Lords Sitting of 25 November 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 Chester.

NIGERIA: PEACE EFFORTS AND RELIEF SUPPLIES
LORD SORNESEN: 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, in view of conflicting public statements in respect of the possibility of negotiations for peace between the Nigerian Government and the Biafran secessionists, what is the present situation; and to what extent food and drug supplies are now reaching the secessionists' area.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords, I have nothing further to add to my reply to my noble friend Lord Brockway on November 18 and 20. As regards the second part of my noble friend's Question, the position is that relief supplies of food and drugs are at present being supplied to the secessionist area by night flights, which we believe to be supplying about 165 tons a night.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the conflicting statements that are made make it very difficult for the general public, and indeed Members of this House, to assess the actual situation? Can anything be done by the Government to clarify the matter? In regard to the second part of my Question, I should like to ask him to what extent is it now estimated that the food and drugs which are being supplied are actually meeting, in some measure at least, the great need in that part of Nigeria?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, if I were to deal with the question about the conflicting reports from both sides, I fear I should go well beyond the length of my reply last Thursday. If my noble friend cares to put down a Question for Written Answer, I will try to give him the information in that form. In regard to the food position in Biafra, it was not quite as bad until some two months ago, when the situation began to get worse owing to the fact that crops had not yet been harvested. We do not believe the position is as bad as most of us have been led to believe.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, on the second point, may I ask my noble friend whether it is not the case that the harvest has already been consumed and that there is a very great danger that starvation in the Biafran region will increase desperately in the coming year? Secondly, and much more important, in view of the fact that both Nigeria and the Biafran Administration have accepted negotiations without conditions, is it not possible for the Government now to use their influence to secure that there shall be a meeting between Nigerian and Biafran representatives, perhaps during a period of truce, to try to bring an end to this war?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, as I have tried to indicate, the situation in Biafra in terms of food and suchlike is not as bad as we are led to believe. That does not in any way remove our serious concern about the growing position and the need, therefore, to find ways and means in which food may be brought to this particular area. In regard to the second part of the Question, I gave my noble friend a reply on November 18, and I would ask him to refer to it.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, could the noble Lord say whether there is any indication as to how much in the way of arms is arriving in Biafra by means of night flights?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, that is another question. Certainly I could not answer that particular question without notice.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, as my noble friend says, things are much better, but can he tell the House what the infantile mortality rate is this year as compared to last year?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I suggest that my noble friend sees what I have just said. I did not say that things were better, I said that things were not as bad as we have been led to believe.

THE HOSPITAL SERVICE: WASTE ALLEGATIONS
2.40 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what they are doing about the allegations of waste and extravagance in the Hospital Service made by the Comptroller and Auditor General at the Annual Conference of the Association of Hospital Treasurers, as reported in The Times on November 14.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (BARONESS SEROTA): My Lords, The Comptroller and Auditor General made it clear to the Conference of the Association of Hospital Treasurers that in general the Hospital Service carries out its business economically. The shortcomings he referred to in his speech are being taken up by my Department with the hospital authorities concerned as they come to our notice through the activities of the Exchequer and Audit Department, the Department's own auditors and in other ways. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State and I will be discussing with the chairmen of Hospital Boards what more can be done to prevent defects of the kind mentioned by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I should like to thank the Minister for that reply, and for the assurance that she and her colleagues in the Ministry of Health are taking steps to rectify this kind of waste and extravagance. May I ask whether the noble Baroness is aware that the Ministry for which she speaks is spending very large amounts of our money, and that the public at large deserve to be assured that they are getting value for these large sums which are being spent in the Health Service?
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, I am only too conscious of the costs of the National Health Service, and also the very great quality of service it provides to those who require its services. I would say to the noble Lord that if he had heard the whole of the speech from which his Question arises, he would have heard that the comments were the result of a very small sample of hospital authorities and that, overall, the Comptroller said that very efficient use was being made of our resources in the National Health Service.
LORD KILMANY: My Lords, would not the noble Baroness agree that it is particularly important at this time, when a large number of nurses think, rightly or wrongly, that they are being underpaid, that there should he no question of waste in the hospital services that does not receive prompt action from Her Majesty's Government to remedy it?
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, of course. That is why we are going to take the action that I have already described to the House.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, is not some of the waste and extravagance due to the fact that much of the money is on an annual budget which has to be spent before the end of the financial year and, therefore, is sometimes spent unnecessarily? I do not say all the money, but some of it.
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, I cannot for a moment accept the words "waste and extravagance" in relation to the National Health Service.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, does not my noble friend think that there are millions of people in this country who have reason to be grateful for the fact that they have received value for money from the Hospital Service? Does not the noble Baroness recollect that in the old days people had to go to the local gentry in order to obtain what was called "a letter" before they could secure admission to hospital? Moreover, does not the noble Baroness think that the present system is very much better than its predecessor?
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, I must thank my noble friend for putting this matter in its proper perspective.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether she would kindly, when investigating the matter—as I am sure she will, because she has the reputation for doing things—look into the prescribing of drugs, particularly the prescribing of proprietary drugs, in those cases where there is an alternative which may be much cheaper?
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, as the noble Baroness knows, the cost of drugs forms a high proportion of the cost of the National Health Service, and that is why it is a matter which my right honourable friend and I always have under active consideration.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, in the matter of excessive costs of nurses' uniforms, can my noble friend say whether a scale of charges for these uniforms has been laid down for the guidance of hospital treasurers?
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, I am not quite sure what my noble friend meant by "excessive costs of nurses' uniforms". The cost of uniforms varies greatly up and down the country. Again, this is a matter which has been the subject of an inquiry by a Working Party in order that we can provide, at reasonable cost, suitable garments—I may say suitable and attractive garments—for nurses to wear.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, would not the noble Baroness agree that the cost of drugs is in fact less than the overall cost of laundry?
BARONESS SEROTA: Not off hand, my Lords.

CIVIL AVIATION: AIR-MISS NEAR LONDON AIRPORT
2.45 p.m.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a statement on the "near-miss" between a B.O.A.C. VC1O and an El Al Boeing 707 over Epsom on Tuesday, November 11.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, at 15.15 B.S.T. on Tuesday, November 11, a B.O.A.C. VC.10 aircraft, G-ASGD en route to Heathrow Airport from Teheran, via Zurich, had an air-miss with an El Al Boeing 720 aircraft 4XABB leaving for Tel Aviv via Munich The incident took place three or four miles North of the radio beacon near Stoke d'Abernon which marks the Epsom holding area for aircraft approaching Heathrow from the South. Air Traffic Control had cleared the VC.10 to leave the holding area at FL70 on a North-Easterly course and the Boeing to cross the beacon marking the holding area at FL60, thus providing the standard thousand feet separation. The aircraft were flying in Instrument Meteorological Conditions at the time in turbulent air and in cloud of varying intensity. The pilots saw each other in close proximity and took avoiding action. Three people in the Boeing received minor injuries but were not detained on their journey. No one in the VC.10 was hurt. The Chief Inspector of Accidents has initiated an inspector's investigation. An accedited representative of the Israeli authorities is participating, and a report will be published in due course.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that detailed statement, may I say that I am sure many Members of this House and people outside will be glad to hear that the report of the investigation will be published. To some extent I am sure it will alleviate the wide concern at this incident. Can the noble Lord say how many such incidents have occurred in the last twelve months?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, first, I am glad to think that the noble Earl approves of the fact that this report will be published. I am sure that in this matter full information provides one way of keeping the public not only informed but appreciative of the right perspective involved. In that connection, I am pleased to tell the noble Earl that in the year up to August, 1968, only seven of the incidents that were reported to the Working Group were believed to have involved an actual risk; in the year up to August, 1969, there were only three. This, against the context of 600,000 aircraft movements in a year, puts the matter in a different perspective.

CIVIL AVIATION: AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL
THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps the Board of Trade intend to take to reduce the number of near-misses and mid-air collisions over Britain.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, air traffic control systems, facilities and procedures are constantly being improved to meet the requirements of safety and the continual increase in aircraft movements over the United Kingdom. Improvements in hand include primary and secondary radar facilities, communications, additional navigational aids, and extension of A.T.C. services within new parts of the air-space. In addition, reports of any near-collisions are carefully analysed to see whether they call for immediate remedial measures or affect longer-term planning.
THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that reply, I should like to ask him two supplementary questions. First, is he aware that the new British system called the Decca Air Control Navigation System, which pilots have demanded, without success, may be adopted throughout the United States long before it becomes operational in Britain? Secondly, is my noble friend aware that aeroplanes flying across Britain are restricted to air corridors and fly to regular beacons like the one at Epsom?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am aware of the facts referred to in the second part of my noble friend's questions. I am also aware that the Decca system, if internationally adopted, would enable an area pattern of navigation which would be, in the view of the United Kingdom, an improvement. I only regret that my noble friend's information is not quite correct when he appears to suggest that the United Kingdom has been against the Decca system. We have pressed for
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the international adoption of the Decca system. Unfortunately, other countries have not yet agreed.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, in the light of the reported incident in the neighbourhood of Turnhouse about three weeks ago, would the noble Lord use his best endeavours to accelerate the installation at that airport of the radar equipment which in the view of many of us should have been installed long ago?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, this is a rather complicated matter, but I accept that there is an important problem here.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he does not think that, in view of the risk of collisions over the land of Britain, it would be a good idea to put as many airports as possible around the coast?
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord could indicate the type of improvements that, as he mentioned in his Answer, will be made in the near future.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Earl. I could go through a very long list, but immediately and most important there are, for example, the fact that 39 V.H.F. omnidirectional ranges (V.O.R.s) have been installed; 15 beacons giving Distance Measurement will be operational by the end of the year; the mediator system, which is a combined military and civil plan, is now in hand, based on the use of primary and secondary radar data. New Approach Control radars have gone into Heathrow, Belfast and Glamorgan, and one is to go into Edinburgh, to which the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, has just referred. In addition, there is a new system coming into operation for controlled A.T.C. services in the lower air space.
I feel that we have here a part of our national system which is alert and alive, and is developing; but when we realise that it is now possible to direct a piece of equipment to almost a pinpoint landing on the moon, so many hundreds of thousands of miles away, it will be appreciated that the area for man uvre is quite elastic.

LOCAL RADIO STATIONS
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, at a convenient moment after half-past three my noble friend Lady Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe will be making a Statement on local radio stations.
EDINBURGH CORPORATION ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Read 3a, and passed.

COMMITTEE FOR PRIVILEGES
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That in accordance with Standing Order No. 65, a Select Committee for Privileges be appointed, and that the following Lords, together with the Chairman of Committees and any four Lords of Appeal, be named of the Committee:

L. Privy Seal (L. Shackleton),

M. Salisbury,

E. Dundee,

E. Longford,

E. St. Aldwyn,

E. Swinton,

L. Amulree,

L. Beswick,

L. Byers,

L. Carrington,

L. Champion,

L. Conesford,

L. Rea,

L. Silkin,

L. Strang:

That the Committee have leave to report from time to time.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

RADIOLOGICAL PROTECTION BILL [H.L.]
2.54 p.m.
BARONESS SEROTA: 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.—(Baroness Scrota.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [The National Radiological Protection Board and its functions]:
On Question, Whether Clause 1 shall stand part of the Bill?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: I should like to take this opportunity again of saying how grateful I was to the noble Baroness, Lady Serota, for explaining the Bill to us on Second Reading and, in particular, for giving the assurances that the Government do. in general, continue to respect the Haldane principle and that it is not their intention that directions given by Health Ministers should prejudice the scientific judgment or advice of the new Board. I am glad that scientific advice will be fully respected. I am, however, still a little confused about the status of the Ministry of Technology and the Department of Education and Science in regard to these services.
Owing, I fear, to some failure in communications—it is not the first in recent weeks and it is certainly not the fault of the noble Baroness, Lady Serota—I have only just received the noble Baroness's letter on the subject, and I think your Lordships might like to hear from her personally what the position is in regard to MINTECH and D.E.S. As your Lordships know, the Medical Research Council is the concern of the Department of Education and Science, and the Atomic Energy Authority is the concern of the Ministry of Technology. Am I right in thinking that these two Departments will now no longer be concerned with these protection services and that Health Ministers will deal direct with the new Board after consulting the M.R.C. and the A.E.A. in accordance with Clause 1(6) and (7), and indeed Clause 2(1)?
I should like to ask the noble Baroness whether the financial support for these services will now be transferred to the Social Services Vote? From looking quickly at her letter I think the noble Baroness may now be able to answer us

