Lords Sitting of 1 December 1970

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

EDUCATION OF AUTISTIC CHILDREN
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, in view of the number of autistic children who are in mental hospitals, what are the proposals to provide those children with appropriate residential schools and specialised education in those schools or elsewhere.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE (LORD BELSTEAD): My Lords, under the Education (Handicapped Children) Act, my right honourable friend has appointed April 1 next as the date on which responsibility for providing appropriate education for autistic and other children in hospitals for the mentally handicapped will be transferred to local education authorities. It will be for them to decide what arrangements are made for educating these children. For those who continue to need medical or nursing care, they will no doubt establish hospital special schools; others may, after assessment, be found places in day or residential special schools.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that reply, may I ask him whether he is aware that a good many of these children are not receiving the particular kind of service that they require? Is it enough to leave the matter to the local authorities? Further, may I ask whether Her Majesty's Government could encourage local authorities to take more developed action to meet the needs of these children?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government sent out Circular 15/70 in July of this year, in which we asked for consultation. That may partly answer the noble Lord's question. In the circular we asked for proposals for special schools—that, of course, does not answer the noble Lord's question. Many autistic children appear also to be severely mentally handicapped and are at present in junior training centres or hospitals for the mentally handicapped. As these institutions have been the subject of fairly blanket condemnation in some quarters as unsuitable for autistic children, may I take this opportunity, in answer to the noble Lord's supplementary question, to correct that impression and draw attention to the devoted work that has been done in those places. I would remind the House that the changes that will take place after next April will bring people here in closer touch with those who are working in the main stream of this field.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, while fully appreciating that reply, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that a good many of these children are not mentally deficient at all, but are assumed to be so, and that is where the real nub of the question lies?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government take this matter very seriously indeed, but we are awaiting further research on it. As the noble Lord probably knows, research is going on at the moment in three different units in and near London, and we hope that the results of this research may be reported on within two years.
LORD SLATER: My Lords, can the noble Lord say how extensive is the accommodation that is being granted at the moment throughout the country? My question is not in regard to the three places that he has just indicated, but I should like to know how extensive it is throughout the country, North, East, South and West.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, there are believed to be about 3,000 autistic children of school age in England and Wales. That figure was arrived at as a result of the Middlesex survey. Of those, some 600 may be in hospitals for the mentally handicapped, whose total population of mentally handicapped children

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exceeds 7,000. I say "may be" because we are not talking about categories.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that diagnosis of autism is often extremely difficult to arrive at, even by the most experienced of medical experts; and ought not the restricted availability of residential accommodation and special education to be made available also to other cases of mentally handicapped children, without giving undue priority to cases of autism?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I very much take to heart what has been asked so far in supplementary questions, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Segal, whose experience in this field is wide. It is because Her Majesty's Government are hesitating in this matter that it has already been said publicly that the advisory committee to my right honourable friend are constantly giving him information. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State is considering a possible circular on this subject, but we hesitate still.
BARONESS BROOKE OF YSTRADFELLTE: My Lords, can the noble Lord tell us whether Her Majesty's Government would be prepared to consider urging several local authorities adjacent to each other to combine together for this purpose? This is a special problem, and obviously the numbers are not sufficient to justify making each local authority responsible.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that suggestion. This is admittedly not what we have done in Circular 15/70. I particularly welcome it, because it seems to me that these children—and indeed children across the whole spectrum in this field—are children who least should travel long distances. It seems to me that my noble friend's supplementary question could go some way towards putting this point right.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that the segregation of autistic children from other mentally handicapped children is often considered not to be desirable? Would it not be wiser to approach the whole problem from a much wider perspective?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I should like to study that question, if I may. I must confess that every time I
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look at the nine points which were put forward for diagnosis—I speak entirely as a layman—by Dr. Creek in 1961, I become more bemused and worried that even the experts in this field cannot make up their minds exactly whether or not we are on the right track in trying to pinpoint autism.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that perhaps it would be a little kinder to the parents if more trouble were taken by his Department to explain to them, even individually, that it is very difficult to diagnose this condition, and it is wrong for them to hope that there will be a complete recovery?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I will certainly bear the suggestion of the noble Baroness in mind with the possibility of a forthcoming circular, and I thank her for it.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, would the noble Lord also bear in mind that in some cases a complete recovery has been achieved?

CONSERVATION AREAS
2.42 p.m.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what action is being taken to ensure that local authorities who until now have failed to determine conservation areas shall rectify this; and approximately how many local authorities have failed in this respect.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, no such action is being taken. Designation of conservation areas is, we believe, essentially a matter for local initiative. One hundred and twenty five out of 157 English local planning authorities have designated one area or more.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, in view of the fact that a certain number have not done so, cannot Her Majesty's Government do something to stimulate action on their part?
LORD SANDFORD: I think not, my Lords. It is much more important to ensure that those conservation areas that have been designated take on some substance and some meaning, rather than to try to persuade local authorities who, for good reasons of their own, have not yet designated conservation areas to do so.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, would the noble Lord tell us, in view of the quite considerable time-lag since legislation was passed and the Minister's circular was issued, without action in some cases, whether it is possible to publish a list of those authorities who have not yet designated conservation areas?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I shall be very glad to consider that.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, is it not possible, while encouraging local authorities who are getting on with the job to continue to do so, to encourage those who have not yet indicated that they are taking any steps to begin to do something about it?
LORD SANDFORD: Yes, my Lords. That is certainly possible and will be considered. But we trust bear in mind that there may well be some local authorities who have quite rightly come to the conclusion that they have not within their responsibility any areas that should be designated as conservation areas.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, will the noble Lord bear in mind that at the end of the day the Government have powers to direct local authorities to designate conservation areas?
LORD SANDFORD: Yes, certainly, my Lords.

THE SPORTS COUNCIL
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: 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 are in a position to make an interim statement on the progress made concerning the future status of the Sports Council.]
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, the noble Baroness, who is herself a member of the Sports Council, will know that my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State met the Council last week specially to hear their views on the future.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord. I quite understand, but I expected the Minister to say that he was not yet ready to make any statement.

THE COUNCIL ON TRIBUNALS
LORD GARDINER: 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 propose to accept the recommendations made by the Council on Tribunals in their Annual Report for 1969–70, and particularly those contained in paragraphs 48, 55, 73 and 76 of the Report.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF ST. MARYLEBONE): My Lords, the Government are grateful to the Council for this useful Report which is generally acceptable, though I cannot commit them to agreeing to every suggestion it contains. I have had a long and helpful discussion with the Council on the points made in paragraph 48 of the Report. I sympathise with the Council's views, to which I am giving careful consideration.
As to paragraph 55, an appropriate note will, when the standard form of notice is reprinted, be included which will inform appellants of their rights to be given the reasons for a local valuation court's decision and the clerks to local valuation panels are being urged by my right honourable friend to provide for ratepayers a full explanation of the courts' functions.
The Council did not make any final recommendation in paragraph 73 and, as is there stated, the matters in question are under discussion with my right honourable friends. As the noble and learned Lord will see from paragraph 78 of the Report, the Council's earlier recommendation to which paragraph 76 refers will be covered by the general review,

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now instituted by the Council, of the whole practice governing the appointment of inspectors and assessors. For this purpose the Council is consulting the Departments principally concerned and we had perhaps better await the outcome.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord very much for that Answer. May I ask him whether he does not agree that, where a Government Department is initiating legislation in the field of the Council on Tribunals, the Council ought to be advised in time before the final form of the legislation is determined; and, if so, whether there is any difficulty in the Government's ensuring that that happens?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I think I would agree, and I do not think there is any more difficulty than there was when the noble and learned Lord was Lord Chancellor.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, may I ask the noble and learned Lord whether he further agrees that there ought to be some machinery whereby the Council's advice may be made available to Parliament at the time when the legislation is being considered?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, this is a more difficult question. It obviously raises controversial issues to ask a Minister in any Government to introduce legislation and at the same time publish advice which may be inconsistent with the legislation introduced. I think the best plan is to allow one to work through these suggestions. If in fact the Lord Chancellor's Department is to act as the spokesman inside Government circles for the Council, I think it is better to keep their advice confidential in matters of proposed legislation.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, on that point would the noble and learned Lord bear in mind that it is already the practice in the field of the National Insurance Advisory Committee for their advice to be available to Parliament at the time Parliament is considering the legislation?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, there are many analogies in the field. The Law Commission, for instance, would be out of business if it did not publish its reports very fully be-
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fore legislation is considered. But not all these analogies are helpful and we must, I think, gain experience as we go along.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, while declaring an interest, may I ask whether it is not obvious to the House how very fortunate the Council on Tribunals is both in the present Lord Chancellor and in his immediate predecessor? We are very appreciative.

DUNDEE CORPORATION ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Considered on Report.
ABERDEEN CORPORATION ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Read 3a, and passed.
GLASGOW CORPORATION (WORKS &c.) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Read 3a, and passed.
STIRLING COUNTY COUNCIL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Read 3a, and passed.

MINES MANAGEMENT BILL [H.L.]
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN): My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Mines Management Bill, has consented to place Her interest, so far as it is concerned on behalf of the Crown, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.
I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

INCOME AND CORPORATION TAXES BILL
2.54 p.m.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, we usually take Bills dealing with taxation formally and arrange at the same time for a wide-ranging general economic debate; but on this occasion things have fallen out rather differently, for we debated economic affairs at considerable length some two weeks ago on the Motion moved by the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition. Your Lordships may therefore think it appropriate for me to outline as simply and as briefly as I can this afternoon the provisions of this Bill.
This is a simple and a short Bill, which gives effect to the proposals for reducing both personal and company taxation which were announced by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in another place on October 27. May I deal first with personal taxation? My colleagues and I believe that income tax in this country is too high. My noble and learned friend who sits on the Woolsack pointed out in his speech in the economic policy debate how badly we compare in this respect with other leading industrialised countries; and this part of the Bill stems from our conviction that it is now necessary to begin to lighten the burden of personal taxation that presses on the shoulders of our people.
Clause 1 of the Bill reduces the standard rate of income tax for the coming year 1971–72 from 41·25 per cent. to 38·75 per cent.—in more homely terms by sixpence, from 8s. 3d. to 7s. 9d in the pound. Some 19¾ million individuals in this country who are at present paying tax will of course benefit from this provision, and I should perhaps add that for this purpose husband and wife are counted as one in the 19¾ million calculation. We are bringing forward the legislation now so that the reduction in the rate can be reflected in the lower P.A.Y.E. deductions right from the start of the income tax year which begins on April 6 next.
Clause 2 is a comparatively minor provision, the object of which is to ensure that every taxpayer in the country will benefit from a reduction in income tax in the coming year 1971–72. There are some cases where a reduction in the stan-
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dard rate would not lead to any reduction in the tax bill. This is true for some taxpayers over 65 years of age with incomes somewhat above the age exemption limits, who are entitled to what is called "marginal age exemption relief". It may be true also for some younger people living on small investment incomes who are entitled to what is called "marginal small income relief". The remedy is to reduce the percentages governing these marginal reliefs by 2·5 per centage points in each case. I should like to apologise for my lapse into jargon in this respect, and I trust that your Lordships will not expect me to explain these provisions in much greater detail. They are extremely complicated and affect only a small number of taxpayers.
Before turning to company taxation, I should just like to add this. This Government do not believe in high taxation as an end in itself, and the present Bill is firm evidence that we shall not tolerate high direct taxation any longer than is necessary. Our purpose is to encourage that initiative and that effort on the part of producers in this country—be they on the shop floor or in management or on the board—on which this country's future prosperity depends. We are convinced that this is the right way to go about it. Likewise I must make it clear, as I made it clear in our debate two weeks ago, that this is but a start.
As regards companies, Clause 3 reduces the rate of corporation tax charged for the financial year 1969—that is the year beginning April, 1969—from 45 per cent. to 42·5 per cent. The main effect of this change will be to reduce the tax which companies are due to pay on January 1 next. However, some companies have already paid corporation tax on 1969 profits at the rate of 45 per cent. and a repayment will be made to them as soon as possible after the Income and Corporation Tax Bill becomes law. There is no doubt that the present levels of company profits and liquidity make it desirable that a large part of the savings resulting from the ending of the investment grant scheme should be channelled back to the corporate sector. This will be achieved through the tax system by means of the new arrangements for depreciation described in the White Paper on Investment Incentives. These arrangements are

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designed to assist company liquidity as far as possible.
However, my Lords, we recognise that they cannot produce any relief in the immediate short term. Having regard to the concern which had been expressed by both the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. about the prospective level of investment and to the indications that companies' cash flow was inadequate, we decided to boost the prospects for industrial investment and to improve business confidence by making an immediate cut in corporation tax. The effect of the reduction was again explained in our long debate two weeks ago the effect will be to add some £60 million to companies' cash flow in the current year, £90 million in 1971 and £100 million in 1972.
I should perhaps draw your Lordships' particular attention to Clause 3, which makes special provision for two cases. For close companies it provides that the rate of 45 per cent. is retained for shortfall purposes only. Without such a provision a reduction in the rate of corporation tax would have the effect of increasing the distributable profits and therefore the required level of distributions, in default of which there is a shortfall assessment. In order to prevent this, subsection (2) of Clause 3 provides that the 45 per cent. rate of corporation tax is retained for shortfall. This rate of course is for shortfall only: a close company's profits will be charged at 42·5 per cent. in the same way as those of any other company. Special provision is also made in Clause 3(3) so that where it is of benefit, the reduction in the rate of corporation tax applies even in those cases where the company has been completely wound up and tax at the 45 per cent. rate has already been paid on the profits. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Earl Jellicoe.)
3.0 p.m.
LORD DIAMOND: My Lords, the noble Earl, who explained the proposals in this short and straightforward Bill in the simplest and clearest terms, started off by saying that the proceedings were, so far as he was concerned, a little unusual. Your Lordships will, therefore, have considerable sympathy with me: if such an experienced Member of this
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House as the noble Earl finds these proceedings a little unusual, how much more do I find them so myself? I trust I shall serve the purposes of the House by considering the background to the proposals in the Bill as fully as, in my opinion, the importance of them justifies.
I want to make it quite clear that, so far as we on this side are concerned, we are wholly opposed to the Government's proposals of which this Bill forms an integral part. We are opposed to the Bill because it does nothing to help in the real problems which are facing the country, the problems of high unemployment, low economic growth, cost pressures. In all those problems it does nothing at all to help, but, in my view, a considerable amount to hinder, especially in the ever-increasing problem of disturbed industrial relations. I regard the proposals before us as completely irrational in their selectivity—I shall come back to what the noble Earl said about the factory floor—and as wholly inequitable in their application.
Let me start first, as the noble Earl did, with the standard rate and the proposals affecting it. He said that the present Government—I hope I have his words accurately—do not believe in high taxes as an end in themselves. I am delighted to hear that. That was the case with the previous Government and that certainly continues to be the philosophy of my Party. We do not believe in high taxation as an end in itself. But it would be just as ridiculous to allege, as is sometimes alleged, that the Labour Party is in favour of ever-increasing taxes as it would be to allege that the Tory Party is in favour of ever-reducing taxes. The noble Earl and his colleagues would be the first to agree, for example, that if a proposal were to be put forward by anybody on the other side that there should be a substantial reduction in taxation matched by a cessation of expenditure on defence, on the police, on fire fighting and on similar essential national activities, it should be turned down immediately. They would make it clear that it is not a question of absolute amounts but of judgment of all the circumstances in relation to a particular proposal or set of proposals. That is exactly the situation with regard to the present proposals, which one has to examine in relation to the total situation.

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I did trouble those of your Lordships who were in the Chamber at the time, and even more those of you who were courteous enough to be listening to what I was saying about a fortnight ago, with a short but in my view, very important, summary of the tax structure. May I repeat it, even more shortly, because it is directly relevant to the single major proposal we are now discussing? It is that although direct taxation as it stands is highly progressive, indirect taxation is highly regressive. That is to say, direct taxation bears more than proportionately on those who are better off, indirect taxation more than proportionately on those who are worse off. One only has to think of the indirect taxes on drinks and tobacco, for example, where one is dealing not with the frequently quoted rate of 80 per cent. on surtax and income tax but with rates which exceed 400 per cent., to realise the truth of what I am saying.
We are at present—or, rather, we were before the introduction of this Bill—in a situation in which the combined impact of our direct and indirect taxation on average family budgets was broadly neutral. It therefore follows that if we make a move on direct taxation alone, and that is a move downwards, that must be a regressive move, and if we make a move on indirect taxation alone, that could be either regressive or progressive, depending on which way we move. I therefore want to look at both sets of proposals.
The first is the standard rate. We know that of all the methods by which one can adjust income tax, an adjustment of the standard rate downwards is the most regressive of all. That is to say, a reduction in the standard rate is the one method under which those at the top of the income scale can be helped most and those at the bottom of the income scale helped least. That is what is proposed here. There are several alternative ways of achieving a reduction in taxation, if the Government thought such a reduction was an essential fillip or boost to our economic attitudes—many ways of dealing with it which would not have had these regressive, or, to use a more simple word, unjust, results. One could have dealt with the personal allowance. One could have had regard to families with many children and dealt with family allowances, and had the
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familiar clawback—I hope that is not too jargonistic a word to use in your Lordships' House—to prevent the benefits of increased family allowances from going all the way up the scale.
No doubt the present Government, just as we did when we were in power, took great care to measure the effect of any proposals towards or away from equity. It is not a matter of personal individual judgment; it is a matter of fairly accurate measurement. It is on a basis which is accepted by most statisticians as an accurate measure of the movement in a total series of budget proposals, towards or away from equality. The present proposal runs flat in the face of a move towards equality. It is a move towards inequality, a major move; and, as I say, it is unjust and seen to be unjust by all those factory workers, for example, to whom the noble Earl referred and whom I have very much in mind and shall refer to again.
If one even wanted to have an alteration in the standard rate, the way to temper the inequity of it would have been to make compensating adjustments in the benefits. What the Government are proposing, in addition to the standard rate increase, is that this should be matched by reductions in benefits. When I explained that the present structure of taxation is such that broadly the combination of direct and indirect taxes is to leave the average household neutral in its effect, I should have gone on to say that when one comes to consider the benefits and subsidies paid out of the taxes so collected in direct and indirect taxation, one realises that that is where the progressive effect is felt. If, therefore, you increase the subsidies you increase the progression; if you reduce the subsidies you increase the regressive effect, and you increase the injustice of a package which we now see is doubly unjust. It is unjust in the first proposal, the standard rate proposal, which helps those most at the top of the income scale, and it is unjust in its compensating benefit proposals which hurt those most at the lower end of the income scale.
So far from balancing what, in my opinion, was not appropriate at the present time but which, in the view of Her Majesty's Government, was considered to be appropriate, namely, a reduction in the standard rate, with some

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progressive measure, they have added to the injustice of the situation by an additionally regressive, unjust measure with regard to the benefits. I do not need to go into them all in detail; they have been discussed on a previous occasion. First of all, dealing with the standard rate proposal, I say that when taken into account with all the other background, of which we are fully aware, it fails in terms of inequity.
I want now to turn, very shortly, to the incentive argument. As was made clear on a previous occasion some two weeks ago, there is no evidence—apart from the Government's bold assertion—to justify the view that a reduction in personal taxation leads to increased individual effort. There is some evidence to the contrary, but I do not think one could put it more cautiously than I did on that occasion by saying that all the evidence is best summarised by saying that there is nothing to support the view that an increase in taxation is a deterrent, or a reduction in personal taxation an incentive to additional effort. Nevertheless, the Government, anxious to find some clothing for this naked attempt to assist those whose need for assistance is by no means the greatest in the community, have attempted to clothe their proposal with the argument about the incentive effect, and the incentive, in particular, to the producers.
I want to make it clear that I do not believe in this argument at all; but what I am now going on to say is that even if noble Lords opposite believe, as I am sure they do, in the argument they are putting forward, there is nothing whatever to substantiate it, even on their basis. First of all, the argument about helping producers falls flat to the ground when one realises that the greatest help that is proposed is help to the non-producer. Those who produce, get income for their work which is called "earned income"; those who do not produce may receive their income from either their past efforts or their parents' past efforts. The facts indicate that in terms of large incomes it is mostly the latter category, and, so far as I know, those facts have never been contraverted. But whatever the source of it, that is called "unearned income".
The proposals before us are designed to give the greatest help to unearned
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income as opposed to earned income. It really is nonsense for the noble Earl to assert, as he has just done, and it was asserted previously—I hope that is not too strong a term, but I will repeat it—it is really nonsense to assert that this proposal is directed towards producers, when the greatest benefit is towards the non-producers. That is the first argument; and not one word has been said, either in this House or in another place, about that very obvious and elementary fact. I am grateful to the noble Earl for having referred to his desire to help those at the top of the scale who have the greatest responsibilities, and those on the factory floor. If he is alleging that there is an incentive effect so far as those at the top of the scale, those who have major responsibilities, are concerned; if he believes (and I absolutely do not believe and I deny) that people who have the most responsibie jobs in our community and which, as a result, attract very high levels of remuneration, are solely guided by the amount of remuneration which they earn as opposed to the sense of responsibility, the sense of achievement, the respect of the community, the challenge of the job and the satisfaction of the job, then the question I must put to him is, why does he think that those human beings who have these responsibilities are affected by the notion of incentive but that those who work on the factory floor are not so affected? Because the proposals which the Government are making are the most largely deterrent proposals that could be put together so far as those with small incomes are concerned.
Let me give some examples. In principle, the noble Earl would agree straight away that the more you extend means-tested benefits, as the Government are proposing to do on a very large scale, the more you are saying that those at the appropriate levels of income, once they attempt to earn more, will retain less of that additional pound earned because they will lose some of the means-tested benefits. That is what is meant by means-tested benefits. Accordingly, there will be a situation—and it comes out most starkly if we consider the Family Income Supplements Scheme—where many people will be at a level at which every additional pound earned will mean ten shillings lost in family income supplement.

