Lords Sitting of 17 February 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 Worcester.
The Lord Maclay—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

TRANSPORT MUSEUM EXHIBITS
LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what financial or other assistance they are prepared to give to the London Transport Board to enable them to rehouse their historic transport relics for public display after the closing down of the Clapham Transport Museum.]
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, the Greater London Council assumed responsibility for the London Transport Executive on January 1, and it will be for the Council to make the necessary financial provision. If it wishes for any advice, I am sure that the Science Museum will be ready to give it.
LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU: My Lords, while thanking the noble Baroness for that Answer, may I ask whether the Government are aware that there is still considerable concern about the future of the exhibits which are at the moment at Clapham but which will have no home when the Museum is moved North? Further, can the Government say when national museums will cease to be the Cinderella so far as the Arts Societies are concerned, especially in view of the increased grants of the Arts Council?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord will not
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expect a direct answer now to the second part of his supplementary question, but I will see that he receives an answer. I would not entirely agree with him that museums are the Cinderella, although I appreciate that he would like to see more money given to them. Under the Transport Act London Transport have a direct responsibility for the exhibits. I understand that ultimately these relics will be displayed in a museum which is to be primarily this type of transport museum. This is an ultimate provision. But London Transport have a direct responsibility for these exhibits.

FILLING MATERIALS IN IMPORTED TOYS
2.37 p.m.
LORD CROOK: 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 aware that following the considerable success during the past four years of Regulations (under the Rag Flock Act) as to the cleanliness of stuffing of toys, certain makers of foreign imports now use other fillings; whether Her Majesty's Government are aware that these fillings, even if clean, are potentially dangerous; and whether they will consider making regulations as to this new menace to the lives of children and thus aid the efforts of the Retail Trading Standards Association.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRE-TARY, MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (LORD KENNET): My Lords, my right honourable friends the Minister of Housing and Local Government and the Secretary of State for Scotland intend to make new regulations under the Rag Flock and Other Filling Materials Act which will, among other things, bring more filling materials within the scope of the Act. The Act is, of course, concerned only with the cleanliness of fillings. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary, who deals with the question of the safety of articles offered for sale, is not aware of any filling material currently used for stuffing toys which presents a safety hazard.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his Answer, may I enlighten him on the things I saw—
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHACKLETON): No. Question!
LORD CROOK: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that some of the fillings—in fact, fine foam crumbs and urea formaldehyde—appear to children temptingly like sugar? It is true that these are found in imported goods, but may I ask my noble friend whether it is possible to take steps to stop such importation?
LORD KENNET: My Lords, there has been only one batch, I think of teddy bears, containing Polish urea formaldehyde. This was some years ago, and on unofficial representations the factory ceased using that particular filling. As regards foam, plastic or rubber crumbs, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary is not aware that they constitute any hazard, either respiratory or intestinal.

PAROLE RELEASE IN VIOLENCE CASES
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the release on parole of Kenneth John Harding, while serving a four-year sentence for violence, which gave him the opportunity of attacking a sleeping man with a brick and inflicting grievous bodily harm was against the advice of the police and the probation service; and whether the Home Secretary will in future be more careful to protect the public from prisoners with bad records of violent crime.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the Parole Board consider reports from various sources, including members of the prison service, the probation and after-care service and the police. Such reports are supplied in confidence. Exercising their judgment on all the information before them the Parole Board recommended the release of Harding on parole nine and a half months in advance
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of the date he would otherwise have been released. Any parole scheme inevitably involves judgments which cannot always be right, but the quality of the Parole Board's judgment is shown by the fact that of the 3,031 prisoners whom they have recommended for release only 125 have had to be recalled for misconduct of any kind.
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, do the Government realise that even the number of 125 is fairly considerable, and that when a man has a "long and shocking record", as the judge said, of violent crime, to release him on parole while he is serving a sentence for another crime of violence, is running a risk which is not justified?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, there was the record to which the noble Lord refers, and that record had to be considered by those qualified to do so. In their judgment—and it was the second time that they reviewed this case—it was thought worth while to give this man the chance that he had.
LORD MOLSON: Do the Government now realise that their judgment was wrong?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I should be greatly surprised if, when the House agreed to the Act which enabled the parole system to be tried out, they did not think that there would be occasions when some error of judgment would be committed. But if one looks at the record as a whole I should have thought the noble Lord would agree that it was a fine one.
LORD KILBRACKEN: My Lords, is it not a fact that this decision has nothing to do with the Government's judgment, as the noble Lord suggested?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I do not think that we should pin this down too closely. As I have said, this was a recommendation of the Parole Board, acting on the basis of all the information they had, and after the local committee themselves had recommended on two occasions that parole should be granted in this case.
LORD GRIMSTON OF WESTBURY: My Lords, with respect, I do not think the noble Lord has answered my noble friend's question. He asked whether the

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noble Lord considered that there was in fact an error of judgment in this case.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I think that parole was abused in this case, certainly.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Molson, is also inaccurate in saying that the probation service were not consulted, in that the local review committee which made the original recommendation for release includes a probation officer, and the Parole Board includes two of the most senior and experienced probation officers in the country?

