Lords Sitting of 4 March 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 Bristol.

AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES AND THE COMMON MARKET
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the policy of continuing subsidies to the farming community as outlined in the Minister of Agriculture's speech on January 31 is Government policy; and, if so, whether they have informed the E.E.C. that they are not prepared to modify their policy towards the European system of import levies.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food accurately represented Government policy on agriculture support arrangements, but expressly emphasised the need to keep an open mind. The Government have made clear on numerous occasions their attitude to the adoption by the United King-
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dom of the E.E.C. system. The second part of the Question does not therefore arise.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for his reply, may I ask whether he is aware that in the first part of his speech the Minister of Agriculture said:
"In order that farmers get these decisions, right, it is my view that they must be told of the broad objectives of Government policy at any rate for the next four or five years."
How does he reconcile that with the question of Ministers' keeping an open mind?
LORD BESWICK: I should have thought, my Lords, that they were easily reconcilable. By adopting the kind of policy which Her Majesty's Government have adopted over the past year and dealing with each commodity as the problems arise we are keeping the farming community aware of our policy.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, would the Minister not agree with me that if the farmer must know for four or five years in advance what is going to happen to him, it is no good keeping an open mind on other possibilities?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I will give the noble Baroness the full text of the speech—
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: I have it.
LORD BESWICK:—and she will find that there is absolutely nothing in my right honourable friend's speech which is not fair to the farmer and properly

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critical of the policy which is now being advocated by the Opposition.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, as the Government have already stated their adoption of the principle of import control for the future of eggs, would it help them to be more consistent in their actions if they stated that they were already proceeding by commodities to adopt the policy which is adopted by the E.E.C.?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the noble Lord asks for consistency. I think that that is an admirable virtue, but rigidity or dogmatism are not qualities which Her Majesty's Government would like to see adopted.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, would my noble friend not agree that a policy which is applicable to over-production can be entirely irrelevant to a commodity of which a country imports some third or half from other countries?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, my noble friend is right. I really cannot understand the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, in taking up the attitude that because something has been done in respect of eggs it must necessarily be applied over the whole field of agricultural policy. What stands out in my right honourable friend's speech is his statement that if the policy of minimum import prices were applied over the whole field of agriculture it would send up retail food prices by something between 4 per cent. and 7 per cent.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, I think the noble Lord has misunderstood my question. My question was directed to trying to help the noble Lord to be consistent with the Government's policy of entering the E.E.C., so that they could claim that they have at least made a beginning in agricultural policy with eggs.
LORD BESWICK: Yes, my Lords, I accept the noble Lord's desire to be helpful. He normally is helpful. Of course, he could have gone further. Not only have we had a certain policy with regard to eggs, which has aroused the opposition of the National Farmers' Union, but we have also controls of
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butter; we have some controls of bacon; and we dealt with these different policies in a realistic and fair way.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, would the Minister agree that it is very important that the farmers in this country and the E.E.C. in Europe should understand exactly what Her Majesty's Government's policy is, so that it does not appear to be contradictory in different speeches?
LORD HENLEY: Just let the noble Lady have the last word.

TELEVISION BROADCAST OF SOLDIERS
2.40 p.m.
LORD TREFGARNE: My Lords. I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the Prime Minister's recent statement in the House of Commons, they will used their influence with the Independent Television Authority to prevent the broadcasting of the play Soldiers by Rolf Hochhuth.]
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, the responsibility for the content of programmes rests with the Chairman and members of the Independent Television Authority; and it is not the Government's practice to intervene.
LORD TREFGARNE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that reply. Would he not agree that the allegations made in this play are bound to cause great pain to the immediate relatives of those depicted in the play? Secondly, would he not also agree that the broadcasting of this play, as distinct from producing it in the West End, is bound to bring these allegations to the notice of a far wider public, who might not have the necessary judgment to reconcile the artistic merit and the historical inaccuracies found in the play?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I do not quite see what the noble Lord's question is to do with me. This is not a matter for the Government to rule on whether the play should be broadcast or not.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, whatever the merits of this play, will the Government please resist any suggestions that they should step into this or any other controversy of this sort which is properly within the province of the Independent Television Authority?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. They are suggestions which I am in fact trying to resist.

RHODESIA: TRIAL OF MR. SITHOLE
2.42 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will disavow the prosecution of the Rev. Ndabaninzi Sithole in Rhodesia by an illegal Government at an illegal trial and the illegal sentence passed on him of six years' hard labour.]
THE: MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords, Her Majesty's Government had of course no part at all in the decision to place Mr. Sithole on trial. We have no information about the facts of the case beyond what was produced in evidence. I think that it would be a mistake for me to comment on the conduct of the trial, or on the sentence passed on Mr. Sithole.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend another question? If this prosecution has been brought by an illegal Government, are not all the subsequent proceedings illegal? Further, while making no comment upon the charges against Mr. Sithole—and those of us who know him cannot believe that they are true—is it not the duty of Her Majesty's Government, before reaching any settlement with Southern Rhodesia, to insist that the leaders of the African people shall be released?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I think we must face the fact, as my right honourable friend the Minister without Portfolio said in another place on October 22 last, that:
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"Britain has responsibility for Rhodesia without power inside Rhodesia."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 22/10/68, col. 1097.]
Our policy is directed towards the restitution of constitutional rule.
With regard to the first supplementary question put by my noble friend, the legislation under which Mr. Sithole has been sentenced was passed and Judge Lewis, the judge in charge of the trial, was appointed before the illegal declaration of independence. Therefore, whatever may have been the Government in Rhodesia arid its responsibilities for this charge, the trial was conducted under legislation that was passed before U.D.I.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, is the Ministed saying that this was a legal trial? How is it possible to have a legal trial under the auspices of an illegal Government?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I sought to reply to my noble friend as to the source of the legislation under which Mr. Sithole was charged, and also in regard to the judge concerned. We recognise that there is an illegal régime in Rhodesia and naturally we are seeking to return Rhodesia to constitutional rule. But the question before us is really more of a legal character than of a political character, although I am bound to accept that they are both intertwined.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, is not the Minister aware that the fact that the Government are not condemning this trial will have an unfortunate effect all over the world?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, before Her Majesty's Government could be called upon to condemn—and I certainly do not condone—we must have more knowledge of the background of this trial than is available at the moment. The only knowledge we have is the evidence that has been published.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, is it not the fact this this illegal Government has illegally detained and imprisoned this man for many years? How cart a trial be regarded as a legal matter when it is brought by an illegal Government?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I speak subject to correction by my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack, but we have not disputed the position and the standing of the courts in Rhodesia.

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This trial has been conducted under the rules of the courts of Rhodesia and we have no information other than what has been published as to the manner in which the trial was conducted.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, is there any reason to suppose that the result of this trial would not have been precisely the same if there had been a legal régime in Rhodesia?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, as I am sure the noble and learned Viscount will agree, one would be wrong to make assumptions as to what another court might decide, because in the end only the court that hears the evidence can fairly judge the case.

BRITISH RAIL AND GIRO
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will endeavour to persuade British Railways to open an account with the national Giro.]
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, the British Railways Board are continuing discussions with Giro as to what use the Board might make of Giro's services, but it is essentially a matter for the Board's own judgment what banking system they use and what arrangements they make to receive payments from their customers. I will see, however, that the attention of the Board is brought to the noble Lord's interest in this matter.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I am much obliged for that Answer.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, could the Minister say what use such an account with the Giro bank would be, in that it does not lend money and British Rail are always having to borrow?
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, I think that is rather a different matter.
THE EARL OF DUNDONALD: My Lords, may I put it this way? Is it not the fact that Giro does not operate for a customer who is permanently "in the
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red"? Is not that the answer to the Question?
LORD BOWLES: No, my Lords, it is not the answer. That is why Giro is asking the British Railways Board to open an account.

NORTHERN IRELAND PARLIAMENTARY COMMISSIONER
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, at a convenient moment after half-past three my noble friend the Leader of the House will be making a Statement on the Northern Ireland Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration.
COVENTRY CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
NORTHAMPTON COUNTY COUNCIL BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

STREET OFFENCES BILL [H.L.]
2.50 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. I think it would be proper to start by reminding your Lordships that this is a much revised version of a Bill which came before your Lordships for Second Reading about a year ago and which was not found acceptable. It would probably be wrong to assume that your Lordships all have in mind the details of the Bill which I then brought forward. On the other hand, I think it would be equally wrong to assume that your Lordships' minds were, so to speak, a blank on this subject; and therefore I do not propose to go over too much in detail the ground which I traversed last year. In that way I hope to save a certain amount of time. On the other hand, it will be necessary to retraverse some of the ground.
Briefly, the object of the Bill is partly to remove an injustice which exists in the law as laid down in the 1959 Act

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and partly to fill in some gaps in the law which that Bill did not make any effort to tackle. It can be summarised, I think, by saying that the object of the Bill is to remove a number of discriminations which exist in the law as it stands at present—the discrimination between men and women, the discrimination between the prostitute and her customer, and the discrimination between heterosexual and homosexual conduct in relation to street offences. As it is against women that most of this discrimination exists, it is not unnatural to find that the societies which represent the interests of women in one way and another have been campaigning for a long time to get a redress of the law on this subject of street offences. In the forefront, as last year, has been the Josephine Butler Society, which has given me great assistance in connection with this Bill. But I think most, if not all, the women's organisations are very much behind the Josephine Butler Society in this matter, and in particular the Mothers' Union, which has written me a number of letters in support of this Bill.
I would mention that when the Bill was before your Lordships a year ago it gave rise in this quarter to a great deal of interest and a great deal of optimism, which, of course, was not justified in the event. That attempt last year was evidently in the minds of an important conference for the advancement of women's rights which was held last year in London in connection with Human Rights Year, which, as your Lordships will remember, was very much in the air at that time. At that conference a resolution was passed demanding equality between men and women in relation to street offences. I think these points are worth noticing as showing the great public interest which has been raised over this matter, particularly among the women's societies.
Undoubtedly, in my attempt last year to reform the law I drew the Bill too wide. The 1959 Act, may I remind your Lordships, makes it an offence for a common prostitute to loiter or solicit in a street or public place for the purpose of prostitution. That is to say, the Act applies only to common prostitutes. For practical purposes, to get a conviction it is sufficient to prove that a woman is a common prostitute and that she was
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loitering in the streets, because it will pretty well follow, as night follows day, that if this is proved and she says, "I was not looking for a customer; I was looking in a shop window", no one is going to believe her. It undoubtedly is an infraction of the general principle of British justice. A class of society should not be singled out for treatment in this way, and that is one of the discriminations that this Bill is aimed to remove.
In my earlier Bill, in order to get rid of discrimination I substituted the words "any person" for the words "common prostitute". And in order to bring the kerb crawler and other people guilty of offensive conduct of a similar type within the sanction of the law we substituted the words "immoral purposes" for "purposes of prostitution". Those proposed alternatives were very much criticised in the debate, and in retrospect I admit that they were very properly criticised, as being too wide and as subjecting perfectly respectable people who were perhaps engaged in looking into shop windows to suspicion and quite possibly to arrest by the police, thereby putting too much power into the hands of the police and constituting indeed an infraction of civil liberties.
The noble Earl, Lord Arran, who was the first to advance these criticisms, in a powerful speech, which I enjoyed, although in a way it was aimed at myself, in effect moved that the Second Reading of the Bill should be rejected by the well-known method of proposing that it should be moved again in six months' time. In the debate which followed I took the view, perhaps naturally, that those defects could be put right at the next stage—"hammered out in Committee" was the phrase I think I used—and quite a number of your Lordships took the view that that was the better course to adopt. Others, however, and indeed the majority of those who took part in the discussion, evidently thought that the defects were too serious to be got over in that way and that the better thing to do eras to hand my Bill back, so to speak, to see whether I could make it a better one. And after spending quite a bit of tine on this effort I come back to-day with what I am quite sure is a very much better Bill.
Before I leave this point I should like to say that Lord Arran himself almost

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came over to the view that the Bill could be put right in Committee, and he said that if he had not been convinced by the Minister of State, my noble friend Lord Stonham, that the Government themselves were going to introduce a Bill to deal with this problem, and to introduce it soon, he would have advised your Lordships that we should go into Committee on it. I should like to quote the actual words which I have taken from the OFFICIAL REPORT, where he said:
"I would suggest that the House should persevere with this Bill; but the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has made it unequivocally clear that something is going to be done—and soon …"—[OFFICIAL. REPORT, 8/2/68, col. 1338.]
I ask your Lordships to pay attention to that, because now, more than twelve months later, nothing has been done, or, if it has, it has been so imperceptible that it has hardly caused a ripple on the surface. That is another reason why I am back to-day with the improved Bill: because I think it is time this matter was dealt with. Indeed, in view of last year's support in principle which almost every one of your Lordships who took part in the debate gave, I think I may take it that my job to-day is to persuade you that the present Bill is well enough drafted to be acceptable, at any rate for Second Reading—acceptable enough to be sent to Committee and worked on there.
I should like to say at this stage that while of course I take responsibility for the terms of the Bill, the work which has been done upon it has been that of a number of friends and colleagues and I should like to take this opportunity of thanking them for their unremitting help. I do not want to mention any names except to say that, because I think it is a good example of the sort of way in which our English system so often works, one of the outstanding critics last year were the National Council of Civil Liberties who, in effect, said that this was a Police Bill and ought to be thrown out root and stock. I challenged them to adopt a constructive attitude and help me to put a better Bill before Parliament. They responded to that challenge and they were represented on my drafting committee throughout the year by one of their members who gave us very great help, and I am very grateful for what he
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did. I mention this as being typical of a great deal that goes on in this country, where criticism becomes of a very constructive character. Nevertheless, none of us is an expert Parliamentary draftsman. That is a highly technical profession, and I have very little doubt that there are still a number of defects in the present Bill; and I expect my noble friend Lord Stonham will be pointing some of them out to me during the course of his speech.
At an early stage I sent a copy of the draft to the Home Office, and I should like to take this opportunity of thanking them for a number of suggestions in respect of the drafting. They were very acceptable and they have enabled me to improve this Bill a good deal. If there are faults, I am quite sure that the faults and defects are of a kind which can be put right in Committee, and I am hoping this afternoon to get a Second Reading so that I can have the assistance of your Lordships in putting the Bill into a fit state to go on to the Statute Book.
There is not a great deal more I want to say by way of general introduction except to make one point. One of my main objectives on the last occasion was to make kerb crawling an offence. That is still one of my main objectives to-day. I referred in some detail to this matter on the last occasion, and I pointed out that the Wolfenden Report had described kerb crawling as a nuisance. My noble friend Lord Stonham supported me in my views and said they were not in any way exaggerated; and the Home Office evidence showed that at any rate in certain cities this offence was really a menace. I then drew attention to the important case of Crook v. Edmondson, where a magistrate's court had convicted a man of an offence under Section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956—he was a kerb crawler—but on a case stated the High Court decided that this section was not applicable to kerb crawling. The result was to leave kerb crawling "unhit at" as it were, by the English criminal law, and one of my main objects, as I said a moment ago, is to try to get this matter put right.
Having mentioned the Wolfenden Report and having been reinforced by the Home Office views, and having, as I thought, dotted the i's and crossed the

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t's by quoting from the address by a Liverpool magistrate and from a letter of a young woman who had written to me from London, and also mentioning that I had a good deal more evidence, I thought I had done enough. But in the debate a number of influential speakers took the view that the case in respect of kerb crawling had not been made out, and that it was not sufficiently proved that it was a serious nuisance. I must say that I was rather surprised at this, and reading over the debate during the week-end I still felt surprised and wondered whether possibly I ought to have produced more evidence.
I could go on about this matter for a long time. It is difficult to know exactly how far you should go in order to try to persuade your audience that this really is a serious business. I have had more letters from Liverpool; Manchester is obviously very bad, and it is worse in the conurbations. I have had letters from all round Manchester, from towns in Yorkshire, from Birmingham, and from Nottingham, where the Chief Constable himself has recently gone on record that it is not safe for a woman to be unescorted in the streets of that city after dark. Of course, I have also had letters from London. It is interesting that very recently a woman Member of another place was complaining that a kerb crawler has accosted her in South London. I understand that that matter has in fact been raised in the other place on several occasions and strong views have been there expressed, but so far no Government activitity has followed.
I hope that what I have said is sufficient to make it quite clear that this is quite a serious nuisance; that everybody this afternoon will agree that the nuisance is accepted as a fact, and that the problem is really to deal with it in an effective sort of way. I was reading the discussion during the week-end, and I must say that I was particularly interested in the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell. I am not sure whether she is here to-day, but her speech evidently attracted a good deal of attention, because I have have received an interesting letter inviting me to bring my noble friend Lady Gaitskell up to Whalley Range, near Manchester, for an afternoon, after which, my informant said,
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"She will come back quite convinced as a result of what she will see in Whalley Range". As I say, I hope that I have said enough to satisfy your Lordships that kerb crawling is, in fact, a nuisance.
Turning to the terms of the Bill itself, the important clause, of course, is Clause 1, which it is proposed should take the place of Section l(1) of the 1959 Act. To a large extent this is based on the Report of the Macmillan Committee on Street Offences in 1928, a very valuable Report which unfortunately was not followed up in Parliament. This proposed clause is divided into two subsections, the first of which is aimed at what one might call the normal type of street prostitution. As on the last occasion, it substitutes the words "any person" far the words "common prostitute". We want to get rid of the peculiar and special position of the common prostitute. Obviously everybody who behaves in this way ought to be responsible for their activities. The activities aimed at are, as in the case of the 1959 Act, activities in a street or public place; that is to say, we are concerned with street nuisances in this Bill, just as the 1959 Act is, but nuisances of a limited type, nuisances which might be described as "prostitution nuisances". The important change is one which I think I have mentioned already, that we are substituting for the word "loitering" the words "persistently to accost". "Loitering" will disappear, and the words "persistently to accost" will take its place. We have introduced the need for persistence because it was suggested on the last occasion that to penalise what one might call a casual "pick-up" was altogether going too far, and I think there is a good deal in that argument.
I admit that the need to prove persistence throws an additional burden upon the prosecution, a greater burden than exists under the 1959 Act under which the burden of proof is as light as it can be. Under the Act the prosecution has only to prove loitering by a common prostitute and they are home. The Wolfenden Committee considered the matter in some detail and felt that what they described as "habitualness" was an aspect which was difficult to prove. They came down in favour of the easier and, as I regard it, unjust method of penalising the common prostitute.

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Their argument would suggest that they considered the matter chiefly in connection with loitering rather than in relation to soliciting. I agree that it is more difficult to prove habitualness in the case of loitering than it is in the case of soliciting. However, it is nothing like as difficult as the Committee made out. A police officer should have no particular difficulty in a proper case in satisfying a court that a case has been made out. When I was a young barrister I often attended magistrates' courts and frequently heard police evidence in this sort of case brought under the then law. The police officer described how he had watched the defendant accosting one man after another during a period of, say, twenty minutes, and the magistrate had no difficulty whatever in finding "habitualness", to quote the word used by the Wolfenden Committee.
A further point to be considered is that solicitation may be by the prostitute or by the customer. I underline this point, which is brought out by the words in the clause "with a view to offering or obtaining" since it brings about an important change in the present law. The present law penalises only the prostitute. That illustrates the glaring inequality of the Act as it stands. This inequality is one of my principal objections to the present Act and I wish to dispose of it by means of the present Bill. The 1959 Act is concerned with sexual nuisance, and we do not propose to go beyond it. We have used the expression "sexual services" rather than "sexual intercourse". The expression "sexual intercourse" is a much narrower phrase and in connection with homosexual activities might well not be a satisfactory phrase. I do not like the expression "sexual services" and I should be happy to have a better one if one can be suggested. The phrase "sexual gratification" has been suggested, but possibly it goes too wide.
I should like to deal with the question of payment or reward, which phrase appears in subsection (1A) to show that the provision is concerned with ordinary prostitution. Subsection (1B) relates to what one might describe as aggressive sexual conduct in the streets, of which kerb crawling is a good example. Some types of that activity would come within the first part of the clause. Nowadays a number of prostitutes use their cars to
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stalk their prey. Even among the male kerb crawlers are many who seek the ordinary prostitute and who are prepared to pay. The woman M.P. whom I mentioned described how the man who attempted to obtain her services thrust two crumpled pound notes into her hand, which clearly brought him within the first part of the provision. But many of these persons are not so inclined and are after a, so to speak, free evening with some woman whom they can persuade to go with them. In order to achieve that goal they are prepared to go along the street, mile after mile, accosting and upsetting all the women they can intercept.
We have tried to exclude the casual picker-up by requiring that the conduct must amount to a nuisance. No prosecution is to lie unless the person importuned, or some other person such as a resident in the street or user of the street, has found the conduct in question so much of a nuisance that he or she is prepared to give evidence about it. This is an ample safeguard, and indeed some people may think that it is more than ample. It is further tightened up by the definition of "importuning" which comes within the next clause.
The Wolfenden Committee, having decided that kerb crawling is a nuisance, then went on to say that the problem of proof was a difficult one and that they did not propose to make any recommendations about making it an offence. Again, that was rather too timorous an outlook on their part. I have no doubt that if many of the women who have written to me about this problem were to give evidence about what they have seen a court would have no hesitation in finding that an offence had been committed. It is significant that in the only case that ever came before the court, Crook v. Edmondson, the bench were of opinion on the facts that the case would be made out, if Section 32 were apposite. They had no doubt that the man in question had been guilty of going along in his car trying to get hold of a woman for sexual services. Therefore I feel that there is no difficulty about proving the matter.
Subsection (5) of Section 1 of the existing Act repealed certain sections of earlier Statutes which the Act replaced, except to take into account convictions which had been entered under them for purposes of assessing punishment. The Macmillan

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Committee of 1928 suggested that a number of local Acts of Parliament were in existence on the subject. The 1959 Act did not repeal all the local Acts relating to this matter and it seems high time, as was suggested by the Macmillan Committee, that the law should be uniform over the whole country. Therefore, we have taken the opportunity of having a general repeal clause. It may be objected that all the different local Acts ought to be set out and repealed seriatim, and I agree that that would be much the better way of doing it, but I just do not have the research facilities for finding them and it seemed to us that it could be done in this general way. If my noble friend Lord Stonham should tell me that it cannot be done in this way, then I suppose we could drop this clause, but it would be a pity.
There is one further point on this clause about which I ought to say something, although the matter is a little technical and will take a few minutes. This repeal clause is not intended to have the effect—and I do not think it has—of repealing Section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956. That is the Crook v. Edmondson section, if I may call it that. Perhaps I should read it. It says:
"It is an offence persistently to solicit or importune … for immoral purposes."
I should like your Lordships to notice that this is a section in an existing Act of Parliament which is used a good deal, and there the word "persistently" is used, which the Wolfenden Committee did not think was a good word; also the words "immoral purposes" are used, which are words in my Bill to which strong objection was raised. So both those terms are in an existing Act of Parliament. It is certainly not my intention to repeal that section. I should be grateful for the Minister's opinion as to whether my repeal clause has that effect, because I hope it has not.
Perhaps I ought to say something more about Section 32, because last year there was a good deal of argument about it. On that occasion my noble friend Lord Stonham queried whether it was not an inconsistency on my part not to seek to repeal that section, because up to a point it creates a discriminating position as between men and women, if only because—as it has now been held that it applies only to men—it establishes punishment of up to two years, whereas the Street
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Offences Act 1959 provides a maximum sentence of three months' imprisonment. It is used to a certain extent against male prostitutes, although I expect your Lordships know that it was really enacted in 1898—I think this was pointed out last year—against the activities of the ordinary prostitute's bully, and I believe it is still occasionally used in that sort of way. As we have seen, the Crook v. Edmondson case decided that the section is not applicable to male importuners of women. I should have thought one could put up quite an argument that it was not applicable to male importuners of males, because the same argument could, at any rate, be advanced; but, so far as I am aware, the point has never been taken in the court.
However that may be, I see no reason why the section should be repealed, and there is at least one reason, which seems to me to be a good one, why it should not; that is, that although the prostitute's bully has rather left the centre of the stage, he is still a very real person and there are from time to time cases where he has to be dealt with. This is the section of the Sexual Offences Act under which he can be dealt with, and it ought to be kept in existence for that reason. But, apart from that, there is quite an argument for keeping it in existence for the purpose of dealing with the male prostitute. Cases of this sort vary a great deal in gravity. This we know is so over the whole range of the criminal law. For example, there can be an ordinary common assault, dealt with summarily by magistrates, and for which the punishment is light. But an assault may be quite a serious one. In that case it will be made the subject matter of an indictment and tried by a jury, and imprisonment can then be up to two years. I think it is right that the prosecuting authority should have these various possibilities open to it.
The ordinary case of homosexuality is dealt with as gross indecency to a male person. It is a summary offence and is dealt with by magistrates, and it seems to me absurd that importuning for that can be dealt with only as an indictable offence under Section 32 of the 1956 Act. Would it not be better to have a summary offence, as this Bill provides, so that when the case is an ordinary, rather trivial one it can be brought before a magistrate and dealt with there and then

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and the whole matter cleared up? I hope my noble friend Lord Stonham will tell me that my repeal clause does not have any effect on Section 32 of the 1956 Act.
Finally, by Clause 4 we repeal Section 2 of the 1959 Act. This is the section which enables a woman who has been cautioned by a police constable about her conduct to apply to a magistrate to have the caution expunged from the official records, if an official record of it has been made; or, if it has not been made, to make an order that it shall not in fact be entered on the records. With the disappearance of the old law the need for this provision, which was put in for the purpose of protecting the innocent woman who had been cautioned and wanted to have the caution removed, will disappear. In any case, it is a unique element of English criminal law which was a good deal criticised at the time, and, as I understand it, it has been practically a dead letter, so there does not seem any reason why it should be continued. However, the Home Office will have much more information about this subject than I have, and I shall be happy to act on what ever advice my noble friend Lord Stonham gives me about it.
I have attempted to go over these clauses in the Bill, and I hope I have been able to explain them to the House with reasonable lucidity. I hope that your Lordships will now feel that you can give the Bill a Second Reading. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Chorley.)
3.27 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, many of your Lordships—perhaps most of you—will approve of the objects of this Bill, which are, first of all, as the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, said, to make the law for street offences, in so far as sexual importuning and so on is concerned, the same for women as for men. The second object of the Bill—perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, would call it the primary object—is to try to do away with the practice of kerb crawling. This practice does exist and I am told it is worse in some places than in others. It must be a practice which is extremely
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frightening to most women and, if possible, it should he curbed.
I hope the noble Lord will not object if I say that although I agree with him that this is a better Bill than the last one which he introduced, it is all the same very doubtful whether it ought to have a Second Reading. I say that for two reasons. First, I believe part of it to be quite unenforceable and no prosecution would succeed; and, secondly, it is in part too widely drawn. As the noble Lord said, the whole meat of the Bill is in Clause 1, which contains two subsections with which I shall deal separately. To start with, let us see exactly what subsection (1A) says. It says:
"It shall be an offence for any person in a street or public place persistently to accost any person or persons with a view to offering or obtaining sexual services for payment or reward."
It is the words "for payment or reward" which I believe will make this part of the Bill unenforceable. I quite see why the words are in the Bill, since without them it would be drawn far too widely. There I agree. But what happens in practice? How are we going to get a conviction under this Bill? Somebody is accosted or importuned. If the person who is importuned is willing or interested, nothing further is likely to happen in so far as a prosecution is concerned. We are really dealing here with cases where the person importuned is neither willing nor interested.
My Lords, let us see what happens in practice. There are really four cases to consider. The first case is that of the female prostitute who accosts, and where she having said, "What about coming home with me, dearie?", the man is unwilling and says, "No, thank you; I am going home", or words to that effect. She then becomes persistent and says, "Be a sport", or, again, words to that effect, and he then becomes a bit more abrupt in his refusal. In practice, that is the end of it. So far no offence has been committed under this subsection because nobody has mentioned payment.
We then come to the second case—that of the male prostitute. My Lords, I am afraid I have no personal experience of being importuned by a male prostitute in this country, but any of your Lordships who have lived in the East for any length of time, as I have, will have