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on this point. This Bill is complicated because so many Departments are concerned. I thought MINTECH and D.E.S. were not concerned, but we may be told that they are.
Secondly, I wonder whether the noble Baroness can also give me a reply to the question which I addressed to her on Second Reading with regard to the role of these protection services in the event of a nuclear war. I imagine—and my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor will no doubt confirm this—that in that case the Home Office will be involved in a co-ordinating role with all the other Departments concerned. I do not think it worth while to put down Amendments to the Bill covering all these points, although there may be further thoughts on this when the Bill gets to another place. It has come to your Lordships first. However, I should be grateful to the noble Baroness if she would let us have the views of the Government on these two points.
BARONESS SEROTA: I am grateful to have this opportunity of apologising to the noble Earl for the failure in communications. As I believe he knows and understands and accepts, I myself checked whether he was to be in the House in order to receive the letter giving him the answers I had promised on Second Reading, and although I was assured that he would be receiving the letter, in fact I heard from him just before the House met to-day that he had had it in his hand only on coming here for this particular stage of the Bill. I apologise and hope that he accepts the apology that I have given him both personally and now here, publicly, in the House.
As the noble Earl said, Clause 1 is somewhat complex, and I undertook to inform him of the relative responsibilities of the different Departments of State involved in the new organisation. The position is that the main Parliamentary grant to the Board will come from my right honourable friends the Secretary of State for Social Services and the Secretary of State for Scotland. The Ministry of Technology, to which he referred, and the Department of Education and Science are also concerned because they are responsible for the Parliamentary grants to the Atomic Energy Authority and the Medical Research Council respectively.
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As I think the noble Earl indicated, the Medical Research Council and the Atomic Energy Authority will each be making a substantial contribution to the income of the Board, and all these bodies are of course involved in the work of the new authority.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: Before the noble Baroness moves from that point, I wonder whether, perhaps later, we could have a breakdown of the extent to which these services will be supported financially by MINTECH and D.E.S., and the extent to which they will be supported by the Health Ministers. It would be interesting to know exactly what the proportions are in regard to financial support.
BARONESS SEROTA: I cannot, of course, give the noble Earl and the Committee the financial information off the cuff. If I cannot get it in time for our discussion to-day I will send it to him, and on this occasion I think I had better deliver it to him personally, in view of the previous failure of communications.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: Or perhaps give it on Report stage.
BARONESS SEROTA: I should like to be quite clear that what he would like is a clear statement of the amounts of money involved and which particular Departments they are coming from.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: Yes.
BARONESS SEROTA: May I continue with the noble Earl's second point, which related to what I regard as a rather sombre situation to contemplate? He asked what the position would be in the event of a nuclear incident or disaster, and asked me to confirm, which I readily do, that the Home Secretary will be the Minister responsible for co-ordinating Ministerial action in this field. There would of course be many Departments who would have a very important role to play in what must inevitably be comprehensive and interrelated contingency plans for any credible emergency. The services and advice of the new Board which this Bill establishes would, of course, be at the disposal of all the Ministers concerned, under the co-ordinating authority of the Home Secretary, and would clearly have a very important, and indeed a major, part to play in advising the Government.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that information, which certainly goes a long way to meet my points, but I hope she will be able to give me a little more information, perhaps on Report stage, on the proportions of financial support coming from each Department.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 [General provisions about the Board]:
BARONESS SEROTA BARONESS SEROTA moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 3, line 38, after ("from") insert ("income tax and").
The noble Baroness said: The first Amendment to Clause 2 is to give the Board exactly similar exemptions to those granted already to the Atomic Energy Authority by the first part of Section 6(2) of the Atomic Energy Authority Act. It is a matter we picked up on further consideration, and I hope the Committee will readily accept it. I beg to move.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: So far as I can make out—again I have only just received these Amendments—this change makes sense if indeed it brings the new Board into line with the Atomic Energy Authority. Subject again to any further thoughts in another place, I certainly accept both the Amendments on the Paper.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
BARONESS SEROTA BARONESS SEROTA moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 4, leave out lines 3 to 9.
The noble Baroness said: I am much encouraged by the fact that the noble Earl has accepted this Amendment before I have even moved it. For the Record, I should perhaps explain that this particular Amendment relates to the Board's pension schemes, a matter which we discussed on Second Reading; and as I then assured the House, and now reassure the Committee, it is intended that the Board's staff will either join the Atomic Energy Authority's pension scheme or continue in their existing schemes. If the Board does set up a scheme, it is intended that it should conform to present practice with regard to tax relief. With those few words of explanation, I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 2, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clauses and Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported, with the Amendments.

EXPIRING LAWS BILL
3.5 p.m.
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Although the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, to which I have just invited the House to give a Second Reading, embraces several, but I think notably fewer, items of legislation than it has done in the past, it has become the custom of the House in recent years for our debate to concentrate principally on the question of immigration control, and more particularly on Commonwealth immigration, since that is the topic of most lively public concern to-day. But before following the practice of earlier years, I should like to refer briefly to the laws that are being made permanent in the Bill.
I know that there are at least two noble Lords in the House to-day who in our previous annual debates on this subject have chided the Government with their failure to make certain laws permanent. Noble Lords, and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, wall be glad to see the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act made permanent to-day. Similarly, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, will welcome the particular words that he sees printed on the Bill which we are now considering. On a number of occasions he has urged my noble friend Lord Stonham to make this legislation permanent, and I hope that Clause 1 gives him pleasure.
Turning now to the main subject of the Bill namely, arrangements for Commonwealth immigration, I should like to say at the outset that while there is clearly a close link between the subject of immigration control and race relations, I do not propose in introducing this Bill to discuss race relations issues, because the Bill itself is essentially concerned with existing immigration control and continuing it for another twelve months. Noble Lords will also be aware that my noble friend Lord Walston has

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a Motion on the Order Paper relating to the recent publication of the Institute of Race Relations, Colour and Citizenship, which will, I hope, give the House a very full opportunity in the course of the next few weeks to address a debate specifically to that particular aspect of the problem.
It has been customary, and your Lordships generally follow custom, for the Opposition Members of the House to tax the Government on these annual occasions with the fact that immigration control continues, year after year, to be renewed on this annual basis. They take the view, as indeed do the Government, that legislation of such continuing importance should be placed on a permanent footing. In fact I think the records show that both Parties, when in office, have accepted the need for permanent legislation. This is the first occasion when I myself have taken part in one of these debates, and I do not propose to spend time apologising for the fact that once again we are seeking an annual renewal of legislation governing the immigration both of aliens and of Commonwealth citizens. The Government are on record as agreeing that permanent legislation is desirable, but we have been, I think the House will agree, far from inactive in the field of legislation in the immigration area in these last few years. In particular, your Lordships will remember the Immigration Appeals Act which was introduced last Session; and my right honourable friend the Home Secretary thinks it right that we should gain experience of the working of the appeals system before consolidating the immigration laws on a permanent basis.
The statutory system of appeals will be brought into operation next year, when a heavy programme of administrative preparations for the new system has been completed. These preparations have to cover such matters as the training of staff, the appointment of adjudicators, the provision of premises, and the preparation of a number of Statutory Instruments laying down regulations and rules of procedure. All these preparations are now well under way, and the Instruments will be laid before your Lordships' House in the coming months. These will, at the appropriate time, include a commencement order under Section 24
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of the Act specifying the starting date for the new arrangements. I am afraid I cannot give the House a definite date to-day, but I can assure your Lordships that there will be no avoidable delay.
One important feature of the Act has already been brought into effect—that is, the requirement in Section 20 that dependants should be in possession of entry certificates before they arrive here. I think there was a general welcome for the Government's decision to introduce this requirement. This change was primarily an administrative one, and we made it clear that it was designed to reduce hardship at the point of arrival, and in particular to avoid the need to send passengers away, after a long and sometimes tiring journey to this country, because their claims to admission had not been scrutinised before they set out. The new requirement does not impair the statutory entitlement of wives, and children under sixteen, to join men settled here.
As I said just now, it is already possible to say from experience that the new requirement has been manifestly successful in its main object of removing hardship at the point of arrival. In the early months of this year we were having to refuse admission to one in every forty dependants arriving—a rate of about 1,000 a year, and nearly all were women, children or aged parents. From India we were refusing one in every twenty-five. Since the new entry certificate requirement was enforced at the beginning of June, we have had to refuse admission to only two dependants arriving with entry certificates, while we have admitted up to the end of October about 10,000 dependants who have arrived with entry certificates. In the same period another thirty-five dependants unfortunately managed to arrive here without entry certificates, in disregard of the new arrangements, and had to be refused admission.
Your Lordships will no doubt be aware that a Select Committee of another place will be examining the arrangements for the issue of entry certificates overseas during the present Session, and members of the Committee are themselves shortly to go overseas to see the arrangements in operation in the countries from which the greatest number of dependants come. We shall pay close attention to the Committee's findings. But we have already

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greatly strengthened the arrangements overseas in order to cope with the additional burden of work which has been occasioned by them.
It was inevitable that the introduction of the new arrangements would have a short-term effect on numbers arriving. As all noble Lords will agree, figures of Commonwealth immigration are notoriously difficult to interpret. But it is clear that the numbers of dependants arriving from the Commonwealth as a whole were already set in a declining trend before the new requirement was introduced.
The House may also wish to have a progress report on the arrangements for non-statutory appeals for dependants, because the statutory appeals scheme will not come into operation until next year. The House will recall that the Government decided to introduce in advance of the statutory system arrangements under which dependants affected by the new entry certificate requirement would have a right of appeal against the refusal of an entry certificate, and also against the refusal of admission to an entry certificate holder. These appeal arrangements have already got under way, and are providing a useful trial run for us in preparation for the statutory appeal system.
Some of your Lordships may be aware that these appeals are dealt with in the
United Kingdom by lawyers nominated by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. This arrangement follows the pattern recommended by the Wilson Committee on immigration appeals. When an entry certificate is refused, the applicant is given a written explanation of the reasons for the decision, and a form on which to give notice of appeal. If he appeals, the lawyer has before him the appellant's grounds of appeal and a report from the entry certificate officer setting out the facts and the reasons for the decision. By arranging for the appeal to be heard in this country, we make it possible for the dependant's sponsor in the United Kingdom to be present when the appeal is dealt with. He is given an opportunity to ask for a hearing, and arrangements have been made for appeals to be dealt with not only in London but also in Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.
My Lords, I have given this progress report, if I may so call it, on the occasion
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of the Second Reading of the Bill because I know how concerned many noble Lords have been about the working of these arrangements. I do not think I need detain the House further at this stage, but if there are any questions that noble Lords have to raise in relation to the new arrangements, to the number of persons involved, or in regard to any other changes there have been in the last year, I will try to answer such questions. With that introduction, I hope that the House will give this Bill its Second Reading. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Baroness Serota.)
3.17 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I hope the noble Baroness will not think that I mean anything disparaging towards her clear and courteous speech when I say that I look forward to the disappearance of this annual Bill. One of the few contributions that I have made to the work of Parliament occurred when I was a Treasury Minister and I managed to get rid of an annual Bill, the Isle of Man Customs Bill, which each year took up valuable Parliamentary time in both Houses. I have for long been convinced that the Expiring Laws Bill could in due course be dispensed with, and I trust that we are on the way to that end. The noble Baroness in the course of her introduction made one slip when she said that she was introducing the "Expiring Laws Continuance Bill". It has now been given a new temporary title, being simply the Expiring Laws Bill, because Clause 1 performs the excellent service of in fact making two of the temporary Bills permanent. I think it was two years ago in your Lordships' House that I suggested that the Accommodation Agencies Act and the 1955 Act, which is commonly termed "The Horror Comics Act", should be made permanent.
I am delighted that the Government have discovered that that can be done through this Bill, by a change in its name. I am sure that nobody would be more pleased than my noble friend Lord Ilford who introduced the original Accommodation Agencies Bill in 1953, as a time when it was badly needed, as a Private Member's Bill in another place, and who now has the pleasure of seeing it become part of permanent legislation.

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As to the "Horror Comics Act", I think that the probable reason why it was made temporary in the first instance was because it was felt to be a dangerous form of censorship, and censorship of publications is not something that we in this country like. But what has happened in the intervening 14 years is that it has been found that theoretical objections must yield to practical experience, and I believe that by universal consent this Act, which forbids the importation into this country of a particularly foul form of children's literature, will become part of our permanent law.
The noble Baroness did not make any mention of subsection (2) of Clause 2 of the Bill, which continues for another year Part VII of the Licensing Act 1964. This deals with the subject of licensing planning, which is not one of the most exciting subjects that your Lordships could be invited to discuss. In my time as Home Secretary I set up a Committee under Mr. Ramsay Willis, now Mr. Justice Willis, to make recommendations to the Government as to the future of Part VII of the 1964 Act. In 1965 the Willis Committee published what seemed to me at the time a valuable Report, and I am bound to express regret that the Government still do not seem to have made up their mind on that Report. It will be tragic if we have to continue this Expiring Laws Bill simply and solely in order to retain Part VII of the Licensing Act 1964 in existence when the aliens legislation and the Commonwealth immigration legislation have been, as the noble Baroness forecast, made permanent.
I would remind your Lordships that three years ago, on November 17, 1966, to be precise, the spokesman for the Government, replying to me on the subject of licensing planning, said:
"I can assure the noble Lord that we shall try to come to conclusions in this matter."
That was three years ago. I have raised the point each year, and a year ago on this same Bill the noble Lord replying for the Government said:
"I can assure your Lordships that we have these matters very much in mind."
Well, if we had a Home Office Minister in the Lords—and without disrespect to the noble Baroness I regret that we no longer have—he, I am sure, would repeat the assurance that at the Home
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Office they had these matters very much in mind. But the task to which the Government were pledged of reaching decisions on this practical matter appears to have been beyond them. I trust that in clue course we shall have Government decisions implemented by legislation on this subject of licensing planning which, though it may be of limited intent, is nevertheless important to some.
I agree with the noble Baroness, however, that the main subject of debate on this Bill must naturally be immigration from the Commonwealth and from foreign countries. The Government wish to bring forward permanent legislation on both these subjects to overtake the Aliens Restrictions (Amendment) Act 1919 and the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962. This too, the bringing forward of permanent legislation, has so far been beyond them. I grant that it will be a considerable undertaking, but judging by what both Houses of Parliament have been told and have said in the past, it is overdue. It will now fall to a Conservative Government to introduce the permanent legislation. When it is taken in hand, I sincerely hope that the new Bill will rise above short-term expedients and will be so constructive as to implement a fully considered long-term immigration policy for Britain. I shall come back to that matter later in my speech.
As to short-term measures, within the past two years a number of the loopholes for evasion of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act have been closed. I want to give the Government credit for that, though I must say that their own White Paper of July, 1965, more than four years ago, pointed out how evasion was developing and said that firm action was urgent to stop it, but a number of their own supporters rebelled at the firm action that was proposed in that White Paper, and so action was postponed for two years until an appeal procedure had been set up. The present Home Secretary, Mr. Callaghan, who has shown himself stronger in this matter than his predecessor, also had the courage to bring in legislation to cope with the risk of Kenya Asians seeking to come to this country in very great numbers because they hold British passports though they have never set foot in Britain. But that is not what we are debating to-day, for that Act is permanent and does not call for annual renewal.