ABORTION CLINIC AND OVERSEAS PATIENTS
VISCOUNT BARRINGTON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether in their opinion the recently reported decision of a well-known London abortion clinic to arrange for its overseas clients to be met by a car-hire firm, when they arrive at Heathrow Airport, is one that should be encouraged, discouraged or ignored; and, in either of the first two alternatives, how; or in the third, why.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (BARONESS SEROTA): My Lords, while Her Majesty's Government would not regard it as necessarily wrong for a clinic or nursing home to make transport arrangements for patients booked to enter it, they are firmly opposed to action of any kind deliberately intended either to encourage women to come to this country for the purpose of obtaining an abortion, or to divert to a particular nursing home women from abroad who have not been booked there as patients. If my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services received firm evidence of any such action he would consider whether to withdraw approval of the nursing home for the purposes of the Abortion Act.
VISCOUNT BARRINGTON: My Lords, may I thank the Minister for her
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extremely satisfactory Answer, which was, I think, what everyone had hoped for. May I ask two supplementary questions? First, is it possible to give the House any idea of the kind of nursing homes which are said to be employing touts; that is to say, whether they are believed to be quite illegal bodies or are properly constituted? Secondly, in view of the welcome statement made on behalf of the Government in col. 1685 of last Friday's Commons Hansard, informing us that in future, when the licences of private abortion clinics are renewed, the standard not only of the premises and facilities but of the conduct of the owners will be taken into account, may I ask whether it would not be possible and desirable actively to encourage the owners of some of these clinics to devote some of the undoubted initiative and energy which they show in conducting people to their clinics, to aftercare when they are conducted away from them, or, more often, conduct themselves, which, in the case of foreign people domiciled abroad must frequently be difficult.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Speech!
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, in reply to the first question, my right honourable friend is, of course, concerned With the approval of nursing homes under the terms of the legislation. Noble Lord; will be aware that all of these homes are first approved as nursing homes by local authorities before my right honourable friend will consider approving them for the purposes of the Act. With regard to the noble Viscount's second point, in the past year the Secretary of State has taken every action open to him to make certain that the facilities available at nursing homes that he approves for this purpose are of the highest standard. That includes the number of beds available for patients coming to the home and relating them to the number of operations carried out on any one day, so as to ensure that any patient can in fact stay overnight.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, in view of the fact that there is no firm evidence of the actions described in this Question, would my noble friend not agree with me that those who are spreading this rumour have as their motive the object of discrediting the Act and thereafter repealing it?
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, the question of touting at London Airport certainly is not related solely, as my noble friend has implied in her question, to transport to and from private nursing homes.

CONCORDE TEST FLIGHT ROUTES
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, at a convenient moment after half-past three my noble friend Lord Delacourt-Smith will be making a Statement on the Concorde test flight routes.
I thought it would also be for the convenience of the House, and I trust the greater advantage of the Refreshment Department, if I say now that dinner will be available to-morrow evening between 7 and 8.30 p.m.

BARCLAYS BANK D.C.O. BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and referred to the Examiners.
BRIDGE STREET BAPTIST CHURCH, BANBURY BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and referred to the Examiners.
GATESHEAD CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
GLOUCESTER CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
HOUSING (AMENDMENT) (SCOTLAND) BILL
Read 3a, and passed.
RURAL WATER SUPPLIES AND SEWERAGE (SCOTLAND) BILL
Read 3a, and passed.

LOCAL EMPLOYMENT BILL
2.50 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, MINISTRY OF TECHNOLOGY (LORD DELACOURT-SMITH): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a. —(Lord Delacourt-Smith.)
On Question, Bill read 3a.
LORD WISE LORD WISE moved Amendment No. 1:
Before Clause 1, insert the following new clause:
Amendment of section 15(3) of Industrial Development Act 1966
".Section 15(3) of the Industrial Development Act 1966 is hereby amended by the addition after the words "population changes" of the words "level of earnings." ".
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I understand that although permissible it is not customary to move a new Amendment on the Third Reading of a Bill in your Lordships' House. Your Lordships will appreciate that as a comparative newcomer to your Lordships' House I should not like to deviate from the recognised procedure, and I apologise for so doing. I also apologise for the lateness in tabling the Amendment, which was beyond my control. However, I feel that events are such as to justify my action, although I was admittedly a little hesitant before agreeing to do this.
The Amendment is identical in context to one moved in another place by the honourable Member for Norwich, North, during the Report stage of the Local Employment Bill, which was subsequently withdrawn upon the assurance of the Minister of State that power to give priority to low wage-earning areas already existed. While the Department of Economic Affairs was in existence, the Secretary of State assured East Anglian M.P.s that there would be no impediment to the issuing of industrial development certificates for East Anglia. He gave them this assurance after the publication of the Hunt Committee's Report. But a test case has arisen, and what has happened to these assurances? A substantial international firm has made an application to come to King's Lynn to manufacture there products which it is now