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That is a rate of 50 per cent. Some of those people will be taxpayers, and, the standard rate being 30 per cent., their situation will be that for every additional pound earned at those relevant levels 80 per cent. will be deducted: 50 per cent. will be lost in "F.I.S." and 30 per cent. in standard rate. So of every additional pound earned—this is the incentive argument of noble Lords opposite—4s. will be retained. That is a great incentive to earn the additional pound, by sweat and tears, at the end of a hard day on the factory floor! That is the picture which the noble Earl has in mind, and which I share with him.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, if the noble Lord will allow me to interrupt, may I ask whether it is not true that it was his Government who reduced the threshold of tax to the level which brought these people who are eligible for family incomes supplement—those who are earning less than £15 a week—within the tax threshold?
LORD DIAMOND: My Lords, of course it was. I am delighted that the noble Lord reminded me of that, and I wish he would follow our good example. Instead of taking the view that those at the top of the scale were first in the queue for help in this country, I wish he would have regard to those at the bottom of the scale and raise the threshold again. This is an obvious way of dealing with the difficulty. If he had wanted to give a boost to the economy and to people earning at all levels by reducing taxes, what could have been better than to give help, as we did, at the bottom end of the scale? That is the essential difference between the noble Lord and myself and between our two sides. I believe, as profoundly, no doubt, as he does the other way, that those at the bottom of the scale come first. It is just as simple as that.
LORD FORBES: My Lords, the noble Lord is trying to tell us that there is no incentive by reducing taxation. Does the noble Lord believe that if taxation was 20s. in the pound there would be any incentive to work?
LORD DIAMOND: My Lords, I do not know whether I had the undeserved privilege of being listened to by the noble Lord when I detailed all the papers that
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had been produced as a result of lengthy research in this country, in America and in Canada, on the incentive effect, or deterrent effect, of taxation. If I was not so privileged on that occasion, perhaps the best reply to the noble Lord would be to ask whether he would pay me the courtesy of reading what I then said, when I think he will find a full answer to what he has said. I do not think I should go on to say that you can carry on any argument ad absurdum, because I do not consider that that would be in the spirit of what I am trying to put over.
What I am saying is that in terms of incentive effect I deny completely what the noble Earl said, that the proposals would have equal effect on those at the top of the scale of responsibility and those who work on the factory floor. So far as those who work on the factory floor are concerned, you will have a situation where the husband will go home one night and say to his wife, "We cannot make ends meet. Would you, dear, consider taking a job?" She will say, "Yes", and she will take a job. But if he is in the situation which I have described, with family income supplement and bordering on standard rate taxation, and if, in addition, the family are getting help with school uniforms or any other of the many benefits which are being affected by the proposals put forward in order to make these tax reductions possible, then the situation may well be that the wife's going out to work will make the family income less in total.
That is what the noble Earl put forward as the incentive effect for those on the factory floor and, with respect, I throw the argument back at him. It does not carry at all. So I am saying—and if my words indicate that I feel this very seriously and sincerely, I make no apology for the words I have used—that both in terms of equity and in terms of selectivity these proposals are wholly wrong.
I now turn shortly to corporation tax. We should all be delighted if the rate of economic growth could be increased. It would help all round.
LORD BOOTHBY: Hear, hear!
LORD DIAMOND: There is only one intervention in this House which does not

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need to be named, because we all recognise, and have always recognised, the tonality of it.
If, for example, the rate of growth could be increased, then wage demands would immediately be seen to be less inflationary, because it is only the excess of the nominal wage over and above the rate of growth which produces the inflationary effect. If resources could be increased in this way we should have more for social services, and there would not be these difficult arguments in which we are now engaged about the need for reducing benefits. So we should all be delighted if higher economic growth could be achieved, especially now, when the main economic barrier which faced the Labour Government for virtually the whole of their period of office—namely, that of a critical balance-of-payments difficulty—no longer exists. There were any number of steps which one then wanted to take to stimulate and encourage growth, but which one could not take because one immediately ran flat into the balance-of-payments problem.
That problem is no longer with us. It is an extraordinary situation—extraordinary to me, after listening for six years to every economic debate in another place—to have an economic debate now when the words "balance-of-payments crisis" do not arise. I am sure we all realise what a vast difference it is to work in the new climate rather than in the old one. Therefore I repeat that it would be welcome to all of us if an increase in the economic growth rate could be achieved.
What noble Lords opposite are saying is that this growth can be encouraged by a reduction in corporation tax—a totally unsupported assertion. There is no evidence anywhere that there is a correlation between rates of taxation—and overall, as everybody knows, we are merely in the middle of the league table so far as the total impact of taxation is concerned, as measured by a proportion of the gross national product—and rates of growth. What there is, however, is a most careful and recent and lengthy study by the Brookings Institute. They went into every possible cause, in their view, of low growth, and they identified a number.
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The most familiar one which they identified was the increase in working population which took place up to 1964, but which then ceased for reasons which we all understand. But the two items which they did not, and could not, specify as elements in the causes of low growth in this country were effective taxation rates and marginal taxation rates. Neither of those was identified as a possible cause of low growth. So I repeat that not only is there no evidence in support of what the noble Earl has alleged, but there is considerable evidence to the contrary.
What we do know is that the one factor which is essential for accelerated growth is an accelerated rate of investment. That we all know, and I hope we are on common ground on that. An accelerated rate of investment produces greater industrial growth. But the total investment proposals to which the noble Earl referred, including a reduced corporation tax—here, again, I say that you cannot look at the tax by itself; you must look at all the circumstances which go with it—means that firms who wish to invest will have less benefit over the life of the asset concerned than they would otherwise have. That has been examined by accountant after accountant, time and time again, in recent weeks, and every one has come out with the same conclusion so far as his own firm is concerned; namely, that it will be worse off under the totality of the new proposals than it would have been before. Yet we know that the one factor essential for growth is additional investment, which should be stimulated, and the obvious incentive is to give the manufacturer, the businessman, financial encouragement when he makes his investment.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, I have listened to the noble Lord's argument, with very great interest. I have read them for many years as recorded in another place, and I never thought that we should hear in this House a similar speech, such as he has been making to-day. But surely he is grossly minimising the effect of purchasing power on growth, and also the effect of the cash situation on investment policy. I expect that he is on the boards of many companies at the moment, and there must be many of them who are extremely short of cash. What dictates investment is not

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so much the long-term element of investment grants and so on, but the short-term cash.
LORD DIAMOND: My Lords, I am doubly indebted to the noble Lord: first, because, in spite of what is no doubt a very busy business life, he has found time to read speeches that some of us made in another place; and, secondly, because he has touched on two additional points which I think are extremely relevant and which I had not touched on merely because one does not wish one's speeches to go on over-long. Of course he is absolutely right in saying that purchasing power—namely, the prospect of selling what you are going to make with a new machine—is a most relevant consideration in the decision to invest in a new machine. But my case is that there is nothing in the proposals to increase growth. There is nothing at all in the proposals to stimulate the economy.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer made it absolutely clear that he regarded the demand pressures as being such that they ought not to be increased, and he produced a piece of paper which I have challenged—and which I am going to challenge again shortly—to demonstrate that the demand was neutral under his total mini-Budget proposals. Therefore, there is no additional proposal made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to meet the noble Lord's point.
The noble Lord's second point concerned cash. Here again, I am grateful to the noble Lord because he will have heard, as the rest of us did, the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown, speaking from first-hand experience of one of the largest firms in the country, explain the cash shortage which was going to result from these proposals at the important time when the board was going to invest. I listened very carefully to the point which the noble Lord was making. I suggest to him, with respect, that the important time in terms of cash shortage is not now: the important time for cash is when you need to sign the cheque for the investment you are making. And because the cash would not be available in this very large firm, they were foreseeing difficulties in carrying out their investment plans. We have all heard of Rolls Royce, who have said exactly the same thing: that their cash-flow difficulties are being contributed to in a large measure by the Government's
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proposals for the withdrawal of investment grants. There are many other identical cases, all making the same point: and it is at the point of time of signing the cheque for the investment in question that a wise board would see that the money is in the bank account first.
LORD HAWKE: It will be in the bank account, my Lords, if it has not been paid out in taxation.
LORD DIAMOND: Of course it will. It will be in the bank account if it has not been paid out in taxation or in increased dividends in the meantime. I am delighted to see so many noble Lords shake their heads in a negative direction. No doubt they are going to see to it, when their boards meet, that the additional £70 million, which is a retrospective present for this year for which they have no need, or for which they have no budgetary need, will be earmarked for future investment and not used to meet pressures for increased dividends.
LORD HAWKE: I think the noble Lord is grossly distorting the situation. In most cases it will be used to reduce the heavy bank overdraft, to start with, thus enabling them to plan ahead for further investment.
LORD DIAMOND: I am sure the noble Lord is speaking from his own experience, and I hope there will be many such cases in which the money is so used. Neither he nor I can assert with any individual authority what will happen in all the cases involved in this £70 million, given as a retrospective present in the way I have described. I have no doubt there will be some who will do as the noble Lord suggests and some who will find it appropriate to increase their dividends.
So what I am saying—and I hope to draw to a conclusion very quickly now—is that the proposals so far as corporation tax is concerned are either irrelevant or inimical to growth, inasmuch as they are part of a total set of proposals which make the would-be investor worse off. May I say, just very quickly, that I do not yet know what the practice of this House is (I hope to learn in due course, by application of my mind and such intelligence as I have) but two weeks ago there was a debate in which I not only asked but challenged the Government on the very basis of their justification for

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these proposals all told: namely, that demand was neutral. On the basis of the information so far available, I do not believe it. Nor do most City commentors. I am in good company, because neither did the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time when he said that the demand effect was neutral if you took into account income tax only—and we have £70 million plus £90 million plus £100 million of corporation tax in addition.
I said at the time that I should be putting down Questions to the Government. The noble Earl knows that I want to co-operate as much as I reasonably can in giving the Government notice of matters I intend to raise. I therefore put down two Questions fully on this point, saying to the Government, "You know the figures; you know what the demand effect is. Please be good enough to tell us, to tell both Houses of Parliament, what your figures are". Those Questions went down two weeks ago. I have not had any reply, and this debate is taking place to-day. It is absolutely fundamental to one's belief in the sincerity of the Government, as to whether they have achieved what they set out to achieve—namely, cuts to compensate for the tax hand-outs, as I believe they are vulgarly called, though we all know what that means—or whether they have not. As I say, I do not know what is the practice of this House, but in another place there would be a most unholy row if this situation were to be repeated. I want to say no more about it than that except that I still assert, the more strongly because it has taken so much longer for the Government to say what they must have known before they made their first statement to divulge it, that I do not myself believe that the Government are in a position to make these tax hand-outs.
So, finally, to summarise what I have been saying, there is nothing in these proposals to help growth. There is nothing to help employment. Wage demands will be stimulated by the additional cost of living which the proposals entail; and there will be an increased sense of unfairness, an increased friction in our society, because of the way in which the standard rate works.
There was only one argument left—the "boost to the economy" argument.
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As to that, I would ask noble Lords to take a look at the Stock Exchange figures. From my own recollection, I cannot recollect a larger fall in such a short period as has taken place since the mini-Budget. I am not going to be so foolish as to say that that fall has been wholly attributable to the mini-Budget, but what I am saying, and what I sincerely believe, is that this is the comment of the City and of those who invest—and it is a very wide public indeed that is involved—on the Government's failure to deal with the essential problems. These are peripheral proposals, almost irrelevant and in certain cases, as I say, inimical to what we all want to achieve. I think that shows that the Government have lost the confidence of their natural allies. They have certainly incurred the hostility of the workers, and they deserve censure from all of us who believe, as I do, and as all my noble friends behind me do, that to transfer burdens deliberately from the richer to the poorer, for no benefit to the nation as a whole, is an offence to our social conscience.
3.38 p.m.
LORD ARDWICK: My Lords, I am somewhat abashed to find myself to-day in such illustrious and in such sparse company. The sparseness I attribute to the fact that your Lordships expended all your passions in the previous debate. But I am a frustrate from that debate; I had been abroad. When I got back I found that there were about 45 names on the list, and I feared that the Whips would be pursing their lips at me if I made my name the 46th.
I was very glad to hear my noble friend Lord Diamond say that we on this side of the House are not in love with high taxation, because many of my political friends, in their zeal, often like to say exactly that: that Labour is essentially a Party which believes in high taxation, and this is what distinguishes it from the Party opposite. I think that statements of this kind are not merely heroic; they are an invitation to political martydom; and every time somebody makes a statement of this kind the publicity people in Conservative Central Office must hear the birds singing.
I do not think that such statements are really true. The Conservative Party, of course, take a great pride in the tax

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reductions they were able to make during their 13 years of office, but they were of course, in the long run, chicken-feed. But at other times the Conservative Party take credit for maintaining comprehensive State welfare, which meant that, in spite of the tax reductions that were made, the pattern of taxation at the end of their last period of office was not very different from what it was at the beginning. The truth, my Lords, surely is that all Parties in power in advanced industrial countries of the West are Parties which maintain, and must maintain, high State welfare, and therefore must maintain, in order to support it, pretty high taxation and other charges.
I do not believe that the new Government in this country is going to dismantle the Welfare State, and so I do not believe that when their period of office has expired we shall finish up as a low-tax country. But I think that those who share my political views will stand a much better chance of being returned to power if they express their ideas in a more acceptable and more realistic way. Labour believes in developing a first-class comprehensive Welfare State and in raising the money to do so by taxations and contributions. If you believe in the Church, you cannot begrudge the tithes. Certainly high tax revenue will be necessary, but the rate of taxation will of course depend on the nation's capacity for economic growth. Only if there is sustained and conspicuous growth can a Government, any Government, gratify the competing wishes that everybody has for better welfare and more money for personal consumption.
But, of course, the high rate of taxation prevailing when the Labour Government went out of office was not wholly due to expenditure on welfare. Quite a lot of it was imposed in order to keep down consumption in the interests of exports and of balance of trade. So there was ample room when the Conservative Government took over, in view of the buoyancy of exports and the size of the surplus, to take off 6d., or even more, from the standard rate of income tax. And they could have left it at that, but for one fact: the Government were not able to do so because they felt they could not contribute, even marginally, to current inflation, in the absence of any clearly
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visible policy to bring it to a halt in the near future. The reason that the promised tax reduction has not been greeted by us or, to judge by the opinion polls, by the rest of the country, with unalloyed bliss is simply the other side of the package: the increased charges for school milk, meals and so on.
The double effect of the mini-Budget was sharply brought home to me an hour or two after the Chancellor had spoken by the lady who was helping me to get down on paper a few words of commentary about it. In the middle of this exercise the new tax tables arrived and it required only a minute or two of mental arithmetic to work out that, whereas I was to be given a bonus which might enable me to have a jolly good holiday, she, with children at school, would be quite a bit worse off. She was given a minus! It was not a transfer from the poor to the rich, it was a transfer from the "sub-affluent" to the rather more affluent. What the Government have done in this mini-Budget has been to transfer wealth from people like her to people like me.
There is a powerful case for the radical revision of the whole of our tax system and a new look needs to be taken at all our methods of financing State welfare. But what was obnoxious, I think, about the mini-Budget was that it tinkered with both problems. What was unacceptable was the trade-off between tax reduction and the increase in welfare charges. It is true that the Government have tempered the wind to the shorn lambs at the botttom end of society. The lowest paid workers have, to some extent, been taken care of. But the lower-paid workers (if I may continue the analogy) have been—and feel they have been—fleeced.
In any talk of tax reform we hear a great deal about the penal taxation of the highest-paid people in the country; and I have some sympathy with the reformers who wish to reduce surtax on earned income. This is a very old view of mine, and I got myself into trouble, when I was editor of the Daily Herald, by saying just that—and Mr. Macmillan lived on it for some weeks. But there is another group of taxpayers—those whom my noble friend Lord Diamond mentioned—at the lower end of the tax tables who are also paying what for them

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are penal rates; and very little is heard about them. It is these people who ought to have been the first to benefit from the tax windfall. They have been penalised under both Labour and Conservative Governments, and nobody seems to mind. All that happens is that as inflation proceeds the Inland Revenue find it convenient to drop out a few thousands tax-papers at the lowest end of the scale who ought never to have been in the tax brackets at all.
There has been a great deal of talk about a minimum wage of £16 a week. But even after the new tax cut a married couple living on what is now agreed to be the socially acceptable minimum will be paying tax at the rate of something like £70 a year. This, my Lords, on £16 a week! And these are the people who are receiving less than two-thirds of the average industrial wage.
If the tax tables are correct, even a married couple with a total miserable income of £13 10s. a week will be paying £30 a year in income tax. And, of course, for a single person the position is worse. A widow, working perhaps in a supermarket and earning £9 a week, is already a taxpayer to the extent of £15 a year. Direct tax is being imposed on people who have not enough to live on at the minimum standard; and this has been going on for far too long, under other Governments as well as this one. Indeed, it has been said that there is a point at which the limited generosity of the supplementary benefits officer collides with the unlimited rapacity of the tax gatherer. In other words, the sum which the "supplementary man" thinks is essential may bring the recipient into the tax brackets. If that is true, it is not only absurd; it is appalling.
My Lords, at the risk of damaging my case (because it takes a very rash man to-day to speak a good word for people who are known as the "revolting students") may I remind those who are so anxious to turn student grants into loans that the moment a young person graduates and earns a wage of £21 a week—as a school teacher, for example—he will be paying immediately nearly 16 per cent. of his salary, or nearly £4 a week, in income tax. I am not going to pretend that this is unjust; but surely it is enough. Taxation at this rate is heavy enough without imposing a load of debt
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upon him. From the beginning of his working life this man is contributing substantially to the system from which he has benefited; and he will go on for the whole of his working life contributing in perhaps larger and larger amounts. And even beyond his working life, when he comes to pension. He will be paying tax to his dying day.
My Lords, these are problems which all political Parties, and not just the Government in office, will have to think seriously about. And if, as I hope, we go into Europe, the need for revision will be even more compelling: because if we are going to adjust to the European system on one side, which implies a value added tax, we have to adjust to it also on the other side and visualise pensions and family allowances on the more generous European scale. I have never been able to understand how the Party opposite, with their commendable enthusiasm for Europe, can talk in terms which imply lower State welfare instead of the harmonisation which is going to be essential, even mandatory, towards the higher European scales. It is one of those mysteries of this Government, who work in such a mysterious way their wonders to perform, that even some of their supporters are dubious whether they will in fact be achieved.
3.50 p.m.
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I intervene for two or three minutes, with humble apologies for not having put my name on the list. I was so interested by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, that I could not resist rising to my feet. I thought that at some points in his speech the noble Lord agreed with his noble friend Lord Ardwick, that on balance we in this country are too heavily taxed right across the board. I do not think that in his heart of hearts any noble Lord would deny that fact. The Budget surplus is grossly excessive. In my judgment to maintain a surplus of something around £1,000 million is an enormous disincentive to economic growth in this country.
This has nothing to do with the balance of payments but it brings me to the Government proposal for a cut in income tax of 6d. in the pound. I am bound to say that I cannot but agree with the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, that this

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cut will bring real benefit only to the very rich, who do not want it, who have not asked for it and who do not need it. An increase in family allowance accompanied by a claw-back, which was advocated, as the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, will remember, at the time of the last Budget by the late Jain Macleod—and which the noble Lord has advocated in your Lordships' House this afternoon—would have brought far greater benefit to the lower income groups. It is the lower—not the lowest but the lower—income groups, as the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick said, who will suffer most by these proposals.
Now I come to a point at which I am afraid I must dissent entirely from the noble Lord, Lord Diamond. At a time of industrial stagnation and wholly inadequate investment in industry, the cut in corporation tax, accompanied as it is by the withdrawal of investment grants, is in my opinion wholly inadequate. There seemed to be a moment when the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, was trying to suggest that corporation tax at its present level did not prevent industrial investment. If he really believes that, then I must say that I entirely disbelieve it. I think that corporation tax is a vicious tax in itself. I would remind noble Lords that it was rejected by the last Royal Commission on income tax presided over by Lord Radcliffe which sat for four and a half years. The Royal Commission rejected two taxes which are a gross disincentive to investment: one was the corporation tax and the other the capital gains tax in its present form. I think that the capital gains tax is a disincentive to the investment of risk capital. Needless to say, my Lords, almost immediately afterwards both taxes were put on the Statute Book, which shows how much use are Royal Commissions, even though they may sit for four and a half years.
I believe, my Lords, that over the next few months Her Majesty's Government must give intense and concentrated thought to the vital question of economic growth, which is the only thing that really matters to this country to-day, and is the only method by which the present galloping inflation can ever be checked. We must have greater economic growth and greater productivity. I think that the Government must consider the corporation
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tax in a far more radical way before the next Budget, and capital gains tax and other disincentives to investment in industry, because the whole objective of any Government in this country to-day, whatever their political complexion, must be designed to achieve greater economic growth, greater investment in industry, without which, as a nation, we shall never achieve anything.
3.55 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, for the studied moderation with which he has spoken. Nevertheless, it failed to conceal some very sharp barbs. If I may say so (this sounds very patronising, but it is not meant to be) I think that the noble Lord has already found his way round your Lordships' House very adequately indeed. Of course he speaks with very considerable authority on these matters, and that I recognise. I think that in his way, as Chief Secretary, he was almost as awesome a spectacle and had almost as sharp a knife as my right honourable friend John Boyd-Carpenter when he was in that particular seat and I was at times the victim of his knife. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, has made an indelible impression on the Treasury.
My Lords, I shall be brief in winding up this short discussion. I was very glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, say that the Labour Party, like the Conservative Party, saw no great merit in high taxaion per se. All I can say is that the proof of the pudding is sometimes to be found in the eating; and the proof of the pudding was a rise in taxation rates equivalent to £3,000 million a year in the course of the six years of the Labour Administration, and an immediate cut in taxation, both in corporation tax and also in income tax, at the start of the new Administration.
I would also agree with what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, about the need for a searching look at the whole ramshackle system of taxation in this country. I cordially assent, and I hope that in the lifetime of this Government we shall see such a searching look taken it is certainly overdue. The noble Lord, Lord Boothby, made a powerful plea for lower taxation in this country, and I would cordially assent, too, to what he said. I believe that, on any basis of

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comparison, so far as personal income tax is concerned the rate in the United Kingdom is higher than in any other major industrialised country. This will remain true even when the proposed reduction comes into effect. For example, in this country a married man with two children is more heavily taxed at almost all levels of income tax than he would be in the United States or in any European country, with the exception of the Netherlands and Sweden. Personal taxation has been too high in this country for too long, and it is high time that this first reduction for eleven years should be made.
In a very powerful speech the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, contested the view of this Government about the effect on incentives of a reduction in the rate of personal taxation. I did not have the good fortune to listen to the noble Lord when he spoke in the long debate two weeks ago, but I read carefully what he said then and I have listened carefully to what he had to say to-day. The noble Lord went on to contrast the fact that with the reduction in the standard rate there will be a bigger gross reduction in tax liability on unearned income than on earned income and this is true. But it is merely a reflection of the fact that earned income bears less tax than investment income of a similar amount; and if you are going to reduce the standard amount the fact that there is a larger decrease in the amount of tax borne by investment income follows as night follows day. But, my Lords, I would hold that this reduction is also desirable in order to encourage savings and indeed investment—just the investment for which noble Lords opposite are pressing.
The noble Lord also stated his belief that it was extremely improbable that reductions in the rate of tax for those who are earning good incomes will do anything to increase incentive or produce extra effort. He said that there are many other things which cause people to work hard and well. Of course I would grant that straight away. We all have a pride in our jobs. We all have a sense of responsibility—at least I hope we do—in our work. We have a sense of duty, and indeed (although it may be considered old-fashioned and "corny" to say so) I
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think that we have a sense of patriotism. These are all factors at work in our society, and they affect many people in varying degrees. But, although this is not perhaps susceptible of proof in a learned treatise, I should have thought on the basis of most of our experience that, to what ever extent men are driven to work hard and well by the factors to which I have alluded, it is against all human experience to deny that man's desire to improve his own material standard of living and that of his wife and family is a very real factor, working in almost all of us. Therefore I would suggest to the noble Lord that he must wait and see.
I believe that these reductions in the standard rate of tax will call for and produce that greater incentive, and therefore that better effort, which they are designed to produce. I think this applies lower down the scale as well. If the noble Lord has done me the justice, which I have done him, of listening to what I said two weeks ago, or of reading my words, although it is true that the tax benefits lower down the scale are going to be less, the sort of argument which the noble Lord was adducing ignores entirely the dynamic effect of these tax changes. Noble Lords in their criticism also ignore the net impact upon the favoured £25-per-week wage-earner. They are thinking entirely in static terms.
I do not want to repeat what I said in the debate two weeks ago, but when noble Lords opposite speak of a lowering of the platform of State welfare they are surely ignoring what we are doing in the total package by way of improved exemptions and relaxations in the social services for the less well off families. This should not be ignored, any more than the Family Income Supplements Scheme, which we shall be debating in a week or so and into which therefore I will not go this afternoon in any great detail. By the same token, it is a great mistake to ignore what is being won in this package by way of improvements to the hospital service, to old people's housing and in many areas of national life where we all want to see advances.
Turning to corporation tax, I believe, like the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, that the key here, as in so much else, is growth. I think that one of the saddest aspects of our economic history over the last two decades or so—and this does not

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lie with any particular Government—is that we have been overtaken in growth by our nearer neighbours. I believe that we should searchingly probe the reasons for this. I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, that the Brookings Institute, in their remarkable and comprehensive study of the British economy, have got to the bottom of this. I do not believe that anybody has yet got to the bottom of it. But I believe that this should be one of the great objectives of economic policy to which we should all be addressing ourselves.
In this matter of corporate incentive, the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, conceded that investment must be related to the cash available to a company for investment—as the noble Lord said, to what was in the bank. But the corporation tax reduction is designed to operate precisely in this area. It is designed to add to the cash resources available to the corporate sector for investment. The noble Lord, Lord Diamond, put his case fairly, I admit, and also squarely, but I do not think he took fully into account that the new arrangements for investment will cover a wider field—for example, they will include investment in service industries in the development areas. Also, he did not refer to something which I believe to be very important; that is, the essential efficiency of a system which operates by way of relief against the profits of the company. This I hold to be a guarantee against the subsidising of inefficiency, and we have seen too much such subsidising in the last decade or so.
The noble Lord asked me a number of extremely difficult questions on the problem of demand. He referred to two Questions which he tabled after our debate on November 18. I should like to apologise to the noble Lord if he has not yet received Answers to those Questions.
LORD DIAMOND: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl, but since I spoke I have been handed an Answer to one of the Questions. I am young and innocent, and I believe that this was just coincidental.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, of course I will grant that the noble Lord is young, at least in spirit, but he has yet to convince me of his total innocence. All I would say is that, normally speaking, it is our custom—though perhaps we
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should look at our custom—to take about two weeks to answer a Question for Written Answer, So far as I know, there has been no deliberate hold-up of the works in this case, but I apologise to the noble Lord and congratulate him on the effect his remarks have had. At this stage, not having before me the Answer which the noble Lord has received, I think it would be wise for me to refrain from commenting on an extremely difficult area, an area to which I shall be glad to address myself in reply on some subsequent occasion.
I do not wish, and I do not think that the House would wish me, to renew our debate of two weeks ago. I am aware that I have not answered all the specific points which the noble Lord put to me, but I have covered certain of them. I do not suppose that I shall be able to convince the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, in the course of my brief reply, of the essential virtues of the Government's package. I believe that it is now time that we should perhaps pass on to other matters on our programme this afternoon.
On Question, Bill read 2a: Committee negatived.