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Under the Acts which we are renewing (and let me say that the Opposition certainly support their renewal) new methods of evasion may be discovered in course of time, for the temptation to do so is very great; but, for my part, I do not think there is much evasion now, and I want to say that publicly to Parliament. May I pay tribute to the work of immigration officers? I think they have a most thankless task. It has been eased for them, I believe, by this new procedure of appeals, which at the moment is non-statutory but is about to become statutory. However, I want to say that in this whole field, which, as we have discovered, is highly charged with emotion from time to time, the immigration officers at the ports and airports have, in my view, faithfully carried out the will of Parliament, and I think it is right that Parliament should take the opportunity to thank them.
I agree with the noble Baroness that this is not the occasion to debate race relations within this country. I, too, hope that we are going to have another opportunity of that before long, but I trust that neither the noble Baroness nor anybody else will think I am getting out of order if, having spoken of the immigration officers, I also pay tribute to the teachers. This large-scale Commonwealth immigration has put a new and tremendous strain on teachers in a great many schools in different parts of this country, and I think they have risen to the task magnificently.
The two Acts which we are renewing have different histories, and they enshrine quite different procedures. The reasons for that are, we all know, historical. if we were starting with a clean slate I am perfectly sure we should seek to assimilate the procedures. We should not deliberately create two different procedures which contrast so sharply as those which govern alien immigration under the 1919 Act and Commonwealth immigration under the 1962 Act. The particular difference I want to dwell on for a moment is that an alien who receives a work permit to come to this country is admitted here for a limited time; in contrast, the Commonwealth citizen who receives a voucher under the 1962 Act can stay for ever. Long before it had become official Conservative policy I urged that all permits to come to this country for purposes of work should be for a limited period, a period extendable at the dis-
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cretion of the appropriate Minister. That has worked perfectly satisfactorily in the case of aliens, and I see no reason why it should not be applied equally to Commonwealth immigrants.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord a moment? Would the noble Lord make clear that there is no ceiling on the number of aliens who come in, while there is a ceiling on the quota of Commonwealth immigrants?
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, knows that an alien can get a work permit to work in only a limited range of industries, and even there he has to get a permit to work for a particular employer. The suggestion that there is unlimited opportunity for aliens but limited opportunities for Commonwealth immigrants really is not the case.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord again. but the immigrant has to have a work permit, too.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord for one moment? Does this apply to Irish immigrants as well?
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: No, my Lords. I am sure the noble Baroness is so familiar with the debates on the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill in 1961 and 1962 that she must well know the reasons why it does not apply to people from Ireland. Many people think that it should, I believe, and others think that it should not. The frank truth is that as there is a land frontier between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, it is deemed impossible to apply to Southern Ireland the same restrictions as apply to immigration from other parts of the world.
But, my Lords, to return to what the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has said, I for my part should not be at all sorry if the charge led to larger numbers coming from the Commonwealth for a period of two or three years' experience here in the professions or in industry. What we have to watch is the number of people, whether they are aliens or Commonwealth immigrants, who come here

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for permanent settlement. At present, between 4,000 and 5,000 Commonwealth immigrants a year are coming in on vouchers. I am sure that it would be right to admit at least that number on temporary permits. But I am not at all sure that it is right to give vouchers for permanent residence here to so many doctors, engineers, teachers and others in the professions who, after gaining experience here, would have just the skills for which their own countries are crying out. I am not at all sure that we have a right to present those people with opportunities to remain here permanently, thus depriving their own countries of their services.
To run our hospitals largely on immigrant doctors is something which the Royal Commission on Medical Education itself said that we must stop doing. We have cause, I would say, to be intensely grateful to all the doctors and nurses from overseas, without whom the hospital side of the National Health Service would collapse. But have we the smallest right as a country to run a brain-drain on this scale against the countries from which these doctors and nurses come and which are crying out for trained personnel? I come back again to the need for thinking out long-term aims. This is a great country in which we live, and it is fantastic for us to behave as though we could not be expected to produce the manpower and womanpower required to staff one of the finest and noblest humanitarian services—the hospitals of this country. We are not doing it at present.
I realise that we cannot expect any more legislation on immigration policy in this Parliament. That makes it all the more important to plan ahead for the next. I am one of those who have consistently held that where an immigrant has settled down permanently in this country he should have the right to have his wife and children with him. The case for that on human and moral grounds seems to me overwhelming. I do not think that the age limit for entry as of right is correct. It is now, as the noble Baroness has said, sixteen. Up to their sixteenth birthday, if their two parents are both in this country, children can come as of right. I do not think it is desirable that fifteen-year-olds should come from a distant country to go straight
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on to the labour market in this country without passing through any form of British education at all. I cannot believe that we have got that age limit right. Sons and daughters of parents who are already here, or who are coming here, ought to have the advantage of a year or two here at school with other children before they start work. Subject to that, I would certainly maintain a statutory right of entry for wives and young children of all parents who are already here or are coming here.
But, my Lords, Iet us make no mistake about it: this is going to mean the continuance of net Commonwealth immigration at a level of something like 50,000 a year for some years. Last year I think the figure was 53,000; this year it may be 47,000. But it is clearly going to be something like 40,000 or 50,000 a year for some years, and that is bound to make the ultimate problem of maintaining good race relations here harder.
In the debate on this Bill in another place, Mr. Enoch Powell pointed out that before long one-fifth, or even a quarter, of the population in the centres of large cities would be coloured. To judge by Press reports (I was not there myself) his speech caused uproar in the Commons. I have looked up past speeches of mine. I find that three years ago in your Lordships' House, on November 3, 1966, I said that in less than fifty years one-third of the whole population in large areas of our big cities was going to be coloured, and that in some cases that might well be one-third of the whole city. Mr. Enoch Powell's speech caused uproar; my speech caused not a ripple. It makes me wonder whether the lurid language with which he embellished some of his previous speeches is essential if one is going to get anyone to listen. This, my Lords, is my main anxiety in this whole difficult subject: that so many people prefer to close their ears and eyes, and to live in a world of what I can only call liberal unreality.
During the years of heavy immigration up to 1960, shockingly little thought was given by most people to the social and administrative problems that would be created by the arrival of rapidly growing numbers of newcomers and their concentration in particular districts. We all regret that now; and we are all trying to catch up on that. But I believe that we

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are now committing a similar mistake again. We are in danger of turning blind eyes to the pace of change in the make-up of the population in those areas, and to the rate of increase in the percentage of the whole population of these islands who will be coloured.
To-day, the proportion is a little over 2 per cent. How soon will it be 5 per cent? No one knows. Why does no one know? My Lords, 2 per cent. spread over the British Isles is nothing, but the essence of the problems we have to tackle is that it is not thus widely spread. In the areas of concentration, certainly before many years are out, it will be between 10 per cent. and 20 per cent. I remember that in a previous debate (I think it was in the corresponding debate last year) the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, speaking from the Cross-Benches, and referring to his experience of minorities all over the world, said that often where there was no difference at all in the colour of the skin:
"… as soon as a minority attains about 10 per cent. of the population in any one area… somehow it begins to cause ill-will".—
[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10/12/68, col. 459.]
If he is right, troubles arising through race differences in this country have hardly begun, but we have a great deal to be anxious about for the future.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, will the noble Lord—
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: I will carry this no further now because we are to have a debate next month on race relations, when we can think more about all this.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, the noble Lord has been very kind in giving way previously, and I am obliged to him; but we seem now to be getting quite away from our previous discussions on this matter. In the past, it has always been a question of Commonwealth immigrants, but now we are having a concentration on coloured immigrants. There has constantly been a denial from critics of Commonwealth immigration that it has had anything whatever to do with colour. Is the noble Lord now saying that colour really does matter in their considerations?
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord, for
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whom I have great respect, is really giving further evidence of this phrase which I used a few minutes ago, "liberal unreality". There is no doubt whatever that colour influences people. There is equally no doubt that the presence of large minorities, even when there is no difference in colour at all, can create ill-will. That is what the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, was saying. But we must not be afraid to be realistic about this. I try to discuss these matters in sincere and non-emotive terms; but those of us who attempt to do so are not helped when there are people who run away from what appear to us to be realities.
LORD ROYLE: It is a colour question.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: it is a colour question, but primarily it is a question of numbers and concentration, and that is what we must not ignore. Exactly the same thing could happen if there were large numbers of immigrant people in cities of this country who were indistinguishable in colour from ourselves and were distinguishable only in language and culture. The great difference, of course, is culture. The clash of culture is liable to be the most dangerous. To be frank, the trouble about colour is that it forces itself upon the eyesight. but there arc many other things which can force themselves on people's perception; and I beg your Lordships not to try to argue about all this as though colour did not matter, culture did riot matter and numbers did not matter. All these things matter, and we must take account of them all if we are to help to build up in this country a wholly happy community.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I have been listening to the noble Lord with increasing despair, and I wonder whether he will undertake, when we have the next debate (this may not be the occasion) since he has laid so much stress on colour, to come forward with some practical advice about how we can deal with this problem. At the moment, though he speaks in more moderate terms, his speech seems to me to have an Enoch Powell strain in it. I am quite certain that is not the noble Lord's intention.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, it is not my intention to speak on

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this subject in sensational terms; it is my intention to speak in realistic terms, and nothing will frighten me from doing that. But when the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, speaks about our coming debate on race relations, I would remind him that I have a pretty good record, in Parliament and elsewhere, so far as community relations are concerned. For many years I was the representative in another place of a constituency which probably has a larger percentage of overseas-born people than any other in the country. We learned there a very considerable degree of toleration among ourselves, and it is through toleration and understanding that we must solve these problems. But we shall not solve them by turning a blind eye to them. Today I was seeking only to pay regard to the aspects of these matters which were affected by immigration policy. For that reason I do not apologise for not having expanded my views on community relations, because I think that really would have been out of order.
My Lords, what I am bound to say is that the problem of numbers—and I think it is mainly a problem of numbers and concentration—is bound to grow and grow, even if we were to stop all further immigration immediately. It will, of course, be affected by immigration policy, and that is why I would urge yet again that the Government should state their long-term aims and then state their policies to secure them. The first need of all is to establish authoritatively figures of future population on various alternative assumptions—because we cannot know for certain what assumption to take—and then publish them to the world so that everybody may grasp them. Otherwise the British people will be entitled to say, as indeed many of them are saying now, that this Government, and not only this Government but all their Governments, have been pursuing immigration policies to which they have never consented; and that is the most fertile and dangerous ground of all in which race prejudice can grow.
Inevitably this is an emotional subject. Emotion can best be checked by
establishing facts. I am in agreement with a great deal of what the Government have done in recent years in revising their immigration polices. I have indicated in
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my speech where I disagree with these policies. The fundamental difference between us, I suspect, to judge by speeches made in another place, is that the Government are ready to take pride in the prospect of Britain becoming a multiracial society just like Brazil. I believe that Britain can gain much by learning from other cultures, and setting a shining example in treating everybody who settles and lives in these Islands as equal in all respects before the law. But I believe equally firmly that Britain is likely to make her best contribution to the world if she continues to be, as she has been for centuries, a nation of predominantly Anglo-Saxon stock; and I think that that needs to continue in London and all the great cities of our country too. If, for saying that, I am called a racialist, a racialist in that sense is what I am proud to be. I am not frightened of pejorative words. Procrastination over looking facts in the face is what frightens me; and we have had too much of that in this field over the past twenty years. My Lords, I support the Second Reading of this Bill.