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had experience of it, for it is much more common there. But the same sort of language is used—the same sort of language, not the same words—and as a rule there is still at this stage no mention of payment, except that sometimes small boys offer to introduce their sisters, which happens very commonly in the Middle East. But in this country the same sort of thing as regards language, and so on, would happen with a male prostitute as would happen with a female prostitute.
We then come to the third case, which is that of the man who tries to pick up a girl and is rather pestering about it, the girl being perhaps perfectly respectable. In practice, what happens is that he stops to talk to her, and she, perhaps not knowing quite what he is saying, also stops. What does he then say? He says, "Come and have a drink", or, "Let me take you out", or something of that kind. So far, no offence has been committed under this subsection. Then we come to the fourth case, which really comes under the second subsection—the question of kerb crawling. I have no personal experience of this, I may tell your Lordships, but what I am told happens is that a man drives down a road after a girl who is walking and makes a suggestion either verbally or by sign. But he is unlikely to drive along holding a £5 note out of the window. So, normally, again, so far under this subsection there is no offence. offence.
My Lords, when does the question of "payment or reward" come in? It comes in after the person who is being importuned shows that he is interested. It is then that they start to talk about money. But that is not caught under this subsection. I suppose an offence is being committed, but it is not going to be possible to get the evidence if the man or woman, as the case may be, is willing and interested. So in my view this subsection will be quite unenforceable because of these words, "for payment or reward"; and I should not have thought they were worth trying to put on the Statute Book in this form.
We then come to the second subsection, subsection (1B), which really creates two new offences. What is said is this:
"It shall be an offence for a person in a street or public place to importune any other person so as to cause annoyance to that person …"
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That is the first part of the subsection. I may say that the definition of "importuning" in the Bill is:
"persistently for sexual purposes to molest by words, by behaviour, by any obstruction or by pestering or following, whether in a vehicle or on foot."
But this subsection refers to pestering
"any … person so as to cause annoyance in a public place".
That must be too wide. Take the case of a young man and woman who have known each other for years, or at least for some time, and who go bathing together on the seashore. During the course of the afternoon the young man makes certain propositions to the young woman, and she says, "No; shut up!". But he goes on—this is not unknown, I dare say—and she eventually gets very cross. It is possible that she may get so cross that she goes off and complains that she has been pestered. But that is not really how life works. She gets up and walks away. All the same, according to the Bill the young man will have committed an offence. However the male Members of your Lordships' House may think you have behaved in your lives, there surely must be in your recollection some moment when you have pestered a girl whom you have known quite well. My Lords, does this make sense? I suppose this is enforceable, but it is far too wide.
The second part of the subsection says:
"It shall be an offence for a person in a street or public place to importune any other person so as to cause … a nuisance to any other person who resides in or uses the street or public place."
My Lords, I am not a lawyer, and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, will deal with this matter when he comes to reply, but in so far as I have been able to find out, except when it is dealt with by Statute, a nuisance is always a civil offence and not a criminal offence. If I am right, then, for the first time, by means of a Private Member's Bill a Statute is being drawn so as to make a nuisance a criminal offence. I cannot believe that that is right. The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, is a very knowledgeable lawyer, and if I am wrong he will tell me I am wrong.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords I can tell the noble Lord at once. There is a criminal offence of common nuisance.
LORD DERWENT: A public nuisance, I think, is—
LORD CHORLEY: Or a public nuisance.
LORD DERWENT: That is not mentioned here. This is a plain nuisance; and I still think I may well be right. Perhaps some other noble Lord will clear up that point. My Lords, for those two reasons—that I believe the first part of Clause 1 is in fact unenforceable and that the second part of Clause 1 is far too wide and would lead to absurdities—I suggest to your Lordships that you should consider not giving the Bill a Second Reading.
3.38 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My Lords, my noble friend Lord Chorley has introduced this Bill with a balanced and persuasive speech, and the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, has made a speech which by no means attacks the Bill but in which he has given reasons why he thinks it is unenforceable. I hope it will be of assistance if I intervene thus early in the debate to indicate the Government's attitude to the Bill. As I understand it, the Bill's objectives are to remove discrimination between men and women, between prostitutes and their clients, and between heterosexual and homosexual behaviour in relation to street offences. Another of the proposed effects of the Bill is to make the conduct known as "kerb crawling" an offence.
Since those proposals involve important considerations of justice and equity I should be surprised if they did not have a strong appeal, not only to women's societies but to many noble Lords. The issues involved touch on matters of social conscience about which strong opinions are held, and I should like to make clear at the outset that the Government adopt a neutral attitude to the principles of the Bill and believe it is right that your Lordships should be free to vote on the Bill, if there is a vote, as you will. I propose to comment on the proposals in turn and hope I shall not be thought unsympathetic if during that consideration I insist that we have the clear duty also to consider the practical implications involved.
The Street Offences Act 1959 was aimed at a specific problem: the presence of large numbers of prostitutes on the streets of London and other cities. There were
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those—and I was among them; and possibly in this House foremost among them—who in 1959 had grave doubts whether the Act was the right way to achieve that aim. I particularly had doubts about the use of the term "common prostitute" in Section 1 of the Act; and I still have grave doubts. Now we have to look at the position as it is today when the Street Offences Act has been in force for nearly ten years. No one could deny that in that time it has been largely successful in its aim of keeping prostitutes off the streets. Indeed, it has been more successful than many of us envisaged in 1959. I do not mean that the numbers employed in the "oldest profession" have been reduced; I do not think they have; and when we were considering the 1959 Bill no one thought that they would. But the prostitutes are plying their trade in ways which are less blatantly obvious.
Admittedly, there are still some areas where street prostitution is a problem, but we have been keeping the position under review and the general picture is that the number of prostitutes in the streets has substantially dropped since the Act came into force, and in many areas where prostitutes used to congregate in the streets they have almost totally disappeared. Nor is there any evidence that the Act, in driving prostitutes from the streets, has given rise to even more serious problems. It is true that many prostitutes have adopted other methods. There is an increased use of cars. I believe there was a sudden and remarkable increase in the demand for cars with left-hand drive soon after the 1959 Bill became an Act. There has been an increase in the use of advertisements to bring their services to the notice of clients; but it was recognised by the Wolfenden Committee that this was likely to happen, and the general feeling then was that these practices—some of which, such as advertisements, I remember referring to in a debate at that time—existed before the 1959 Act and it was thought that they would be less injurious than the presence of large numbers of prostitutes in the streets. There is no evidence that the Act has led to any large-scale underground organisation of prostitution or to an increase in the number of ponces or to other consequences so undesirable as to outweigh its advantages.

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There have, I know, been some suggestions recently that prostitutes are returning to the streets in increasing numbers and that the rate of convictions under the Act is rising. It is true that in the last year or so there have been some slight increases in the number of convictions, but these figures must be seen in the light of the situation before 1959 and against the general picture since then. There were 2,422 convictions for street offences by prostitutes in 1967—the last full year for which we have figures—but this must be set beside the figure of 19,536 for 1958 and the figure of over 10,000 convictions annually for some years previously. Since the passing of the 1959 Act there have been fluctuations in the number of convictions, as was only to be expected, but the annual average over the eight years 1960 to 1968 has been around 2,000; in other words, little more than one-tenth of what it was before. None of us would wish to see a return to the position as it was before 1959; and in considering the proposals that my noble friend has put before us, we must ask if they would be as effective as the present law in combating the nuisance at which it was aimed.
Under Section 1(1) of the Street Offences Act 1959, it is at present an offence for a common prostitute to loiter or solicit in a street or public place for the purpose of prostitution. This offence, which many of us still find the most offensive and most unjust in its terms, would disappear under the present proposals, and instead there would be two new offences, the first of which would penalise anyone, man or woman who, in a street or public place, persistently accosts any person or persons with a view to offering or obtaining sexual services for payment or reward. I am glad, incidentally, that my noble friend decided not to use the term "gratification"; because that would have been even more difficult to prove. This is a provision which, if this Bill becomes law, would normally have to be used to deal with street activities by prostitutes. I recognise that it aims to do more than this, since it is aimed at the customer as well, but the point I am making is that it is the provision on which we should have to rely to deal with the street activities of prostitutes.
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My Lords, would it be as effective as the present law? The reference to loitering in the 1959 Act is removed, find the first ingredient of the new offence is "persistently to accost". It is likely that it would be extremely difficult to prove persistence—the Wolfenden Committee thought that a formula requiring persistence to be proved would make the law unworkable against the activities of prostitutes. If the Wolfenden Committee were right, one of the main strengths of the 1959 Act would be gone. But, as Lord Derwent pointed out, this Bill would require not only persistence to be proved but also that the conduct in question was
"with a view to offering or obtaining sexual services for payment or reward".
I must agree with the noble Lard that the possibility of proving both these elements seems remote, and I have to advise the House that it is the view of the Government that if this provision were enacted it might weaken the law against street activities by prostitutes.
The second new offence created by the Bill applies to any person who, in a street or public place, importunes any other person so as to cause annoyance to that person, or a nuisance to any other person who resides in or uses the street or public place. But it is proposed that no one shall be convicted of this offence unless evidence is heard from a person importuned, or a person to whom nuisance has been caused. The term "importune" is defined in Clause 2 as meaning
"persistently for sexual purposes to molest by words, by behaviour, by any obstruction or by pestering or following, whether in a vehicle or on foot".
I do not want to delay the House this afternoon—this has never been my practice—by dealing with purely drafting points, but I think that I ought to mention that it seems to us that the drafting of the Bill is ambiguous in a number of respects. To mention just a couple of examples, first, it is not clear what is meant by "uses" the street; find although the proviso requires evidence to be given by the person importuned or caused annoyance, it does not say what the evidence is to relate to. It appeals from the Explanatory Memorandum that the intention is to require evidence of annoyance or nuisance, but the Bill itself does

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not say so and in our view it ought to be clear on this point.
It is my noble friend's intention that the second of the new offences proposed in his Bill should cover the activities of kerb crawlers, and I agree with him right away that the Bill's definition of importuning is wide enough to extend to this type of conduct. I agree with him also, and I think with all noble Lords, that we should like to put an end to this most objectionable behaviour towards decent women about which there have been a number of complaints—a comparatively small number but, unhappily, a growing number. Respectable women and girls walking along the street may find, and do find, themselves accosted by cruising motorists who are in all probability in search of prostitutes. As has been said, they may not be; and this must be a most unpleasant, indeed unnerving, experience for a woman or girl to be subjected to.
Furthermore, my Lords, there is a certain difficulty as the law stands at present—this I readily acknowledge—in catching these kerb-crawling pests. Until a few years ago we thought that they could be charged under Section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 with importuning for immoral purposes, but, as my noble friend Lord Chorley pointed out, in 1966, in the case of Crook v. Edmondson the High Court decided that the words "immoral purposes" in Section 32 have a restrictive meaning and do not include soliciting by a man of a woman for purposes of having sexual intercourse with her. The result is that kerb crawlers at present cannot now be dealt with under this section, although the police are not altogether powerless in the matter. For example, in London there is an offence under Section 54(13) of the Metropolitan Police Act 1839 of using threatening, abusive or insulting words of behaviour whereby a breach of the peace may be caused. There are similar provisions in a number of local Acts in different parts of the country, and in many areas there are by-laws which cover offensive behaviour in the streets. My information is that since Crook v. Edmondson the police in some areas have found it more difficult to deal with kerb crawling, but that the problem is not altogether unmanageable.
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My Lords, the problem often lies not so much in the lack of an offence with which to charge the kerb crawler as in the difficulty of obtaining sufficient evidence to identify the men concerned. Nevertheless, accepting that there may be—indeed there are; let us be frank—deficiencies in the existing law to deal with kerb crawling, the question arises whether the proposals now before us would provide the answer. To bring a successful prosecution under the second offence proposed in my noble friend's Bill it would be necessary to prove that there was importuning; that is to say, molestation by words, behaviour, gestures, as the noble Lord said, and so on, for sexual purposes—something which, I suggest, would often be impossible to prove against a kerb crawling motorist. I am bound to say that when I was listening to my noble friend and to all the possibilities, it made me feel that in future I shall be afraid to get out of my car to ask the way. Nearly every time I get out of my car to ask my way, when I am in an area that I do not know, the first answer I get is, "I am a stranger round here." I can never seem to find anyone who knows where we are.
My Lords, it would be necessary for the person importuned or caused annoyance to give evidence against the offender, and we know, for reasons of which we are fully aware and with which we fully understand and sympathise, that persons accosted are usually unwilling to give evidence: they are not all lady Members of Parliament. It seems most unlikely, therefore, that this provision in the Bill will be of any real help in dealing with cases of kerb crawling.
Another aim of the Bill is to remove discrimination between homosexual and heterosexual behaviour in relation to street offences, and I should like briefly to examine what the Bill appears to do in this matter. Clause 2 provides that
"… sexual services shall be deemed to include heterosexual and homosexual services,"
and it would appear that accosting for homosexual purposes could be caught under the first of the new offences created at Clause 1(1A). It is not entirely clear whether homosexual conduct would be caught under the new offence at Clause 1(1B) because the definition of "importuning" in Clause 2(4B) refers to molestation for sexual purposes; and it is not clear whether this term, like the term

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"sexual services" used in Clause 1(1A) would apply to homosexual conduct. I do not know whether noble Lords followed that particular point.
My noble friend asked me whether he was right in thinking that his Bill does not repeal Section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 which is the provision which at present applies to soliciting by men for homosexual purposes. My noble friend is quite right. His repeal clause does not repeal that section. Indeed my noble friend has made clear that it is not his intention to repeal it. Thus, the provision of the present Bill relating to homosexual importuning and carrying a maximum penalty for a third offence of three months' imprisonment would not be in place of, but in addition to, the existing Section 32 offence which carries the higher maximum penalty of two years' imprisonment. My noble friend obviously thinks that there would be an advantage in having an additional and less punishable offence—applicable summarily, as he said, so as to deal with the offence quickly—to deal with this type of conduct.
My Lords, does the Bill really achieve this? I have already referred to the difficulties which might be faced in proving the offences under this Bill in relation to heterosexual conduct. These difficulties would apply equally to proving offences of homosexual conduct. If homosexual importuning were to be dealt with under the new offence at Clause 1(1A) it would be necessary to prove not only that the persistent accosting was for homosexual purposes, which is all that needs to be proved under Section 32 of the 1956 Act, but also that it was for payment or reward. It is difficult to see the advantage or the logic in creating an additional, less heavily punishable, offence for which there is no real need; and since it would be more difficult to prove than the existing provision, it would be unlikely to be used by the police. Its effect would merely be to complicate the law unnecessarily. I would remind your Lordships that the present penality of two years is the maximum. There is nothing now to prevent a court from imposing a lesser penalty if it thinks that it would meet the circumstances of the case.
May I draw your Lordships' attention to another consequence of the Bill? You
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will notice that Section 1(3) of the 1959 Act, relating to powers of arrest, is left untouched. Thus a constable could arrest without a warrant anyone he found in a street or public place and suspected, with reasonable cause, to be committing either of the proposed new offences. At present the 1959 Act powers of arrest apply only to prostitutes, because only prostitutes can commit the offence. Thus the effect of my noble friend's Bill would be to make the powers of arrest in some respects narrower than they are at present and in some respects wider. They would be narrower because there would no longer be a power to arrest a prostitute for loitering for the purposes of prostitution, since that offence would be abolished. Nor would there be power to arrest a prostitute simply for soliciting. There would have to be reasonable cause to suspect persistent soliciting and that the act of soliciting implied the offering of sexual services for payment or reward. On the other hand, the powers would be much wider—your Lordships may think, dangerously wider—in that they would apply to "any person" who appeared to be committing an offence under the Bill.
In considering my noble friend's proposals, therefore, we must consider very carefully their impact on the powers of arrest. On the one hand, we ought to be satisfied that the proposals do not seriously weaken the powers of the police to control the more objectionable forms of street soliciting; on the other hand, we ought to be satisfied that the powers of summary arrest are not extended beyond what is necessary and so catch innocent people. Any legislation which impinges on moral questions is bound to give rise to controversy, and the problem of prostitution raises particularly difficult issues. The law ought to be adequate to deal with overt social nuisances to which prostitution gives rise, but we must always bear in mild that it is generally accepted that private morality is not the concern of the criminal law. It is not always easy to balance these two considerations—morality and the law. I should be the first to agree that the law relating to street prostitution offences is far from perfect. It has not been a duty I have looked forward to, to point out what we regard as the difficulties of this present Bill. I assure your Lordships that it is a job I would sooner not have had to do.

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The present law has its anomalies and its injustices. But what we have to decide to-day is whether piecemeal amendment of the kind proposed by my noble friend is the answer.
Last Session we debated a Bill with similar aims introduced by my noble friend. He gave an account of that this afternoon and said that he had striven very hard to improve on that Bill. I think he has succeeded in doing so. But the question is whether he has yet got it right. During our last debate I referred to the statement made by my right honourable friend's predecessor, that he proposed to ask the Criminal Law Revision Committee to review the law on sexual offences. I said then that it was hoped that the review would begin during the year—that is, in 1968. My Lords, I now have to tell you that this has not proved possible. The Criminal Law Revision Committee have a heavy programme of other commitments and I cannot at present commit the Government or the Committee on the question when the review of sexual offences is likely to start, but I can reaffirm that it remains the intention to refer the subject to the Committee when their other commitments permit.
My noble friend Lord Chorley quoted from the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Arran, in the last debate, to the effect that I had convinced the noble Earl that something was to be done soon. I repeat now what I said last year—namely, that it was hoped to start a review of sexual offences during the year. I do not think that anyone could reasonably have interpreted that as meaning a Government Bill this Session.
THE EARL OF ARRAN: My Lords, I think that the words used in regard to this were, "very shortly". I do not know what that "very shortly" meant, but one had hoped.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am quoting now what my noble friend behind me said, and he said "Soon." The noble Earl has said "Very shortly". I do not think there is much between them. I would say that both mean "in the reasonably near future". What I said was perfectly honest; but at present the Criminal Law Revision Committee are heavily engaged on their current reviews
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of the law of criminal evidence and of Common Law misdemeanours, which are both major topics. The Committee themselves decided to circulate a Paper setting out their provisional proposals on some of the more controversial aspects of their review, with a view to getting the reactions of lawyers and other interested persons and organisations before they reached their final conclusions. Anyone who sat through the Theft Bill debates will know that there was a wide variety of reactions from learned counsel. But this is a delay which the Committee have calculated on, one which is unavoidable and which I think in the long run would not only be a saving of time but also eventually bring a better Bill. That is what one is up against when standing at this Box and seeking to give an assurance. We have not gone back on anything. We really want to do this job. But I wish to make it clear now that we shall not have the answer in the near future or soon or in any other time expressed in any comparable form of words. But we will certainly press on with it.
Meanwhile, we believe that it is unsatisfactory to attempt to make changes in the law relating to street soliciting in advance of the general review of the law of sexual offences as a whole. The points which my noble friend seeks to deal with in his Bill are aspects of that whole and would suffer from being dealt with in isolation. Although it has not been possible to undertake the review of sexual offences as soon as had been hoped, we still believe that there would be considerable advantage in awaiting the review before seeking to amend any part of the law on the subject.
I have tried to show how sympathetic most of us are to the principles which my noble friend wishes to bring into practice, and I have tried to show some of the difficulties which surround the Bill. There are, perhaps, three main practical considerations. First, the Bill may reduce the effectiveness of the present law in dealing with the street activities of prostitutes. Secondly, there must be doubt whether it would effectively deal with the problem of kerb crawling. Thirdly, there would be the disadvantages of acting in advance of a general review of the subject. These are fundamental difficulties, which it might not be possible to overcome by Amendments to the Bill

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now before us. I know that your Lordships will consider these points carefully in reaching your decision. That decision remains entirely one for you.

NORTHERN IRELAND PARLIAMENTARY COMMISSIONER
4.8 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, with permission, I should like to repeat a Statement which is being made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in another place on the subject of the appointment of a Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration in Northern Ireland.
The Statement is as follows:
"Hon. Members will recall that, following the disturbances in Londonderry last October, I had discussions with the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland in London on November 4. When I reported on this meeting to the House the following day, I mentioned that one of the main subjects covered in the talks was the appointment of a Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration in Northern Ireland.
"On November 22 the Northern Ireland Government announced their intention to make such an appointment, and in The Queen's Speech opening the Northern Ireland Parliament on December 17, it was stated that legislation for this purpose would be introduced in the New Year.
"Subsequently the Northern Ireland Government raised with Her Majesty's Government the idea that the first holder of the office of Northern Ireland Parliamentary Commissioner should be Sir Edmund Compton, who would undertake this work in addition to holding the office of Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration for the United Kingdom.
"Her Majesty's Government took the view that provided this did not prevent Sir Edmund from fully discharging the duties which this House has laid upon him, such an appointment would give great confidence both in Northern Ireland and here. Accordingly, after soundings through the usual channels, and after members of our Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner had been informally
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advised, I informed the Northern Ireland Government that there was no objection from the side of the United Kingdom Government to this appointment.
"Accordingly, the Northern Ireland Prime Minister has to-day informed the new Parliament at Stormont that, subject to the passage into law of a Bill which is to be introduced next week, the Northern Ireland Government will advise the Governor to appoint Sir Edmund Compton as the first holder to the office of Parliamentary Commissiner for Northern Ireland. The House will realise that, in this capacity, he would act on complaints referred to him by members of the Northern Ireland Parliament in relation to actions of the Northern Ireland departments. He would not investigate such actions on behalf of Members of this House.
"I understand that Sir Edmund Compton would be willing to accept the Northern Ireland appointment subject to the terms of the Bill as passed into law and to appropriate provision of staff and other administrative arrangements by the Northern Ireland Government. His intention would be so to organise the work as to ensure that he can continue the full discharge of his duties on behalf of Members of this House under the United Kingdom Act."
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am sure your Lordships are grateful to the noble Lord the Leader of the House for repeating this Statement. I have only one question that I wish to ask. Before asking the question, however, I should like to state my belief that Sir Edmund Compton will be admirably qualified to discharge the extra responsibilities which he is being asked to take on, and also to remind your Lordships that it was the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland (for whom, I think, without departing from the bounds of neutrality, it would be right for me to say there is considerable admiration on all sides of your Lordships' House) who originally asked for this appointment to be made. That brings me to my question. Can the noble Lord tell us what extra staff, in the view of the two Governments, will be required for the Parliamentary Commissioner, how they will be provided, and who will pay for them?
LORD BYERS: My Lords, I, too, should like to welcome the Statement. We all have a great deal of confidence in Sir Edmund Compton, but I should like to ask the Minister whether it might not give greater confidence to Northern Ireland if there were also a Deputy Parliamentary Commissioner resident in Northern Ireland. May I also ask the noble Lord what happens if a Northern Ireland Member of Parliament refuses to send on a complaint to the Parliamentary Commissioner? In view of the political atmosphere in Northern Ireland at the present time, this could be a very important point. Thirdly, may I ask the noble Lord whether anything is likely to be done about complaints arising in relation to local government matters, because it is in the maladministration of local government that so many complaints arise?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I echo the remarks of the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, in the first part of his observations. First of all, as regards staffing and the appointment of staff, this must be a matter for the Northern Ireland Government, and I am not sure that it would be right for me to comment on it. The person who will need to satisfy himself that it is satisfactory is Sir Edmund Compton. As I pointed out, his acceptance is conditional on his being satisfied with the staffing arrangements. I think we must leave it to him to see whether it is necessary for a deputy to be appointed. Very much the essence of the appointment is the Parliamentary Commissioner himself, and he ultimately will presumably take responsibility for views that he may form.
On the question of what happens if a Northern Ireland Member of Parliament refuses to send on a complaint, the position is exactly the same as it is in this country. As I understand it, a United Kingdom Member of Parliament has discretion as to what he sends to the Parliamentary Commissioner. When we debated this subject in your Lordships' House, I think most of us felt that this was a sensible sort of sieve. Indeed, when a Member of Parliament is dissatisfied with answers that he may get from a Department, he may decide to call in aid the Parliamentary Commissioner: according to his judgment he can go to him first. I am speaking, I may say, from
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the analogy of the United Kingdom, but I do not know—
LORD BYERS: It is quite remarkable.
LORD SHACKLETON: I do not know what will be in the legislation. But there are quite a number of Members of Parliament in the Northern Ireland Government; and, if my recollection is right, one is not bound in the United Kingdom to confine oneself to one's own Member of Parliament. It is possible to go to other Members of Parliament, and, if I understand it aright, there is quite a variety among the kinds of Members of Parliament in the Northern Ireland Parliament. Perhaps I should not be drawn any further, because this is a matter for them.
I fear that I cannot comment on the position with regard to local government. I am well aware, as clearly are other noble Lords, of the point which the noble Lord, Lord Byers, has in mind. I can only say that this will be a matter for the Northern Ireland Government; and in the light of the remarks of the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, we may all hope that happy solutions will emerge.
LORD REA: My Lords, for the sake of the record, may I ask whether it is not true that when the noble Lord uses the words "Members of Parliament" he really means "Member of the House of Commons"?—because in this country it is rather less than half the Members of Parliament who are entitled to use this privilege.
LORD SHACKLETON: I am not sure whether the noble Lord is making a House of Lords' point. If so, he is entirely welcome to it.

STREET OFFENCES BILL [H.L.]
4.17 p.m.
Debate on Second Reading resumed.
THE LORD BISHOP OF EXETER: My Lords, I am sorry to drag your Lordships away from these fascinating Constitutional topics to the rather more sordid business with which the Street Offences Bill is concerned. The Bill, as it seems to me, has two main objects—it has other objects, but I propose to deal with only two of them, and that quite briefly.

