Lords Sitting of 28 January 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 Chichester.

I.M.F. SPECIAL DRAWING RIGHTS AND WORLD RESERVES
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government—

(1) When the Special Drawing Rights in the International Monetary Fund explained in the White Paper of last June (Cmnd. 3662) can begin to be used;

(2) How much new international credit money they expect to be created by this means in the next five years; and

(3) Whether they will consult with the new United States administration, and other Governments, on the possible inadequacy of this scheme.]

LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the first decision to allocate Special Drawing Rights will be made after enough members of the Fund have ratified the scheme: this process may be completed in the early part of this year. The amount of the first allocation remains to be decided, but for the first five years the amount should be in the range of 1 billion dollars to 2 billion dollars a year. It is altogether premature to conclude that the scheme is inadequate.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for his full reply. May I ask whether Her Majesty's Government agree—I hope they do—with the figures which the noble Lord gave us last July, showing that the total amount of world reserves is only 40 per cent. of world trade, compared with 100 per cent. in 1938? Is
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the noble Lord really saying that Her Majesty's Government think that there will inevitably be recurring balance-of-payments crises in the Free World, however well we behave, unless we can get a much bigger amount of world reserves than, according to his Answer, seems possible under the Special Drawing Rights scheme?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, it is difficult to debate this in the form of question and answer. The figures I gave last July are the figures by which Her Majesty's Government stand. If the amount of the Special Drawing Rights comes to the figure of 2 billion dollars that I mentioned, this will be an increase of 3 per cent, to the world reserves; and it will be an accumulative increase of 3 per cent, each year. The first thing is to get confidence in this matter. Once confidence is established, there is no reason why it should not develop from a complement to gold to an alternative.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord. I agree that we cannot debate at Question Time whether 3 per cent, is adequate. I think it is hopelessly inadequate. Is there any possibility of discussing this with the new United States Administration?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, obviously there is a possibility, although no particular proposal is in mind. The House discussed this point at great length on the I.M.F. Bill. I feel that what we have to do now is to get the scheme ratified by the necessary number of nations and then to see how we go.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, will Her Majesty's Government remember that it is not only a question of the necessity of financing trade deficits, to which my noble friend referred, but that the amount of mobile funds in the world, which is increasing at a very rapid rate, is the chief menace to monetary stability in the world?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, even these funds are merely a result of something else. So far as we are concerned, the basic necessity is to get ourselves into a position in which we can pay our way. Until we are doing that, no amount of international agreement will solve this problem. We have, over a period of time, to pay in goods and services an

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amount equivalent to the goods and services that we import.
LORD HANKEY: My Lords, have the French Government ratified this agreement?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I think the answer is, No. Twenty-nine countries have ratified. On present information I do not believe that the French are one of them, but I understand that they are going to ratify.

NIGERIA AND BIAFRA: PEACE EFFORTS
2.42 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what further action is proposed to restore peace between Nigeria and Biafra.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords, the attitude of Colonel Ojukwu is not encouraging, as was clearly shown when his representatives in London at the time of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference refused to meet the leader of the Nigerian delegation even for informal talks to which no pre-conditions were attached. Peace can be achieved by negotiation only if both sides will enter into meaningful talks, which has been the aim of Her Majesty's Government and the O.A.U.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. May I ask whether he is aware that I am not going to comment on his statement because I do not want to aggravate the difficulties? Further, may I ask this? Despite the disappointments during the Commonwealth Conference, of which I have inside knowledge, are there not now hopeful gestures on both sides: Colonel Ojukwu's offer of an uncommitted ceasefire without insistence upon secession, and, secondly, the Federal Government's offer of a representative constitutional
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conference without including confederation? To facilitate these movements towards peace, would Her Majesty's Government support two proposals? The first is—
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, my noble friend said that he was not going to comment; but he is engaged, if I may say so, on an operation which is equally not in accordance with the Rules of Order of this House. He should rise really to ask questions.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I indicated that I was not going to comment on what was said during the Commonwealth Conference. I am asking Her Majesty's Government two specific questions: whether they will support the proposals for an African Committee of Good Offices, of which the Emperor Hailé Selassie should be chairman and in which an African Head of State would support both sides; and, a new proposal, Whether Her Majesty's Government would make some approach to the French Government, each supporting one side, to use their joint services to try to bring peace in this terrible war?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lord, I am not aware of the statement that my noble friend referred to and attributed to Colonel Ojukwu. I will certainly look at it, but my understanding of the Biafran position is that while they would go for a cease-fire unconditionally, this in fact means that they would still remain in de facto control of their present territory, which is clearly contrary to anything that the Federal Government would be prepared to accept. In regard to an African Committee of Good Offices, as my noble friend knows, the O.A.U. under Hailé Selassie has been working very actively, and if any such committee could arise from such an organisation I am sure it is to be welcomed. As to an approach to the French, clearly we would consult any country that could bring about a settlement; but we must remember, as I am sure my noble friend appreciates, that we must not appear to bring in a colonialist attitude in seeking to impose a solution from outside on an African problem.

THE MIDDLE EAST: PROPOSED FOUR-POWER MEETING
2.44 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their attitude towards the proposal of a four-Power meeting to consider the means of guaranteeing peace in the Middle East.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD CHALFONT): My Lords, we sympathise with the idea of a meeting of the four Permanent Members of the Security Council. We think it important that such a meeting should be clearly seen to be in a United Nations context and as a contribution to the work of Dr. Jarring in trying to promote agreement among the parties. We have so informed the French Government through diplomatic channels.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. As this Question refers to the Middle East may I ask whether he is aware of the deep horror which is felt on both sides of this House by the report this morning of the 14 hangings in Baghdad and Basra, and our fervent hope that influences may be exerted to prevent any continuation of this horror? May I also ask my noble friend whether, in view of the fact that the Foreign Secretary has now had his conversations with the Soviet Chargé d'Affaires and says that the proposal does contain constructive elements, and as the Minister of State is now in Cairo, following the French call for a four-Power summit, it is now possible for a meeting to be held between representatives of the four Powers, not to impose a settlement, but to open a door towards the acceptance of the United Nations resolution which our Government sponsored?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, so far as the question or comment about the hangings in Iraq is concerned, there is of course a point which must be made: that since all those involved in the trial appear to have been Iraqi citizens there was obviously no ground for any formal inter-
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vention, and there can be no ground for a formal intervention, by Her Majesty's Government. But we did take up the question informally with the Iraq Government on humanitarian grounds, as my noble friend might have expected, and we understand that others did, too. We urged clemency and pointed out the effect that this would have on Iraq's reputation abroad. I can assure my noble friend that we very much regret that the Iraqi Government did not feel able to show clemency in this case.
On the second, and perhaps more substantive, part of the Question, the Soviet Government, as my noble friend will know, has already announced its agreement to the four Powers proposal. It announced it on January 20. We have not yet had a considered assessment from the United States' Government, and I need hardly remind the House that the new Administration there has only just taken office. Indeed it is relevant as my noble friend has suggested that my right honourable friend the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs is at present in Cairo. I hope that when he returns and when we have had a considered reaction from the United States Government we may be able to go a little further along this road.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, may I ask the Minister two questions? First of all, President Nixon referred yesterday, in his Press Conference, to a meeting of the Security Council for next Saturday. Would Her Majesty's Government say whether or not that is, in effect, to be considered as a meeting proposed by the French Government? Secondly, could the Minister say whether the French Government have received a written reply to their proposals from Her Majesty's Government? Could he comment on the fact that there was a verbal reply by an official of the Foreign Office last Friday to a representative of the French Embassy in London? It seems a little curious, in a matter as important as this, to have given information in that way first of all without giving a written reply to the French Government?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, on the first part of the noble Lord's question, if the four Permanent Members of the Security Council meet to consider this problem, I imagine that this will be at least a beginning of the process in which

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the French Government has invited us to participate. How and where such meetings will take place is a matter on which I should not like to speculate at this moment. So far as communication with the French Government is concerned, I must confess some astonishment at the noble Lord's suggestion. It seems to me to be a matter of very little importance whether an answer is given to the French Government in writing or orally, so long as it is given through the ordinary diplomatic channels. We have welcomed the French suggestion through those channels and I do not think we can be any more specific than that.