BROADCASTING: LOCAL RADIO DEVELOPMENT
3.47 p.m.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend, the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, about the development of local radio. It is as follows:
"I have authorised the B.B.C. to establish local radio stations at: Birmingham, Blackburn, Bristol, Chatham (to serve the Medway towns), Derby, Hull (to serve Humberside), London, Manchester, Middlesbrough (to serve Teesside), Newcastle (to serve Tyneside), Oxford and Southampton (to serve the area surrounding the Solent).
"The B.B.C. estimate that the 12 new stations, together with the eight already in existence, will by 1971, have brought about 70 per cent. of the population of England within the range of local radio.
"As the House knows, 20 more stations, including stations in Scotland and Wales, bringing the total to 40,

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will follow over the subsequent four years. Locations for these stations have not yet been chosen, but I will inform the House as soon as I decide on the next stage in this development.
"The service will, like other operations of the B.B.C., be financed essentially from the licence income, the net increase of which from April, 1971, will enable the B.B.C. to meet this and its further commitments."
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Baroness for repeating this Statement. She will realise that the main difference between my noble friends and myself and those who sit on her side of the House is not whether these local stations should be authorised, or the rate at which they are authorised, but how they should be financed. If these local stations were to be financed commercially from advertising revenue I should welcome the Statement. Is the noble Baroness quite satisfied that her right honourable friend and the B.B.C. have their priorities right in authorising further expenditure from the licence revenue for the benefit of limited local audiences, in view of the present financial difficulties of the B.B.C. and the economies they are having to make affecting national programmes?
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES HASTOE: My Lords, nobody pretends that this is an easy situation or that revenue is ever adequate for anything. Nevertheless, I am sure that the plans the B.B.C. have made have been extremely thoughtful. With the additional £3½ million we hope to gain in the next few years from the prevention of licence evasion, I think there will be very much more money available. Furthermore, the Government have always taken the view that local radio would not be served adequately by commercial interests and that it would be much better done by the B.B.C.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement. My friends on the Liberal Benches and myself very much welcome the progress in this direction, but we wonder whether quite enough deliberation has gone into it, and we tend to ask ourselves, if not the noble Baroness, whether there
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is not a little undue hurry in place of the intransigence of the Conservative Party on this matter. There are a couple of questions I should like to ask the noble Baroness. First of all, are the Corporation, and therefore the Minister, happy that there are enough really able and gifted personnel to operate these stations? Because it is a matter for great skill. It very much depends on having really good people to do that. Secondly, we should like to ask whether the Government have considered fully the possibility of providing some of the revenue through advertising but advertising run according to the Pilkington suggestions, advertising gathered from a different body from that which makes the programmes for local radio. I should like to distinguish this sharply from the kind of commercial money-raising for payment for these local stations which the Conservative Party favours.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, I should not like to intervene in the private fight which the noble Lord is conducting with his Conservative friends, but I can definitely assure him that the kind of personnel available will fulfil everything that one wishes of them. The existing local radio stations have been a tremendous success; and they have been a success, as noble Lords will know, especially with young people. I think that we can look forward to a continuation of that standard. The second point that the noble Lord raised is an issue of major policy and I think it would not be correct to comment on it at this stage beyond saying that the Government have, of course, taken it into account.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Statement does not seem to be very fair to Scotland? The noble Baroness read out a whole list of places and said that Scotland was far down in the queue. Surely Scotland is entitled to a fair share of the deficiency of the B.B.C.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, the present reorganisation is for England, which contains four different regions. Scotland, Wales and Ireland are out of it for the moment. They will be included subsequently, I hope towards the end of the four-year period.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, is my noble friend able to explain why Cambridge has been so obviously slighted?
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, I am quite unable to comment on individual towns, as I am sure the House will agree.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, while thanking the noble Baroness for this Statement I am very sorry that it contains nothing that can give us any idea as to whether these stations will be merely, as it were, booster stations for London or whether they will have their own individual programmes and programme makers. I do not know whether the noble Baroness is aware that there is a very strong feeling, not only among the public but inside the B.B.C. staffs as well, that these changes should not do away with the—shall I say?—personality of the local stations.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, I can reassure the noble Lord. The whole point of these stations is to give a more local flavour to local broadcasting. In fact, that is what it is all about.
LORD STONEHAVEN: My Lords, can the noble Baroness tell me whether the Scots are going to be asked to pay increased licence fees to supply the English with these stations; or whether the Scots are going to pay a lower fee until such time as they get stations of their own?
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, I am sure we can rely on the Scots to deal with that point.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that some of us regret the introduction of this note of racial discrimination into this matter? Having regard to criticisms which have been made, will she take it from me that there is very warm appreciation on the part of many of us on this side of the House of the wise and sensible step that the Government have taken?
LORD GRIMSTON OF WESTBURY: My Lords, is it correct to understand from one of the answers given by the noble Baroness that the B.B.C. are depending entirely for the extra finance required for these stations on the "pick-up" that they are going to receive through checking present evasion of licence fees?
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: No, my Lords, that was not what I intended to convey; it was simply that there would be rather more money as a result of these efforts than there has been in the past.

EXPIRING LAWS BILL
3.56 p.m.
Debate resumed.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, sat down I wished to make a brief comment on his speech. The noble Lord made great play—
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, I am not sure what the state of play is. Are we returning to the debate? I do not think that after such an interval it is possible to take advantage of the, at best dubious, Rule by which people manage to get in an extra speech. I am very sorry; but I rather thought that the House did not want it.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, I thought that I was speaking with the leave of the House. I wanted to comment just after the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, sat down, but the debate was interrupted by the Minister making a Statement on local radio.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, made great play about being realistic. Certainly his speech, even if realistic, will give a great boost to prejudice in this country. However, if he is being—or if we are all being—exhorted to be realistic, I wonder whether the noble Lord is being realistic about the economic consequences either of stopping immigration now or of stopping it in the future; and whether he has really done his sums on that account.
LORD RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, I was not going to intervene, but the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, makes it essential for me to do for I am an immigrant—as are many noble Lords opposite. I am not Anglo-Saxon. I should like to speak also as a member of the Community Relations Commission. I have no doubt at all on the noble Lord's record as an unrealistic liberal in the other House, sitting for a constituency very largely immigrant or

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non-British born, that he behaved admirably. I would only ask him to spare some of us who are trying to build up community relations at least the discouragement of the kind of speech we had today. This is not a question of realistic figures, figures to be added up, or a question of distribution or sorting out the whole of the immigrants in this country. What we have now is a realistic situation. The realism is that we have to come to terms with people who are here and who are trying—I can assure the House that they are trying—to find their place and to behave as we would expect people of any culture to behave in this country. If we cannot reconcile cultures, I want to know how on earth the British race, so-called, ever emerged.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: My Lords, surely the noble Lord is under a delusion. He is not an immigrant to Britain, is he? He is merely an immigrant to England—and we are dealing with a British Bill and not with an English Bill.
LORD ILFORD: My Lords, all that I desire to do is to offer my thanks to Her Majesty's Government for having accorded permanent status to the Accommodation Agencies Act. It has taken rather a long time, 16 years. Last year the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, promised that it would be given permanent status. Now that that has been done all that remains is for me to express my appreciation.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I do not want to prolong this debate, but I should like to take this rather rare opportunity of expressing my very strong agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, for one thing in particular that he said. Towards the end of his speech he stated that we must check emotions by establishing facts and, subsequently, that we must look these facts in the face. Those, I think, are admirable sentiments; the more facts that we can adduce from this very difficult and vexed question the better it will be for all of us.
He also said—and here I am afraid that I revert to my more usual rôle of partial disagreement with him—that we must not be carried away by liberal unreality. If his emphasis was on the word "unreality", I agree entirely; but if his emphasis was on the word "liberal" my agreement is somewhat more dubious. But
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we must not be carried away by unreality in any form, whether it be liberal unreality or whether it be whatever the antithesis of "liberal" may be in this context—shall I call it reactionary unreality? I am afraid that there is at the moment a great deal of reactionary unreality which is carrying people away from the truth and much further a way from reality than any amount of the "liberal unreality" to which we have been listening. I should like to issue a warning against reactionary unreality no less vehement than the noble Lord's warning against liberal unreality.
My third point is that I disagree with him quite categorically when he says that this is primarily a question of numbers and of concentration. Undoubtedly these are of the greatest importance, but in my view—and this is pertinent to all in this House and elsewhere—the question of immigration and integration is primarily a question of leadership. I believe that the vast majority of people in this country are prepared to follow decent, honest and unequivocal leadership in this matter; and that, above all, is what we require from this House. If we get the leadership which encourages people to welcome and to integrate those who come to these shores, we shall resolve this problem; but if we get a leadership which strives to create barriers and to accentuate difficulties, we shall fail.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, may I, with leave of the House, just say this? The noble Lord, Lord Walston, said that he disagreed with me on some matters and agreed with me on others. I think he will appreciate the difficulty in which I am when we have one debate on immigration, on which I sought to speak to-day, and then a separate debate later on race relations, in which we are greatly looking forward to hearing his speech and in which I hope to be able to take part, too.
4.2 p.m.
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, I should like first of all to thank the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, for correcting my slip of the tongue. I can only say that old habits die hard and I have heard other noble Lords round the Chamber muttering about Expiring Laws Continuation Bill, forgetting that we have changed the name. I should like to say to the noble Lord that we have gone a

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long way, as I think he has recognised to-day, in dealing with many of the problems which have been raised on numerous occasions in the past. We have not managed, as he rightly pointed out, to deal with this vexed and complex question of licensing planning, and I can only repeat the assurances, which I know he was given on five previous occasions by my noble friend Lord Stonham, by saying that we still have this very much in mind.
Other than that, the discussion we have had has concentrated on the questions of immigration which raise both emotive words and considerable feelings on all sides of the House. My noble friends Lord Ritchie-Calder, Lord Walston and Lady Gaitskell have already answered, I think, many of the points which the noble Lord made. I was a little surprised when I heard what appeared to be a slight tone of envy in his voice, when he reminded us that the words of a certain other person had been listened to rather than his. I hope that this was not what he meant to say, because the noble Lord does not normally speak in emotive terms in this Chamber and I thought that by his words to-day he raised the temperature of the House and by some of the things he said caused considerable concern in certain parts of the Chamber.
The noble Lord made a particular point about the doctors and other staff in the National Health Service who come to this country from Commonwealth countries, and implied, I thought, that we were deliberately enticing these men and women here. That really is not so. They come because they want to come. We do not set out to recruit doctors from Commonwealth countries. They want to come and that is why we have had to introduce a voucher scheme to limit the number who do come. Many of these doctors come traditionally to training posts. This country has been the heart of Commonwealth training and this, I am sure, is a right and proper role. Many go home, though admittedly not all do, and my right honourable friend has accepted the comments of the Royal Commission on Medical Education by announcing in the last few months that by 1975 the number of places we have in our medical schools will be increased up to 1,000.
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In recent months, we have also given great consideration to the problem of the number of doctors from overseas, some of whom are not always fluent in colloquial English, though they have sat their qualifying examinations in written English. Here again, the Government have announced a scheme for compulsory attachment of doctors, so that they will go into training in hospitals. This scheme will come into operation very shortly. I make these points, not because I wish to delay the House, but to show that the Government have a positive and constructive attitude to what is admittedly an extraordinarily difficult problem, and I do not think it is entirely fair to suggest either that we have ignored it or that we have deliberately enticed people here.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cum-nor, made a point in debate which he has made in previous debates, one which I know he holds most sincerely, relating to the age of 16. He has always taken the view that youngsters coming to this country from overseas should come at an age when they can benefit from education in this country before they go into the employment market. This view, as he also knows, the Government cannot accept. My noble friend Lord Stonham has already set out, more effectively than I can, the strong reasons against dividing families in the way the noble Lord suggested we should, and I think that the majority of the House accept this point of view.
Coming to the issue which has raised the temperature of the House to-day, noble Lords have already made their position clear. We are to have a much wider debate in two or three weeks' time on the Motion of my noble friend Lord Walston, and I hope that on that occasion the House, keeping temperatures down, will rationally, reasonably and constructively debate this vital issue of cornmunity relations. The only comment I would make to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, on his remarks about future population projections is that I think they are based on a major fallacy—namely that the people he was referring to will be aliens in this country. We are thinking towards the future of people who will be born here, who will be educated here, who will be working here, who will be married here and will produce their families here. Surely, my Lords, this is the

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crux of the issue. They will not he aliens, they will be British citizens in this country. I hope that in our forthcoming debate we shall see the ways in which we can help newcomers and avoid the kind of recrimination and discrimination that we have seen on occasions in the past.
On Question, Bill read 2a and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

TRANSPORT (LONDON) AMENDMENT BILL
4.10 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR DEFENCE, R.A.F. (LORD WINTER-BOTTOM): My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Shepherd, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Many noble Lords will recall the interesting debate we had in June on the Transport (London) Act which I introduced as a Bill for the Government. That Act provides for a radical and far-reaching reorganisation of the whole of London's transport system under the strategic control of the elected body responsible for the affairs of Greater London—the Greater London Council. The most important single element in this reorganisation is undoubtedly the transfer to the Council of the major part of the London Transport undertaking itself. Although there was some difference of opinion about certain of the provisions of the Act, the general feeling of your Lordships' House was that it was a very worthwhile piece of legislation. The Bill which we have before us to-day supplements the Act and will ensure that the transfer of London Transport can be completed in the very near future. I am sure that it will be helpful if I outline briefly this afternoon what this measure does and the factors which have led up to its introduction.
The Transport (London) Act provided for 90 per cent. of the existing London Transport Board's capital liabilities to the Minister to be written off. The remaining 10 per cent. of capital debt, amounting to some £26 million was to be divided between the Greater London Council and the National Bus Company in the same proportion as the existing
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Board's assets were to be split between the new London Transport Executive (the body which under the G.L.C.'s policy control is to take over the tubes and central buses) and London Country Bus Services Limited (the National Bus Company's subsidiary which will run the country buses and Green Line coaches). The Act also provided for the new Executive to take on a debt to the G.L.C. equal to the G.L.C.'s debt to the Government.
In practical terms, the effect of this Bill will be to relieve the new Executive of interest payments of some £1¼ million per annum, and the National Bus Company of some £25,000 per annum. The bus services which
the N.B.C.'s subsidiary is to take over will certainly run at a loss in 1970, and, in addition, many of the buses are old and will have to be replaced before long. It therefore seems to the Government that there is every reason for taking this opportunity of affording them some limited measure of financial relief. The primary purpose of the legislation, however, in writing off the remainder of the London Transport Board's capital debt, is to eliminate the interest burden on the new Executive. If your Lordships will bear with me, I shall explain briefly why we have brought in the Bill.
Throughout the discussions which successive Ministers of Transport (first, Mrs. Barbara Castle who is now the First Secretary, and then Mr. Richard Marsh, the right honourable Member for Greenwich) had with the Greater London Council, both sides have been fully aware of the fact that a pre-condition of the transfer of London Transport to the Council was that the undertaking should be viable on handover. Viability had been defined by the Government and the G.L.C. as the new Executive's ability to put at least £2 million to general reserve in its first year of operation, and thereafter to maintain the reserve at least at that level. The 90 per cent. write-off of the London Transport Board's capital debt to the Minister provided for in the Transport (London) Act would have relieved the Executive of interest payments of some £11 million per annum. This write-off, together with the fares increases introduced on the Board's buses and tubes on September 7 this year, were, according to the information available at the time the Act was before your Lordships last June, adequate and sufficient measures to meet this viability objective.