EXPIRING LAWS CONTINUANCE BILL
4.10 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD WINDLESIIAM): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Some Members of your Lordships' House will know that this is an annual occasion when certain legislation of a temporary character is continued in force for a further year. With the passage of time the number of items has dwindled until to-day we are left with only two: the control of immigration to Britain by people from other countries, and a limited system by which local planning authorities and licensing justices can work together in certain areas of the country. I will have a few words to say about licensing planning later on, but it is the usual practice of both Houses to make use of this annual occasion for a discussion of the far more important subject of the working of our immigration controls.
It has often been pointed out that this temporary basis for our immigration laws

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is a most unsatisfactory one dating, as it does in the case of aliens, back to an Act passed within 24 hours of one of the most significant dates in history: August 4, 1914. A great deal has happened since the proclamation of a state of war with Germany, but ever since then the control of immigration has been continued on a year to year basis, and Ministers in successive Governments, irrespective of Party, have vied with each other in saying just how unsatisfactory this temporary basis for our immigration control was in practice and how firm was their determination to put matters on a permanent basis as soon as possible. There is a French proverb, however, which runs:
"There is nothing so lasting as the provisional."
That certainly has turned out to be true in this case. In 1962 Commonwealth citizens became subject to immigration control; in 1968 further legislation was enacted; but, my Lords, the expiring laws procedure endured. For this reason, I am asking your Lordships once again for your agreement to extend these powers for another year.
In doing so, however, I think I can say with some confidence what no predecessor of mine would have been rash enough to predict: that this should be the last time that the Government will need to renew the powers referred to in Clause 1(1) of this Bill. Of course no one can safely predict that the law will be changed until an enactment is safely on the Statute Book; but as noble Lords will know, the Government are firmly committed to the introduction of comprehensive legislation making immigration control permanent. A Bill is now in the course of being drafted and will be laid before Parliament this Session. It will not be long before the Bill is published, and whatever differences there may be between us when its contents come to be debated, I hope that to-day we can all welcome the fact that an objective shared between the major Parties for so long is at last in sight of being achieved; that is, that the legislation will in future be on a permanent basis.
As noble Lords will know, the forthcoming legislative proposals were contained in our Election Manifesto; they were referred to by my right honourable
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friend in the debate on the Queen's Speech in another place, and again in a debate on the Committee stage of this Bill in another place last week. It would, I think, be inappropriate to seek to debate the very real differences which exist between the Opposition and the Government on immigration policy this afternoon since we shall have ample opportunity to do so when the actual proposals are before us later in the Session. But what I thought might be helpful to your Lordships would be if I were briefly to summarise the main principles—there are only three—upon which our immigration policy rests and on which the Bill will be based.
First, the measure will be a comprehensive one, replacing both the Acts governing the entry of foreign nationals and those regulating the entry of Commonwealth citizens. It will confer full power on the Home Secretary to take effective action to prevent any further large-scale immigration, and to discharge his responsibilities for applying a just, humane and at the same time effective immigration control. We believe that the knowledge that the Government have this power should have a stabilising effect in the field of community relations. Nothing is more harmful to good community relations than fear; and the fear that is most dangerous of all is that entry may get out of control. Entry is not out of control and it will not be allowed to get out of control. The Government have made it quite clear that there is to be no more large-scale permanent immigration. The Bill will contain the necessary powers for this purpose.
Secondly, the basis of entry from the Commonwealth by Commonwealth citizens who come here to work will be altered. As already announced, they will no longer be entitled on entry to remain here indefinitely for settlement, as a Commonwealth employment voucher-holder has been hitherto. Instead, they will be granted work permits for particular jobs, in particular places where resident labour is not available, and for a maximum of 12 months in the first instance. Extensions of stay will be granted if the Commonwealth citizen remains in approved employment or obtains other approved employment. He will not have a right to permanent settlement, but at the end of four years in

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approved employment it will be open to the Home Office to cancel his conditions—that is, to accept him for permanent residence.
Let me say a word about dependants, on which there has been some misunderstanding. Commonwealth citizens coming here with work permits will receive just the same treatment as foreign nationals receive at present. That means that they will be able to bring in, or be followed by, their wives and children up to the age of 18, and the wives and children will be admitted for the same period as the work permit-holder. No other dependants will be admissible during the period that the permit-holder is subject to conditions. If after four years the conditions, are cancelled, the Commonwealth citizen will be eligible to apply to bring in such other dependants—parents over a certain age, for example—whose admission is provided for in the immigration rules.
Thirdly, I should emphasise that there will be nothing in the new Bill to disturb the security of those Commonwealth citizens who are already settled here free of conditions. The ordinary law-abiding immigrant, already accepted for permanent residence under the existing legislation, will retain that status unchanged.
I think we can all agree that, whatever the system of immigration control, it must be enforced. In the last few months I have been able to visit a number of the ports and to meet a cross-section of members of the Immigration Service. I must say that I have been impressed by the way in which the immigration officers do their work. They are currently handling no fewer than 29½ million arrivals and departures at the ports a year. Of these, approximately 11 million are subject to immigration control. The vast majority are routine law-abiding visitors who are very welcome to this country. Many are tired on arrival, a few are irritable, some may have difficulty in making themselves understood, while a tiny minority may be suspect for one reason or another. But all must be treated by the immigration officer with patience, courtesy and understanding.
We have to remember that the immigration officers are both the main line of defence against the evasion of our immigration controls, and at the same time a reception service, being the first people whom the visitor from overseas meets on
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arrival in this country. It is extremely difficult to combine this double role, and I should like to pay tribute to-day to the very competent and fair way in which it is performed by members of the Immigration Service. While the immigration officer will always be on his guard to detect those who, by deception or other means, may try to frustrate the immigration control at the ports, there are from time to time, unfortunately, instances of would-be immigrants who attempt to by-pass the ports altogether. These are the people who come in small boats—or perhaps hired aircraft—or who, in one way or another, manage to smuggle themselves through a port without submitting to examination by an immigration officer. There have been several such cases reported in the Press recently, and I make the point in passing that the existence of illegal immigration is in itself an indication of the effectiveness of the controls at the authorised points of entry.
To prevent these instances, the police are working in co-operation with the Immigration Service, Customs and the Coastguard Service. There is close liaison between these Services, and they are well aware of the need for constant vigilance. All illegal immigrants detected are promptly returned to their own country, except for the few who may be needed as witnesses in criminal prosecutions of the smugglers. Nor have the courts been slow to impose substantial terms of imprisonment on those who traffic in human misery. Noble Lords may remember the case of 40 illegal immigrants from India who were discovered crowded together in a cellar in Bradford last July. Resulting from police inquiries, at the Leeds Assizes recently eight men were found guilty of a conspiracy to contravene the provisions of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, and were sentenced to periods of imprisonment ranging from 15 months to 7 years. My right honourable friend is in touch with chief officers of police about the necessary precautions, and I can assure your Lordships that we are conscious of the need to take every possible measure to detect and punish those who engage in the smuggling of immigrants into this country.
Rather separate from illegal immigration in the true sense, which is what I have been describing, is evasion. Here the chief anxiety is felt about Commonwealth citizens 'who obtain entry as

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visitors or students, and who then, by one means or another, seek to stay on indefinitely. It is important not to exaggerate the scale of this evasion: to the best of my knowledge it is modest. In the nature of things it is impossible to be certain, but I would invite those of your Lordships who are particularly interested in this subject to refer to the memorandum that the Home Office presented to the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration of the House of Commons, which is printed as an Appendix to the minutes of evidence, dated February 19, 1970. Paragraph 3 of that memorandum sets out the calculation of what is known as the "net balance figure" for the period from July 1, 1962, when Commonwealth immigration control was introduced, to June 30, 1969, a period of seven years.
Subject to the qualifications which are set out in that paragraph, a calculation based on the gross admissions and departures of Commonwealth citizens over this period indicates that there is not gross evasion by people from the Commonwealth who have been admitted as visitors or students. And this is supported, with regard to students, by the sample survey referred to in paragraph 8 of the same paper. The indications are that the great mass of Commonwealth citizens admitted as visitors or students do indeed return to their own countries. Of course there are some individual cases where this is not so and I would not want to deny that. But I think it is always worth trying to get a more general picture, if it is possible to do so, over a longer term of years.
There has also been some publicity recently about Commonwealth visitors who come here on charter flights. These passengers come from countries in which the airlines require them to obtain entry certificates (which are endorsements in a passport similar to a visa) before they embark. So the first hurdle that the would-be evader has to jump is the entry certificate officer in the British High Commission post overseas. He will not grant an entry certificate for a visitors to come to this country unless he is reasonably satisfied that the applicant is a bona fide visitor, who intends to return after his visit to the United Kingdom. Next, on arrival in this country the passenger is subject to examination by the immigration
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officer. If the immigration officer admits him, there are special arrangements whereby all charter flight passengers are recorded on entry, and there are also arrangements for checking up on whether they depart on the return flight, and for following up individually those who do not do so. Of course a proportion of people who come on charter flights may have genuine reasons for applying for an extension of stay, and this may or may not be granted by the Home Office. But here again, subject to the occasional failure which is inherent in the nature of the work, our system of control is an effective one and is extremely difficult to evade.
My Lords, with those remarks—
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, may I ask this question? Since there is a complete record of those who come in on charter flights, and those who go out on them, will the noble Lord tell us the number of people who have not gone out again?
LORD WINDLESHAM: Not without notice, my Lords; but if I can obtain that information by the end of the debate, when I shall reply briefly to points that are made. I will give it to the noble Lord.
May I say a few words now on Clause 1(2) of the Bill before us, which concerns licensing planning. This clause provides that Part VII of the Licensing Act 1964, which deals with licensing planning, shall continue in force for another year. I am aware that the continuing renewal of these provisions has aroused some comment in previous years—most recently by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, in this same debate last year. We regret that once more it is necessary to make use of the expiring laws procedure to renew these particular provisions. Noble Lords who have followed this matter (it is a somewhat narrow and technical one, but there are noble Lords who have done so) will know that the previous Government did not feel able to act on the main recommendations of the Committee under the chairmanship of Mr. Ramsay Willis, which was set up in 1964 by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, as Home Secretary, to report on the future need for licensing planning machinery. For our part, the difficulty lies not in any particular doubts we have about the

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conclusions of the Ramsay Willis Committee, as in the fact that the Government are now considering what should be their attitude to the whole question of the licensing laws. Noble Lords will agree that while the general framework of the licensing laws are under consideration it would not be wise for me to hold out too much hope to-day of introducing early legislation on this one, limited, aspect.
I feel that I owe the House an explanation of what licensing planning is. Before I sit down perhaps I may give it. Licensing planning is generally regarded as a useful piece of machinery in those areas of the country—there are 17 of them—where it still applies. It enables the functions of the licensing justices and local planning authorities in the redistribution of on-licensed premises to be co-ordinated, and it is able to take into account local requirements in the light of actual or proposed building developments. The proposals of the licensing planning committee are subject to confirmation by the Secretary of State for the Environment. In a licensing planning area the licensing justices still have power to grant new on-licences but with the exception of restaurants and residential licenses, they must be satisfied that the licensing planning committee does not object. Although of a limited nature, we believe that these co-ordinating functions are useful, and hope that your Lordships will agree to their being extended for a further year. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Windlesham.)
4.30 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, the whole House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for his explanation of this Bill. The Second Reading of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill has usually in both Houses been an absolute field day for anybody who wants to raise any question about immigration. This year is, in some sense at least, exceptional, because we have been told that we shall have in this Session a completely new and comprehensive immigration law put before us for consideration. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, can give me any further assurance about the Part of the Session when it is likely to be introduced. It
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has been said somewhere that it will be introduced in one House or the other before Christmas—I do not know whether the noble Lord can tell us about that. But he has given as an assurance that it will be introduced this Session. That being so, I do not propose myself to commence a debate on immigration matters. We shall have these new laws before us. I do not suppose it is likely that we shall agree with them altogether, but I do not think it would be useful for me to start lo criticise them until we have seen them. Of course, I should not wish, and indeed have no power, to restrain any other noble Lord who wishes to raise any immigration points, but, for the reason I have given, I do not propose to pursue the question of immigration to-day. All I propose to do, if I may, is to attack the whole of this Bill.
My Lords, I hate this Bill. I have always hated this Bill. It is not the way to legislate. I might have hoped to obtain some assistance from the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack on this point if he had remained here. I am not without hope in the case of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, who I remember expressed a similar sort of view on a previous occasion. Of course, it must very occasionally happen that Parliament thinks that a law it is enacting need be effective for only a very short time, and therefore it may say that it is to last for a year, and provide that it may be renewed at the end of the year. But, for one reason or another, we have had quite a number, and a bad habit has grown up among Government Departments of automatically coming along and saying, "Just this twelve more months only, please", sometimes for about twenty years, in the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill. We used to have licensing Acts, rent control Acts, the Tenancy of Shops (Scotland) Act and other similar Acts, until a few years ago we were left with only five.
First, there was the Accommodation Agencies Act 1953. The noble Lord, Lord Ilford, is no longer with us, but I rather think (though I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, will know better than I) it was a Private Member's Bill which he introduced. Be that as it may, it may be that a Private Member thinks that he is more likely to get a Bill through if he says, "Well, just do

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this for a year and then you can see how it is working." But I know of no one who does not think that that Act ought to have been made permanent. It is true of all these Acts, that if they are right they ought to be made permanent, which means only that they run until they are repealed or amended. If they are not right, then they ought not to be continued.
The Accommodation Agencies Act is a simple Act making it illegal for accommodation agencies who were being employed by a landlord to find tenants for his accommodation, to charge the prospective tenants for simply giving them a list of the premises, which was the very thing those agencies were already being paid to do by the landlord. I think that that concerned the Board of Trade and it was not without some difficulty that I was able to persuade them to make it permanent. Then we had the Ministry of Supply Act 1939 and the Services (Transitional Powers) Act 1945. The only surviving part of that was an emergency war-time provision to enable the Air Ministry to look at their contractors' books. On that point, I remember, I had to deal with Mr. Wedgwood Benn. That had gone on for over twenty years—"Just twelve more months, please." We got rid of that altogether as being unnecessary and that was a great help. When the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, said that most of these Acts had gone with the passage of time it reminded me of the hard work I had had to put in, and I can assure him that it was not done just with the passage of time.
Now I was left, fortunately, with only one enemy—the Home Office—because the other three measures were all concerned with the Home Office. The next one was the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1955. For about thirteen years the Home Office had gone on saying, "Oh, we want it renewed just for twelve more months, please." This was the horror comics Act, to keep out horror comics. I said, "Either it is a good Act and we ought to keep it; or, if it is not any good, what is the point of going on with it?" They also said that there had never been a prosecution. I said, "If there has never been a prosecution, the Act is no good. Let's drop it." They said, "Oh no; we would not drop it because, you see, it is
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the very fact that it is on the Statute Book that stops the horror comics from coming in." I said, "If it does that, then why on earth don't we make it permanent?" And at long last it was agreed that it should be made permanent.
Now I have only two enemies left. One is the Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act 1919 and the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962; and here indeed there is a change. What the Home Office have said for years and years is: "Of course we agree that it is frightfully untidy having on the Statute Book immigration legislation and, indeed, emergency Orders dating from"—I think it was— "the First World War. Of course they all ought to be put together in one Act. We are going to do it, but we cannot get it ready for this Session. So twelve months more, please!" I am very glad to recognise that at long last we are to have comprehensive immigration laws, and that, as the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, said, we shall not see this Act in the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill next year.
So I am left with my last enemy of all, and the question is: Do we really need to have a special Act of Parliament called the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill for what now, at the end of a fight for some years, is the last enemy of all, Part VII of the Licensing Act 1964? Your Lordships should not be deceived by the date. I think this was a consolidating Act. It is quite old, and it is very simple. It was at the end of the war, when it was found there were a few particularly devastated areas, that the conclusion was reached, rightly or wrongly, in rebuilding that not as many public-houses would be needed as there had been before the war. So the question was: which of the licensees who had lost their public-houses by the bombing were to have the new, reduced number of licences? So in what is now Part VII of this Licensing Act there was very sensibly set up a machinery for deciding this question, consisting of joint committees of planning people and licensing people. The House will not be surprised to hear that it has now long ago been decided which of the publicans are to have their licences, and to keep this Act on the Statute Book is absolute rubbish.
A Committee considered this question about three years ago, and I remember

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that in a previous debate on an Expiring Laws Continuance Bill the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, said that one of the reasons why he set up the Committee was to get rid of this nonsense. The Committee have said that the continuance of the Act is nonsense, and that it ought to be thrown away, but they recommended other changes in the licensing laws. So what the Home Office have gone on saying ever since is, "Oh well, it would be administratively tidier if we waited to get rid of this legislation when we introduce our new Licensing Bill". But they never do introduce their new Licensing Bill.
Therefore, I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, whether in this Session the Home Office are going to introduce a new Licensing Bill. If not, then, subject to anything which he says in reply, I shall advise my noble friends, when it comes to the Committee stage of the Bill, to put down two Amendments. One will be an Amendment to make Part VII of the Licensing Act 1964 permanent—which means only, of course, that it will continue in force until the Home Office do introduce their new Licensing Bill—and the other Amendment will be one to make it expire. And they can take their choice.
4.40 p.m.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I shall not venture on the grounds of Licensing Acts, or matters of that sort, and I do not intend to avail myself of the permission of my noble and learned friend to have a "field day" on immigration. But since this is, we hope and understand, the last occasion on which this particular Bill will be brought before your Lordships with any reference to immigration, I hope that I may be allowed to say a few words about it. In the first place I am very happy to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, of the proposed new Bill: I am sure that it is long overdue. Certainly the concept of the Bill is welcome; whether its contents will be welcome remains to be seen.
We have come a long way in our attitude towards immigration. Until 1914 we had the open door, and we were proud of it. The door was then closed (though it was openable under certain conditions) for aliens, but it remained open for members of the British Empire—later the British Commonwealth. Alas! the door did not remain open indefinitely.
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As your Lordships know, in 1964 it was pushed shut; and in 1968 there followed that shameful Bill—even more shameful because it was introduced by the late Government—which still further restricted Commonwealth immigrants.
My Lords, although I am sad at the passing of the "open door", I cannot oppose it. In these days of planned economy and of great movements of people, the completely open door of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century I do not believe is possible. But I do believe that it is both wrong and foolish for us to close the door in the way that we have done; in other words, to close it because of panic and pressure of public opinion—uninformed public opinion in most cases, without a full knowledge of the facts—rather than to close it because we have a definite objective in view.
To my mind, our immigration policy should be based first on a desire to admit into this country as many people as we can digest, house, welcome and make use of and, above all, that priority should be given to members of the British Commonwealth. I thought I detected (although I hope I was wrong) in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, comments on the new Bill which we shall shortly he seeing which indicated a restrictionist attitude; a feeling that the object of this Bill is to keep out as many people as possible and only to let in a small number here and there when the pressure becomes too great. That, my Lords, I believe to be entirely wrong. What we should aim at doing is to have a comprehensive plan for immigration with priority for members of the Commonwealth based on our own economic needs. I make no bones about that and I am not at all ashamed of it. Where these people are needed—and God knows! we need many of them; far more than the opponents of immigration will ever admit—they should not only be allowed in but should be welcomed in because they will be useful members of our society.
At the same time, our general plan should not simply be an immigration plan dealt with by the Home Office and immigration authorities, nor indeed should it be purely a labour plan dealt with by the Department of Labour and Productivity.

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It should be a comprehensive plan in which those people who come in, do so in order to work, it is true, but with facilities for living in equality with resident British people and with other immigrants who are already here. A plan should be made in advance for housing them, caring for them, educating their children and for their dependants, and all the rest of it. This matter should not be looked at in watertight compartments but should be part of a comprehensive plan of immigration, work and social living in this country. That is my first plea, and I hope that the new Bill will encompass it.
The second point I should like to make, following upon that, is to urge upon the Government that still more positive support could be given to the integration of those immigrants who are already in this country and those who will be coming under the new Act. The Community Relations Commission has been set up in order to do this. I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Frank Cousins for the very difficult work he has done in starting off this most important activity, and I know that the whole House will join in our good wishes to his successor, Mr. Mark Bonham Carter, than whom I can think of no better person to take on this vital task.
The C.R.C. is the first line of attack in this problem. It has an enormous job to do. It has the resources already, and I hope that none of its work will be impeded for lack of resources, either financial or of manpower. But there is far more to it than this. It is not simply a question of dealing with immigrants, strangers who come into this country. The nub of the problems facing immigrants is identical with that of the problems facing all those in this country—and there are many of them—native born, who are in one way or another underprivileged. This is a problem which the late Government attempted to solve by its urban programme. I believe that was the right move, but once again I should have wished to see more money available. But we have heard little of the urban programme lately, and I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, replies to this debate he will be able to give an assurance that the urban programme will be pushed forward with the utmost vigour in concert with the activities of
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the C.R.C. so that in the years ahead we can say that there are no people in this country, whether they be immigrants or not, who suffer from feelings of frustration, hardship and almost being outlaws of society because of deprivation through the places in which they live, the communities in which they live, their attitudes towards the police, their attitudes towards their teachers, their attitudes towards the houses (if one can dignify them with the name "houses") in which they find themselves herded together.
This is the basic problem which is facing us, and we should do the immigrants and ourselves a great disservice if we tried to separate the two problems from each other and feel that simply by keeping out immigrants and restricting them to a mere trickle we shall have taken a step towards solving it. We shall equally have taken only a very small step towards solving it if we try to solve it in isolation from this wider problem. My Lords, I apologise for widening the debate and straying somewhat from the actual terms of the noble Lord's speech, but I feel that unless we look wider in this matter we shall never have any success.
4.50 p.m.
LORD GIFFORD: My Lords, my noble and learned friend, Lord Gardiner, may accuse me of having a field day, but I do not think that a Bill which has as one of its effects the continuation of Section 1 of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 should be allowed to pass through this House without a protest, or rather without an outcry, at the result of that section of that Act as it affects British citizens in Africa to-day.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, will the noble Lord excuse me? Surely Section 1 of the 1968 Act is permanent and does not need to be renewed by this Bill: it has nothing to do with this Bill.
LORD GIFFORD: My Lords, I read the Explanatory Memorandum, which says that Part I of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 is one of the measures continued, and Section 1 of the 1968 Act amended part of Part I of the 1962 Act. So, unless I am corrected by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, I apprehend that the 1962 Act, as amended by the 1968 Act, is made to continue by this Bill to-day.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I believe the position is as stated by my noble friend. The 1968 Act is permanent, whereas the 1962 Act required to be renewed every year. At the same time, I think the gloss which the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, has added, in practice brings him within the rule of order—that the provisions of the 1968 Act do hang together with certain provisions of the 1962 Act.
LORD GIFFORD: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord for the clarification. If ever there was a case where we, as Members of this House, should, as my noble friend Lord Walston said, be ashamed of the handiwork of Parliament it is the case of that Act. We should be ashamed because on that occasion Parliament allowed itself to be bulldozed by the pressures of intolerance into a panic measure. We should be ashamed because we denied a group of British citizens the basic right to enter their own country, ashamed because we reneged on a solemn pledge given to that group of citizens, and ashamed because we introduced legislation which, as the Government themselves have admitted in their submissions to the European Human Rights Commission, was discriminatory in intention and effect. We should be ashamed, finally, because of the degradation which that Act has caused to many thousands of citizens of Asian origin in East Africa. This is a matter which cannot wait until the passing, after long deliberation, of a new Immigration Act. It is a situation which calls for action to-day.
My Lords, although I may speak with passion and even with anger on this topic, my approach to it is not a partisan approach. In the first place, it was the Labour Government which, to its discredit, was responsible for the passing of the 1968 Act. In the second place, the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, to his credit, was one of those 85 noble Lords who voted against that Act and nearly succeeded in defeating it in this House. I am quite sure that the noble Lord, having voted as he did and holding the office he now holds, feels that there is no problem which he would rather see resolved and no wrong which he would rather see righted than the wrong done to the citizens of Asian origin in East Africa by that Act. What I would say to the
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noble Lord is this: that of course I recognise that a new Government needs time to review the situation, and of course I recognise, as the Home Secretary has stated, that the situation is being reviewed. But 5½ months have now passed since the General Election, and the decision on the future of the British citizens in East Africa cannot, in all humanity, be delayed much longer.
There are two factors in particular which cause the need for urgency in resolving the problem. In the first place the situation inside East Africa is deteriorating week by week. It is perhaps most graphically illustrated by a report from Uganda, which the noble Lord may well have seen, a report called The Crisis for British Asians in Uganda, prepared for the British Council of Churches by the Rev. David Mason. I know the Rev. Mason very well his work as founder and leader of the Methodist Group Ministry in Not-ting Hill over the last few years has been widely admired and recognised. He is not a man who would falsify or distort the facts. He spent six weeks in Uganda. His report says quite clearly that the situation in Uganda is coming to a new pitch of intensity.
Two Acts were passed by the Uganda Government, the first, the Trade Licensing Act, which forbids non-Ugandans to trade or work without a licence, which, in the vast majority of cases, they cannot obtain, and the Uganda Immigration Act of 1969, which requires all non-Ugandans to possess an entry permit, which again, in the vast majority of cases, they could not obtain. The result, as the Rev. Mason says, is:
"The British Asian is thus trapped between two fires. The Ugandan Government forbids him to work and demands that he leaves Uganda at the earliest possible opportunity. The British Government limits his entry to the United Kingdom and insists that he takes his place in the queue for a quota voucher, which usually means a wait of two or three years. The result is poverty, family separation, homelessness and despair."
The report further indicates that matters even now have not yet come to a head. A case was heard in the courts in August, 1970, of a citizen of this country who was charged, tried and imprisoned for being in Uganda illegally. His name was Harkasan Mulji, and he was a 55-year old tailor. He had applied for a work permit in Uganda and had been