MOTORWAYS CRASH BARRIERS
LORD KILMANY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress has now been made towards increasing the erection of crash barriers between the up and down channels of motorways pursuant to assurances given in this House on Wednesday, December 18.]
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport has recently announced that he is reviewing the present criteria for the use of safety fences, and this may result in further lengths being authorised.
Meanwhile, he has recently approved their installation on 1,500 yards of M.1, North of the M.10 junction, and on 8 miles of M.4, West of the London Airport Spur. They will also be included in the construction of 11½ miles of M.23 southwards from the "C" ring road; of 10½ miles of M.5 from Quinton to Ray Hall, and of 12½ miles of M.6 from the A.454 intersection to Castle Bromwich.
LORD KILMANY: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord very much indeed for his most encouraging reply. May I ask him to bear in mind that, as he well knows, there is a very large volume of instructed opinion, not only in this country but overseas, that crash barriers of some sort can probably do more than anything else to reduce the number of serious accidents on
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motorways? And will he press on with this good work?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am glad of the slight tribute of the noble Lord. I am sure that he is right in saying that if we had these barriers on motorways they would reduce accidents, particularly serious accidents. But I am sure the noble Lord will appreciate that we have many roads which are dangerous, particularly as a result of the increase in traffic; and with limited resources clearly we have to have some priority. But all these matters are considered with the road safety factor in mind.
LORD ROWALLAN: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that one of the most dangerous roads in the whole of this country is the M.8 and A.8, between Glasgow and Edinburgh, especially in foggy weather, which is almost always there in winter?

FAMILY LAW REFORM BILL [H.L.]
2.51 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, that the Bill be now read 3ª. —(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 3ª: an Amendment (privilege) made.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move this Bill do now pass. Before parting with the Bill, may I say, with reference to that Part of the Bill which confers on illegitimate children succession rights in substantially the same form as we have already tried for Scotland, that I am sorry that I was unable to accept a number of Amendments put down by my noble friend Lord Chorley, but these would have largely re-cast our law about affiliation orders and were really quite outside the scope of the Bill.
On the other hand, I was glad to be able to adopt the suggestion made by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, which I think will make the form of birth certificates in these cases better for both parents and the children when they grow up. The suggestion about proof of paternity was obviously contentious. A good deal of medical knowledge is necessary in dealing with blood

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tests, and I thought it was a tribute to the work now being done by the Law Commission that the whole of that Part of the Bill not only met with no Amendment but was not criticised in any way at all during the passage of the Bill through your Lordships' House.
With regard to the age of majority, your Lordships agreed that in general it should be reduced to 18, but an Amendment was put down by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, limiting the reduction in the age of free marriage to 20. Perhaps I should say that I have been asked whether the fact that the Government have put down no Amendment on Report stage to reverse the decision made in Committee means that the Government have changed their minds. In considering whether such an Amendment should be put down on Report stage, account had to be taken of the size of the majority in Committee, of whether it was likely that the numbers present in Committee would not attend on Report stage or of whether there was a reasonable prospect that the decision of the Committee would be reversed.
The majority was not large. The voting was 77 to 71. But I think that all Members of the House would agree that we had a good debate, in which both sides of the question were fairly put and fairly considered, and 150-odd Members is a large attendance in Committee. There seems to be no reason to suppose that a different position would have been arrived at if an Amendment had been put down on Report stage. I do not know whether it is permissible to disregard for a moment the right reverend Prelates, because they are neither hereditary Peers nor Life Peers, but if it had not been for the hereditary Peers, if my arithmetic is right, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, would have attracted only 26 supporters for his Amendment. One must remain human and realise that if you have a title and perhaps landed estates to hand down to your eldest son, the girl he marries is of very special importance. So the answer is that the Government have not changed their minds, and they hope that in another place, where the Members are not burdened with such considerations, a different position may perhaps be arrived at.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I do not think it is necessary to say very much in elaboration of the speech of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor since, so far as Parts II and III and the miscellaneous parts of the Bill are concerned, he has dealt with the situation most thoroughly. On the question of the disputed age of marriage, the noble and learned Lord must realise that had I not voted with him his minority would have been one less, so that he cannot have it all ways on that sort of criticism. Noble Lords may or may not have another opinion, but it depends on what happens in another place. At any rate, I am glad that the Government in this House have decided to accept your Lordships' opinion on this occasion and certainly I would wish the Bill Godspeed in another place.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask my noble and learned friend a question? When talking about the qualities of daughters-in-law, about how they differ in one House from another, could he explain to the House whether he was talking about their spiritual qualities or their financial position?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I was talking about the very natural fact that people with titles and landed estates have a very special interest in the matter. What surprises me is that 17 hereditary Peers voted against the Amendment; but then they included Scottish Peers, like the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross. If you live in a country where for generations the age of free marriage has been 16 and there has been no move to increase it, naturally you wonder what on earth all the fuss is about.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, I hesitate to question the opinion of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, but I wonder what percentage of hereditary Peers in this House still have landed estates. Certainly I have not.
On Question, Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

ELECTRICITY (SCOTLAND) BILL
House in Committee: Clauses agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.

MINES AND QUARRIES (TIPS) BILL
3.0 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. On October 21, 1966, many thousands of tons of colliery refuse cascaded down the slopes of the Merthyr mountain into the mining village of Aberfan. It was a tragedy which shook the world. The fact that some 140,000 cubic yards of material (50,000 lorry loads) broke away, and in minutes overwhelmed everything in its path, brought home to the people of this country and, indeed, to the world the dread consequences of the failure of a large tip.
The Report of the Tribunal appointed to inquire into the cause of and the circumstances relating to the disaster showed that this tip failure need not, and should not, have occurred. The Tribunal made a number of recommendations designed to ensure that a similar tragedy shall not occur again. I shall have something to say later about what has already been done by the Government and by the National Coal Board to put these practical recommendations into effect. The Tribunal also considered the amending legislation called for and indicated the topics which, in their judgment, needed to be dealt with, pointing out that the best method of achieving the desired ends would need detailed consideration thereafter. The present Bill before the House is the outcome of that consideration. It received a warm welcome in another place and was given a swift passage. I feel sure your Lordships will welcome it equally and will wish to put the Bill on the Statute Book and see it brought into operation with all speed.
First, a word about the scope of the Bill and the general approach which the Minister of Power has adopted in its preparation. The Bill, as will be seen from Clause 2(1), deals with accumula-
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tions above ground of mine and quarry refuse, both liquid and solid; it does not attempt to cover accumulations of refuse from other trades and processes covered by the Factories Act, as, for example, fly ash from power stations or slag from blast furnaces. It is not concerned with amenity, but simply and solely to prevent danger from tip slides; that is, to prevent another Aberfan. Local authorities already have powers to deal with the reclamation of land, amenities and so on, under, for example, the Local Government Act 1966, the Industrial Development Act 1966 and the Countryside Act 1968.
The Bill is in two parts. Part I, which is to be read as one with the Mines and Quarries Act 1954, deals with tips so long as they form part of the mining and quarrying industries, when they are under the supervision of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Mines and Quarries, for whom my right honourable friend the Minister of Power is responsible. Part II of the Bill deals with tips when the mine or quarry with which they are associated is abandoned and the tips, as is were, become merely part of the landscape. The treatment is therefore different, since different responsibilities and different authorities are involved.
Part I of the Bill places an obligation on mine and quarry owners and managers to see that tips—and tips, as I have already indicated, include lagoons for the deposit of liquid waste—"are made and kept secure". "Secure" is a term well known in the industry and is the best we have been able to find. It is used in the Mines and Quarries Act 1954 and has been the subject of legal interpretation. We see no difficulty about its application to tips. Like the principal Act, the Bill would impose duties on owners and managers and give the Minister wide powers to make regulations to achieve its objectives. Regulations are to be both general—about such matters as the siting of tips, their construction and maintenance, and the general conduct of tipping operations—and specific as regards the making of tipping rules by owners and managers, the keeping and preservation of plans and sections of tips, and the keeping of geological maps. Without these regulations Part I of the Bill would be incomplete.

