not-Contents, 60.

CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Foot, L.

Raglan, L.

Airedale, L.

Gardiner, L. (L. Chancellor)

Rockley, L.

Albemarle, E.

Garnsworthy, L.

St. Davids, V.

Amulree, L.

Granville of Eye, L.

Segal, L.

Archibald, L.

Hall, V.

Serota, Bs.

Arwyn, L.

Hawke, L.

Shackleton, L. (L. Privy Seal)

Auckland, L.

Henley, L.

Shepherd, L.

Beswick, L.

Hilton of Upton, L.

Soper, L. [Teller]

Blyton, L.

Hirshfield, L.

Sorensen, L.

Booth by, L.

Jackson of Burnley, L.

Southwark, L. Bp.

Bowles, L.

Kennet, L.

Stocks, Bs.

Brock, L.

Kilbracken, L. [Teller]

Stonham, L.

Brockway, L.

Kirkwood, L.

Stow Hill, L.

Brown, L.

Latham, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Buckinghamshire, E.

Leatherland, L.

Strang, L.

Burden, L.

Lindgren, L.

Strange, L.

Carron, L.

London, L. Bp.

Summerskill, Bs.

Champion, L.

McLeavy, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Chorley, L.

Maelor, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Clwyd, L.

Merrivale, L.

Willis, L.

Cooper of Stockton, L.

Merthyr, L.

Winterbottom, L.

Douglass of Cleveland, L.

Mountevans, L.

Wise, L.

Dundonald, E.

Moyle, L.

Wright of Ashton-under-Lyne, L.

Energlyn, L.

Noel-Buxton, L.

Exeter, L. Bp.

Pargiter, L.

Wynne-Jones, L.

Ferrers, E.

Phillips, Bs.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Eccles, V.

Luke, L.

Atholl, D.

Elgin and Kincardine, E.

MacAndrew, L.

Audley, Bs.

Emmet of Amberley, Bs.

Milverton, L.

Baldwin of Bewdley, E.

Ferrier, L.

Morrison, L.

Bourne, L.

Geddes of Epsom, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Brecon, L.

Goschen, V.

Rathcavon, L.

Bridgeman, V.

Gowrie, E.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Clifford of Chudleigh, L.

Grenfell, L.

St. Helens, L.

Clitheroe, L.

Gridley, L.

St. Oswald, L.

Conesford, L.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Sandford, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Headfort, M.

Sandys, L.

Craigavon, V.

Hertford, M.

Strathcarron, L.

Croft, L.

Horsbrugh, Bs.

Swansea, L.

Daventry, V.

Howard of Glossop, L.

Thurlow, L.

Denham, L.

Hylton-Foster, Bs.

Tweedsmuir, L.

Derwent, L.

Iddesleigh, E.

Vivian, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Ilford, L.

Wedgwood, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Inglewood, L.

Windlesham, L. [Teller]

Dudley, L.

Jessel, L. [Teller]

Wolverton, L.

Ebbisham, L.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Wootton of Abinger, Bs.

LICENSING (SCOTLAND) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1ªand to be printed.
PENSIONS (INCREASE) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1ª, and to be printed.

CUSTOMS DUTIES (DUMPING AND SUBSIDIES) BILL [H.L.]
5.46 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This is a small but I think useful Consolidation Bill consolidating all our Statute Law on dumping and subsidies which is now contained in the Customs Duties (Dumping and Subsidies) Act 1957, the Import Duties Act 1958 and the Customs Duties (Dumping and Subsidies) (Amendment) Act 1968. If your Lordships give the Bill a Second Reading it will go in the usual way to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 2ª, and referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.

REDUNDANCY REBATES BILL
5.48 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD BROWN): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The Bill has only one major clause and the simple object of reducing the rebates paid from the Redundancy Fund to employers who have made statutory payments to redundant employees. Under the Redundancy Payments Act 1965 employers (except in those occupations which are specifically excluded) are required to make payments to redundant employees with more than two years' service. Workers receive half a week's pay for each year of service between 18 and 21 years of age; one week's pay for each year of service between 22 and 40; and one and a half week's pay
750
for each year of service over 40, subject to a maximum of 20 years' service. An employer who has made a redundancy payment is entitled to a rebate from the Redundancy Fund which is financed by contributions paid by all employers. The rebate under the 1965 Act is two-thirds of payment for service under 41 and seven-ninths of payment for service over 41.
Clause 1 of the Bill provides for a uniform rebate of one-half. The change is estimated to reduce the Fund's expenditure by rather more than £17 million a year, about half of which is needed to cover rising expenditure from the Fund and the rest to enable repayment to begin of the Fund's accrued deficit. The Fund has been increasingly in deficit during the last two years and it has been necessary to increase its borrowing power to the limit of £20 million laid down in the Act, and on two occasions to increase the rate of employers' contributions. When the House of Commons last approved an increase in contributions last July expenditure was running at about £900,000 a week and income was little more than £650,000. The Fund's deficit then was £14 million, which had increased to about £17 million by the time the Fund received its full income at the new level of contribution which became effective in September. A further increase in the rate of expenditure brought it only just below the new income. The difference between income and expenditure is far too small, particularly in view of the difficulty of forecasting expenditure and the need to begin repayment of the Fund's debt.
It has throughout proved extremely difficult to forecast future expenditure from the Fund. This is a matter not only of the number of payments on which rebates are to be paid, but also of the size of each payment and the extent to which it attracts rebate at the rate of two-thirds or seven-ninths. The size of each individual payment is determined by the recipient's age, length of service and weekly wages. It is the interrelation of so many variables that makes predictions of the Fund's expenditure so difficult even after three years' experience of its operation. In retrospect, however, it can be seen that the principal recent cause of rising expenditure has been a steady increase in the average size of payments.

751
In the first half of 1967, individual payments averaged £193 and the average rebate from the Fund was £144. By the second half of 1968, the average payment was £245 and the average rebate £183. Looking ahead, it is prudent to assume that this trend will continue. One factor in the increase in the average size of payments is expanding earnings. The redundancy payment is based on weekly wages, and as they increase so will the payment increase. But contributions are at a flat rate and until they are brought on to a basis related to earnings, as is envisaged in the White Paper on Earnings Related Social Security (Cmnd. 3883), the Fund's income will tend to fall short of its expenditure.
As well as providing for rising expenditure, the Government consider that a start must now be made on reducing the Fund's debt. The cost of redundancy payments is met by employers, and the Fund is a device to enable part of the cost of payments to be carried by employers in general rather than leaving the whole cost to fall on individual employers making redundancy payments. The funding system was introduced in 1965 to meet representations from employers that the cost of payments should be spread, and it was intended to be self-financing. Provision was made for it to borrow from the National Loans Fund to meet short-term fluctuations. It has now been in deficit for over two years and the time has come to reduce the deficit substantially.
Having found it necessary to improve the position of the Fund, the Government faced the question of how this should be achieved. One alternative would have been to reduce the scale of payments to redundant workers, or their eligibility for payments. This course is not acceptable. The appropriate scale of payments to redundant workers is a matter of judgment, but no evidence has been brought forward to suggest that the scale laid down in 1965 is too generous. Certainly this scale of payments has led to reduction in the friction associated with redundancy and has helped to promote the movement of workers into new jobs where they can be more effectively employed.
The choice, therefore, lay between an increase in contributions to the Fund by
752
all employers or a reduction in the rebates paid to individual employers making redundancy payments. One factor in the Government's choice between these methods was the incidence of redundancy among older workers. Part of the increase in the average size of redundancy payments can be accounted for by an increase in the proportion of long-service workers, among them many workers over 40 receiving the higher rate of payment of one and a half weeks' pay for each year of service. In 1963 the proportion of redundant workers over 40 was about 60 per cent. Last year it was about 70 per cent. It can be seen that the operation of the Act encourages an older worker to volunteer to be made redundant as he receives payment at a higher rate. This may well not be in his best long-term interest, as he will find it more difficult to obtain a suitable job, and he will be less able to adapt to new circumstances or to learn new skills. Where a choice exists, however, the employer has no reason to reject the older worker's offer of voluntary inclusion among those to be made redundant as the cost of the extra half-week's payment to the older worker is met entirely by the Fund.
A change in the rebate afforded the opportunity to remedy this problem, at least in part, by ending the system under which the Fund carries the cost of the extra half-week's payment. This is likely to encourage employers, where a choice exists, to look again at the method of selecting those to be made redundant and to select younger rather than older workers. It is also arguable that where employers are reorganising their activities to secure more profitable working they should meet a larger part of the cost of redundancy payments themselves, rather than through the contributions to the Fund of employers in general. And in the case of firms going into liquidation it is not inappropriate that other employers should bear less of the costs of their liquidation. An increase in contributions would not contribute to resolving the problem of the undesirable concentration of redundancy among older workers, and on balance a reduction in rebates has been preferred.
It has been suggested that the redundancy payments scheme is abused and that a tightening up of the scheme would improve the Fund's position. Abuse may

753
be taken to mean a number of different things. It can mean deliberate attempts to obtain rebates to which an employer is not entitled. We have found no evidence of fraud of this type. It is sometimes used to describe situations where workers volunteer to be made redundant or, having received redundancy payments, find immediate new employment. To regard this as abuse is to misunderstand the basic purpose of the scheme. The whole principle of the scheme is to provide compensation to a man who loses his job through no fault of his own. The lump sum is recompense for the uncertainty and loss of security, for the potential loss of earnings and fringe benefits, the need to adjust to new habits and attitudes. It is not a form of unemployment benefit paid in a lump sum. Protection of a redundant worker during subsequent unemployment is provided separately by earnings-related unemployment benefit. It is no abuse of the scheme when a man volunteers to be made redundant when genuine redundancy occurs in the factory. It is in fact a sign that the Act has succeeded in weakening the fear and anxiety formerly associated with redundancy and enabling necessary industrial change to take place more smoothly.
The Government accept, however, that there are some aspects of the scheme which have proved anomalous. It could be expected that experience would reveal imperfections in an Act such as this which broke entirely new ground. Perhaps the best-known example is the situation in which employees of a television company which lost its franchise were eligible for payments even though they were immediately re-employed on virtually identical terms by the new franchise holder. The way in which the Act defines "associated companies" probably requires modification. And clarification is required of the concept of "temporary cessation of work" in the Contracts of Employment Act which is relevant to computing length of service for calculating the amount of a redundancy payment. None of these anomalies materially affects the finances of the Fund, but they need to be removed as a matter of principle. The Government intend to begin early discussions on them with industry and commerce, with a view to making what changes in the Act prove desirable and necessary.
754
My Lords, the Redundancy Payments Act has been generally accepted as a valuable contribution in the field of industrial legislation, and I commend to the House this Bill which seeks to put the financing of the Redundancy Fund on to a sounder basis. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª.—(Lord Brown.)
5.59 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for having explained to us the purposes of this short Bill. The Redundancy, Payments Act was welcomed in principle by us when it was introduced because, as he said, it was designed to contribute to the drive for improved efficiency and modernisation in industry to which we on this side of the House attach so much importance, as do the Government. We saw it as a measure which would render more acceptable the redundancy which in many cases is the inevitable accompaniment of modernisation.
When the Redundancy Payments Act was introduced in 1965 it was described in another place by a Government spokesman as "a landmark of first importance in industrial policy". Nevertheless, its Second Reading was moved in this House at nearly 10 p.m. in the week before the House adjourned for the Summer Recess, and it received the Royal Assent only nine days later. The Minister who moved the Bill spoke for twelve minutes. I have re-read his speech and I find that he did not mention the method of financing the scheme at all. I remember pointing out at the time that this was a somewhat cavalier way to treat a "landmark", and the subsequent history of the Act has amply justified our misgivings.
As the noble Lord said, the Act set up a Redundancy Payments Fund which was to be wholly financed by a weekly levy on employers, to be known as "the Redundancy Fund contribution" and to be paid along with the employers' National Insurance contribution. The Fund was to be controlled by the Minister. The Act laid down that the weekly contribution should be 5d. for each male employee and 2d. for each woman, and the Minister was given power with the consent of the Treasury