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These measures had been formulated on the basis of the financial estimates originally produced by the London Transport Board the previous autumn, and verified as late as last May. It is commonplace to state that estimates are by their very nature always subject to revision and variations, but this does not alter the fact that these were the best available while the Transport (London) Act was passing through Parliament. The measures were designed to close the viability gap as we then saw it, as precisely as possible, without allowing for possible adverse changes in the estimates. This was done quite deliberately, as the Government considered that additional measures could not then have been justified. It would surely have been wrong to ask Parliament to sanction the imposition on the taxpayers of greater payment than seemed necessary. So there could be no question at that time of a larger capital write-off. And secondly, there was no point in asking people using London Transport to pay higher fares so long as the viability objective did not require increased revenue in 1970 beyond that already to be raised by the higher fares planned for introduction on September 7.
This remained the position up to the time that the Transport (London) Act received its Royal Assent. Thereafter three factors combined to alter the basis on which the estimates had been drawn up. The first was the increase in National Insurance contributions to be paid by London Transport from November 3. Noble Lords may remember the statement about the increased benefits and contributions made by my noble friend Lady Serota during our Second Reading debate on the Transport (London) Act. The second factor was the wages settlement which the Board reached on the actual date of Royal Assent, July 25, on busmen's wages, and which, as finally negotiated, turned out to be higher than the Board had estimated the previous year. The third factor was the Board's re-assessment of its estimates of costs and traffic trends as it fed in the figures for the number of passengers carried on its services during the summer months. The combined effect of these three factors was to reopen a viability gap.
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If the Government intended to honour the agreement with the G.L.C.—as they have done—it was clear that further measures were needed to improve London Transport's revenue position in 1970. Discussions were thus reopened with the Council, as a result of which the Government decided that the most appropriate measures to take in the circumstances would be to write off the whole of the London Transport Board's capital debt to the Minister, thus enabling the new Executive to start its existence with a clean slate, and to bring in the limited fares increase on the Board's buses in the outer area of London before the end of this year. The G.L.C. were satisfied that these measures would ensure the viability of the Executive in 1970.
I do not think it would be useful to enter into a detailed account of the negotiations with the G.L.C. which led the Government to propose these further measures. But, if I may digress somewhat, I should like to stress that the limited fares increases, unpopular as they are bound to be, was the sole option open to the Government once the additional write-off had been settled on. The only other alternatives would have been widespread cuts in London Transport's less economic services or some form of Government guarantee of London Transport's financial position over the next few years. The Government felt that they had to reject both these courses. The first would have meant a totally unacceptable cutback in London Transport's pattern of services which it would not have been practicable to reverse for some time to come. This would hardly have been appropriate just before the new Executive charged with
"providing or securing the provision of such public passenger transport services as best meet the needs of Greater London"
had been appointed, and had had an opportunity to consider what the right pattern of public transport services for the capital actually was. Nor could we at any time consider seriously the second alternative, which would have entailed the totally unacceptable situation of the Government's underwriting an organisation over which it had no control other than in certain very limited fields concerned with national rather than London Transport policy. I should add for the information of noble Lords that the Minister's approval of the fares increases requires no legislation, as the powers are

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contained in the Transport (London) Act. My right honourable friend has already given the Board formal approval to implement the increases, and these are expected to be brought in before the end of the year. My Lords, this very short, straightforward piece of legislation will enable the finishing touch to be put not only on the transfer of London Transport but on the reorganisation of the whole of London's transport system. It is on this note that I would commend it to your Lordships' House. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Winterbottom.)
4.20 p.m.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, may I thank the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, for moving the Second Reading of this Bill and describing to us its intentions. My remarks on it will be brief. We had the opportunity to discuss the original London Transport Act, as it now is, in some detail during the summer, and on that occasion it was approved by your Lordships on all sides. Therefore it is not necessary to go into much detail here this afternoon.
As the noble Lord has told us, the basis of the transfer from Her Majesty's Government to the G.L.C. was to be the solvency on trading account, plus £2 million to the reserve in the first year. This basic condition, as the noble Lord has explained, was incorporated in the original Act. The noble Lord has frankly told us the slightly sad story of what has happened in the ensuing three months, and how quickly those forecasts have become out of date. It is a sad little tale of official forecasting—either that, or a reflection on the economic instability in which we are now living, for which the Government have some responsibility.
I would not criticise London Transport or the Government for the lower revenue forecast on account of the deterioration of traffics. That is extremely difficult to predict and, in any event, is a trend which is beyond their control—it is due to much more deep-seated causes. With regard to the higher cost due to the wage settlement, which happened to be concluded on the day the first Act was given the Royal Assent, I should have thought that Her Majesty's Government and London Transport might have been aware that that was
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coming along, and similarly in the case of the higher contributions to the National Insurance Fund. The Government must have known that those things were in the pipeline, and I should have thought that they might have provided for them. But there it is; they did not.
Quite rightly, having discovered that these fallacies in their forecasts have falsified the original basis of agreement with the G.L.C., they now have no alternative but to come forward with fresh legislation in order to put the matter right. I do not know, but the noble Lord implied that there have been certain promptings from across the river, in County Hall. In any event, the Government have now entirely fulfilled the basis of the original agreement in this Bill by writing off the further £26 million of the original capital debt of London Transport and by the Minister's own powers in providing for the fare increases in the outer areas. Neither of these measures are ones which we like. We do not wish to see the taxpayer having to stand a further £26 million written off, nor do we like to see the fare increases. I entirely agree with the noble Lord that the alternative of making a serious reduction in the quality of the services would have been a complete mistake, and that in a choice cf evils this was the right thing to do in order to get London Transport, in its new constitution responsible to the Greater London Council, off to a good start.
There are two small events which have happened since we put the original Act on the Statute Book and to which I should like to refer. I think I can just bring the first within the terms of this Bill. It is the appointment of the Chairman of the new London Transport Executive, whose salary will—at any rate partially—be paid for by this Bill. He is a very distinguished ex-civil servant, Sir Richard Way. I should like to send him my best wishes in his formidable task. There is a complex of factors in London Transport which, as I said on the Second Reading of the other Bill, presents a most formidable problem of management.
In our last debate I discussed these matters and brought down on my head the wrath of the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, who I am sorry to see is not in his place now. I am bound to say that while I admired the warmth of the defence of his former colleagues, every word that

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he said went to prove my case that there is a major unsolved problem of management still there. This will fall on to the plate of the new Chairman, Sir Richard Way—and it will require all his powers to deal with the human, logistic and political problems which are bound up in London Transport. He has my best wishes.
There is one other point which is worth mentioning and it is that London Transport have now combined their planning, transport and traffic control by bringing the two chief officers, Mr. Bernard Collins, and Mr. Peter Stott, together into one department. I am sure that this is right. These two activities of planning, transport and traffic control are interwoven, and I am sure that the Greater London Council will get the best direction of policy by combining them in one major department. These functions are extremely difficult, in human, in logistic and in political terms. I believe this is the right approach, and the G.L.C. certainly have my best wishes, and my ready support for the extra money in order to give them the best possible start.
4.27 p.m.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, may I say just one or two words before the noble Lord replies? I do not think anybody could grudge the money that London Transport are getting. They obviously need it very badly. I sincerely hope that, with that money, they will make London Transport a more efficient service than it has been until now. At the present time, London Transport is, I think, one of the least efficient public transport systems that I have known—and I have known quite a few. It really is discouraging sometimes to go into an Underground station when one leaves your Lordships' House at, say, eight o'clock—which, after all, is not the middle of the night—and find it completely unmanned, with all the automatic ticket machines closed, and not in use. Possibly there is one man in the ticket office, and a long queue of passengers waiting to get their tickets. As to the bus services, possibly remarks on that had better be reserved until a later time when we are discussing London Transport. I sincerely hope that it will be made more efficient and more of a
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service to the public in the true sense of the word.
4.29 p.m.
LORD POPPLEWELL: My Lords, may I say, in supporting this Bill, that the Government are right in the change that is now taking place, in that the G.L.C. are to be responsible for London transport. They should be given a clean sheet, as it were, because it is very easy to castigate transport undertakings. Today, the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, has followed his usual hobbyhorse of criticising the management of London Transport, as he does with all other forms of nationalised transport undertakings. But I have yet to hear from the noble Lord, or from anyone else, how, given the remit under which London Transport have been working, they could be a more efficient organisation. If it were possible to give them unlimited capital, with a view to developing various services, by curtailing the ordinary motorist who clutters up the roads, I think the cost ratio would come down somewhat.
This is the real problem of transport. Each time a suggestion is made—and the G.L.C. will find this; indeed, I am certain they already know it—about increasing the cost of a transport fare there is a tremendous outcry by people using the transport. One can understand their point of view—transport seems to be a Cinderella—and in the past London Transport management have fully understood this. They have had very great difficulty indeed in measuring up the two things. Having investigated the workings of the London Transport Board in the past, I believe that, when it comes to dealing with, and facing up to, the problem of transport, the management are very efficient—
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? Has he read the two Reports, of last year and the year before, of the Prices and Incomes Board on the management of London transport?
LORD POPPLEWELL: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, and I helped to conduct a research into London Transport and visited the various organisations; we visited management and understood their problems. No matter what decision has come from the Prices and

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Incomes Board—I do not say there were not flaws here and there—the flaws were known, and it is not entirely the fault of London Transport that they were not solved. I suggest that we conducted a much greater probe into London Transport than did the Prices and Incomes Board. If it had been possible to take off the shackles that were on London Transport, based upon the economic situation, Government policy, thirteen years of Tory rule, with some Labour rule involved too, and all the other difficulties, I do not think London Transport would have been in the financial difficulty in which they ultimately wound up.
We know that problems of transport exist. The noble Lord, Lord Somers, has referred to unmanned stations and what happens with regard to buses, and suchlike, from time to time. London Transport employees, like all other transport workers, have a right to a decent wage level and decent conditions; and to obtain those decent wage levels and conditions economies have taken place. The result has been a number of unmanned stations and difficulties with the buses; and all this has rebounded on London Transport and the G.L.C., who find themselves involved in a similar situation. In order to meet the situation in the past economies have been made, but as soon as that is done there is an outcry and there is said to be inefficiency. At the same time, it is the
shackles which have been placed upon London Transport and other transport in the past which have prevented the transport experts from embarking on improvements which they knew ought to be undertaken. It took some time to get the Victoria Line. Transport management took the initiative in the development of automatic ticket machines and such innovations; but they all cost money and money has not been too readily available.
In wiping the slate clean, the Government are quite right in wanting a certain balance, but the G.L.C. will have tremendous problems before them. I am sure that they realise this much better than I do because they are dealing in detail with the actual situation. But now that they are taking over, I sincerely hope that when they see modern developments, instead of hanging on for years and years, as has been the position
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in the past, with loss of money, they will be courageous enough to go ahead with them, even if it means increasing fares and prohibiting so many motor cars from coming into the centre of town. We all know that since parking meters were established in London there has been a slight increase in the volume of traffic movement. One wonders to-day whether that is sufficient because increasing congestion is taking place. Only a short while ago, for instance, I left this House and took a taxi, and it took nearly twenty minutes to get clear of Parliament Square because it was so congested. It is difficulties such as this which face London Transport. When the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, makes his asides about inefficiency and the problem of management, he really ought to be more forthcoming and tell us how the problem can be dealt with. The problem is a physical and a general one, and I am sure that London Transport will be fully alive to it.
I think that London Transport will have to face up to the problem and to a pet theme of mine which I make no apology for making special reference to. Instead of keeping through traffic on the roads, underground motorways will have to be built in London to take the flow of traffic including the private motor cars —I am a motorist who likes driving—that continually clutter up London and all our other conurbation areas. Now London Transport is having a fair opportunity, with a wiping of the slate clean, and I am certain that the people who are to control and run London Transport will be courageous with the problems that confront them and will turn to the G.L.C. and say, "We are going to meet this traffic problem in London and not be entirely swamped with it. You will have to be forthcoming with capital development and the curtailment of other traffic, which is so necessary if we want to make a really efficient transport system"— which every one of us wants. There are nearly 53 million people in this country—and nearly 53 million traffic experts, apart from those who are actually dealing with the problem. Everyone who is not actually administrating and dealing with traffic problems can tell those who are dealing with them what they ought to do. Now the G.L.C. will have the opportunity of putting this matter to their ratepayers.