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The enforcement of statutory provisions of this Part of the Bill will be a matter for Her Majesty's Inspectors of Mines and Quarries, whose powers have been increased for the purpose. Contraventions of the Bill and of the regulations will, like contraventions of the Mines and Quarries Act 1954, be punishable as criminal offences. There will be a penalty of up to three months imprisonment in addition to or in substitution for a fine if the offence is
"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."
All this is in recognition of the Tribunal's statements that tips are potentially dangerous and that
"such dangers as arise are almost invariably in respect of active working tips."
When tips cease to be associated with mines and quarries they should in future be in good condition and unlikely to give trouble. The powers in Part II of the Bill to be conferred on local authorities are designed to ensure that they remain so. They are also designed to enable local authorities to deal with problems created by the many thousands of tips up and down the country which have been built up over the years ever since men first began to win minerals from the earth's crust. Many have, of course, long ago ceased to be recognisable as tips—something like the burial barrows on Salisbury Plain. Many are situated in remote places where there can be little or no danger to members of the public. But where there is likely to be danger because of the instability of an old tip—a "disused" tip in the language of the Bill—the powers will be there to see that the corrective measures, which the Bill calls "remedial operations", are taken, and taken in good time. The local authority—that is the county council, unless they have delegated some or all of their powers under Clause 11(4)—will have power under Clause 12 to get information to enter land both to see whether a tip would constitute a danger to the public if it failed, to do any tests necessary to determine whether it is stable, and to inspect any work being done which might affect its stability. Clause 36(2) makes it clear that the local authority have power to take action if they have reasonable ground for believing that the
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tip is likely to slide beyond its present boundaries, as happened at Aberfan, and such a slide would be likely to constitute a danger to members of the public.
Local authorities can act in either of two ways. First, they can serve notice on the owner of a tip under Clause 14 requiring him to carry out any necessary works, or, alternatively, and even without notice where the remedial works are immediately necessary for the protection of the public, they can do the work themselves and recover the costs. Work will not be held up through lack of funds. Clause 25 of the Bill gives the appropriate Ministers power to make grants where the costs of such operations cannot be recovered from the owners of a tip or from other persons whom the court can require to make contributions towards the costs. The Ministers for Part II are the Minister of Housing and Local Government and the Secretary of State for Scotland or the Secretary of State for Wales.
The provisions of Part II of the Bill are necessarily somewhat complex in order to protect the interests of the public, of the local authorities and of the owners of the tip (including of course the owners of the material in the tip) and of persons whose land is affected by remedial operations. Owners and potential contributories can challenge the need and extent of the operations required by the local authority before the works are done in the case of a notice under Clause 14, or afterwards, when a local authority seek to recover the costs of operations which they have themselves carried out under Clause 17. In each case the Bill sets out the factors to which the court must have regard. Your Lordships will be particularly interested in the provisions of Clause 19 which gives the court wide discretion to see that the costs of remedial operations and of preliminary exploratory tests are equitably shared among those who can probably be held responsible for the tip's condition.
That, my Lords, is the legal framework of the Bill. Now a word about the way we expect Part II to work in practice. When the Bill becomes law, local authorities will acquire extensive powers, and tip owners will acquire new liabilities, in addition of course to those they already have at Common Law. Local authorities with tips in their areas would

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be well advised as a matter of prudence, and because of their responsibilities of public duty to their constituents, to identify any tips which would be a danger to the public if they failed. Indeed, many local authorities must have gathered a good deal of knowledge already, particularly since Aberfan demonstrated only too clearly how serious and how tragic a tip failure can be. Local authorities will be expected to satisfy themselves whether there is cause for anxiety about these tips. If a particular tip causes anxiety, they have the power to carry out all the tests they need and to take any further steps they consider justified. But because notice has to be given before a tip is inspected, the owner will usually know of the local authority's interest and because of his potential liability will set about ensuring that any tip he has is in good order.
So far as the National Coal Board are concerned, I know that this is, in fact, what they are already doing in anticipation of the Bill's becoming law. Other owners of tips may well be doing the same. Of course, there is nothing to prevent, and everything to encourage, local authority engineers and the owners of tips to get together and discuss what ought to be done, without resort to formal notice under Clause 14 or to direct action by a local authority under Clause 17. Often it will be no more than seeing that drainage is properly maintained. The machinery of the Bill need be invoked only when there is a failure to agree, or when it is a question of other parties' contributing to cost because of their responsibility, or partial responsibility, for a tip's condition, or if a Government grant is required because the cost cannot otherwise be met. Even so, there is room for co-operation by all concerned.
When I began my speech I said that action had been taken in advance of the Bill to give effect to recommendations in the Tribunal's Report. May I mention just a few items? The Minister of Power has strengthened the Mines Inspectorate by the creation of a civil engineering branch, and, additionally, more than a hundred inspectors have received special training in soil mechanics and the factors affecting pit stability. My right honourable friend has amended the Mines (Notification of Dangerous Occurrences) Order 1959 and the correspond-
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ing Order relating to quarries to cover tips. I am sure the House will be relieved to know that no serious tin incident involving loss of life has been reported since the Order was made in 1966.
My right honourable friend has also set up an Advisory Committee an Tip Safety which has been hard at work, under its Chairman, Mr. F. R. Bullen, a distinguished civil engineer, on a number of problems. The Committee are now finalising a technical document designed to help local authority engineers in identifying the signs of instability in tips. The Committee's expertise will be of particular value to the Minister of Power in framing the regulations which will govern the siting of tips and the conduct of tipping operations. The Mining Qualifications Board, which the Minister appoints, has looked into the question of training in soil mechanics and related subjects for those engaged in mining and quarrying who may be responsible for tips in the future. The co-operation of the universities and technical colleges, and of the Institution of Mining Engineers and the Institute of Quarrying, has also been obtained and will ensure that the engineers in the mining and quarrying industries receive instruction in soil mechanics as Part of their normal training.
I have already mentioned part of what the National Coal Board are doing in advance of legislation. They have remedied the defects in organisation and training which the Tribunal criticised, and tributes to the work they have done in many directions have been paid to them in another place. Special mention should, I think, be made of the comprehensive draft of the Code of Practice which the Board have prepared and which is now being studied by the Advisory Committee on Tip Safety. This impressive and valuable piece of work embodies the results of the Board's experience and research to date. It should be of great value to the Committee in framing the general guidance for which the Tribunal saw a need.
My Lords, although the total number of tips is enormous, problem tips are, fortunately, few in number. Those that are known to Her Majesty's inspectors or to the National Coal Board are being watched, and appropriate action has been or is being taken. The work goes on.

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The mining and quarrying industries are acutely conscious of their responsibilities since the tragedy of Aberfan; the powers which the Bill will confer will ensure that they and other owners of tips will remain so. Less than three years ago we were all horrified by this tragedy which came so suddenly. This Bill, which perhaps does not excite much comment, if any, but is a substantial Bill, may seem dry, but it is the necessary mechanism for ensuring that this sort of thing never happens again. I believe, therefore, that in human terms it is of paramount, extreme importance. It is for that reason that, with confidence, I ask your Lordships to give it your unqualified support. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª.—(Lord Stonham.)
3.19 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, the whole House will be very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for, as usual, giving us a clear and concise account of the contents of this Bill. May I straight away echo the words he ended with and say that in principle I am sure that all your Lordships will wish to see this Bill read a second time and go on the Statute Book, in the hope of avoiding any further disaster such as that at Aberfan Before coming to the contents of the Bill, may I also express my great pleasure that the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, is to make his maiden speech on this Bill. He is a fellow Welshman and no one is better qualified to speak as a professor of geology.
As the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said, Part I of the Bill deals with the security of active tips; that is, those that are still in use. While the horror of Aberfan is still in our minds, I know that we shall all support any measures that go towards preventing a recurrence. As the noble Lord said, the Tribunal, under the able chairmanship of Lord Justice Edmund Davies, made some valuable recommendations and in so far as this Bill puts them into effect they are much to be welcomed.
I wish to make only one comment on Part I of the Bill, and that is to endorse what the noble Lord referred to at the end of his speech; namely, to stress the importance of the Advisory Committee on Tip Safety. Throughout its Report
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the Tribunal stressed the importance of civil engineering skills in relation to the potential danger of tips, and recommended the establishment of a Committee on Tip Safety to advise the Minister and to co-ordinate research. On this side of the House we certainly believe that this Committee has a most important role to play, and we hope that, once its initial task of preparing a code of guidance (particularly for local authorities) is over, it will continue in existence and will continue to be consulted by the Minister.
So far as Part II of the Bill is concerned, I have rather more comments to make and I would start by declaring a personal interest. I am in the unfortunate position of owning some of these disused tips, and I hope that what I say is not based entirely on my own self interest but also represents the views of the Country Landowners' Association and other interested people. In certain cases the owner of a disused tip may be the person who was responsible for making it, or his legal successor. Certainly that is so in the case of the National Coal Board. The disused tips in the Board's ownership were made either by its own operations or by the colliery companies that it succeeded. Therefore no doubt it is perfectly right that the National Coal Board should assume responsibility for the safety of these tips. But in many other cases the owner is the local landowner, who had no responsibility for making the tips in the first place and certainly would have been happier without them. However, he now finds himself saddled with responsibility for their safety.
In another place the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government made statements in the Committee stage of the Bill that seemed to me to display considerable ignorance of this fact. He spoke of people who create a situation which may give rise to danger; of those who permit potential dangers to arise on their land, and of the well known doctrine that if one creates something which is dangerous then one is responsible in law for the consequences. In many cases the landowner did not create these tips, yet under Part II of the Bill he is held responsible for their safety. This is a hard doctrine, although I realise that it has legal precedents, especially Common Law precedents I only ask that the Government