755
to vary contributions. In introducing the Bill in another place the Minister said:
"… we have proposed a levy of surcharge"—
which I take to mean an addition to the weekly National Insurance contribution—
"which should, we think, ensure that the Redundancy Fund is self-financing over a substantial period.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 26/4/65, col. 44.]
To enable the scheme to get off the ground, and to even out fluctuations in demand on the Fund from year to year, the Treasury was empowered to advance out of the Consolidated Fund such sums as the Minister might request, up to a maximum of £8 million or such larger sum, not exceeding £20 million, as the Minister might by order, subject to Treasury consent, determine. The Minister has had to exercise his order-making powers to the limit, and we are now told that unless something is done the limit of £20 million laid down in the Act will be exceeded. And that, my Lords, despite the fact that contributions were doubled in 1967, and then trebled in 1968 for men, making it three times for men and three-and-a-half times for women what was originally in the Act. In other words, in spite of the incomes and prices policy the price of this service to industry as a whole has increased more than threefold in three years.
The Government must accept responsibility for what has proved to be a gross miscalculation, and it is the employers and the public who have to pay for the Government's mistakes, since the Exchequer bears none of the cost—unless, of course, the advances are ever written off. So though the burden on employers as a whole is already three times as great as it was when the scheme was started, the Government now propose to increase the burden on those employers who dispense with the services of employees on redundancy.
When an employee is made redundant the employer makes the redundancy payment and receives a proportion of it back from the Fund as rebate. The noble Lord said that that proportion is now seven-ninths in respect of qualifying service over 41 and two-thirds in respect of qualifying service under 41. The Bill proposes that it should be a half in both cases. I think it is worth while looking
756
at the effect of this. If my calculations are right, the effect of the change is that whereas at present the net cost of redundancy to the employer is the same whether the payment is in respect of service under 41 or over 41, if the Bill becomes law the cost to the employer will be 50 per cent. more in the case of service under 41 and half as much again (I think it is 125 per cent. all told) more in the case of service over 41. The effect of the Bill is to transfer £17 millions a year of the cost of redundancy from the Fund to the firm in which redundancies occur. I understand that about one employee in 330 in the work force is receiving redundancy payments each year and the average payment is running at about £248.
Having regard to the national purpose of the scheme, which is to reduce resistance to reductions in manpower where they are needed in particular firms, one must ask whether this is the right policy. Will it not mean that firms where reductions should take place in the interests of efficiency and modernisation will be that much less willing to carry them out? That is what one may describe as voluntary redundancy. Applying the average figure, again if my arithmetic is right, it will cost a firm employing 2,000 men some £50,000 to reduce its labour force by 10 per cent., of which it will get not more than half back in rebate. But what of involuntary redundancy—that is, for example, where an employer has to dismiss employees or close down entirely because of decline in demand for the goods or the kinds of goods he produces or because he is too old or too sick to carry on.
Let me take a case. Suppose such an employer had to give up his business through ill health, and had two employees who had been with him for 20 years each, each earning £24 a week. This Bill, as I understand it, would cost him £400 more than these redundancies would do at present: it would cost £720 instead of £320. In another place the Minister did not deny that this was harsh he merely said he did not think it was unduly harsh. In the extreme case of a firm going into liquidation the people who are going to suffer, of course, will be the creditors. If my researches are correct, the Government accepted the case for the two-thirds and seven-ninths contributions from the Fund to the rebate in the course of the

757
Bill in another place; that was three and a half years ago. Now they are going back on it entirely.
Is it not questionable—I would raise this general question—whether the same scheme should cover both voluntary and involuntary redundancy, or at any rate whether it should cover it in exactly the same way? Admittedly, looked at from the point of view of the employee made redundant it does not matter whether redundancy is voluntary or involuntary; he goes. But Parliament has to look at schemes from the national and not the sectional point of view, and, as in this Bill, Parliament has to look at the cost and who should bear it and in what proportions. Is there not a strong case for considering involuntary redundancy as a risk to be borne by both employer and employee, not necessarily in the same proportion? Changes in the nature of demand and the conditions of trade may render a whole industry obsolescent and even redundant. It is not necessarily the fault of management if an industry declines or disappears.
Surely in the long run the interests of the employee should be covered by social insurance in the case of involuntary redundancy, and we should work towards that. It is a risk that he enters into, and a risk for the employer, too, that is inherent in business. On the other hand, the purpose of voluntary redundancy is to improve the efficiency of the company, and it is in the interest of the company as well as of the employee that there should be a redundancy scheme. It is also in the interests of the nation, and it would therefore be not unreasonable for Exchequer assistance to be given as an inducement to make such a scheme. But this Bill goes exactly in the opposite direction. It is deliberately increasing the cost of redundancy to employers. That is bound to make them hesitate to introduce changes which would improve efficiency but would involve some redundancy. I must ask, is it right to move in the wrong direction merely to achieve a short-term objective?
Obviously, the Fund cannot be allowed to continue to run into deficit. But the change proposed in this Bill is to ensure not merely that the £20 million limit of borrowing will not be exceeded but that it will be repaid in quite a short period of time. As I understand it, the period
758
of time the noble Lord envisages is about two and a half years, and I take it, therefore, that it is the Government's intention that all the advances should be repaid before the new method of financing the Fund proposed in the White Paper on earnings-related pensions comes into operation, in about two and a half years. If the noble Lord's predictions work out, that is what it will mean.
As he said, there were two main ways in which the situation could have been dealt with. The first was to increase the income of the Fund by raising the weekly levy, and the second was to reduce its outgoings, which could have been done either by reducing the redundancy payments made and by reducing the rebate to what the Government originally proposed. The obvious way to reduce the redundancy payments was to provide that one week's pay would be given for each year of employment for men over 41 instead of one and a half weeks, as at present, and so put service over 41 on the same level as service between 22 and 41.
The Government put both these proposals—that is, the reduction in rebate and the reduction of redundancy payment—to the T.U.C., the nationalised industries and the C.B.I. I wonder whether the noble Lord could tell us what advice the Government received from each of them? The noble Lord has told us in just one short sentence that the Government rejected the suggestion that the weeks taken into account should be calculated at the same amount that is, one week per year of service whether in respect of service over 41 or under it.
If I understood the noble Lord correctly, one argument for making the redundancy the same for all is that many older men are volunteering for redundancy payment. The noble Lord was not entirely clear about this. He said. "It would seem" that this is so. Has he any positive figures to give us about this? I took down his words. He said. "It would seem" that that is what is happening. The next time he referred to it he put it as a fact of an undesirable concentration on older workers. I wonder whether he could give us some further and more positive information about this? If it is so, I should like to ask him this: how will the tendency be checked by making the employers pay more for the

759
older man than for the younger man? Will they refuse to let older volunteers go? If a man volunteers will they say, "No, you cannot go. We are sorry, but we are withdrawing this." Will they not allow any older man to volunteer, or will they stop volunteering altogether? Whichever way the Government do this, it seems to me they are making trouble for industry.
Take the case of two employees, one of 36 and one of 56, both with 14 years' service, each earning £40 a week. Why should the employer necessarily have to pay more for the older man? The younger man will probably have children at school and a move for his family is likely to upset more people than a move for the man of 56. At present, the net cost to the employer is the same fox both—about £187 in that case. Under the Bill, redundancy would cost the employer £420 for the man of 56 and £280 for the man of 36.
The truth is that the scheme is riddled with anomalies. It is not just a question of the odd anomaly here and there. The Government really must study this scheme to see how it fits in with public and private social security arrangements. It is important that they should be doing this at the time when the White Paper that they have just laid before the House on earnings related benefits is being considered. If the purpose of the scheme is to indemnify men for being made redundant by paying them a lump sum related to their length of service and current pay up to the specified amount of £40 of earnings, then why limit the years of service qualifying for the indemnity to 20? If, on the other hand, the purpose of the scheme is to provide men made redundant with the wherewithal to live until they find another job and to move to another job, why give a man who leaves one job on a Friday and starts another in the same town on the following Monday the same amount as the man who has to find work in another area and may take weeks or months to find it? This is a curious interpretation of the proposition "To each according to his need".
According to The Times of January 21, the Department's statistics show that one worker in three finds work almost immediately; yet if his earnings are average
760
and he is 41 or over and has served for 20 years with the same firm, he gets at least £480, and may get up to £720. Again, it was a mistake to fix the contribution to the Fund at so much per head instead of as a proportion of the pay-roll. I admired the way that the noble Lord glossed over this particular mistake. That is an error which the Government now propose in their White Paper on earnings-related pensions to correct. That mistake may have contributed in part to the financial difficulties into which the scheme has run. But even if the contribution had been fixed as a proportion of the pay-roll, the proportion would have had to be increased by order, because of the Government's initial miscalculation.
The Economist expressed the view that it was crazy to differentiate between service before and service after 41. Certainly, if temporary steps have to be taken to bring the Fund into balance, it is difficult to see the justification for laying the whole of the cost of the temporary steps on the employer to seek to make himself more efficient. Would it not have been better, as an interim measure, to raise the levy payments to the point where the Fund would break even? The only reason I can think of against this is that it would have turned the landmark into too conspicuous an eyesore. So, instead, the Government have gone back on their previous decision.
The Economist also expressed the view, in its headline, that the Bill is a product of Britain's machinery for taking wrong decisions at its bumbling worst. It begged progressive M.P.s of all Parties to join together to throw out the Bill. Well, progressive M.P.s did not do so, and this is hardly the sort of Bill which your Lordships should throw out after it has gone through another place. All we can do is to urge the Government to press on with their examination of the 1965 Act and to produce as soon as possible a new scheme that makes more sense.
6.18 p.m.
LORD BROWN: My Lords, I have taken careful note of the noble Lord's points and I will try briefly to wend my way through them. Some of them overlap a little. I should like to take

761
up this question of the "gross miscalculation" said to have been made by the Government. Much was made of this in another place in long speeches. Noble Lords opposite, especially those with previous ministerial experience, know well that calculations upon the basis of a scheme such as this are made by statisticians and economists employed by Government. Ministers have to accept this advice. These people are competent professionals.
It is quite obvious that with a scheme of this nature, with the number of variables that we have to face in the scheme—that is to say the amount of redundancy that is going to occur, the average length of service of those who are to be made redundant, the rate of pay and the age distribution of these people—it really is not possible to be absolutely accurate; and if one looks at the actual movement here one sees that payments from the Fund varied from £20 million, in 1966, to £38 million in 1967, and £46 million in 1968. It would have been a brave economist who, on that basis of the random variables with which one has to deal in a calculation of this sort, could have looked forward and said, with his hand on his heart, that he was within plus or minus 5 per cent., or who claimed any marginal error of that kind. It is almost impossible, and it is no good heating the Government about the head.
This scheme was a sound scheme, as the noble Lord has been good enough to agree. It was generated and thought about in the first place by his own Party; and it is much better to face the introduction of a scheme like this and get the experience of what it generates in the nature of variable sums, than to shrink from it simply because it is going to vary in this degree. I am quite sure that it will vary in erratic fashion throughout its operation. I am convinced of that. We have had to make some predictions for next year. I should be the last to stand up here—and one or two of my colleagues have perhaps gone further than I would have gone in backing the predictions they have had to make for the future—and claim in the light of the experience we have had in this scheme, any high degree of accuracy for the predictions now made. But I certainly reject the criticism that has been
762
made of the Government on these grounds.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, there is a difference between a high degree of accuracy and a 300 per cent. mistake.
LORD BROWN: My Lords, it is not a mistake; it is a prediction that was greatly out, due to the difficulty in making these predictions. If the noble Lord is really going to criticise, what he is saying, in effect, is that we must have better statisticians and better economists in Government service. I do not think this is the answer to the problem of getting greater accuracy. I think it is difficult always to be accurate about a matter of this sort.
The noble Lord asks whether this is the right policy, and goes on to point out that the cost to a firm employing 2,000 men, with a redundancy on its hands of 200, is about £50,000. I would point out with reference to that example, which is slightly over-estimated, that in the new situation the cost of that redundancy might be substantially less.
May I now take up this business of all the points the noble Lord has made about the man of over 40? First, we must be clear that in one sense there is no such thing as a "voluntary redundancy"; in another sense there is such a thing. Let me try to clear the air on this. The management of a firm decides that the time has come when they have to reduce the number of employees. Without a decision of that sort on the part of the employer no employee can say, "I am a volunteer for redundancy". It is only when the firm say, "We must reduce", then the man can volunteer; and it is for the firm to decide whether they say, "Yes, you shall go as you volunteered" or, "Somebody else must go who has not volunteered". What has been happening is that a larger percentage of the men over 40 have been offering themselves for redundancy than used to do so.
I am accused of having glossed over the point, but in 1963 a survey was carried out as to the percentage of men over 40 being made redundant. The figure came out at about 60 per cent. By the time of the second survey, carried out in 1968, that figure had moved up to 70 per cent. We cannot be certain of the part this higher rate of redundancy pay