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Its first object is to remove discrimination between prostitutes and their clients. The objective, of course, is entirely confined within the limits of prostitution. The second main purpose of the Bill is to provide the police with increased powers to prevent people from annoying other people by making immoral suggestions to them in a public place, and particularly to prevent people from doing this while driving a motor car.
To achieve the first of these purposes, the Bill proposes to amend Section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959. It is, I am sure, immensely important always to bear in mind what the 1959 Act was intended to do. As the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has reminded your Lordships, the object of that Act was to abate a public nuisance caused by the presence in great numbers of prostitutes on the streets and in the public places of many of our cities. To that end, the Act was very carefully drafted, as a result of long debates in your Lordships' House and in another place. The Act has succeeded in its object; of that there can be no doubt. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has given your Lordships many figures. I can only add to them that in the London area in 1958 there were 11,000 arrests for prostitution, whereas in the year 1967 there were only 600. The nuisance has been abated; the prostitutes have taken their business elsewhere. Whether it was right to abate the nuisance in that way, or whether it would have been better to have left things as they were, or whether some other manner of abating the nuisance could have been discovered, or whether, indeed, there was a nuisance at all, are all quite different matters.
The limited purpose of the 1959 Street Offences Act has been achieved. Now this Bill wants to improve that Act, as the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, thinks it would improve it, by penalising the prostitute's customer equally with the prostitute. But I must ask the question: to penalise the customer precisely for what? The prostitute is penalised not for being a prostitute but for being a nuisance. Is the prostitute's customer, or are the prostitutes' customers, a nuisance? Were they ever a nuisance? If they were, it would be right to penalise them for the nuisance, just as the prostitutes themselves are penalised. But if they are not a nuisance, then why, I wonder, is it that
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the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, wants to penalise them equally with the prostitute although there is no suggestion so far made that the prostitute herself should be penalised for being a prostitute.
Is there perhaps a hidden motive here in the mind of the noble Lord and in the minds of many other noble Lords—possibly, even probably, in my own—a hidden motive to give further and legal expression to the social disapproval of prostitution? Is it that, while fornication is more or less tolerated now in our permissive society, prostitution— that is, the committing of acts of sexual intercourse or of lewdness for payment—is increasingly disapprobated? But if that is so, would it not be more straightforward to make prostitution itself a criminal offence?
Certainly it is time that we reconsider the whole of our legislation on sexual offences. I am very glad to have the assurance of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that this overall review is not being overlooked but that it will in fact take place. In the light of that review it will perhaps be possible to decide again what is the area of sexual offences by law to permit and what by law to prohibit. It might be decided that it was right to prohibit prostitution. Whether that would be a wise thing or a foolish thing to do, I should not at this moment like to say. Indeed, I think a decision could rightly be taken only after very long and careful debate and anxious consideration of all the possible and probable consequences and implications of such an action.
This Bill, in seeking to remove discrimination between the prostitute and her client, would in effect repeal the 1959 Act and bring the prostitute back on to the streets. I do not think there can be any real doubt about that—and for the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, and the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. But I am sure that that is not what the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, himself wants. I am satisfied that if he were really to be convinced that the effect of his Bill would be to bring prostitutes back on the streets he would himself withdraw the Bill.
One ought not entirely to overlook one feature of the 1959 Act; namely, that that Act is a protection for a respectable woman who might be loitering

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for perfectly innocent reasons or might stop a man to ask him the way. Yet there is an element of sex discrimination in the 1959 Act which certainly ought to be removed, and it is this. The 1959 Act protects women against the risk of an unjust prosecution; men are not so protected. Section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 enables a man of hitherto exemplary character to be prosecuted if the police observe him in a situation which arouses their suspicion that he is importuning for immoral purposes. This can and does happen, and with grievous consequences. I understand that the reason why there is this discrimination between the treatment of female prostitutes and the treatment of male prostitutes, so that ordinary men are in this way left unprotected, is that the law knows only female prostitutes under the term "common prostitute" and for that reason the 1959 Act cannot be held to apply to a male but is confined entirely to females. I should not have thought that it was beyond the ability of the Law Commission, or indeed of almost anybody else, to bring in a very simple Bill which would amend the Common Law definition of the term "common prostitute". But I am told that this term goes back well into the early stages of the Common Law and that the repercussions of its redefinition might be extremely complicated and complex. But, not being a lawyer, I am not able to speak with any certainty about that.
I move now to the other purpose of the Bill: to deal with the man who tiresomely solicits a woman or the woman who tiresomely solicits a man, but not for the purposes of gain, and in particular the nuisance of the kerb-crawler. I am now convinced, as I was not a year ago, that in certain parts of England the kerb-crawler is undoubtedly a nuisance. So far as I can discover from my inquiries, it is not a nuisance, I am glad to say, which we suffer from in the South-West. It appears to be a nuisance which is apt to confine itself to the Metropolitan Area and the large cities of the West Midlands and the North-West. Why this should be so, I do not wish to speculate. But I am quite sure that the nuisance exists and that it is a cause of annoyance and of alarm to women.
I am not clear how this Bill would affect that nuisance; that is to say, I am
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not clear what further powers the police actually need, or whether this Bill would provide them. I am inclined indeed to think that this particular problem is not soluble, chiefly because ordinary people are not willing to become involved in court proceedings. It is so much easier to go home and to forget about the annoyance and the alarm. If reliance is to be placed on the evidence, not of the person solicited but of other persons who use or reside in the street, then I ask myself: who are these other persons, in what way are they annoyed, and what is the nuisance that has been caused to them?
So, my Lords, I sum up like this. I agree with the second purpose of this Bill, and I should like some way of abating this nuisance to be found, but I do not think that this Bill has found it. With the second purpose of penalising the prostitute's customer equally with the prostitute, I do not agree. I do not agree so long as the ostensible reason for any penalisation of either is the causing of a public nuisance. I might think differently if, after a review of the whole law of sexual offences, prostitution itself were made a criminal offence. Finally, I think the term "common prostitute" should be redefined as quickly as possible to include male as well as female prostitutes.
4.31 p.m.
LORD FOOT: My Lords, on the occasion when the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, introduced his earlier Bill about this time last year, I made my maiden Speech and I rather timorously urged the House to give that Bill a Second Reading although I thought there were considerable objections to the wording. At that time, as to-day, most noble Lords speaking upon the matter gave general approval to the objects which the noble Lord had in mind in the Bill and then went on to make specific criticisms of the detail of the matter. I did the same, but on that occasion I thought that if the Bill had faults they were faults which were curable, and I sought to urge the House to give it a Second Reading in order that those matters of detail might be considered in Committee. Unfortunately our persuasions were of no avail and the Bill was rejected.
In the interim period of these last twelve months the noble Lord, Lord Charley, and the people who have been

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working with him have had the opportunity of reconsidering their Bill, and they have made substantial improvements. Many of the misgivings which were expressed on the previous occasion by me and by others have in fact been met. Your Lordships may remember that the chief misgivings twelve months ago were about two particular problems. The first was the use of the words "for immoral purposes", which were generally felt to be far too uncertain and wide and indefinite, and were words, indeed, which in the case of Crook v. Edmondson one of the judges said were words which, so far as he knew, had never been judicially defined.
That was one of the main objections on the last occasion, and the other was the objection expressed by my noble friend Lord Arran and others that this was exposing innocent people to the possibility of being arrested without any justification, and we did not want to see that risk extended in any way. I think this new Bill has gone a long way to meet those two objections. I do not want to expatiate upon that, because the way in which this Bill is an improvement on the last has already been dealt with in considerable detail and most comprehensively by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley.
What I wish to do for a few minutes is to attempt to make some answer to some of the criticisms that have been made by noble Lords in this debate, and I should like to begin with what the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said towards the end of his speech when, as I understood it, he urged that the Bill should be rejected, although he said at the beginning that the Government would be neutral on the matter. As I understood it, he said that this Bill should not go forward but that the consideration of the matters involved in this Bill—these street nuisances and street offences—should await the general review and reform of the law affecting sexual offences.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, if the noble Lord will allow me to say so, at no time did I advise the House to reject the Bill, or say anything which was explicit in that respect. I said that we were neutral, and my last words were than the decision was entirely a matter for the House. All I have done is to point out where we think the Bill is in
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some respects defective and in some respects would not achieve its objects.
LORD FOOT: My Lords, the last thing I want to do is to misinterpret anything the noble Lord said, but I understood that towards the end of his speech he suggested that it would be better if the matter of street offences and street nuisances could await the general review of the law on sexual offences. That was the only point I was trying to make.
May I now suggest why I think that is not a proper view? This matter of importuning and soliciting in the street is, I suggest, not really concerned with sexual offences; it is primarily a question of public order and seemliness in the streets and in public places, and I do not personally see why it is necessary that the reform of the 1959 Act—if indeed the reform of the Act is called for and is justified—should await the general review of the whole law affecting sexual offences.
May I now turn for a moment to the criticisms that were made by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent? His charges against the Bill were fairly wide. With regard to subsection (1A) his claim, as I understood it, was that the clause as it is drawn would be unenforceable; but when he came to subsection (1B) his criticism was that it was drawl too widely and would catch too many people within its scope. With regard to the first criticism, as I understood the point he made it was that because we have inserted in subsection (1A) the words that a person commits an offence if he persistently accosts
"any person or persons with a view t offering or obtaining sexual services for payment or reward"
it would not in practice be possible to bring successful convictions against the prostitute who accosts the man or against the man who accosts the prostitute, because in most cases, as I understood him to argue, it would not be possible to prove an ingredient in the offence, namely, that the approach was made
"with a view to offering or obtaining sexual services for payment or reward".
I wonder whether that is really true? What is the ordinary case of the person who commits this nuisance of importuning in order to offer or obtain sexual

43
services? The ordinary case is, first of all, that a prostitute goes from one man to another and makes some invitation to each: and, if I understand the meaning of the word "persistently" rightly, there would be no difficulty if one had police evidence that a woman had gone up to a series of men. That would be proving the element in the offence that there had been persistent accosting; and if that was proved to the satisfaction of the court, why should the court not infer from all the circumstances of the case that those approaches were made for the purpose of offering sexual services for payment or reward?
The courts do not live wholly out of this world; they know what goes on, and to-day, under the present law, if the courts were not to draw inferences, if they were to regard everything as having to be strictly and absolutely proved, one would probably never be able to get a conviction of a prostitute under the law as it stands. If, under the present law, a woman is charged with this offence under Section 1 of the 1959 Act the prosecution have to prove several ingredients: first, that she loitered or solicited somebody in a public place and that she did it—I forget the exact words—for the purposes of prostitution. First of all, you call evidence that she is a common prostitute, and then you call evidence that she was found loitering in the street or soliciting somebody. If the courts were to say, "There is a third element in this and the prosecution must satisfy us that this was done for the purpose of prostitution," and were to insist upon proof of it, in almost all cases proof would not be forthcoming. What the courts do is to infer from all the circumstances that that is what she was doing.
I see no difficulty myself, in the ordinary case of a woman approaching a series of men, in the courts inferring from that that she is doing it for the purpose of offering sexual services for reward. Equally, when a man goes from one woman to another in the street, making his approaches to her, and is seen by a policeman, I do not see where the difficulty is in the court's inferring that he is doing it in order to obtain sexual services for payment or reward.
With regard to the noble Lord's criticism of subsection (1B), he posed the
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case of the young man out with his girl friend on a beach, a public place, who is pestering her; and the noble Lord says that this clause as it is drawn here would catch a case of that kind and it is far too dangerous to have a law which would embrace a case of that sort. It is always very easy to demolish a section of a law by trying to invent extravagant examples. In the case the noble Lord posed, is it conceivable that anybody is going to prosecute? First of all, you must have the young lady complaining of the pestering. Under the proviso, she would have to be willing to go into court and say that she had been pestered and importuned by her boy friend. Is it conceivable, even if she was prepared to do so, that the police would institute a prosecution? It is not really a serious criticism of this Bill to say that you can think up fantastic situations under which it might theoretically be applicable.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, if I may remind the noble Lord, of course this is what the Bill says.
LORD FOOT: My Lords, I agree it is what the Bill says. The difficulty in drafting legislation is always to try to be so precise in your language that you include the cases you want to include, and exclude the ones you do not want to include. In this imperfect world it is very difficult to draw legislation in such a way that it catches all the cases you want to catch, and leaves go all the ones you want to let go. I dare say the noble Lord would agree that that is the case. It is a Committee point, is it not? If these words are too wide, then let them be restricted at the Committee stage. It is not a criticism that goes to the substance of the Bill.
Then the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, referring particularly to subsection (1A), said that in his view—and I accept this—because of the differences between subsection (1A) and Section 1 of the 1959 Act, because we have left out the word "loiter", because we have introduced the words "persistently to accost" and have introduced the element of persistence, the law which keeps the prostitutes off the streets would be weakened. I am prepared to accept that that may be so. I am prepared to accept that it might be that we could have some return to some numbers of prostitutes on the streets. But if the

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law as it stands to-day is unjust to the prostitute, if it is in fact a great injustice to select a particular class of people and say, "You will be committing an offence against the criminal law if you do what it is perfectly lawful for anyone else to do, because you are a common prostitute. You are not permitted to loiter in the street, to window shop, without a risk of being arrested for having committed this criminal offence", if the law is as ugly as that—and I suggest it is very ugly indeed—is it any argument for maintaining the law in its present state, unreformed, to say that if you do reform it it might mean some of these women coming back on to the streets? That is a price that I am perfectly prepared to pay.
The consideration of this Bill, and the decision as to whether it is going to be given a Second Reading by this House, will be determined by the importance which noble Lords attach to the faults in the existing law: how far they regard it as an ugly law, how far they regard reference to a common prostitute in a Statute as being a defacement of a Statute, how far they regard as evil a special law applicable to one section of the community. I regard it as a very great evil, and I urge upon this House that it is important for our own dignity, it is important for the dignity of the law of this land, that this ugly Act of Parliament, which was passed in semi-panic in 1959, should now be amended so as to do a belated act of reparation to these people, the prostitutes of this country, who have been singled out in this way in a fashion for which I cannot think of any precedent in our criminal law.
I believe that when the 1959 Act was going through its stages in this House the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, spoke most valiantly against it. I think it is clear that he retains the view that that is a most unsatisfactory Act of Parliament. I urge that it would be quite wrong for us to reject this Bill on Second Reading, and not to give this House an opportunity of amending the law, unjust as it is, simply because there may be some faults in the drafting or in the detail.
4.50 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LEICESTER: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, explained to me that he was detained at a Select Committee, and that is why
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I appear to be taking his place. I was glad to hear the words of the noble Lord, Lord Foot, who I think slightly turned the tide of thought in the discussion upon Lord Chorley's Bill. Up to then most noble Lords had said that they agreed with the purposes of the Bill; they gave him a cheer, so to speak, as he set out on his Sir Galahad-like charge to rescue the damsels, but when it came to the point they were not willing to support him. I am willing to support him. I do so with diffidence after the weighty speech of my right reverend Brother the Bishop of Exeter, but I think it not altogether a bad thing that occasionally your Lordships should realise that the Bishops do not all speak with one voice nor, indeed, with one language. Whether or not this Bill obtains its Second Reading, I believe that the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, will not have been in vain, and that in the end the evils which he is trying to remedy will be remedied either in this way or in another. That there are great evils to be remedied I have no personal doubt.
First of all, I should like to agree wholeheartedly with all that the noble Lord, Lord Foot, has said about the inappropriateness of the phrase "common prostitute" in a Statute of this country. We know very well what the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, really thinks about this, because he revealed his mind so very plainly when the present Act was going through its stages in legislation. He said:
"It is a really bad Bill, and I shall do the utmost I can to oppose it at every stage."
So we do not have to apologise in any way to Her Majesty's Government for looking at this present Bill with a fairly critical eye. The more one thinks about it, the more unsuitable is this antiquated phrase "common prostitute". I wonder what your Lordships would think if it were proposed now to introduce legislation bringing the "common fornicator" into some particular position of exposure to the law. Everybody would agree that such a thing was entirely impossible. How about bringing in some legislation specially applicable to the "common thief", apart from the particular act for which he is to be arrested or charged? The whole idea of taking a class of person and saying, "This particular person is subject to the law, but other people are not" is to my mind very repellent.

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I think the Bill does something to redress the gross inequality that has existed for centuries between men and women in all these matters. This dual standard is so deeply engrained in the whole history of mankind that it is almost impossible to realise how frequently it is at work. If one goes right back into the ancient law of the Israelite people one finds all the time that the charges against women in these matters are brought because they are regarded as the goods and chattels of men, either their fathers or their husbands, or their affianced sweethearts; and this goes on even to-day.
I am sure that it has been a great revelation to many of us to learn, as we have heard repeatedly in this debate, that Section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 cannot be used in connection with any offences committed by men. I think that is the plainest proof that this inequality between the sexes still remains. If men are to be dealt with they have to be dealt with under the Public Order Act, in which they have to be charged with conduct likely to bring about a breach of the peace.
Coming to the question of kerb-crawling, I think there has been almost unanimity of feeling in the House that this is a bad thing. At least we can go as far as that. How bad it is seems to be still a matter of opinion, and whether anything can be done about it is also a matter of opinion. I think it was the right reverend Prelate who said that he thought it was something that could not be dealt with in the present situation in the country. Personally, I think it is just another case where the car has proved a very great adjunct to crime, and where so far the police and society in general have not yet adjusted themselves to the new situation brought about by the existence of the car in very great numbers.
I believe that there is sufficient evidence already before the House as to the existence of this nuisance. The right reverend Prelate said that it did not exist in the South-West. I do not understand why that should be, particularly as it is hilly country. Otherwise I should have said perhaps he dwelt in the "cities of the plain", and so the womenfolk in his diocese were not exposed to this particular danger. I have a letter here—which I know others have received—from those
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who deal with questions of moral welfare in the city of Liverpool. It says:
"No one is safe from the persistent attentions of the kerb-crawler. The campaign has been undertaken to collect evidence, and this has shown beyond all doubt that legislation is required urgently to give to the police a law under which they can act to clear up this unhappy situation."
I do not believe we can exaggerate the unhappiness that is caused by this particular custom. I have tried to imagine some of the different types of women and girls who might find themselves subjected to this treatment. There is, of course, the woman who is pleased to be invited into the car. She may be on the pavement, too, for that very purpose. Well, I do not think much can be done, or need be done, to help her so far as the law is concerned. There is the woman who is shocked at being asked; the woman who is frightened at being asked, and there is the woman—do not let us forget it—who may be too frightened to refuse, and may fear that if she refuses she will be subjected to real danger. There are places where this could easily happen even in London, in Regent's Park and Hyde Park. Who can tell in how many cases physical force is actually used to pull these women and girls into the car? There are all these ranges of different reactions. The more lonely the situation, of course, the less certain is arraignment of the offender, but if society makes it clear that this is something which it means to eradicate, the general opposition to it will certainly prevent many particular cases in which it is indulged in.
When we come to the exact provisions of the Bill, I think it necessary to comment on the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent. He has had one answer, the answer from the noble Lord, Lord Foot, to the effect that the case he thought up is outlandish and one could not imagine it happening. My answer is that the clause could be amended to remove from its operation the kind of situation which the noble Lord had in mind. It is dangerous to risk a form of words, and I know that there is no likelihood of its being incorporated in any provision, but the kind of words which could be inserted are that something "must not be done in a public place other than a place to which the two persons concerned had voluntarily and by

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mutual consent resorted". That would avoid the case of the man and the girl who are spending the afternoon on the beach when the man gets rather too fresh.
I hope that the Bill will receive a Second Reading. I am not entirely happy with some of its provisions, particularly if there is to be any loss of control over loitering, which is a difficult matter. The noble Lord, Lord Foot, said that we should accept the loitering in order to obtain the other advantages provided by the Bill. I would rather find a way in which loitering could still in some way be an offence. We then come back to the difficulty which we faced in dealing with the 1959 Act, that unless there is some limitation of its operation the Bill will go too wide. We were led into the unhappy appellation of the common prostitute as the only person concerned.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, if the right reverend Prelate will allow me, if a person is loitering he does not commit an offence unless he is loitering for the purpose of committing an offence. Then one goes on to define the offence. That is the problem one faces.
THE: LORD BISHOP OF LEICESTER: I am sure that the matter is most complicated and I do not think I can add anything useful on the point.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter drew a sharp distinction between prostitution, which he rightly said was not a crime, and the nuisance of parading for the purpose of prostitution, which, of course, is a crime. But there is something a little exaggerated in that distinction, since it would not be a nuisance if what they were loitering for was not unpleasant in the eyes of a considerable section of the community. If somebody was just selling violets, nobody would say that it was a nuisance. I mention this point lest it should be thought that, in drawing this distinction, it was sought to undermine the reasons behind the Bill.
THE LORD BISHOP OF EXETER: My Lords, I asked whether it was not the case that this Bill and the Act of 1959 conceal a hidden motive in a desire to express more vigorously the social disapprobation of this sort of conduct.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LEICESTER: But surely, my Lords, that applies to the Act as well as to the proposed Bill.
5.5 p.m
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, those of us who support the Bill and the principle embodied in it are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, for so persistently pressing on with the first Bill and then with this modified second Bill. I earnestly hope that the whole House, although it may be critical of certain provisions, will give the Bill a Second Reading so that the many points which have been raised to-day can be discussed in detail in Committee. I apologise that I was not in the Chamber to listen to the earlier part of the debate, but I had an engagement which was fixed some time ago.
My reason for supporting the Bill is that it is an advance towards the fuller recognition of the principle of equality between man and woman. I recognise the great physiological and psychological differences between man and woman. I do not think they are identical at all, but are very different. There should be equality between the two, otherwise segregation of the two sexes will lead ultimately to conflicts because of a basic lack of contact. The right reverend Prelate referred to the early days of the development of mankind, when woman was regarded as a chattel. I would remind him that remnants of this attitude still remain to-day. I believe that in one version of the marriage service which is conducted in the right reverend Prelate's own Church the woman has to be given away by someone to the husband, as if she were a piece of cheese or a pound of potatoes. Indeed, one has some implications in the Decalogue itself.
THE LORD BISHOP or LEICESTER: My Lords, with great respect, the Prayer Book does not actually say "given away"; it says only "gives".
LORD SORENSEN: I cannot see any material difference, because one is "given" to the other and there is nobody to give the man away. It suggests a one-sided arrangement. In the Decalogue one finds an interesting piece of anthropological evidence. Even in those days when the two tablets were supposed to have been delivered to Moses on Sinai by the Almighty himself there was an

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assumption that there should be a permanent inferiority on the part of one sex. One remembers the Commandment which says:
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife … nor his ox, nor his ass",
as if they are all in the same category. The inference in those days, and even to-day among many people, is that they are to be treated in the same category. There is no indication that the wife should not covet her neighbour's husband. I hasten to say that one must not go too far in that direction, but the inference one draws is that it is all one-sided, that the wife is a chattel, along with the ox and the ass and the man-servant and the maid-servant and other objects which the man owns and can punish and do with as he pleases. There are still remnants of that attitude to-day, and that is why I referred, not too seriously, to the process of giving away the bride from one person to another. As I pointed out, it does not take place the other way round; one does not find anybody giving away the man. He would be insulted if it were suggested that he should be given away. This Bill is a step in the right direction.
I am glad that some effort is now being made to recognise that to retain the category historically called "the common prostitute" is most unfair. One does not hear of the common pimp. In the days when one talked glibly about a man sowing his wild oats it was as though it was to be expected, but never as regards a woman. One never heard of a category of "common wild oat sowers". It was assumed that it was right for a man to sow his wild oats and it was a heinous and outrageous thing if a woman attempted to do the same thing. That bias has gone on through history. One understands how it arose and how it was protected and integrated through the years. One rejoices that in recent years, after great struggles, it has come to be realised that the only true relationship between the two very different sexes is one of mutual dignity and humanity. I earnestly hope that we shall do something once and for all to remove from our language of classification the derogatory term "common prostitute." Of course, the institution of prostitution is very ancient. I do not pretend that legislation can abolish it; in fact, I do not
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believe it ever could, even if it tried. But it is one thing to say that; it is quite another to allow to persist at the same time as prostitution so many of these gross inequalities, an attempt to deal with which is taking place in this Bill.
Reference is made in the Bill to the process of kerb crawling. I recognise that this is a very difficult thing to determine. I can see how easily it can lead to blackmail. Allegations can be made, and no doubt sometimes have been made, by some girl or woman with malign intent, or quite innocently, that she has been grossly offended and importuned, and this may lead to blackmail. On the other hand, we must take risks, and in Committee we can surely look at this matter again more closely to see what words can be adopted to avoid so far as we can blackmail and similar dangers.
As to the offence itself, there is no doubt it occurs. I speak from experience, not as one who has himself been kerb crawling but from the experience of my family. As your Lordships know, I live in the district of Waltham Forest. I live at Whipps Cross, and there is a stretch of about a mile from my house to Leytonstone station. One side of that Whipps Cross Road is forest land and on the other side there are houses and a large hospital. Two or three times in the past 38 years during which I have been living at that house either my daughter or friends or my wife have come home to say that they were accosted by kerb crawlers, sometimes very offensively and sometimes dangerously. I have known young ladies, girls, come rushing home almost in tears, because men have brought their car slowly to the kerb, have wound down the window and have said some words, insulting or otherwise; and, of course, the natural nervous reaction for the girl is most distressing.
My wife has herself had a kerb crawler come along and stop her, elderly lady as she is now, although this occurred a few years ago. Apparently, he did not quite see what she was like. But she was not really distressed, and she tried her best to explain to the man that he should have better things to do. These illustrations can be repeated many times over. This particular road lends itself to this practice, especially at night, for there is the darkness of the forest on the

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one side and the houses on the other. I hope most earnestly that this example will bring the attention of all Members of this House to this aspect, and I trust that, either by preserving the existing words in the Bill or by using modified words, we shall enable this nuisance to be brought to an end.
I do not propose to say much more, except that I welcome the Bill most heartily. I am glad there has been so much support. I appreciate the difficulties and dangers, but I hope that the House will give the Bill a unanimous Second Reading, so that we may then endorse the intention behind it. Many of the objections which were raised when we last discussed a Bill of this character have now been overcome and the objectors have, to some extent, been met. In those circumstances it is surely not worth dividing the House, and we can get down to the details in Committee. I hope that something will have emerged out of our debate which will help to establish more surely than heretofore the equality of men and women regarding sex and which will do something to abolish some of the dangers and nuisances that are in our midst. I also hope that we shall be able to do something to provide a clearer and fresher atmosphere in which the people of this country, particularly the young people, can live and love.
5.15 p.m.
THE EARL OF ARRAN: My Lords, as the introducer of the Amendment to the previous Bill, which in fact wrecked it, I feel I should say a few words to-day. May I begin by saying at once that I find the new Bill a vast improvement upon the old one? Gone, in particular, is the clause to which I took particular exception and which gave powers to arrest without a warrant any person suspected of loitering for immoral purposes. This, as I pointed out, meant that no man waiting for his girl, and no girl waiting for her boy friend, could feel safe and this would have led to an intolerable state of affairs. So much for the dangerous aspect of the original Bill which has now been removed.
As I pointed out last year, the original Bill contained some excellent provisions. The new Bill also does this. Perhaps I may mention them again and add them all up together. First, I naturally and
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wholeheartedly—as does the whole House—approve of this attempt to get rid of what is known as the kerb crawler. Next, I applaud the proposal that, in the matter of importuning, men and women should be treated pari passu—a principle accepted by a majority of your Lordships' House when we debated the sexual Offences Act. Thirdly, I am particularly pleased that in the matter of soliciting both buyer and seller should be regarded as equally culpable. I have always held this to be right. After all, it is the demand which creates the supply, not the supply which creates the demand. Finally, I am delighted with the last part of subsection (1B), which provides that no conviction shall be obtained without evidence from the person importuned, or to whom a nuisance has been caused.
Only two solemn questions remain. The first is whether, despite the redrafting, the Bill entirely safeguards the rights of the individual to go about his or her lawful business without fear of interrogation or arrest. I am not altogether happy about this, and it may be that other Members of the House feel the same. The second question is whether the Bill is necessary at all. Could we not, in fact, be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut? Are the problems involved such as call for special legislation? I am in some doubt. Most of all, I am shaken by the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter, who said that it would mean the reintroduction of prostitutes on to the streets of London—something which I am very firmly against. At any rate, it seems to me that some redrafting is essential in the light of what has been said and in the light of the dangers which have been pointed to. We simply cannot take risks with the freedom of the individual to walk around the streets without fear of questioning, even of arrest, by the police.
Personally, I would rather see the whole Bill, excellent as it is, destroyed, unless we can be happy in our minds that no such danger exists. Also, I would ,gladly see the Bill go down if it meant that our streets would be filled again with professional ladies. After thinking this over I believe, on balance, that the House should give the Bill a Second Reading, in the hope that during the Committee stage any of the many provisos which are held to