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And I am certain that, given this remit, given the opportunity and given farsightedness, they will make an adequate and good job of it.
4.38 p.m.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, for his general support for the Bill, and particularly for his agreement with the fact that the existing route pattern should be maintained intact until the new management has had a chance to look at it, even if he did salt his observations with a little mild criticism. I am certain, too, that he has replied to the noble Lord, Lord Somers, and my noble friend Lord Popplewell. When sending his best wishes to the new Chairman, in which I am certain we all join, Lord Nugent pointed out that he was undertaking a job of quite unusual complexity and difficulty. May I say to the noble Lord, Lord Somers, that if we could have a little more than £50 for the purpose we might go away together and then I could show him some of the traffic systems abroad which are a great deal worse than the system which exists in London to-day.
LORD SOMERS: I have never denied that, my Lords.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: Therefore, my Lords, I am glad that this tidying-up operation which has been forced upon us receives the general blessing of your Lordships' House.
On Question, Bill read 2a; Committee negatived.

THE CASE OF EX-P.C. LUCKHURST
4.40 p.m.
LORD WILLIS LORD WILLIS rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make available to the legal advisers of ex-P.C. Luckhurst the report of the official police inquiry into his case. The noble Lord said: My Lords, your Lordships will remember that on March 11 this year we had a very full and open debate on the case of ex-P.C. Luckhurst, and it is not my intention to cover again to-day all the ground covered then. But for those of your Lordships who may be unfamiliar with the background I would
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refer you first to the OFFICIAL REPORT for March 11, and will make a very brief summary of the case which was made then.
May I say first that my purpose in returning to the charge to-day is more limited than it was on March 11, and I make no apology for doing so. Before that debate there was considerable doubt as to whether Mr. Luckhurst had been treated fairly and with justice, and I think it is true to say that nothing that was said on the Government side in that debate did anything to allay those doubts. Indeed, I was approached afterwards by several people, including noble Lords—people who had known nothing of the case—and they expressed shock and disquiet at what had been revealed.
Let me briefly summarise the background again. On May 8, 1966, a Colonel Matters found a bank wallet containing a large sum of money and stated that he telephoned to a local police station in Buckinghamshire to report this fact. Later, Colonel Matters stated that a policeman called and collected this bank bag. The policeman gave no signed receipt for the bag and the Colonel did not ask for one. Later that evening the same policeman is said to have called on Colonel Matters and reported that the bag had been handed in and that it had contained £40.
Seven weeks later the Colonel made inquiries and discovered that there was no record of the bag having been handed in at any police station and no record of his earlier telephone call of seven weeks before. As a result the Colonel complained, and an official police investigation was mounted. Following the report of that inquiry an identification parade was held at which the Colonel, with some difficulty, picked out Luckhurst as the P.C. who had called on him and who had taken the bag. On the basis of this identification parade Luckhurst was charged, tried and convicted. He was sent to prison for a year and dismissed the force.
In October, 1967, eighteen months after the event and as a result of comsiderable disquiet about the circumstances, the then Home Secretary, my right honourable friend Mr. Roy Jenkins, invited the Chief Constable of Buckinghamshire to initiate a further inquiry

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into this case. This inquiry was conducted by a senior officer from another
force, Detective Chief Superintendent Brennan, and his report ran to over 300 pages. After reading this report the Home Secretary decided to take no further action.
My Lords, that, briefly, is the background. May I now summarise the case for Mr. Luckhurst, and again may I ask you to refer to our OFFICIAL REPORT of March 11 for more complete details. My reason for raising this case again is that I believe there has been here a serious miscarriage of justice. My reasons for so thinking are as follows. In the first place, Colonel Matters could not remember which police station he telephoned to report that he had found a bank bag, and only just before the trial did he mention that it was Langley. No record of the telephone call was made at Langley or any other local police station. At the time this telephone call was said to have been made P.C. Luckhurst was not on duty; he was in fact at home. The bank bag and the missing money have never been found. It was admitted by the prosecution at the trial, and confirmed by the judge, that Luckhurst could be guilty only if another police constable was involved with him. That P.C. was never charged and is still in the force. Nor has he ever had an opportunity to reply to the allegations which inevitably, have been made against him.
The identification parade was not properly constituted or conducted, and Colonel Matters picked out Luckhurst only after moving along the line three times. And his wife did not even pick Luckhurst out at all. There were many serious discrepancies in the evidence presented. I quote only one, and that is that Colonel Matters' wife later at the trial, when it was pointed out that she had not identified Luckhurst, said that she would have done because she now remembered that she had seen him with a receding hair line. In fact when she saw the identification parade Luckhurst and all the other officers on parade were wearing caps, and it was impossible to see whether he had a receding hair line or not.
Finally, my Lords, under the Police Act 1964 the acting Chief Constable of Buckinghamshire had a clear duty to refer this case to the Director of Public
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Prosecutions, because this was a complaint made by a member of the public,
Colonel Matters. He did not do so. He chose to institute proceedings without reference to that Act.
I have done less than justice to Mr. Luckhurst by that very brief outline, but that, in essence, is the history of the matter. May I say that I think this case is hedged with so many improbabilities, so many discrepancies, that seldom have I read a case in which it has seemed to me so clear that an injustice has been done. Let me add that many eminent people, including lawyers—distinguished lawyers —have expressed the same concern and have expressed the view, having studied all the facts, that there has been, as I have said, some kind of miscarriage of justice here.
I now come to the report made by Detective Chief Superintendent Brennan, which is the point of this Unstarred Question to-day. There is, as your Lordships will know, a growing body of opinion, inside and outside the police, that the procedure laid down by the Police Act in this respect is both wrong and inadequate. It is wrong because nobody should be made a judge and jury in his own case. But the Act maintains that when a member of the public makes a complaint against a policeman, the inquiry must then be carried out by a
policeman. The evidence is secret. So is the name of the officer under suspicion. Then the officer under suspicion has no legal right to see the report under which he has been condemned, or to appeal against it, or to be present when statements are made against him, or to be represented when such statements are made, or even to see such statements. It is not even necessary that the investigating officer should see the officer who may be under suspicion. That is the broader objection, and I hope that at some time Parliament will be able to get back to this serious question of the character of police investigations.
But what happened in the case of ex-P.C. Luckhurst? The Home Office, under certain pressure, were concerned about the circumstances which led up to Luckhurst's dismissal and conviction; and, as I have indicated, eighteen months later they asked for a further inquiry. They asked the Chief Constable of

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Buckinghamshire to appoint an independent officer from another force to conduct
the inquiry. That in itself highlights a weakness of the procedure, for it is one part of Luckhurst's case that the Chief Officer of Buckinghamshire himself acted wrongly by his decision not to refer the original case to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Indeed, this objection has been underlined since, because the Home Secretary has issued further instructions indicating that under the Police Act all such complaints by the public which involve serious accusations must be referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions. This arose directly as a result of the Luckhurst case.
Yet, my Lords, the man who in some respects is being criticised in this case for his failure to apply the effect of the Police Act 1964 was the man who was asked to set up the inquiry. I am glad to emphasise, of course, that the Chief Constable acted quite properly in this matter. He carried out his instructions. Nor am I questioning the impartiality of Detective Chief Superintendent Brennan, who led the inquiry. But there are many disturbing factors. In the first place, Luckhurst was never informed that the inquiry was to take place. He heard of it only from his M.P.—or, rather, he first heard about it from a reporter after the inquiry had been announced in the Commons. There was no letter from the Home Office; no official information at all. He was not informed when the inquiry began. His first intimation that the inquiry was going on at all was when a friend called to say that he had been interviewed about Luckhurst's personal circumstances. The strangest part of all was that Luckhurst was not interviewed until Detective Chief Superintendent Brennan had almost completed his inquiries, and then for not much more than half an hour.
I am not an expert in this matter, but I should have thought that the man under suspicion, the man who in fact had been dismissed the Force, was rather an important link in this case and it was rather important to get his point of view and his evidence. But in fact that evidence was not taken until the very end of the inquiry. In fact, nothing relevant to the case was asked in the form of questions to ex-P.C. Luckhurst.
At that interview Detective Chief Superintendent Brennan stated that he had almost completed his inquiries, and he asked Luckhurst if there were any other points which he felt should be covered. That is a pretty impossible request, because Luckhurst did not know what they—a team of detectives conducting an inquiry—had been covering in the last three or four weeks. He had no idea of the scope of the inquiry or of what sort of statements had been made against him. Therefore it was a little difficult to say what other points ought to be covered, although he did put one or two issues. Further, Luckhurst was not informed when the inquiry was completed and he was in the dark for some months, until his local M.P., Mr. Bell, put down a Question in the other place. It was then that he was told that the report had been delivered and that no further action would be taken. Since then various applications have been made on behalf
of Luckhurst for a look at the report, by Mr. Bell, by Joan Lestor, M.P., and by Luckhurst's solicitor. In each case the request has been refused. Why?
The reply, given in a letter to me by my right honourable friend, the present Home Secretary, on April 22, 1969, said as follows:
"Reports of this kind are made to the Home Secretary in confidence: and it is a longstanding practice not to disclose them. As I am sure you will appreciate, such a practice is unavoidable if these are to be full and frank reports on police investigations, which must necessarily often contain a good deal of information that cannot be fully disclosed without prejudice to individuals."
One can appreciate that argument. But there is one interesting aspect to this. In a letter to Luckhurst, Ronald Bell, his local M.P., on October 23, 1967, wrote to inform him politely that the Home Secretary had decided to set up a police inquiry into the affair. But two days later on October 25 Mr. Bell wrote again and said:
"Dear Mr. Luckhurst, I write just to correct an impression which I may well have given you in my letter of 23rd October … the inquiry which the Home Secretary has decided to set up is not a police inquiry, though it is to be conducted by a senior police officer —that is to say, it is not a statutory inquiry under the Police Act but a general inquiry into the sequence of events after the wallet was missed, and which led up to the prosecution".
So we have this curious situation where we have a police inquiry which is not a police inquiry and a general inquiry which is not a statutory inquiry. The Home Secretary called it a "police investigation". Either way, there is absolutely no legal reason why the Home Secretary should not allow Luckhurst's legal advisers to see the report of that inquiry. There would be no legal reason in fact had it been a statutory inquiry, because there is nothing in the Police Act which forbids the Home Secretary to show this report to anyone; but there would perhaps be precedent. But since this inquiry was not set up under the Police Act 1964, it is almost a personal inquiry set in train by the Home Office, and it seems to me that there is no precedent and no legal restraint and no real reason why Luckhurst's legal advisers should not have access to the report. Why was this general inquiry set in motion? It was set in motion mainly because so many people, in and out of Parliament, were concerned about this case and worried that an injustice had been committed. Recognising this feeling, the then Home Secretary instituted this general inquiry, which was in every respect like a police inquiry and yet was not one.
What happens next? We have a curious Alice-in-Wonderland situation. First you persuade the Home Secretary to hold an inquiry. Next he tells you that the inquiry has been held and that he proposes to take no further action. You then ask him why. He says he cannot tell you. You say, "There must be reasons in the report; can we see the report?". He says, "No", and it is an absolutely slammed and shut door. My Lords, analogies are seldom perfect or accurate, but there is one which seems to fit this situation. Suppose that one of your Lordships were to buy some salmon from the local fishmonger. You take it home, cook some of it, and afterwards a member of your family is ill. You suspect the salmon, so you wrap up the remainder and take it back to the fishmonger. He first of all denies that there is anything wrong, but when you press him he agrees that he will get another fishmonger to analyse the fish and make a report. You go to see him a little while later, and he says that the salmon was fresh and he intends to take no further action. You ask if you can see a copy of the report
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made by the other fishmonger, and he refuses on the grounds that that report was private and privileged. Meanwhile the member of your family is ill or dying. I suspect that none of us would let the matter rest there with the local fishmonger. In this case we are not dealing with fish but we happen to be dealing with a human being.
Why have the Government refused so far to allow Luckhurst and his legal advisers to see the report? If the report simply confirms the judgment against Luckhurst, well and good. His solicitors will so advise him. But is it not possible that there may be some statements taken from certain witnesses, statements which Luckhurst was not allowed to see, was not allowed to hear, statements made without his legal advisers being present, that Luck hurst may be able to refute, question or throw new light on? Should he not be given an opportunity, in all justice, to do this—an opportunity that has been denied to him so far?
Or let us speculate in another direction. Suppose the report is embarrassing for the reason that it contains allegations against people who may be innocent, private letters, actionable statements even, and so forth. One would quite understand the difficulty of the Home Secretary in not wanting this sort of stuff published offhand; he would not want to publish it and one would understand that it would be wrong to do so. But to allow legal advisers access to it is surely a different matter. Why should somebody be protected because there may be something wrong in the report, there may be accusations against innocent people in the report? Why should they be protected at the expense of Luckhurst? Surely Luckhurst's solicitors could go to the Home Office and read the report in confidence.
My Lords, it may be said that Luckhurst has had the benefit of the due process of justice. Does anybody in this House really think that? Is there a due process of justice? Is there a beginning and an end to the due process of justice in the eyes of your Lordships? No one who is at all impartial and has read the papers in this case can have any possible doubt that Luckhurst has a strong and powerful case. That case has not so far been answered, shaken or refuted by any arguments put forward