763
has played in that movement. It is our opinion that it is substantially a reason for that happening. If an employer is at present faced with a volunteer of over 40 or a volunteer under 40, it costs him the same in both cases; but if this Bill goes through it will cost the employer more to make a man of over 40 redundant than a man of under 40—simply because he is likely to have more years of service and the rate at which he has to be paid is one and a half weeks per year of service instead of one week.
It is our view that it is in the national interest for a smaller proportion of men over 40 to be made redundant because they are the men who are less likely to benefit by training for different jobs than those which they are accustomed to doing, whereas the younger men are much more likely to be able to pick up and do efficiently in a short space of time some alternative job.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, this is an important point, and I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way again. Unless and until the Government can give more specific figures of this, I do not think they can reach any positive conclusions. I remember very well that in the days of the Coal Board redundancy, and the railways redundancy, workers in the older age brackets were encouraged to volunteer to go, and it was made worth their while to go rather sooner than their normal retirement age. Surely this is right in cases of redundancy. What may be undesirable is that the man of, say, 55 should be encouraged to go. But until the Government have more specific figures of what particular ages of the older bracket of employees are being encouraged by this scheme to volunteer, I do not think they can draw the kind of conclusions which they are drawing and which the noble Lord is now indicating.
LORD BROWN: My Lords, I do not think one will ever get proof of the effect of one factor like this on a general trend, but there is strong presumptive evidence that this is what is happening. I do not disagree with the noble Lord that a man of 60, 61, or whatever it may be, engaged in the railways or coal mines, where the work is heavy, might well be encouraged to leave the industry and
764
take lighter work; or even to retire. But we are dealing with an age bracket extending from 40 up to retiring age, and we think it right that we should not encourage industry to make these older men redundant, which is the current effect of the Act as it now stands, though it will be corrected by this Bill. It will put a deterrent on the managerial behaviour which has led to this growth in the redundancy of older men.
The noble Lord referred to the employer with two employees. In quoting this example he was making a general point. In my own view I think it is essential that employers, however small, should, in the event of their going out of business, face their obligations to deal with their employees in a satisfactory manner. I do not think it is right that they should be able to pass over the burden of what are properly an employer's responsibilities to the Government or to other employers through some amendment of this scheme. I do not weep for such people. Very many of them retire from business, or close it down, having made a great deal of money, as well as those who go bankrupt and are very hard up. There are two sides to this case.
The noble Lord has stated that it is questionable whether the same scheme should cover voluntary and involuntary redundancy. Here we are back on this word "voluntary" again. I would merely comment again here that all redundancies are involuntary so far as the firm is concerned. That is necessarily the case. I think he was suggesting that some firms would fail to reduce their working force appropriately if they had to pay out a large amount of money to employees made redundant. That is a commercial decision they will have to take. I do not think this scheme will affect it one way or another. I know there are companies in the country—and this has been particularly so at some periods in the past—where, as has been shown by statistics, the employers were hanging on to their employees and depriving the country of a working force which would otherwise be available. Economically that is a very bad thing for the country.
One of the effects of this Bill, if indeed companies have to pay out a large amount, might conceivably be that

765
they would be less ready to release employees; but if you look at the margin of expense in which they involve themselves by retaining people for whom they have not sufficient work, and the cost of paying those people appropriate redundancy payments, I cannot believe that an economically-minded manager would ever for the reasons stated by the noble Lord retain employees who ought to be made redundant. If we are going to have economic idiocy in managerial behaviour, I do not think we can put it right by an amendment to the Redundancy Act.
The noble Lord has asked me to state something more about the attitude of the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. in the discussions which took place. I have a note on this. The C.B.I. have backed the idea that about half of the required reduction in the Fund's expenditure should be achieved by changes in the level of rebate, and that the balance should be obtained by increasing from two to three years the period of qualifying service and by raising from 41 to 51 the age at which each year of service attracts the extra half week's payment. I hope that I have expressed their view correctly. The T.U.C. expressed strong opposition to any changes which would reduce the value of payments or limit eligibility for payments. They were particularly opposed to any reduction in the benefits of the scheme to older workers. The Government do not accept that any part of the required reduction in the Fund's expenditure should be met by reducing the employees' entitlements to payments. Out of those cross currents of opinion—and there were many—has emerged the Bill which we now have before us.
The noble Lord drew attention to the matter of anomalies. I agree with him; and discussions have already started in regard to dealing with some of those anomalies. They mostly arise from conditions of association of companies which were not foreseen in the drafting of the original Bill. Situations now arise where companies which are not in the same financial ownership, or maybe not even financially associated, are nevertheless almost alternative employers for the same employees, who switch between one and the other. One has had cases there where
766
tragedy has occurred, either for the firm or for the employees, because the law did not recognise this rather unusual situation. There are more dramatic cases, and I referred to one relating to the change of television franchise, but I think that it would be wrong to exaggerate the financial effects of all these anomalies. They are distressing, one reads about them in the Press, and sometimes ill-informed comment is made upon them, and we in the Government take them seriously. We will go into them and shall have to introduce legislation as soon as possible to put them right.
The noble Lord suggested that it would be more appropriate to take recognition of the fact that some men made redundant immediately get fresh jobs in the same town, while others spend weeks looking for new jobs and maybe have to move to other towns. There is a difference in principle between myself and the noble Lord on this matter. This Bill is not intended to cater for ensuing unemployment periods following redundancy. There are other means of looking after that matter. It is a recognition of long service on the part of employees such as any good employer has for many years acknowledged by paying people three or six months' salary geared up according to the length of service and related to previous pay. That is the principle which has always stood behind this Bill, and it is not compensation for a period of unemployment that might follow. Indeed, the legislation necessary to gear this scheme to the ensuing circumstances endured by a man after redundancy would be extremely complex. I should not like to think how accurate predictions would be on the matter if something were introduced to that effect.
I hope that I have dealt with most of the criticisms by the noble Lord. I think there has been some misunderstanding about the underlying principle of this Bill. I hope I have helped to clear this matter, and I trust that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2ª; and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

MINES AND QUARRIES (TIPS) BILL
6.35 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Stonham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD STRANG in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 to 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 [Notification of beginning and ending of tipping operations]:
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 4, line 20, after ("days") insert ("or such shorter period as the Inspector may exceptionally permit").
The noble Lord said: Under this clause the owner of a mine or a quarry is required to give not less than 30 days' notice before beginning new tipping operations. This in general is a welcome provision, and indeed was inserted on Report stage in another place as a result of suggestions made by the Opposition there. But there remains one worry which this Amendment seeks to overcome. That is the case where, for some unforeseen reason, it suddenly becomes impracticable or dangerous to continue tipping on the normal site. Somewhere some alternative site has to be found to tip the rubbish unless the whole plant is to be brought to a standstill while 30 days' notice is given to find a new site. I realise, of course, that if a closed tip is available—that is, a tip formerly used by the mine or quarry and still in its ownership—the inspector may allow a lesser period of notice under subsection (3). But it may well be that no closed tip is available. What is the owner to do then? He cannot use the present tip because for some reason it has become impracticable or dangerous. He has no alternative closed tip on which to dump the rubbish, and he has to give 30 days' notice before he can dump the rubbish on a new site. The object of this Amendment is to introduce a little
768
flexibility into the procedure and to allow the inspector the discretion to allow a shorter period of notice in certain exceptional circumstances. I beg to move.
LORD STONHAM: As the noble Lord pointed out, this Amendment, if it were accepted, would apply to those areas where tipping operations are begun on a virgin site. It does not apply to where an existing tip is re-used or brought into use again, because there the inspector can act in less than 30 days. Normally this Amendment would be unnecessary because, as the Aberfan tribunal pointed out, tips should be treated as civil engineering structures and the normal procedure of preliminary site investigation would be applied. These requirements will be laid down in regulations which will be made under subsection (2) of Clause 1, and they will have to be complied with before tipping operations begin. Planning permission will probably have to be obtained, and both of these actions will take up a considerable time.
We are anxious to ensure as far as possible that prudent mine and quarry owners will make all the necessary arrangements for new tipping sites well before they expect to use them. The National Coal Board already plan ahead in this way, and there is nothing whatever to prevent a mine owner from making all the necessary arrangements well in advance so that he has a tip or an area for tipping available if it should be required at short notice. But we recognise that, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said, there may be exceptional circumstances, and there may well be cases where the inspector knows the site quite well and would be in a position to say "Yes" in less than 30 days. I should be prepared in principle to recommend the Committee to accept the Amendment, but it requires some redrafting. Therefore, if the noble Lord is prepared to withdraw the Amendment, I will give an assurance that I will table an Amendment on Report to meet the point.
LORD ABERDARE: I am grateful to the noble Lord and am immensely encouraged that I have achieved such success at the very first try. I accept his assurance with great gratitude. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 4 agreed to.
Clauses 5 to 8 agreed to.
Clause 9 [Penalty for offences relating to tips to which Part I applies]:
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 7, line 47, leave out from beginning to end of line 3 on page 8 and insert ("and the court by which that person is convicted is satisfied that the contravention in respect of which he is convicted was likely to cause the death of, or serious bodily injury to, any person, or was likely to endanger the safety of any person, the court may impose upon the person convicted either in addition to or in substitution for any fine authorised by section 155(1) of the principal Act imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months.").
The noble Lord said: This is a matter which we discussed shortly on Second Reading, and it relates to the penalties for offences committed under Part I of the Bill. I have no quarrel at all with the fact that all tips are potentially dangerous, and in certain circumstances it is quite right that the courts should be able to impose a penalty of imprisonment. But as the clause stands at present, it is possible for a penalty of imprisonment to be imposed for any contravention of any provision of Part I of the Bill and this, to my mind, introduces certain anomalies. For example, it would apply to an offence under Clause 3(1) of failing to secure adequate information, or to an offence under Clause 5 of making inappropriate tipping rules.
Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said on Second Reading, no court would impose such a penalty for such an offence, but while we are drafting an Act of Parliament I suggest that we should if possible he precise. Therefore, the Amendment follows exactly the wording of the principal Act—the Mines and Quarries Act 1954, Section 155(2). It seems to me that if the principal Act specifically reserves imprisonment for offences endangering the safety of persons, it is equally right that this Bill should follow that precedent. On Second Reading the noble Lord suggested that to do so might introduce an element of chance, according to the particular time that any offence was committed. This would no doubt be so if the offence depended on actual injury or danger to persons, but it does not. The Amendment merely relates to an offence which
770
is likely to cause injury or danger, and in doing so it follows exactly what has hitherto been perfectly satisfactory in the principal Act. I suggest that this Amendment would be an improvement to this Bill. I beg to move.
LORD STONHAM: Subsection (1)(b) of Clause 9 is not now in its original form. It was amended to its present form by the Government in another place precisely in order to meet the Opposition's case, that the penalty of imprisonment should be available only for offences which were likely to endanger persons, not property. The penalty which originally applied to all contraventions can now only be inflicted for an offence,
"of such a nature that it impaired, or might in the opinion of the court have been expected to impair, the security of the tip".
In our view, the present wording, made after full consideration and amendment, is the right wording and should not be further amended. The Aberfan Tribunal said that tips
"should all be regarded as potentially dangerous"
but that
"such dangers as arise are almost invariably in respect of active working tips".
It is in order to prevent danger arising that subsection (1) of Clause 1 of the Bill requires every tip to which Part I applies to be made and kept secure. Any offence which impairs the security of a tip makes it dangerous, because people will be on or in the immediate vicinity of a Part I tip—that is, an active tip. For example, they will be performing tipping operations or carrying out inspections which will be required by Regulations. They are likely, therefore, to be in danger if a Part I tip becomes insecure.
In our view, the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, to add a provision to the effect that the court must be satisfied that the offence was likely to endanger the safety of any person, is thus unnecessary, and in our view its acceptance would at best make the clause more complicated to no useful purpose. At worst it might enable an offender to avoid imprisonment, if he could show that in the particular circumstances of his case, and perhaps through pure chance, no person was likely to be in danger at that particular time; for example, if the mine was closed down for a

771
holiday, or if the people living in houses close to it were not in their houses because they were on holiday, and were therefore away from them. Although this might be the position at the time of the hearing, the offence might nevertheless have consequences which were slow to develop and which could result in persons being injured or killed at a later date, or when circumstances changed.
We think that it is of the utmost importance to bear in mind all the time that the object of the Bill is to ensure that tips are so constructed and maintained as to prevent another Aberfan, and that an offence under Part I which prejudices the security of a tip is one which could have very serious consequences, because it is liable to create a danger to workmen or the possibility of a tip slide. In our view, the clause as drafted, after amendment in another place, already makes it clear that minor offences of a technical nature do not attract the penalty of imprisonment and are punishable only by a fine.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, that it is very nice to start off by getting a winner at the first shy, and I should have liked to keep up the record. But I hope I have satisfied him that the Bill is better and safer as it is and more likely to ensure our object, than with his Amendment. I hope he will feel able to withdraw it.
LORD ARWYN: I should like to put myself, a coalmining engineer, in the position of the manager and the owner. I would draw your Lordships' attention to Clause 3 of the Bill, which states, in effect, that it shall be the duty of the owner and of the manager of every mine and quarry to take steps so as to be at all times in possession of all information relevant for determining the nature and extent of any steps which it is requisite for them to take in order to discharge their duties efficiently. It seems that under Clause 9 such an owner or manager is liable to imprisonment for failing to secure the requisite information. Some clarification of Clause 3 is therefore necessary, and it might help if the Bill defined under which headings the requisite information was required. The manager could then take steps to see that he had taken every precaution to ensure that he was not liable to imprisonment,
772
and to see that he was able to satisfy the authority by answering every question within his power. What is more important, he could inform them of any inability on his part to supply highly specialised knowledge until such time as a survey had been made by specialists.
LORD ABERDARE: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, although I am not sure that I am completely convinced by what he said. He gave an example of a mining community where people might be on holiday and away from their homes. But I should have thought that that, quite clearly, would not arise where the court was required to say that the offence was likely to cause death or serious bodily injury. You could not really say that, because people were not in their homes at the time, just for that reason the offence which had been committed was not likely to cause bodily injury. All I was trying to do was to make sure that we were specific in the Bill and that, rather than leaving it to the discretion of the court to impose a penalty of imprisonment only for serious offences, we should spell it out in the Bill, and spell it out in exactly the same way as in the principal Act. I should have thought that what was good enough for the principal Act was good enough for this Bill, too. But I should like to look at it again, so I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 9 agreed to.
Clause 10 agreed to.
Clause 11 [Local authorities having functions under Part II]:
6.50 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON LORD MILVERTON moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 9, line 10, leave out ("subject to sub-section (4)").
The noble Lord said: With the permission of the Committee, I will deal with Amendments Nos. 3, 4 and 5 together. The reason for these Amendments is that under Part II of the Bill county boroughs, London boroughs and county councils are given powers to ensure that disused tips of refuse from a mine or quarry do not, by reason of instability, constitute a danger to members of the public. Non-county boroughs and