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will place a fair responsibility upon the owner.
I have two suggestions to make for the improvement of this Bill. The first is this. If a local authority decides that a disused tip is unstable and is likely to cause a danger to the public it has, as the noble Lord clearly explained, two courses open to it. Under Clause 14 it can require the owner to make the tip safe; under Clause 17 it can itself take the appropriate action and recover the cost from the owner. But the difference in the treatment of the cases is that in the second case, under Clause 17, the local authority, if it does the work itself, may receive a Government grant towards the cost, and in making the grant the Minister may limit the amount of the cost falling on the owner. I fully accept the fairness of this procedure under Clause 17. There is provision for a Treasury grant and the balance is found by the local authority and the owner. But if the local authority proceeds under the first case, under Clause 14, and requires the owner to make the tip safe, then the whole financial burden falls on him and there is no provision for any grant.
If your Lordships read the Explanatory Memorandum you will see that the costs involved are very high. One tip which is mentioned there I know well. It cost over £30,000 to make safe, and the Explanatory Memorandum forecasts remedial operations which may cost £100,000. Many an owner would be made bankrupt by sums far smaller than that. I suggest that it would be only fair for provision to be made in the Bill that where a local authority proceeds under Clause 14 there should be provision for a grant to the private owner.
My second point is this. Surely the best solution of all would be to remove the tip altogether; and in certain cases it is perfectly possible for an owner to do so economically, and even profitably, by the sale of small coal from the tip. However, he needs planning permission to do so and not infrequently this is refused on grounds of amenity. The noble Lord likened some of these tips to barrows on Salisbury Plain. They are rather larger and potentially more dangerous, but it is perfectly true that some of them are covered with a form of primitive vegetation, even trees. The local community may prefer to keep them
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and may fear that if operations were undertaken to remove them they would be subjected to noise, dust and dirt in the process. No doubt this is a correct decision for the local community to take if it so wishes, acting through the planning procedure, but if the planning authority refuses an owner the right to remove a tip, surely then it is unjust to continue to lay upon him the full responsibility for its stability. He has offered to make it safe once and for all by removing it and it is not fair to say to him, "No, we want to keep it but if it should prove dangerous you must pay to make it safe". I should like to see a provision in the Bill that when a request for planning permission to remove a disused tip is refused on the ground of amenity, then the local authority should assume responsibility for its future safety, together, of course, with the advantage that they have under the Bill of a Treasury grant.
Those are the two main points that I wished to stress. There are a number of other smaller and mainly Committee points on which we are not altogether happy, and it might be convenient if I were to mention them briefly in broad outline at this stage. First, under Clause 9, dealing win penalties, we feel that the penalty of imprisonment should apply only where an offence has been committed that endangers human life. Under Clause 14 we believe that the Mines Inspectorate has a most important part to play in advising local authorities on disused tips and, as my friends in another place tried to impress upon the Government during the Report stage, we still think that it should be obligatory on local authorities to consult the Mines Inspectorate before serving a notice under Clause 14. We believe that this argument applies even more forcibly under Schedule 2, where the Inspectorate should be consulted by a local authority when the local authority is itself the owner of a disused tip in its own area.
Clause 15 provides for an appeal to be made by the owner only against notices issued under Clause 14, and surely it should also apply to action taken by a local authority under Clause 17. These are two alternative methods by which the local authority may act, and it seems right to say that the owner should have the same right of appeal in both cases.

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Finally, there is a point under Clause 19. The court may order a contribution to the costs of remedial operations by a person who within the previous 12 years has caused or contributed to the instability of a tip by carrying out operations on the tip, on the land on which it is situated, or on neighbouring land. The question I should like to ask is whether the land on which it is situated includes the land under the surface. I am thinking particularly of subsidence, and it is quite likely that mining operations in the vicinity of a tip could cause instability. Would this clause allow the owners to look for some contribution from the mining company which caused the subsidence and hence the instability of the tip? These last points are really Committee points, and I do not expect an answer from the noble Lord to-day.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord on the last point. If he is referring to an owner looking for compensation from a mining company, it must surely be a mining company which is still operating, in which case it would surely come under Part I and not under Part II?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I was thinking of a disused tip in a mining area. Mining operations are often taking place in the vicinity of a disused tip and could cause instability in a disused tip that was no longer part of the colliery. I think this is more a matter for interpretation of the Bill, and we shall put down an Amendment at Committee stage. I hope very much that your Lordships will give the Bill a Second Reading to-day, and I hope that we shall be able to improve it at the Committee stage.
3.32 p.m.
LORD ENERGLYN: My Lords, I should like to thank my countryman, the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for his far too generous reference to me and to my professorial status, but let me hasten to assure your Lordships that I would not regard your Lordships as one of my normal captive audiences and subject you to an hour of boredom on theories or pearls of doubtful wisdom. I also assure my noble friend Lord Stonham that I will not set him an examination paper on his Bill. I also have learned to respect the indulgence of your Lordships' House and I know you would permit a Welshman
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who has lived in the shifting shadows of a dangerous and treacherous coal tip to become emotional about this subject, but I will not embarrass your Lordships in that way. On the contrary, I should like, in a non-controversial manner, to speak about the wider aspects of this very important and timely Bill, as its impact could be quite striking. On the other hand, it could become a source of irritation and frustration if it is not administered wisely.
The committees and councils that will deal with this matter are the natural habitats of the buck-passer and if they try to evade the inevitable question that will always arise in the mining and quarrying industry—namely, "Where else can we put our waste?"—then this Bill will lose the real importance it should have. In supporting the Bill, I would suggest to the Government that they instil an incentive in the administration of the Bill, and the incentive is the right and proper attitude to waste products. Your Lordships know better than I do that fortunes have been made out of waste tips. Long ago, for example—this is out of context—there were the tips of granulated cork which established the cork linoleum industry. To-day we see vast quantities of slag being used for commercial purposes, mainly engineering. We also know, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, pointed out, of the great quantities of coal being extracted from our coal tips all over the country. In theory we could, for example, attack the white kaolin tips of Cornwall and extract from them large quantities of mica which would quite seriously interest the importers of this country. Likewise we could think in terms of the slate tips which disfigure so many of the beauty spots in this country, and we could extract from them alkali and trace metals of great value. The old mining dumps still contain sizeable quantities of lead, zinc and copper, which if extracted would materially improve the import situation.
But in all these cases where you process a tip for one component, or possibly two, you are left with an end-product which is much more difficult and dangerous to contain and confine than the original tip. So the conventional methods that are applied to-day to the tips will not achieve what I hope the Bill will achieve, which is the complete removal

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of rubbish from the surface of Britain but, at the same time, by good housekeeping turn that rubbish to profit for the nation.
The Government have not been idle in this matter. Long before the ghastly tragedy of Aberfan they had turned their backs on the lip-service which previous Governments had paid to science and looked seriously at those areas of science which did not possess the glamour or status symbol of some sciences internationally and so able to claim support. As a consequence, they have given the biological and geological sciences a shot in the arm, and as a result we now have within our grasp processes which can prefabricate and alter many of the waste products from our mining and quarrying industries, and indeed many of our other industries as well.
I am confident enough to forecast, for example, that in ten years' time we shall not import one single ton of lightweight rock like pumice into this country but that we shall make our own out of the waste products of industry. With equal certainty, I am sure that the future of the mining and quarrying industry will undergo a dramatic change and that by using these new biological and geo-chemical processes we shall see the mine, the quarry and the tip forming units of what I should like to describe as a mineral factory from which I expect no waste to emerge.
3.39 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, as the first speaker after the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, it falls to my pleasant lot to congratulate him upon a most impressive and interesting maiden speech. I am sure we shall all look forward to hearing him on many occasions, especially perhaps as he not only is the head of the Geological Department at Nottingham University but has shown us that he has an intense gift for applying his talents to ensuring a great future for waste products. It may be that some people regard the House of Lords as a challenge of that kind, and I am sure we shall all look forward with the greatest expectation that he will apply some of those talents of his to giving this House the great future that he envisages for such waste products: and I am sure that he, with his own talents, will make a major contribution to that desirable result.
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To turn now to the Bill, it implements some of the recommendations of the Aberfan Tribunal. I propose to deal only with such parts of it as especially concern local authorities. Local authorities are immediately concerned with Part II, which will confer powers upon them to take action to prevent public danger arising from disused tips by ensuring that such tips are stable. Although the whole of Part II is cast in terms which make it a matter for the local authorities' discretion whether or not to take action, there can be little doubt, surely, as to the moral responsibility which will thus rest upon them to see that disused tips from mines and quarries are in fact safe if the owner of the tip, who is of course primarily responsible, fails to act. In order that they can do so it is necessary that they should be able to command the requisite technical skills; and I know that the Association of Municipal Corporations feel, and indeed the Minister himself clearly recognises, that frequently this must mean calling upon the services of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries.
The first point I wish to make is that it is imperative that this skilled help should be available as of right lo any local authorities asking for it. Nowhere in Part II of this Bill is there any reference to the Mines and Quarries Inspectorate. They are named in Part I as the appropriate body for dealing with questions of security relating to active tips of mine and quarry refuse. Local authorities feel that Part II should similarly provide for the services of this Inspectorate to be available to local authorities in respect of disused tips.
The Inspectorate should, if asked by local authorities, decide what kind of test should be carried out on disused tips to ascertain whether they are dangerous, to advise on the results of tests and what remedial work should be carried out by the owner of the tip, or, if he fails to act, in default by the local authorities. Assurances have been given by the Minister that the help of the Inspectorate will be available to local authorities, but there are limits on the extent of the promised assistance. In particular, seemingly it falls short of advice on the nature and the results of tests to determine the stability of disused tips and what