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importing and selling in this country. The products are mainly fuel burner pumps, water circulating pumps and hydrolastic transmission units, primarily for earthmoving and agricultural equipment. Its imports this year will probably be in the region of £920,000, which it is estimated will rise to nearly £2,500,000 in 1974. If they were able to manufacture these products in this country, that figure should drop from the present £920,000 to nil in 1974.
The firm spent a year investigating sites up and down the country, and there was a great deal of research before eventually deciding upon King's Lynn as the most suitable and practicable for their needs. Its market is mainly in the more densely populated areas of the Midlands and the South-East, and obviously it wishes to keep the lines of communication reasonably short. The hydrolastic transmission is a modern invention superseding the old well-tried gearboxes, and it is essential that the servicing is carried out with a minimum of delay. That is one reason why the firm wishes to remain in East Anglia rather than go into a development area. There is an abundance of local labour of the type required, and the estimated number of eventual employees is upwards of 300 to 400. That seems excellent for somewhere like Lynn, but I should have thought was comparatively useless for a development area.
This company wants to come to Lynn. It is willing to forgo the advantages it would receive in the way of all the grants and inducements if it went to a development area—and they are considerable— for it is of the opinion that these would be far outweighed by the subsequent communication and servicing problems. The company does not want to go elsewhere and would probably continue to import its products, or would buy existing factory property in an area nearer to London. We in Lynn need this company and would welcome it, but the Minister who is now responsible for the allocation of I.D.C.s said, on receiving a report on the application, that he saw the greatest difficulty in approving this project. Where is the assurance that was given? It has gone, it is lost. This shows the need for strengthening the Bill.
I do not want to delve into the implications of the Hunt Report, or into the subsequent Government appraisal of its
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implementation. In principle I agree with it but, as we in East Anglia know full well to our cost, the Hunt Report did little enough for us. I seek to bring areas with low level earnings into line with the high unemployment areas. I appreciate the problems and can sympathise with the regions designated as development areas, but I cannot agree with the automatic preference shown to them over areas such as East Anglia, where we also have our problems.
Our overspill and town expansion schemes are under way. The number of people expected to move in is so great in comparison with local industry that it cannot possibly meet the total work requirement. The East Anglian Study estimated that some 10,000 to 13,000 male jobs would have to be created by 1971 in the expanding towns alone. It showed that we are working longer hours for 9 per cent. less money than the average of the country, and if we worked no longer than the national average of hours we should be at least 10 per cent. lower in wages. I do not think the Government should underrate the significance of this, and a steady growth of industry is essential for continued or renewed prosperity.
East Anglia, and Norfolk especially, is a wonderful place in which to live, but not so wonderful a place in which to work. There is no incentive and it is demoralising for a man to take home no more at the end of a week's work than he would receive if he were unemployed or on sick pay. The Report shows that East Anglians spend as much money as other areas on food, transport and clothing, but less on housing, drink, tobacco and durable household goods. In other words, the cost of living is as high as elsewhere, but the standard is lower. It is an invidious situation, my Lords.
In many respects, low level earnings are almost as bad as periods of unemployment, for the spending money is inevitably less. Families cannot afford holidays and things of that sort. Youngsters are denied certain things. I believe it is a fact that the level of acceptances of East Anglian boys into university is lower than the vast majority of places in the rest of the country. Primarily, I think it is because they are denied the wherewithal to study, to read and to enlarge their horizons and outlooks. I think this could be rectified by

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allowing local industries to expand in conjunction with a steady influx of new ones. We do not seek any preferential treatment but only equality. I hope that as an act of good faith the Government will agree to the insertion of this new clause, or will, at any rate, give us a further assurance that I.D.C.s will be forthcoming without any trouble whatever. My Lords, I beg to move.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I am rising on the spur of the moment, but I have behind me a background of 15 or 16 years' close association with East Anglia in my then capacity as the chairman of the regional council of one of the major political Parties in this country. I have been approached by Members of another place who told me that when they argued the case for earnings to be taken into consideration they were told that, instead of that, the Government would see that there was a steady flow of I.D.C.s to enable companies— industrialists—to move from London into the East Anglian area. They now complain that when a specific example of this kind of case has arisen, the I.D.C. has not been granted. I know that the people of East Anglia are not among the moaning classes: they are a happy, industrious lot of people. But they feel here that they have not had quite a fair deal from the Government or from the Department in question.
It is a fact—and I address myself now immediately to the terms of the Amendment—that earnings in Norfolk and some other parts of East Anglia are low. That may be because of the preponderance of agricultural industry in that part of the country, and that is an argument in favour of the transferring to or establishing in that part of the country some more types of industrial employment—and the particular case that has been mentioned is a fine example of the modern kind of industry which would be a boon to that part of the country. I think that we need a variety of employment in East Anglia. If it cannot be done by including in the grey areas those areas not only of high un-employment but also of low earnings (and in some ways one is a corollary to the other) but could be done by taking a generous view in granting I.D.C.s, so that established industries which want to expand
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can move themselves into East Anglia and let that expansion take place, with benefit to themselves, with benefit to the people they employ and with benefit to the community as a whole, it would be a very good thing. That is all I have to say, my Lords, but I did not want it to be thought that my noble friend Lord Wise was a lone voice speaking in the wilderness on this question.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I, too, have had a lifelong association with East Anglia, and can confirm what my noble friends Lord Wise and Lord Leatherland have said about the situation there. Indeed, I should have thought that the disparity between earnings in similar occupations, certainly in Norfolk and, from what I am aware, in other parts of the country also, was considerably more than the percentage quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Wise. From my visits to Norfolk on quite a number of occasions (though I have strongly in mind a very recent visit to the King's Lynn area). I was really astonished to learn of the wages being earned, not only by men in manual occupations, in industry, but also by women office workers, typists and so on, amounting to many pounds a week —I should have thought as much as one-third—below what I view as normal wages within my ken.
I knew of course of the efforts which were being made, particularly by my honourable friend the Member for King's Lynn, to get new industry there, which would have provided one remedy—more competition for labour. But I felt that in many cases the only hope for those workers to get what I regard as a reasonable wage would be to emigrate from East Anglia to other parts; and I do not think we want that. We do not want that area to be depopulated: it is not over-populated now. I would say to my noble friend who is going to reply for the Government that I do not know whether this particular Amendment is viable, or indeed whether it is in the right place, but it is very much in the right spirit and I hope that he will do what he can to meet the point—a very important one for some very worthy people— which has now been raised by my noble friend Lord Wise.
LORD STRANGE: My Lords, I am joining in only out of curiosity. I agree with what both the last two speakers