773
urban and rural district councils will not have these powers, though county councils may delegate to them any of these functions. There seems to be no reason why county councils should be thought better qualified to carry out this work than the other local authorities in their areas. The town hall is surely the place to which the public would most likely go in a matter within the scope of this Bill, and it is closer to the problem than the county hall. Non-county boroughs and district councils are, of course, the public health authorities, and they are accustomed to taking action in the public interest to abate nuisances, to which this legislation is closely related.
It is difficult to accept the view expressed by the Minister on Second Reading in this House on January 28, that restricting the powers to county councils would mean that the technical staffs would be available. All authorities, irrespective of size, may need special expertise, such as that possessed by the Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries, to help them to exercise their powers; and, though the Minister has given assurance that the advice of the Inspectorate will be available on request, it would surely be better to provide specifically to this effect in the Bill, as well as to define the extent of the help which will he given. We are proposing two Amendments for this purpose to Clause 12 and Clause 17. Given, however, the Minister's intention that the fullest help will in fact be available from the Inspectorate, there seems to be every reason why local authorities —that is, non-county boroughs and district councils—should have these powers directly conferred on them.
At an earlier stage a suggestion was made that concurrent powers should be given to county councils and county district councils. The Minister, however, I understand, thinks it undesirable that concurrent powers should be exercised at two local authority levels, since, as he said, there is always the possibility that one would fail to take action believing that the other would do so. To meet that criticism, and for the reasons advanced, the Amendments suggested seek to give the functions to the local authority instead of to the county council. I beg to move Amendment No. 3.
LORD BURDEN: I should like to support, quite briefly, what has been said by
774
the noble Lord, Lord Milverton. The Amendment comes to us from the Association of Municipal Corporations, arid is meant in no way to reflect on the work of the county councils. It is put down because the district and other councils are in the nature of things more closely in touch with the problems than the county councils are.
In a general way I should like to submit for the consideration of the Committee that more and more land—arable land, and land under cultivation—is being taken for roads, schools, airports and public amenities of that kind. Yet there are many thousands of acres in this country covered and derelict because of the waste from pits, quarries and so on, in bygone days. Very little, if anything, is being done to bring that land into public use, though it call be done. I remember that, when I was a member of a local authority, we had a fairly large area covered by waste. That was cleared, and was turned into very useful playing fields.
We are warned by authorities almost every month that the population explosion is bringing the world nearer to starvation, yet on the very doorsteps of local authorities there are acres and acres of land that are not being utilised because nobody gets down to the problem. It is because we believe that, with the incentives given in this Bill, we can get some of this land under cultivation fairly quickly that we urge the Minister to let the local authorities, who are those closest in touch with the problem, to use their powers. I repeat that this Amendment is in no way a reflection on the good work that county councils have done and are still doing. It is because of the urgency of the problem, and because the local authorities are nearest and are more aware of the problems than the county council can be, that we urge the Minister to accept this Amendment and the following Amendments, which I think are consequential.
LORD ILFORD: These three Amendments deal with a subject which he s been discussed on a number of occasions during the last few years. Whenever new powers are conferred on local authorities the Bill always restricts the authorities affected to the county councils and the county borough councils. Then the Departments turn round later on and say

775
that the district councils have no powers and can be disregarded. It really is time that the Government seriously considered whether some of these new powers which are being given to local authorities ought not to be given to the district authorities.
In the case of this Bill, the power of inspection is precisely the sort of power which the district councils are accustomed to exercise under the Public Health Acts and other Acts, and which they can exercise just as readily as the county councils—indeed, more readily. At present neither the county councils nor the district councils possess the necessary technical staff to carry out the requirements of this Bill; they will have to rely on the Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries. Both authorities are in exactly the same position so far as their technical advice is concerned. I say to the Government that this continued policy of refraining from extending new powers to district councils really ought to be reconsidered. Where new powers are given to local authorities which are powers suitable for administration by the district councils, the district councils should be given the opportunity of accepting them.
LORD BRECON: I am sorry that I cannot support my noble friend Lord Milverton and my other noble friends. I believe that the responsibilities of inspection of these tips under Part II of the Bill should remain with the county councils. There are some very small local authorities which are district councils. Each will need to appoint staff who are qualified in soil mechanics in order to carry out their functions. It will be a costly business for the ratepayers of each of those areas. I think that the county councils with their county surveyors can look after this. They are making roads already, they have some knowledge and they have staff who know something about soil mechanics. Even then, the county council do not want to spend a great deal of money on this type of staff if the Inspectorate already have it and will supply the service. Rather, I would ask the Government to see to it that the Inspectorate have the proper staff—because if the local authority ask an outside firm to survey even a small tip it can cost £10,000.
776
Another factor is that a county council is not generally a water authority. Those of us who know Aberfan and the tragedy that happened there will recall that its primary cause was the sliding of the tip. But there was a secondary cause which contributed greatly to the damage: the fracturing of two 30-inch water mains that were laid in the bed of the old canal. This added to the extent of the tragedy. I do not think it would have been so great a catastrophe if these pipes had not been there. The mains carried water from the reservoirs six miles away. When they fractured the water ran for two hours. At the moment there is a tip at Cilfynydd which has slipped in the past. They have just laid another 30-inch water main along the bottom of the tip. If that tip slides and breaks the main, all the water, right back to the reservoirs, or at least back to any safety valve or automatic valve, is going to rush out into the area.
I think the county council is the authority to look after this matter. Incidentally, it is assumed here that no local authority will do anything to cause any damage or sliding on a tip. I do not accept that. I think the local authorities can cause extra danger and hazard in their work on these tips. In any case, we may be going to see before long from the Government vast changes in local government. We are going to see fewer small authorities and more large authorities. Those changes might make a difference; but, for the time being, I hope that this authority, this inspection, will stay with the county councils.
LORD BURDEN: I should like to call the noble Lord's attention to the Preamble to this Bill, which points out that since 1966 only one tip has been dealt with and a little remedial work has been done. With the problem on their doorsteps—and I know that the local authorities are aware of the problem—nothing has been done. It is because we want to break up the problem and give it to all the local authorities that we are pressing this Amendment.
LORD ENERGLYN: I should like to echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Brecon, regarding the size of the bodies that are to administer many of the clauses of this Bill. As the noble Lord rightly pointed out, the cost of

777
surveying alone for any tip is a very sizeable sum of money. You need experts in soil mechanics, geologists and expert surveyors. I should like to place on record the difficulties of surveying the surface of a tip. It is not like surveying the surface of a solid mountain, because the surface is constantly on the move. There are many different techniques that can be used but they are all expensive, and therefore I should like to keep the area of responsibility to the largest possible scale. Many of the clauses in this Bill will have to be implemented quickly if we are to achieve the main purpose of the Bill, to render every tip safe. At present there are not the personnel available to do this job in toto. We must think of this in the short-term and the long-term view and therefore I should have thought myself that the largest authority ought to be selected for this purpose.
As far as cost is concerned, I might point out that there are already sources of information in this country which are rendered as a public service. Let me take them one by one. First, there are the geological maps that are necessary. This country boasts of having the oldest geological survey in the world. I am proud to say that it is the mother of all geological services of the world; they are all patterned on it. Thanks to this fact, there are deposited in the Institute of Geological Sciences adequate geological maps, which are there "almost for the asking". These sources of information are readily available. Secondly, I should like to mention the splendid work done in the training schemes of the R.A.F. in aerial photography. I must declare an interest here because I originated the use of aerial photographs in the study of coal seams and tips in South Wales in the early 1940s. But photogrammetry has grown enormously. To-day we have a technique which could produce maps which will supplement specific geological maps.
This could not only speed the implementation of many clauses of this Bill but also render several different kinds of services. The first is that it could provide the site manager (who is the most important person at the moment of catastrophe) with an intelligible map. A geological map normally requires an expert to interpret it and use it; but an aerial
778
photograph suitably inscribed with the geology can be used immediately. It will tell the site manager several important things, such as the volume of material on slide, where the slide is likely to take place, where it will ultimately end up. These are important in an emergency.
The second, rather curious, outcome of this technique is that in suggesting the use of aerial photographs for the control and inspection of sites on a national basis —and I am suggesting this—we should be contributing to an area of endeavour which is quite important from the point of view, oddly enough, of invisible exports. We have outstanding firms in this country who work abroad surveying uncharted areas of the earth. They earn for us considerable sums of money as invisible exports. if they had a home-based contract to survey such tips as at tragic Aberfan (and let us not forget that there are equally dangerous tips in places like North Wales; slate tips are dangerous and difficult to maintain) they could keep down their overheads, improve techniques and so win bigger and better contracts abroad. This may appear an odd outcome of my suggestion but it is nevertheless an important one. Briefly, I support Lord Brecon's suggestion that we do not reduce the size of the authority controlling inspection and the ultimate remedial measures concerning the tips.
7.10 p.m.
Lotto STONHAM: I was beginning to believe that before the end of this Committee stage my limited knowledge of this subject would be utterly blinded by science. It makes a nice change from Home Office business and lotteries, which we discussed earlier. We are here considering three Amendments together. Amendment No. 3 is a paving Amendment to No. 4 which is the substantive Amendment, and No. 5 is consequential upon No. 4. I must congratulate the Association of Municipal Corporations on its stalwarts. When I heard the three speeches I began to wonder whether I should stand alone in putting the case for the county councils and I was the more relieved therefore, to hear the noble Lord, Lord Brecon, speak up in respect of size. In many parts of the country I do not think that it is only a question of size; it is also a question of population and resources. I believe that the

779
entire population of the county of Merioneth, or at least the electorate, is not more than 29,000.
LORD BRECON: The population of the County of Radnor is under 19.000; that is the smallest.
LORD STONHAM: It underlines how small some of the local authorities must be in areas like that. Clause 11 at present provides that the local authorities which have functions provided in Part II of the Bill are the county council or the county borough council; and in subsection (4) the county council is given power to delegate some of or all of the functions to a county district council by agreement. The Amendment we are considering is not a technical one. It is not one which depends, as it were, on technical knowledge. It proposes, bluntly, to take the Part II powers in the Bill away from the county councils and give them to the county district councils. To me it seems an extraordinary proposal to take away from the county council authorities all the Part II powers under the Bill.
We have the Bill in its present form because we seek flexibility. We want to draw everybody into taking action. My noble friend Lord Burden spoke of the need in so many areas to reclaim land, and to get into useful use land which is at present disused. I am in entire agreement with that. However, I cannot see how county councils are any less anxious to do that than other local authorities. I would remind my noble friend that grants are available to local authorities under the Local Government Act 1966, and under the Industrial Development Act, for the reclamation of derelict land The point is not of direct and immediate concern to the one that we are discussing but as my noble friend raised the matter I thought I would mention that point to him.
Everybody cannot be drawn into taking action, as we would wish, if in this Bill we restrict the technical officers of the authorities who are unable to participate. The object of subsection (4) of the clause is to ensure that whereas county councils will normally have the technical staff on a greater scale to enable them to undertake this kind of work than the local district councils (which almost by definition
780
will be smaller and have less resources) it is the district councils which have the local knowledge; and it is important to get the optimum mix of technical forces and staff and local knowledge to get the job done as soon as possible wherever the problem has to be faced.
I hope that the noble Lord who moved the Amendment and his supporters will not take it amiss if I say that it seems to me that there is something parochial about the thinking behind the Amendment. Surely the one object we all have in mind is to get the best equipped and the most knowledgeable organisation available in any given area. Surely the most promising way to achieve that is co give the power to the larger local authorities, which virtually, by definition, will have the most resources, and to say to them, "You can delegate part or all of your powers if in your area there are authorities with local knowledge and with more resources". As my noble friend Lord Energlyn underlined very much, in many cases this is a big job which requires a great deal of expertise and knowledge which will not in all cases be available immediately to every county council.
LORD ILFORD: May I interrupt the noble Lord? Neither the district councils nor the county councils possess the expert knowledge needed to carry out this duty. Both authorities will have to rely on the Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries for what they do.
LORD STONHAM: I heard the noble Lord make that point, and what he said is quite true. But I would remind him that we have now reached Part II of the Bill and it is in Part I that most of the responsibilities of the Inspectorate lie.
Another reason for the later Amendment to which the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, referred is the consciousness of district councils that not only have they not the necessary resources, in means and men, available, but they have them to a lesser degree than the county councils are likely to have them, and therefore they seek, as it were (we shall be considering this later), to put these responsibilities on to the Inspectorate. As I shall have to point out later, the powers, and even the knowledge and