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in this House or in any other place. Surely a man's right to justice does not stop at a certain point; surely we do not say, in this House of all places, "Thus far and no further." There are a dozen points, two dozen points, which Luckhurst's legal advisers wish to check, which they can only do if they have access to the report.
It may be it will not do him much good, but at least we know there is a long report in existence of an inquiry which, to be absolutely frank, we do not consider was satisfactorily conducted. It is in existence, and it is on that basis that the Home Secretary decided to take no further action. It is on those grounds that we say, let us, in common justice, let the legal advisers have a look at that report and make up their own minds. How can we deny such access on formalistic legal grounds which do not exist, or on grounds of precedent? Surely we should do everything possible, we should lean over backwards, to bend the rules, to alter precedent, to help this man who for three years has stood up and claimed that he was innocent, who has never been ashamed to come forward to make any statement, and who has continued to fight to clear his name. We have nothing to lose in this House or in the Home Office or anywhere else. He has everything to win.
I am sorry that to-day my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor could not be in his place. I understand why. He has not so far come forward in this matter. May I ask him, however, to read again the debate of March 11, because I know of his earlier and present work for justice; to send for all the papers in this case and, as the highest Law Lord in the land, to bring all his powerful influence to bear, so that justice may be seen to be done in this case. And may I ask the Home Secretary and Her Majesty's Government to take a further look at this whole question and allow Luckhurst's legal advisers to take one more step along the road to clearing his name by allowing them to see the report. I beg to ask the Question standing in my name.
5.0 p.m.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, there is very good public reason for gratitude to the noble Lord,
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Lord Willis, for putting down this Question, for he is dealing with a matter which, in my opinion, goes far beyond the rights or wrongs that have been done to any individual person, in this case ex-Police Constable Luckhurst. In fact, he was almost bound to put down his Question this afternoon after the debate which we had last March, because in the course of that debate speaker after speaker made it clear that the interest in this case would not be abated as a result of that debate. It will be abated only when the matter has been cleared up, and shown to be cleared up, to the general public satisfaction.
Therefore it is almost unnecessary to extend the customary vote of thanks to the noble Lord who asked the Question, because I do not see how he could help raising the matter again; it is just another chapter in the same story. But I personally am most grateful to him, because, for the benefit of those of your Lordships who may not have remembered the case entirely, he has given an exceedingly thorough outline of the whole story which I need not go into again. But I would disclaim at once any intention of in any way re-trying the case. I willingly accept the fact that the case was tried, and that a conviction was arrived at; that there was nothing wrong with the conduct of the trial, and that the jury were required "by due process of law"—that curious expression to which the noble Lord for good reason takes exception—to find a verdict of guilty. Very well; it happened. But the question is not whether the law was complied with, for I accept that it was, but whether justice was done. I am not satisfied that justice was done, and I do not believe that anybody else is satisfied either—that is to say, anybody whose knowledge of the facts extends simply to those which are available to the public. There may be others who know more than Luckhurst himself has ever been allowed to know, who believe that justice has been done, but we all must believe that it has not; because justice must be seen to be done.
In this case, I submit with perfectly good reason, justice has not been seen to
be done, and when the case was over so great was the public and the general disquiet about the whole matter that the Home Secretary himself was moved by that disquiet (which presumably included

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his own) to order this police inquiry to which the noble Lord has referred and which he has described. That inquiry, so far from allaying the public disquiet, has actually increased it, for this reason: that it was an inquiry conducted by the police within whatever terms of reference it may have been so set up.
Although in fact it was not a matter internal to the police, because the public were themselves involved as were the courts of law and legal processes outside the jurisdiction of the police. The best comment I can make on the fact that it was conducted by the police perhaps I can take from an article in the New Law Journal, in the issue of March 20, which says this:
"The Home Secretary claims to have difficulty in understanding why that inquiry is unacceptable, but it may help him to resolve his difficulty if he will only ask himself whether he would have expected an inquiry into the Aberfan disaster to have been acceptable if it had been conducted by a member of the Coal Board—even by a member of the Board's Yorkshire division—more especially if the report of such an inquiry was never published, as the report on the police inquiry in the Luckhurst case has not been published."
I think that mutatis mutandis we have a perfectly good parallel between the two cases. The analogy is as near as possible exact, and there is every reason to complain about the fact that this inquiry was, in the first place, conducted in such a way that, in the second place, it would produce a report which nobody could ever be allowed to see.
As I have said, I will not re-try or attempt to re-try the case, but whichever way we go round or come back at the story we fetch up at one particular point, from which there is no escape, and that is the fact that Luckhurst was convicted on one piece of evidence only, which is the identification of him on parade by Colonel Matters who was the sole witness against him. Whether or not that identification parade was correctly conducted is not my particular concern at the moment. What is my concern is the fact that it is possible on that evidence alone to send a man to prison.
Perhaps I may best illustrate my disquiet over this by referring to another noble Lord. I hope he will not take it personally, because he is not here at the moment. In fact I will refer to two noble Lords. The second one I do not know,
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but for convenience I will call him Lord X. One morning about a year ago, Lord X said to me, "I saw you sitting on the Woolsack yesterday afternoon". Neither Lord X nor anybody die has ever seen me sitting on the Woolsack, and it is very likely that he will never do so. The noble Lord who had been sitting on the Woolsack was my noble friend Lord Grenfell, who I am told resembles me to some extent. We are both aware of this. Each of us has been mistaken for the other. I do not see it myself, nor I think does he; but there it is.
This mis-identification took place within 24 hours, and I think it is reasonable to say that there are few people on earth who are more conspicuous than somebody sitting on the Woolsack. It is impossible not to notice him. Yet 24 hours later, somebody who has seen some other person sitting on that Woolsack comes to somebody who is similar in appearance, and says, "I saw you sitting on the Woolsack".
Let us compare that example with the case of Luckhurst who was identified by somebody who had seen him, or had seen somebody, three months earlier. If you can go wrong within 24 hours of seeing two people, one of whom at least you must know by sight, how much more wrong can you go when you attempt to identify someone whom you think you have never seen before, except on one occasion and that three months before? Yet that identification is in law conclusive. It requires no corroboration whatsoever. On that piece of evidence alone Luckhurst was sent to prison. Now that is the law. I do not say that it ought not to have happened in this particular case. All I say is that it ought not to be the law; I am perfectly certain that it ought not to be the law.
If we go a little further in this case we find that it is even worse than that, because there is a great body of evidence in Luckhurst's favour, the chief evidence being an alibi sworn by somebody else. That somebody else was Police Constable Owen Smith who, if Luckhurst was guilty, must also have been guilty, because it is only through Smith that Luckhurst could have received the information that led him into a position in which he could commit the theft of which he was accused, and it is only

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with the assistance of Smith that in fact he could have carried it out. But Smith has sworn, first, that he did not get the information by telephone from Colonel Matters and therefore he could not have passed it on; and secondly, that at the material time he himself was on duty. It has been proved and accepted by the police that he was on such a duty, that he could never have gone anywhere near Matters' house, and he swore that all that time Luckhurst was with him.
Therefore, it is impossible, except in one circumstance, for Luckhurst to have gone to Colonel Matters's house and to have committed the theft. That one circumstance is that he left Smith, went to Colonel Matters's house, and came back and joined Smith again, at the beginning and the end of the motor journey which began and ended at Langley Police Station. Smith has said that that did not happen. Either it did happen or it did not happen. If Luckhurst is guilty, presumably it did happen. If Luckhurst is not guilty, then it did not happen and Smith is right. You cannot have it both ways; you cannot have Luckhurst guilty and Smith innocent. That is the great stumbling block in this case. We return over and over again to the matter of identification and yet Luckhurst was convicted and went to prison and Smith was never charged with anything at all. Yet in my submission, if Luckhurst was guilty, Smith must have been guilty of perjury.
Let us turn to what the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said when winding up the debate in March. He made a great point, and rightly, of emphasising the thoroughness with which the inquiry had been carried out, and he said:
"Detective Chief Superintendent Brennan's inquiry was very thorough … He had the assistance of a superintendent and of a detective inspector who were specially assigned to assist in the inquiry. Their investigation occupied five weeks, and Chief Superintendent Brennan's report included copies of all the statements, covering some 327 pages".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11/3/69, col. 452.]
I break off there to wonder why they had 327 pages to discover the truth of the particular point which turned solely on the question of the identification. Surely in that mass of verbiage there must have been a great deal that was not really relevant.
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The noble Lord went on:
"He re-investigated all the facts of the theft …"
No theft has ever been proved.
"He re-investigated all the facts of the theft and made full inquiries into all the points raised by or on behalf of Mr. Luckhurst." [Col. 452.]
How did he do it? I should like the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, if he would be so good, to explain this for me, and I would put the question to him like this: at what stage in the inquiry did Chief Superintendent Brennan approach Mr. Luckhurst—at the beginning of the inquiry or at the end? How much time did he spend in talking to him? That might be elaborated a little by inquiring what did he ask him and what answers did he get, to support the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, to the effect that he
"made full inquiries into all the points raised by or on behalf of Mr. Luckhurst".
That question has already been answered by the noble Lord, Lord Willis. I think it gives the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, the chance to say whether he confirms or not what the noble Lord, Lord Willis, has already said.
I will continue and conclude this quotation.
"These included the further evidence which the Court of Appeal declined to admit at the hearing of the appeal, the possibility of the offence having been committed by some other police officer, and the points of police procedure raised by the Police Federation." [Col. 452.]
I do not know whether or not anybody has ever seriously suggested that the offence might have been committed by another police officer, but I want to put this point: if the inquiry was as thorough as all that, and if, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, also said, every point that had been made by noble Lords who spoke in that March debate had been thoroughly investigated by this inquiry, then one of the points that must have been investigated, because it was made over and over again—nearly all of us who spoke on that occasion raised it—was the question of the irreconcilability of the guilt of Luckhurst and the innocence of Smith. The answer to that question is apparently included in the report, and I should like to know what it is.
How did the inquiry reconcile the two apparent irreconcilables, the guilt of

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Luckhurst and the innocence of Smith? Did they in fact reconcile it? If they did, they must have done so by finding some proof, or at least some evidence
which is not known at any rate to the public or to Mr. Luckhurst or his
advisers, because, on the face of it from what we all know, it cannot be done. You cannot have one guilty and the other innocent. If it was done, if some new evidence was found to prove it, ought that not at least to be disclosed to the legal advisers of Mr. Luckhurst? Common justice, at least, seems to suggest it. But perhaps the inquiry did not manage to reconcile what I call those two apparent irreconcilables. What then? Does not the whole inquiry become instantly suspect?
We were told, by implication at any rate, by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that that was investigated and that the answer was found satisfactory to the Home Secretary and no more should be done. But if those irreconcilables were not reconciled, then that is not true; the answer to this question was not satisfactory, it was not found, and instant suspicion must again fall on the inquiry, and it is bound to fall also on anybody who hushes the inquiry up. I am not saying that the suspicion is justified: I am not saying that I suspect the Home Secretary or Chief Superintendent Brennan, or anyone else; I only say that the suspicion is inevitable and that the due processes of law and of justice should not be subjected to that type of suspicion.
Again, if the guilt of one and the innocence of the other have not been reconciled, then why has Smith not been charged with perjury? There is a possibly obvious, and obviously possible, answer to that; the answer is, or could be—I am certainly not going to say that it is—that Smith is still suspected by the police (by the Home Secretary, for all I know) of having committed perjury, but in order to secure a conviction for that particular crime two witnesses are required and it is not possible to find two witnesses to come forward and give evidence that Smith committed perjury. I find that difficult to believe. This case is so cluttered up with witnesses, or people who have made statements, that if Smith had committed perjury I cannot believe with any readiness that it would not be possible to make out a case against him. Apart from the mere legalistic fact that
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two witnesses are required, the fact that Luckhurst has been convicted and could not have been convicted unless Smith was guilty, is surely itself evidence against Smith.
So we remain with the fact that Luckhurst has been convicted and Smith has not been tried. They may both be guilty; they may both be innocent—I make no statement of opinion either one way or the other. What I do say is that we do not know and we never can find out, but we ought to know—or at least Luckhurst ought to know—how the final conclusion was arrived at. Above all, let us remember that the victim in this case is not necessarily either Luckhurst or Smith. Either or both of those may or may not have been victims —I make no statement on that. But there is one victim, there is one casualty, and that is the law itself, or rather, to be more precise, it is justice. For, my Lords, this is the point to which we come: Luckhurst was convicted by the law, but we do not see, I do not see, that that law which convicted him was supported either by logic or by justice. And law is the servant of justice, not justice of the law.
5.18 p.m.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: My Lords, I took part in this debate in March last when my noble friend Lord Willis raised this matter on an Unstarred Question in somewhat slightly different terms. I do not wish to intervene for more than two or three moments, but I should like to stress a point made by the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, in his very adequate speech. It is the point that so long as people are unsatisfied that justice has been done in this case, the matter will be raised again and again; and in order to satisfy public opinion it is necessary that something should be forthcoming.
I think nobody is satisfied. I believe that even the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chief Justice, is not satisfied. In the Court of Appeal I recall—I may be wrong—that he said that there was "a balance of improbabilities". Well, if justice is done and going to be seen to be done on "a balance of improbabilities" it is time we took a little more care in dealing with points of this kind.