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be necessary will be introduced. If the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, presses us to a Division this afternoon I shall vote for him, though, I freely confess, with some doubt in my heart.
5.20 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I know that during the last year my noble friend Lord Chorley has felt that I was rather lukewarm about the cause of women as expressed in this Bill. Indeed, I think he wondered why I did not make a contribution last year. But I felt that last year's Bill was so faulty in many respects that it was really unfitted to go on the Statute Book. Now we have another Bill before us to-day, and I want to say to my noble friend that to-day my respect for him, for his integrity and for his perseverance is in conflict with my common sense. But I shall be inconsistent, in that I am going to follow him into the Lobby if there is a Division, it the hope that on the Committee stage there will be some amendments to this Bill.
I recall that my noble friend said last year:
"… if one nuisance, that of women, could be remedied by the Street Offences Act, 1959, so can the other nuisance be remedied by another Statute in 1968 …".—[OFFICIAL REPORT,8/2/68, col. 1281.]
Can we equate the protection of our booted young women of to-day from the attentions of men, with or without a car, with the protection from a prostitute of a young man who is "up for the Cup"? As the sexual urge of the man is more insistent, and, consequently, he is more vulnerable and calculated to succumb to the advances of a prostitute, he needs protection, and we gave him protection in 1959. But we cannot possibly plead for sex equality in this context, because, without appearing rather priggish, the fact is that women have a higher moral standard than men and their way of life is dissimilar. One cannot equate the various aspects of the sexual life of men and women, any more than one can equate the obstetrical experiences of the male and the female. They are entirely dissimilar. In fact, in the male, of course, they do not exist at all.
Let me give an illustration of this. It is recommended that boys should be allowed to marry at 18 without parental
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consent. At 17 a boy can obtain a driving licence, so I think we can assume that, the male being the pursuer, he will respond to his biological urge and ask strange young women to have a ride in his car. Or, at 16 he can get a licence to ride a motor-bike, and can ask strange young women to ride on the pillion. And. my goodness me! I remember getting on a pillion when I was 17, a long time ago, though I agree it was not with a strange young man. But this is the law. This is youth expressing itself. It is for cases of this kind that I am concerned as to how subsection (1B) of Clause 1 will be interpreted. It has not been mentioned before, but the age of criminal responsibility is 10, and I understand that any boy over that age could be guilty of an offence under this Bill. A boy could be filled with romantic dreams, but the attraction of the sexes is inborn. Indeed, without it the human race could not exist. Can legislation of this kind control the young roving male, in the springtime of life, who, to quote subsection (4B) of Clause 2—and I am relating life to the Bill—obstructs, pesters or follows, whether in a vehicle or not?
Of course, the lecherous kerb crawler is a different kettle of fish. The experienced kerb crawler, the older man, is of course looking for a companion of his own kind—birds of this kind of feather always flock together—and in that case, of course, he would be equally culpable. But should the activities of the unsophisticated boy—15, 16, 17 or 18 years old—and the libertine be subject to the same punishment? They are put together in this Bill. I ask your Lordships whether the Bill does not put such a tight rein on the natural desires of innocent youth that it will be unenforceable—and, as a Parliamentarian. I know full well that if a measure which is unenforceable is put on the Statute Book it then becomes discredited.
Many men have referred to the helpless little woman, or have at least implied that the woman is helpless in these matters. While we have statistics of violent assaults by men on women, we have no statistics of the number of women who have been annoyed in one way or another by a pest. And when I say, "one way or another", one does not think only of a pest who rides along in a car and makes eyes at a woman on the pavement. Every woman knows that

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there are all kinds of ways whereby a man who is intent upon annoying a woman can do this without the public being aware of it. Why do we not have such statistics? It is because the average woman knows how to handle the situation. Some of these attractive young things handle such a situation every day of their lives, and they prefer to do it rather than be surrounded by publicity.
I am certain that no enactment could fully protect an attractive woman from undesirable attentions. Surely, it has been going on since time immemorial in every country in the world. In Italy, it is so common that the Government had to tell the youth of Italy last year that they should not say nice things to women in the streets, because that was not the custom in their own countries. I must confess that that warning by the Italian Government has made no difference at all to the tourist industry between our country and Italy, particularly with regard to pretty young women. I see that the noble Earl, Lord Arran, has gone, but he said that he was a little afraid that this Bill is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I am inclined to think that those who framed this Bill were a little out of touch with the modern woman. In order to bring an action of any kind, the woman must give evidence, and I think very few women would be prepared to give evidence in cases of this kind.
It could be argued that the kerb crawler is looking for a near prostitute. He is therefore encouraging the business of prostitution, and, consequently, should be doubly guilty of an offence. Clause 1 provides that,
"… no one shall be convicted … without evidence having been heard from a person thus importuned or a person to whom such a nuisance has been caused."
What potential prostitute would give evidence against the nasty kerb crawler? I divide my kerb crawlers into two. First, there is the boy with his new car, who is flipping along looking at a gorgeous mini-skirted creature on the pavement; and then there is the man who has done it for years and knows every trick of the game. He is looking for the near-prostitute. Those women are not going to give evidence against him. There is a freemasonry in these circles. Besides, the woman will be reluctant to focus the
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attention of the law on her own activities. She also has something to hide.
So I regard this Bill as one which will punish the occasional, nasty prowler, if he can be caught—and, generally, the experienced ones are not caught. The ones who will be caught are these rather simple boys with their new cars. I do not regard this as a Bill which can possibly protect girls from undesirable advances from men; they will always go on. It is the woman, the girl herself, who knows how to handle the situation. On the other hand, I see in the Bill a danger to the young, inexperienced men who momentarily respond to the attraction of a pretty face, without counting the cost in terms of an offence under the Street Offences Act.
5.31 p.m.
LORD SOPER: My Lords, I have sat through this debate with what fortitude I could command, taking up and putting down points which have been made by others which I should have liked to initiate myself. I think my noble friend, Lord Chorley, must be gratified at the amplitude of the debate as it has taken its course; and rather than proceed with the kind of speech which I intended to make perhaps it will be not inconvenient if I try to draw together some of the threads of the arguments which hitherto have been deployed. There is no doubt at all—and your Lordships will be in no doubt about this—that there is a need, if it could be met, to deal with a public nuisance which is generally described as a street offence. Listening to the noble Baroness who has just sat down, we should probably equally agree that if we cannot make people good by Act of Parliament, that is no reason why we should not seek to make it rather more difficult for them to be bad. There seems to be a reasonable hope that the street offences which now clutter up and contaminate our thoroughfares can in some measure be dealt with and it ought to be the intelligent business of government so to seek to redress those evils and to abate those abuses.
The second point to which I believe general assent has already been given is the inadequacy and, indeed, injustice of the 1959 Act. I entirely concur with the noble Lord, Lord Foot, in his strictures about the common prostitute. It is unjust to select this particular kind of person

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for special treatment and therefore to take her outside the general ambit of the law. It is also quite incorrect to talk about the common prostitute, because most common prostitutes are uncommon prostitutes. To assume that the situation is as Guy de Maupassant and others have delineated it is a complete misdirection of attention and is completely false. It is a gross injustice to put upon a group of people who have to be arbitrarily defined a penalty or a possible penalty which does not afflict others; and it would seem to me a not incongruous flippancy to say that the only safety from the law that the common prostitute enjoys is when she keeps her life at the pace of a continuous canter. It is impossible to justify the present law, the 1959 law, as it stands, and therefore it ought to be altered.
I think that there is overwhelming evidence in this House this afternoon that the inclusion of others besides those delineated hitherto as the "common prostitute" is both necessary on grounds of expediency and still more as we consider the development of the whole issue of soliciting, importuning and accosting—partly because, owing to the immense publicity that it has received in the Press, on the cinema and the television screen and in plays in the theatre, there is a greatly-added interest in homosexual practices; and, as your Lordships probably will know, there is a great deal more soliciting by men and there is a great deal of variety in the kind of soliciting and importuning. This is a sordid subject and I do not intend to go into any detail; but whereas in past days the pattern was, as the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, said, "Hallo, dearie, would you like to come home with me?", there is now a revival of that particular invitation but there is added to it a vastly improved liturgy of the prostitute whereby all kinds of other and contributory and even more perverse habits are invited. This is a fact, and although it has not been mentioned hitherto, it deserves prominence in your Lordships' debate on this matter. Therefore, in principle what is good or bad for those who are women and prostitutes to boot is equally good or bad for those who solicit and importune as male prostitutes or as those requiring satisfaction for even more perverse and egregious practices.
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I would take issue with the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Exeter, in his assumption that there is therefore something wrong in a Bill which equates the customer with the prostitute. This would be true only if the customer accosted the prostitute; whereas many a customer, in fact, accosts and importunes innocent bystanders of both sexes. I do not subscribe to the view, adumbrated by the noble Baroness, that our young people of the female persuasion are almost entirely free of fear, are splendid young creatures; mostly handsome, if not beautiful. This is true of some but, unfortunately, not true of many others; and certainly not an argument which goes down very well if any of your Lordships have daughters of impressionable and adolescent age—as I have; and a daughter who is in Exeter University and who could, I think, give to my right reverend Prelate from Exeter some information which has hitherto eluded him.
This Bill also provides what seems to be a very good and entirely justifiable step forward in regard to the evil of kerb-crawling. I wonder whether your Lordships will permit me to say, not arrogantly, that there is a liability to talk a lot of nonsense about kerb-crawlers. I have taken the trouble to find out the nearest to first-hand evidence from the hostel in which we care for girls in need of care and protection, and from a most experienced warden of the hostel who is neither sentimental nor stupid. She assures me that it is impossible to allow the girls of that hostel to travel a quarter of a mile in North London from the hostel itself to one of the local thoroughfares without the absolute certainty of their being accosted at least once and probably more times by the kerb-crawling motorist—who is not just a young gallant with a great deal of sexual impulse and a generally good attitude to life. These men are very often unscrupulous, and the curse of their attitude is that it leaves on many young and impressionable girls impressions and consequences which a great deal of time is needed to eradicate. I happen to know that to be true and to have some experience in looking after those who have been first of all "kerb-crawled" and finally seduced. I take a very serious view of kerb-crawling and I believe that this particular measure, though it needs

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a good deal of treatment in Committee, is in substance right.
I should like to deal with some of those arguments which have been produced as contrary to the success of the Bill and requiring that we should throw it out; because I do not think those arguments are as sound as they may seem to be. With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, what he said of the four categories of those who could not be immediately stigmatised as requiring payment would as cogently apply to anybody who accosted, or was accosted by, a common prostitute, unless in fact it were known to any onlooker that that person were a common prostitute. And though it is true that most common prostitutes are not particularly gracious to look at, that is by no means as true as it was in days not so very long ago.
Secondly, I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, that it would be quite easy to deal in Committee with his problem of the bathing issue. I agree with him that as the Bill stands it raises a problem which is not met even by the most cogent argument of the noble Lord, Lord Foot. To introduce the word "accost" in Clause 1(1B) instead of the word "importune" would, I think, meet his case, because you could not say it was a case of accosting in a situation where two people had been sitting on a lido for half an hour or even for three or four hours.
The argument that it would be a return to the streets land the noble Earl, Lord Arran, put his finger on a very real problem here) I think is not proven, even with the ecclesiastical authority of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter. I think that there is little evidence to support it and I would set before your Lordships, if I may, a bit of evidence which would seem to me to confound it. Your Lordships have heard a little to-day about the prostitute's bully or pimp. It is the fact that within recent years a great deal of prostitution has been organised in the city and area of London by those who have been prostitutes' managers. With the passing of this Bill it would be impossible for a manager to operate. Therefore it is highly likely that what might be a return to the streets from the Underground and from other public places to which prostitutes now resort would not in fact be such an exodus from
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underground places into public thoroughfares. In any case I heartily agree with the noble Lord, Lord Foot, that if the issue of the common prostitute is morally objectionable—and it is completely morally objectionable—then we have, for the time being, in order to put it right, to be prepared to face even a temporary increase of prostitution upon the streets.
For these reasons, my Lords, I support the principle of the Bill. I believe that it ought to receive a Second Reading. I think it needs magistral amendment in Committee. Many points, which have been so persuasively raised by your Lordships, would guarantee that if this Bill went through unamended it would, in many cases, probably do more harm than good. But I do not believe that any of those arguments invalidate the general intention of the Bill; and therefore I cordially hope that your Lordships will offer to it a Second Reading.
5.43 p.m.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I am tempted to say a word or two, partly because I took part in the debate in 1959 on the Amendment which has been referred to, in particular, by the noble Earl, Lord Arran, but also because of something which has just been said by the noble Lord, Lord Soper. I do not think that any speaker has made clear that in the debate in 1959, all of which I re-read last weekend, one of the points was that the term, "common prostitute" had to be left in the clause, because if it was not it would read
"It shall be an offence for any person to loiter …"
I think all of us agreed it was a pity that the expression had to be left in, but that is why it was left in. I felt I should make that point, and one or two others.
With due respect to what the noble Lord, Lord Soper, has said, I feel, with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter, that Clause 1(1A) will enable the prostitute to return to our streets. It was the shocking condition of our streets in 1959 which brought about the legislation, and the unattractive but workable, and working, section to which so many have objected. I feel that Clause 1(1B) cannot be administered because of the proviso, a proviso which was expressly advised against by the Wolfenden

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Committee at paragraph 255 of their Report.
If the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, did not advise the rejection of the Bill, he certainly refrained from giving it even faint praise; at least that was my impression. He considered that the matter should be left in the hands of the Government to proceed with as ,soon as may be, and it is clear from what has been said—your Lordships will appreciate this from what the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said—that the big problem is kerb crawling. This is a very difficult matter to tackle, and I believe that this Bill applies to kerb crawling in such an oblique way that it will not he as effective as many of us would like.
The noble Lord, Lord Derwent, described how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to administer the provisions of the Bill as they stand. After speaking as I have done, I should like to say as firmly as I can that there is no suggestion in my mind that in opposing this Bill I should want to treat women as chattels, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Sorensen, suggested was the thought of opponents of the Bill. Indeed, I want to see the male prostitute become liable to any rigours of the law which may apply to the female prostitute. As the Bill does not apply to Scotland, and as my three attractive daughters, whose worries were the cause of my intervention in 1959, are now married and live outwith England, I do not propose to vote either way; but, if I did, I would oppose the Bill. I thought I would just make those points as they impressed me in the course of the debate, and as my thoughts went back to 1959.
5.46 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I should like to start by thanking all those of your Lordships who have taken part in this discussion, and who have contributed to what has, for me, been an exceedingly interesting debate, which I am quite sure it has been to everybody else present. Naturally, I should also like to thank all those who have supported me, not only for their support for the Bill, but also for the nice things that some of them, at any rate, said about me. The only parts of the speech of my noble friend Lady Summerskill
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which I really enjoyed were her nice personal remarks. After that I was reminded of fearing the Greeks when they bring presents. Her "present" was quite a valuable one, because she has informed your Lordships that she intends to go into the Division Lobby with me; and a vote is a vote, even if accompanied by a certain amount of acidity.
It is difficult to reply to a debate like this. One finds oneself making notes of the speeches of one's opponents. I should have liked to thank, one by one, all those who have supported me. But if I make an exception in not doing so, it is in respect of the noble Earl, Lord Arran, because, of course, he defeated me last time. Although his conversion was not quite as stunning as that of St. Paul on the way to Damascus, at any rate it represented a very considerable movement on the part of the noble Earl and, naturally, it has given me a good deal of gratification. Obviously, the noble Earl was very much worried by the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter, and in a moment I should like to say a word or two in reply to that.
But in the order of my notes (if I once lose that order I shall never get back to it) I should start with the noble Lord, Lord Derwent. I thought that his speech was completely answered by the noble Lord, Lord Foot. It was a case of the practical lawyer, who knows what happens in courts, talking to the man who shows that he really does not understand at all what happens in courts. I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, is a magistrate, but, if so, he cannot have been doing his job much as a magistrate on the Bench, because the law does not work in the way he suggested. But the noble Lord, Lord Foot, knows how it works.
If the law worked in the way the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, imagines, we should have chaos in this country. Take, my Lords, what he said about having to prove that, in effect, money passed. It is not so. The courts judge from their conduct what people are undertaking to do, what promises they make. Literally hundreds of cases have been decided by courts on the evidence of what people did in the sort of circumstances that happen in our streets. The noble Lord, Lord Foot, pointed out that in 99 cases

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out of 100 there cannot be any question at all about there being a bargain. It may not be written out in full and in detail, but there is a bargain between the parties. It is understood that money is to pass and, if the court, having heard the evidence, is satisfied that it was so, then it has the evidence on which to found a conviction. The remainder of the noble Lord's speech was on just the same unrealistic lines and was, I thought, very effectively answered by the noble Lord, Lord Foot.
I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Stonham. Almost all that he said was in effect Committee stage comment, and if and when I get my Committee stage I am sure that we shall be able to deal with most of it. The important thing my noble friend made clear was that there was no prospect within any reasonable foreseeable time of getting this part of the law altered through the Criminal Law Revision Committee. That stands out a mile. If we really want to get the present position redressed—and most noble Lords this afternoon showed that they do—then we have to do it in advance of the Criminal Law Revision Committee.
That brings me to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter. I should like to say to him that I do not want to make men and women equal for the purpose of this part of the law so that men can he penalised, because I have some sort of puritan side to me which wants to see a lot of men who behave in this way brought before the courts and fined. That is not the point at all. As my noble friend Lord Sorensen said, we want to see justice. We do not want to see the continuation of a position which goes right back to Mosaic times. I could say a great deal about this, but I will not take it further. I hope that the right reverend Prelate will realise the position. The real damage he did was that to some extent he persuaded the noble Earl, Lord Arran, and the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, that if this Bill were passed we should return to the position of 1958. We should not. As a matter of law, the law would he completely different under this Bill from what it was in 1958. There may be some recrudescence of prostitution in the streets but there is no reason at all to suppose that we should go back to the 1958 position, because we should have
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a new system of law, and to suggest that we are just going back to the old law is not only wrong but nonsense.
My Bill is to a large extent founded on the Report of the Committee which sat in 1928—an eminent Committee, which was just as good a Committee as the Wolfenden Committee, presided over by Lord Macmillan, who was not only a great lawyer but also a great statesman and a man of the world.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I did not say that we would go back to the position we were in in 1958. I said that subsection (1A) would produce a situation which would result in prostitutes returning to our streets.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, that is the noble Lord's opinion. It cannot be founded on the position in 1958, because we do not go back to the law as it then was, but to a law which met with the approval of a good committee, presided over by a great lawyer and statesman, Lord Macmillan, and I should like your Lordships to realise that. It seems to me that that is a complete answer to this attempt on the part of the right reverend Prelate to make our flesh creep. He went on to say—and I was glad to hear this—that he was converted to the view that kerb crawling is a real public mis-chief and nuisance. Then he said that he did not think that this Bill would succeed in stopping it and he seemed to be doubtful, as was my noble friend Lady Summerskill, whether it was possible to stop it at all. This is the sort of non possumus attitude which really makes me wild. Are we to do nothing?
If my noble friend Lady Summerskill had been speaking to the Victorian Parliaments which introduced all the Statutes for the protection of women, she would have said, "Men are men" in the same sort of way. We should have none of these Statutes on the Book under which people are convicted day after day in our courts for sexual assaults of greater or less severity. This Bill is in line with that. Surely we should try this. Surely we should do something about kerb crawling and not just say that it requires evidence which is too difficult to get and that we really cannot deal with it. That is not the way statesmen ought to face up to these problems.

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So far as my recollection goes, there is no one who has spoken this afternoon who has not taken the view that we are confronted with a really deplorable situation. Everybody has said that my motives are good and it is a pity that they cannot be put into force. They cannot be, if noble Lords take up this sort of attitude. They can be, if noble Lords give my Bill a Second Reading, take it into Committee and make it a good viable Bill. I said at the beginning that I did not claim that this was a perfect Bill but that it was a much better Bill than the Bill of a year ago. I am asking, for your Lordships' assistance to
Resolved in the affirmative: Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
put the Bill into Committee, so that we can improve it. Unless your Lordships give it a Second Reading, then that will be the end of it, and no doubt the kerb crawlers will stand each other another drink in the public houses and go out in their cars and get on with the job. For goodness sake, let us have a go at bringing this to an end. I will not take it any further. I ask your Lordships to give this Bill a Second Reading.
5.56 p.m.
On Question, Whether the Bill shall be now read 2a?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 61; Not-contents, 48.

CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Garnsworthy, L.

Phillips, Bs.

Ailwyn, L.

Granville of Eye, L.

Plummer, Bs.

Airedale, L.

Hacking, L.

Poltimore, L.

Amulree, L.

Hankey, L.

Royle, L.

Arran. E. [Teller.]

Hawke, L.

Ruthven of Freeland, Ly.

Atholl, D.

Headfort, M.

St. Davids, V.

Barrington, V.

Hertford, M.

Segal, L.

Beswick, L.

Hill of Wivenhoe, L.

Serota, Bs.

Bourne, L.

Hilton of Upton, L.

Soper, L.

Bowles, L.

Inchyra, L.

Sorensen, L. [Teller.]

Bristol, L. Bp.

Kennet, L.

Stocks, Bs.

Brockway, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Summerskill, Bs.

Brown, L.

Kirkwood, L.

Swansea, L.

Carron, L.

Leatherland, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Chalfont, L.

Leicester, L. Bp.

Teviot, L.

Chorley, L.

Lindgren, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Clwyd, L.

Listowel, E.

Willis, L.

Delacourt-Smith, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Wise, L.

Faringdon, L.

Molson, L.

Wright of Ashton under Lyne, L.

Foot, L.

Moyle, L.

Gardiner, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Nunburnholme, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Exeter, L. Bp.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Albemarle, E.

Falmouth, V.

Newton, L.

Allerton, L.

Fortescue, E.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Alport, L.

Grenfell, L. [Teller.]

Rankeillour, L.

Arwyn, L.

Gridley, L.

Rusholme, L.

Auckland, L.

Grimston of Westbury, L. [Teller.]

St. Aldwyn, E.

Blyton, L.

St. Helens, L.

Burden, L.

Hall, V.

Sandys, L.

Champion, L.

Helsby, L.

Shackleton, L. (L. Privy Seal.)

Conesford, L.

Horsbrugh, Bs.

Shannon, E.

Daventry, V.

Iddesleigh, E.

Somers, L.

Denham, L.

Ilford, L.

Stow Hill, L.

Derwent, L.

Jellicoe, E.

Strabolgi, L.

Dilhorne, V.

Jessel, L.

Strange of Knokin, Bs.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Maelor, L.

Strathcarron, L.

Dundee, E.

Merrivale, L.

Vivian, L.

Emmet of Amberley, Bs.

NATIONAL THEATRE BILL
Brought from the Commons, endorsed with the Certificate from the Speaker that the Bill is a Money Bill within the meaning of the Parliament Act 1911; read 1a, and to be printed.