781
responsibilities, of the Inspectorate in these matters are strictly limited. It will be imperative for the county councils, the authorities with these responsibilities, to employ outside experts and consultants for many of the jobs and consultations which will have to take place.
The noble Lord, Lord Milverton, referred to the Second Reading debate. May I remind noble Lords what I said then on this point:
"The Bill provides that the powers shall reside with the county councils but that they shall be able to delegate these powers under the Act. My Lords, it is possible to think in terms of the powers being restricted to the county council level or to the county district council level, or of giving powers to both; but to give overlapping powers to two tiers in the local authority structure seems the worst of all worlds. The function of two authorities can only too easily become the function of neither; and restricting the powers to authorities at county council level would, I think, ensure that they are exercised by an authority large and powerful enough to have the technical staff."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28/1/69, col. 1150.]
We want to place the responsibility, as we do in the Bill, on an authority which is likely to have the best resources for discharging that responsibility but at the same time will be able to delegate its powers, if advisable and desirable.
There is not much that I can add. Some district councils, although I think it would be a minority, could do just as well as the county councils, and they would have the additional advantage of detailed local knowledge but those district councils who could do the job will not be bypassed because under the clause as dratted we expect the county councils to delegate some of their functions under Part II to district councils that are willing and able to exercise them. Surely that is the way it should be. With respect, it seems to me absurd to suggest, as this Amendment does, that the county council, the major authority, should have no power under Part II of the Bill. I hope that noble Lords will see the force of this argument and withdraw the Amendment.
LORD MILVERTON: In view of the arguments that have been adduced against this Amendment, I beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 11 agreed to.
Clause 12 [Information relating to disused tips]:
7.22 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON LORD MILVERTON moved Amendment No. 6:
Page 9, line 42, at end insert—
("() A local authority may, by notice served as aforesaid, require the said owner or other person, to investigate within such reasonable time as the notice may specify, the existing conditions of the tip and furnish the local authority with such information about these conditions as the investigation reveals.")
The noble Lord said: Clause 12 empowers a local authority to call on a tip owner, or any other person who may be able to assist, for such documents in his possession or control as he may have about the tip. This seems to imply that the information which may be required from owners and others is restricted to information which they already have in their possession, presumably from earlier investigations. But, of course, it may be completely out of date. It was therefore suggested to the Minister that an Amendment should be made requiring the owner of a tip or other appropriate person to investigate the existing conditions of the tip and supply current information.
In reply, the Minister felt that it would be unreasonable to put the owner of a disused tip to the expense of doing this unless there was evidence that his tip was unstable and likely to endanger members of the public. It was assumed that usually he would keep his tip safe. However, the whole basis of Part II of the Bill is that the normal responsibility is placed firmly on the local authorities to see that disused tips do not become a public danger. The Government, having chosen local authorities as the instrument for so securing, ought in our view to give them the powers they reasonably feel to be necessary in order to carry out their duties. There cannot be many closed tips which are a potential danger and where there is reason to think that such a tip exists it is reasonable that local authorities should be able to require the owner to investigate existing conditions instead of having to do it themselves. I beg to move.
LORD ARWYN: I should like to see an opportunity given to each tip owner to register as soon as possible after the

783
Act is passed the lack of any information required by local or county authorities. Such documents or records as may be required under this clause may have been destroyed so that they will not be available within 14 days. Perhaps they never existed, especially in the case of old mines, started by the mineral owners and subsequently sold to a company after reserving the mineral rights. That happened several times in my own family. The ownership of the surface is retained by the original owners—that means the ownership of the tips. Alternatively, the documents in the possession of a tip owner may be inadequate. We must remember that the initiators of these tips were controlled by the economics of the enterprise, and in those days the lack of geological knowledge, and certainly of soil mechanics, prohibited them from choosing a site as carefully as could be done to-day. I should like to support the Amendment.
LORD STONHAM: The noble Lord, Lord Milverton, by his Amendment, proposes to empower a local authority to require the owner of a disused tip to investigate the conditions of the tip and furnish the local authority with the results of the investigation. This power is not needed to enable a local authority to discharge effectively the functions conferred on it by Part II of the Bill. The authority can already, under Clause 12(1), require the production of any documents bearing on the stability of a disused tip, including the reports of any tests carried out on behalf of an owner, and, under Clause 13(1), enter on to land to determine whether such a tip is unstable. I never make heavy weather of technical deficiencies but I think that I should say to the noble Lord that his Amendment is invalid because it is far too imprecise to have any real meaning.
Perhaps I may deal with some of the serious objections to the Amendment. First, it would tend to encourage local authorities to cut down the inspection of tips which might constitute a danger to members of the public and to rely on reports from owners. Safety would be bound to suffer. Few owners, other than the National Coal Board, have the expertise and resources to do a worthwhile inspection themselves. Secondly, it could impose a heavy and in some cases quite
784
intolerable financial burden on the owner of a tip by requiring him to carry out operations which may not be necessary to protect the public. Not all landowners, particularly owners of land of this kind, are rich. It would therefore be necessary further to complicate the Bill by including provision for appeals against unreasonable demands. This again would take time, and again safety would suffer.
Thirdly, the Amendment offends against the general approach of the Bill and of the Public Health Act 1936, in relation to statutory nuisances; namely, that an owner who keeps his property in good order should not be put to needless expense. Under the Bill a local authority can recover the cost of exploratory tests only when they result in remedial operations—that is, when a tip is unstable and by reason of its instability constitutes a danger to members of the public. Another objection is that tests take time and the reports furnished by an owner might well prove inconclusive. In that event the local authority would be obliged to institute its own tests under Clause 13. Once again time and money would be wasted and safety would suffer.
Some of these disadvantages could perhaps be reduced by further complicating the Bill which is already complex enough; but, given that only a very small proportion of tips is likely to give trouble, the complications and other disadvantages of the Amendment far outweigh the only advantage I can see; that is, to relieve a local authority of some financial liability. I hope that for these reasons, and because technically it is invalid, the noble Lord will feel ready to withdraw his Amendment.
LORD MILVERTON: In view of what the noble Lord has said, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
7.30 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON LORD MILVERTON moved Amendment No. 7:
Page 10, line 10, at end insert—
("() An inspector shall, on request, furnish to a local authority such reports as they may reasonably require to enable them to determine whether a disused tip is, or is likely to constitute, a danger as aforesaid.")
The noble Lord said: With the permission of your Lordships, I should like to speak to Amendment No. 11 in

785
moving Amendment No. 7, as the two are connected. The reason for suggesting these Amendments is that they seek to write into the Bill a provision bringing Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries into the picture under Part II. In earlier approaches emphasis was laid on the difficult position in which local authorities would be placed by being given discretionary powers to establish whether disused tips constituted a public danger (which powers they will undoubtedly be expected to use), yet not necessarily possessing the expert knowledge necessary to decide whether to use them. Her Majesty's Inspectorate are obviously the appropriately qualified body, with expert knowledge in this field. They are named in Part I of the Bill, but nowhere in Part II. The Minister has assured the Association of Municipal Corporations that their help will be available to local authorities, but the Association wish to see specific provision made to this effect in the Bill itself, and the extent of the help to be clearly defined.
The two Amendments suggested would enable a local authority to call on an inspector to report on the condition of a disused tip, on which report the authority would then decide whether to act and to call upon an inspector to assist where the authority decide that they themselves must do remedial works, making his expert knowledge available to them. In correspondence with the Ministry of Power, they have said that the inspectors will be able to advise only on the basis of a visual inspection of the tip and all available records, but will not be able to carry out engineering operations or to supervise remedial operations. This does not seem to be good enough. This is the expert, qualified body, and their help, if needed, must surely be available as of right to local authorities engaged in this work which demands specialist knowledge. Local authorities did not seek this responsibility, but they will readily accept it provided that they can have the necessary skilled assistance when they feel they need it. There may be only a limited number of inspectors, but equally there can be only a limited number of tips requiring inspection at any one time, and this specialist body of experts ought to be on call by local authorities for any
786
help that they can reasonably give. I beg to move.
LORD ILFORD: This Bill places on local authorities substantial new responsibilities, and, indeed, they are responsibilities which, if they were neglected or not properly performed, might result in serious disaster. It is essential that your Lordships should be satisfied that the necessary technical assistance should be available to local authorities in discharging these new duties. I do not think my noble friend is asking for too much when he asks that the local authorities should be able to call upon the Inspectorate to furnish them with reports upon any tips which appear to them to be in need of some action to ensure their safety.
The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, dealt with this in the Second Reading debate, and he said:
"ֵ the local authority associations have been told that the advice of the Inspectorate on tips wilt be available to them and to all local authorities."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28/1/69, col. 1151.]
We were very glad to have that assurance, but I think it ought to go a little further, and something should be introduced into the Bill to ensure that if the local authorities require this highly technical advice they should be entitled to receive it from the Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries.
LORD BRECON: I should like to support my noble friends on this Amendment. I think that the Mines Department are going to have to set up (they probably have done so now) a substantial department to deal with this particular problem. If their services were made available to the local authorities, it would save a great deal of proliferation of staff. Having got this information, the responsibility of the local authorities would come in to carry out the remedial works.
LORD STONHAM: This is one of those occasions reminiscent of:
"The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but he had fled."
But, like the boy who stood on the burning deck, I am undaunted, and I hope I shall be able to satisfy your Lordships. Amendment No. 7, which refers to reports that may reasonably be required, with Amendment No. 11, which

787
was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, and which purports to assist in carrying out remedial operations and works of reinstatement, are virtually both arguments for skilled assistance being given to local authorities, and I am glad to have the opportunity of dealing with them together. Indeed, Amendment No. 7 is related also to Amendment No. 4, which was designed to give Part II powers direct to district councils.
In this Amendment noble Lords are proposing to place obligations on owners of tips and on Her Majesty's inspectors, as I understand it, in order that county districts would be in a position to exercise the functions conferred on local authorities by Part II of the Bill without the need to employ and pay specialist staff or consultants to deal with tip problems; and they would then be able to take shelter, as it were, behind the advice of Her Majesty's inspectors in the event of a tip failure. That is the position as we see it. It is true that recommendation No. 21 of the Aberfan Tribunal says:
"Tips (active or disused) should be regularly inspected by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries. Their Reports should be available to local authorities."
I submit, however, that these Amendments are unacceptable for several reasons, which I regard as good reasons. First, Part II of the Bill (and we are now dealing with Part II) is concerned with disused tips; that is, tips which no longer form part of the mining and quarrying industry, and are, so to speak, now part of the landscape.
LORD BRECON: Perhaps I may ask the noble Lord a question. The Bill defines what is an active tip, and also what is a closed tip. The noble Lord used the expression "disused tip". Could we have a provision in the Bill to show what a disused tip is?
LORD STONHAM I would say off-hand that it is one that is no longer used.LORD STONHAM I would say off-hand that it is one that is no longer used.
LORD BRECON: Then what is a closed tip?
LORD STONHAM: I will deal with that point in a moment. If the noble Lord will allow me, I want to deal now with this Amendment. The fact is that
788
Part II of the Bill is concerned with disused tips, and, as I have said, it is Part II with which we are now dealing, tips which no longer form part of the mining and quarrying industries and are part of the landscape. The problems that are likely to arise, therefore, are not mining or quarrying problems, but problems, as indeed the noble Lord, Lord Brecon, said at an earlier date, of soil mechanics, in which field, as I said earlier, there is plenty of expertise. Many local authorities, and also the National Coal Board, employ consultants, and do so with every confidence. But the important thing is (and this is why I keep mentioning that we are now on Part II of the Bill) that Her Majesty's Inspectors of mines and quarries are recruited, trained and organised to enforce the Mines and Quarries Act 1954, and their powers and those of the Minister of Power are limited to operating mines and quarries.
The inspectors are not equipped to carry out exploratory tests or to supervise the carrying out of remedial operations. The help they can give is therefore strictly limited. We must get this clearly in our minds. It is no use county councils thinking that they can get virtually all the technical help they need in this matter from Her Majesty's inspectors. We have on many occasions made it clear that the inspectors will give local authorities all the help they can; and these assurances stand. But this is a very different matter from writing provisions into the Bill which would virtually give local authorities carte blanche to call on the Inspectorate for help even where the local authorities are well able to do the job themselves or to employ consultants to act on their behalf.
The provisions which are proposed in this Amendment are undesirable from a number of standpoints, first, because they would tend to detract from the responsibility of the local authorities in their traditional role as the guardians of public safety to make up their own minds about the need for remedial operations. They would formally involve the Minister of Power and Her Majesty's inspectors in fields—that is, Part II fields—in which they have neither power nor responsibilities. Moreover, they would also deflect the inspectors from their duties under the Mines and Quarries Act 1954,