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refused. He had appealed to the Minister of the Interior and his appeal was rejected. He had applied for a voucher to come to this country and had been told that he must wait. He was ordered to leave Uganda within a month. He could not leave, and eventually he was charged with being an illegal resident of Uganda, and the magistrate had no option but to send him to prison for a month. It was then, after the case, that the High Commissioner finally gave that man a voucher; but he had spent a month in gaol in Uganda before he could come here. One wonders what would happen if, as is likely to be the case, this is only the first of many more cases.
Happily, so far that is an isolated case, but the cases of destitution and despair number thousands. The Rev. Mason estimated that 2,000 in Uganda were destitute, and he stressed particularly the plight of teenagers and young persons over the age of 16. They cannot work in Uganda because they have no permit. They cannot study, because to study entails payment of money and their funds are running out. They cannot come to study in this country, because, even if they are offered a place by a college, they are not given a voucher, I understand, unless they can show that they have a re-entry permit into Uganda, which of course, they cannot. They cannot in many cases even accompany their own parents to this country, because, being over 16, they are not considered dependants, and therefore have to come under a separate voucher.
Again I quote the words of the report as to their situation:
"This means that often the parents and younger children do receive their vouchers for the United Kingdom in advance of their older sons and daughters, so that a teenage boy or girl is left behind in Uganda, lonely, penniless and eating his heart out with anxiety and frustration."
One wonders what sort of attitudes the people who have been through that experience are going to bring to this country when they finally, as they must, obtain admission. The more one reads about it the more one finds it to be a nightmare situation which has to be changed. It is small wonder that some of these people have been driven by these pressures to try to come to these shores by whatever method they can, and that
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they have been involved, as so many have, in this appalling shuttlecock from country to country.
The second new factor which adds urgency to the situation is that some of these shuttlecock victims, as was their right, have made application to the European Commission of Human Rights, and that Commission have declared that their case is admissible. This is not a final pronouncement by the Commission; it remains, however, a highly authoritative pronouncement of our law as it relates to the human rights guaranteed in the Convention. Out of some thousands of cases brought before the Commission, only about 50 have reached this stage, and in nearly every case the Governments concerned have taken steps to change their practices. The admissibility of the applications of this group of Asians was upheld not merely on one breach, or one alleged violation of the Convention, but on four: Article 3 protecting freedom from degrading treatment; Article 5, protecting the right to security of the person; Article 8, protecting the right to respect for family life; and Article 14, the right to enjoy one's rights without discrimination on racial grounds.
As a lawyer, and as an internationalist, I have the greatest admiration for the Human Rights Convention. It represents a first step by a group of democratic nations to submit their laws and practices to the scrutiny of an international body of impartial and distinguished lawyers. It lays foundations which have to be built on if we are ever to see some kind of international order in the world. It would be a tragedy and, moreover, make a mockery of our pretensions to be members of the community of Europe if we were to disregard a ruling of the Commission or Court of Human Rights, if, as there is every reason to believe, it rules that there has been a violation of human rights.
Those are the matters which, I say, make it essential for this nightmare to end. I hope that the noble Lord, if he cannot make a positive statement to-day, will at least assure us that a statement about the position of these people will be forthcoming from the Government very soon. Will it form part of the Immigration Bill, or will something be done sooner than that? If we cannot get an

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assurance of some early action on this intolerable problem, I for my part should be disposed to put down an Amendment at the Committee stage of the Bill and ask noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, to stand up once again and be counted on this issue in the Division Lobbies.
5.5 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I think we all respect the intensity of feeling with which the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, speaks against the 1968 Act, which we are all aware he vigorously opposed at the time. With many of us his views would carry greater conviction if he would combine with his condemnation of successive British Governments an equally severe condemnation of the Governments of Kenya and Uganda, who have brought about this situation by the most gross racial discrimination. I apologise for having interrupted the noble Lord, but I still think that the main issue of the 1968 Act does not arise on this Bill. The 1968 Act is a permanent Act, until such time as the Government decide to introduce amending legislation; and there may well be amending legislation when the comprehensive Bill which the Government have promised comes along.
LORD GIFFORD: My Lords, if the noble Lord is passing from the 1968 Act, would he not agree, first, that taking away rights from non-citizens is a very different thing from taking away rights from citizens? Furthermore, if he does despise the Kenyan and Ugandan Governments for what they have done, does he really think that we should take steps lower than theirs in order to vie with them?
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, I find it difficult to accept what I have described, and will describe again, as gross racial discrimination by the Kenyan and Ugandan Governments, simultaneously with their apparent readiness to condemn the British Government in our attitude to, for example, South Africa or Rhodesia. But, quite frankly, I do not think that this is an issue here. I am not minimising the importance of the 1968 Act; I am simply submitting that the time to discuss it in detail will be when the comprehensive Government Bill comes before us for Second Reading.
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I am going to follow the example of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, who expressed the view that this was not the occasion for a far-reaching debate on immigration. In the past it has naturally been considered to be so because there has been no prospect of another Bill within the year. But there is now every prospect of a Bill of a permanent character reaching your Lordships' House during the next six or eight months, and that Bill will require searching examination from all quarters.
I had not intended to speak in this debate to-day, but as I have been referred to by a number of noble Lords, and as I have taken part in debates on the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, either in this place or in another place, on, I think, the last eight occasions and have in fact twice moved the Second Reading of this Bill in another place, I feel that perhaps I should be failing in my duty if I left this last Bill without a single word from myself. I am looking forward eagerly to the comprehensive Bill. Before I ceased to be Home Secretary in 1964 I had reached the definite decision that there ought to be an attempt to assimilate the very different codes of immigration practice for aliens and for Commonwealth citizens, though I fully recognised the difficulties. I am not criticising the last Labour Government for not having time to bring that about. I believe that, in principle, such assimilation is a good thing, if it is practicable, and I look forward with eagerness to seeing that Bill.
I would only ask the Government to bear in mind something I have stressed in all these debates: that the crux of this problem of immigration is concentration of numbers. Whether it is Commonwealth citizens or aliens, if those who are with us now were evenly spread throughout the whole country there would be no problem worth talking about. The problem arises through concentration, whether it is of Indians in Southall, or of Italians in Bedford, or wherever it may be; and that is what we have to address ourselves to.
I am not going to argue with Mr. Enoch Powell, or anybody else, as to what the proportion of coloured people in Birmingham or elsewhere may be fifty years hence. But we all have a duty now to try to look forward, in our minds,

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to the situations which, by our legislation, we may be helping to mould for our children and grandchildren. I believe that it is not the will of the present British population, white and coloured, that there should be great cities in this country which, in the 21st century, will be one-third or one-half coloured, even though in fact those populations will quite definitely be British-born.
My own view is that those who have taken up what I might call an extreme Right-wing attitude on these matters of immigration—and I mention no names—have made their mistake in not stressing, as I have always tried to stress in my speeches, the overriding necessity of ensuring that all who are living in this country, young or old, shall be treated with absolute equality, not only by our laws but by our practice. Though I do not like the idea of race relations legislation—I wish we could do without it—nevertheless I am convinced that it is a necessity, if only to ensure that those children who are born in this country to overseas parents have, as they grow up, an equal chance with everybody else of a good life. But I am sure that these are matters for the major Bill which is in course of preparation.
May I mention, in conclusion, as my name was specially linked with this, licensing planning? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, said that he was going to move drastic Amendments in the Committee stage of this Bill—thereby, I think, creating a precedent in your Lordships' House—to get rid of that. I agree that it would be lamentable if we had to go through all the stages of an Expiring Laws Continuance Bill each Session in order to continue licensing planning. My own record in this purpose, which is very near to his heart, of getting rid of annual Bills is, I think, a good one, because I was the Minister who got rid of an accursed little Bill called the Isle of Man Customs Bill, which darkened the Parliamentary Order Paper in July of every year; and I am extremely anxious to see the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill go likewise.
I would say, with the greatest respect to the noble and learned Lord, that the Government of which he was a member had five years from the date of presenta-
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tion of the Ramsay Willis Committee's Report to do something about it, and to get licensing planning out of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill. But they failed to do so; and here it remains. I sincerely hope that my noble friend Lord Windlesham and the Home Secretary will be able, by some means or other, to avoid the unhappy situation which threatens us if we have to continue to have an Expiring Laws Continuance Bill each year simply to maintain this highly esoteric matter of licensing planning.
5.12 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, I apologise to your Lordship, for not having given notice of my intention to speak. I had hoped that one of my noble friends would speak, but unfortunately he is unable to be here. I think it is right that a voice should be heard from these Benches, if only to join with the noble Lord, Lord Walston, in welcoming Mr. Mark Bonham Carter as the new head of the Commission. As a distinguished Liberal I am sure he will perform his task with great skill and determination.
I welcome the fact that the Government are going to produce what one hopes will be a comprehensive and logical Immigration Bill. Whatever it contains, it will certainly be better than what we have now, and what we have had. I do not necessarily follow the noble Lord, Lord Walston, in what he thought would be the right basis for an immigration policy. I am never entirely happy that we should regard immigrants purely as economic factors, and welcome them in or keep them out only if they have something to offer our economy. That does not seem the right approach.
What seems much more the right approach is to weigh, on the one hand, what the noble Lord, Lord Walston, called the "open door" policy—which I think must always be a great Liberal ideal—and, on the other hand, a population policy which is virtually never mentioned in our debates. I sincerely hope that in approaching this problem the Government will bear in mind the idea of a population policy for this country, as one of the countries in a world which is suffering from a population explosion, and will balance that policy with the "open door" policy.

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I say to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, that if there is to be a long-term, comprehensive and rational Bill, it must be seen to be founded on justice. It should be a Bill which, when we have fought out our little battles in the other place and here, can be seen from all sides to be worth while. But it will be seen to be worth while only if it is just, and that is where we come up against the very real problem of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968. Whatever the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, who introduced that Act, may think about it, whatever the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, who voted against it, may think about it, and whatever other noble Lords may think about it, the world as a whole sees it as an unjust Act. I identify myself with almost every word that the noble Lord, Lord Gifford, said, but I do not want to go further into that subject than to ask the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, to consult with his friends and, before the Bill reaches its final form, to bear in mind the importance of seeing that anything which is unjust is eliminated if it is to be a really worthwhile piece of legislation.
5.16 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I had not intended to take part in this debate, because I had hoped to reserve what I have to say until the promised legislation was introduced. But I am taking part for two reasons: first, because the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, went considerably further than dealing with the laws which are now expiring; and, secondly, because of what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, said about Kenya and Uganda. I welcome the fact that there is to be a comprehensive Bill, but I look forward to it with very great fear because of what the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has indicated that Bill will include. It means that those who seek to come here from Commonwealth countries will be admissible only if they have work vouchers, and then only for one year.
I think back to the record both of the Empire and of the Commonwealth; to the time when we were proud that in the extension of the Empire all its residents were subjects of this country. I think of the time when we went further than that, and made them citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies. I think back to the time when we went still further and, with the independence of Kenya,
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Uganda and Tanzania, recognised that their people should be British citizens if they opted for that, and should hold all the rights of British citizens. When one thinks of that record, and sees that our attitude towards the countries of the old Empire—the countries of the Commonwealth to-day—has led us now to the position where we are to treat them in the same way as those who are aliens from foreign countries, it makes those of us who have some reverence for the Commonwealth very sad indeed.
I want to say to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, that, despite my fears arising from what he said, I hope very much that when the Government introduce this legislation they will reflect the spirit which was shown in this House when I moved the rejection of the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill in 1968. I think the most remarkable feature of that debate was the fact that I then had the support of all those distinguished Conservative Members of this House who had been associated with the Colonial Office and with the Foreign Office at the time Kenya and Uganda obtained their independence: the noble Marquess, Lord Lansdowne, the noble Viscounts, Lord Boyd of Merton and Lord Chandos, the noble Earl, Lord Perth, and even Lord Windlesham himself—and may I express my great sympathy with Lord Windlesham, because of his sincere convictions at that time, when he voted against this Bill, that he should now have the disagreeable task, in office, of administering the legislation which he then opposed.
My Lords, the fact that the rejection of the 1968 Bill had that degree of support from those Conservative Members of the House associated with the Colonial and Foreign Offices was because they approached this issue not from the point of view of immigration but from the point of view of national honour. I was in Kenya and Uganda on the occasion of the independence of both those countries and, if I may say this to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, I exerted my whole influence there, addressing in Nairobi thousands of Indians, with Mrs. Indira Gandhi, who is now the Prime Minister of India, urging that Indians should follow the advice of Pandit Nehru and become citizens of the countries in which they were resident. If they had all done that, this problem of British Asians would not have arisen.

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But at that moment assurances were given from our Colonial Office and from our Foreign Office that if Asians in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania decided to remain British citizens, they would have all the rights of British citizenship, including the rights of the passports which they hold. That pledge—a pledge of honour by this country; a pledge which the leading Conservative Ministers at that moment recognised by the votes which they gave in this House—was repudiated by the 1968 Act. I want to appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, to ensure that when this new legislation is introduced (and I am encouraged by the fact that Mr. Maudling expressed his doubts when the matter was discussed in the House of Commons) the Government will look at this matter as one of national honour, with a view to saving us from repudiating pledges which were made at that moment.
Though I shall return before I sit down to what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, I want to add to this general statement just one or two points which have come to my knowledge to-day. The first is this. It has often been argued that the British Asians who wish to come to this country should be treated with less sympathy because, on the whole, they have been the richer element in the non-white population of Kenya and Uganda. But, my Lords, they have now been two years without permission to trade or to work, and destitution has spread. I should like to ask Lord Windlesham this question. I have heard to-day that at the High Commission Office in Uganda three conditions are now being laid down before anyone can be registered as an applicant for a voucher—not to receive a voucher, but to apply for one. Those three conditions are: first, they must be homeless; second, they must be destitute; and, third, they must be unemployed. Only under those conditions, I am informed, is registration for applications now being received. I should very much like to know if that information, which I have had from a high authority to-day, is correct. If it is, then it indicates the depth of destitution which these people have reached after two years' unemployment: that is, since the priority of work was withdrawn.
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The other question I want to ask the noble Lord in detail is this. When this Bill was introduced in another place Mr. James Callaghan had to acknowledge that if Kenya or Uganda evicted those who were British citizens and held British passports there would be no alternative but to receive them in this country. My Lords, what is happening? In Uganda to-day the Government is giving instructions to individuals that they must leave. But they cannot leave. They are not allowed to leave, because we do not allow them to come to this country. They are then arrested, and are imprisoned. They are in prison at this moment. I want to suggest to Lord Windlesham that at least, if we say it is our duty to accept these men if they are evicted because they are British citizens, it is also our duty to accept them when they are ordered to leave those countries and when they are imprisoned because they have not the opportunity to come here. My Lords, I am talking about British citizens—those to whom we have given pledges; those who hold British passports, with all the promise in those passports. They are being treated in that way under the 1968 Act.
Before I conclude, let me deal with the point which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, has raised regarding the attitude of the Kenya and Uganda Governments. I want to say this to him, and I think he will believe it because of my record. I regret very much what they have done, and I have said so publicly. My words have reached them, and I would have hoped that they would have some influence, because those who are in Government now are my old friends of difficult times.
But I put this point to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. The British Asians who are suffering now are those who declined to become citizens of Kenya and Uganda, and of Tanzania. In Kenya and Uganda, particularly, there is heavy unemployment, and the Governments have decided that priority in trade and in work shall be given to those who are citizens of those countries. I admit that there is a little more in it than that. There was always some latent African opposition, because of the Indian monopoly of the retail trade and of other businesses. I admit that there is some racial feeling. But the basic decision in declining to allow Asians and other

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non-citizens in Kenya and Uganda to trade or to work is a decision taken on grounds of nationality and citizenship, rather than on colour or on race. I have friends in Kenya at this moment, Indian friends with whom I stayed, who, because they opted to become Kenya citizens, are not suffering any disability at all.
My Lords, I conclude by saying that although I deplore a world in which opportunity in life is restricted by one's birth or citizenship, nevertheless we have no right to be self-righteous about this; because it is the very principle of our immigration laws. It is the very principle on which is laid down the new legislation mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham: immigrants from the Commonwealth are not to have work here unless they get a voucher. Even then, the work must be only for one year, and it must not be work in competition with our own citizens. That is the very principle which Kenya and Uganda have adopted in this instance. While regretting a world where that kind of differentiation is applied, we should be self-righteous to an intolerable degree if we denounced them for applying a principle which we ourselves apply in our own immigration laws.
5.32 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I can say that I am heartily pleased that there are only two items in this Bill to-day because we seem to have covered a very large number of subjects. What may have been the case in the past when the noble Lord was speaking on Bills of this kind and when the list was a great deal longer, I hesitate to think! To-day, in a lengthier debate than the number of names on the list had caused us to anticipate, the debate has covered the shortcomings of temporary legislation, as explained by the noble and learned Lord opposite; licensing planning; and the future of immigration policy—with two notable speeches by the noble Lords, Lord Gifford and Lord Brockway, whose interest in this matter is well known to us, on the plight of the U.K. passport holders in East Africa—and speeches by the noble Lord, Lord Walston, and the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, on community relations. I have been asked a very large number of questions in the course of this debate and I hope
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that noble Lords will bear with me if I do not succeed in answering all of them. If I miss out some of them, I can assure noble Lords that I will read the whole of the debate in Hansard, will pick out the questions that I have missed and will write or speak to noble Lords with the information they have asked for.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, asked whether I could tell the House when the Immigration Bill will be introduced. I am afraid that I cannot go further than the statement which has been made by my right honourable friend that it will be introduced during this Session. He also said—or rather implied with great politeness—that I perhaps used rather too loose a phrase in saying that with the passage of time the number of items in the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill had come down to two; and I should like to congratulate him on the work he did. I can understand that it was no easy task to reduce the number of items; but I can also say that I wish he had finished off the job.
Now he is pressing me very hard, not on the major subject of immigration policy (which will be dealt with) but also on this one remaining sore thumb of licensing planning. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said that it would have been a great help if the noble and learned Lord had finished off the job in his term of five or six years on the Woolsack and had managed to erase this particular item as well. But I have noted very carefully and seriously his remarks concerning Part VII of the Licensing Act 1964. The noble and learned Lord will know that I cannot stand here to-day without notice and give a guarantee that the Government will introduce a comprehensive measure to reform the licensing laws; but I can assure him that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary will take very close account of what he has said to-day. I will see what can be said as a matter of urgency about the point he raised in his speech this afternoon and whether I can join with him in one final effort to remove this item from the Parliamentary timetable.
The noble Lord, Lord Walston, sent me a message to say that he is sorry that because of another longstanding engagement he has had to leave the House before the end of the debate. This

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is because the debate has gone on longer than expected. I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Walston, broadened the debate to a discussion of community relations and the relationships between the people who came to make their homes in this country from the new Commonwealth. He underlined the importance of the Community Relations Commission and commended the work done by the first chairman of the Commission, Mr. Frank Cousins, who announced this week that he wishes to give up that office at the end of the year. I should like to add my tribute to what the noble Lord, Lord Walston, said about Mr. Cousins. For many years he has had a record of working for equal opportunities in the trades union field; and after such a long and conspicuously successful career in the trade union movement, I think that we were extremely fortunate to have had two years with Mr. Cousins as chairman of the Community Relations Commission. We can also join with the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, in congratulating Mr. Bonham Carter on his appointment as chairman of the Community Relations Commission, not as a Liberal but as a man who—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Oh!
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, that phrase was used by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont. We join together in our congratulations to Mr. Bonham Carter who has been chairman of the Race Relations Board for five years. He has handled an extremely difficult task with great skill and confidence and we all look forward to the period when he takes over the work at the Community Relations Commission.
The noble Lords, Lord Gifford and Lord Brockway, pressed again on the subject of United Kingdom passport holders and the plight of British Asians, as they are sometimes called, who are in East Africa and subject to control under the first section of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968. It is true that this subject has been a great deal in the news recently; but we should note that those who have received publicity are nearly always those who attempted to come to this country for permanent settlement without being in possession of the vouchers that would have entitled them
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to settle here. We might get the impression from the media that all United Kingdom passport holders from East Africa have been denied entry into this country. This is far from the case. All the time there is a steady number of authorised entries into this country. The intake at the moment is at the rate of 1,500 heads of families a year or 6,000 including dependants. We have admitted over 15,000 British Asians from East Africa since the 1968 Act came into force and over 50,000 since the beginning of 1965.
It is estimated that there are between 150,000 and 200,000 United Kingdom passport holders still in East Africa and we know that many of them will ultimately wish to settle in this country. Nearly 9,000 heads of households, mostly Kenyans and Ugandans, are at present awaiting vouchers. This means that there are well over 30,000 persons waiting to come here. The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, asked whether it was the fact that the High Commissions in East Africa will not accept applications for vouchers unless the applicant is homeless, destitute or unemployed. The policy is that all applications for vouchers are accepted. If the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, would like to give us the source of his information, we shall certainly follow up the implication of what he has said. I am afraid, however, that I must agree that the position of the United Kingdom passport holders in East Africa has deteriorated over the course of the last year. Persons who are not citizens of Kenya or Uganda are being forced out of employment and the immigration laws of those countries are aimed at preventing non-citizens from continuing to reside and work there.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, made the point that it is the policies of the Governments of Kenya and Uganda which have been responsible for the plight of the United Kingdom passport holders in both countries. There is no doubt that there are a considerable number of Asian families holding United Kingdom passports which are in distress and are under pressure to leave. A substantial number, over 5,000 since 1968, have gone to India, and others will go there. This was referred to by Members of another place and my noble friends will have seen what the Home Secretary said. Both the noble Lord, Lord Gifford,