REDUNDANCY REBATES BILL
6.6 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD BROWN): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Brown.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD JESSEL in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Reduction of rebates]:
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 10, leave out ("three quarters of").
The noble Lord said: In moving this Amendment, with your Lordships' permission I should like to discuss Amendment No. 2 at the same time. It might be for the convenience of the Committee if I go into a little of the background of this matter, because all that the Bill is really concerned with is rebates. The Redundancy Payments Act provides that where employees are made redundant payments are made related to weekly basic wages up to £40 a week, calculated on the basis of half a week for every year of service under 22 years of age, one week for every year of service under 41 years of age, and 1½ weeks for every year of service over 41 up to 64. In all cases the maximum period of service counting for redundancy payment is 20 years, and payments are made by the employer, who receives rebates out of the Redundancy Payments Fund.
This Fund is financed by weekly payments levied from all employers at a rate of 1s. 3d. for men and 7d. for women: it was originally, in 1965, 5d. for men and 2d. for women. But despite the increase in the levy, the fund is in deficit. The Minister has power under the Act to make advances up to a limit of £20 million, and that limit will be reached very soon. That is the background of the matter. The Government decided to put a stop to this drawing on advances.
LORD BROWN: For the sake of the record, may I point out that the noble Lord has quoted the wrong contribution
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rates: they are now 1s. 3d. for a man and 7d. for a woman.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I think the noble Lord must have misheard me. That is what I said. I said that they were originally 5d. and 2d., but they are now at the rate of 1s. 3d. for a man and 7d. for a woman. Four courses were open to deal with this situation. One was to increase the limit of the advances and allow more to be drawn; the second was to increase the levy; the third was to reduce the redundancy payments; and the fourth was to reduce the rebates, thereby increasing the proportion of payments falling on employers where employees are paid off as redundant. The Government decided on this last course. It is not open to your Lordships, even if you were so minded, to make any Amendment to vary that, so as to increase the levy or to reduce the redundancy payments.
The rebates are reduced under the Bill from two-thirds to one-half in the case of service under the age of 41; and from severs-ninths to one-half in the case of service over 41. The effect of this is that, whereas at present employers make the same net payment in respect of service under or over 41 and the Fund pays the difference, in future the Fund will pay the same rebate irrespective of the age—whether it is over 41 or under 41—at which the service is given and the employer will pay the difference. By this change, which is estimated to increase the burden on employers by £17 million a year, the Government hope to be able to pay back the advances received from the Exchequer, as I understand it, at the rate of about £8½ million per year; and, at the same time, to accumulate enough to cover anticipated rises in the cost of redundancy payments due to increases that are expected in weekly wages on which the redundancy payments are based.
Again, if I understood the noble Lord correctly, this is essentially an interim scheme, since the Government expect to change the basis of the levy from a fixed weekly payment per employee to one based on a proportion of the total payroll, under the White Paper which they have already laid before the House, and this would be a proportion of the total payment. It may be thought that

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this would have been better in the first place, because in that case it would have enabled the Fund to rise along with wages, whereas at present, as it is a kind of poll tax per employee, it does not do so unless and until the levy is increased.
What this Amendment proposes is a compromise between the present level of rebates and the level proposed in the Bill. The Amendment leaves unchanged the reduction in rebate in respect of service under 41—the change that is proposed in the Bill is left unchanged; as I said, the Bill proposes that it should be reduced from two-thirds to one-half—but it reduces the rebate on service over 41 from seven-ninths to two-thirds, instead of from seven-ninths to one-half as proposed in the Bill. The only reason the Government have given for what is, after all, a savage increase in the burden on employers who for one reason or another have to reduce their work force, is that the proportion of older men made redundant has risen from 60 per cent. in 1963 to 70 per cent. in 1968, which they say is due largely to more older men volunteering to be made redundant when redundancy schemes are being made between employers and employees. This increase in veteran volunteers is no doubt due in part to the introduction of wage-related unemployment benefit, and in part to the higher level of redundancy payment in respect of service over 41.
The Government seem to think that the best way to discourage such volunteering is not to reduce the incentive to volunteer, but to make the employers pay a higher proportion of the redundancy payment made to old men. This may be good policy but it is curious logic. The Bill is so drawn that we are concerned only with rebates and not with the payments themselves. What we are entitled to consider is how much higher a proportion of the redundancy payments ought to be paid in the circumstances; and that is what this Amendment seeks to achieve.
I hope that the broad effect of the Amendment would be that the reduction of the rebates would suffice to meet the rising level of payments without running the Fund into further deficit. But it would, of course, slow down the repayment of advances already made by the
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Exchequer. But as this is only an interim scheme, that does not seem important, especially as the level of employer contributions, on the basis of a proportion of payroll which is envisaged in future, seems likely to provide a surplus and, at any rate, could be adjusted to do so. So it is only a question of time as to when the advances should be recovered. In the meantime, it is a question of the burden laid upon the employer.
I must give your Lordships some indication of the Amendment's effect on employers, in comparison with the proposal in the Bill. Broadly speaking, under the Amendment the rebate is reduced proportionately by the same fraction of a week's pay, whether in respect of service under 41 or over 41—it is reduced by one-sixth of a week's pay—whereas under the Bill as drafted the rebate is reduced by no less than five-twelfths of the week's pay in the case of service over 41. Let me illustrate this by one example. Let us take two men, one 41 and the other 61, each with 20 years or more of service and each earning a basic wage of £24 a week. The redundancy payment would be £480 in the case of the man of 41, and £720 in the case of the man of 61. That is unchanged, of course, under the Bill. At present the employer pays £160 in the case of each; under the Bill the employer would pay £240 for A and £360 for B. Under the Amendment the employer would pay £240 for each. So while the Bill would increase the employer's share of payment to A by £80, and the payment to the man over 41 by no less than £200, the Amendment would increase the payment by £80 in both cases.
I would remind your Lordships that when the Government first introduced redundancy payments to Parliament they proposed that rebates should be half of payments, but then wiser counsels prevailed. Now they are going back to their original suggestion. I think we all agree that the redundancy payments scheme has two purposes. The first is a social purpose: to provide employees with some compensation for being made redundant which is related to their years of service up to 20, and at the same time to recognise that it is a greater hardship for men in their fifties to be paid off, because it is more difficult for them to find other

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work and to adjust themselves to change. Then there is an economic purpose: to reduce the natural reluctance of employees to accept schemes designed to improve efficiency and productivity where they involve some redundancy.
I do not think it can be denied that the Bill as drafted will render such schemes considerably more expensive for the employer to introduce. Therefore, it is idle to pretend that it will have no adverse effect whatsoever on modernisation. But of course it is not only in such schemes that redundancy payments are involved. During the passage of the 1965 Act in another place, one of the main arguments that persuaded the Government to agree to increase the rebates to their present level was the effect that redundancy payments would have on businesses, particularly small businesses, which were forced by economic circumstances of one kind or another to reduce or disband their labour force. The redundancy payments scheme, as it is now, is admirably adapted to serve the economic purpose I have mentioned. Its advantage is that it helps progressive employers to improve productivity by reducing resistance to change by employees, and its disadvantage is that it places a heavy financial burden on employers who are already in difficulties, at a time when they are least able to bear it. But this Bill is greatly increasing the disadvantage as compared with the advantage. The burden is increased under the Bill by 50 per cent. in respect of service under the age of 41, and by no less than 125 per cent. over the age of 41. My Amendment restricts the additional burden to 50 per cent. in both cases.
Lastly, in the case of any terminal or redundancy payments related to years of service there seems to be no logical reason why an employer should pay more in respect of service over the age of 41 than in respect of service under the age of 41. Take the case of two men who have each served five years, one aged 40 and the other aged 50, both of whom are laid off. It seems to me almost inconceivable that any employer would think of making a higher payment to the man aged 50 simply because all his service was given when he was over 41. But if Parliament thinks fit to make a distinction between the payments to these two men, then in my view Parliament should so
74
arrange the financing of the payments that the employer pays the same and the difference is borne by the poll tax (or whatever one likes to call it) levied on the employer in respect of each employee and paid into the redundancy payments fund. I think that is the logical thing to do: to do what the employer would do in any case and for the State to step in and arrange for the rest to be paid through the redundancy payments fund, financed by all employers. That in fact is what Parliament wisely did in 1965 when it passed the Redundancy Payments Act, and that is what my Amendment proposes to continue to do, though inevitably, because of the state of the fund, at a higher cost to the employer than at present. I beg to move.
LORD BROWN: I like compromises and it would have been nice to accept the midway stage between the Government's proposal for an Amendment to the Act and that put forward by the noble Lord, but I am afraid I cannot do so. The noble Lord has put forward a quite convincing case by reciting the arguments in support of his Amendment—and no blame to him for that—but I shall have to recite other arguments against doing this. The noble Lord has been perfectly logical in reciting the arguments in support. I do not dissent from much of what he said but I think it is worth reminding the Committee that a survey in 1963 showed that less than 60 per cent. of redundant workers with over two years' service were more than 40 years old, whereas a survey on the same basis in 1968 showed about 70 per cent. to be over the age of 40. There is inferential evidence that one of the influences of the 1965 Act has been to influence employers to accept the voluntary offers of older workers to be made redundant.
In this connection I ought to say that it is the view of the Government that in these days of rising employment and, in some parts of the country, of shortage of employees—although I wish it was so in some other quarters—to displace the older worker, with the probability that he will find great difficulty in getting alternative occupation and in learning new skills, is not in the economic interests of the country. I should like to draw the attention of the Committee to the fact that in recent years the average expectation of unemployment for a man

75
coming on to the unemployment register has been seven to eight weeks; for a man under 25 years of age it has been only four weeks, whereas for those between 55 and 65 it has been over 23 weeks. This is just an additional factor of the situation. I freely admit that it is a question of judgment as to what is the best point at which to pitch the amount of the payment which is recovered collectively rather than paid by the individual employer, and in this connection I would dissent from the noble Lord's description of the effect of the Bill as being a savage increase of the burden on employers collectively. It represents no change in the burden collectively. Individually it will involve some employers in greater expense, but it will relieve employers collectively of some of the amount they would have to draw from the fund.
The other parts of the argument against the Amendment are these. On the best estimates that we can make—and the noble Lord knows how difficult it is to make estimates in this connection—it would reduce the size of the increase of the revenue to the fund from £17 million to £10½ million. That is to say, it would reduce the repayments to the fund to replace the deficit which has been created recently, by £6½ million per annum. I agree that the Government have the intention of moving towards a different type of recovery of sums from employers to recoup the fund. It is arguable when this will come about, but I do not think it would be far off pushing the fund into further deficit. It is difficult to say in advance just what the rate of call on this fund will be. It might be that we should push it further into deficit, and we are nearly at the limit of the borrowing powers. I hope that at some time in the near future the Government will change the basis of assessment in regard to this fund. I regard it as dangerous to reduce the income to the fund by this large figure of £6½ million per year.
Finally, I am grateful to the noble Lord for doing his sums and pointing out the difference there would be on the call on the fund if his Amendment were passed and the amount that would be required from the fund if the Bill remained as it is at present. This gives me the oportunity to point out that it is
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the intention of the Government to introduce a deterrent to the employer from accepting the offer by older men to be made redundant when redundancy becomes inevitable. That is part of the Government's intention in introducing this Bill. We feel that it is a by-product of the Bill and if this Amendment were to be accepted this important by-product would not arise. It is on these grounds that the Government feel that their judgment in this matter is probably correct, and with great respect to the noble Lord I would ask him, if he sees fit, to withdraw his Amendment on the grounds I have given.
LORD DRUMALBYN: It is with some reluctance that I do so, because I do not think there is really a very strong argument for the case put forward by the Government as against the case that I have put forward to-day. Take, for example, the deterrent to the employers and let us look at it for one moment. It means that the employer will be almost compelled to reduce the number of younger men. In many cases this will mean that he will have to retrain the older men. Can we have any assurance that the trade unions will allow the older men to be retrained? If not, the logic is that the employer should make the older men redundant. All these things fit together, and I am not at all certain that this is the right or reasonable course in circumstances of this kind. It is all very well to say that the younger men get snapped up quickly, but that is simply because they can be easily retrained. If the redundancy scheme is based on a wide restructuring of the industry which involves a high proportion of retraining, this may be pretty difficult. That is the kind of consideration one should have in mind. As I showed before, if you want to prevent the older man from volunteering, then the right way is inevitably and undeniably to reduce the incentive to volunteer. The Government say that for social reasons they do not want to do that. But the alternative is either not to have any volunteering at all or to say to the older man, "You cannot volunteer because it is too expensive".
What view are the unions going to take of this? I think it is quite likely to give rise to a lot of trouble. I simply do not like these arrangements. I think the judgment Parliament made in 1965

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as to how the payments should be split between the Fund and the employer who has a redundancy scheme where redundancy takes place was about the right one. And then the noble Lord did not mention at all the effect on employers who have no option but to have redundancy schemes, no question of choosing to have a redundancy scheme in order to get greater efficiency, having no option because they have to reduce staff or disband it altogether. This will come at the very moment when they are least able to bear it; and this is an increase of 125 per cent. in the amount they have to pay.
I do not think the noble Lord has answered these questions. Obviously, we cannot take this matter to a Division, but I hope the Government will consider it further. If they think there should be a slightly higher proportion in respect of service over 41 it would be fine, but this difference of 125 per cent. really sticks in my throat. I do not think it can be right. I hope that the Government will look at it again.
LORD BROWN: If I may reply on one point, the noble Lord suggested that if more of the older employees are retained in a redundancy he hopes the Government will help in the retraining of those older men. But the nature of the normal redundancy is not to produce a situation where those remaining have to change jobs; the nature of a normal redundancy is that some leave their occupation, and those who are left do not normally have to change their occupation. It is those who leave who have to be retrained and it is right that the younger man, more adaptable for training, should leave rather than the older man. The noble Lord suggested that one should reduce the incentive to volunteer. One could, of course, do that by reducing the payments to the older man. We do not want to enter into this argument, but it is the Government's view that the one and a half weeks per year is the proper recompense for men in the latter part of their service. They should have this amount, and I believe that most good employers would acknowledge that the rate of pay
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ment for old servants should be higher than for younger men who have more opportunity to gain employment elsewhere. One always has this consideration in mind as an employer.
The noble Lord made a point about the effect on the employer who has to introduce redundancy and is in a bad way. I do not deny that perhaps many employers who have redundancy on their hands are in a position of financial strain at the time. But it is equally true that many employers are having redundancies in order to improve the efficiency with which they are operating. There are other employers of a smaller soft who decide to retire from business and who may sell their business or disband it. There are employers who find themselves in a fortunate position as well as those who find themselves in an unfortunate position. What we are really doing is swapping the alternate sides of this argument. This is a matter of judgment, and it is one for the Government to decide where they want to place the balance of judgment. They have so decided, I think rightly. Again I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his Amendment in the light of the arguments I have put.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am prepared to withdraw the Amendment but not in the light of the arguments. I should like the Government to think about this subject further. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Remaining clause agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without Amendment; Report received.

SHIPBUILDING INDUSTRY BILL
House in Committee: Clauses agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.

PENSIONS (INCREASE) BILL
6.40 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Shackleton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD ST. HELENS in the Chair.] Clause I agreed to.
Clause 2 [Extension and amendment of previous Pensions (Increase) Acts]:
On Question, Whether Clause 2 shall be agreed to?
LORD GRIDLEY: My Lords, I do not intend to detain your Lordships for very long on this matter, but my noble friend Lord Selkirk has asked me to say, in his absence, a few words regarding certain officers under these regulations. I am referring to former officers of Achimota College, the Nigerian Coal Corporation and the Lagos Town Council. In the 1962 Act a supplement to or a topping-up of pensions was granted to former members of Her Majesty's Over-sea Civil Service. At the time this was given to meet the existing cost of living, and the consequent devaluation of the purchasing power of the pensions. In spite of many representations, the supplement granted under the 1962 Act to overseas civil servants and pensioners has so far been denied to officers of Achimota College, though it is hard to believe that, at the time of their recruitment, these men were in any different category from those being recruited normally for other overseas service.
I have always understood that the qualification for pensionable status was that the officer concerned was recruited originally by the Crown Agents for the Colonies, on the instruction of the then Secretary of State for the Colonies, and that the service offered was employment on pensionable terms. In the case of Achimota College, there was a Statutory Ordinance in 1930, and it has been argued that under its terms officers were
80
recruited for university service and not engaged for a direct Government Department. If one examines the main principles of that Statute, it seems that the then Secretary of State was delegating his powers to the Governor in Council, and that if there was a difference it was of little substance.
Under that Statute, the Principal of the College was appointed by the Governor, but with the approval of the Secretary of State. Pensionable staff were appointed by the Governor, with the approval of the Government. Appointments could not be terminated except with the approval of the Governor, officers were subject to the disciplinary procedures of the Government, and the Governor in Council was to declare the pensionable posts which were to be in existence. The Government's pensionable ordinance and the widows' and orphans' pensionable ordinance were to apply to all officers. This was a condition binding on all officers of the Colonial Service, and as it applied to the officers of Achimota College it is difficult to believe that their term of employment was in any way different from that which was in force for all such officers recruited at that time. In view of this, I cannot believe that any officer recruited to the Achimota College post-1930 would have considered his pensionable status inferior to that of any other officer recruited for service overseas anywhere else at that period.
As I said, they have been denied the supplement, because it is argued that the College became subject to the Statutory Ordinance of 1930 which I have mentioned. But these men were in every sense servants of the Crown. They are, and were, loyal Government servants, and they can turn nowhere for help, in the plight in which they find themselves, except to the British Government.
To come to another aspect of Government service, I now want to refer to the former Nigerian Coal Corporation. In this case, members of Her Majesty's Oversea Civil Service were given the option either to remain in that service, or to transfer to the Coal Corporation. When the offer was made, each civil servant received a letter in clear, explanatory terms signed by the Chairman of the Coal Corporation. In addition, to

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give it greater force, that letter had the approval of the Government of Nigeria and the then Secretary of State. Specific assurances were given on the following most important points. Each officer was told that service with the Corporation would be no less attractive than in his present form of employment; that is to say, in the Civil Service. He would suffer no loss of the rights or benefits which would normally accrue to him. Pensionable status, which officers would have enjoyed had they remained in Government service, would in no way be diminished. Those were the terms of the letter. But this has not occurred. These guarantees have not been carried out, and no supplement has been paid to any of those officers.
The last case is that of the Lagos Town Council. To go into the history of that, one finds that between 1916 and 1938 staff for the Council were recruited by the Crown Agents, and the posts were declared to be pensionable by the Governor-in-Council with the sanction of the Secretary of State. These men, too, have received no supplement, though officers of the Town Council contributed to the Government's Widows' and Orphans' Pension Scheme as was required of every officer who joined the Colonial Service, who was under the instructions of the Secretary of State and the Crown Agents for the Colonies.
In view of what was said in Standing Committee on February 4 in another place, I hope that the Government are prepared to look into these cases with sympathy and consideration. Of course, it is only too easy, as an after-thought, to plead the existence of anomalies. But what I think is not denied on all sides is that there has been hardship and inequity in these cases. These men are loyal former servants of the Crown, whom Parliament surely has a duty to protect, and I was gratified in the Second Reading debate to hear the great tributes which the noble Lord the Leader of the House paid to all former civil servants of the Crown. I know that in this respect we have his sympathies. If the noble Lord could give me some assurance that the cases I have mentioned will receive the sympathetic consideration of Her Majesty's Government, then I and the officers concerned would be most grateful.
6.48 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: This is one of those difficult areas, where anyone concerned with administering pensions schemes, or similar arrangements of that kind, is desperately seeking for principle and consistency in the administration of the various provisions. There is, of course, a certain continuing measure of consistency all the way through in regard to overseas pensioners, except that in the last two Acts, and in this Act, further concessions have been made. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Gridley, will acknowledge that there is now a concession with regard to overseas pensioners who are living in any country in the world, whereas in the past it was more restricted, and this adds to the cost.
Before I come to the position of Achimota College, perhaps I may explain the general position with regard to the overseas pensioner who has transferred from Crown service into some other form of service. Of course, he receives the full British supplement appropriate to his overseas pension in respect of his central Government service, in the same way and subject to the same conditions as other Crown service pensioners. But the pensioner does not qualify for a British supplement in respect of the pension arising from his service after he left Crown service, and I know the noble Lord, Lord Gridley, understands this very well. As a general rule, the pensioners concerned were not compulsorily transferred from central Government service to the new statutory body, but were seconded to its service. During the period of the secondment, they were then offered a choice, either of transferring to the new body or of reverting to the service of the Crown.
I admit that there is a certain element of "Hobson's Choice" in this, and I do not wish to take too strong a stand upon it. Although it is recognised that they were encouraged to transfer, they were free to revert and were then, if possible, found suitable employment. If none was available, they were retired on enhanced pension terms. If they agreed to transfer to the new statutory body, they were normally guaranteed and enjoyed no less favourable terms than they had when in Crown service. But the guarantee could not and did not extend to the British pensions supplements, which are not part of an officer's service overseas. Although

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the overseas pensioners concerned are not so well off as Her Majesty's Civil Service pensioners, they are no worse off than they would have been if they had retired at the date of transfer from Crown service. They have not been discriminated against by their overseas employers, since they receive from them the full pensions to which they were entitled by their service plus the same pensions increases as the overseas employers pay to their indigenous pensioners. It is difficult to make any distinction.
I listened to what the noble Lord, Lord Gridley, said about Achimota College, and I should like to study the matter more closely. My information suggests that, notwithstanding the powerful presentation that these employees were in no different position from those who were not in the Civil Service, they were recruited by Crown Agents. This is not a criterion, since they recruit for a variety of overseas bodies. The terms of service provided by Statute said clearly that the hiring and firing of the staff rested with the Council of the College, and not with the Secretary of State. Those who were employed before 1930, and who were compulsorily transferred to the newly based College, were given unique conditions and guarantees and have been given greater pension supplements. The position is the same with regard to Lagos Town Council.
I do not feel that what I have to say will bring much comfort to the noble Lord, but knowing that the matter was going to be raised (I thought by the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, although the noble Lord, Lord Gridley, with his great knowledge of these matters, has put the case well), and having studied again the principles which have been applied, I do not see how Her Majesty's Government could depart from those principles without driving an enormous hole into the whole system governing pensions for Crown service. I certainly undertake to look at this matter again, but it would be misleading to hold out any hope to the noble Lord.
The noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, passed me a note about Indian Civil Servants. I understand that they are provided for under slightly different provisions in Schedule 2.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
Schedule 1 [Pensions Qualifying for Increase under Section 1; Table of Percentage Increases]:
6.55 p.m.
LORD BOURNE LORD BOURNE moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 12, leave out line 5 and insert—
(" Not later than 1st July 1945 … 25 per cent. After 1st July 1945 but not
later than 1st July 1955 … IS per cent.")
The noble Lord said: I put down this Amendment since I felt that it was generally agreed on all sides of the House that the pre-war pensioners of the Civil Service, especially the pre-war pensioners and their widows under the 1919 Code in the Armed Forces—that is to say, those from 1919 up to 1945—deserve better treatment than they receive in the Bill. During the debate on Second Reading I pointed to the effect of these Pensions (Increase) Bills, with their escalating scales of percentage increases, on the smaller pensioners. It is nobody's fault, but the result is that the pre-war pensioners will get further behind every time there is a Pensions (Increase) Bill.
When I suggested one or two ways of remedying this situation the noble Lord, the Leader of the House, said that he thought there were better ways of doing it, namely, by increasing the percentages at the top end of the scale. That is what my Amendment proposes. I propose 25 per cent. instead of 18 per cent. for the pre-1945 men and women. I will not go over all that was said during the Second Reading, except to say that although we accept the intended generosity in the Bill, there are in it very real snags to people in that category. I mentioned that they were getting further behind and that the numbers involved are fairly considerable. There are in fact 99.000 of them. The actual figures are 7,000 officers, 42,000 other ranks, 5,000 widows and 45.000 civil servants, all of whom are affected by my Amendment.
On Second Reading I drew attention to the two elements which the Government have agreed should be catered for in pensions increase legislation. First of all, these increases are to deal with the cost of living and price rises, and, secondly, they are to give a share in the increasing standard of living or prosperity. I can do no better than quote what was said by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury three years ago during

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the proceedings on an earlier pensions increase provision. He put it very well indeed by saying:
"We are responsible for the management of the public services and are, therefore, concerned to see that public service pensioners do not, as a result of inflation, suffer hardship—whether in absolute terms, if their pensions will no longer buy the necessities of life, or relative hardship, if their pensions will no longer give them the standard of living which they had earned through their years of service and to which they had reasonably looked forward when they retired."— [OFFICAL REPORT, Commons, 18/11/65; col. 1352.]
Those are the points which are sought to be covered in my Amendment.
I should like to take the examples of a captain and a major-general, examples which I mentioned during the Second Reading debate. The pre-war captain, before the Bill, was drawing £560. Under the Bill as it stands he will draw £661. Under the amendment with the 25 per cent. he would get £700, an increase of £140 instead of £101. He, your Lordships will remember, is already 50 per cent. behind on his standard of living, and senior officers are even further behind. In case anyone thinks that this is being a shade generous, I may say that to-day's captain draws £895, which is considerably more than £700. To quote the major-general similarly: before this Bill he was drawing £1,618; under the Bill he will draw £1,910; and under the 25 per cent. Amendment proposed he would draw £2,023, which is an increase of £405 instead of £292—rather better. But he is nowhere near the present-day major-general, who would be drawing £2,720. I maintain that my proposal is no more than the justice, the common reward, which we have all agreed we should pay these people.
My remarks apply even more strongly to the widows, many of whom draw not maximum widows' pensions but minimum widows' pensions—very small sums indeed. I quoted the case of a widow of a lieutenant-colonel who died very shortly after World War I and who had to draw supplementary benefit.
LORD SHACKLETON: May I interrupt the noble Lord? Is he talking about the widow of a lieutenant-colonel who died? Because on the last occasion he talked about the widow of a lieutenant-colonel who was killed; and, of
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course, war-widows' pensions do provide parity, and. this rather confused me.
LORD BOURNE: I apologise for confusing your Lordships and the noble Lord the Leader of the House. I should have said "died" instead of "was killed". It is much the same thing when you actually do it.
To sum up, I should like to move this Amendment in order to enable this very hard-hit section of the community, both retired Armed Forces people and civil servants, to catch up slightly on the figures which I gave, before they are totally forgotten under the earnings-related scheme which is coming upon us pretty soon, and also before the review takes place on April 1, 1971, as was promised in another place. I reckon that we ought to do the catching up before this takes place. If I am told that this would involve giving some other ranks and some civil servants of a lower grade rather more than people retiring to-day, then I suggest it is a very small price to pay. The cost of my Amendment would be less than half-a-million pounds. I beg to move.
LORD THURLOW: I will not take up a moment, but I should like to support my noble and gallant friend in his Amendment. I have addressed your Lordships on two occasions before on this subject, when my own Party was in power, but I regret that nothing was done for these old .and rapidly-aging pensioners. I hope that the Government will have a look at this and will try to do something on the lines suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, because I feel that this category has been very harshly treated in these days when the cost of living has risen so much higher in a very short period. If something could be done now to bring their pensions up to a more reasonable level then future examinations of the whole pensions problem would be much easier and a great deal of happiness would be generated all round.
There is one point which is very important, and that is that, whoever is in power, we are always trying to get the best type of officers and men into the Armed Forces; and those of us who have served in the Armed Forces are constantly being asked by our friends whether the career is still worth going

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into. One of the reasons put forward against it by so many people is the way that pensions have dropped so far behind the cost of living. I ask the Government to consider this and to try to give a favourable answer to my noble and gallant friend Lord Bourne.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: All my sympathies are with my noble and gallant friend's Amendment. I spoke in similar terms on the Second Reading of the Bill, and the only reason why I did not seek to table an Amendment of a similar kind on the Committee stage was because I frankly felt that there would be no chance of an Amendment making any substantial difference to the finance of the Bill being accepted in another place. I have to confess that I have not the familiarity with the 1919 Code for Service pensions which is enjoyed by my noble and gallant friend. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that there is widespread public sympathy for those people who retired many years ago and who are now having to live on pensions which, judged by modern standards, everybody would consider inadequate.
I hope that the noble Lord the Leader of the House will help us by explaining what the practical effect of this Amendment would be in different cases. My belief is that in the case of Service pensions and in the case of the pensions of the higher civil servants it would be wholly reasonable and fully to be supported. I suspect—I do not know for sure, but I am familiar with the ease with which one can create anomalies through pensions increase proposals—that, as my noble and gallant friend said, it might raise the pensions of some of the less well paid but long-retired civil servants above the pensions that would be enjoyed by men and women of the same rank who retired considerably later. May I suggest that we should try to find a way through this? It is unreasonable that we should stop short of doing justice to certain categories of people because if we applied an overall percentage increase it would bring the pensions of certain other people out of line. I quite realise that the noble Lord the Leader of the House has to apply himself to the Amendment on the paper and not to some hypothetical Amendment
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such as I am adumbrating, but I strongly suspect that this will not be the last Pensions (Increase) Bill.
From personal experience, I have the highest admiration for those in the Civil Service who have to specialise in this subject. They need wonderfully clear minds and they need the most comprehensive knowledge—and, of course, they are restricted, as we all realise, by Chancellors of the Exchequer, who can make only limited amounts of money available. From time to time there have been new initiatives in Pensions (Increase) Bills, not all of which have been as successful as others; but what I am submitting is that we should now seek a new initiative, a new departure, by which we could find an expedient, a device, to do justice to those people who have retired long since and whose pensions are, as I have said, unworthy in present public estimation, without creating the anomalies that a flat percentage increase would induce for certain other ranks. That is the best contribution that I can make to this debate, but I feel quite sure that your Lordships ought not to let go of this subject until we have found some means of meeting the very powerful case that my noble and gallant friend has made.
LORD SHACKLETON: First of all, may I say that I am grateful to all the noble Lords who have spoken, and I am grateful in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Bourne. As I have said before, no one has fought more strongly on this subject than he has, and I very much appreciate, despite the strength of his feeling, the moderation with which he puts his case, which does not suffer in effect as a result. Let me preface my remarks by saying to the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, that he rather gave the impression that we were doing nothing for these older pensioners. When he reads his remarks, he will find that he said that we must do something. This Bill does something; it increases their pensions by 18 per cent. I will go on to analyse the consequences of this particular Amendment and I will seek to meet the point of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, because, fairly, he put his finger on some of the difficulties that are involved. May I say that I appreciate his remarks with regard to those who have to work this out. It is a fact that it is to-day the Civil Service Department and not the