789
which include the inspection of active tips where, as the Aberfan Tribunal made it clear, the dangers almost invariably arise, and where their skills are most usefully employed.
The noble Lord, Lord Brecon, asked me about a disused tip. A "tip" is defined in Clause 2(1), and "active" and "closed" tips are defined in Clause 2(2). A disused tip is defined in subsection (2) of Clause II as a tip which is neither active nor closed, which I think is a very lucid definition.
The noble Lord, Lord Ilford, asked me about assurances. As noble Lords know, I would never do or say anything which I thought was unfair, or try to walk away from any obligation. I give your Lordships an unqualified assurance that Her Majesty's inspectors will make available any relevant information. I would point out that Clause 7 of the Bill, which deals with the preservation of plans et cetera of tips when mines and quarries are abandoned, has been inserted to ensure that such information is kept for future use. Inspectors will give help which is within their power and which comes within their remit. Their experiences and their responsibilities relate to the Mines and Quarries Act. In relation to Part II powers and responsibilities, local authorities, while being able to ask inspectors for such help as they are able to give, must have it in mind that other responsibilities and help which the inspectors cannot give will have to be met either by members of their own staff or by consultants and others whom they will have to call in for specific projects. It is for these reasons, and all else I have said, that we cannot accept this Amendment.
LORD MILVERTON: In view of the specific assurances which the noble Lord has given, I beg leave to withdraw this Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 12 agreed to.
Clause 13 agreed to.
Clause 14 [Notice requiring owner of disused tip to carry out remedial operations]:
7.45 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 8:
Page 11, line 33, at end insert—
("Provided however that the Inspector of Mines and Quarries for the district has previously been consulted on the extent of the remedial operations so specified.")
The noble Lord said: This is the first time that I have spoken on Part II of the Bill, and I should like to declare again, as I did on Second Reading, my own personal interest in this Part as I am the owner of some of these unfortunate tips in South Wales. Some of the points appropriate to this Amendment have already been discussed under the previous Amendment, and indeed under Amendments to Clause 11; but this Amendment covers a slightly different point from that which has just been dealt with by the noble Lord, Lord Milverton. This clause, Clause 14, is the one that enables a local authority to serve notice on an owner of a disused tip, so clearly defined by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, requiring him to carry out remedial operations. The Amendment suggests that, before doing so, the local authority should be obliged to consult the local inspector of mines and quarries on the extent of the required operations. This is not in any sense the carte blanche that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, described the last Amendment as being. There is no question of the local authority being able to throw the whole responsibility on the local inspector. But it does, I suggest, give a further reassurance to the owner that no unnecessarily expensive operations are going to be required.
During the Second Reading debate, the noble Lord stated:
"local authorities will normally prefer to proceed under Clause 14 where the owner is in a position to do the work."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28/1/69, col. 1148.]
Taking this as a starting point, and taking into account what appears in the Explanatory Memorandum (which makes clear that these are extremely expensive operations: the figures mentioned in the Memorandum are £30,000 to £100,000)

791
I am only concerned that the best available professional advice should be sought before notice is served on an owner. I agree, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said, that normally a local authority will take professional advice from civil engineers or/and surveyors, if not those on its own staff then maybe by calling in outside consultants. But many of the factors which affect a disused tip will be best known to a mining expert. I know that it is a question of soil mechanics to some degree, but those who are skilled in soil mechanics may not necessarily also be skilled in the mechanics of mining and the mechanics of tipping.
I would suggest, as my noble friend Lord Brecon has continually suggested in the Committee, that the local inspector is a man whose knowledge and experience of active tips would be extremely appropriate also in the case of disused tips. I do not believe there would be any difficulty about his availability; he would normally be readily available in mining areas. And, after all, it would be, I hope, only on very rare occasions that his advice would be called for. I suggest that it is essential that he is brought in before the owner is required to undertake what may otherwise be extremely expensive remedial operations. I suggest that as these inspectors play such a key role in Part I of the Bill we should ensure that their experience and technical knowledge are available also under Part II. I beg to move.
LORD ARWYN: This Amendment is worth very serious consideration. No authority should serve such a notice without previous consultation with this Inspectorate. That is my very firm opinion. I have been a colliery manager and I know what goes with that job. When an inspector calls on a colliery manager he expects the colliery manager to understand his vocabulary, and the inspector should understand the colliery manager's vocabularly, so that there is a proper interchange of information. Without that one cannot get very far. The members of the staff of a local authority may have greater, or equivalent, local knowledge, I but in my view this Amendment would reduce the possibility of local prejudices or charges of victimisation by the action
792
of serving such a notice without consultation with the Inspectorate.
I am told that the Chief Inspector's Annual Report for 1967 states that specialist civil engineers are to be recruited, and training courses are already arranged. I take it that under ideal conditions of inspection at a disused pit these specialist civil engineers would be accompanied by the local mines inspectors. Therefore we can assume that if sufficient technical knowledge is available from the Inspectorate the local authorities should have this consultation before they serve a notice under this clause.
LORD STONHAM: My noble friend Lord Arwyn spoke about an inspector calling on the colliery manager. That has nothing to do with this Amendment, which seeks a totally different situation.
LORD ARWYN: May I interrupt my noble friend, in order to make myself clear? A disused pit is more dangerous than a pit that is in operation, and the inspector, who has passed his colliery certificate, knows the mixtures of shale, fireclay and the various other things which one gets underground, and their dangers. So the vocabulary which he will use is one which he has been trained to use, and he will be better understood by the National Coal Board, for instance, and certainly he should be understood by the local authorities.
LORD STONHAM: Yes, but we are dealing with a clause entitled:
"Notice requiring owner of disused tip to carry out remedial operations".
We are talking about disused tips, and we are also talking about an Amendment to provide that before a notice served by the local authority becomes operative the inspector of mines and quarries for the district has previously been consulted on the extent of remedial operations as specified. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said that this is somewhat different from the Amendment we have been considering previously—and I agree that it is on a slightly different point. Nevertheless, I am afraid that the arguments are very much the same.

793
I notice that the noble Lord has not put down a similar Amendment to Clause 17, which suggests to me that he is, understandably, anxious to ensure that local authorities do not make unreasonable demands on owners. But the Bill already contains what we regard as being adequate safeguards. If the noble Lord will look at Clause 15, he will see that it says:
"A person on whom is served a notice or a copy of a notice under section 14 may, within the period of 21 days beginning with the date of service of the notice on the owner, apply to the court for an order varying or cancelling the notice on any one or more of the following grounds. …"
There are six grounds, of which the first two are:

"(a) that there is no reasonable ground for believing that the tip is unstable or that, by reason of instability, the tip constitutes or is likely to constitute a danger to members of the public;

(b) that the remedial operations specified in the notice are more extensive than is necessary to secure the safety of members of the public.…

The safeguards are there, and in another place my honourable friend gave an undertaking that the Inspectorate would be available to give local authorities what help they can. As I have already indicated to-night, this undertaking stands, but we regard it as being undesirable to mention the Inspectorate specifically in Part II of the Bill because, as I have said, the Inspectorate belongs to Part I and their responsibilities arise under the Mines and Quarries Act. We think that consultation with Her Majesty's Inspectors, or indeed any outside body, is unnecessary in all cases, because some local authorities already have adequate expertise among their own staffs, or can obtain it, and the job of the Mines Inspectorate is to supervise the operations of the mining and quarrying industry in the interests of safety. They are trained for that purpose, and if they were required by Statute to play a role under Part II of the Bill, inspectors would be needlessly involved in litigation, to the detriment of their other duties.
The Bill places on the shoulders of local authorities the responsibility for requiring remedial operations in the interests of public safety, and since the Minister of Power (whom on this Bill I am representing) has no powers under
794
Part II of the Bill, to mention the Mines Inspectorate in that Part would involve him in matters for which he has no responsibility. I would also point out that if consultation is to be limited to the case of Clause 14 notices, as the Amendment requires, local authorities might be encouraged to proceed under Clause 17, a step which I understand the noble Lord would be anxious to avoid. I cannot see how it can be held that the inspectors should be brought into the Statute in Part II of the Bill. Apart from the assurance which I have already given, more than once, I am afraid that I cannot do anything else; and I cannot accept this Amendment.
LORD ABERDARE: Perhaps I may correct one impression straight away. I prefer Clause 17 procedure to Clause 14 procedure because there are various safeguards under Clause 17, such as grounds. However, I take the noble Lord's point. I think that all of us who have supported this Amendment and the previous Amendments feel that it is just because the inspector is involved in Part I that we want him to be involved in Part II. It is because of the expert knowledge he has of mining operations. The noble Lord, Lord Arwyn, made the point that what constitutes the tip are the shale and other constituent parts, a matter which is particularly within his realm of knowledge. We felt it important, therefore, that the expert advice of the inspector should be available for disused tips as well. However, it is something to know that the noble Lord has given me an assurance that the advice of the Inspectorate will be readily available if called upon, and one can only hope that it will be called upon. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 14 agreed to.
Clause 15 [Appeals against Notices under section 14]:
7.59 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 9:
Page 13, line 11, after ("14") insert ("or section 17(2)").
The noble Lord said: This clause, as it stands, gives an owner a right of appeal against a notice issued under Clause 14.

795
I have no quarrel with the clause, but I think it should also apply to a notice under Clause 17(2) where the local authority decides to take action itself. It is perfectly true, as the noble Lord pointed out on Second Reading, that once a local authority has taken action under Clause 17(2), and the notice is presented to the owner, there is a provision in Clause 24 for him to appeal. But by then the work has been done and it is very much more difficult to argue that too much has been spent or that unnecessary work been done.
It seems to me that when a local authority decide to put work in hand on a disused tip and notify the owner that they intend to do so and recover the cost from him, at that stage the owner should have a right of appeal, just as he does under Clause 14 if the local authority require him to do the work. This seems to me only elementary justice. What I am proposing in no way interferes with the right of the local authority under Clause 17(3) to take immediate action if there is immediate danger. It would apply only in the normal, if I may call it, routine way in which the local authority act under Clause 17(2).
In the course of the Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, gave two reasons against writing in this appeal procedure. First of all, he said that local authorities will normally prefer to proceed under Clause 14. Well, that may be so, but it is not really relevant to an appeal procedure under Clause 17(2). He further said that local authorities will proceed under Clause 17 in three cases: first of all, where urgent action is needed—and, as I have explained, this Amendment in no way trespasses on their powers in an emergency which are contained in subsection (3); secondly, where an owner is unwilling or unable to carry out the work himself—but I would point out that he is still expected to pay; and, thirdly, where a question of grant is involved—and here again the owner is not relieved of making some contribution, and it could be a substantial one.
I should like to make one further point. It may not often occur but it is possible that a local authority will choose to issue a notice under Clause 17(2) on, say, a quarrying company who
796
own a disused tip, and it is quite possible that the company will prefer to do the work itself and pay for it rather than have an outside contractor enter the site and then have to foot the Bill. As the Bill stands at present, such a company would have no appeal. If the Amendment were accepted, the company could appeal under Clause 15(1)(c) and perhaps establish its right to do the work itself, and I cannot see that there could be any objection to that. For all those reasons I believe it is important that the same right of appeal should apply against notices issued by a local authority, whether they fall under Clause 14 or Clause 17(2). I beg to move.
LORD STONHAM: As the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has made clear, his Amendment proposes that there should be provision for an appeal to the court where a local authority decide to carry out remedial operations themselves and give three weeks' notice of their intention under subsection (2) of Clause 17. It can be argued, and indeed the noble Lord did argue, that this was a perfectly reasonable procedure, because the procedure would be adopted only when there was immediate urgency and that the procedure under subsection (3) of Clause 17, where there is such urgency, is unaffected. First of all—and I always dislike saying this—technically the Amendment is defective. It would need to be accompanied by an Amendment to Clause 24 to ensure that matter which could already have been the subject of an appeal under Clause 15 was not raised again at the stage when a local authority who had carried out remedial operations sought to recover the costs. Without such an Amendment the same issue could be tried twice.
But, leaving that aside and dealing with the question of the principle of the noble Lord's proposal, we find it objectionable, first, because the proposal is inconsistent with the whole structure of the Bill, which is drafted on the basis that the power to deal with disused tips which might constitute a danger to members of the public belongs to the local authority, who have the choice of proceeding either under Clause 14 by requiring the owner to carry out any necessary remedial works or by doing the work themselves under Clause 17.