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and also the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, know that this matter is under very close review, but beyond that I am afraid it is not possible for me to go this afternoon.
The noble Lord, Lord Gifford, mentioned a visit made to Uganda recently by the Reverend David Mason on behalf of the British Council of Churches. I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Mason before he went to Uganda, and afterwards. We have studied his report, and I am pleased to say that we have been able to help Mr. Mason on one point; that is, the statement contained in his report about dependant children over the age of 16 and other members of the family unit, which was quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Gifford. The position is that dependant children of quota voucher holders are freely admitted up to the age of 18, and above that age if dependant and if part of the family unit overseas. Since getting the report we have been in touch with Mr. Mason and pointed this out to him, and I hope that this will clear up at any rate one misunderstanding; because if it is a misunderstanding in certain cases, it should be brought to the attention of the people concerned.
My Lords, I said at the beginning of this winding-up speech that I was very conscious that I should not be able to cover all the points. I hope I have at any rate covered some of the more important ones.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask whether he would clarify one figure? When he says that there are 150,000 waiting, does he mean 150,000 heads of families or 150,000 total?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hawke; we ought to clear this point up. The total number of individuals is between 150,000 and 200,000. There has been a certain amount of publicity and speculation, in the Press and elsewhere, that the total number is in excess of 1 million or that it is round about 1 million. That figure is totally wrong, quite misleading and based on the assumption that the 150,000 to 200,000 are heads of families and would be voucher holders, and not the total number of individuals. So we are talking of a total figure between the brackets of 150,000 and 200,000.
LORD GIFFORD: My Lords, I know that the noble Lord cannot go further than saying that the position is under close review. But can one expect a statement on the matter in the near future, or is it simply going to be allowed to continue as at present, with no change in the practice, the quota or the law?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, we are aware of the situation but it is not possible for rile to add to what I have said.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

ANIMALS BILL [H.L.]
5.45 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now received.
Moved, That the Report be now received.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Clause 2 [Liability for damage done by dangerous animals]:
LORD AIREDALE LORD AIREDALE moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 2, leave out line 13, and insert—
("known to another person at a time when he had")
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in Committee it was the noble Lord, Lord Kilbracken, who put forward the opinion that Clause 2(2)(c) was ambiguous. This drew from the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, the emphatic opinion that the paragraph was not ambiguous. So I will content myself merely with suggesting that it is not as clearly expressed as perhaps it might be, and in particular line 13, with its two different references to time. Accordingly, I have gone through the exercise of seeking to find alternative words which will preserve the intended meaning of the paragraph and which also are clearer and quite definitely unambiguous. I hope I have succeeded in this task. I am certainly ready to have my Amendment judged by those two standards: is it clearer than the original, and does it preserve the intended meaning? I trust the Amendment commends itself to your Lordships and I beg to move.
LORD KILBRACKEN: My Lords, I should like to support the noble Lord, Lord Airedale. I felt that this ambiguity existed as to the time to which the Bill referred; whether it was the time at which the damage was caused or the time at which the person had charge of the animal. I felt that it should be the former; it turned out that the Government's intention was that it should apply to the latter. So be it; we have to accept that. But I still feel that the ambiguity exists and that the noble Lord's Amendment clarifies it admirably.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I should like to give this Amendment a little more consideration. If the noble Lord would not press it now, I would consider it before it goes to another place. My advice is that the noble Lord has not succeeded in producing anything less ambiguous; although he has succeeded in producing a form of words which reads a little more easily; I concede that at once. He has, in fact, produced something which, marginally, is more ambiguous, because as the Bill stands, the keeper is responsible even when the servant is dead. I am advised that where the servant whose knowledge is material is no longer alive, the noble Lord's form of words does not make the situation quite so plain as the present text. But I do not want to reject it out of hand. If the noble Lord will not press his Amendment now, I will see that it is given further consideration. I do not think that a great deal turns on this point.
LORD AIREDALE: I wish to consider what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has just said, and therefore I am only too anxious to seek for the present to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 5 [Exceptions from liability under sections 2 to 4]:
VISCOUNT INGLEBY VISCOUNT INGLEBY moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 3, line 17, leave out from ("breach") to end of line 34 and insert ("by any other person, being a person having an interest in the land, of a duty to fence.")
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I am very glad to have the opportunity of moving this Amendment again, this time in its proper form and with due
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notice. The words used in this Amendment are those recommended by the Law Commission. They state in paragraph 67 of their Report that the nature of the defence available is one of the more obscure areas of the present law relating to cattle trespass, and any new rules must seek to state the defence so that it is limited in nature and clear in effect. If this Amendment were adopted, subsection (6) of Clause 5 would read as follows:
"… but a person is not liable under that section where it is proved that the straying of the livestock on to the land would not have occurred but for a breach by any other person, being a person having an interest in the land, of a duty to fence."
I suggest to your Lordships that that is reasonably clear and understandable. But when we turn to the words which are at present in the Bill, we find there are 16 lines of them. If I were to inflict all 16 lines on your Lordships, I wonder how many of your Lordships would be any the wiser.
I should also like to say that I have it on the authority of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, that the wording at present in the Bill would reverse the decision in Crow v. Wood. I do not want to go into this matter again, as I did on the previous occasion, but the effect of the present change would be that those moorland farmers who still keep sheep would be responsible for the upkeep of the moorland walls of those who no longer keep sheep. That would be a very serious matter for them. I beg to move.
LORD DENNING: My Lords, I should like to support this Amendment. There are 16 lines in the Bill as it stands at the moment. I should not mind if they were simple, clear and intelligible but, as I read them, they are obscure, complicated and unintelligible. No farmer reading them could understand them unless he first went to a lawyer, no two lawyers would give him the same advice, and if we ever had to consider the matter in the Court of Appeal, as probably we should have to, we would have to condemn them, as we often have to do with legislation which comes before us. The particular words on which there may be a different opinion are in line 22, where it says
"the duty was owed to a person having an interest in the land"

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In the case which we had to consider, I would have said that Mr. Wood, a farmer who put sheep on the moor, had not an interest in the land, but apparently some advisers on the other side thought that he had. But I will not go into the details, except to say that in my view the clause is too complicated to warrant endorsement by your Lordships' House.
Secondly, the proposal in the Amendment is quite clear. It is the Law Commission's own proposal. It is simply this. At the moment, as the law is and the Bill will hold, if a farmer's cattle stray on to another person's land and do damage, he is liable for cattle trespass absolutely; but there is the qualification that if it is the duty of the owner or tenant to fence so as to keep cattle out, then the original farmer whose cattle has escaped is not liable. That is the simple provision which the Law Commission have recommended and which it is sought to enforce by this Amendment. Goodness knows what trouble the Bill as it stands with these 16 lines will lead to. I would ask your Lordships to grant the Amendment accordingly.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, when we considered this matter in Committee the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor was naturally unable to deal with it because there had been a mistake in the wording of the Amendment. I hope that on reflection the noble and learned Lord may feel able to accept this Amendment. My recollection is that the Law Commission considered the sort of point which subsection (7) is intended to cover and found any attempt to deal with it so complicated as to make it impossible. I have never understood why, as between two men, if A was supposed to put up a fence, it ought to be the duty of B to put up a fence as well. I understand that subsection (7) would reverse the decision of the Court of Appeal in Crow v. Wood. I think that that case is not only right in law but right in common sense. The Amendment moved by the noble Viscount, Lord Ingleby, is supported by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, and on the previous occasion by the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, and by myself, and that, I respectfully think, is not a bad cross-section of the House. For those reasons, I hope that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chan-
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cellor may feel able to accept the Amendment.
5.56 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I think I should say a little on behalf of the complicated words which have met with so much disapproval, though on another occasion I have expressed the view that I have no particular love for them. The House should be aware that these words were inserted at the express request of the Law Society to deal with the very point which I endeavoured, though obviously unsuccessfully, to explain on an earlier occasion.
The matter starts from the position that a farmer's cattle trespass on somebody else's field, and the person on whose field the cattle trespass brings an action against that farmer. The Bill, as drafted and as it will remain, whether the Amendment is accepted or not, provides a special defence for the person whose cattle have trespassed. The defence is this: "It is all your fault, because you did not fence your own ground against my cattle and you are under an obligation to do so."
At this stage, because of what the Law Commission recommended, which is also the effect of the Amendment as drafted now by my noble friend Lord Ingleby, the Law Society rightly pointed out that it was certainly irrelevant and might be undesirable if the duty to fence owed by a person was owed only to his own landlord—was a private arrangement between him and his own landlord. That seemed to me a perfectly valid point. From that moment onwards the Law Society pressed the point on the Parliamentary draftsman. The Parliamentary draftsman, a man of considerable ingenuity, scratched his poor head and tried to meet the Law Society's perfectly legitimate complaint; and although many of us, including myself, have tried to improve on the complicated set of words which the Parliamentary draftsman devised, we have all been unable to do so. I say that, having fulfilled diligently my promise made on the last occasion to my noble friend Lord Ingleby that I would try my own hand on improving on the Parliamentary draftsman. I have established to my satisfaction that I have failed.
In the meantime, the Law Society pressed me to stand to my guns, despite the powerful batteries brought against

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me by noble and learned Lords. I find this an embarrassing position. I fully accept that the Law Commission's presentation is simple. My advice is that the noble and learned Lord the Master of the Rolls is wrong in thinking that the decision in Crow v. Wood would be affected adversely if I were to stand to my guns. That is a point which at any rate is in doubt. The advice I have received is that the position is not that which the noble and learned Lord has given to the House. I do not want to argue this obviously difficult point, and it would be silly for me to suppose that I am more likely to be right than the the noble and learned Lord. What the House has to face is that this is an extremely sophisticated point. We have to choose, and Parliament in the end will have to choose, between a statement of the law which is certainly defective in the rather sophisticated way the Law Society represented it to me, and remedying the defect by a set of words which is certainly complicated and difficult to understand, though not, I would say to the noble and learned Lord the Master of the Rolls, impossible to understand: certainly too difficult for a farmer to understand, but not too difficult for a solicitor.
I do not feel that I can help the House much more than that. I have been receiving pressure from all sides, and if it is the will of the House I will accept the Amendment, provided it is fully understood that the law will be less perfect as a result of accepting it—at least that is my advice, and it is my belief—than as a result of retaining the existing test. This is not a matter on which I should wish to stand on my dignity or try to force a Division, or to force people to vote about it contrary to their conviction, so long as they realise that by choosing a simpler form of words they are choosing a less perfect form of law. I am quite willing on those terms to accept the Amendment.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I greatly admire my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack, not least for the intellectual agility which enables him to understand subsection (7). The only point that I would add is that I think it important that legislation which goes from this House should be intelligible to the
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ordinary man if he takes care to understand it. Subsection (7) was described by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, on the last occasion, as "quite incomprehensible"; it was described by the noble and learned Master of the Rolls as "even to a lawyer, almost unintelligible" (though, as I remarked on the last occasion, if the matter came before the Court of Appeal to be construed, I know that the Master of the Rolls would manage it somehow), and I said, quite candidly, that I could not understand a word of it. Those being the reactions of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, the noble and learned Master of the Rolls, and the man in the street, such as myself, I think that some farmers would have been puzzled beyond endurance. Therefore I very much welcome what my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack has now said: namely, that he will accept this Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
6.3 p.m.
LORD KILBRACKEN LORD KILBRACKEN moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 3, line 38, leave out ("the British Islands") and insert ("England and Wales").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack seems to be in quite an accepting mood this evening, and I am hopeful that he may give sympathetic consideration to this Amendment, which is similar to, though not identical with, the one I put down on the Committee stage. I am now proposing that the words "England and Wales" should be substituted for "the British Islands". On the last occasion I said that I was not sure, or did not know, what the British Islands were, and it was quickly pointed out to me, both by the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, and by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, that I should find the definition in the Interpretation Act 1889. I immediately looked it up, and found that of course they were quite correct, and that "the British Islands" means Great Britain, the whole of Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. If that is what British law says, then of course it is a definition that we must accept. But I would only say that it shows the law to be what I had better call a small, long-eared member of the equine species, because it goes to

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such trouble to define an area which in point of fact can never in any circumstances have any use.
The British Islands as defined by that Act, and as subsequently clarified by the Ireland Act and the Statute of Westminster, defines an area which cannot be considered a political one, when it includes the Republic of Ireland, and certainly is not a geographical area, when it contains the Channel Islands, which are geographically much more part of France or of the Continent of Europe. Therefore I see no need to find some other way, as the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack advised me, of describing this heterogeneous zone to which we should never in any circumstances ever have to refer. If we should never have to refer to "the British Islands", surely that is particularly the case here. Why should we be concerned whether animals are domesticated in Hoy or Arran (neither noble Lord is now present) when what we are concerned with is whether they are domesticated in the area to which this Bill when it becomes an Act will apply. That area is England and Wales, and I am therefore suggesting that the words "England and Wales" should be substituted for "the British Islands".
Perhaps I should mention one last point. The noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl, expressed some apprehension on the last occasion about the position of his Highland cattle if my Amendment—and this would also obtain under my present Amendment—were accepted. But I do not feel that he need have any apprehension, since when such cattle are in England and Wales they would commonly be domesticated, and there would be no more danger of their being categorised as members of a dangerous species than (shall I say?) Charolais cattle; which were originally domiciled in France and are now becoming quite common in this country. It is a fact that those that are in this country are commonly domesticated. I think "England and Wales" is the logical phrase to use here. I beg to move.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I do not believe that much will turn upon which of these two expressions is used in this part of the definition of a dangerous species of animal, but my suspicion
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is that if it had occurred to those who were drafting this clause that this Bill did not apply to Scotland or to Northern Ireland the expression they would have used would have been "England and Wales", rather than "the British Islands". I should have thought, therefore, that it was tidier to accept the Amendment and have the words "England and Wales" in this definition.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I rather share the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, that in practice not a great deal will turn upon this. But I would respectfully suggest to the House that the argumentation in support of the Amendment is to some extent fallacious. I think everybody knows what "the British Islands" means; and if anybody had any doubt about it, that doubt would be set at rest by Section 18 of the Interpretation Act 1889. But my own view is that it does not require Section 18 of the Interpretation Act to tell people what is meant by "the British Islands". The question is whether wild and domesticated animals should be defined by reference to a political boundary or to an œcological boundary. Personally, I prefer an (ecological boundary.
I do not myself believe that very much turns on this point in actual practice, because offhand, and not being a scientist, I do not really know whether there are animals domesticated in, say, Northern Ireland which are not domesticated in England. If there are, I should certainly feel that they ought to be treated as domestic animals for this purpose. But my own feeling is that the House would not be wise to accept an Amendment which applies a political test to an ecological factor. For that reason, I would advise the House, on the whole, without feeling very strongly about the Amendment, that the text is better as it stands.
LORD KILBRACKEN: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, for his support. In view of what the noble and learned Lord has said, I do not propose to press the Amendment, but I would emphasise again that "the British Islands" is not a political or geographical area. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 6 [Interpretation of certain sections used in sections 2 to 5]:
6.10 p.m.
LORD KILBRACKEN LORD KILBRACKEN moved Amendment No. 4:
Page 3, line 41, after ("cause") insert ("severe").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, at the Committee stage of the Bill I expressed the opinion that the definition of an animal of "a dangerous species" was drawn too widely and would include a number of animals, such as rabbits, and even mice, and other "wee sleekit beasties" which are not commonly domesticated in England and Wales but, because they are liable to cause damage, would be designated as animals of a dangerous species. The proposal I then put forward did not prove acceptable to the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. I am now proposing a more modest one, to insert the word "severe" before the word "damage", so that for an animal to be an animal of a dangerous species it would have to be not only not commonly domesticated in the British Islands, but also one likely to cause "severe" damage, rather than simply damage. I hope that this Amendment may be acceptable to your Lordships, and I beg to move.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am not sure that I wholly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kilbracken, because I should have thought that both rabbits and mice were commonly domesticated; and not only in England and Wales but also in the Republic of Ireland. However, being in an accommodating frame of mind, I desire to accept the noble Lord's Amendment. I do not think it will do any harm, and it may do some good.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: My Lords, if the Amendment is accepted, will it not render redundant the last words of paragraph (b) of subsection (2)? They say:
"… or that any damage they may cause is likely to be severe."
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: No, my Lords; I think not. I should like to consider that point before I give the noble Duke an assurance on it. I will ask my advisers to look into that point.
LORD KILBRACKEN: My Lords, would it be in order if I replied to the noble Duke?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Yes, indeed.
LORD KILBRACKEN: Two quite different things are involved here. One is whether these characteristics are likely to cause severe damage, in other words whether the beast has characteristics that are likely to cause severe damage. If it were not commonly domesticated that would make it a member of a dangerous species. Something quite different is when any damage that the beast may cause is likely to be severe. With respect, that is not the same thing.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD AIREDALE LORD AIREDALE moved Amendment No. 5:
Page 4, line 15, leave out ("accepts") and insert ("incurs").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, subsection (5) starts by saying:
"Where a person employed as a servant … accepts a risk incidental to his employment …".
It does not mean accepts a risk, but undergoes a risk, or incurs a risk. I should have liked to go further than this Amendment and amend the next line, too, so that the word "accepting" might be changed to "incurring". I do not think I would get away with that—seldom in this world do you get everything that you ask for. But I beg leave to move this Amendment, such as it is.
LORD KILBRACKEN: My Lords, I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, for supporting me on my Amendment and I wish that I could support him on this one. However, I feel great reservations about it. I feel reservations about subsection (5) altogether. What this means is that where a person in the course of his employment daily has to deal, let us say, with one of those vicious bulls or a bull which is likely to have a fierce temperament—and we were talking about this on a previous occasion—the owner or keeper of the bull is liable for any damage it does to him, even though he is, day after day, looking after this bull, feeding it, and so on, because it is part of his employment. It seems to me that under the Bill as it stands at present the employee must have accepted

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the risk, which tends to imply more than the noble Lord's Amendment would imply, namely, that he has been asked to accept a risk and has done so. The noble Lord's Amendment means that the employee need only incur a risk, and if he does something on his own initiative, without having been asked to do so by the owner of the animal, and without being asked to accept the risk, the owner is still liable. It seems to me that this Amendment would take the subsection further away from the position in which I should like to see it.
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, when a risk is a calculated risk does one "accept" it or "incur" it? This is further to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kilbracken.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, may I ask whether wearing a "red shirt to a bull" is adding to the calculated risk?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, my noble friend should know that bulls are colour blind. It is one of the biggest fallacies in Nature to think that bulls dislike red. They do not; they see it as a dull, black-and-white photograph colour. Turning to the subject matter of this Amendment I must say that, left to myself, I should have agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Kilbracken. But the advice I have had is to the contrary: that the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, is perfectly safe to accept and that the use of the word "incurs" instead of "accept" where it occurs for the first time in the clause, as drafted, is slightly more convenient because it runs more easily in cases where a risk is incurred unknowingly. I am told that it makes no difference whether the Amendment is accepted or not, and on that basis I should like to accept it.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 8 [Interpretation of certain expressions used in sections 2 to 5]:
6.19 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved Amendment No. 6:
Page 5, line 19, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
("(2) Where damage is caused by animals straying from unfenced land to a highway a person who placed them on the land shall not be regarded as having committed a breach of
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the duty to take care by reason only of placing them there if—

(a) the land is common land, or is land situated in an area where fencing is not customary, or is a town or village green; and

(b) he had a right to place the animals on that land.")

The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, I have put down this Amendment in pursuance of the obligations that I incurred on the Committee stage. This time I tried my prentice hand and rather succeeded, although the drafting Amendment is professionally drafted and not my original effort, which followed the same lines, but rather inexpertly. This is a definite improvement to the Bill. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, has always disliked guidelines, and said so on almost every occasion. I have always disliked guidelines and said so on almost every occasion. The farmers disliked the guidelines because they caused them great anxieties. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, made the point that, for the purposes of this liability, there was really no logical difference between commons and open land.
The end of it is that I have suggested the abolition of the guidelines but a clear indication that a farmer is not liable by reason only that he has put his animals on land on which he is entitled to put them and which is normally unfenced and unenclosed. I have also brought together the commons and village greens with unenclosed land. My own feeling is that I can with a good conscience commend this Amendment to the House as an improvement, and I hope it will give satisfaction to those who on an earlier occasion pressed on me the views of the farmers. My Lords, I beg to move.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, may I immeditely thank my noble and learned friend for his very handsome fulfilment of the undertaking which he somewhat hesitatingly gave to the Committee on the previous occasion. For myself, I never had any doubt that his ingenuity and energy would find some satisfactory solution, and certainly from the point of view of the farming community he has admirably found it. I express my own gratitude. I have also had some words with the National Farmers' Union and I can express their gratitude as well—which is perhaps a

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little less likely, but it is forthcoming. They really are most grateful to the noble and learned Lord for removing what is, or has been, quite a serious anxiety on the previous structure of Clause 8.
There is one point on which I should like to ask the noble and learned Lord to say a word when he replies to this short debate. That is on the interpretation of "customary". Obviously, courts will have to interpret what "customary" means, and I presume that the livestock farmer concerned will have to establish that no fencing is customary in the particular area. Would this normally be by reference to living memory? Is this normally the evidence which would be satisfactory to a court? This, I think, is the only remaining anxiety that farmers still have.
As to the general structure, what my noble and learned friend has succeeded in doing is in putting this unfenced land, especially in the upland areas which are used for livestock rearing, in precisely the same category as common land; and that is where it ought to be. There is no doubt about it now. At the same time, he has made it absolutely clear that where a livestock farmer grazes his cattle on this land he is not in breach of duty by so doing. Although, inevitably, areas of doubt still remain, I feel, as I said on the Committee stage debate, that when such a major radical change in the law is being made it is only fair on the livestock farmers concerned that they should not be left substantially at risk.
On the previous construction of the subsection, although obviously great efforts had been made in the various points which were enumerated in subsection (2), I always felt that the livestock farmer still was at risk because, in the event of an accident occurring with his cattle, he had to show that he had taken reasonable care if an action was brought against him. What he had to plead was that he had taken reasonable care in all the circumstances; but that meant that he had done nothing, since no care was needed in the areas concerned because everybody knew that cattle strayed on the roads and that the roads were not fenced. It seemed to me that the clause as previously constructed really was straining the meaning of words. Therefore, I am very grateful to my noble and learned
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friend for the Amendment he has put forward, which removes what seemed to be an anomaly.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, I regret that the noble and learned Lord has given way to this extent to the National Farmers' Union. I am not sufficiently inexperienced as not to appreciate that, if that is so, no opposition to the Amendment is likely to succeed. True, I never liked all the paraphernalia of the guidelines, as the noble and learned Lord has called them, partly because, among other things, they included references to an area and I never understood what the area was. But this only emphasises that point, and makes it rather worse, because a judge decides whether the man is situated in an area where fencing is not customary. I suppose "area" can mean anything from a couple of farms to Cumberland or South-East England; and how anybody is to know how this word is to be interpreted I am not sure.
There is an alternative. The next three Amendments on the Marshalled List are, I think, merely alternatives to this Amendment and, speaking for myself, I should prefer them (if it is not out of Order to refer to them) primarily because they bring back the concept of what is reasonable or unreasonable. In all these cases the circumstances will vary very greatly, and the more we leave it to the judge to exercise his good sense as to what is reasonable or unreasonable in all these circumstances, I should have thought the better. I do not know whether we are to have a discussion on Amendments Nos. 7, 8 and 9 before coming to a determination on Amendment No. 6, but the House may feel that that would be the proper course to take.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, to clarify the phrase "where fencing is not customary", would it not be much simpler to say:
"where fencing has not been carried out for a hundred years"?
We should then know where we were; but if we say "customary" or, as my noble friend Lord Nugent suggested, "within living memory", those terms can be interpreted very widely.
6.27 p.m.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, I am afraid that, although an amicable mood