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remedial work should be done. Additionally, as I have said, there is no reference at all in Part II to the Inspectorate, so any part or even the whole of the help offered by the Minister from this source could be withdrawn at will. May I echo the hope of the local authorities that appropriate Amendments may, at the proper time, be made to the Bill?
Furthermore on Part II, the powers to be given to local authorities are to be conferred upon county boroughs, London boroughs and county councils. This means the exclusion of non-county boroughs and urban and rural district councils, unless a county council choose to delegate functions to them, for which of course specific provision is made in the Bill. Surely there is no reason why county councils should be thought better able to exercise these powers than non-county boroughs and other district councils. The latter authorities are well accustomed under public health legislation to their responsibilities for dealing with nuisances, to which this Bill seems closely related, and it is almost inevitable that the local town hall will be the first place of inquiry on a matter concerning the safety of a local disused tip. Assuming that all necessary assistance can be obtained from the Mines and Quarries Inspectorate, I suggest that non-county boroughs and other district councils should, together with county boroughs and London boroughs, exercise the powers to the exclusion, if need be, of county councils. May I submit that this will be a more logical distribution of function than that provided in the Bill?
Another Amendment that the Minister might consider in Part II is to empower a local authority to require the owner of a disused tip to carry out tests on that tip to ascertain whether it is stable. Part I of the Bill gives a similar power to the Mines and Quarries Inspectorate, and it is considered that a similar provision should be made in Part II in relation to disused tips, instead of the local authority having to carry out the tests, which is what the Bill now provides.
There are two other points of concern which arise on the Bill as a whole. One really would need to ensure that questions of safety are considered along with questions of amenity when an application is made for planning permission for a new
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or extended tip of mine or quarry refuse. I understand that in discussions with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government the point has been taken that questions of safety need not primarily concern the local planning authority, because the Bill will make the Mines and Quarries Inspectorate responsible for seeing that safety measures are carried out in relation to active tips, while the local planning authority can, in effect, confine itself to questions of amenity. The local authorities are unhappy at the idea that planning consent could be given for tip operations on a site which is of itself dangerous for such operations, and they feel that safety and planning aspects cannot be separated, that they cannot properly be divorced from each other. It is therefore suggested that an Amendment to require every planning application for a new or extended tip of mine or quarry refuse should be accompanied by a certificate from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries that the siting will be satisfactory from the safety aspect.
The remaining point of concern is that a mine and quarry operator whose working is done by virtue of statutory powers contained in a local Act could escape liability for damage or injury caused by the collapse of a tip if he could show that the collapse was not due to his own negligence. The Ministry of Power have been asked to include in the Bill a provision similar to that in other legislation which would spell out clearly that the fact that the work was being carried on under a statutory power should not exclude an undertaker from any liability to which he would have been subject at Common Law if he had not possessed such a statutory power. I understand that the Ministry take the view that only the National Coal Board enjoy statutory powers to work mines, other undertakers working by virtue of ownership and therefore not enjoying this statutory protection; and as regards the National Coal Board, they think that a provision in the Board's enabling legislation of 1946 has the effect that the Board could not in any case enjoy this special protection. I am informed, however, that the Association of Municipal Corporations disagree with this interpretation of the law and have asked that an "avoidance of doubt" clause should be inserted into the Bill. I hope that the Ministry may be persuaded to agree to

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this, and, if so, an appropriate Amendment could of course then be made. It is also suggested that a suitable precedent for the action for which we are asking is to be found in Section 7 of the Reservoirs (Safety Provisions) Act 1930.
I hope that in the Committee stage the Government may see fit to accept these suggestions, after giving sympathetic consideration to the point of view of the local authorities. I am not suggesting that they have not that sympathy, because I gather that they have already expressed some sympathy with the attitude, although up to date they have not said whether they would approve of action to eliminate that anxiety.
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: My Lords, I apologise for not putting my name down on the list of speakers, but I want only to ask a question, arising out of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. Perhaps I should really address this question to the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, but I understand that it is a convention of this House not to do so to a maiden speaker—and may I quickly say how much I enjoyed his speech? The question is simply this. We have heard a great deal, and rightly so, about plans for making available to local authorities and the like technical information on the matter of tips and their stability. Can the noble Lord say anything about the state of technical knowledge about tips themselves at the present time? Do we know exactly when a tip is unstable? Do we know it more or less scientifically, absolutely? Are we in a state of certainty? What stage has technical knowledge about these structures reached?
3.53 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, I rise for a few moments for three reasons. The first is to congratulate my noble friend Lord Energlyn on the very thoughtful speech that he made. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, referred to him as a fellow countryman. That is quite true, but I think he has lived in Nottingham long enough to be naturalised. The work my noble friend does at Nottingham University in the field of geology is well known, and I should like to pay my tribute to this work and to the regard in which he is held throughout the County of Nottinghamshire. I think we can say to my noble friend that
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he has left the land of Twm Shon Catti and now come to live in the land of Robin Hood.
My next reason for rising is to express my apreciation to the Government for introducing this Bill. As we are thinking about it, and listening to the speeches, our minds are filled with memories of Aberfan—a terrible tragedy. Some of us have lived among tips the whole of our lives, although in the part of the country from which I come they are nothing like so dangerous as they are, say, in the valleys of Wales. One of the difficulties that I find, so far as Wales is concerned, is that the carrying on of mining operations over a long period of time contributes to the danger; they have been putting a mountain on a mountain. It may be that that is one of the reasons why the tragedy of Aberfan took place.
There has not been a great deal of major mining legislation in this country, although mining has been, if it is not so much now, one of our major industries. We had the 1911 legislation, when the late Sir Winston Churchill was President of the Board of Trade, and after that, apart from a few regulations, the next piece of major mining legislation which went through both Houses of Parliament was passed as recently as 1954. One of the strange things to me is that in 1911 and in 1954 this danger in getting rid of the waste, and in building these tips, was never foreseen by anybody, and formed no part of major mining legislation. It took an Aberfan to awaken the thoughts of all of us to the danger that some, if not all, of these tips constituted to the mining communities of this country. The Government have lost no time in bringing forward this legislation. I congratulate them on doing so, and I welcome this Bill.
It may be, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has said, that Amendments can be put forward during the Committee stage. I am not quite so sure. I shall have to think about one point which the noble Lord raised when he mentioned the fact that the material was not put there, on the tips, by the present owners of the land to-day. That, at any rate, is how I understood his proposition. If we look very carefully into mining operations over many generations we see that the landowners who provided the land for the waste matter also did very well