797
The provisions of the Bill are so drawn that the local authority have every incentive to proceed under Clause 14 if the owner of the tip is able to do the work. If they proceed under Clause 17, they have to pay for the remedial operations and attempt to recover the costs later, and at the recovery stage justify their action to the court. It follows that a local authority will not normally have recourse to Section 17 without good reason, and clearly where they are acting with good reason they should be able to get on with the job immediately in the interests of public safety, without having first to justify their action before a court. After all, it is the local authority's responsibility, not that of the court, to use the powers conferred by the Bill to ensure that the public is properly protected against a tip failure. The function of the court is to establish who should pay. If the authority are over-zealous, they will have to bear the cost themselves, since the rights of owners and potential contributors are adequately protected by the comprehensive grounds of appeal set out in Clause 24.
If noble Lords will look at the provisions of Clause 16, they will see how a local authority's responsibilities to their constituents are recognised and how inconsistent it would be to permit an appeal against a notice served under Clause 17. Clause 16 enables the local authority at any time, subject to the payment of compensation, to cancel a notice served on an owner under Clause 14, even when that notice has been the subject of an appeal under Clause 15. They can then get on with the work themselves under Clause 17 and make the tip safe. Clearly it would be objectionable, as well as a waste of time and money, that issues which had already been before the court under Clause 15 should again be the subject of litigation under Clause 17 before anything was done, and for a third time at the recovery stage. Of course, in such circumstances the condition of a tip would probably deteriorate further and the ultimate cost of the operations increase.
All in all, we are convinced that the Bill provides the cleanest and most sensible solution. It gives an owner and others the opportunity to challenge the need for and extent of remedial operations in the ordinary case and before
798
the work starts. It gives a local authority power to do the work first on their own responsibility, when they think that course justified, and defend their action later. It both prevents the same issues coming before the court more than once and provides adequate safeguards at all stages. Both in the practical sense and in the technical sense I think the Amendment is wrong and therefore unacceptable.
LORD ABERDARE: I am grateful to the noble Lord. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment for the moment and to study what he said more carefully.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.10 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 10:
Page 13, line 26, at end insert—
("() That the owner is prepared to undertake such operations as are necessary to remove the tip but has been refused planning permission to carry out those operations;")
The noble Lord said: This deals with another matter to which the noble Lord was kind enough to pay some attention at Second Reading. If I may briefly recapitulate my argument, it is that many of these disused tips contain small coal, and this makes it possible in certain circumstances to recover the cost of moving the entire tip by the sale of the coal. However, an owner has to obtain planning permission before he can do so and, not infrequently, that permission is refused on grounds of amenity. A judgment is made by the planning authority that to move the tip would cause unnecessary nuisance to people living in the neighbourhood. My argument is that in such a case an owner should not be held solely responsible for the cost of remedial operations in the future. After all, he has offered to make the tip safe once and for all by removing it, but he is told that the local community prefer to keep it. It seems to me only right that if it becomes unstable in the future the local community should share in the cost of remedial works.
In the course of the Second Reading debate the noble Lord tried to appease me by pointing out that there was an appeal to the Minister in any case of an application for planning permission That does not cover my point. The Minister,

799
like the local community, may feel that it would cause too much nuisance to remove the tip in particular circumstances. I am not contesting the justice of the planning decisions; all I am saying is that where the local amenity is preferable to complete removal of danger, the local community that enjoys that amenity should share in the risks of future danger. The choice is theirs between the removal of the danger once and for all, and the discomfort of the process of removal.
The owner would by no means be entirely rid of his responsibilities, but if he were called upon to carry out remedial works under Clause 14 and this Amendment were accepted, then he would have the right to appeal on the grounds that previously he had been refused planning permission; and if that appeal were successful then, presumably, the local authority would proceed under Clause 17 and in due course the owner's contribution would be decided by the Minister under Clause 25. Briefly, what I am trying to ensure is that where several parties are interested in a disused tip they should all share in the risks attaching to it. I beg to move.
LORD ARWYN: So far as I understand it, I think that this Amendment indicates a conflict of interest between departments. It is my contention that the removal of a tip should have complete precedence over any other interest. If planning permission is refused, then the local authority should take over full responsibility for the tip and its safety.
8.14 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: I recall our exchanges on this matter on Second Reading, and I am sorry that the noble Lord feels that the appeal to the Minister is not much of a help to him. I feel that there are circumstances in which this could ensure that the matter he raised was fully ventilated and the Minister would be able to take account of both amenity and safety considerations. I saw particularly the noble Lord's point at the time and I said I would look into it, because it would be a pity if there were a case where an owner could forestall a slip, as it were, by removing a disused tip and extracting small coal, and so
800
reducing the cost, but were then refused permission, only to find later on that he was faced with an emergency, leaving no time to wash the usable coal. I know the cases he has in mind, where perhaps with hindsight another course might have been pursued. But, for all that and for all my sympathies and, I hope, understanding of this particular point, I really cannot recommend the Committee to accept the Amendment.
May I say a word about planning permission in this context? The Bill is silent on this subject because it is thought that remedial operations made necessary by Statutory notice under Clauses 14 or 17 will not constitute development requiring permission. Leaving aside the situation in which action has to be taken under the Bill, planning permission may not be required to remove a tip or to remove material from it. When deposited material remains "unabsorbed" into the terrain, it may well be regarded as chattels which can be removed as a follow up to mining operations. But when the tip has become naturalised, the extraction of coal will normally need permission. As Part II of the Bill is concerned with disused tips, it may be fair to generalise and say that any disturbance constituting engineering or mining operations will need permission, except when being done in pursuance of a notice under the Bill.
The noble Lord's Amendment refers to "such operations as are necessary to remove a tip". But what are those operations? The noble Lord has the washing of coal very much in mind, but if a planning application were necessary in any particular case it could have been made for a purpose which bore no obvious and direct relation to removal and could legitimately have been turned down on amenity, transport or other grounds. So it is possible to envisage a case in which the refusal of planning permission was due entirely to the owner's desire to carry out a profitable operation without safety coming into the matter at all. He might or might not have reason to think he was anticipating —or preventing—action under the Bill.
Under the noble Lord's Amendment there would be no time limit linking the refusal of permission and the action of the local council under the Bill. But the need to take action to make the tip

801
safe may have been brought about by some event since the refusal of permission—either by unforeseeable natural causes, or perhaps through some interference with the tip without permission. We do not think that that should be a reason why the owner should be relieved of obligations under the Bill. If we agreed with this Amendment, what would there be to stop the owner of every tip from applying for permission to remove his tip in the hope of getting a refusal which would enable him to appeal under Clause 15 if anything later went wrong?
Clearly, permission could not be given for wholesale removal of tips because all the material removed, except saleable coal, has to be put somewhere else. There are bound to be amenity considerations in proposals to remove tips, and they may be strong enough to justify refusal of permission except when safety is at issue. A local planning authority must feel free to turn down a planning application on planning grounds without their, or any other local authority, having to take over financial liability at some future time if remedial operations become necessary. Moreover, it is possible that the potential revenue from the sale of washed coal would abate only slightly the cost of making a tip safe. It is also possible that the cost of remedial operations required by the local authority would be much less even than the net cost of the complete removal of the tip contemplated in the Amendment. This seems altogether too easy a way of avoiding the responsibility which the Bill places on owners.
I would return to the point that an owner has a right of appeal to the Minister or the Secretary of State on a planning application—a point which the Amendment fails to cover. This will ensure that no planning application is dealt with on a parochial basis and that the Minister can take a wide view of the question, including any safety considerations. But to remove potential liability for future safety measures when a planning application is turned down almost smacks of hidden compensation for a planning refusal.
I am sure the noble Lord did not envisage any of these things arising out of his Amendment, but now that I have
802
gone into the ramifications—and I hope he will forgive me for giving a rather long explanation—I hope he will feel that it is right that we should refuse this Amendment.
LORD ABERDARE: I am grateful to the noble Lord. I agree that the Amendment is defective if it has the consequences which he has explained. I am still a little concerned about the owner's position in certain cases, but meanwhile I should like to withdraw this Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 15 agreed to.
Clauses 16 to 20 agreed to.
8.22 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON LORD MILVERTON moved Amendment No. 12:
After Clause 20 insert the following new clause:
Liability for damage and injury
". Where damage or injury is caused by the instability of a disused tip the fact that the tip was accumulated under statutory power shall not exonerate the undertakers from any indictment, action or other proceedings to which they would otherwise have been liable."
The noble Lord said: I do not propose to take up the time of the Committee with any lengthy exposition of this Amendment because I propose, after having had correspondence with the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, to ask leave to withdraw it. I would just say that a similar clause was moved in another place when the Minister replied that if, as he believed, only the National Coal Board had statutory powers, the position is covered by the Coal Nationalisation Act 1946, which says that the function of the Board shall not entitle them to disregard any enactment or authorise any act or omission unlawful on any other ground.
The Amendment was withdrawn on that assurance, but subsequently the legal advisers of the Association of Municipal Corporations were in some doubt about whether that was a correct piece of advice, and they seemed to think that it was possible that that meaning merely limited the wide powers given to the Board by other parts of the Act, and that it had no effect on the statutory defence which the Board could claim. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, was kind enough

803
to point out to me in a very courteous letter which he sent me:
"The question of statutory undertakers and the National Coal Board being able to plead statutory authority as a defence against common law claims for damages if negligence cannot be proved is, of course, a large question and not one confined to tips."
I am prepared to accept that and, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, pointed out, even if there is any foundation to our view of the position, an Amendment to this Bill is not the right place, as it has a much wider context. It would apply to many other things than tips. Therefore, subject to anything the noble Lord has to say I shall beg leave to withdraw this Amendment. I beg to move.
LORD STONHAM: I am most grateful to the noble Lord. Indeed, the Committee has even greater reason for being grateful to him because I have a formidable brief here consisting of at least 1,000 words and quoting every possible authority under the sun from Lord Dunedin onwards. I know that the Association of Municipal Corporations disagreed with us at one point—at least they were still in disagreement with us at the time of the Second Reading, but I hope that this is no longer the case. There is not going to be any difficulty about this at all, but if the A.M.C. is still doubtful then I shall be very pleased to write to them and quote all our authorities for thinking that we are absolutely on the right lines here. On this particular point they have nothing to fear at all.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clauses 21 to 24 agreed to.
8.26 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE LORD ABERDARE moved Amendment No. 13:
After Clause 24, insert the following new clause
Grants towards Owners' Expenditure.
".—(l) Where remedial operations are being or have been carried out in relation to a disused tin by the owner of the tip, the appropriate Minister may, with the approval of the Treasury, make grants towards the expenditure incurred by the owner in or in connection with the carrying out of the remedial operations and any consequential works of reinstatement.
(2) Grants made by the appropriate Minister under this section shall be of such amounts and payable at such times and subject to such conditions as he may from time to time determine."
The noble Lord said: The noble Lord got off to a good start by accepting my first Amendment, and I hope that he will look with favour on my last, because it raises a very important point. Again it is one that was covered on Second Reading, and my argument can be quite briefly put. If a local authority proceeds under Clause 17 and carries out the work itself, it can apply for grant to the Minister, and in making that grant the Minister may limit the contribution of the owner. But if the local authority proceeds under Clause 14 the owner has to carry out the work and foot the entire bill, and he has no right to apply for grant.
I would remind the Committee that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, throughout this Committee stage has told us that the whole object of the Bill is to encourage local authorities to act under Clause 14. It is to safeguard the owner's position, if that is so, that I am moving this Amendment to give him an equal right to apply for grant. It seems to me only right that he should have this right, in view of the fact that the landowner who owns the disused tip may well have had no responsibility whatever for making the tip, and certainly no say on the safety aspect at the time the tip was made. This new clause, if it were to be agreed to, would give him the right of applying to the Minister for grant. I have never suggested that this should be a grant as of right any more than the grant made to a local authority is of right; but it would give the owner a chance to apply to the Minister.
The noble Lord was good enough to spend some time on this matter in the course of the Second Reading debate. It is of course a difficult point, because so much depends on the particular circumstances. He spoke of the owner perhaps being what he described as a "lightweight" financially, but when we are talking in terms of sums of £30,000 to £100,000 even a heavyweight is likely to be daunted. I appreciate that in a great many cases—I hope in most cases—the situation will be resolved by agreement between the owner and the local authority and, if necessary, the Minister. The noble Lord made this point; but, of course, if we depended entirely on good will we should not have a need for this Bill at all. I should like to insert in it something to cover the possible awkward