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have said. There is definitely a need for industry and slightly higher wages, I would think, in Lynn, as I think it is usually called—though the locals, I believe, call it "King's". But I am interested in this. I understand that one of the principal occupations there is in the vegetable trade, outside, and that it is very difficult to get people to do things like picking brussels sprouts, packing celery, and so on, which goes on over a wide district. What I am curious about is this. If this factory is put up, as I hope it is, and the men get better wages, what is going to happen to the vegetable crops? Because as your Lordships know, if the prices of these vegetables are raised beyond a certain level the market goes with them, since the housewife has a certain fixed price that she will pay for things like sprouts and eggs (as we may find out if we join the Common Market), and if that goes up she will go to something else, and therefore the principal industry of the district will lose its labour.
3.8 p.m.
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, like most of the noble Lords who have spoken on this Amendment I, too, can claim an association over a good number of years with East Anglia, though not so long, I think, as in the case of at any rate the three noble Lords who were the first to speak in this short debate. The debate on this Amendment has concentrated on the question of East Anglia, and particularly on the position in relation to one decision on an applicacation for an industrial development certificate at King's Lynn. But, of course, the terms of the Amendment are very much wider than that. Perhaps I could say a brief word on the specific points which have been raised and then look at the wider principles to which the Amendment gives rise.
In the case of the specific application for an I.D.C. to which the noble Lord, Lord Wise, referred, I should be very happy indeed to look into the circumstances and to communicate with the noble Lord upon the specific case. But perhaps I ought to say that, while conscious of the needs of East Anglia and sympathetic to the requirements for new industry there, the Government have to look at each application for an I.D.C. upon its merits, having regard to the location proposed, the nature of the project
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and so forth. I do not think the Government could give an undertaking not to seek to steer mobile projects to the development areas where this seemed reasonable. But the brief debate we have had illustrates two features of the regional policies which we are seeking to pursue: first, the necessity for a measure of flexibility; and, second, the difficulty of holding a reasonable balance between conflicting, and in their respective ways legitimate, demands of different parts of the country. I am not able to say any more than that on the general I.D.C. position, but, as I have said, I shall be happy to look into the particular case mentioned and to communicate with the noble Lord, Lord Wise, upon it.
The noble Lord referred to the level of earnings in East Anglia, and I think it is true that in Norfolk and Suffolk the level of earnings is low. I would make the point, though, that there is some indication that the rate of increase in earnings levels in East Anglia is slightly higher than the average for the country as a whole. There are other parts of the country where wage levels are low, or at any rate fairly low, and where they are not showing the same tendency to rise, relative to the national average, as in the case in East Anglia. This illustrates again the complexity of the problem of trying to have regard to the conflicting claims and conflicting interests of different parts of the country.
But I must come to the Amendment itself, which asks us to amend the Bill before us to include the level of earnings as one of the factors to be taken into account when designating intermediate areas. The Industrial Development Act 1966 adopted for development areas a wider set of criteria than had previously been applied in designating areas for the purposes of regional policies. Whereas until then unemployment had been virtually the sole and certainly the overwhelming criterion, the 1966 Act in the designation of development areas said that the Minister of Technology should:
"… have regard to all the circumstances actual and expected including the state of employment and unemployment, population changes, migration and the objectives of regional policies."
The present Bill deals with the selection and designation of intermediate areas. In designating intermediate areas the Government will have regard to the