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is prevailing here, I cannot find myself in agreement with the proposal in this Amendment, for this reason. The question of fencing is a question which does not necessarily depend upon "customary fencing". Obviously, if you were always to rely upon what is customary you would be placed in a difficulty. For example, you would have been faced with the situation in the New Forest that it had been customary for a very considerable time not to have any fencing. However, those concerned thought that the custom was a bad one and they produced regulations which required fencing to be provided, with the result that the danger which had prevailed before—and I referred to the figures; I do not want to repeat them—was reduced; a considerable number of accidents was reduced to practically none.
In my view, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, was perfectly right. First of all, on the question of area, what is the area customarily not fenced? One might have a field with a very short frontage which for years had not been fenced. It becomes, consequently, a place where fencing was not customary. Surely, nobody here would be prepared to say that, because that was the situation by custom for years—a hundred years, if you like—it should not be fenced at the present time in order to protect the people who suffer from animals straying from that area. I think, if I may say so with respect, that the word "customary" here is wrong. "Reasonable"—well, that is another matter. It may very well be that the other Amendments about to be proposed will cover the point. But certainly one has to look at these questions, and I have been concerned in this matter for many years now.
We have heard a lot about the National Farmers' Union, and we may have a very high regard for it; but we also must have regard to the person who is injured by a straying animal. That is the side we are dealing with. It is already covered to some extent. The Bill as it stands at present has serious restrictions so far as a person claiming compensation is concerned. If noble Lords will look at this provision they will see that it is likely to result in a large number of cases concerning people who are not in a position to take legal proceedings, with consequent cost upon the community for
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legal aid and so on. We have to look at this particular measure as being one to protect those who are injured, or the relatives of those who are killed, in the matter of damages. Time after time learned judges have commented upon this matter and have pointed out how bad the position is in so far as the common law is concerned.
Looking at it from that angle, and with the greatest respect to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, I think it is wrong to have actions in the courts as to what is customary, in the first place, and to abide by a custom in a matter of this nature, where in fact we are deviating from the long custom because the Bill itself is a deviation from custom, the custom having been that the compensation should not be granted. That may not be as strong an argument as the other, but at the same time I would beg the House to consider the matter from the point of view of the injured person.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, as someone who lives in a county where there are wide areas of unfenced land, may I add my thanks to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for moving this Amendment, which certainly in the North-West of England will not be looked upon just as a surrender to the National Farmers' Union, which seems to be the point of view of noble Lords opposite. I have received carefully reasoned memoranda from the county councils of both Cumberland and Westmorland and from the Lake District Planning Board, and they would not like to be looked upon just as agents of the National Farmers' Union but as people who represent the broad spectrum of all reasonable opinion in their districts.
I do not want to speak at any length, but there is this one point. I think it is a mistake to labour heavily over the word "custom", because in the agricultural community it is perfectly clear what the custom of the country is, even though it may not be clear to all those who live in towns—if rather less clear to-day than it was a few years ago before more and more of our custom had been written in detail either in appendices to Bills or in statutory regulations. But to those who will have to work this system the custom of the country will not present the great difficulty which speeches of noble Lords opposite seem to imply.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, will the noble Lord forgive me for interrupting him? Would he not consider that if a person had not fenced his own land, small though it might be, for many years, it had been customary for him not to have fencing?
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, may I suggest that the word is not being used in the technical sense at all; it just means "usually".
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, may I congratulate the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack? I think the noble Lord, Lord Janner, has overlooked some facts. I do not believe that, in any of the cases he imagines, the actual result would be different under the Amendment moved by my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack from what it would have been under the words previously in the Bill. In my submission, what this Amendment makes clear is this: that the liability in any case is for negligence. What this Amendment says is that a person shall not be held guilty of negligence by reason only of the fact that he did not fence on a common or in places where fencing is not customary. I do not believe that in fact the Amendment would alter the result from what it would have been without it. What I think it does is to add very much to the clarity of the clause and to concentrate on the one point that was so doubtful to many people; namely, what duty to fence was implied in the Bill as it stood.
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, I too, want to congratulate the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, because in my view he has thought up an answer to this problem which has bothered us all for about eleven months since we first started talking about this matter. I was most surprised to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, being slightly critical, because I thought he was also going to say that this Amendment was a good one. Many months ago the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, suggested that the whole clause should stop at subsection (1) and that none of the guidelines should be in at all. The only guideline which has been left in is the last one at the bottom, which makes it quite clear that because land is common land and cannot be fenced it should not make the owner of the land liable for
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negligence. What we were struggling after for so long was to put exactly the same kind of land which is not common on to all fours with common land. That is all that has been done. The whole question of putting the farmer and other people at risk for negligence is in no way altered, so it seems to me that we have an extremely good Amendment.
I still agree with the original thoughts of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, that it would have been better to leave the clause at subsection (1) and to say nothing at all either about commons or about land which is unfenced but which is not common. Nevertheless I think the general feeling is that both types of land should go in. If I may say so, the noble Lord, Lord Janner, has missed the point. This Amendment will not make it any more difficult to hold a man responsible for negligence. He is in exactly the same position as he was with the Bill unamended. It seems to me that the Amendment is a very much better one than that standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, and myself, and my own feeling is that the House should accept the Lord Chancellor's Amendment.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, may I endorse what the noble Lord has just said? What we wanted to do was to remove the fear on the part of farmers and others in these open spaces that they were going to be required to fence these wide areas of land. My noble friend and I thought it was best to face it and make the failure to fence such land not evidence of negligence. When we saw the Amendment put down by the noble and learned Lord, which much more satisfactorily and easily secures this object, we felt there was no further need for our Amendment. Of course it had already been sent in, and that is how it comes to be on the Marshalled List, but we do not propose to move it.
LORD HURCOMB: My Lords, may I, in two sentences, express the hope that your Lordships will accept this Amendment with gratitude. Apart from the point of view of the farmers, as I said at a previous stage of the Bill there are a great many people who still like to drive or walk along roads which are not fenced, and the clause as it stood would, at any rate by implication, put pressure on people who were in doubt as to what

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they ought to do to fence where it was really unnecessary to do so. So it seems to me that this Amendment meets the point of view of the general country lover, apart from the point of view of the landlord or the farmer.
As to guidelines, I have had some experience in legislation laying down guidelines. In my day the draftsmen used to say that when you had told the tribunal what they should take into account and included every suggestion that every interest wanted, you should end up by saying "and all the other circumstances of the case", thus endeavouring to restore the discretion of the court or the tribunal. So I think we are rid of guidelines and we are also rid of any pressure to fence unnecessarily. We have achieved a great deal, and this Amendment seems to me to be calculated to give general satisfaction.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, may I say a word in reply to the various speeches which have been made? I am extremely grateful to all those noble Lords who have welcomed the Amendment. May I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, that I was not conscious of yielding to anybody, except the general feeling of the debate in Committee, which rather pressed me to look at the matter again. I looked at it again in the light of the criticisms, which were well nigh universal, on the existing subsection (2). Not least effective among those criticisms were those which came from the noble and learned Lord himself, who on more than one occasion expressed himself strongly against them. I then tried to do what I thought the House wanted. I would have no shame in yielding to the National Farmers' Union if I thought that they were right.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, seems to think that this is against the Ten Commandments; I can assure him there is nothing about the National Farmers' Union in the Ten Commandments. I believe it is a good thing to yield to people if you think they are right. I felt certain, having heard the strength of the anxieties they expressed, that they had a genuine and legitimate fear which ought to be removed if it could be done without injustice to anybody. When this was reinforced, for instance, by the noble Lord, Lord
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Hurcomb, who spoke on behalf of the amenities of the countryside primarily rather than that of agriculture or the farmer, and by my noble friend Lord Inglewood, who voiced the views of the County Councils' Association, I thought that I should be particularly mulish if I did not take account of the criticisms offered. I genuinely thought that this was an improvement. The words I had used in the original draft which I made myself were different words and did not include the word "area" or "custom"; but I am advised that these are rather better, so I willingly embrace them.
As regards the criticisms of the noble Lord, Lord Janner, I would point out that the word "area" exists in the draft which he has clasped to his bosom; it occurs in guideline (e) and is just as vague there as in my Amendment. The word "reasonable" which he has also clasped to his bosom remains in the Bill if my Amendment is accepted, because it is in subsection (1). So I think he can reassure his own mind that justice continues to be done, because it is based on negligence, and the farmer and the landowner and the amenity interests have got something they can understand. I had hoped, although I am now disappointed in that hope, that the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, whom I may refer to as a legal purist, had got rid of something he legitimately disliked. I hope I have even now pleased a majority, and I am very grateful to those noble Lords who happen to agree with me.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I think Amendments Nos. 7, 8 and 9 fall now, because they relate to words which have now been omitted. Amendments Nos. 10 and 11 might with convenience be discussed together.
6.44 p.m.
LORD KILBRACKEN LORD KILBRACKEN moved Amendment No. 10:
Page 7, line 17, leave out ("any")
The noble Lord said: My Lords, at the Committee stage of the Bill I proposed to substitute the words "one or more" for the word "any", because I felt, in my ignorance, that the definition should not only require more than one animal of the different species enumerated. In my studies of the Interpretation

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Act in another connection, I discovered that the plural includes the singular and the singular includes the plural, unless it is stated to the contrary. My Amendment was therefore quite unnecessary, but the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said on that occasion that he felt that the word "any" was otiose. Since I am sure that he does not like to see an otiose word in his Bill, I beg leave to move this Amendment to delete it.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, if I may just express an opinion, it is that both this Amendment and the next are improvements and I happily accept both.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD KILBRACKEN: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 11.
Amendment moved—
Page 7, line 21, leave out ("any of")—(Lord Kilbracken.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.

THE CONSUMER COUNCIL
6.45 p.m.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware of the dismay caused, not only in this country but also in many other countries which have in one form or another followed the British example, by their decision to discontinue the grant to the Consumer Council, announced in Cmnd. 4515, paragraph 10; and whether they have any plans to continue the work of the Council in any other way.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I rise to ask the Question standing in my name, but first I want to say one thing to the noble Lord who is going to reply. I want to make it quite clear that, although this Question is put down as a critical one, I am, as he knows, a staunch supporter of this Government in all their other policies, and it is only on this occasion that I am raising this matter and speaking, as I must, in disagreement with what the Government are proposing to do.
The Consumer Council has never been a Party political matter. My noble friend Lord Eccles, when he was at the
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Board of Trade, appointed the Molony Commission. And it was my noble friend, Lord Erroll of Hale, when he was at the Board of Trade, and Prime Minister Mr. Harold Macmillan who invited me to be the first Chairman of the Consumer Council. We started absolutely from scratch; we had absolutely nothing laid down in the way of organisation; we had to start it all up. Under the last Labour Government I carried on for two years. So in this debate, and in the Question I am asking, I do not intend to make this a Party political question to-day.
The matter is practical and important to us all, since, whether we are manufacturers, retailers, or producers of anything, we are all also consumers. I tried when setting up the Council to get a fair balance of interests; and I tried in making speches all over the country, not to campaign against any section but simply to speak up for the consumer—unless, as in some cases, he had misused or misapplied goods bought; and then I said so. I am not going into detail, but looking back at the Annual Report I see that in my foreword to the very first Report of the Council, for 1963–64, I wrote the following:
"In launching this new enterprise we had to decide what are the basic principles of consumer satisfaction on which it should be founded. We have acted on the assumption that people have a right to: full information about the goods they buy, a choice of goods and a choice of prices with a choice of shops to buy in, help in discriminating, safety in goods bought, redress for justified complaints, protection from unfair pressures, for instance in marketing and advertising."
One or two things stick out in my mind from those early days of what the Council did and of the actions it took. The abolition of resale price maintenance we found a very controversial subject indeed; but in the interests of the consumer we backed the abolition, and I think we were right. In 1964, we supported the Hire-Purchase Act, and urged the 72-hour pause before a consumer was committed to buy. We supported many safety measures in connection with inflammable material, electrical appliances and so on. We urged the improvement of building standards, through the National Housebuilders' Registration Council. We supported improvement in labelling, with our Teltag Scheme, and we did all we could to try to concentrate on the point of sale so that

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the buyers could know exactly what they were buying.
We tried also to bring the point of view of the consumer to the forefront of any Government Department drawing up legislation. I was often amazed how little our legislators thought of the end product—the point of sale, so to speak—and of the actual effect their legislation was going to have on the consumer. But I think we did succeed in getting into the heads of many of those people drafting Bills the idea of the consumer's point of view. During the passage of the Trade Descriptions Act through this House in the last Parliament I continually spoke out for the consumer, but still endeavoured to be strictly fair as between manufacturers, retailers, and consumers.
I realised what enormous pressures were brought on to the ordinary shopper by advertising, by high pressure salesmanship, and how important it was to educate the consumer to know and discriminate in buying, so as to get the best value for money. I remember going to schools and colleges of further education where excellent courses and demonstrations were going on, both in the 15 to 16 age groups and in the post-school evening institute classes. I was delighted with the interest taken in the work and setting up of the Council by a great variety of organisations, and by their help in all that we were trying to do.
In those first one or two years I spoke to any number of chambers of commerce in many parts of the country, particularly in the great cities; to trade associations; to co-operative societies; to women's organisations of all kinds and descriptions; to citizens advice bureaux; to any number of weights and measures officials, and also at the Weights and Measures Conference; and I remember an enormous conference, organised (I think in Blackpool) by the National Council for Quality and Reliability, when I had lunch with a number of shop stewards from different industries. Wherever I went enormous interest was shown by a very varied number of people and interests.
As we got going we suddenly found that great interest came from abroad—among Commonwealth countries, for instance. I remember that in August, 1963, we had great correspondence, and we saw people from New South Wales who
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were anxious to know how to set up a similar kind of organisation there. From Canada, in 1965, the Economic Council of Canada wanted to know how they could do something similar to what we were doing, and we had to provide them with general information on many subjects. We also gave information to India, on which they acted. Then there were Ghana, in 1967; Kenya, in 1969; New Zealand in 1964—all these Commonwealth countries wanted to know what we were doing, thought it was a good idea, and were anxious to follow. Then we received inquiries from Europe: from Czechoslovakia in 1969; from Bulgaria in September, 1965; from Israel in 1965. I remember a great conference afterwards in Israel, when we sent delegates over there. Inquiries came also from other European countries, such as France and Germany.
Then I found myself, on one occasion, in the United States, and I was asked down to Washington to the White House (it was the offices of the White House) to explain to departmental officials there what we were doing, and why we were doing it. We were, in fact, being called on to give advice and information very nearly all over the world. I knew that it was only a beginning, but it had a spark of originality and leadership which gave us at that time a lead in these affairs—a lead of which I felt, and still feel, very proud. I wish that the work we did was being carried further forward. We were doing something new and something useful.
I remember vividly the last meeting I addressed at the end of my five years as Chairman of the Council. It was in Newcastle. We took a hall accommodating 300 people. I thought it would be amply big enough but 800 people applied for tickets. We had to move to another hall, and 900 people came. These were very simple people, ordinary housewives who came to hear various speakers and to ask questions. Many of your Lordships know that to get a large political meeting of 900 people, unless you have a tremendous attraction, is a very difficult thing to do—and even if you have such an attraction you do not often get such a large audience. I was amazed and thrilled by the fact that the last meeting I addressed was one of 900 housewives.
The Council published a number of leaflets on subjects of interest to consumers. I have a few of them here—I was looking at them just now—and they have an enormous sale: leaflets like, How to Say "No" to a Doorstep Salesman. Many people find that a very difficult subject. There is a leaflet, Buying a House, which deals with all the things that have to be done, and the difficulties, in order to help young married couples when they want to start buying a house. Then there is a leaflet about what you should do before booking your holiday, so that you are not led up the garden path and find the package holiday you thought you were going to have turns out to be something different from what you expected. We published booklets about shopping, about Christmas, about buying food and drink. In fact, we had a wide range of subjects upon which we published literature, and all of which we discovered was demanded by people because there was nothing of the kind available for them. The booklets went into many editions. One in particular (I forget now which one) I think we translated into Hindustani, because it was wanted so badly in one area and that was the language in which it was required. All these things were enormously valuable, and I do not think that any other organisation was doing it or could do it.
The Consumers' Association, of which I am a member, publishes an admirable and excellent publication, which we all know, called Which? but this is complementary to what we in the Council were doing. The Consumers' Association were, and are, doing something quite different. They are testing articles and making recommendations to people as to what they ought to buy as the best buy. By our terms of reference we could not test articles, and we could not deal with individual complaints. The Consumers' Association could do these things, but we could not.
However, I think we were a good combination, and I was very interested, and gratified, to read a letter from Mrs. Roy Jenkins, who is at present chairman of the Consumers' Association, in The Times of November 9. I should just like to quote from it, because I think it is a handsome tribute to the Consumer Council
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from the Chairman of the Consumers' Association. She says:
"Consumers' Association and the Consumer Council have always been complementary, not competitive organisations. Consumers' Association exists to do what the Consumer Council was specifically debarred from doing by its terms of reference; almost all our resources are needed to give our members in our magazines the results of the comparative tests and surveys they pay for.
"In contrast, the Consumer Council has provided advice and information for the public as a whole through its publications and through the Teltag Scheme of informative labelling it has persuaded and assisted hundreds of schools to include consumer education in their courses; it has played a vitally important part in representing the consumer viewpoint to Government and industry."
I am very glad to have that tribute from the Chairman of the Consumers' Association. I am also glad to have read many letters and comments in the Press, since the announcement that the Consumer Council was to be ended, in which great tribute was paid to the valuable work which the Council have done and could go on doing for the community in the future.
Last week the National Council of Women passed a resolution at their Annual General Meeting. The National Council represents 3 million women, and the resolution reads as follows:
"The National Council of Women in Conference Assembled urges the Government to reconsider its decision to abolish the Consumer Council, thus leaving consumers without a powerful and influential spokesman when decisions are taken by industry and Government departments. The National Council of Women considers that it is essential that provision is made for consumers to be informed, educated and expertly represented if they are to benefit from free competition in an increasingly complicated technological society."
I listened yesterday to part of the debate on metrication, and I thought to myself, "My goodness me! What problems metrication is going to give to the ordinary consumer when it comes. Who is going to disentangle those questions?" We also have the currency being changed in February and, while I strongly support the change, I know that it is going to be very difficult for many people. That is the kind of problem which the Consumer Council could have helped a lot of people with, and nobody will be there in a similar capacity.
The Minister who is to reply is a great expert on these matters. He and I

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worked closely together when I was Chairman of the Consumer Council and he was chairman of an advertising agency. He knows as well as anybody the work that we were doing and he has great experience, so I know that I am speaking to a sympathetic person. I want to ask whether the Government will reconsider their decision. The greatest people, and indeed Governments, have changed their minds and often for the better. If that is not possible—and I sincerely hope that it is—I want to ask what plans the Government have to carry on the work begun seven years ago and built up with so much good will on all sides, irrespective of Party political affiliations or anything else. Is the Department of Trade and Industry going to have a section to care for this work?
I agree very much with the Prime Minister's forward look. I am all for taking a new look at many things and I am anxious to encourage and support the Government in every way. We are leading the world in the development of consumer interest, and in the attitude which Government Departments are taking in shaping legislation. The cost is infinitesimal. I am told that it is one penny per person per year; in other words, £240,000, which is absolutely nothing. If we can stop people wasting their money on poor purchases and save them from exploitation, as well as raise the standard of goods and services in the country, then no one, not even the taxpayer, will grudge that small sum.
I ask the Minister, in all sincerity, to see whether he can persuade his colleagues to change their minds. If he cannot persuade them to do so, I ask him to see that the work we have done, and are prepared to continue to do, will go on under some other auspices; but, I hope, under auspices as effective as those of the Council in the years in which it has been in existence.
7.5 p.m.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, of course the noble Lord who is to reply to-night has an alibi for the action of the Government, in that he was not a Member of the Government when the decision about the Consumer Council was taken. Equally, he will not have an alibi for the reply which he is making to us. I personally hope that he will
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not need one, but we shall all have to wait and see about that.
I should like, first of all, to make two points. First, it seems to me that the Consumer Council has been treated very badly in the way this matter has been dealt with. There was a leak or a well-founded deduction by James Margach in the Sunday Times, which was subsequently picked up by other papers. I think I am correct in saying that neither my noble friend Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge nor Dame Elizabeth Ackroyd could obtain confirmation or denial from the Government following that publicity. We can all imagine the effect, for some ten days or so, which such publicity had on the staff of the Consumer Council. I know personally that this effect weighed very greatly on my noble friend Lord Donaldson and on Dame Elizabeth Ackroyd. It really was a matter of very great concern.
Secondly, I wish that the Minister could have opened this debate, and probably the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, does, too. In common with her, I want to know what is going to take the place of the Consumer Council, and then we could have a discussion in some depth. In passing, I would say that I think we must have an organisation having a direct link with government, and certainly one not in receipt of money from trade or industry.
The House knows, and consumer organisations know, that I have been critical of the Consumer Council. I thought reappraisal necessary; indeed, I thought it essential if the Consumer Council were to continue, and I said so in our debate in November of last year. We have now reached the stage when I think certain things must be said. These may well be unpopular, but I remember someone once saying to me, "Well, after all, we do not come to the House of Lords to be popular." Anyway, Members have always been very kind in this House in remembering that consumer affairs have been my major preoccupation in Parliament for some twenty years.
I think that part of the trouble has been that government—with a small "g"—has always been reluctant to regard consumer affairs as of major importance. I know that a Conservative Government set up the Molony Committee, and then the Consumer Council following the Report

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of that Committee. I know that a Labour Government passed the Trade Descriptions Act. I know that Law Commissions have reported on guarantees. Why then, and with what justification, do I say that government is reluctant to regard consumer affairs as an area of major importance? All through the 'fifties we had a long drawn struggle in the Commons. By the mid-'fifties we had made some progress against the opposition of both Front Benches. Out of that progress came the Molony Committee. In 1962 the Molony Committee reported, and the first debate on their Report was in this House in November of that year. In 1963 the Government set up the Consumer Council. I remember battles over this here in this Chamber—mostly objections by myself, I will agree. They were objections, my Lords, to which I got no answer at all: objections, I would hasten to add, not against the setting up of the Consumer Council but as to how it was being done.
What was I objecting to? My Lords, the Consumer Council had no teeth. The status of the Chairman, whom it took a long time to find, was nothing like the status envisaged by the Molony Committee. I have always hesitated to say that here, because it might seem discourteous to the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood. Nobody in this House would wish to be that—and I am sure she knows it. And so we have gone on for eight years. The general plan has not worked. I think it has not worked for two reasons: first, the set-up was wrong; secondly, the Consumer Council went the wrong way about things. Concerning the set-up, I hesitate to think how many times your Lordships must have wearied of this constant theme. But never once, from either Government, whether having given notice or not, have I had any attempt at an answer to the basic points put forward—and, my Lords, I believe that one has a right to an answer. My points may have been right, they may have been wrong. I am sure they were a nuisance: but they were an attempt to be constructive. I think that anyone who tries to be constructive merits an answer. And, nuisance though I may have been in both Houses over twenty years, I have tried to be a constructive nuisance.
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My Lords, I think the suggestions merited or should have had something more important than an answer. I believe they should have had consideration. Nobody at the very top was prepared to sit down and really consider how this was going. Why? There were two reasons, I think. First of all, it was a nuisance. Here you had a Consumer Council: why look for problems? Secondly, among many priorities it did not rank sufficiently high. As to the way the Consumer Council went about things, the House knows of my views particularly from our debate of 12 months ago. We all feel the difficulty of criticising an organisation in Parliament simply because we are in a privileged position, and not one person here would wish to take advantage of that. I tried last November to voice my doubts and to suggest what might be done. A few minutes ago I said that nobody at the very top had been sufficiently interested to sit down and consider why this area of consumer affairs had not worked out successfully. Perhaps I might make the somewhat cryptic statement that someone at last was; but the outcome of the General Election put paid to that.
So what do we have now? My Lords, we have a decision which seems to spring from a doctrinaire view of Government's proper role—and this from a Party which has always condemned doctrinaire decisions. We have a statement, repeated in the Government publication Trade and Industry of November 4, to the effect that since 1963, when the Consumer Council was set up,
"other consumer organisations have grown in number and in strength, and the consumer's interest has been more widely recognised and protected. The Consumer Council has played a useful part in this development. However, in the different situation which now exists, the Government have concluded that an adequate advancement and presentation of the consumer's interests no longer requires the maintenance of the Consumer Council at public expense".
Obviously, someone is out of touch with consumer affairs; that is, with consumer affairs as understood by those of us, on all sides of the House, who have worked on these matters for many years. The number of consumer organisations has nothing to do with the matter at all. What has been wanted ever since the Molony Committee reported in 1962 has I been co-ordination in consumer affairs