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Treasury who are responsible—although the Treasury is always with us.
My Lords, there is one very important thing that I wish to make clear. We are not talking about war pensions; we are not talking about war widows' pensions. It is really important to get this across—although I accept that the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, was speaking in a particular context when he talked about the widow of the colonel who was killed in action as opposed to the widow of the colonel who died. There is a very different position here. Although the noble Lord said that it is all the same to the individual, I am quite sure that he would not advocate that we should assimilate the position of those with disability pensions or war widows' pensions with the generality. This is something which the nation has decided is a case for special provision; and parity is provided in these circumstances. Therefore, although this is related primarily to the Services, we are talking about people who have died not as a result of action; people whose death is in no way attributable to their service. In this respect their position is the same whether they be civil servants, serving airmen or serving soldiers or officers.
The noble Lord, Lord Bourne, argued his case in a most persuasive way. He was saying that we ought to be doing more for the pensioner of longer standing who retired 24 or more years ago. Although words are not enough, I stress that he is far from being alone in his anxious concern for these people. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, that I have no doubt that if there were any satisfactory way, within reasonable limits of cost, of bringing more assistance to those who have fared so ill in the past there is none of us who would hesitate for a moment to back it. But the situation is infinitely more complicated than has been suggested. I am not suggesting that the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, has in any way sought to be unfair; he has always accepted the fact that there are complications. But, my Lords, there can be complications so great as to cause one so say: "We cannot proceed along these lines; we must find another way." The difficulty is in trying to find another way.
May I first deal with the question of cost? Successive Governments, the previous Government and this one, have brought in ever more costly measures
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over the years to improve the position of public service pensioners; but however far they have found it possible to go the standard emotion expressed in debate is always one of regret that they have not been able to carry the matter a step further. This is a reaction that we all understand and about which none of us would complain. If I may say so, I think it is right to recognise tint the new commitment in this field of £34 million (at a time of severe economic stringency) represents quite a considerable burden; but it is one that we recognise as right. The increases proposed by the Bill have been planned to distribute these resources in as equitable a way as possible with particular attention to the needs of the older pensioners.
The noble Lord's Amendment would add a sum getting on for about £2 million to this cost. It is always easy to say, "What is £2 million against a sum of the magnitude of £34 million?" But the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, knows that one cannot conduct the control of public expenditure on this basis. And, my Lords, it is not only the cost of the noble Lord's Amendment. As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, recognised last week (and again to-day) this is a subject of great complexity. Indeed, the more I have gone into this subject the more I am hound to say that there is very little about it that is straightforward. It is simply not the case that one can identify all the pre-July, 1945, pensioners as a group that has done particularly badly and that one can justify an increase for them substantially larger than that for any other group.
My Lords, I think I owe an apology to the noble Lord, Lord Bourne. He moved me enough the other day for me to say that whereas I did not like a flat rate increase, I should look—if I were to look at anything—at the escalator. I suspect that I may have encouraged him in a way which, from the Front Bench, perhaps was wrong. It was certainly with no intention of fobbing him off. We have examined this and we have looked closely at the proposal. There are, I freely recognise, those among our older pensioners for whom we should all like to think more could be done. I am not wanting merely to bandy figures with the noble Lord. hut this Amendment would

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create some quite intolerable anomalies and would intensify others.
It is, I think, well recognised that of those who retired under the 1919 Code, the other rank pensioners are more favourably placed than officers. We already have the rather astonishing anomaly —I say this particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, who spoke of the other ranks—that the 1919 private is ahead of the current rate. The effect of the Amendment would be to put him still further ahead. But this is by no means all. The Amendment would create a completely new set of anomalies. The 1919 serjeant, when these new increases take effect will be only 3s, behind the current Code pensioner— that is, the person due to retire now would be put 3s. ahead. For retired officers on the 1919 Code, the Amendment would put a major's pension £30 ahead of a 1945 Code pension. Even at that level, therefore, the Amendment would carry the oldest pensioners ahead of the 1945 parity. Similar anomalies would occur on a wide scale in the public services. I give a single example. A clerical officer who retired at the end of 1939 would by the Amendment have his pension brought ahead of any subsequent pension for similar service up to and including one awarded at the end of 1967.
My Lords, some anomalies are inevitable, but I think we must agree that they have to be contained within reasonable limits. Even if it were feasible to devote a further £2 million or so to this purpose I cannot think it would be right to distribute it in a way which would have such arbitrary consequences. I say to the noble Lord that I am not insensitive to what has been urged. We are very well aware of his concern which I think the whole Committee shares. I should like to emphasise that with the 1965 Act following on earlier Acts, and again under this Bill, those affected by the Amendment receive increases which, at least so far as this period is concerned, more than fully compensate them for the rise in the cost of living since the previous measure took effect. So at least they are, if anything, slightly better off relatively than they were under the previous pension arrangements. Taking the two measures together, they will have received an improvement in the purchas-
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ing power of their pensions of getting on for 10 per cent. Some of them have still a long way to go, and this we do not dispute, but I would draw attention to this figure because it underlines the point that at least we have reversed the trend of earlier years and got these pensions moving in the right direction. So at least the anomalies are not getting worse.
The great difficulty confronting any Government is that the moment they want to start looking fundamentally at proposals for pensions, they realise that they are about to embark on a very major study. I have already informed your Lordships that as soon as we have brought this Bill into effect we intend to get down to a detailed study of the whole problem with the genuine intention of trying to find some better way forward for the future. In the course of this study we shall examine carefully how best to do full justice to all our pensioners, but especially to those who have suffered longest the erosion of their pensions, without at the same time providing unjustifiably large increases for some groups or placing unreasonably heavy burdens on the taxpayer in circumstances where, as this Amendment would propose, the case is not made out as compared with current pensioners. It will, of course, be the taxpayers and ratepayers who have to pay for this, and the problems are not easy, but I want to stress that we intend, and I know that my officials intend, to tackle them with resolution.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, will say, "Well, it will be too late for some people", and that is a powerful and heart-moving argument. I can only say that we have done the best we believe to be possible. I stress again that we are not talking about those with war pensions; we are talking of those who are retired and in many respects comparable to people in civilian life. One has to remember that, again before the war, the widow of an other rank got no pension at all. I accept that there is here a powerful argument with regard to the way the burden has fallen on the pensioners in the higher ranks, but I can only say that they will benefit quite considerably from this Bill and that we certainly intend to try to work—though it will not be a short process—for what I hope will be a more equitable basis.
LORD BOURNE: We have heard the noble Lord the Leader of the House say why the Government are unable to accept this Amendment. I very well understand the reasons. There is a slight discrepancy in the figures, because, in answer to a Parliamentary Question in another place, the actual cost for the Armed Forces of the 25 per cent.—or levelling up to 1945 which is pretty nearly the same thing—was given as £300,000. So I find it difficult to believe that the civil servants cost the difference between that and £2 million. At the same time, I have to admit that figures are very difficult to establish in this flatter and I think we should leave them out.
We have all said that we want to help this section of the community because it is a deserving section, but sometimes I wonder whether we remember the things that are said by the Government and by us all about keeping pace with the cost of living and sharing in the rising prosperity. We say these things, but there are examples which I quoted to show that although there is an increase, and even an increase in the increase, as the noble Leader has told us, over the successive Pension (Increase) Acts, the fact remains that these people are getting further behind. I still think that we ought to remember them. I should very much like to introduce the captain whom I mentioned to the postman to whom the noble Lord the Leader of the House referred as keeping up with the cost of living. My captain is 50 per cent. behind, and has been suffering for quite a long time. He is a "pre-war model".
It is agreed that any time you try to help these people, whether by a levelling up process or a flat-rate increase as was suggested the other day by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, or by an increase in the percentages on the escalator as I have suggested this afternoon, unfortunately you create more anomalies. My point was, let us put up with the anomalies. We have not a very long period before the big earnings-related scheme comes along, and the people I am talking about, the pre-war pensioners, are too old to draw National Insurance or to be affected by the earnings-related scheme. They may be forgotten. I sincerely hope, as was said by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, that we shall have another Pensions (Increase) Act
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following on the review promised us in 1971, and that even more attention will then be paid to this matter than the Government have paid this time. I beg leave to withdraw—
LORD SHACKLETON: Before the noble Lord asks leave to withdraw his Amendment, may I say that we have listened to what he said, but I must stress again that the Government have not forgotten these pensioners. The trend has been reversed. Something is being done, though it is not as much as many of us would like to do. But I do not think that it should be allowed to he said that nothing has been done and that steps have not been taken at least to halt the erosion and claw a little back.
LORD BOURNE: I should like to thank the noble Lord the Leader of the House for that assurance and to say that hope we shall be able to have discussions with him and the Minister of Defence about how to help this section of the community on whose behalf I put down the Amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Remaining Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without Amendment; Report received.

FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE INQUIRY AND PRESS REPORTS
7.30 p.m.
LORD ROYLE LORD ROYLE rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will seek information from the Chairman of the Northumberland Committee of Inquiry into foot-and-mouth disease as to whether the Committee sat on February 15, 1969, and also how the publication, Farmer and Stockbreeder, was in a position to publish on February 4 the fact that the meeting was taking place on February 15 and were able to anticipate the Report of that Committee. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to ask the Unstarred Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. May I say at the beginning that I am very conscious of the fact that a very important Question in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, is to follow my Question. Because of that, I shall try to make my case

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on the Question as short as I can. I will start by assuming that noble Lords have read the Question and that I do not need to repeat it.
May I say straight away that I have no desire to enter into any discussion of the causes of foot-and-mouth disease or the possibility of avoiding the terrible outbreak we had a short time ago. That is not my purpose. That duty falls on the committee of inquiry into foot-and-mouth disease, which was set up by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and is presided over by the noble Duke, the Duke of Northumberland. It was set up as an independent body to hear evidence and present its Report. And if it has maintained that independence and ultimately bases its Report on that evidence, I for one shall be happy to see the Report implemented. But—and it is a very big "but"—at this moment I have some doubts about whether these conditions apply.
My doubts arise from a leading article in the Farmer and Stockbreeder of February 4. If I may, I will quote the relevant parts of that article.
"The draft report on foot-and-mouth disease of the Northumberland Committee recommends that on animal health grounds imports into the United Kingdom of carcass meat from countries where foot-and-mouth disease is endemic should be prohibited after a year's grace, which would give those countries time to switch over to the production of boned chilled meat."
Later on the article says:
"The Northumberland Committee will be meeting "—
remember this was on February 4—
"on Saturday, 15th February, a year to the clay since the Minister announced its establishment, to finalise the report. If the draft recommendations are agreed it will be a victory for Mr. Henry Plumb, the National Farmers' Union's deputy president, and the only practical farmer on the Committee, who has fought throughout the year to convince his colleagues that prohibition of imports of carcass meat from endemic countries was the right policy. At one time it looked as if Mr. Plumb would have to produce a one-man minority report expressing this view. Now, with the Duke of Northumberland himself as the first convert, the majority of the Committee has swung behind the proposal."
From these quotations, I would suggest that some serious questions arise. I am going to ask these questions and not elaborate at all. First, how was that journal in the position to say categorically
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that the draft report recommends something before it reaches the Minister? Secondly, how did the journal know that the Committee was meeting on February 15 to finalise its Report? Thirdly, was the information—and I stress the word "information", because it was not given as conjecture—given by Mr. Henry Plumb as a Committee member and deputy president of the N.F.U.? Fourthly, if the article is correct, has Mr. Plumb acted as an independent member of that Committee or as an advocate of the N.F.U. point of view? Fifthly, I wonder whether the noble Duke is prepared to concede that he has been converted, not by the evidence and its examination, but by the fighting prowess of Mr. Henry Plumb? And are the other distinguished members of the Committee also prepared to concede their conversion to him? If they are not, why has no denial or repudiation appeared in the columns of the subsequent issues of the Farmer and Stockbreeder?
I took the trouble of looking up this morning's issue—and this is the fourth issue since February 5—and at no point has it ever been repudiated or has the Chairman of that Committee written to the Farmer and Stockbreeder to put things right. That same gentleman, Mr. Henry Plumb, in April, 1968, made the public statement:
"To protect British housewives we must make sure that meat is prevented from coming from the Argentine".
I suggest that this gentleman has gone a little bit too far. This gentleman is not behaving in the right fashion, as a responsible member of an independent Committee of this kind.
In conclusion, I suggest that the article, so far not repudiated, shakes confidence in the fairness and independence of this Committee. It suggests that among its number there is a man who approached his task with a biased mind and who, I suggest, was not suitable to be a member of such an independent committee of inquiry. In my view, and I hope your Lordships will agree with me, it is a complete contradiction of what Parliament regards as a committee of inquiry, and unless there is an unequivocal repudiation of that article to my mind the Report will be useless and will have no weight.
It may be that when my noble friend Lord Beswick replies he will be tempted to say that this has nothing whatever to do with the Government; that once a committee of inquiry has been established, its behaviour and way of working is entirely its business. I hope that he will not rely on that argument, because I believe that it is the Minister's responsibility to ensure that this is an independent Report, based on evidence and the consideration of evidence rather than on a particular member's advocacy of one particular point of view. I should have liked to elaborate on these questions but I know that other things have to be discussed this evening.
7.38 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, my noble friend has a great interest in these matters, which I appreciate, and he has put his reasons and his apprehensions forcefully and clearly. May I thank him for being good enough to realise that he puts me, in some respects, in a difficult position in replying. Although he said that he had no wish to open up a discussion about this wretched foot-and-mouth disease he is in fact asking me to comment upon the contents of a Report which has not yet been published. I do not know what is in the Report, nor does the Minister, and certainly Mr. Murray, the author of this speculative article in the Farmer and Stockbreeder, does not know what is in this Report. No one can object to any active and enthusiastic journalist putting down his own opinions and prophecies and frankly I cannot see why I should be expected to comment one way or the other about the alleged contents of the forthcoming Report of this Committee.
My noble friend asked for a denial and repudiation, but why should any member of the Government have to deny or repudiate a statement simply because a journalist makes it in an article? My noble friend is saying that he never said that, but he will see when he reads Hansard to-morrow that he did indeed say that because there was no denial or repudiation, he was entitled to believe that there is substance in the article to which he refers. I say this to my noble friend, because I know that on many of these matters his opinion will be the same as mine. To put one in a position where
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one has to repudiate everything said in a journal or newspaper, is really encouraging some form of trial by journalism.
I will, however, deal with three of the specific points which my noble friend raised. He asked particularly about the meeting on February 15, and how it was that Mr. Murray knew that a meeting was to take place on that date. My understanding is that there was no secret about when this Committee met; it was generally known. And, indeed, it was not unusual for interested journalists to be around the meeting place to pick up some unconsidered trifle when those meetings took place.
Similarly., my noble friend made reference to the import of boned chilled meat, and he seemed to think that there was some great insight or secret information which led Mr. Murray to deal with the situation in that way. But here, again, there is no mystery about the matter. For eighteen months now there has been talk about the possibility of some control of the import of meat in this way, and it does not require a highly-skilled journalist to draw the conclusion that this subject is a likely candidate for inclusion in the Report. I must say to my noble friend that I was rather surprised at the conclusions which he seemed prepared to draw from the article about the position of Mr. Henry Plumb. Although he said that his conclusions were being couched in an interrogatory form he put them in such a way as to make them seem to most hearers to be positive assertions.
LORD ROYLE: I hesitate to interrupt my noble friend, but, quite quickly, may I point out to him that he is being rather unfair to me. I quoted:
"The draft Report on foot-and-mouth disease of the Northumberland Committee recommends…"
It is not, "we hear that it recommends", but, "it recommends". Where does the information come from?
LORD BESWICK: Why should I be placed in the position of having to say where the information comes front, if a journalist chooses to put that in a journal? I am surprised at my noble friend, if he is suggesting that he can quote anything from any journal and expect that there should be some denial or confirmation by a member of the Government. As 11 was saying, my noble friend

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appears to be saying that Mr. Plumb has swayed not only the noble Duke, the Chairman of the Committee, but the whole of the rest of the members of the Committee to a particular conclusion, presumably against their better judgment.
LORD ROYLE: The article said that.
LORD BESWICK: I am not saying anything at all about what the article says. I am referring to what my noble friend has said. He was asking for a repudiation of this. Why should one repudiate such an absurd suggestion, that one member of a Committee of eight, a very high-powered Committee, could dominate that Committee in this way? I really do not feel that, on reflection, my noble friend will think that this is what has happened in the case of this Committee, of which the noble Duke, the Duke of Northumberland, is the Chairman. Moreover, I say this to my noble friend. There is absolutely no reason to believe, or for anyone to say, that Mr. Plumb is anything other than one effective loyal and conscientious member among a Committee of eight.
I make just one other comment about this article. It purports to know that at one time Mr. Plumb was proposing to produce a Minority Report. There is only one man who knows what was in the mind of Mr. Plumb, and that is Mr. Plumb himself. He has asked me to say that at no time has he discussed with the author of this article what he proposed or did not propose to recommend, and there is no justification for any journalist setting down in this way what Mr. Plumb's intentions were.
Like my noble friend, we all look forward to the eventual publication of this important Report. I hope that, on reflection, my noble friend will agree with the rest of us that the recommendations that this independent Committee will eventually put before the Minister will command the highest possible respect.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, I should like to regret that I have not the right to reply.

N.A.T.O., FRANCE AND THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY
7.45 p.m.
LORD GLADWYN LORD GLADWYN rose to ask Her Majesty's Government, whether in the light of recent Anglo-French exchanges and the apparent desire of the French Government to liquidate NATO and to replace the E.E.C. by an association of entirely independent States, they will now promote the gradual establishment within the Atlantic Alliance of more forward-looking and democratic European Institutions.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I put down this Question in order, if possible, to permit a short debate on the situation arising in Europe as a result of what is known, I think rather unfairly, as the "Soames affair". In spite of the lateness of the hour, I persist in asking it because I believe that the inflexibility of our arrangements is such that it is impossible to get any discussion of this, after all, important matter in your Lordships' House at a reasonable hour—that is to say, before 7 or 8 o'clock in the evening —for about another month.
I do not want to go into the details of this remarkable incident, except to say that in my view—though, frankly, I do not know whether I speak for my colleagues—the Government were right to communicate to our Allies the gist of what President de Gaulle said to the Ambassador. Criticism of how and why they did this may or may not be justified, but the decision which produced the explosion in the Elysée and, consequently, the new situation, was the decision to pass the information on. I seek to explain, as I see it, why the Government were right to risk such an explosion. I am sure that they did it with their eyes open.
Why did it create a new situation? It was not because there was anything very new in what the General actually said. As I describe in my forthcoming book on this subject—
LORD ST. OSWALD: Price? Publisher?
LORD GLADWYN: May I ask your Lordships to read it? We have known for many years, both from his public

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and private utterances, that the General thinks there should preferably be what he calls a European "Confederation"; that is to say, a simple association of entirely sovereign States, totally independent of America, from the territory of which Confederation the Americans would be requested to remove their armed forces.
If all this were accomplished, it would naturally involve a general repudiation of the Treaties of Rome and the break-up of the European Economic Community, in its existing form at any rate, and the liquidation of NATO, without which the North Atlantic Alliance would be an empty shell, since the Treaty itself contains nothing which obliges any member to go to war in support of any other nation. We also knew that the General had scant regard for smaller countries, and, therefore, it was not at all out of character that he should propose what I think is no longer referred to as a "Directorate", but probably as an "Inner Council" of the four larger Powers, which, so we must understand, would take the place of the Western European Union, even if the obligations of the Germans under this organisation were somehow maintained. No doubt the Western European Assembly, to which we know the General has a certain aversion, would also disappear.
Finally, the idea that the European Economic Community should be converted into what he calls a free trade area is something which, again for years and years, we have heard the General say was "inevitable" if Britain and the other applicants were admitted. Now he suggests—and here, my Lords, is the new situation—that it might even be a good thing if it were so converted now or soon. Owing to his persistent and partly successful efforts over the last ten years to emasculate the existing Community, this, we may think, is not altogether surprising. But at this point we should perhaps consider certain possibilities before, with shouts of joy, we join the British Gaullists in applauding, irrespective of all the other stumbling blocks, this one suggestion for positive negotiations with the Government of France.
In the first place, it is most unlikely that if we ever had such negotiations and
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got down to hard bargaining the General would he able to arrange for the European Economic Community to negotiate with the European Free Trade Area and thus, as it were, commit a sort of elegant hara-kiri, after which something like the present European Free Trade Association would spread over most of Western Europe. It is much more likely that, having got preliminary agreement that no duties or restrictions should be imposed on imports into the United Kingdom of French and indeed other Europear agricultural products, he would suggest, as he suggests now, in defiance of GATT (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) some abatement of Community duties on certain British industrial exports, with the resultant agreement constituting—I am sure that this is what he is really aiming at—a sort of British association with the Common Market which had by that time been reduced to a kind of embryonic Customs Union.
Thus we should, as I see it, be in the position of having to cut down our food imports from New Zealand and Australia, and possibly also from Canada, with certainly no net advantage to our industrial exports; while the political advantage would be infinitely less than it would be if we actually joined the European Economic Community, since membership of the famous Four-Power Inner Council or Directorate (or whatever it is called), in which the veto, I need hardly say, would apply, would not result, economically weakened as we should be, in our having any particular influence on the course of events. These events would be, I am afraid, much more likely to be determined by an effective French leadership, largely exercised through some enduring Anglo-French-German alliance. L' A iifgeterre, I can assure your Lordships, would he a very poor relation indeed.
Some noble Lords may not agree, but I myself do not see, therefore, how any British Government, of whatever complexion, could for a moment contemplate accepting any one of the conditions proposed by de Gaulle as the basis for some new deal Europe. Quite apart from the catastrophic effect on our most sure and trusted European allies if we even listened to such suggestions, it must he obvious that acceptance of them would cut us off from America, liquidate what remains of the Commonwealth and reduce us to a state of penury and impotence,

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and we might even in the long run risk becoming, along with other European States, a kind of satellite of the Soviet Union.
But before considering what we might do next and what our general European policy should now be, let us just for a moment discern a little ray of hope that might even brighten up the whole landscape in the not too far distant future. Why indeed did the General feel impelled—because, in spite of the apparent approach of the Ambassador to the Elysée there is little doubt that he did feel impelled—to try to come to some kind of arrangement with the British? No one, no one on the Continent at any rate, doubts that this was chiefly because the "events", as they are called, of last May and their monetary sequel last September, together with the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Russians in August, have made it impossible to pursue his previous, dreadful, policy of gradually achieving a European construction without us and thus, presumably, under French leadership, the object of which was to produce, as we all know, a détente based essentially on Franco-Soviet co-operation.
But if this concept—and an illusory one in any case, as we may think —has vanished, then all Frenchmen must scent danger. If they are really left alone with Germany, how are they to continue to be the tail which up till now has wagged this large and rather formidable dog? Nobody blames the Germans for becoming strong economically. They certainly deserve their success. Nobody thinks that the Bonn Government is anything but profoundly democratic. But, however innocent their intentions, it seems likely that in relation to France the Western Germans will get stronger and stronger.
Incidentally—or, rather, more than incidentally, because it is an important point—the date for the re-negotiation of the agricultural arrangements among the Six approaches. Thus, it will probably become clear that the Germans are simply not prepared to go on producing the really colossal sums which they now have to pay into the agricultural fund for the principal benefit of France. More and more they are thus likely to dominate the present European Econo
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mic Community, always supposing that it continues to exist, and it would of course require a great effort to disentangle it. So in their bones a great many French are coining round to think that, paradoxically perhaps, Europe would be a much less chilly place with L'Angléterre. Even if they realise that, given their Chief's attitude, there is no chance, at the moment, of resuming negotiations for Britain's entry into the Community, they might be prepared to put pressure on the General to consider some rather more acceptable approach to political unity.
"If the French Government"—
said Mr. Stewart on February 24 in another place—
"were proposing some very considerable changes in the whole nature of the European Communities, whatever one might think about them they were clearly ideas which should be discussed by all those who were concerned."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, C. 1094.]
Well said! We might indeed have one day what has been called a new Messina conference, perhaps with French participation.
Therefore, if this first feeler is rejected, as it had to be for the reasons I have given, it is by no means the end of the affair. Efforts to till the breach between our two countries must and will continue, but it must be made quite clear that this breach can be filled only in the context of a greater whole. How can this best be done? As I see it, by concentrating on projects which may not for the moment be acceptable to the General, but which more and more would seem good and reasonable to the other countries concerned, including our own—I am thinking of this country as a whole—and indeed to wide sections of opinion in France itself.
In other words, it is we, after ten years, who now, if we care to use it, have the power of initiative. The Parisian newspaper L'Express came out recently with the headline, "L'Angleterre dit, 'Non' á de Gaulle". The effect, indeed, on the other side of the Channel, where I was at the time—I do not myself of course think that the analogy is correct; I am speaking only of the effect produced on the French mind—was almost as if a rabbit had bitten a stoat! Even the ordinary Frenchman can now perceive that something has changed and that his President