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same criteria as in designating development areas. Indeed, the intermediate areas, as we saw on Second Reading, are those parts of the country where special measures are necessary because problems are arising of the same character as those which exist in the development areas, but where the economic problems are not so severe as to justify designation as development areas. As I have already said, the Act of 1966 requires the Minister to have regard to all the circumstances, actual and expected, and I think that with such words it is not necessary to spell out in the Act itself every single, individual relevant indicator.
The other factors to which we have regard in designating development or intermediate areas, factors such as heavy reliance on one particular industry, are not specified in the 1966 Act; but that does not prevent and has not prevented the Government from taking them into account. We do of course specify certain factors, the level of employment and the others which I have quoted, because it seems right to single out the factors which particularly need stressing. But that does not in any way preclude the taking into account of the other factors which follow within the quotation which I read. I want to make it clear in this connection that I can repeat an assurance which has already been given in another place that the Government already have the power for which this Amendment asks. The Government have the power to take into account the level of earnings in designating development areas and intermediate areas, and to the extent that it is judged appropriate along with other factors, the Government already pay regard to the earnings level, and it is certainly the intention to continue to do so. In the light of this explanation and the reaffirmation of the assurance that the level of earnings is a factor which is already taken into account and which will continue to be taken into account, I trust that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his Amendment.
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down may I ask this question? Is it the case that if he communicates with the noble Lord, Lord Wise, there is a possibility that the I.D.C. will be granted in the case which Lord Wise has put? Can that be done without
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an Amendment to the Bill which is now before us? If the Minister decides that this is a case well worth further consideration (and he might be favourably disposed to do so) would it be possible under the Act as it at present stands and under this Bill when enacted to grant the I.D.C.?
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, although it clearly does not arise under the present Amendment, which has no bearing on the granting of industrial development certificates, may I say that the answer to the specific question which has been put by my noble friend is, Yes.
LORD WISE: My Lords, I have listened with interest to what the noble Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, has said. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Champion, for his intervention which produced the answer that I was hoping for. I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill do now pass.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass— (Lord Delacourt-Smith).
3.17 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, your Lordships may remember that I put forward an Amendment at the Committee stage on the question of the expanded towns. The expanded towns have quite a justifiable fear that they may be pushed a bit down the queue for I.D.C.s and for treatment by this Bill; and the noble Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, gave a welcome assurance on this point. Before the Bill passes I should like to ask him a question of which I have given him notice. It is whether he could give an assurance that when a firm which has already a base or factory within an expanded town wishes to expand again within that town, it will have no difficulty in getting an I.D.C. for that town. I am informed—I have no actual knowledge of this myself —that in the past some pressure has been put on such firms to go to development areas. It would seem only fair and just to establish the right of the expanded towns in this particularly useful and very important bit of social and industrial planning by giving them an assurance on this matter.
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, for having given me notice that he intended to raise this point at this stage of the Bill. It is a very natural continuation of the short debate that he initiated at an earlier stage in the Bill on the expanded or overspill towns. The point that he raised is somewhat analogous to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Wise, in his Amendment. It is not, however, quite the same. The noble Lord, Lord Wise, was concerned with applications made by firms coming from outside and proposing to establish themselves in an expanded town; but it is the position of a firm already in such a town and proposing to expand, and therefore needing an I.D.C. to enable it to do so, that has been raised by the noble. Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley.
The position is that as a general rule applications for industrial development certificates will be approved for firms already established in expanded towns. Incidentally, the same practice is followed in new towns. I do not think that we can treat the two categories other than similarly. Having said that, I must say that equally we must reserve the right to refuse an application when it seems right to do so. Expanded towns vary a great deal in their circumstances, as was brought out in the debate on the Committee stage. Some of the expanded towns—such towns as Basingstoke or Hemel Hempstead come to mind in this connection—are already fairly full in the industrial sense, and labour is already pretty scarce in them. It would not be doing much of a service to them, and certainly it would not be consistent with the common sense of the regional policies we are trying to pursue, always to approve unlimited expansion by an existing firm in all the circumstances of expanded towns. Further, there may be cases where firms in an expanding town have already had a long run of industrial development certificates and a time comes when it seems right and reasonable for any further expansion to go to one of the assisted areas.
In all this we must bear in mind that the amount of mobile industry is not unlimited, and there is a clear reasonableness in seeking to direct such mobile industry as can be so directed to those areas where it is most needed. Further,
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there may be a wish to refuse an application in one of these expanded towns when it is associated with a rundown in a development area or intermediate area, or where there are special circumstances of some kind surrounding the application which would justify that course. I have felt is necessary to be candid in explaining these reservations; but at the same time I wish to assure the noble Lord that refusals in expanded towns and in the new towns will be very much the exception and that as a general rule applications are approved promptly. I hope that the noble Lord will feel that that is an adequate response to his question.
On Question, Bill passed.

GLASGOW CORPORATION ORDER CONFIRMATION (NO. 2) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936) deemed to have been read 2a and reported from the Committee.