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out of the levying of coal royalties for many generations. I shall be interested during the Committee stage to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has to say on this particular point.
The other reason I rise is to pay a tribute to the Tribunal which looked into the matter of the disaster at Aberfan. I remember at the time rising in my place and expressing my gratitude and delight that such a person as Lord Justice Edmund Davies had been chosen as Chairman. When one reads the Report, with all its technicalities, all its searchings, its many conclusions, one can only come to the conclusion that that Tribunal under the chairmanship of Lord Justice Edmund Davies did a thorough job. It was a painstaking task. They spared no effort to come to the right conclusions and recommendations, with one purpose in view: to obviate the danger of another Aberfan in the future. I conclude by repeating my appreciation both to the Tribunal themselves and to the Government for implementing their recommendations.
4.0 p.m.
LORD ARWYN: My Lords, I wish to apologise for not putting down my name on the list of speakers, but I cannot let this opportunity pass without congratulating my old friend Lord Energlyn on a masterpiece of condensation. I know something of the enormous programme of research which he has carried out and I could be tempted to make a speech on this matter lasting at least half-an-hour. We shall look forward to hearing the noble Lord on many other occasions. I want to say something which I never thought I should ever utter, in sympathy with mineral landlords—and I am referring to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. I should hate to have a tip dumped on my land these days. It is not the noble Lord's fault, but the fault of his ancestors. It is rare that a mineral landowner has the right to interfere as to where a tip should or should not be put. We shall need to be very careful on the Committee stage about how we should penalise a landlord who is as guiltless in this case as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare.
4.2 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have
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spoken, including the three "chalk jockeys" who spoke without having put down their names. It always happens to me, whether I speak for the Ministry of Power or for the Home Office—they seem to be inexorably drawn into the discussion. I am grateful to every noble Lord who has spoken for the warm welcome to the Bill, and I am most grateful to a number of noble Lords for giving a clear indication that we are going to have a most interesting Committee stage. I join with others in congratulating my noble friend Lord Energlyn on a notable maiden speech. He assured me that I was not in for an hour of boredom. Having heard him for seven minutes, I cannot imagine that even an hour would have been boring. He crammed a great deal into his seven minutes, and I know that we all look forward to hearing him on many future occasions.
I will deal with the speeches in the order in which they were made and will try to answer as many of the points as I can. Many were Committee points which will need to be discussed much more fully in Committee in relation to Amendments which are tabled; but as I want to be as helpful as possible, I will try at least to give interim answers to most of the points which have been raised.
The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, very properly declared his interest as a local landowner who finds himself saddled with responsibility for tips which he did not create and which, as I understood him, he certainly would prefer to be without. Before we start recriminations and cross-talk in Committee, we ought to bear this in mind and not hark back too much to the past. We should consider the present and the future and at all times have in mind that the paramount objective of this Bill is to remove, as far as humanly possible and for all time, the menace of the possibility of another Aberfan.
The noble Lord asked about a contribution from an adjacent mining company and, as it were, for the definition of "land" in Clause 19, and whether it would include land under the surface. There is no question that it would include such land. The noble Lord also mentioned Clause 9 and the penalty of imprisonment, and suggested that the Bill should be amended to provide that these penalties should be imposed only if life

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was in danger. We think that the possibility of a penalty of imprisonment is right, for two reasons: first, because the failure of a tip can have catastrophic results in human terms, and secondly because it may be pure chance that a particular offence at a particular time endangers no one. The Bill aims to ensure that tips are properly sited, constructed and maintained to avoid danger to persons. The penalty which we propose and which I think is quite right, much as I deprecate including in any Bill a penalty of three months' imprisonment (I always prefer to have either a fine or not less than six months' imprisonment) is a recognition that the security of a tip and tile safety of persons are inseparable. But it would be quite wrong to assume that prosecutions would be instituted lightly by Her Majesty's Inspectors or that the court would impose the maximum penalty unless the offences were very serious.
The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said that he appreciated that tip owners under Part II would be held responsible, and I think he described it as hard doctrine, but he acknowledged that it was founded on sound law—or at least that it was founded on law. He raised two important points which I should like to deal with at a little length. The first was that if a local authority find a tip is unsafe there are two courses open to them. Under Clause 14 they can require the owner to put matters right and he must pay the whole cost, and by Clause 17 the local authority themselves can do the work and claim grant, and the Minister making the grant can limit the amount falling on the owner in such cases. The noble Lord pointed out that there was a disparity in this matter. Certainly the point which he put forward has some attractions, but the Bill is based on the principle that owners have a moral obligation to keep tips in a stable condition and to avoid creating a danger to the public.
The Bill also takes into account an owner's potential liability at Common Law, which exists now if damage or injury is caused by a failure of a tip. It is not the Government's intention to give any owner the impression that he can look to Exchequer grants as of right to relieve him of his obligation. A wealthy owner or large corporation which is capable of carrying out remedial operations is unlikely to need financial help.
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It seems unlikely that somebody with no resources would want to undertake or could undertake, operations of any size and in such cases the local authority would almost certainly have to act under Clause 14. But the proposed grant is not directed at people or corporations of substance;it is intended to assist a local authority who find themselves left with expenses which they cannot recover.
If the owner is a light-weight financially and responsibility for the danger is unlikely to be attached to a contributory, it is to be expected that the local authority would decide to carry out the work under Clause 17. There is nothing to stop the local authority from making an arrangement with the owner to do any work of which he is capable as the authority's agent. We feel that, from an administrative aspect, the payment of grants direct to owners would be undesirable, because the Ministers responsible for the grants under Clause 25 are experienced in paying grants to local authorities. All the machinery exists for the payment of such grants, and the audit of local authority accounts is by no means the least important element in ensuring that Exchequer monies are properly used.
It should be remembered—and I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has taken full account of this—that there is always a possibility of a contribution order being sought under subsection (4) of Clause 19, 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. Lastly, it is thought right 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 it is therefore essential to pay any grant to the local authority, basing it on net residual expenditure.
The whole of this really rests on fair play. It must be based on fair play. It would be quite wrong, for example, if work was going to cost £30,000 and the owner was possessed of, say, £30,000 or

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£40,000, that he should be bankrupted or made penniless in this way, because it was known he possessed that sum as his entire wealth. A scheme of any size is bound to be considered and discussed between the Minister, the owner and the local authority. That will be the opportunity for the Minister to assess the merits of an Exchequer subvention and if it seems to the Minister that the owner, although not a man without financial 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 to enable a grant to be paid. I think, therefore, that on that point there is less to be feared than perhaps the noble Lord imagined from the precise words of the Bill.
The other point of substance which the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, raised was where planning permission had been refused, perhaps for amenity reasons. I think the noble Lord mentioned washing small coal out of a tip, which would have given a financial return. He referred to the owner being left with his responsibility for keeping the tip secure and said that a claim might be made against him in future years, although if permission were given now the job could be started. My noble friend Lord Energlyn mentioned that the best way of making these tips secure was to do away with them, with which we agree. That was partly in support of what the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said. That is quite an attractive suggestion, and it is only sensible that all concerned should act reasonably. It is always open to the owner of a tip to make the most of his case when he applies for planning permission, and of course he can appeal to the appropriate Minister if the planning authority refuses permission. There can be a public inquiry under an inspector, the application can go to the Minister and every factor in it can then be brought to bear. The Minister will be able, if he thinks fit, to call for the relevant planning application and to deal with the whole question at once and decide the issue in the light of all the circumstances.
I do not know, but the noble Lord may have been referring to a particular case where an application for what
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seemed a promising project was refused, and where there is now a continuing liability on the owner. That may well be the case. But, in general, the way in which it is suggested that future cases of this kind should be dealt with under the Bill is that the whole gamut should be gone through, if agreement cannot be made initially with the local authority, and that the matter should be thoroughly explored bringing the Minister fully into it.
The noble Lord also raised the question of an appeal against notices under Clause 17, as there is under Clause 14. Of course, there is already an appeal under Clause 17 against the extent and cost of works done when a local authority seeks to recover its costs under Clause 23. But there is no appeal at the stage when notice is first served under Clause 17, and that is for two reasons. The first reason is that local authorities will normally prefer to proceed under Clause 14 where the owner is in a position to do the work; and the second is that they will use their own powers only when urgent action is needed, when the owner is unable or unwilling to do the work, or where the question of a grant is involved. I think I have covered the questions which the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has asked, but no doubt we shall be discussing at least some of these points again in Committee if the noble Lord tables Amendments.
I come to the speech of my noble friend Lord Energlyn, who said that the Bill, when it becomes an Act, could become a source of irritation and frustration if not handled wisely. I should have thought that any Act could become a source of irritation and frustration if it was not handled wisely. But if ever a Bill was well conceived, and conceived in the right spirit, this one surely is. In the case of the mining and quarrying industries, where the Bill will bite hardest and where the main dangers arise, there is, as my noble friend must be aware, a long-established and happy working relationship between the industries and Her Majesty's Inspectors. The industries are very conscious of their responsibilities since the tragedy of Aberfan, and they will certainly willingly co-operate.
I should tell my noble friend that local authorities will in due course receive guidance from the appropriate Ministers