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The other matter I should like to mention, and I think the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, touched upon it, is the fact that the Police Federation, I believe, were not at all satisfied with the situation in this case. They looked at it, and looked at it very carefully, and were not satisfied. The police inquiry that took place was probably a very adequate inquiry, but nobody knows, because we are not allowed to see the result of it—least of all Luckhurst, the man who has been sent to prison. So I can only support my noble friend and hope that something may be done to alleviate people's doubts, if nothing else, in this very astonishing case.
5.21 p.m.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, it is not my intention to keep you for any length of time, and perhaps I ought to say that I did not participate in the debate in your Lordships' Chamber on this matter in March last. However, I listened very carefully to what my noble friend Lord Willis and others of your Lordships had to say on that occasion, and also to what Lord Willis has had to say to-day; and I want to associate myself with his appeal to the Government to release these papers and to make them available to the legal advisers of the former Police Constable Luckhurst. I thought that my noble friend made the strongest possible case for doing so. This is not a retrial; this is not a rehearing; this is not asking for the papers to be made available to the public. There may be, as he quite rightly pointed out, very good reasons for not making this report available. But can there be one good reason, one single reason, for not making these documents available to the legal advisers of the unfortunate Mr. Luckhurst?
I am sure we were all impressed with one thing that the noble Lord, Lord Willis, said. In a matter of this kind, when a person's reputation is at stake, can there be a stage when any one of us can say that justice has been done? If there is a doubt in anybody's mind—and I submit, with the greatest respect, that in this case there are doubts in the minds of many of your Lordships—can we say that justice has been done, regardless of the number of inquiries that have been made or the number of times this matter
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has been gone into? I should have thought that where a person's reputation is at stake, and so long as there are many people, both in your Lordships' House and elsewhere, who have the gravest doubts whether justice has been done, we dare not say that the matter can rest where it stands. I add my support to what my noble friend Lord Willis has said, and I beg Her Majesty's Government to make available to the legal advisers of this former police officer the papers in this matter. And I hope that they will do so without further delay.
5.24 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, this is an unhappy business, and I suspect there will be a certain amount of sympathy for me in having to deal with a case when, in the very nature of things, I am not able even to start trying to controvert some of the points that have been put forward. This is not a court of law. I know the anxiety which my noble friend Lord Willis feels. I myself listened to the debate in March, and, like others, I shared the feelings which have been expressed to-day. But the Question on the Order Paper, and therefore the Question which I propose to answer, relates to the publication of the report of the official police inquiry, and I know that my noble friend Lord Willis will not be surprised at the Answer which I have to give him because, as he says, he has already raised this with my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, who has written to him directly and personally explaining why it is not possible to meet his request about the publication of this report.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: My Lords, may I be forgiven for interrupting? I do not think that the noble Lord refers in his Question to the publication of the report.
LORD BESWICK: The Question asks for the publication of the report—
LORD WILLIS: My Lords, if I may interrupt my noble friend—
LORD BESWICK: I wonder whether my noble friend would allow me to try to answer—
LORD WILLIS: Yes, I will.
LORD BESWICK: I think it would be better. I think he has overstated his

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case, if I may say so to him. He has not advanced his case at all by the exaggerations which he has allowed himself to-day, and I think it would be better if he would allow me to say what I am going to say in my own way, and in my own time. I know the point he is going to make, but—
LORD WILLIS: My Lords, before my noble friend loses his temper any further, may I make one point? My noble friend said earlier—it is a very mild correction; and may we please all keep our tempers in this matter?—that my Question referred to publication. My Question refers to making the report available to Luckhurst's legal advisers, not to publication.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, my noble friend is quite right, and I stand corrected on that. I assure him that I have not lost my temper, and I assure him that I am still as anxious as he is to see that the right thing is done in this case. But I am dealing here with the sight of the report, if he likes to put it in this way, and I am dealing with the fact that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has said directly to him that it is not possible to allow this report to be seen by the legal advisers, or indeed to be published in any other way. I am simply making it clear to this House that the reply which I have to give to my noble friend is the one which has already been given to him by the Home Secretary; and it is the one which has already been given to Members of Parliament who are interested, to Mr. Luckhurst's solicitors and, indeed, to Mr. Luckhurst himself. I think it would be useful if I set down again the reasons why it is not possible either to make generally public, or indeed to be put in the hands of legal advisers, the reports of inquiries of this kind, whether they be police inquiries into criminal matters with a view to prosecution or whether they be post-trial inquiries by the police, as in this case.
In the first place, as my noble friend Lord Willis has himself said, such reports will contain material which cannot and ought not to be given any wider publication than is necessary for official purposes. if the truth is to be found, if it is to be discovered, it is essential that witnesses should be frank and should be
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encouraged to tell all that they know, however detrimental it may be to others. It is equally important that investigating officers should be free to make a full and frank report and an uninhibited assessment of the evidence which they have found—and such assessments, as my noble friend himself suspected, or sensed, may include a critical appraisal of the character and motives of the victim of the crime, as well as of the suspected offender.
In the case of the initial investigation of a crime, much of the evidence may later become public, when the case is brought to court. Much of it, but by no means all, is brought to light in that way. But such a report may contain a good deal of information about the person eventually accused which would be rigorously excluded as inadmissible and prejudicial in any proceedings. It may contain material which reflects adversely upon others, although it does not amount to evidence which could support proceedings. It may contain information about the private affairs of individuals given in confidence—information which they would not wish to be generally known, or indeed known even to legal advisers. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Willis, with his genuine concern about the liberty of individuals, would be the first to question the invasion of Privacy that would be involved by the publication or disclosure of information of this kind. I do not believe, great as is my sympathy for anyone who is trying to get at the truth behind official decisions, that it would be right that matters of this kind, intended for confidential consideration, should be made available outside the confines of the Government Department or Ministry for whom they were intended in the first place. Those are objections based on the private rights of the individual. But, of course, reports of police inquiries may also contain matters which it would be contrary to the public interest generally to make known. I have in mind details of police methods and sources of information which, if known, would be invaluable to the criminal fraternity and could not fail to prejudice the protection of the public from their activities. Here I am laying down the general considerations of principle which apply to the policy regarding non-publication. I am not saying that all or any

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of these considerations apply to the report of Chief Superintendent Brennan on the case which we are considering to-day. But I am saying that it would not be in the public interest to depart from the policy that I have set out. It is in accordance with that policy and practice that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has made it clear that he does not feel able to make available either to individuals or for general publication the report which Chief Superintendent Brennan has prepared.
So much, my Lords, for the Question which my noble friend put down. As for the case itself, my noble friend Lord Willis made the point—and this is where I think he was guilty of exaggeration—that we should not stand on formalistic matters. He talked about the police being judge and jury in their own case. But nothing could be further from the truth than that. We are not here dealing with any formalistic matters; we are dealing with a case which has gone through the proper processes of law. This is not formalistic. My noble friend said that we have nothing to lose by the Executive stepping in here. I think that on reflection he will agree that we have a great deal to lose if the Executive, without the due and proper evidence which would require such a course to be taken, were to step in when the Judiciary, through its proper processes, had reached a certain decision with which my noble friend himself may not agree.
My noble friend deployed the case of Mr. Luckhurst with great skill in the earlier discussion, and he has done so again. But the fact of the matter is that this case was deployed also at the quarter sessions. The evidence was heard; it was assessed, and the chairman of the quarter sessions came to a different conclusion from that reached by my noble friend Lord Willis. There was a jury; the case was argued out. They heard the evidence; but they did not reach the same conclusion that my noble friend has reached. The case then went—as is provided for in our country under the constitution—to the Court of Appeal. The Lord Chief Justice heard the arguments, and he came to the conclusion that there was no reason why the verdict should be set aside. He accepted the prosecution case. He confirmed the original decision. Subsequently, the
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matter was raised, by one means or another, quite properly, by Members of Parliament in another place and by others in the public Press.
I assure my noble friend that I am not losing my temper, but I must say that I was disappointed when he tried to dismiss the action of my right honourable friend the previous Home Secretary, when he talked about this "personal inquiry of his". I do not know why he used this phrase. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary heard these doubts and he himself could see absolutely no reason why he should seek to intervene. But to make absolutely certain, he had the police inquiry made. As I have said before, this is not a matter of the police being judge and jury in their own case; it is a question of the Home Secretary of the day hearing these doubts expressed and having a decision to make himself; of his wanting to be absolutely sure himself that no mistake had been made. Therefore he had this inquiry made by the detective chief superintendent from another force. With the advantage of this report before him, the present Home Secretary is unable to agree with the viewpoint of my noble friend, Lord Willis.
The matter was raised in this House in March, and on that occasion my noble friend Lord Stonham replied. Great tributes were paid to the compassion which my noble friend Lord Stonham shows in these and all other matters. He, too, considered the facts on the basis of the report and he, too, was unable to accept the judgment of Lord Willis. My noble friend will not be surprised therefore if, on the basis of what has been said, I cannot announce any departure from the decisions already taken.
The noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, asked about the position of P.C. Smith. I should be less than frank if I did not say that this is a point which also worries me. Indeed, the Lord Chief Justice said that he cannot say that this police officer was not involved. This is a terrible thing for the Lord Chief Justice to say. Nevertheless, to take it further one requires evidence. The Home Secretary has no responsibility for the institution of prosecutions—that is a matter for the chief constable of the force concerned —and it is not for me to comment on the reasons why other persons were not

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prosecuted. But it seems fair to say that obviously there is no evidence on which that step could be taken.
I was also asked by the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, what attempt was made to give Mr. Luckhurst the opportunity of making a statement or putting forward a point or points to the inquiring police officers. I am informed that the chief superintendent saw Mr. Luckhurst and his solicitor on November 10, 1967. Mr. Luckhurst had made a statement on the previous day. He had also made a number of other allegations and a number of other —though not formal—statements over the preceding month. Everything that was said by him was thoroughly investigated by the inquiring officers. Mr. Luckhurst was invited to put forward any additional points and he made a number of them; and although it is true to say this was towards the end of the investigation, it is I think also true to say that they were inquired into with a really surprising thoroughness.
I have looked into this matter with a certain amount of care. I do not think that I have ever spoken at this Box on any matter unless I have been able to look into the background. I have read all the papers of the case. One thing I can say is that these statements of Mr. Luckhurst were looked into with surprising thoroughness and in surprising detail. It is precisely because of the detail into which the inquiries went—if for no other reason—that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary would be justified in saying that he could not make this report available.
My noble friend Lord Willis said that this was not an inquiry under the 1964 Act. That is quite true: he was told by my right honourable friend that it was not an inquiry under the 1964 Act. I have said that this was an inquiry ordered by the Home Secretary to enable him to come to a conclusion which he thought would be fair and in the interests of all concerned. Certainly there is nothing in the Act which says that the report should not be published. Equally, there is nothing in the Act which says that this report shall be published; and, for the reasons which I have tried to set down, it is the invariable rule that these reports are not published. On the other hand I would say this: that if there was any par-
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ticular point in the report on which Mr. Luckhurst or my noble friend wanted information, I would certainly ask my right honourable friend the Home Secretary whether he would be ready to give the substance of the relevant part of the report to Mr. Luckhurst or to his legal advisers; provided, of course, that there was nothing involving other individuals.
My Lords, I would simply add this: that if any fresh evidence of a material kind were brought forward by Mr. Luckhurst, or by any other person, I would see that that fresh evidence was considered and, if necessary, that action would be taken upon it.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords—
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, would the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, be kind enough to give way to me? It is very unusual, on an Unstarred Question—the noble Lord has been in this House for a very long time and he knows this—for anyone else to speak after the Minister has replied. I do not wish to stop any debate on any subject, but I am bound to remind the House of this particular rule. It is the custom and the practice of the House. We do not have lots of rules but we do stick to a certain custom.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, may I have your Lordships' permission to reply to the noble Lord the Leader of the House? I have had the honour to be a Member of your Lordships' House a great deal longer than he has, and I can remember a number of occasions on which this has happened. I can remember an occasion on which there was a considerable debate after the Minister had replied, and I could refer the noble Lord to a leading article in The Times commenting on the subject—
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? We have guidance on this from the Procedure Committee. These are not rules. If the House wishes it may ignore the advice; but it
accepted the Report of the Procedure Committee. I cannot stop the noble Lord; only the House can do that. I know that he has been a Member much longer than I have, but I am bound to say that if we are going to alter our custom we shall have to ask the Procedure Committee to consider the matter.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, if this is a custom of the House, it is a very recent custom, because there is no question that this has happened in the past. I wanted to listen to the Minister in order to hear what he was going to say before I intervened in the debate. That is surely common sense, and in the ordinary way
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of discussion. But if your Lordships feel that this more recent custom is one which ought to be accepted and that I am transgressing by speaking now, I am very ready to bow to the will of the House.
House adjourned at sixteen minutes before six o'clock.