SEA FISH INDUSTRY BILL [H.L.]
3.24 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.— (The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 3a.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move, That the Bill do now pass. The Report of the Joint Consolidation Committee on this Bill is in the following terms:
"The Committee have considered the Sea Fish Industry Bill and have heard evidence thereon. The enactments repealed in Part II and Schedule 6 to the Bill are repealed on the grounds that they are obsolete, spent, unnecessary or superseded. The Committee have made certain Amendments which they consider necessary to bring the Bill into conformity with the existing law and they consider that the Bill as amended is in all other respects pure consolidation and represents the existing law. They consider that there is no point to which the attention of Parliament should be drawn."
My Lords, before we pass the Bill may I, on your Lordships' behalf, express our gratitude to the Joint Consolidation Committee for their work on the Bill? The

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noble Lord, Lord Airedale, was asking, a few months ago, when we were going to consolidate this legislation; because there are, I think, some 16 different Acts of Statutory Instruments. The noble Lord will now be satisfied and will not have to reproach us again. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.— (The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

DRIVERS' HOURS (GOODS VEHICLES) (MODIFICATIONS) ORDER 1970
3.25 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords, I beg to move that the Drivers' Hours (Goods Vehicles) (Modifications) Order 1970, a copy of which has been laid before this House on January 22, be approved. The Memorandum explaining the effect of the Order and a general explanatory booklet on goods vehicles drivers' hours are available in the Printed Paper Office. This Order is made in exercise of my right honourable friend's powers under Section 96(12) of the Transport Act 1968 to make certain modifications to the requirements of Section 96 of the Act as they affect drivers of goods vehicles. A separate Order has been laid before the House for passenger vehicles. Section 96 of the Act sets out the permitted driving times and periods of duty of drivers of goods and passenger vehicles, but the Order dealing with passenger vehicles will be moved in your Lordships' House on another occasion. To-day, we are dealing only with goods vehicles.
The House will remember that my right honourable friend's predecessor announced in another place, in a Written Answer on July 25, 1969, that Part VI of the Transport Act 1968, which deals with drivers' hours and records, should be brought into effect on March, 1970. Briefly, the Order, if approved, will have the effect of virtually exempting certain people, like doctors, midwives, window cleaners and maintenance engineers, from the drivers' hours rules when they choose to travel in estate cars or light vans
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instead of in the normal private cars. These people are not really goods vehicle drivers at all, and the rules were never intended to apply to them. The Order also includes a concession to drivers engaged in building construction and civil engineering work, so that time at the wheel while off the road—I stress "off the road"—will not count as driving time. Other exemptions and concessions are contained in the Drivers' Hours (Goods Vehicles) (Exemptions) Regulations 1970 which were laid before the House on February 10.
In case noble Lords should wonder why the exemptions are split up in this way between this Order and the Regulations I have just mentioned I should explain that Regulation-making power is confined to emergencies and other cases of special need, while the Order-making power is intended for more general exemption and for modifying the provisions of Section 96. In the debates which took place in both Houses on the Transport Bill, and during extensive consultations with over 200 representative organisations after the Act was passed, a formidable number of claims for exemption and concession from the general rule were made, covering virtually every section of the industry.
To meet all these would in my view make nonsense of the whole legislation and would reduce considerably the benefits accruing from the Act. Even so, a considerable concession was made by my right honourable friend's predecessor during the Committee stage of the Transport Bill in another place when, to help all concerned to adjust to the proposed reductions in drivers' hours, he announced that the general reductions would be made in two stages instead of one. My right honourable friend has had the task of studying all the claims made for exemption and concessions with a view to allowing only those which are genuinely needed to prevent a serious breakdown in the existing transport services. A number of concessions of this kind are being provided.
My Lords, I turn to the Order itself. Articles 1 and 2 are purely formal. Article 3 provides the exemptions for the people I mentioned at the outset. My right honourable friend has been persuaded by the arguments advanced during the passage of the Transport Bill through