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and consumer education. The word "protection" was left behind in the 'fifties. This co-ordination I saw as the main job of the Consumer Council, as did Molony at paragraph 872; and in this, I think, the Consumer Council has failed. But such co-ordination is the outstanding need. In our November debate of a year ago I called for a reappraisal, a reconstruction, to see why this co-ordination had not been forthcoming. That means reconstruction, and not abolition. I believe it has been put about tentatively that the Consumers' Association might take on the job. Anybody who understood anything at all about this field would realise that that was not even a starter—and a very dusty answer has come from the Consumers' Association.
My Lords, are the Government going to put anything in place of the Consumer Council? One idea the Government are rumoured to be considering is the setting up of some machinery for protecting the consumer within a proposed "Commission for Competition". The House knows my views on the word protecting". So far as consumer affairs are concerned, the title alone fills me with apprehension—apprehension because the Government have not even begun to understand the problem of consumer affairs. In the area we are discussing to-night the problems are not competition, they are not protection: they are education of the consumer based upon Government legislation dealing with, for example, contracting out and guarantees, unregistered seals of approval, recommended pricing and legal problems of small claims.
So what would I suggest? First of all, I could not support the idea of a fund for the continuation of the Consumer Council as at present. I would suggest, as the item of the Council runs down, a reappraisal of the whole field of consumer affairs such as outlined in column 1268 of our debate on November 26 last year. I would suggest that the Government take no irrevocable step as to the future until this has been done.
Finally, on October 31 last, I read a leader in the Guardian which stated in the penultimate sentence:
"For many bad reasons the Department of Trade and Industry, now controlled by an ex-Director of the C.B.I., will no doubt have welcomed the chance to kill the Council off".
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My Lords, that may be true, it may not. I hope it is not. For my part, I hope that Mr. Davies himself, however preoccupied he may be, and indeed as ex-Director of the C.B.I., will realise full well, and will persuade his colleagues in the Government to realise, that in these days of giant organisations, of monopolies, of developing retail chains, of complex nomenclatures in labelling, of production being concentrated more and more in larger and larger units, the more necessary, not less, becomes co-ordination of information and education for the consumer—and, my Lords, for reputable industry, too.
We have dedicated, capable and experienced men and women in the Consumer Council. We have an organisation like the Retail Trading Standards Association, to which I have constantly paid tribute both here and in another place. This Association has recommended the setting up of a Committee for Consumer Affairs. I would beg the right honourable gentleman himself, with his background of business and industry, to read our debate to-night before giving his agreement to the doctrinaire abolition of a service (not necessarily the Consumer Council as of now) that the country can ill-afford to lose.
7.20 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, for having asked this Question tonight because I think it is one which a great many people are asking. I believe, with the noble Baroness, Lady Burton, but for slightly different reasons, that the whole key to the matter is that the Government do not understand the seriousness of what they are doing. I do not think that this applies in any way to the noble Lord who is going to answer the debate tonight, for we know that he has long had an interest in and concern for many of these matters.
But a scenario is sometimes put forward by noble Lords in this House during any debate we may have on consumer legislation which probably holds some kind of sway not only in Government but in Ministries as well. It is to the effect that manufacturers and traders are all decent, honest people doing their best, and that they would never in any way "do down" the consumer if they

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could possibly help it. In addition, the force of free competition is such that if they did sell shoddy or dangerous goods or anything like that, they would soon go out of business; and so they do not do so. The other side of this scenario applies to the consumer. According to this side of the scenario, the consumer is an intelligent, wise and careful person, who goes about from shop to shop carefully judging quality and prices. He or she is very aware of the possible dangers to the family of purchasing shoddy goods; one who can be relied upon to hold his or her own against any manufacturer or trader who produces such goods; and he will immediately put such people out of business.
It cannot be stated too often that this is a totally false scenario. To start with, among producers and traders there are as many rogues as there are in any other collection of human beings—including, if I may say so, your Lordships in this House. There is no collection of people in the world which consists entirely of honest men of goodwill, and everyone knows this. But the question of whether they are rogues is not the most important point. The most important point is the pressure on manufacturers, for example, to conform in matters of price rather than in matters of safety. If the expense involved in fitting an extra safety device to a car is likely to bring the end price above that of competitors' cars there is a great temptation for a manufacturer not to fit the extra device; particularly if the consumer has shown by previous reactions that he would buy the cheaper car of a competitor.
The consumer, on the other hand, is not as he is painted. More and more consumers are becoming educated in purchasing—and we must be glad of it. We must be thankful to the Consumer Council and the Consumers' Association that this is so. But the consumers are not all as the scenario depicts them. At most those wise consumers represent a fairly small proportion of the population of this country. To take a more extreme case, there are still many people in this country who are poor and badly educated. Many people find it difficult to understand the small print on agreements; they find it difficult to judge the quality of goods other than those they are handling all
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the time. Yet these are the very people, the poor and ill-educated people, who it is most important should exercise this kind of judgment, and to whom it most matters whether they choose things of good quality or not.
This is why there is a continuing need for education and information and, I would say, for more and more legislation. Here I would differ—but perhaps not entirely—from the noble Baroness, Lady Burton, for she was saying what the Consumer Council ought to do, while I think that what is most important is what they have done. They have been a pressure group. They have been a pressure group in Ministries and in the drafting of legislation; and we know from our own experience what an effective pressure group they have been, for example, in this House. When the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, or the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, speak on consumer matters we listen, not only because we would always listen to them (and that the Consumer Council can get such people is a sign of its quality) not only because of themselves, but also because they speak for an organisation which has been set up by the Government to look after consumers and which can call on the accumulated wisdom of all groups of the community. Other bodies will not do this as well.
Whatever may happen to be the body doing this—and I hope it will continue to be the Consumer Council—it must have some direct link with the Government. This is extremely important. None of the other bodies now existing can do this, as they themselves say. The thought that the need no longer exists is laughable. I do not think it has been defended yet, and I hope it will not be defended tonight. My Lords, the Consumer Council is the Conservative Party's own "baby". It is the Consumer Council, as we were reminded in another place last night, which gave a great deal of support to Mr. Heath in the greatest victory of his career, which was to get the Resale Prices Bill through a hostile Cabinet, a hostile Party and a hostile House of Commons. It is a great pity that the Conservative Party should have turned to kill their own baby. I think it is entirely because they do not realise that the whole field of consumer protection is of the utmost possible importance in a world

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where the power of industry and the power of Government and of every other kind of body gets greater and greater.
There was a time when it was absolutely right that the Legislature of this country should say that the power of the employers as bargainers against the employee was too great, and that trade unions must be built up so that there could be collective bargaining on the part of employees. It may be that that process has gone too far; but it was absolutely necessary at the time. Now is the time when the collective bargaining power of the consumers must be looked after. I do not think that in this field it will ever happen through bodies like the trade unions; I think it is the Government's duty to protect these people. I regard it as of tremendous importance. I should like to close by appealing to the Government in the words which Queen Elizabeth addressed to her judges:
"Have a care over your people. They are your people. Every man spoileth them without mercy. They cannot revenge their quarrel nor help themselves. See unto them. See unto them; for they are your charge."
7.29 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I was present at the birth of the Consumer Council—at least, I was at the Board of Trade. I cannot claim to be the midwife, but my noble friend Lord Erroll of Hale was the father and I suppose the Board of Trade was the mother. At that time a new child was urgently required. My noble friend Lady Elliot started off by being the nanny and then became governess—and very successful she was. But nobody suggested that the child was going to live forever. As the child grew up I think it was realised more and more that it had no teeth. It was never given teeth. At the time it was set up the parent—the Board of Trade—had a lot of teeth missing, too. When it came to protecting consumers there were very wide "gaps" and they could not do much about it. The Consumer Council did a very good job—there is no question about that—in pushing Governments into new legislation, and in educating the public. Without them, I think much of the legislation would have been more difficult to get through. But I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, that the proper people to control things on behalf of the consumer are
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the Government, and most of the controlling can be done by legislation.
I said that when the Consumer Council was set up teeth were missing at the Board of Trade. But when we are considering this matter it is important to remember what has happened since that time. In 1963 there was the Weights and Measures Act which dealt with a lot of consumer problems. In 1964 there was the Hire Purchase Act. Prior to that the Consumer Council had a lot to say about hire purchase. In 1968 there was passed what I suppose was the most important of all the Acts to protect the consumer, the Trade Descriptions Act. All those are enforced by Government or local authorities. Since then, as has already been mentioned, further protection for the consumer was afforded when resale price maintenance was abolished. So the situation to-day is quite different from what it was when the Consumer Council was set up.
My Lords, I do not wish to give offence in any way, but I think the Consumer Council have almost worked themselves out of a job. I have had a good deal to do with them, mostly at second hand, and very effective I have found them, particularly in the early years. But, as the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, said, one must not be afraid of being unpopular in your Lordships' House, and it has seemed to me that latterly they have had little to do. As I say, I do not wish to be offensive in any way, but there has been a little scraping around, looking for trouble, without in many cases having the funds for adequate research or, indeed, the right to carry it out.
I think that at this stage in our history we must consider the money question. The Consumer Council never had enough money, but they were set up primarily as an advisory body and, if you like, a propaganda watchdog. I am sorry to say it, but I have a feeling that nowadays, because they have done a large part of their job, their work is less effective than it was in the early stages. In 1963–64 they got £60,000 from the Government. In 1964–65 they got £115,000. In 1970–71 they got £240,000—due largely, I think, to inflation. I do not believe they are doing much more to-day, if as much, as they were doing in the early years. My noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood

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asks, what is £240,000? My Lords one of the things from which this country is suffering is from people saying, "What is £240,000?" People say, "What is a million? Or five million? It is chicken feed." That is one of the troubles. My own view is that the Consumer Council, as such, has served its purpose, in view of the fact that there has been much more legislation and there is going to be more. That legislation is enforced either by local authorities or by the central Government.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry: I think the question of what we ought to do should be looked at again. I believe that at this stage of consumer protection the unofficial bodies should be almost entirely educational and should not be looking for things that are going wrong. They should try to teach the public what it should look for. That requires quite a different set-up, and I hope that the Government are considering something of that kind. I am sorry to say it, and I know that I am alone to-night in saying it, but I think the time has come for the Consumer Council, in its present set-up, to come to an end. I think that Her Majesty's Government are right.
7.35 p.m.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, I am grateful to my friend Lady Elliot of Harwood for persisting with this Question, despite the many laments already expressed when the White Paper, New Policies for Public Spending, was debated. I am not going to follow the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, in his argument because I happen to disagree with him entirely.
First, I must declare an interest as I was, several years ago, a member of the Consumer Council for about eighteen months. Under the excellent and uncompromising directorship of Dame Elizabeth Ackroyd I have been known to complain about the occasional rough treatment of the then Labour Government. I wonder whether it is this independent attitude of their offspring that the Conservative Government fear, or its serious and formidable reputation. No one can deny that reputation—not even the noble Lord, Lord Derwent. There is no area of Government or business involvement in everyday life where the consumer may lose out in a large or a small way which escapes the Council's probing concern. It is only lack
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of money that limits its activities. I would challenge the contention that any privately run organisation could have done as well with as little money as the Government grant.
The consumer movement is a surprisingly young movement. It is little more than ten years ago since Michael Young, a man who is a veritable power house of ideas, started the Consumers' Association and its publication, Which? From this many local consumer groups have flowered, but these are usually supported by the middle classes who can afford to pay for good advice, as the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley has said. This leaves about 75 per cent. of the public, the less well-off and more defenceless consumers, with no champion except the Consumer Council which works and speaks for them.
Though no one can underrate the sterling work of the Consumers' Association in testing and comparing goods and services, it is no substitute for the Consumer Council. They are both necessary. Here I must disagree with my noble friend Lady Burton of Coventry, who laid so much stress on co-ordination. I do not believe that co-ordination is the fundamental thing about consumer protection. All sorts of measures have to start in various branches of everyday life. The essential job of the Consumer Council is one of information, education, and of advising the public, as has been said. It has even succeeded in securing consumer education as a subject in schools examinations, and I consider this a real triumph.
The Council examines every kind and every aspect of selling practice, good and bad. This ranges from the more obvious warnings about dangerous and impure goods to such tricks as inertia selling, which could more accurately be described as forced buying, and the hazards confronting the unsophisticated—as the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, mentioned—in the incomprehensible legal jargon of insurance policies and mortgages. And all along the line, my Lords, there is the misleading advertising which is so universal to-day. I read recently that in the United States one of the most advertised products, a particular mouthwash, has been tested and proved to be all "eye-wash".
The Council has been able to exert influence and bring pressure to bear on

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firms, trade associations and Government Departments. Its views are sought and respected. What is so important about this is that all its efforts are directed solely to obtaining a better deal for consumers. It is just the kind of organisation, given a bit more money, that could make surveys on rising prices by exposing the anomalies in the prices of groceries in different shops. The Council, in a recent survey of grocery prices in Scotland, found that they were much lower in the city of Aberdeen than in a typical Highland village.
The Council endeavours to protect people both from competition and from monopoly. Who can deny that the less well off get worse value for accommodation, for the goods they buy, and for credit? The need to protect them is greater in 1970 than it was in 1963, when the Conservative Government set up the Council. With the creeping inflation that affects all affluent societies, the consumer needs more safeguards against exaggerated salesmanship, low-quality goods and hazardous products. I see that the Minister in another place, replying for the Government, could defend the dissolution of the Consumer Council only by that time-worn cliché that competition was the best protection for the consumer. Those Election slogans, my Lords—how the melody lingers on! I am staggered that so intelligent a man as Mr. Maurice Macmillan cannot acknowledge that competition works best when the public is well informed and discriminating, which has been the goal of the Consumer Council's efforts since 1963.
I find it difficult to understand the reasons for such an unwise act. The Government's economic reasons are derisory. I suspect that the Government frowned on the choice of Des Wilson, that stormy petrel, as the Council's new Director, but. I can assure them that a look at the United States, at a troubleshooter called Ralph Nader, would give them something to think about. This man, Ralph Nader, has brought about a new climate of responsibility among politicians and businessmen towards consumers. I cannot help saluting a man who fought the powerful General Motors and forced them to take one of their cars right off the market because he proved that it was unsafe at any speed. Nothing can stop his crusading for the
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public, and he has been responsible for the passage of many Federal laws dealing with health and safety.
In our increasingly complex and impersonal society, individual complaints tend to be ignored by big business and industry, and the Government need the help of more, not fewer, watchdogs. I hope that the Government will think again and bring back the Consumer Council. We all know that a Conservative Government on assuming office, have to go through the illusionist act of cutting public expenditure. The Consumer Council is very cheap at the price, and to do away with it, when it has much more work to do, is just doctrinaire. But whether the Government reprieve the Council or not, I prophesy that it will rise again and will have to be reconstituted, for the simple reason that in many years to come it will be harder to get value for money.
7.45 p.m.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE: My Lords, I want to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, for at last bringing the Government into the ring. She is much the most distinguished Chairman that the Consumer Council has ever had, and it has taken her forcefulness and tact to get a squeak out of the Government at all. We tried a fortnight ago in this House. The noble Lord, Lord Boothby, and I raised the question of the Consumer Council. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, did not reply, though he wrote to me to say that he was sorry he omitted to do so and would reserve his ammunition for to-night. My noble friend Lord Shepherd raised the question and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, failed to reply to him. My noble friend Lord Shackleton, in despair, raised the matter in quite an elaborate way in his final speech, but the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, not slow to reply to criticism, made no reply. So I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for having at last brought us to the position where we are able to ask for an explanation, and we look forward to getting it.
I do not envy the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, his position to-day. He has always been a good friend to us. I do not believe that he would have come to this conclusion on his own. I shall certainly not put ideas into his head. I

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shall try not to annoy him more than our respective postures makes it inevitable. I hope that he will give me credit for that. We have always got on well in the past and perhaps later on may be able to do so again.
To-day I am glad to say that the debate has not been politically oriented. The Consumer Council has always been fearlessly independent and absolutely uninfluenced by the views of the Government in power. The noble Baroness caused grave offence to her own Government during her period of chairmanship, and I got into serious scrapes with my leaders during the time of the Labour Government. Any organisation representing consumers will always be a nuisance to administrators. One of the reasons why I am satisfied that we have done our job well is that we are giving embarrassment to a number of Government Departments, and personally I have no regrets about that. So, though the execution has been decided upon by a particular political Party and is a legitimate object of attack by the Opposition, I want to consider this matter to-day without Party bias and without making Party points. I may not entirely succeed, but I shall try.
I need not sing the Council's praises. They have been well voiced to-day, as they were yesterday in another place. I have a pile of cuttings praising the work that we have done and I think it would be wrong for me to elaborate on them. Curiously, there have been only two comments from Government sources of an evaluative kind. The Board of Trade in its statement described the work of the Consumer Council as "useful", and the Prime Minister said in another place last week:
"Some of the Council's work has been good work—I have never denied that."
I am glad to hear that, but it is not exactly an enthusiastic testimonial and contrasts curiously with views from outside country. For example, the Director of the Consumers' Institute of New Zealand says:
"I hope this thoroughly bad decision can be reversed. This will be a very great loss to the world consumer movement."
The President of the Consumers' Union of New York says:
"We were terribly distressed to learn of the liquidation of the Consumer Council after it
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had become a model to other nations of what might be accomplished in consumer protection as a result of careful and well-directed research."
A letter from the United States Commission on International Trade and Investment Policy at Washington says:
"I read with dismay about the abolition of the Consumer Council. How could it happen! Here I think we are finally beginning to move in the other direction, however haltingly."
The French representative on the Consumer Contact Committee in the E.E.C. has expressed his disappointment that the teeth of our consumer defences have been drawn.
We have had a large number of letters from the weights and measures inspectors in various places, and one in particular reads:
"The successes that you have scored over these last seven years or so have been of considerable importance in the field of consumer protection. I feel that without your support the position will deteriorate rather than improve and will worsen the safeguards to the shopping public."
Finally, I should like to quote again the comment of Sir Joseph Molony, who, after all, started the whole thing at the request of the then Government:
"I express firmly the opinion that in its seven years of life the Council has done all that its designers hoped that it would do and done it well."
So much for the two tepid comments of Government and the view of other people both outside and inside the consumer field. There is a contrast here of a striking kind.
I want to turn now to some of the things that we are doing, although I do not propose to go into great detail. Our work in education is something that no one will take on. The noble Baroness, Lady Burton, and the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, referred to this. The noble Lord said that the work should be done in quite a different way. I do not suppose he knows in what way it is being done now. I wonder whether he has looked into this question. I think it would be helpful if he did. A great deal is being done. It is inconspicuous work, and it is not going to be done by anybody else. One can well visualise officials from the Board of Trade running round the schools and the teachers training colleges suggesting that they put things into their curricula. But that is the kind

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of thing that we have been doing, and doing for seven years.
May I quote one letter in confirmation of what I am saying—I am not simply making it up. This is from a principal of a college of education, who says:
"I write as a principal who, inspired by the Consumer Council, created a senior post for a lecturer with special responsibility throughout the college for consumer education. The main artery of this is now removed, the lecturer now feels bereft, she thinks of the films, leaflets and charts, and apart from the material side, as she says, the injections of vitality by the Consumer Council were necessary in this complex society."
So much for education.
Now may I refer to one or two practical matters. Most of what we do has been referred to at some time or other in the debate. I should like to refer particularly to three enterprises which the Council has started. First, and perhaps the most important, was the Teltag, the informative label scheme which has been referred to by several speakers. This was a recommendation of the Molony Committee. We took it up. We spent quite a lot of money on it, and an enormous amount of effort. At last it is beginning to make real headway. I am not going into the details, because your Lordships will not know the names of the different firms. But there is a breakthrough in the Teltag which is just beginning to go well. It seems absolutely crazy to risk all the work and money that has been put into it just when it is breaking through.
Then there was an investigation in which we are all deeply interested, and which I think is extremely important; that is, our inquiry into the question of justice for small traders. This led to a conference of people concerned with the legal system, with those who handle consumer complaints and give advice. The Council's study Justice Out of Reach, incorporated some specific proposals for reform of the legal system. We put these proposals to the Lord Chancellor's Department, and we have been hoping that in due course something would come of them. Something does not always come of things of this kind, and I think the chance of anything happening without steady and relentless pressure from a body like our own is slender indeed. But I believe that this is an extremely important point. Nobody in England
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can risk going to court for £100—it is not worth it and you have to lose the £100 rather than go to court. Our solutions for this may not be quite the right ones, but they are important. We brought them together, but they have gone, if I may say so, for a "Burton".
Thirdly, our effective and imaginative service of advice to consumers, which we have been developing over the years, will disappear. This year we have proposed, in conjunction with the Institute of Race Relations, to conduct a pilot scheme in issuing to shoppers leaflets in various languages in selected areas where there are large immigrant populations. We know how successful similar publications in English have been among other sections of the consuming public who can read them. This might have been quite a constructive action in relation to the general attempt to integrate immigrants into local life. It is quite certain that nobody will do it now; it is as dead as a doornail.
Apart from these efforts cut off in their prime, we must not forget the day-to-day influence, perhaps the most important thing of all, of a Council like ours in relation to Government obligations to look after consumer interests. The Government have statutory obligations to look after consumers' interests and they do not carry them out too well. The Trade Descriptions Act, the Food and Drugs Act, the Post Office Act—there are a number of Acts which lay down specific obligations on the Government to consult the public, the public interest and consumers' interest. In all those cases and a good many others Government Departments have come to realise that if they want a properly researched and representative view the Consumer Council has had the resources and the desire, and above all the duty, to put the consumers' point of view. We can and do support with expert technical skill those too often lone representatives, statutorily appointed to look after consumer interests; and we provide expert opinion on behalf of the consumer on many other committees where we sit round a table with manufacturers and traders making sure that the consumer view is heard. All this will stop.
It is no good pretending that there are plenty of people willing to take the work on. Without a professionally staffed,

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full-time organisation, in most consumer cases nothing happens at all, and nothing will. It is a naive economist indeed who supposes that competition is kept on the boil simply by isolated consumers exercising their choice in the market. I hope that the Minister will not skate round the very serious gaps which this policy is going to make in the whole consumer movement and the steady pressure in different directions in the consumers' interests.
The Department of Trade and Industry says, as a reason for our demise, that other consumer organisations have grown in number and in strength. No doubt the noble Lord will give us a list of those consumer organisations and of their number and strength, to show exactly how they are going to do the work that we are to stop doing. But I should like temporarily to anticipate him. In the first place, there is the Consumers' Association, our good friends. They have made it perfectly clear that they will not touch it. That has been said again and again. There are one or two things in relation to representation that they are prepared to do, but they are not prepared to do the rest. Their finances indicate that they are fully committed in their testing and reporting on goods and services.
In addition, there is the Federation of Consumer Groups, of which I am proud to say I am advisory chairman, and their constituent groups around the country. There is the Women's Advisory Committee of the British Standards Institution, and the Housewives' Trust, of which the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, was the inspiration. All of these labour in their particular bits of the vineyard, all of them on financial shoestrings. They all deplore the loss of the Consumer Council, as they have looked on us as a national source of strength. I am sure they would not thank the noble Lord if he conferred on them the task of advising and working and speaking for consumers as a whole, men as well as women, for the purpose of services as well as goods.
Yet the right honourable gentleman Mr. Maurice Macmillan yesterday actually quoted these diverse and specialist bodies as an adequate replacement. I hope that the noble Lord will think of something slightly more plausible. The wretched evasion which was given by the Board of Trade as a justification for this
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action, that enough protection is now being given to the consumer by other bodies, has convinced me that the services for the individual are deteriorating every day as personal service gives way to computers and mechanisation. One has only to look at one's bank statement and compare it with one ten years ago to see how startling is the change. And anyone who, as I have, has bought a new washing machine and had to wait ten days before anyone could be persuaded even to make it work, will greet such a statement with a hollow laugh. One could have understood a Government with the rather confused approach to life which is put out as a new philosophy not actually setting up a Council like ours. But to suppress it in present conditions is inexplicable.
Now, my Lords, I should like to say one or two things about comments which have been made in the debate. I found the faint praise of my noble friend Lady Burton almost as embarrassing as Lord Derwent's modest condemnation. Both appreciated that there was a need for the Consumer Council. My noble friend Lady Burton thinks that there still is. I cannot argue this point at length now, but I should like to have a quarter of an hour with the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, to bring out Sir Joseph Molony's point that if there was a need then, my goodness!, there is a need now. The idea that everything is now perfectly all right is quite honestly not tenable for one moment. As to over-co-ordination, in the debate that we had in this House I agreed with the noble Baroness that there was a good deal to go for, and we have been going for it; but that will not happen in the future. With regard to over-education, I have said some of the things we are doing but more will have to be done.
The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, in dismissing the laissez-faire solution, was clearly saying what is absolutely true today. Whether the Government's reason is a laissez-faire one or not we shall hear from the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. I do not believe that even the Government take the view that everything is all right if you leave it alone; but we shall hear about that in due course. Lord Beaumont pointed out the necessity for what the economists describe now as a "countervailing power". The

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Consumer Council must be a pressure group to help individuals fight large organisations. I have nothing to say about the comments of my noble friend Lady Gaitskell, except that I agree with them.
So may I pass on to my last remark, which is simply that I do not want to sit down without saying something about the staff. It is not only that our staff was dedicated to the work which we are now told was not worth doing; they were also exceptionally able and built into a most effective body with a hard cutting edge. On the whole, this is the most wanton aspect of the whole affair. An integrated instrument is hard to build, and in this case it has been forged most successfully. The airy way in which the whole thing has been scrapped should make individuals wary before they accept employment in Government-sponsored activities. If a Party sets up a body which has obvious ideological implications, anybody who undertakes to work for it does so with his eyes open, in the knowledge that a change of Party may change the policy. But the Consumer Council had no ideological implications. It was set up by a Conservative Government and it has been destroyed by a Conservative Government. My Lords, I look forward without much joy to hearing the noble Lord's explanation.
8.3 p.m.
LORD GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, I hesitate to take any of your Lordships' time on subjects which do not concern my own former professional background. But I felt that this was a subject on which even at this late hour, the voice of an amateur but continuing consumer of modest means might have something useful to say. I will not say anything which is in any sense advocating the point of view of any Party or institution, my only institutional connection being membership of the Consumers' Association, for whose work I am most grateful. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, for having given us this chance to discuss this sensitive subject. I should like to pay tribute to the efforts of those who have worked for the Consumer Council, and particularly the work which has been carried out in recent times by Dame Elizabeth Ackroyd.
May I start by making one concession to the point of view of the Government?
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It is not a vice to want to reduce Government expenditure: all Governments have moments when they have to do this. I also agree that when you try to do this, it is very difficult. There is a version of Parkinson's Law which transforms all work into necessary work, and then you are not cutting off a piece of dead wood, but you have to choose which among the necessities you will dispense with. Having said that, I confess that I am puzzled over this particular choice. I must take up the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, on the point that the Consumer Council has done what it can and can now how out, and that we can live moderately happily ever after. This is based on the static conception of society that disregards wholly the fact that by January 1 there will be one or two new problems for the Consumer Council, and in a few years' time there will be a great multiplicity of them.
There is also another point which I found puzzling. This is a development of the argument put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell. I see considerable force in the Government's view that some of the life in our community should be made a little tougher and more self-reliant, provided that this is taken in company with the other part of the policy of the Government, that those who are behind in the race, or are in a weak position economically and socially, should get something of a hand. Surely the Consumer Council is not an obstacle to this: it is a necessary prop for this. As the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, said, it is precisely the weak consumer who needs help; and the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, made the same point very tellingly.
May I jump to the conclusion that we need something, and the purpose of this debate is perhaps to advise the Minister who will reply what, as something of a consensus, those who have spoken on this side of the argument would like to see. The noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, and other speakers have shown us clearly enough why the Consumers' Association cannot take on the work of the Consumer Council. They do not have the resources and probably they would not get the extra resources if they asked for them from the sources from which they get their present assets. So there has to be something different.