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on the exercise of the new powers conferred by the Bill, and my right honourable friends will certainly emphasise the desirability of co-operation between all the parties. I think it will be agreed that the Bill effects a nice balance between the interests of all; and, of course, a local authority's demands must be reasonable if it is to get the work done, or if it is to recover the costs which it has itself incurred. So I hope we shall find that good will is built into the Bill.
I think the most important part of my noble friend's speech, and the most hopeful and promising part, was when he referred to what I think he called, "a right and proper attitude to waste products". I understand—and I think he confirmed this—that considerable research has been done on the use of this waste by the National Coal Board, in conjunction with the Road Research Laboratory. The research has mainly been on the use of colliery waste in road-making. Some work has been done in developing its use as a lightweight aggregate and also as a material for brickmaking, although there are still technical problems to be overcome in respect of bricks. But, unfortunately, scope for using tip material as aggregate is small in relation to the total tonnage available. I can only hope that what my noble friend suggested—that mines, quarries and tips will form a mineral factory from which no waste will emerge—will from now on be realised. I can assure him that any advice or suggestions to this end which he can give to my right honourable friend will be gladly received and carefully considered.
The noble Lord, Lord Milverton, asked me a number of questions. I do not know whether I can answer all of them, because he indicated that he would probably be tabling Amendments, but perhaps I can answer one or two. He raised the point that statutory undertakers might be able to evade liability for damage caused by the instability of a disused tip by pleading their statutory powers as a defence. This point, as I have no doubt the noble Lord is aware, was raised in another place, and we have re-checked the position since it was so raised. My information is that the only body which needs to construct tips to which the Bill applies in the exercise of statutory powers is the National Coal Board. The Coal Industry Nationalisa-
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tion Act, Section 49(4), states that the duties and functions laid on the Board
"are not to be construed as authorising disregard of any enactment or any act or omission unlawful on any other ground".
We have had legal advice that this provision would prevent the Board's pleading their statutory powers as a defence. Before the Committee stage I will look at the noble Lord's suggestion about the "avoidance of doubt" provision in the Reservoirs Act and will write co him. That will still leave him the opportunity to put down an Amendment on the point if he so wishes.
Then the noble Lord said a good deal about the powers of local authorities. The Bill provides that the powers shall reside with the county councils but that they shall be able to delegate those 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. And this is the important thing: this is the paint the noble Lord raised. He expressed doubt whether the technical staffs would be available to all local authorities. Clearly the lower the level at which one makes those powers directly available, then the greater the doubts whether the requisite staff will be available. Therefore, I think that what we have now is the right way to do it.
The noble Lord also asked whether a planning application to tip should be accompanied by a certificate from the mines inspector that the site is safe. The Town and Country Planning Acts are concerned with the right use of land, and not with safety. It is true that an application for planning permission for a factory needs to be accompanied by an industrial development certificate, but that, as the noble Lord is aware, is concerned with location and not with safety. The safety of a factory is looked after

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by the Factories Act and the factory inspector. The Bill looks after safety. Regulations under Clause 1(2) will ensure that no tipping starts on land which is inherently unsafe; and the thirty days' notice of intention to start tipping under Clause 4 will put the inspector on warning. We think it is best to keep safety and planning control separate, but the local authority associations have been told that the advice of the Inspectorate on tips will be available to them and to all local authorities. My Lords, I hope the noble Lord will forgive me, particularly as there is further important business to come, if I leave his remaining questions to our Committee stage.
The noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, asked me about the state of technical knowledge about the safety of tips at present, and asked how we can be sure that a tip is safe. They may not be his exact words, but that is, I think, the sense of what he said. My Lords, we know the factors that can lead to instability, and the means of identifying them are also known to us. The application of this knowledge, of course, is through training and advice of those responsible for tip management; and it is in this field that the Tips Advisory Committee has so much to offer. The direct answer to the noble Earl's question therefore is that it is through knowledge and expertise. We are satisfied that in total we have the knowledge; that the Tips Advisory Committee will ensure that present knowledge, as well as future knowledge and experience, is properly considered, absorbed and disseminated, and that this Bill when it becomes an Act will provide the necessary powers and the means to implement them.
My Lords, I am most grateful for your Lordships' contributions. I have done my best to answer as many questions as possible, but I hope to do better during the Committee stage when dealing with your Lordships' Amendments.
On Question, Bill read 2ª, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

NATIONAL INSURANCE &C. BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1ª, and to be printed.

AGE OF MAJORITY (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
4.28 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCOTLAND (LORD HUGHES): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The sole purpose of the Bill is to lower to 18 the age at which a person attains majority and ceases to be a minor under Scottish law. I should like first to say something about the background to the Government's decision to introduce this Bill.
Part I of the Family Law Reform Bill implements for England and Wales the principal recommendations of the Latey Committee. Although the Committee were assisted in their consideration of the subject by a factual statement on the relevant law of Scotland, which was provided by the Scottish Law Commission, they were concerned only with the position of the minor under English law. The Committee's terms of reference were:
"to consider whether any changes are desirable in the law relating to contracts made by persons under 21 and to their power to hold and dispose of property, and in the law relating to marriage by such persons and to the power to make them wards of court."
Under Scottish law, a minor already has the legal capacity to enter into binding contracts; he can acquire and dispose of property, both movable and heritable, and (since the passing of the Succession (Scotland) Act 1964) he can make a will dealing with both; he can marry without parental consent provided he is 16 years of age; and, of course, the procedure by which a person can be made a ward of court is unknown to Scottish law. For these reasons, and because there was no apparent demand in Scotland for change nor evidence of any practical difficulties arising under the existing law, we reached the conclusion that it would be inappropriate to extend the Latey inquiry beyond the Border and quite unnecessary to mount a separate inquiry in Scotland. In the event, of course, the Committee's main recommendation was that the age of full legal capacity in England and Wales should be reduced from 21 to 18, and the question which immediately arose was whether, if this particular recommendation were to be implemented for England and

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Wales, any convincing evidence or arguments could be adduced to justify maintaining the status quo in Scotland.
On the one hand, it could be argued that the considerations which led the Government to exclude Scotland from the scope of the Latey inquiry still held good, and that under existing Scottish law minors, so far from suffering any serious disadvantages, had the best of both worlds: they were free to enter into contracts, but if they were foolish enough to enter into one which was seriously to their detriment they could invoke the protection of the courts and have the contract reduced, and the period during which they could challenge contracts entered into during their minority extended beyond their 21st birthday throughout the period known as the quadriennium utile, the four years immediately following the attainment of their majority.
There were, however, a number of arguments pointing the other way. The age of majority is at present the same on both sides of the Border, and anomalies could arise if young persons in England and Wales achieved full adult status at the age of 18 whilst their contemporaries in Scotland remained technically minors until 21. For example, the law on adoption is at present the same in both countries. If the age of majority were lowered to 18 in England and Wales only and if the maximum age at which a person could be adopted were also lowered to 18 in consequence, practical difficulties might well arise if the latter change did not apply to Scotland also. Furthermore, if young persons in England and Wales were judged to be sufficiently mature and ready to assume adult responsibilities at 18, there could really be no logical justification for withholding a similar recognition from young persons in Scotland. There was the further consideration that the proposed reduction in the voting age to 18 applied to Scotland as well as to England and Wales.
The arguments, therefore, were finely balanced, and in April of last year, following the announcement that the Government intended to implement, for England and Wales, the main recommendations of the Latey Committee, my right honourable friend, the Secretary of State for Scotland, consulted a number
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of organisations concerned with both the legal and the social implications of any change in the age of majority in Scotland. The organisations which favoured a change in the law included tie local authority associations, the Scottish Trades Union Congress, the Church of Scotland, the Scottish N.F.U., the Scottish Landowners' Federation, the Scottish Standing Conference of Voluntary Youth Organisations and the Scottish Marriage Guidance Council. The last organisation made out a particularly convincing case for lowering the age of majority in Scotland in recognition of the sense of responsibility shown by the great majority of young people between the ages of 18 and 21. The faculty of Advocates and the Law Society of Scotland questioned the necessity of amending the Scottish law; but they offered a number of helpful and constructive suggestions of which account has been taken in the drafting of the Bill which is now before us. The Government decided therefore that, notwithstanding the benefits enjoyed by minors in Scotland under the existing law, there was a strong case, on broad social grounds, for lowering the age of majority to 18.
Clause 1 of the Bill effects a change corresponding to that effected for England and Wales by Clause 1 of the Family Law Reform Bill. It provides in general terms that a person shall henceforth attain majority at 18 instead of 21, that persons who are already 18 but not yet 21 on the date on which the Act is brought into operation by an Order made under subsection (3) of Clause 2 shall attain majority on that date and that references to such expressions as "full age" and "minority" as they appear in statutory provisions or in deeds executed after the commencement of the Act shall be construed accordingly.
I should draw your Lordships' attention in passing to the drafting of subsection (2) of Clause 1 which applies the preceding subsection
"for the purposes of any rule of law".
This means that any rule of law the application of which is contingent upon the duration of a person's minority or alternatively upon the attainment of majority must be construed in tie light of the altered circumstances brought about by the preceding subsection. Thus,