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Parliament, and in subsequent consultations with representative organisations, that the full force of the drivers' hours limits ought not to be imposed on people who drive only light vans for purposes not including the general carriage of goods. Among these are doctors, nurses, midwives and veterinary surgeons, repair mechanics, window cleaners and so on, who use a small van or an estate car for their work where others might well use a private car. Also in this class are commercial travellers carrying samples or advertising material, and road patrols of the Automobile Association, the Royal Automobile Club and the Scottish Royal Automobile Club, who, though they sometimes carry a spare can of petrol and tools, do not carry goods in the normal sense. The Minister has no powers under Section 96(12) of the Act to exempt these drivers from a daily limit of 10 hours upon their actual time at the wheel, but I do not think this is likely to be restrictive in practice.
Article 4 of the Order deals with the concession to the building and construction industry. The House will recall that Section 96(9) of the Act continues the present concession for the, driving of vehicles elsewhere than on the road in the course of operations of agriculture and forestry. This concession is designed mainly to enable time lost in the winter months, when vehicles often cannot go on the land, to be made up when the weather is more favourable. The Order provides a similar concession for vehicles used elsewhere than on the road in the building and construction industry, which is also subject to the vagaries of the weather.
A concession of this kind was asked for when the Transport Bill was before Parliament, and while my right honourable friend's predecessor made it clear during the Report stage in another place that such concessions as were given would be few, he said that where there were particular problems they would be considered. My right honourable friend in fact quoted the building industry as an example of an area in which the Minister could, if he thought fit, in the light of representations, make exemptions.
Since the Act was passed, the Ministry have had meetings with representatives of the building and construction industry, and my right honourable friend is satisfied
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that some alleviation of their problems is justified. The concession means that driving in the building and construction industries on the site and off the highway will not count towards the 10-hour daily driving limit in Section 96(1) of the Act. Nor will such driving count in computing the limit of 4 hours driving in any day, which is the point at which a driver becomes subject to the drivers' hours rules. Thus a driver in the building and construction industry will not be subject to the rules unless on any day he spends more than 4 hours driving on a road. Some noble Lords may feel that the exemptions do not go far enough, but they do represent a considerable concession to the interests concerned. We believe that a fair balance has been struck between the competing claims and the necessities of the Act. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Draft Drivers' Hours (Goods Vehicles) (Modifications) Order 1970, laid before the House on January 22, be approved.—(Lord Shepherd.)
3.33 p.m.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, your Lordships will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, for his explanation of this Order, which provides exemptions from the new drivers' hours due to be brought into effect on March 1, and also for explaining the difference between this Order and the Regulations which are outlined at the back of the guide that has been produced by the Ministry of Transport. This difference was certainly not explained in another place, and the noble Lord has now made it clear to us.
Article 3 of the Order surely deserves a qualified welcome. The Government have accepted that the limits for drivers' hours should not apply to certain people who drive light goods vehicles for purposes not including the general carriage of goods. But it is perhaps open to doubt whether the list of those exempt is in fact comprehensive enough, and I feel that it may plunge the rules as they will affect dual-purpose vehicles, into deeper incomprehension. But I know that the intention of Her Majesty's Government in this matter would have been gladly welcomed by my noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford, who attempted to persuade the Government, by Amendments during the Committee stage of the Bill, to accept exactly these points which are put forward in Article 3. My noble friend

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regrets that illness prevents him from being in the House this afternoon.
Article 4 will allow drivers of goods vehicles in the construction trades to drive on a site off the highway for any length of time without this counting towards the limits now to be imposed, and again we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, for explaining exactly how this will affect such drivers. Your Lordships may recall that in this House during the passage of the 1968 Act the Government accepted the need to give this exemption to forestry as well as to agriculture, but denied in Committee in this House that similar exemption was appropriate or necessary for the construction industries. Therefore your Lordships will have been particularly interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, this afternoon making the point about making up time on such sites when the weather is good —a point with which we cordially agree.
Many noble Lords warned the Government in 1968 that this exemption would be a practical necessity and that the rules here would in fact be unenforceable, a point which seemed to me to become more obvious when, during the passage of the 1968 Act, the Government came down against the use of tachographs. Now Her Majesty's Government have accepted that the general concept in this field is impracticable, and many noble Lords suspect that there are many other cases where the impracticability of the new rules is going shortly to be revealed.
That leads me to ask one or two brief questions of the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd. Do the Government really think that the lists of exemptions in Article 3(2)(a) and (b) are complete? In another place the Minister was asked why child-care officers had not been included. The claim of probation officers could equally be advanced in your Lordships' House. Often such people carry goods related to their professions in light vans or dual-purpose vehicles. Here comes an associated point, which I must say makes the matter to me even more muddled. How on earth can drivers' hours be enforced in respect of dual-purpose vehicles when all these are,
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by Government policy, to be exempt utterly from the new quality licensing system, the operators' licensing, when it comes into force? How are the police to distinguish between noble Lords who drive into London in estate cars carrying nothing and other noble Lords who carry goods connected with the businesses in which they happen to be engaged? How are the police to know when such goods were loaded or off-loaded?
All these matters, and many more, will be relevant, because by Government policy these vehicles are not to be separately licensed when the operators' licensing comes into force; and I suspect that it may well be that eventually dual-purpose vehicles and light vans will have to be exempt from Part VI of the 1968 Act.
May I also ask the noble Lord to throw a little more light on the exemption which is afforded to commercial travellers under the Order? Certainly in another place the Minister was most helpful in trying to clarify this, but Mr. Mulley also said that observations of Ministers are not necessarily of interest to a court. Indeed, they are not; but in such cases it is the Ministry who is prosecutor, and I feel that the Government have a responsibility to explain a little more precisely how far the commercial travellers' exemption extends. All are grateful for this guide which the Ministry of Transport have issued, but whether 20 pages of closely set type sets the matter out clearly, as the Minister believes, or is a reflection on the unnecessary complications of legislation under this Government, as we on this side believe, is a matter of opinion.
Lastly, may I ask the Government whether an undertaking can be given now to watch how these Regulations develop? For at the end of the day what is the principle behind Articles 3 and 4 of this Order? Is it not simply a question of expediency? Therefore, will the Ministry keep a flexible approach in enforcing Part VI of the Act in the early stages after March 1; and will the Government be prepared to introduce further exemptions if such are found to be necessary?