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It could be and has been argued that this work could now be undertaken by the Board of Trade itself. Here perhaps my own experience can be helpful. No Government Department particularly welcomes a strong "ginger group" getting at it all the time, especially if the "ginger group" happens to be subsidised by Government money. On the other hand, many officials, in their own private thoughts, when they feel that an objective is good, may find it quite helpful to have a "ginger group" helping to make sure that things get done which most people know ought to be done, but which, as many speakers have said, come low in the list of priorities and may not get done through the ordinary process of Departmental submission. If there is to be a body at all it has to be not only, as the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, said, an information body: it has to be a pressure group as well. Its resources, it appears, will not come from elsewhere than Government. There is something in the nature of an advanced and sophisticated democracy if a Government can bring itself to allocate the small sum of money—which this is—required to keep a "ginger group" directed against itself going. This seems to me to be democracy of a sophisticated kind of which we ought to be proud.
May I conclude by saying that I know that the noble Lord who will reply to this debate will do it with all his known charm and competence. But I hope he will give the consumer a slightly happier feeling than the consumer would have had at the beginning of this debate. Also as a final point, that he will be able to do so in such a way that the expert services of some, at least, of the Consumer Council may be retained before they are all dissipated.
8.10 p.m.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I 'also should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, for giving the House the opportunity to debate this Question. I thought she dealt with it very gently, and were I the member of the Government to reply to her I do not think I should feel she had treated me at all harshly. I do not intend to labour the points which have been made so eloquently by various noble Lords during the debate. It seems to
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me that embodied in this Question are in fact four questions. I shall, as is usual when various Members of this House put questions, probably answer them myself; but I will leave certainly one for the noble Lord who is to reply. The questions are: What have the Government done? How have they done it? Why did they do it? And, fourth, was it a sensible and justified action? I have just one more which they can have a little later.
I remember the setting up of the Consumer Council—and we have heard a lot this evening about the birth of this particular body. I was working a long time before that in the field of consumer education and protection through the British Standards Institution. We had a body known as the Consumer Advisory Council, which was disbanded at the time of the setting up of the Consumer Council—a very statesmanlike action to which I think little commendation has ever been given. I am bound to say, with the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, that I had not a very high opinion of the Consumer Council at that time. I felt—and still feel—that its terms of reference were too narrow and that the exclusions, what it could not do, were in many ways much more important than what it could do. But I should like to pay tribute to what it has done over the years, within the limitations imposed upon it. The Consumer Council has given a splendid account of its stewardship.
If we are going to look at what the Government have done, we should look at the Conservative Manifesto. I notice that we are all being very non-political to-night, but I do not think, standing at this Box. I can claim to be anything other than Party political. In the Manifesto we notice the statement that:
"The Conservative Party will closely examine ways of safeguarding more effectively and equitably the rights and freedoms of the individual citizen."
Splendid! I applaud it. A little further on we see that they boast that:
"In 1963 the Conservative Government set up the Consumer Council, which has since proved to be a powerful and influential spokesman for the interests of the consumers."
It proved to be such a powerful and influential spokesman that its reward was that its grant was withdrawn as soon as

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the Conservatives came into Government—because they did not wait very long to take action.
How was it done? My noble friend Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge has not gone into this. Quite commendably, he has not told your Lordships, but I feel you should know. As my noble friend Lady Burton of Coventry indicated, first there was a leak in one of the Sunday papers in early November which seemed to suggest that the Consumer Council would not get its grant.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, will the noble Baroness forgive me for interrupting? I have not interrupted this debate at all so far. She will appreciate that it is always very easy to assert there has been a leak merely because something later happens. It may have been just an intelligent guess.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I will give that point to the noble Lord: an intelligent guess appeared in a certain Sunday newspaper. But intelligent guesses have been known, rather like denials, to be proved to be a forerunner of what is to come. When I read a denial of an engagement I know that the engagement is almost certainly going to be announced in the next two or three months, after it has been said, "We are merely good friends." Similarly, any intelligent guess seems, curiously, to be the forerunner of an actual event.
I understand that my noble friend Lord Donaldson, as Chairman, received a summons to the Minister one morning, when it was said that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would announce in one sentence, without giving any reasons, the withdrawal of the grant that afternoon. Finally, I understand that a Press statement from the Board of Trade was given out on the day of the act and reached the Council two days later. I know that the present Government are claiming to be a disengaged Government. I am wondering whether they will go down in history as a discourteous Government, because this does not seem to me the way one should do something of this kind. So far as Mr. Des Wilson is concerned, I have been trying to think during this debate whether he was more or less fortunate than a chairman of another corporation. Mr. Wilson, at any rate, was sacked even before he had taken over his post. So at least he had the
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opportunity of taking his talents elsewhere, as apparently he is going to do.
Now let us look at the reasons the Government gave—we have been given these several times tonight. First, it was said that there had been an adequate advance in presentation of consumer interests; and, second, that other consumer organisations have grown in strength and number. We have heard who these are: the Consumers' Association, the consumer groups, the Retail Trading Standards Association, the Citizen's Advice Bureaux, my own little organisation, the Housewives' Trust. I cannot speak for the others, but I can speak as one who tried to start a consumer information service.
If you rely on the money you get from your members—and this applies to the Consumers' Association, too—you will be servicing the people who can afford it and not necessarily the people who need it—in fact, they are very rarely the same kind of people. If you receive money from industry, this money will always be regarded with some suspicion—sometimes unjustifiably, but nevertheless there will be the accusation that this is given for a reason. So I do not think any Government should suggest that the consumer associations already in existence, although they have grown in strength and number, can adequately fill the role of consumer education which was being carried out by the Consumer Council.
Let us now look at the other question. It is said there is an adequate advance in presentation of consumer interests. I am sure that the noble Lord who is going to reply will tell us that we have various Acts of Parliament; and he will be right. But I should like at this point to quote from The Times of November 7:
"Competition between producers can be an effective instrument to efficiency only if consumers know the value of what they are buying. Yet how many of us do?"
And this is very relevant:
"Many people who would never buy a house without a surveyor's report will nevertheless purchase goods of equal complexity with nobody's advice except the salesman's."
The consumer in every field at the moment needs an organised kind of education. We know that the situation is not going to change, but that the demand is going to become increasingly severe. We are offered all the time more and more by manufacturers and retailers, service industries, nationalised industries, all

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kinds of sophisticated equipment and services. It is moving more and more into the field of sophistication. Through my letter-box this morning came, as will have been the experience of many of your Lordships, invitations to have central heating installed, invitations to have double glazing for the windows in my home, invitations to take package holidays. The offers are absolutely unlimited and are increasing all the time. And only this week I have had two classic cases. One was of a young man who had central heating installed, at a very substantial cost; and he has had no heat for two years. He has struggled on against one of tile giants to which several of your Lordships have referred this evening. These are sophisticated services demanding more knowledge on the part of the consumer.
I have said before many times that the battle of the shopper is like the sex war, and that in that both sides should be armed. On the one side we have the whole barrage of the manufacturer, with his advertising, all his sophisticated knowledge of scientific researches; and on the other side we have the buyer, who is confronted by packages of all shapes and sizes, by convenience foods, by all kinds of promotion methods, all kinds of premium offers, and supermarkets which become larger and more impersonal while the small shops tend to disappear. These are the circumstances in which we are told the consumer no longer needs to have help and advice. I cannot think of a greater contradiction.
Finally, I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, what is going to happen to the existing records of the Consumer Council. Is all the research and the work which at the moment is in various important stages just to be left high and dry? Are we to have the opportunity of knowing what are the Government's plans, or are we again to have one just rather barren sentence which neither explains nor attempts to justify?
8.20 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, we have had an excellent debate on the Question tabled by my noble friend, postponed unfortunately from one time to another, and those who are not present this evening are very much the losers. It has been an absolutely first-class debate.
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I must say that the Question seems to have been somewhat prolonged, but this is the procedure that we seem to have, and in the course of the speeches the original two questions have become an absolute torrent of questions. I do not know whether I shall be able to explain the inexplicable to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge. All I can do is to put forward the point of view of the Government on this matter and explain, so far as I can, the reasons for their thinking.
Probably the first point I ought to make is that in the nature of the case it has been difficult to explain in advance what the Government were going to do. As my noble friend had put down a Question I thought the proper thing to do—and I quite take the criticisms made by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, on this point—was to await this occasion. Because, obviously, in the debate we had recently it would have been difficult to give anything more than a very summary answer: it could easily have been completely misinterpreted, and in any case it would have sounded, as one speaker said to-night, as if Governments do not treat the consumer interests as important. That is certainly not true.
Let me first say what the Government's decision does not mean. It does not mean that we think there are no longer any consumer problems, or no longer any need for the consumer's interests to be firmly advanced. Of course such problems remain, although I need hardly repeat the view of this Government, that real and effective competition can do more than anything else to mitigate them. Also, since the Molony Committee has been referred to, may I remind your Lordships that at page 295 of their Report the Molony Committee said this:
"…we have no hesitation in saying that, overall, competition is the consumer's best friend."
Nor does it mean, my Lords, that we have repented of the decision, which the Conservative Government took over seven years ago, to establish the Council, or that we are unaware of the many hard battles which the Council has fought, or of its less obtrusive hard work behind the scenes to put the consumer cause on the map. What it does mean is that we have asked ourselves, as any Government should, whether the solutions which were appropriate to the early 'sixties are

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quite the right ones in what are undoubtedly the quite different circumstances of the 'seventies. And we have concluded that they are not.
A number of noble Lords have referred to the situation that existed before, and my noble friend Lord Dement, in particular, has pointed out that at the time of the Molony Committee's Report, which was a very valuable Report, purely consumer organisations were struggling newcomers. Someone has said that the consumer movement in this country is hardly more than ten years old. These were struggling newcomers and the protective umbrella of legislation, as the Molony Committee pointed out, was inadequate in so many respects. My noble friend gave the example of the gaps in the teeth. The fact is that there were hardly any dentures at all. At that time, clearly, an authoritative consumer voice had to be provided by the Government; otherwise the Council would not have come into existence. But look what has happened since then.
My noble friend mentioned all the various Acts of Parliament that have been passed, and there cannot be the slightest doubt that they have quite changed the situation. For example, the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell—in a charming speech, if I may say so—spoke of the ways in which advertising could mislead. But in fact we now have on the Statute Book the Trade Descriptions Act, which greatly strengthens the law protecting the consumer, as well as other purchasers, against false or misleading statements, whether in advertising or elsewhere, and places a positive duty of enforcement, which had not existed before, on the weights and measures authorities.
So we have to-day over 200 authorities watching this situation in the interests of the consumer and of the purchaser in general. Also, the year previously, we had the Misrepresentation Act, which improved the buyer's means of protecting himself against loss due to misrepresentation on the part of the seller. Does the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, wish to intervene?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I really think the noble Lord is overstressing this business of the changes between 1963, when the Consumer Council was set up, and the situation in June, 1970, when
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the Conservative Party, in its own Manifesto, called attention to the fact that the Consumer Council had proved to be a powerful and influential spokesman in the interests of the consumer. There was no qualification of that at all. Does the noble Lord really say that since June, 1970, there has been a significant change?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, if I may say so, I think the noble Lord has his facts wrong. If I remember rightly, there was no such reference in the Manifesto. What I think he is talking about is the Campaign Guide. That is a factual statement; and of course we do agree entirely. The Consumer Council has exercised a very useful voice and has done a great many good things. But it is entirely wrong to say that these Acts of the Party opposite, on which they placed such great stress—they went round the country saying what magnificent Acts they were—have not changed the situation. Under the Conservative Government before that we had the Weights and Measures Act and the Resale Prices Act, both of which were of great advantage to the consumer and undoubtedly lessened the need for the outside voice.
All the same, my Lords, I would not for one moment dispute that the relationship I have had with the Consumer Council has been extremely happy. I have appreciated what the Council was doing, and I am certain that everybody here does so as well. But it is not only legislation: during this period various Orders and Regulations have been made—for example, under the Consumer Protection Act 1961, which deals with safety matters. In the field of food there are the new labelling regulations due to come into force mainly at the beginning of 1973. There have been developments, as was inevitable, in the voluntary machinery for advancing or asserting the consumers' interest. These are very impressive developments. The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, said that no doubt I would refer to them, and I must not disappoint him.
Consider for a moment the Consumers' Association. I understand that their income from subscribers to Which? and other publications has risen from £600,000 to £1·6 million in the last five years. The number of subscribers has more than doubled. These additional funds,

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willingly provided by individual consumers for something they recognised to be of value, have enabled the Association to direct its interest more and more beyond the limited field of comparative testing to matters of more general consumer concern. It has broadened the range of its publications; it has opened an experimental shoppers' advice centre; it has co-operated in establishing an Institute for Consumer Ergonomics; it has undertaken consumer educational work; and it has played a growing part in consumer representation—all this flowing, without external support, from a private initiative which correctly interpreted and fulfilled a real consumer need. None of this was foreseen by Molony.
Along with the growth of the Consumers' Association there has been the growth of the local consumer groups—now numbering about 80 with some 12,000 members—and these are linked together in the National Federation of Consumer Groups. I am not saying that the Consumers' Association is able here and now to take over everything that the Consumer Council did. They themselves have said that their resources do not permit them to replace the Consumer Council in all its work.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but I must quote from a letter recently written by the Chairman of the Association to the Minister, the honourable gentleman, Mr. Ridley. In her second paragraph she says:
"We trust that Government spokesmen will in future avoid saying or implying that the Consumers' Association can do the work of the Consumer Council. This is not so. We hope to take over a little of the representational work, but in the absence of alternative provision the Consumer Council's educational and informational work will lapse."
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, the Consumers' Association have said that they cannot take over all the functions of the Council, but they have also stated that they are prepared to take over some of them. What the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, does not realise is that where there are needs there is a tendency for those needs to be met.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords—
LORD DRUMALBYN: Really, it is most unusual in an Unstarred Question to have an abundance of interruptions. I did not interrupt any noble Lord or Lady who spoke, and I think we shall get into a terrible tangle if we make this a sort of colloquy across the Floor of the House. But I give way with pleasure to the noble Baroness.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I would remind the noble Lord—I hope his memory is not so short—that nobody was better than he was at putting a whole series of questions demanding answers, certainly on an Unstarred Question. I was going to ask him whether he agrees that the Consumers' Association will give information to those who pay for it.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Yes, my Lords, they will give information to those who pay for it, but, of course, they rightly claim that they are also giving information to a very great many other people. They claim that their readership is several times their circulation—I forget how many times, but I think two and a half. And what they print is available for report and comment in the Press. What they put over with their enormous circulation in fact receives very much more publicity, naturally, than the Consumer Council was able to get. One must accept that. The Housewives' Trust, in which the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, has taken so great an interest, is another example of advances that have been made; and there is the whole constellation of women's organisations. Then there are the citizens' advice bureaux, some 500 of them, ready to help individual consumers who find themselves in difficulties. The Molony Committee envisaged the closest links between the Consumer Council and the citizens' advice bureaux, but while there has been some co-operation it has not, I think, been as close, and shows no signs of being as close, as Molony hoped.
There are other bodies, not financed either by the Government or by the consumer, but some with independent representation, which have shown themselves solicitous for the consumers' interest—the Advertising Standards Authority, with which I had some connection, and the Retail Trading Standards Authority, to which the noble Baroness referred. There is also the recently formed Mail Order

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Publishers' Association, of which Lady Burton is President. And lastly there are the Press, radio and television. There are not only journalists specialising in consumer affairs, but also well known columns in the popular Press which set out to right consumer wrongs. Both make a continuing and regular study of the consumer interest each in their own way. These bodies, or nearly all of them, have shown their ability to work together to an increasing extent. They are all animated by a common concern to see that the consumer gets a fair deal.
My Lords, this is surely an impressive catalogue of achievement and development; on the one hand, the achievement of a near-comprehensive system of protective law—and with the Sale of Goods Act we shall bring that nearer still; this is the last part of the Molony recommendations to be implemented—with adequate arrangements for its effective enforcement. May I say in passing that we ought to be cautious about looking only at the laws of other countries. We ought at the same time to make certain that their laws are as well enforced as ours. On the other side, there is a flourishing variety of voluntary bodies founded upon private initiative, with growing resources. Individual consumers are showing that they are willing to pay for the kind of service they really need; and different bodies are showing that they can correctly diagnose and fulfil that need. Instead of recognising and being proud of this, we are apt in this country to delude ourselves with the semblance of things in other countries; but I think that those who have explored the situation elsewhere must agree that in this field we are the equal of many and the envy of most. What distinguishes us from other countries is that by and large we do better than the law requires, at least in this field.
I am not saying that we have achieved perfection in this country and for that reason can dispense with the Consumer Council. What I am saying is that a Conservative Government established a Consumer Council in 1963 when the consumer movement was in its infancy; and now the situation is entirely different. Consumerism was weak; now it is strong. The noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, did a splendid job in awakening consumers to the protection of their own interests. That is what she was doing; she was not just
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publicising the Consumer Council. She would be the first to admit this. By speaking all over the country she encouraged the formation of local consumer groups and stimulated consumer education in schools, colleges and in the home. Her work has been ably continued by her successor, the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson and has been backed by a most able and active director, Dame Elizabeth Ackroyd, and a devoted and vigorous staff. I know how devoted it is. The Consumer Council has made a notable contribution to the change that has taken place. In 1962 the private organisations in the consumer field were struggling infants; now they are lusty adults. By their vigorous growth they have demonstrated that consumers have the initiative, the will to provide and the confidence to support with their purses services to meet their needs.
It is a complete illusion to think that every improvement in the consumer field has been due exclusively and entirely to the Consumer Council—I am sure that the Consumer Council would not claim that, but some of the comments we have seen in the Press seem to indicate that this is so—let alone that not one of those improvements would have taken place without it. Of course it has played a very large part, and played it very well. True, some of the needs of the consumers are not likely, perhaps, in the immediate future—because you cannot switch over at once—to be looked after. But as long as some part of those needs was met by the Consumer Council, sponsored and suported by the Government, it was unrealistic to expect private initiative to deal with the entire sector of the activity the Council covered. We had to ask ourselves whether it was really appropriate for the Government to decide forever what kind of central organisation, with what functions and resources, consumers should have.
The noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, and others, have suggested that while there should be some consumer representation, it should be of a different kind and doing different things. But that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about the Consumer Council as it is, and there has been a marked cleavage of opinion. On the one hand there are those who do not want to give up the Consumer Council as it now is,

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and on the other hand those who want to have an entirely different sort of body doing different things. Thirdly, my noble friend Lord Derwent took the view that the Government take: that the Consumer Council has done an excellent job, that it has done a job of pump-priming, if you like to put it that way, and now it is possible for consumers to decide what things they wish to have done on their behalf and, by their efforts, to provide the machinery and resources to do them. That they can do so with great success, as I say, has been demonstrated by the progress voluntary organisations have already made.
I do not know whether or not the removal of the Consumer Council from the scene will lead others to provide the machinery to do every single thing that it has been doing or seeking to do, but this I do know: that the very successes achieved by the Consumer Council have made it that much less necessary to have a Consumer Council. Its appointment and its performance can justly be regarded as successful pump-priming operations—perhaps in other countries as well as our own. The Consumer Council has played a considerable part in making trade associations and business in general—perhaps even the Government—more sensitive to the needs of the consumer. It has helped to teach consumers that the best way to set about securing their interests is not only by working with each other but by co-operating with trade and industry. It has shown some of the ways in which consumers can be informed about their legal rights and their legal duties.
But it is not necessary to have a Consumer Council in order to find out what consumers are thinking. Indeed, there is some danger in keeping such bodies going too long. The Press and the public could become too dependent on the view of a Government-nominated, Government-financed body as expressed in regular handouts and Press releases. It would be quite wrong if, instead of representing the consumer viewpoint, a Government-nominated body reached the position of telling—and I am not suggesting that the Consumer Council has reached this position, but I am pointing out the danger—
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not only the Government but also consumers what they ought to think. In the view of the Government it is better left to consumers to create their own organisations and decide what organisation to support, and to see that through them their voices are heard. I cannot believe that consumers will fail to respond to that challenge.
Finally, I put it to your Lordships that a voice is authoritative not because it is the voice of a body nominated by a Government, but because it truly represents the interest which it claims to serve, and because it commands the respect of the public and the Government alike. While the Consumer Council has conscientiously tried to represent the views of the consumer, and has done so with considerable success, gaining a large measure of public confidence, we believe that in the long run it is far better for consumers to provide the authoritative voice than for the Government to provide it for them.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him whether he intends to reply to the charge of discourtesy which my noble friend Lady Phillips made as to the manner in which the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, was told that the Council was to end?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I regret very much that the charge has been made. Certainly there was no intention of any discourtesy. If the noble Lord feels that there was a discourtesy in this matter, then on behalf of Her Majesty's Government I would apologise to him for this. The noble Lord knows how difficult these things are to do, and of course I am sure there was every intention of avoiding a leak. This is why I took up what the noble Baroness said. I am grateful to the noble Lord for having raised this point, and I can only repeat that I am certain there was no intention of discourtesy. But if it is felt that there was discourtesy, then the Government are very sorry for it.

WEST END BAPTIST CHURCH, HAMMERSMITH BILL
Reported, without amendment.