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can no longer simply order people about. This new assessment of L'Angleterre will probably have very considerable repercussions.
It used to be said that the only way to achieve political unity in Europe was to get economic unity going first. However true this dictum, it has been vitiated, as we all know, by de Gaulle's double veto on our entry into the Community in pursuit of political objectives that have now been shown to be unobtainable. Owing to this delay efforts to join up the Six and the Seven economically will undoubtedly take much longer than we had previously hoped, though I have no doubt, as I say, that once the political climate improves negotiations to that end will be promptly resumed.
How then do we improve the political climate? Here, as it seems to me, is where Her Majesty's Government, if they would, could really make some running. Why should General de Gaulle have a monopoly of great thoughts about the future political organisation of Europe? There is no reason why we should not have great, and perhaps rather more practicable, schemes as well. And, strangely enough, it might well be less difficult to get going on political and defence projects, rather than on economic ones. To borrow the classic phrase of the General, "L'intendance suivra"—the services will come along.
It has been said so often that it can profitably be said again. In all the vast spheres not covered by the Treaty of Rome—that is to say, broadly speaking, foreign policy, defence and technical developments in such matters as space, electronics and so on—rapid progress towards greater unity can be made only if certain simple principles are accepted, and they need not frighten anybody. All you have to do is to get all concerned to agree that, in certain limited and specified spheres to start off with, some Authority shall be established which, in the last resort, and when all established procedures have been utilised, shall take decisions by some form of "weighted" majority voting.
Did not Mr. Stewart himself say, in answer to questions on the "Soames affair" on February 24 in another place, that,
"none of us can accept a position in which France tries to put a veto on all progress in
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Europe"?—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 24/2/69, col. 1089.]
If this statement is to be taken at its face value—and we must assume that it must be—then, logically, we can only favour a system in which no State, in the last resort, has a right of veto. Why single out France? And if this is indeed our belief, why not come out with some scheme or schemes embodying, in some of the fields outside the Treaty of Rome, the essential feature of weighted, or "qualified", voting?
Nor should that be all. Detailed plans for the operation of independent political and defence commissions— no doubt with advisory powers only to start with, but with the right to be consulted by Ministers and with the duty of considering all problems from the point of view of the group as a whole—could at least be circulated for discussion with any Governments interested. This is not a starry-eyed proposal, I assure your Lordships. It has already been worked out in considerable detail and is supported not only by the Western European Assembly which comprises hard-headed politicians, and the European movement, but also by a number of French deputies. Even some Gaullists, I think I am right in saying, would see some merit in the idea.
Finally, in any proposals which we might canvass there must be an important role for such a body. Personally, I do not think that Her Majesty's Government, any more than any of the other Governments concerned, would be likely to favour direct elections to such a Parliament. at any rate for a considerable time. But we could certainly indicate how a European Parliament, even if nominated, could exercise real powers of supervision in any new European Community that might now be discussed.
All I am really saying is this. Europe is moving. It is essential for us as a nation to make up our minds in which direction we want her to move. If, consciously or unconsciously, we favour the nationalist or Gaullist line, there is no hope at all for European unity and. as I think, small prospect of improving the political and economic position of these Islands. If, on the other hand, we favour the "no veto" or "Community" approach—no doubt in fields outside the Treaty of Rome, to start off—then we should formulate our ideas and canvass

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them with all friendly Governments, including—and why not?—the French. Failure to do so will inevitably give rise to the suspicion that what we secretly favour is, after all, some kind of nationalistic solution, and if there were the slightest truth in this—I do not think there is—what are we quarrelling about with the General? His thesis is, after all, quite logical, given his disastrous premise.
So, greatly daring, I suggest that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary should, first of all, clear the main lines of a new and constructive plan with their colleagues, and then invite the excellent French Ambassador to a meal, for the purpose of explaining at length to M. de Courcel the many attractions of the scheme, together with a request for comments. There is no need for any misunderstanding: the essentials of the plan would be handed to the Ambassador in the form of an aide memoire in accordance with normal diplomatic custom; no need to worry about leakages, since a copy would also be sent for comments to all our other allies. Why not? The whole idea would be not to isolate France or to force our way into the Common Market over her dead body, but rather to contemplate new and democratic methods of coming together in fields outside the Treaty of Rome, by methods which would gradually eliminate that veto which Mr. Stewart has so properly condemned.
If it were found that the plan represented a large consensus of opinion—and it would, of course, be some time before this were forthcoming—then a conference to consider the proposals could be held. It need not be summoned by us. Perhaps by agreement, some smaller Power could take this initiative. France would be invited and might well attend, and, if she did not, it would simply be a case of the absent being always in the wrong. If a conference without the French was successful, then a determined effort would be made to sell the resulting scheme to the French, and perhaps a second negotiation might then follow. If all these efforts failed and the French Government had nothing whatever to do with the scheme, it would have to be decided whether to put it into operation without them. This would be a grave decision which would have to be carefully con
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sidered in the light of all developments, including the highly regrettable possibility of the French withdrawal from the European Economic Community.
Whatever happens, and whether or not progress in this direction is immediately possible, those who had produced and subscribed to the scheme should never falter in their insistence on the no-veto principle. That is the key. If we lose it we are lost. If we hold on to it we shall not for much longer be knocking at Europe's door, because we shall be able to open it. In any case, if we get bored with Europe and try to knock on America's door, we shall certainly be knocking for much longer, if not indefinitely; and where, my Lords, would be the key?
So while congratulating the Government on what they have done so far, I urge them once again to have the courage of what I have gradually come to believe are their sincere convictions, and shortly to come out with some plan—some fundamental thoughts— about how best to organise a really democratic Europe.
8.9 p.m.
EARL, JELLICOE: My Lords, on general grounds I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, persisted with his Unstarred Question this evening. I hope it means that his forthcoming book, which we await with impatience and which we shall all read with pleasure, will go to the "top of the pops" very quickly indeed. But, more seriously, it was clearly desirable that your Lordships should have an opportunity of debating our national stance towards Europe, in the light of the depression which has recently settled over Anglo-French relations. I have said that on general grounds I am glad that the noble Lord persisted with his Unstarred Question. But on personal grounds I must confess that I am a little less glad, because before his Unstarred Question went down on the Order Paper I took on a commitment which I judge to be inescapable. That means that I shall be breaking a rule which I have never before broken in your Lordships' House, and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, will acquit me of any discourtesy if I am not here to listen to his winding-up speech. It is a commitment I cannot escape. The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, did not hold an inquest on the immediate past, and in that I am sure that he is right, since the

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future of Anglo-French relations and the future of Britain's relationship with Europe is far more important than the sorry events of the last few weeks. However, since he has been inclined to condone, unlike his late leader in another place, Mr. Grimond, the Government's handling of this difficult problem, and since I take a very different view from the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, about that aspect of the matter, I feel that I must dwell, if only briefly, on those sorry events. The French have christened this incident "l'affaire Soames" and we seem to be following their example. I believe, with the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, that this is a complete misnomer. It does an injustice to our able, articulate and pretty formidable Ambassador in Paris. More properly it should be called "l'affaire Quai d'Orsay—Foreign Office", and perhaps in the footnotes of history it may eventually go down as "l'affaire Wilson".
I am not one of those who automatically believes that if something goes wrong in our relationships the British Government of the day, of whatever political complexion, is necessarily to blame; and in this case I am more than willing to accept a very substantial part of the Government's account of what transpired. I am sure that the Foreign Office received a faithful account from Mr. Soames of his fateful conversation with the General early in February. I am sure that the Government's cautious reaction to the General's proposition was warranted. I also sympathise with their desire to communicate at least the gist of what the General said to our close partners in Western Europe and indeed the United States of America. Likewise, I do not question their assertion that the version communicated was in fact substantially that received from our Ambassador in Paris.
At that stage I find one aspect of the Government's conduct in this affair hard to understand and indeed impossible to defend. It was quite clear that the French Head of State was talking in confidence to our Ambassador, and that being so I hold that the decision to communicate the gist of these talks to the other five Governments and to the American Government without the French Government being informed beforehand, let alone approving, incomprehensible
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and indefensible. Despite the Foreign Secretary's determined stonewalling in the other place the other day, I find this hard to understand, because Sir Alec Douglas-Home pointed out in another place last week that we had a perfectly simple alternative open to us; the springs of diplomacy had not run dry. General de Gaulle was, in my view at least, saying something that was not altogether novel; he had made statements of this sort to many people beforehand, and I cannot myself see why days were lost while this was shuffled round the corridors of Whitehall.
I cannot myself see why it was not possible for the Foreign Office to have gone straight back to Paris, presumably in a communication from Prime Minister to Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary to Foreign Secretary, making it clear that we had noted with interest the President's statement, but of course, as he would be well aware, there was a considerable gulf between his position and our known position; that we shared his desire to try to find some more common ground as between neighbours, and that we should be delighted to continue the dialogue. At the same time, we could have made it perfectly plain that before embarking on further talks with the French Government we felt that our partners in Europe must be made generally aware of the gist of what had transpired, and before taking the dialogue further we would obviously need to agree with the French Government on ways and means by which those partners could be brought into the discussions, should they prove fruitful, the right moment. I believe that in some such way it could have been made perfectly clear in a perfectly friendly way that these were our prior conditions to the renewal of this particular dialogue.
As I understand it, we feared a leak or a trap. Perhaps, who knows, we were right to do so. But if the wily General was in fact setting a trap for us, the course of action I have suggested would have de-fused its consequences and we should have been entirely in the clear. I still find it very hard to comprehend why the Government did not take some such course of action and I still find their failure to do so, despite the explanations of the Foreign Secretary in another place, quite indefensible. I find it indefensible because not only has the course of action

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adopted by the Government put a full stop to an Anglo-French dialogue which just conceivably—I would not put it higher—might have been useful; more important, it has weakened the diplomatic credibility of the British Government of the day.
I find this a serious matter and I find the doctrine apparently enunciated by the Government in explanation of their handling of this affair bizarre. I find bizarre the doctrine that the judge of the confidentiality of a diplomatic confidence is the recipient of that confidence. I find that doctrine bizarre in the extreme. But enough of that. I shall read with interest the explanation of the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont. I doubt whether he can persuade me to alter my view of the Government's clumsy handling—I put it no higher—of this particular incident. But even if he cannot persuade me, I of course recognise that this incident, sad and sorry though I hold it to be, is more a symptom, albeit a very tragic one, rather than a root cause of the collapse of confidence between the British and French Governments to-day.
I think it would be idle to suppose that anything very spectacular can be done to lower the temperature of Anglo-French relations at the present time. But what we can do to improve those relations I hope that we will do. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, that this situation has to be looked at in the wider context. But in the narrow context of Anglo-French relations I hope that we shall continue to remind ourselves that both countries have a very great deal at stake over a whole range of joint projects, and I hope that we shall put our hacks behind those projects. Dealing with the biggest of them, the Concorde, I have often been rather dismayed at the readiness of the British Press, and indeed the public, to crab this great project whenever they could. The French take a much more robust attitude to this particular matter, and I have felt at times that the Government's attitude towards it has been a bit ambivalent. I hope that this and other joint projects will receive our full support unless and until both partners are convinced and decide not to proceed with the particular one. I feel that this is something which is incumbent upon
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us and can help the future of Anglo-French relations over at least some area of the ground.
So much for the narrow question. What of the wider approach to Western Europe? Many of us on this side of the House, myself included, are quite sympathetic to the general approach which the Government have, so far as I can make out, been pursuing for the last year or so. We agree, too, that it is right to keep our application to join the European Economic Community on the table, up to date, and fresh before the European public.
In some respects, of course, I hold that our policy should go further. I personally believe that we should be wise, wherever it is possible and practicable, to adapt our own institutions so as to make eventual membership of the Community easier when the time comes, as I think it will come, for our application to be successful. I am thinking particulary of agricultural and taxation policies. Again, I do not dissent from the view that, if we are temporarily blocked by the French veto from membership of the Community, we should pursue the search for greater European unity in those areas which lie outside the Treaty of Rome; the areas which I think the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, mentioned—defence, technology and, indeed, political consultation.
Here—and this is really of crucial importance, if we are to convince our friends in Europe of our seriousness and stability of purpose—it is really important that we should practise, and be seen to practice, what we are preaching. I am not certain that we always do. I cite only two examples. In the field of defence, the maintenance of the Atlantic Alliance and of NATO must clearly remain the foundations of our policy. Nevertheless, I entirely agree with the Government, that it is right and sensible for the European partners in NATO to take a greater share of the defence burden, and to seek within the Atlantic Alliance some closer identity in defence matters.
But it is rather difficult to convince our partners that we are really serious about these matters when we allow our reserves to be depleted, when we make no provision whatsoever for home defence, and when our armed forces are faced, as they are now, with emaciation through manpower starvation. By the

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same token, I believe that the Government have been perfectly right to emphasise to our partners in Europe the absolute need for Europe to remain in the van of technological progress.
We shall be debating these matters in eight days' time on a Motion in the name of my noble friend Lord Bessborough. Therefore, I should like to say this evening only that I believe the Government are serious about this question of European co-operation in science and technology, but that sometimes their actions, whether in relation to ELDO or whether in relation to the airbus—and I will not go into more instances—belie their words.
Finally, there is political consultation. I believe—and I think I part company with the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn here —that we need to tread rather warily; perhaps rather more warily than Her Majesty's Government have done of late. As an old W.E.U. boy, a former member of the W.E.U. Assembly, I do not underestimate the importance of that body, and on one condition I am all in favour of its greater use. It is, after all, the only political structure in which we regularly meet, and in which we are able to consult not only the French but also their five partners in the European Economic Community.
However, just because it is of this special significance, I hold it all the more important that we should not place too great a strain on this institution—more strain than it may he capable of bearing. I think that in recent weeks we have gone close to the limits of what is possible. I am restraining myself from saying more, but I really feel we should be cautious here. In the last resort, if we place too great a strain upon this not very powerful structure, we are facing the Germans with an impossible choice; that is, a choice between the British or the French connection. I hope that some way out of the present W.E.U. imbroglio will be found.
I understand that the next Ministerial meeting is to be held at The Hague in May, and it is certainly my understanding that all seven W.E.U. Members agreed at Luxembourg that it was desirable to work out better procedures for consultation. This matter is likely to arise before the May meeting, and I should be very glad if the noble Lord, in his reply, was able to say something about the Government's
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expectations for that meeting of the Ministerial Council of W.E.U. in May.
In conclusion, I should only like to say this. Although I believe we should tread warily on this question of political consultation, especially in regard to the strain we place upon the W.E.U. structure, I do not think that this absolves us from thinking out our own ideas towards Europe; and in that I am in complete agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn. But although there is no time to go into them this evening, I think I would dissent from some of his particular recipes. While the Government have shown great tactical initiative in the European field, what has rather worried me in recent months is that they have shown rather less initiative in the development of their own thinking towards Europe. We have backed the Harmel Plan and the Nenni Plan, but we have yet to produce a Stewart Plan or a Wilson Plan.
Here I very much go along with what the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, said. I believe that sooner or later—sooner, I hope—we are going to be faced with clear, if difficult, choices in Europe and it behoves us, in this period of attente, to think out our policies through the European thicket. Perhaps it would be wise for us, in certain circumstances, to opt for rather more radical and more daring solutions—and this is a criticism I would make of Governments of both Parties—than we have been prepared to advocate in the past.
8.27 p.m.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, I am very glad that the noble Lord. Lord Gladwyn, has both introduced his Unstarred Question and explained it, and for me he has produced some very new and interesting ideas. I speak not as a Common Market crusader, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, and the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe. But I find myself in greater sympathy with the ideas of the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, than with those of the noble Earl. Many people in this country are interested in a healthy, united Europe, though I have not found that they are frantic about the economic machinery of the E.E.C. It is obvious that Britain, as a great trading country, is interested in a large free trade area and a large market. It is now six years

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since my husband died, and to-day I cannot help savouring the irony of the growing disillusion among members of the E.E.C. the realisation that the present institutions are not sacroscanct.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, will the noble Baroness not agree that it is not the institutions of the European Economic Community which are to blame, or which are at fault; it is the failure to apply them.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, I cannot say that I entirely agree with that, but I am prepared to examine it. I am, of course, appalled by General de Gaulle's cynicism and his proposal actually to jilt the E.E.C. After refusing to admit us into the Common Market for so long, he now comes up with a new and, according to the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, very unsatisfactory set of ideas. Certainly the British Government were absolutely right to say, "No", loud and clear. To those people who kept wringing their hands—and here I include the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe—because for once we had rebuffed the General, I can only say that hitherto every time we turned the other cheek it has resulted in two slaps in the face.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I wonder whether I could just intervene for a moment. I am not necessarily opposed to rebuffing the General. What I am opposed to is a breach of confidence.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: I thank the noble Earl. I might have something to say about it later.
We should not exaggerate this business of bad Anglo-French relations, and I think that the noble Earl has exaggerated them. I do not intend to "chew the cud" of all the diplomatic tittle-tattle that has been churned out in the Press. It is, of course, in our interests that Europe should be stable and healthy. The future of Europe, whether as the E.E.C. or some other association which may be evolved, depends on the economic and social health of all the European countries, especially France, Germany and Britain. There is, of course, some danger that the Big Three will go on playing each other off, one against the other, while their internal situations deteriorate.
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I must stress that the fuss about the Franco-British quarrelling and General de Gaulle's posturing hides a certain danger. It is that this distracts attention from France's real economic and social problems. Everything I read and hear about the French situation to-day makes me think that the General is doing very little to strengthen the franc, or towards creating strong, democratic political institutions which will survive his death. Is it really so important to discover which Foreign Minister put his cards on the table and exactly on which day, when it is on the cards that the franc might be devalued at some future date?
General de Gaulle is quite shameless about changing his mind, and this is not always a bad thing to do. I suggest that at this moment the General would do better to try to be loyal to his true allies, even those he so strongly resented during the last World War. France has formidable domestic problems, and we, too, have our problems. The display of bad temper with the British has nothing to do with the realities of power. In fact, the French could take note of the rightness of our policies and what we are trying to do by concentrating on a healthy economy, a strong pound and a strong balance of payments, for these are the pre-conditions for an effective role overseas.
The General's actual proposals are quite frightening, theoretical as they are. We are asked to substitute the Atlantic Alliance—for what? We know that if we forgo the American nuclear umbrella now and put a European deterrent in its place, it would have to include a German nuclear bomb. I doubt if even the Germans are really enthusiastic about such a prospect. Of course one hopes that a Europe divided into East and West blocs will not persist for ever. One hopes that political changes will take place, working towards a real unity among all the European countries. Finally, returning to the recent Anglo-French exchanges, I think that the Government acted with courage and honesty, though in the field of diplomacy these two qualities do not always result in good public relations.
8.34 p.m.
LORD ROBERTSON OF OAKRIDGE: My Lords, I find myself in some difficulty in expressing an opinion on the Question tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn,

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in part because I am not quite so certain what is meant by certain words in the Question. However, I feel an urge to make a few remarks in the light of recent Anglo-French exchanges. If, in other respects, I stray a little beyond the limits set by the noble Lord's Question, I hope that I shall receive the generosity of the House.
L' affaire Soames"—what a strange business it has been! Everyone is now very busy trying to play it down, to sweep it under the carpet, to suggest that it should be forgotten as quickly as possible. That is not surprising, because in my simple mind nobody has come out of this business with very much credit. However, the fact is that it has happened; it will not be forgotten. It will long be remembered as a milestone, if not a millstone, in the course of Anglo-French relations. As for the part played by the various participants in this strange business, there is no need for me to dwell too much on the part played by the General. He, we are told, offered us a great opportunity which we were foolish enough to ignore; we were told this again only yesterday by the French Foreign Minister in the Chamber. It is true that he appeared to offer the possibility of a dialogue between England and France. He went on to give his ideas as to the general lines which that dialogue should take and did so in terms which it will have been quite clear to him would be completely unacceptable to this country.
It is of more importance to examine the part played by our own representatives, by our Ambassador in Paris and our Government here in London. It is an important part of any Ambassador's job to work for the improvement of relations between his country and the country to which he is accredited, and it is clear that Mr. Soames has been doing precisely that. I said a short while ago that nobody comes out of this business with much credit, but the one man who must be excused from any serious criticism is the man who has been quite wrongly attached to this strange affair. He was invited to a private lunch, he went and he listened carefully to what was said to him, He wrote a report on it, and before sending that report to London he sent a copy to the Quai. As to whether or not the report was correct, we are entitled to
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assume, knowing what we do of the officials of the Quai, that if there had been anything seriously wrong with it they would have been on to our Ambassador within the hour. In fact, they were given eight days, so it is reasonable to assume that that report was generally a correct one.
What of the part played in London by the Secretary of State and the Government? One can well imagine the reaction in the Foreign Office when that telegram arrived from Paris. Anybody who knows the Foreign Office—and we have many distinguished representatives of it among our own numbers—knows that the Foreign Office does not at all like to be surprised by new ideas which it has not been expecting. Moreover, our Foreign Office has been subjected for years to the ruderies which they have had from Paris, and it is natural that they should find this proposal, if that is what it should be called, very objectionable and should treat it with discredit and suspicion. That is very natural. But in diplomatic affairs one must never allow one's feelings to influence one's decisions. One may make one's decisions logically and by the sheer exercise of such brains as one has, but one must not allow the feelings of the heart to enter into the matter at all.
In speaking of the Foreign Service and the Foreign Office, I should like to say that I have the highest respect for our diplomatic service. I do not know what advice they gave their Minister or Mr. Soames. I have an uncomfortable feeling that in this particular case they allowed their feelings to carry them rather too far. As to the part played by the Secretary of State, I read with great interest the account of the debate in another place on Tuesday of last week. I thought that the Secretary of State seemed to be rather too sensitive about some of the remarks that were made. He said that it appeared that
"honourable Members were desperately looking for something for which they could blame the Government".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 25/2/69, col. 1339.]
In the very unlikely event of the right honourable gentleman reading what I am saying to-night, I hope he will at least not make that accusation in his mind of me, for I am not in the least interested or looking for things for which I can blame the Government, but I in fact

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think that the handling of this affair has not been very happy. I largely agree with the criticisms made by the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe. There was apparently an opportunity to reopen the dialogue between England and France, and I feel that the opportunity should have been taken in some way. Of course, the proper precautions must be taken, and on no account should we commit ourselves to the sort of proposals of detail which the General was offering us.
Having said that, I should like to end by expressing one or two of my own feelings about the broader question raised by the final words in Lord Gladwyn's Question. He says that our objective in Europe should be
"the gradual establishment within the Atlantic alliance of more forward-looking and democratic European Institutions."
Those are very long words for me, and I do not know that I quite follow what he means by them; but one thing is very clear to me, and I feel no hesitation about saying it. It is that any European institution which is worth anything must include this country, Germany and France—and all without any reservations. Of that I am perfectly certain; and it should surely be the policy of this country to get the co-operation of Germany and of France towards that end. There should not be great difficulty about Germany, because Germany is still largely influenced by the doctrines preached by the late Konrad Adenauer, and, whatever criticisms may be made of Konrad Adenauer, it cannot be said that he was not a good European. If we want that co-operation, however, we must go about it in the right way, and it is no good going on talking about, "If they will not pay more for our troops we will take our troops away", and it is no good lecturing them about up-valuing the mark. That kind of thing will certainly not gain the co-operation of the Germans. We are not the only people who are apt to talk to the Germans as if they were second-class European citizens: I think they have heard something of the same sort from Paris, too.
As to our attitude towards France, my Lords, it is undoubtedly extremely irritating to be treated by the General as if we were an inferior nation. In the
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light of history it is extremely irritating, but we should not allow ourselves to be irritated. That is not the way to deal with foreign affairs. In our own difficulties we should not turn to France. We should not seek or expect any help from them. We are not likely to get it, anyway. We should solve our own difficulties, and that is what will make it easier to talk to the General. We all have friends in France. I was over there at the same time as Lord Gladwyn, when news of l' affaire Soames first broke; and I am going there on Thursday. We have many friends over there, all of us, and we rest content that our reputation with the Frenchmen who really mean anything is not going to be shaken by the antics of the General. We can look forward with content to retaining their respect and seeking their co-operation in the effort which we shall certainly make.
8.45 p.m.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, I fear that I shall be accused of starting on a rather sour note when I remark that there could be no better example of the painful inadequacy of the management of business in your Lordships' House than the circumstances of this debate. Since the debate on the Address, we have had no occasion on which we have had a chance to consider foreign affairs. This is at a time when the relations between this country and France are seriously strained; when there is an ominous crisis in Berlin; when the whole of the Eastern bloc has recently passed through a traumatic experience with the suppression of Dubcek's Czechoslovakia; when there is near war in the Middle East capable of setting alight half a continent; and when there is a new President in the United States, with new policies and new prospects for that super Power and our closest ally.
Yet, my Lords, we with difficulty appear to tear ourselves away from such engaging topics as female prostitution, the provision of contraceptives for dogs, the diseases of salmon, and homosexuality; from an Order Paper which is full of legislation of limited significance; and, after a debate about some alleged irregularity of procedure on the part of an obscure individual on an obscure committee dealing with an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, to spend a few minutes on foreign affairs. No wonder,

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my Lords, that Parliament is an object of cynicism and contempt!
I am reminded of a passage in one of Disraeli's novels in which he makes one of his characters say:
"He is a man. He is thinking in real politics; foreign affairs; maintaining our power in Europe".
Nowadays your Lordships' House, with all its experience and intellectual ability, is cluttered up with the trivialities of administration and legislation unless some Member like Lord Gladwyn comes to our rescue with a Motion of importance, framed as a Question according to our curious custom, on a subject which should be the concern, and indeed is the concern, of every person who thinks about politics at the present time. It is therefore, my Lords, in no spirit of formality that I offer my thanks to Lord Gladwyn for introducing this debate on this subject at this time.
Let me begin by saying that so far as I personally am concerned I believe that there is every justification for the manner in which His Excellency the British Ambassador in Paris and the British Government handled the initiative which the French President attempted to take to detach Britain from the United States and from its friends in NATO and the W.E.U. It was clearly a clumsy and (if I may repeat the word used by the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell) cynical piece of diplomacy—if I may say so, well in character with the practice of the Fifth Republic. As seems to be the invariable rule with General de Gaulle's diplomacy, his initiative in fact produced exactly the opposite effect to that which he intended. For this we may be grateful, since it has helped, perhaps, in some degree, to condition British thinking about the future of Europe to accept some of the basic facts that have emerged as a result of our experience there during the last ten years and more.
These are, in my view, first, that owing to French policy the E.E.C. in its present form is not the institution upon which European unity can be securely based in the future; and, secondly, that unity must be developed through political and not economic co-operation alone. Thirdly, that the basis of that unity to-day should be a solid understanding between Britain and Germany and access between London and Bonn. There has, I submit,
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never been any reality in the Gaullist idea that the balance of power in Western Europe lay between Germany and France. However large may be France's gold resources or complicated her diplomacy, France to-day is the France of 1872, of 1917, of 1940. She is in the same position as she was on those previous occasions, an unstable element in Western Europe.
The extent of her weaknes3 was brutally illuminated by the collapse of last summer when the existing r6girne was nearly destroyed by a student uprising. The result of that weakness within France to-day is the exaggerated nationalism to which she is prone, a pathological assertiveness of which General de Gaulle is the contemporary expression. European unity cannot be created while a principal element in it—that is, France—is in an aggressively nationalist mood. There is no reason to suppose that if the General disappeared from the political scene to-morrow, Gaullism, or rather the psychology of the defeat of 1940 of which Gaullism is the expression, would disappear from France or that France would suddenly become internationally minded.
The policy of "Waiting for Godot" is just as fruitless for the British as for the French. Even if Mr. Heath became Prime Minister to-morrow, he would not be able to carry Britain into association with the E.E.C. on terms which the French would accept and demand. It may be that Mr. Heath and Mr. Rippon believe that the way to Europe lies through Paris. If they do, they wilt find, I think, that a diminishing number of Conservatives agree with them. Political and economic association linked to the North Atlantic system cannot be based on the existing E.E.C. and secured through a Franco-German alliance. Quite apart from the incompatibility of Gaullism, such a system, if it is to work, must contain its own balance-of-power mechanism. France is too weak to balance Germany. Only Britain in Western Europe is capable of doing that. This is true when for the first time since Germany became a unified country in Europe, the interests of both Britain and Germany are almost identical.
My Lords, it is not a matter of detaching Germany from France; the closer that Germany can keep to France the