805
case which might arise if the owner had notice served on him under Clause 14 and had no right to apply for a grant.
I was impressed by what the noble Lord said on Second Reading about fair play. I say frankly that I have no fears about there being fair play under Clause 17 procedure. In my own experience certainly that has been so. I had experience as the noble Lord knows, of a tip that slipped, and I certainly received the very fairest of play from the Welsh Office, from the local authority, and from everybody involved. It is just to ensure that that same fair play is exercised under Clause 14 procedure that I move this Amendment.
LORD STONHAM: As the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has said, this is a very important matter and a somewhat difficult one. Since Second Reading I have given it a considerable amount of thought. I hope that the Committee will hear with me while I follow out those thought processes. Under the Bill as at present drafted, no grant can be paid directly to an owner who complies with a notice under Clause 14 requiring him to carry out remedial operations; the Exchequer can become involved only where the local authority themselves take responsibility for the work under Clause 17. The Bill is based on the principle that owners have an obligation to keep tips in a stable condition and to avoid creating a danger to the public. And it takes account of the owner's potential liability at Common Law if damage or injury is caused by the failure of a tip. It is not the Government's intention to give owners the impression that they can look to Exchequer grants as of right, to relieve them of their moral and Common Law obligations.
A wealthy owner or large corporation which is capable of carrying out remedial operations is unlikely to need, let alone deserve, financial help. It seems unlikely that someone with no resources would want to or would be asked to undertake operations of any size, and in such a case the local authority would step in under Clause 17. The grant is not directed at people of substance. It is primarily intended to assist local authorities who find themselves or who expect to find themselves left with expenses which they cannot recover from the owner or from contributories. If the
806
owner is genuinely in no position to do the work and responsibility for the costs is unlikely to be attached to a contributory, the local authority will almost certainly find this out at an early stage and decide to carry out the work themselves under Clause 17. But there is nothing to stop them from making an arrangement with the owner to do any work of which he is capable as the authority's agent and reimburse him. Indeed, in some cases this might be an obvious and sensible way to proceed.
But from an administrative aspect, the payment of grants direct to owners would be highly undesirable. The Ministers responsible for the grants under Clause 25 are experienced in paying grants to local authorities. All the machinery exists to enable them to pay any grants which are found necessary, without additional, new arrangements. The audit of local authority accounts is by no means the least important element in ensuring that Exchequer moneys are properly used. And in determining what percentage of grant to pay, Ministers are fully informed of the resources of local authorities.
It should be remembered that there is always a possibility of a contribution order being sought under Clause 19(4) on the grounds that some part of the cost should fall on a person or body other than the present owner. The local authority are best placed to know whether any potential contributories exist (if they take action under Clause 17 they can apply to the court themselves for a contribution order) and the Ministers could hardly be expected to have the necessary local knowledge or to institute first hand investigations into local circumstances.
Finally, we think it fitting that there should normally be some element of local financial responsibility for remedying local problems—in so far as the cost cannot be recovered from the owner and contributories. It is therefore essential to pay any grant to the local authority, basing it on net residual expenditure.
The appropriate Minister—that is, the Minister of Housing or the Secretary of State for Scotland or Wales—has no locus under the Bill unless the local authority do the work and ask for a grant. But in fact any scheme of size is bound to be considered and discussed between the Minister, the owner and the local authority. That will be the opportunity

807
for the Minister to assess the merits of an Exchequer subvention, and if it seems to him that an owner—though not entirely without resources—should not be expected to bear the whole cost, it will be open to the Minister to persuade the local authority to take formal responsibility for the remedial work—perhaps with the owner as agent—and so enable a grant to be paid.
The Bill is necessarily drawn up in terms of formal actions. Experience in the Welsh Office shows that in practice there is ample opportunity for ad hoc consideration of the best way to proceed and how costs should be shared. That is why the grant provision is so flexible as to amount and why no conditions have been specified. Every case will be dealt with on its merits. The Committee may be sure that the planning Ministers will keep an eye on how Part II of the Bill is working and will not hesitate to arrange meetings with interested parties to ascertain all the facts of a particular case before deciding what should be done.
I thought it right to re-state clearly the Government's position and at some length and, in so doing, to indicate that I could not accept the noble Lord's new clause. But, despite all I have said, and because the Government wish to be completely fair and, I hope, to meet the essence of the point which has been made by the noble Lord, I am prepared on Report stage to move an Amendment designed to enable the owner of a tip required to do work under Clause 14 to oblige the local authority to carry out remedial operations themselves under Clause 17. This would automatically ensure that the grant provisions of the Bill in Clause 25 could be applied and, secondly, that the owner would be relieved of the responsibility for doing the work and of currently financing it and that the job of obtaining a contribution order under Clause 19 and recovering the money from contributories would be one for the local authority.
Having said that, and having made that offer, I must make it clear that this procedure would not necessarily mean that a grant would be made. That is a question which, in the event, could be decided only on all the facts of a particular case. It would, however, mean that
808
the proportion of the total costs of remedial operations which the owner would have to meet would not exceed the amount which the court had determined was properly his when it made a contribution order under Clause 19. In the other place Ministers said that the grant position needed to be left completely flexible in order that a reasonable approach could be made to the circumstances in each case. This is still the Government's attitude. Clearly, if a local authority have carried out remedial work, either voluntarily or in response to a notice by an owner (under the modification I have now suggested), and have exhausted every possibility of recovering the expenses, this would obviously be a matter to which full regard would be paid. But, as I indicated, it would be wrong to give your Lordships the impression that under these arrangements the Exchequer is to be regarded as anything more than a safety net. Nor should any owner think he can avoid financial liability simply by requiring the local authority to do the work; the authority's right to recover their expenses under Clause 23 remains unchanged.
I believe—and I hope the noble Lord will agree because we have tried very hard in this matter—that this will meet the essence of the point he made and will still retain the flexibility which we must have in the Bill. I hope that he will feel that he has achieved what he seeks and will be able to withdraw the present Amendment in favour of the one which I will introduce on Report.
LORD ABERDARE: I am most grateful to the noble Lord. I know that he has fought very hard on this matter, and I am delighted that he has fully met my point. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 25 agreed to.
8.40 p.m.
LORD ILFORD LORD ILFORD moved Amendment No. 14:
After Clause 25 insert the following new clause:
New tips and extensions to tips
". An application to the local planning authority for permission to develop land by the accumulation or deposit thereon of a new tip, or the extension of an existing tip, shall

809
be of no effect unless accompanied by a certificate from an inspector certifying that the proposed tip or extension can be established consistently with the requirements of this Act as to security and stability."
The noble Lord said: The purpose of this Amendment is to prevent a town planning consent from being given for the creation of a new tip or the extension of an existing tip upon land which subsequently proves to be unsuitable. Town planning consent does not, of course, in any way authorise the creation of a new tip, except from the point of view of amenity. It is concerned with amenity, and the inspector's certificate is concerned with safety. In spite of that, I think it is desirable that town planning consent should not be given in respect of sites which subsequently prove to be unsuitable. People misunderstand their rights. They get town planning consent and they think that authorises them to proceed.
The Amendment proposes that the application should be accompanied by a certificate from the inspector
"certifying that the proposed tip or extension can be established consistently with the requirements of this Act as to security and stability."
I understand that the Government rely on the obligation in Clause 4 to give 30 days' notice of the commencement of working of a new tip. That, of course, prevents the work on the tip proceeding until the certificate has been given. But the town planning consent may already have been obtained before the certificate was asked for, and it is to prevent that situation arising that this new clause has been prepared. It is a very simple clause and, I should have thought, a very obvious one. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to tell us that this clause, or something of the same sort, will be inserted in the Bill. I beg to move.
LORD STONHAM: When this point was made on Second Reading, I indicated that I was not attracted by the idea and, indeed, I remain quite unconvinced of the need to amend planning law in this way. I know there are precedents for submitting certificates with planning applications, but both the Industrial Development Act 1966 and the Control of Office and Industrial Development Act 1965 are concerned with the location of particular development, in accordance
810
with Government policy in relation to resources and employment, and the provision of certificates gives the local planning authority the green light so far as the building of offices and factories is concerned.
This is surely quite a different question from the security of a tip. Part I of the Bill and the regulations to be made under it, will do all that is required to ensure that a tip is not started or extended in unsafe conditions. Regulations to be made under Clause 1(2) will ensure that proper site investigations are carried out to prove that the land is suitable for tipping, and under Clause 4 30 days' notice will have to be given of intention to start or resume tipping so that the Mines inspectors can check that any necessary tests have been made. I know we are going to make exceptions in both subsections (1) and (3) in certain circumstances to allow permission to be given in less than 30 days. But they will be only under conditions when no longer period is necessary, because the inspector so well knows that the tip is already safe and that one can proceed. I think it is important that we should not create an overlap of two entirely different procedures—safety and planning. We do not need two bites at this.
It is essential to remember that safety will often be affected by how a tip is built up. I agree that a site may be inherently risky for tipping, and in that case the provisions of Part I will ensure that such tipping does not take place or only takes place subject to appropriate safeguards. But often it may be a question of how rather than where a tip is constructed, so far as safety goes. And this is a matter for Her Majesty's inspectors. From a planning aspect, the important thing is where rather than how a tip is allowed. There is sometimes a temptation to use the Planning Acts as a universal "aunt". I suggest that where safety is concerned the Bill does all that is needed to prevent trouble, and that the insertion of a new piece of mechanics into planning procedure is not only unnecessary but also undesirable.
I am rather surprised that this has been put forward, unless the Association of Municipal Corporations are desirous of getting some sort of assurance. If so, I can give an assurance that if in a particular case a local planning authority

811
wishes to satisfy itself that a site is satisfactory for tipping on from the safety point of view, Her Majesty's inspectors will, on request, provide a statement. This assurance stands, but the procedure is administrative to help a planning authority on whom the decision will rest. We do not think that it will often be needed. In view of my explanation, and indeed of that assurance, which is of value, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his Amendment.
LORD ILFORD: The assurance which the noble Lord has given me is not substantially different from the effect of my clause. That being so, I am very grateful to him. It is a small point, but one of some substance, and I am very grateful to the noble Lord for the way in which it has been dealt with. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Remaining clauses and Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment.

NATIONAL INSURANCE &c. BILL
8.46 p.m.
Read 3ª, and passed.

NIGERIA
LORD BROCKWAY LORD BROCKWAY had given notice of his intention to ask Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will make a statement of their further intentions in seeking to bring together the Federal Government of Nigeria and the Biafran administration with a view to establishing a cease-fire, an international peace-keeping force, political negotiations for a settlement and massive relief of starvation.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, with the concurrence of those who had put down their names to speak on the Unstirred Question, including the Government spokesman, I ask leave of the House to postpone the Question until Thursday, in
812
view of the late hour, the depleted attendance and the importance of the subject. I hope I may have that leave.

BRITISH TRANSPORT DOCKS BILL [H.L.]
The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES informed the House that the opposition to the Bill was withdrawn: the Order made on February 13 last discharged, and Bill committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.

VIOLENCE AND PROTECTION FOR POLICE
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD THE EARL OF MANSFIELD asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they are aware of the considerable and ever-increasing number of police officers who have been injured—some of them seriously—in the outbreaks of violence by hooligans, demonstrators and students in the past few months; and whether they will consider the advisability of providing police forces in areas where rioting has occurred, or is likely to occur, with protective shields similar to those used in various countries abroad, together with an adequate supply of water guns and tear gas bombs, so as to avoid further risk to those police who have to restore and maintain order.
LORD STONHAM: These matters are kept under review by chief officers of police, but the general opinion, which has the support of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, is that the police should continue to use their traditional methods when dealing with crowds and demonstrations.

PENSIONERS' COAL GRANTS
THE EARL OF HARROWBY THE EARL OF HARROWBY asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they are satisfied that the coal grants by the Department of Health and Social Security to pensioners are adequate to cover the basic amenities, as opposed to the bare

813
necessities, in view of the fact that some charitable organisations are finding it desirable to supplement them.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (LORD KENNET): In the assessment of supplementary pensions, the Supplementary Benefits Commission need to make extra provision for heating only in special cases, because the supplementary benefits scale rates themselves are sufficient to cover ordinary living expenses, including the basic amenities of heating. Supplementary pensioners also have the advantage of the long-term addition of 10s. a week, which is intended to meet extra needs arising from old age. Charitable organisations of course can and do make grants for extra comforts for individual pensioners, but in the Government's view this does not mean that provision for basic amenities within the supplementary pension scheme is inadequate.

LATE-NIGHT TELEGRAM SERVICE
THE EARL OF HARROWBY THE EARL OF HARROWBY asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will put details the late-night telegram service in telephone directories, since nearly all such telegrams are dictated over the telephone and since inquiries as to time, cost, number of words, delivery and so on, which at present must take place over the telephone, tend unnecessarily to congest the line and cause serious inconvenience, especially late at night.
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Postmaster General is already arranging for a supplement to be issued with all telephone directories giving information about the wide range of telecommunications services available. Information about the late-night telegram services will be included in this.
House adjourned at twelve minutes before nine o'clock.