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one effect of this Bill will be that the quadriennium utile which, as I have explained, is the period of four years immediately following the attainment of majority within which under Scottish law a person can challenge a contract entered into during his minority, will henceforth run from age 18 until 22 instead of from 21 to 25.
Schedule 1 reduces to 18 all the statutory age limits which may be said to be derived directly from the Common Law concepts of minority and "full age". There are of course other statutory age limits—for example, the minimum age at which a person can be sentenced to detention in a young offenders' institution (at present 17 years)—which involve different considerations and are not affected in any way by this Bill. The only provision of Clause 2 to which I need draw attention is subsection (3) which empowers the Secretary of State to bring the Act into force by a commencement order. There is a similar provision in the Family Law Reform Bill and the Government's intention is to synchronise the reduction in the age of majority in the two countries.
In conclusion, I should like to emphasise what I said at the beginning: that this Bill does no more than substitute 18 for 21 as the age at which a person attains majority. It does not affect in other respects the law relating to minors. The Scottish Law Commission have included this branch of the law in their Second Programme of Law Reform which was published last year; and it would be wrong to propose any more extensive changes in the law in advance of the Commission's recommendations on this subject. Nor does the Bill affect in any way the law relating to the marriage of young persons. This is a subject outwith the scope of the present Bill, and I would remind the House that these matters are at present under consideration by a Committee on the Marriage Law of Scotland under the Chairmanship of Lord Kilbrandon. I hope your Lordships will agree, however, that young persons in Scotland, whose maturity and sense of responsibility are already given practical recognition by a law which affords them a wide measure of freedom, are fully entitled along with their contemporaries
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in England and Wales to claim the formal status of majority at 18. I beg to move.
Moved, that the Bill be now read 2ª.—(Lord Hughes.)
4.37 p.m.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has made out a case for this Bill extremely well. I am bound to say that the chief reason for it seems to be to fit the convenience of the English that our law should not be dissimilar from theirs; and, of course, the existing law in Scotland is not nearly so disabling as it has been in England until now.
I have always felt a little sceptical about the proposal in this Bill. I doubt whether there is any great demand for it among the people who are principally concerned. There is some demand among older people; it gives them a pleasant feeling of generosity in conferring, at no expense to themselves full citizenship on people who have not got it. But I have not found any signs at all among young people between 18 and 21 that they are really panting with eagerness to achieve the advantages which are conferred upon them by this Bill, such as the notoriety of being hypnotised at a public entertainment or the delightful privilege of being placed in charge of an insane relative. But I do not think, unless we are extreme nationalists, we should wish to object to a synchronisation of the position in this respect between us in Scotland and people in England. We must hope that the pride of full citizenship may outweigh the joys of irresponsibility.
I shall certainly not be under any temptation to move the Amendment which was moved on the English Bill by my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor and which your Lordships carried, because, as your Lordships know, marriage without parental consent has always been permitted from the age of 16 in Scotland. Of course it may be a good thing that there should be parental control, and probably it is socially advantageous up to a higher age. But there is a great difference between preserving a parental veto that already exists, which your Lordships have done, or are trying to do, in the case of England, and imposing a veto which has never been there at all before. I do not think that your Lordships need be worried about

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the possibility of any Amendment of this kind in Committee.
My Lords, there is one point on which I should like to be enlightened by the noble Lord. It concerns the position of people who have attained the age of 18 but not the age of 21. Under the Budget of 1968 it is provided that the incomes of minors, people under age, shall be aggregated with the incomes of their parents in the financial year beginning April, 1969, and thereafter. I should like to make it plain that I am not asking the noble Lord to anticipate the Budget statement of the Chancellor in any way; I am only asking him what would be the position under the present law, assuming that no change is made in the coming Budget, supposing that a person is now just attaining the age of 18.
Let us suppose that this Bill becomes law in June of this year, two months after the beginning of the financial year. What will be the position? Will the person who attains his full majority in June of this year not have his income aggregated with that of his parents for any part of the financial year because he is now no longer a minor? Or will he have it aggregated with that of his parents for the whole year because at the beginning of the year he was still legally a minor; this Bill not having yet reached the Statute Book? Or will he have to go through the process of having his income aggregated only for the first two months of the year but not for the remaining ten months of the financial year—something which, it seems to me, would impose a very heavy burden upon our already seriously overworked Inland Revenue officials? I am of course assuming that the Government will not have the financial unfairness to continue to tax people as is now provided for in aggregation with their parents up to the age of 21 after they have under this Bill attained legal majority at 18. I am asking only what will be the position of these people who do not reach the age of 21 next year but who are or will be 18 during the course of the next financial year. Will they be allowed full independence in the control and non-aggregation of their own incomes with the incomes of somebody else because they have attained the age of majority? It seems to me that they ought to be entitled to this.
4.44 p.m.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, replies, I wonder whether he could explain what exactly is meant by Clause 1(6)? So far as I can understand, it means that if you have made your will before this date, and for some unknown reason you mention the age of majority or the age of 21 in it, that continues to stand even if you make a codicil to your will after the date when this Bill becomes law. Could the noble Lord please explain whether my reading of that is correct? I do not think that he mentioned it in his original explanation. I also wonder whether he could go into slightly more detail about how the tax position of minors who are about to cease to become minors will be affected by the Bill. So far as I can make out, the tax position remains unaltered because it is in the third part of Schedule 2; but perhaps the noble Lord would confirm this.
4.45 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, for the general welcome he gave to the Bill, although perhaps it was expressed in somewhat muted terms. I should like to make perfectly clear that the Government do not consider that this Bill is being brought in for the benefit of the English. It is not any special part of the remit of the Secretary of State for Scotland to legislate for the benefit of the English. One would almost gather from certain remarks made in recent years that in fact the contrary is the case and that the Secretary of State is regularly legislating not for anybody's benefit but against the interests of the Scots.
The whole purpose of this Bill is to confer benefits on the Scots between the ages of 18 and 21 and remove the difficulties in which they might find themselves and the disadvantages which might accrue to them if the legal age of majority remained at 21 after it had been reduced to 18 South of the Border. It is perfectly true, as the noble Earl has said, that there has been no great expression of delight on the part of young people at the prospect that they are to attain their majority at the age of 18. That is as true as it is not surprising, because I think the noble Earl will probably have shared with me the experience over many years in public life that one never receives any

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expression of gratitude for benefits conferred; one merely receives protests if they are not to be conferred. If we had not sought to bring forward a Bill of this kind I have no doubt that we should have been inundated with protests, violent or otherwise, with the removal of property or otherwise, as appeared to be appropriate, because we were not doing it. So it may be that the state of comparative quiescence which exists in Scotland exists not as a tangible expression of generosity but simply because we have acted in time.
My Lords, the question which has been asked by the noble Earl and by the noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl, on the subject of taxation is, as the noble Duke pointed out, answered by the reference at the end of the Bill that taxation proposals are not affected by this Bill. The noble Earl pointed out that the Finance Act 1968 introduced a provision, which will operate for the first time in the 1969–70 financial year, under which the investment income of young persons under 21 who are not regularly working will be aggregated with those of their parents for tax purposes. My Lords, that provision is unaffected by the Bill now before us. Earlier in his remarks the noble Earl said that he would not expect me to anticipate the Budget. He went on to take it for granted that in the Finance Act the Chancellor would alter the age for these purposes from 21 to 18. My Lords, the noble Earl is freer to speculate or guess in public about what the Chancellor may do in these matters than I am; so he will forgive me if I do not follow him into that particular field.
Reference was made by the noble Duke to Clause 1(6). This subsection sets aside, for the purpose of this Bill only, a general rule of law to the effect that a will or codicil, if confirmed by a later codicil, is regarded as having been, in
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effect, made on the date of the latter. If this rule were to apply, the intention of subsection (2)(b) would be frustrated in cases where a codicil is made after the appointed day, because that subsection is designed to ensure that the Act does not alter the meaning of pre-Act deeds. I think that that is about as near as I can get to translating this from legal language into a language reasonably intelligible to laymen like the noble Duke and myself, although it is still difficult. I come back to what I said in the beginning. This is about as simple a provision as your Lordships have ever been asked to implement and its purpose is achieved in comparatively few words—your Lordships will notice that I say "comparatively few" words.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I just want to make sure about this point. It means that the Finance Act does not use "majority" as a criterion, but the age of twenty-one?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, the noble Earl will recollect that when referring to the changes, I pointed out that where the age of majority was referred to, that would be changed automatically from twenty-one to eighteen. There is a whole list of provisions in Schedule I where the age of twenty-one, and in some cases the age of twenty-five, is referred to. In all these cases the age of eighteen will be substituted for twenty-one or twenty-five, but taxation proposals are specifically excluded from this. If there is to be a change from twenty-one to eighteen for tax purposes, this will be given effect to in a Finance Act.
On Question, Bill read 2ª, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at eight minutes before five o'clock.