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better. It means that parallel to, but separate from, the E.E.C. we should be seeking to construct in Western Europe a political system based upon close cooperation with Germany in the fields of political institutions, defence and technology, and to create a European attitude to regional problems outside Europe. The attempt to discuss the problems of the Middle East in W.E.U. was, I consider, a step in the right direction.
Our aim should not be to get into the E.E.C. through the back door of Western European Union, but to create with our friends a political association, with or without France, to which the E.E.C. might one day be linked. The key to achieving this, I submit, is an association with Germany. Old fears and hatreds (which I have shared all my life) must not be allowed to stand in the way of such an understanding. I believe that the time during which it will be possible to achieve this is limited. It may be that the emergence of exaggerated nationalism within France will infect Germany, or that Germany in five years' time will be so powerful that a political association with the rest of Europe, and with Great Britain in particular, will cease to have attractions to her public opinion. It may be that a new Government in Bonn after the next elections will be able to act more independently, more confidently, more imaginatively, than the present regime has been able to do.
For our part, I hope that we shall not be tempted simply to pick over the car-case of a dead policy, but to realise that for us the era of the E.E.C. has passed. I hope that whoever is Prime Minister in these next four or five years will lead Britain towards the Europe of the 'seventies, and not back towards the Europe of the 'fifties, the Europe of Adenauer, Schuman and de Gaspari. In the meantime, I hope that the Government will continue to seek a place for Britain in Europe which represents a better vision of the future than simply a stubborn determination to join the present E.E.C. at any cost.
8.57 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I should like to repeat what others of your Lordships have said in appreciation of the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, for ini-
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tiating our debate to-night. I should like also to endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Alport, has said in very severe criticism of the arrangements of this House which require a debate of this importance to take place in answer to a second Unstarred Question at this time of night. I do not think that the noble Lord toe Leader of the House or our Chief Whip and its offices are entirely responsible for this state of affairs. I think it is partly ourselves. We have become accustomed in this House to ending our debates in the fairly early hours of the evening and because of that when we have an important debate of this kind there is a small House. I should like to make, if I may, to the noble Lord the Leader of the House, two suggestions; first, that it should be made clear to the House that our duties are now so wide that Members should expect to remain in this House to debate these matters for longer hours than we have done in the past; and second, that it should be considered whether we ought not to meet on Mondays as well as from Tuesdays to Thursdays.
My Lords, I endorse all that the noble Lord, Lord Alport, has said about the issues which have come before this House in recent weeks. I have great sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, be cause in a similar way, through an Unstarred Question, I had to raise in this House the important issue of the war between Nigeria and Biafra. I hope that my words may lead those responsible to make such arrangements in this House as are necessary to its dignity and honour in treating such important issues.
My Lords, as my noble friend, Lord Chalfont, would expect, I shall to-night be putting forward a different, an independent, view from that of others who have taken part in this debate. But I know him well enough, his breadth of mind, his forward-looking attitude to our problems and his willingness to accept new ideas, to be perfectly sure that he will pay some consideration to the different approaches which I shall express. I want to begin by saying that I have no doubt whatsoever that the Government were absolutely correct in conveying to their allies the substance of what was said in the conversations between General de Gaulle and our Ambassador in Paris. It was our duty to those who were acting

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with us and who were concerned in those discussions. If Her Majesty's Government had not done so, there would have been the leakages which already had begun, and there would have been a sense among the Government's allies that some conspiracy was being carried on. The total effect on the disruption of the political mind of Europe would have been far deeper than it has been. Nevertheless, my Lords, I would say to Her Majesty's Government that I think the one mistake which they made in that connection was to inform France that they were going to convey to their allies what had happened only simultaneously with the visit of the Prime Minister to Berlin. In my view, they should have given France longer notice of that fact.
When I turn to the issues to be discussed to-night I wish to regret the stern and stiff line that has been taken with General de Gaulle and France in this debate. I do so because I do not believe that Her Majesty's Government are indestructably right and I do not believe that the French Government are indestructably wrong, take the view that the problems of Europe are far more complex than the attitudes of the two sides; and if I were asked to provide evidence of that I would refer to the speeches delivered in this debate, all denouncing France and General de Gaulle.
Note the difference between the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, and the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Alport. Lord Gladwyn laid down a definite pattern and plan for the solution of all these problems as if they were rigid and inflexible. Lord Alport suggested that the solution of the European problem was for Britain to get nearer to Western Germany and Bonn. My Lords, both those proposals should be discussed when we are engaged in the dialogue on the future of Europe. But these problems are so complex, not only between Britain and France; not only between France and Germany; not only between America and the Soviet Union, Italy and Scandinavia—all these problems are such that we should be entering a dialogue about them with open minds as to their ultimate solution, and recognising that each point of view has a contribution to make to the final decision.
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My Lords, in one sense the tone of our debate to-night has been obsolete. It has been made obsolete by the visit of President Nixon to Europe. I was depressed when President Nixon was elected to his high post. I did not think that I should have words of praise to say of him. But his inaugural speech as President, a magnificent declaration for peace in the world, and the atmosphere which he has created in Europe by his visits to the different European countries has changed the whole climate and has created an atmosphere in which we can begin to discuss these matters, not by anti-de Gaullism, not by anti-the Bonn Government; not by the self-righteousness Of thinking that British policy is absolutely correct, but in a dialogue of thinking out these problems anew and the best way in which they may be solved.
My Lords, may I take two suggestions which came from General de Gaulle in his recent discussions? In case there is any idea that I am a "fan" of General de Gaulle, let me say at once that had I been a citizen of France I should have voted against him. I am absolutely opposed to his authoritarian attitude in France, and I regret the extension of that authoritarianism to the relations between European nations.
But when one has said that, if we intend to approach these problems in a realistic way, trying to understand the attitudes of others, let us look at two of the actual proposals made by General de Gaulle. The first was that the association of European nations should be on the basis of confederation. I am not going to accept that as a final proposal, but what I do say is that the E.E.C., so far as it has operated, has failed to create in Europe either the institution or the spirit which can realise a European Community. The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, said that this was not a matter of its principles, but of their application or lack of application. He was right. But if we are to solve political problems between nations we must accept the mental attitudes and psychologies of the peoples who are involved in the solution which we are seeking. Much as I desire the ending of national sovereignties and the beginning of much wider associations, we have to face the fact that the peoples are not emotionally prepared. Look at

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Europe and ask whether the people of this country and the peoples of France, of West Germany and of Italy, are yet ready to sacrifice their national loyalties and aspirations to become a part of a complete European community? We must recognise that they are not.
This is not only a problem of Europe; it is one of the biggest political problems in the world today: how to associate national aspirations with wider combinations. It is the problem of Nigeria and Biafra, of Quebec and Canada, of Nagaland and India, of Anguilla and St. Kitt's. And this problem is not going to be solved by just laying down a pattern; it has to evolve, and, in the case of Europe, it has to evolve in dialogue between the different European countries.
The other thing I want to say is on the proposal which General de Gaulle has made for the ending of NATO. I would say that the conclusion of the conflict between West and East, between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, is probably the most important issue in the world to-day. We hope that, despite Czechoslovakia and Berlin, a detente is beginning which will enable the antagonism and ferocity which have divided West and East to be reduced. We hope that not merely President Nixon's visit to Europe but his visit to the Soviet Union will contribute towards that goal. I think it very likely indeed that we are moving to a situation where we can take bolder steps to end that division than we have in mind at this moment.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that the dissolution of NATO before we have arrived at anything like a German settlement would be more likely to precipitate a Third World War than anything else?
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I do not accept that; but what I am going on to say will meet the point the noble Lord made. NATO is to be reviewed this year at the end of its 20-year period. The Communist Governments who are in the Warsaw Pact have publicly indicated at two Congresses that they are prepared to end the Warsaw Military Pact and they have suggested that in place of the division of Europe between NATO and the Warsaw Pact there should be a Euro-
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pean security pact, which would be an umbrella for all the nations in both West and East. It may be true that if a unilateral decision were reached for the ending of NATO, what the noble Lord has indicated may occur. That is not the proposal I am making.
LORD GLADWYN: No, my Lords; hut it is the proposal that General de Gaulle is making.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I am quite sure that it would not be the proposal which General de Gaulle would make if there were conversations in a practical way. The noble Lord has the right to disagree, but he also has the right to listen. What I am suggesting to my noble friends is this. General de Gaulle makes the proposal for the ending of NATO and we turn it down rigidly. I am suggesting that the correct response to that proposal should have been to go into dialogue and discussion with him about the problems of Europe and of East and West and to contribute our suggestion, if Her Majesty's Government would accept it, that mutually the NATO and Warsaw Pacts should be ended and that we should have in substitution a European security pact.
I conclude by saying this. The thing with which I was most impressed during the visit of President Nixon to Europe was what the Pope said to him in Rome. I am a humanist; I am not a member of any religious organisation; but I pay my tribute to the Head of the Catholic Church for what he said. These were his words:
"This is the mission which your great nation, Mr. President, along with other members of the international community, is called upon to fulfil: a mission of peace, a mission of noble-hearted collaboration with all peoples, and particularly with the developing peoples, in mutual esteem, with respect for fundamental freedoms of men and of nations, and in the promotion of genuine human values. All peoples are closely bound together, now more than ever before, in a common destiny, the great world-wide effort to build on solid foundations the earthly city in which each individual lives and works."
I believe that if we began to approach the problems of Europe and the problems of the world with those motives and in that kind of spirit we could solve our problems without the conflicts which are now taking place between the nations.
9.16 p.m.
LORD HANKEY: My Lords I should like to support very much what the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, said at the beginning of this debate, and also what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Alport, later on. Personally, I am glad that Her Majesty's Government are maintaining their demand for drawing closer to Europe, and also for entering the Common Market. I have no doubt that this is the best policy for us to pursue, although it is obviously going to be a long haul. I cannot imagine, looking back at the history of the last century and at the steady decline of Europe's influence and potentialities since the war, that we can afford to continue the sort of particularism, if I may use that phrase, of separate, egotistical, nationalist States in Europe, which has led us all into the present morass.
It follows, logically and in plain common sense, that we ought to favour some pulling together, some derogation of sovereignty, some common political and administrative institutions such as those of the Common Market. I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, that we ought to seek to start a new dialogue which will throw into question what has already been achieved in the Treaty of Rome and in the other collective institutions which have been formed. I believe that to start a new dialogue which throws into doubt what has already been achieved plays into the hands of those who, whether they admit it or not, really want to destroy those institutions. I feel, on the contrary, that while a dialogue may be desirable, it should be based on how existing institutions can be improved and extended. In the world in which we live, and in the light of events in Czechoslovakia, NATO also seems to be absolutely essential for our survival as free nations and as free men.
Coming to General de Gaulle's propositions of February 4, I still cannot really understand why he wants to disrupt both the Common Market and NATO, and still less, indeed, why he should want us to propose such a thing. I really feel that his motives and methods are extremely suspect. Say we had done what General de Gaulle wanted and entered into secret talks with France about all this, what
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would have happened? Obviously, there would have been a leak in Paris: there always is—and there was one, anyway. Where should we have been then? We should have been in a pretty kettle of fish, and stinking fish at that. Our NATO Allies would have been horrified; our friends in EFTA and among the Six would have been deeply shocked at us.
Our Ambassador in Paris, who most wisely got the record of his conversation with General de Gaulle approved on February 8, seems to me to have handled this question quite admirably. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Oakridge, said in this connection.
But what was our Prime Minister to say to Dr. Kiesinger in Bonn, when he went there on February 10? Mr. 'Wilson was no longer in any doubt as to what had been said to Mr. Soames. He knew the French had a Treaty with Germany, concluded in 1963, about the time when our Common Market negotiations broke down, by which each side promised to act in very close consultation with the other. If General de Gaulle kept his own treaties, then he should have told the Germans what he had said to Mr. Soames. Indeed, he ought to have told the Germans in advance. What would Dr. Kiesinger have thought of Mr. Wilson if he had not been frank and had suppressed all mention of such a vital French initiative on one of the very subjects that were to be under discussion? Would that have led to the establishment of a better Anglo-German understanding, such as we must have if we are one day to enter Europe successfully?
What a shocking pitfall Mr. Wilson and our Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs succeeded in avoiding—a pitfall for themselves and for the United Kingdom; a pitfall for NATO, which is due to be reviewed this year and where a reasonably good common understanding will be very necessary; a pitfall for the Common Market, for EFTA and for all forms of Atlantic and European co-operation. Of course, it could be said, and it has been said in this debate, noticeably by the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, that we ought to have informed the French before we informed the Germans. But I should like to point out that, if we had done that, the French might have objected and then we should have found ourselves in an even worse

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situation than we are in now. Therefore, I think that on balance the Government acted very wisely in acting as they did.
I prefer to believe that on the whole this was a major gaffe> on the French side, rather than a deliberate trap. But I am bound to say that French diplomacy very seldom drops bricks of such immense magnitude. Do not let us be put off now by a hit of defensive bluster on their side. One day, in my opinion, we shall enter Europe successfully, because in the years we live in nothing else makes political and economic sense. I hope we can meanwhile carry co-operation forward into wider spheres, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn.
I have twice said, "enter Europe successfully". By that I mean that we cannot enter Europe safely unless we put our economic house in order, and, in particular, unless we restore a state of law and order in our labour relations. I cannot, to my very deep regret, be here when your Lordships' House discusses this question on March 18, and as it is so germane to our relations with the new Europe I shall now say a word about it, even if for brevity I have to do it rather superficially.
The Government's White Paper, In Place of Strife, is much too weak, but it is in many respects a considerable improvement on the Donovan Report. The Government have kept this question under the carpet for much too long, and are now proposing to do much too little.
NOBLE LORDS: Order, order!
LORD HANKEY: But the vote in another place shows what courage Mrs. Castle must have needed to do what she has done. I earnestly hope that the Government will not be put off by that vote from doing what is plainly necessary. This country cannot afford to go on—
NOBLE LORDS: Order, order!
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I think the voices that were raised were querying what the noble Lord was saying about a subject which is not really before the House.
LORD HANKEY: My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, has recognised in her speech, we cannot have a valid foreign policy or a valid defence
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policy, which was referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, unless our balance of payments and our economic policy are put in order. I urge that this question is germane to what we are discussing.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, with all respect to the House, I do not think we can really, on the basis of my Unstarred Question, go into the balance of payments or the social policies of this country.
LORD HANKEY: My Lords, I still wish to repeat that unless we put our economic house in order we cannot expect to have a valid European policy. Therefore I urge that this question is still germane. However, I will cut short my remarks on this subject because clearly it is getting late at night and we want to conclude this debate. If we go down the list of economic Powers in Europe, as will be clear from the latest O.E.C.D. statistics which your Lordships will find in the Printed Paper Office to-night, it is evident that we shall find it hard to enter Europe successfully, and I do not think we can safely enter Europe at all unless we put our affairs in much better order. To conclude my remarks, I earnestly hope that the Government will persist in their application to enter Europe, as well as with their incipient and tentative policy on industrial relations, without which other policies really cannot be successful.
9.26 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD CHALFONT): My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, for giving us the opportunity to have this brief debate in your Lordships' House about our European policy. I agree that it is a late hour and a "thin" House, but nevertheless I think the debate has been worth while. I listened with some interest to what the noble Lord, Lord Alport, said about the fact that we are having this debate so late at night and in answer to a second Unstarred Question. I cannot go all the way with him in his strictures on the management of affairs here. I recognise his disenchantment and his deep feeling about this, but after all, as he said, foreign affairs are about our influence in the world and I think it should be said that

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some of the legislation which is necessarily discussed in your Lordships' House is about precisely the sort of influence that we shall wield in the world. Although I agree witth a very great deal of what the noble Lord, Lord Alport said, we must concern ourselves here not only with the questions of the power we wield in the world but with the kind of people we are and the kind of society in which we live.
To return to Lord Gladwyn's Question, I was particularly interested to note the form in which he cast it. It seemed to suggest a concern with what happens in the future rather than with raking over what has happened in the past. This indeed turned out to be the theme of the noble Lord's speech, and although I cannot agree with everything that he has said about the way ahead, I am most grateful to him both for concentrating in his speech on the problems of the future and for his endorsement of the Government's action in our recent controversial dealings with France and our other European partners.
I have been pleased to find that the speeches in your Lordships' House reflect what I have found to be the general consensus among thinking people on this subject; namely, that the action of Her Majesty's Government in consulting our friends in Western European Union about proposals involving their interests and security, was right and proper. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Oakridge, said that in diplomacy we should be careful not to pay too much attention to the feelings of the heart, but I know he will agree with me when I say that whatever may be the truth of that, it is essential in diplomacy always to take account of feelings of morality and of principle. Whatever our foreign policy may be and whatever tactics we may have to follow from time to time, there must in any civilised foreign policy be a thread of principle, and I believe we should have been guilty of deviousness, if not something worse, had we done anything else in this affair.
Therefore I propose—and I hope I shall not detain your Lordships too long—to follow the pattern that has been set in this debate. I shall deal briefly with some of the comments that have been made on the Government's part in what has been called, with trivial and pre-
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dictable irrelevance, "the Soames affair". Here I might take the opportunity to echo the remarks made by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary in another place. Whatever criticisms may have been levelled at our Ambassador in Paris in certain sections of the foreign Press, I want to make it perfectly clear that Her Majesty's Government are in no way disposed to support those criticisms. The Government are fully satisfied with the way in which Mr. Soarnes handled this matter.
I should like to deal very briefly with the criticisms that were made, particularly by the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe. I am sorry he is not here to hear what I have to say in reply to him, but he explained to me as well as to your Lordships, and I know he has an engagement that I, for one, would not have wanted him to miss. But I must put on record my answers to the criticisms he made. One of the things he said was that it was a bizarre doctrine that the recipient should be the best judge of the confidentiality of any proposition or piece of information. I do not know whether I would entirely disagree with that, but I think what would be bizarre in the extreme would be the doctrine that it was open to any Government to go to another with proposals to talk to them on matters which might gravely affect the welfare of other countries and to bind them in advance not to tell the other countries about it. This would seem to me a very bizarre doctrine indeed.
It has been suggested in this debate and elsewhere that there was nothing new in what the General had to say, and indeed the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, wondered why such old proposals had been shuffled for so long around the corridors of Whitehall. But at the same time it was suggested that it was somehow a breach of confidence to discuss them. These seem to me to be two mutually incompatible propositions. Either these matters were new, in which case it was our duty to talk to our friends and allies about them, or they were not, and I fail to see how one can suggest at one and the same time both that the proposals were not new and that it was a breach of confidence to discuss them.
He went on to discuss the question whether we should have asked the French

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first to consent to discussion of this with our other friends in Western Europe, or that we should at least have told them we were going to do this. As my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary said in another place, it is quite simply the fact that we handled the matter in this way because we do not believe it would have been right to put ourselves in a position where we were apparently asking the French for permission to inform our friends of something they had a perfect right to know. And I noted with interest and approval what the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, had to say about that.
The noble Earl also suggested, I think with a little more vigour than he meant, that these events had in some way put a stop to our talks with the French. This, of course, if it is so, is not the fault of Her Majesty's Government. We are ready at any time to talk to the French Government provided only that they understand exactly where we stand on the essentials of security and European unity. But none of us can accept the position in which France tries to put a veto on all progress in Europe, and none of us certainly can accept that issues of this magnitude which affect the future of our allies can possibly be settled without them.
I come now to a brief reference to the proposals made by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, in the latter part of his speech. He talked about the possibility of federal types of solution to European political problems. He talked of a European Parliament and weighted and qualified voting. All these are interesting propositions. But I must reiterate that our aim at the moment is full membership of the three European Communities. This remains our aim, and our application to become members remains in.
LORD GLADWYN: Would the noble Lord agree that that is not the only aim of Her Majesty's Government?
LORD CHALFONT: Yes, indeed, I would agree with that. Her Majesty's Government have many other aims, but in so far as the Common Market is concerned—and I will come on in a moment to look more closely at some of his propositions—we have always made it clear that we regard the enlarged Community
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as the best basis for European integration, going far beyond the economic field. We have always said that the Community is a dynamic thing which has already evolved and which will continue to evolve.
So far as the emergence of Europe as a community is concerned, we believe that Europe can emerge as an entity which can express its own point of view and, as a result, its influence in world affairs, and we have said right from the beginning that we shall play our full part in this process. As a member of the Community, when we become a member, we shall accept whatever responsibilities the Community may decide to assume, and we shall join as eagerly as any other member in creating new opportunities for the expression of European unity. But we cannot—and I agree with all that has been said about this—wait idly by until the French veto is lifted on our attempt to enter the Common Market.
I listened with interest to the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn. His schemes were more ambitious, perhaps, than those he has heard put forward by others. However, I do ask him to believe that their implementation would depend for support on Governments on the Continent as well as on Her Majesty's Government. The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, made a somewhat significant remark when he said, "All you have to do is to get everybody to agree". Yes, indeed.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, in the long run, of course. What I said was we might take an initiative—put forward at least some ideas of our own.
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I assure the noble Lord that we have ideas of our own. They may not always agree entirely with his ideas, but we have examined this problem, and I agree with him when he says that the objective of all of us is a Europe speaking with a single voice and capable of having a proper influence on world affairs. But, as I say, although I cannot go all the way with the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, in his proposals for a British initiative, I think it might be right to end my remarks this evening by very briefly outlining to your Lordships exactly how the Government believe we should go forward with our European policy. I hope

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the noble Lord will acquit us of the charge of not having any ideas, although, as I say, he may find they are not entirely the ideas that he himself has put forward.
First, we very much regret the damage that has been done to relations between ourselves and France in this recent episode. However, I think it is right to say that these relations have not been as cordial as they might be, and indeed as they should be, since the French Government applied its veto to our negotiations in November, 1967. It is important to realise that the relations between our two countries are not just a function of the day-to-day tactics of diplomacy and foreign policy; they spring from what is quite clearly a fundamental difference of opinion between ourselves and General de Gaulle about the future prosperity and security of Europe. It is also significant to say that so far as the other members of the Western European Union are concerned—and this also means by definition the other members of the Common Market—they seem to agree with us. So there is, in effect, a fundamental difference between General de Gaulle and the rest of Western Europe about the way we should go forward and the place we should make for ourselves in the world.
The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, hinted at the beginning of his speech that he might say things that a member of the Government would find difficult to accept. Let me say at once that I do not think his views and mine are as far apart as he may have feared. I agree with him entirely that in examining the future of Europe we must absorb, and examine with respect, new ideas. We must not let ourselves become fossilised by obsolete ideas of national sovereignty. I ask him to believe that although Europe is split, as it is at the moment, by ideological, political and economic differences, I share his fervent hope that that split will not last long. I ask him to believe that as long as it lasts we in this country, if we have any intelligent responsibility for the security of our people, must regard the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Western Alliance as the cornerstone of our policy. We must, as the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, has said, seek for a European identity in defence matters and in political matters, but it must be an
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identity four-square within the Atlantic Alliance.
That is why we rejected what I believe is the Gaullist thesis on the Atlantic Alliance and on NATO. Then we rejected also, but we have a different view of, the future development of the Communities and of the political framework of Europe. I have said that full membership remains our aim. Negotiations are blocked, but we must continue; and I believe that the way to go forward is to make progress towards integration where we can in fields outside the Community Treaties of Rome and Paris.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, does the noble Lord think that we can make substantial progress in those directions without the introduction of techniques, such as weighted majority voting?
LORD CHALFONT: Yes, my Lords, I believe that progress can be made, and I believe that it is already being made. It is being made through the steps which we have taken in the Western European Union. It has been achieved first of all through discussion. It first came to a head in the discussion in February of this year on the Harmel proposal, the idea that you should have consultation on political and other matters inside the framework of the W.E.U. As soon as that idea was put forward by the Belgian Foreign Minister and set out later in an Italian paper which covered these proposals, there was unanimous agreement on the need to improve these political consultations. Six delegations at the Luxembourg meeting agreed that before taking decisions on important foreign policy issues, they would undertake an obligation to consult so that they could harmonise their national positions. I believe that this is already a decisive step forward and the noble Lord, Lord Alport, was good enough to recognise it.
The first thing that happened was that we had a meeting of the W.E.U. Council on February 14 to discuss the Middle East in advance of the Four Power consultations. France was invited, and to our regret did not find it possible to attend. There was a useful discussion, and I ask the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, not to close his mind on this matter, for there is progress to be made in this field as well as in the field of techniques and institutions which he mentioned. The

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Prime Minister's visit to Bonn was another step in the process of consultation. He had a thorough discussion of all the European issues with the Chancellor of the Federal Republic. After the meeting there was a joint declaration which confirmed the identity of views between us and the Federal Republic on European unity. The next steps are as follows—and there are a number of things which can be done and which are being done. There is the meeting of the Action Committee of the noted and distinguished European, Jean Monnet, which is to take place in London in a few clays' time. In April the President of the Italian Republic will pay a State visit to London. We shall continue, and indeed intensify, the consultations inside W.E.U. This will include, as one noble Lord suggested, the meeting of Ministers of the W.E.U. in The Hague in May.
The noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, spoke about putting a strain on the W.E.U. because it is a forum in which we speak to the French and to our other Allies. There can be not the slightest doubt that a Europe without France is as unthinkable as a Europe without Britain. It has been said before, and it will bear saying again, that so long as Britain and France are at odds the future of Europe will always be uncertain. This is a fact that has been proved over and over again in the past and will certainly be proved again in the future. But if anyone believes that the British Government—I think this was hinted at in at least one speech this evening—are trying to isolate France in our attempt to build a united Europe, then they will believe anything. So far, it is the French Government which has always chosen the solitary path. They
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have chosen it in NATO, they have chosen it in the European Economic Communities, and they have chosen it in the Western European Union. If France is isolated, it is because France has chosen to isolate herself.
I do not believe that these policies are in the interests of France or of Europe. Nor do I believe that they will persist for long. I think I can end in no better way than by assuring your Lordships' House that if at any time any move should come from France that seems to us designed to further the interests, the prosperity and the security of Europe as a whole, we shall be ready to discuss them with France in consultation with our friends and our allies. But we shall not, my Lords, I hope, ever make the fatal error of believing that we can buy worthwhile new friendships by betraying old ones.

PHOENIX ASSURANCE COMPANY BILL [H.L.] WITHAM NAVIGATION COMPANY BILL [H.L.]
Examiners' Certificate that the further Standing Orders applicable have been complied with: Ordered to lie on the Table. Bills committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.

BOURNEMOUTH CORPORATION BILL DERBY CORPORATION BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and referred to the Examiners.
House adjourned at a quarter before ten o'clock.