CONCORDE TEST FLIGHT ROUTES
3.40 p.m.
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to make a Statement on the Concorde test routes which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister of Technology.
"The bulk of Concorde's supersonic testing will take place over the sea. But for a small proportion of tests a route affecting some land areas is necessary for technical and safety reasons. In the light of discussions with the authorities concerned and after carefully weighing the various factors involved the Government have decided to authorise the use of a route along the West Coast. Copies of a map of the test routes, including that along the West Coast, will be available to your Lordships in the Printed Paper office.
"Flying along the West Coast route will not start before the spring. Use of the route will be strictly limited to ensure that there is as little disturbance as possible to the public. If any claims for compensation for damage arise they should be addressed to the Concorde Division of the Ministry of Technology.
"In due course an Order in Council will be laid before the House extending the protection of Section 40 of the Civil Aviation Act 1949 to Crown civil aircraft including those engaged on the test flights and providing a statutory basis for compensation.
"This decision to allow a limited number of supersonic test flights over land does not prejudge in any way the issue of whether aircraft should be allowed to fly supersonically over this country in commercial service. This question is being kept under review and my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade will announce a decision in due course in the light of further information and research on the problem."
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, I am sure that the whole House is grateful to the noble Lord for repeating that Statement on the Concorde test routes, and for making available to us the maps of the routes. Although perhaps this is an inevitable stage of development, I am
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sure that this Statement will be received with wide interest, and possibly also a little concern. For that reason, I should like to put to the noble Lord a few points on which perhaps he can reassure us.
First, I should like to ask what sonic boom tests have so far been carried out by the Royal Air Force over land, and if there has yet been any damage recorded. Secondly, is any damage from these future tests anticipated by the Board of Trade? Thirdly, how do the Board of Trade intend to make certain that the right to compensation mentioned in the Statement is properly known in the areas involved? Fourthly, what length of period is anticipated for these tests, and will they be restricted to day time only? Fifthly, have the local authorities in the areas involved been consulted? Lastly (and I hope I have not gone too quickly for the noble Lord) perhaps he could say whether the development of the Concorde is still right on target?
EARL AMHERST: My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the noble Lord for this interesting Statement. I desire to ask him only two questions. Can he tell us at what average altitudes, allowing for climb to and descent from operational heights, these tests will be made and whether there will be a difference in the operational altitudes of the flight tests taking place over the land and those taking place over the water?
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Lord about the last part of the Statement, where he said that the Minister of Technology would in due course announce a decision on whether commercial aircraft would be allowed to fly at supersonic speeds over land. Do I understand that the Minister of Technology will be able to make such a decision without any consultation of Parliament?
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, I will endeavour to answer the questions which noble Lords have put to me. The first question was whether there had been any flights at supersonic speeds undertaken by the Royal Air Force for the purpose of making tests of the effect of sonic booms. I think the most significant experience in this field was what I believe was known as "Exercise Summer Sky" in 1967, when a number of Lightnings—a dozen or

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fifteen—took part in exercises over densely populated and sparsely populated areas, including London, Bristol, and I think parts of South-West England. The experience on that occasion—since the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, went on to ask about damage and compensation— was that the compensation payable averaged something like £400 per flight.
The noble Earl then asked about the number of flights and the period over which they would last. As I said, we do not expect them to begin before the spring, or possibly early summer. It is always a little difficult to be absolutely precise when one is engaged in a testing programme of this sort—and it will be appreciated that it is only one part of the testing programme which involves this particular route—but the hope is that it will not be necessary to use this route for more than about 40 or 50 flights, over a period of some three years.
As to consultation with local authorities, there has been consultation with the local authorities and with a number of bodies concerned in the areas which will be affected by the test route. They include county councils in England, Wales and Scotland, Royal Burghs of Scotland, rural district councils, urban district councils and municipal corporations in the areas affected by the route. We have also had consultations with the House of Keys in the Isle of Man, representatives of the Northern Ireland central and local governments, the National Farmers' Union, including the Scottish and Ulster Farmers' Unions, the Farmers' Union of Wales, the Chartered Land Societies Committee, Country Landowners' Association, British Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise and the Nature Conservancy, and we hope shortly to have some discussions on the subject with the Welsh Council.
On the question of damage and compensation, appropriate steps will be taken to see that the arrangements for compensation are well known in the areas which may be affected.
The noble Earl, Lord Amherst, asked about the heights at which the flights will take place. I am afraid that I cannot give him a figure for the average height, or any information on the further point about possible variation of height. However,
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I will examine this point and get in touch with him about it.
The noble Lord, Lord Conesford, asked a question about supersonic test flights over land. This is not a question for the Ministry of Technology. It is a matter for my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade, and he will announce a decision on this subject in the light of further information and research in due course.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, do I understand that the Government have come to the conclusion that they are at liberty to make a decision, not so far made by any other country in the world, that commercial flights at supersonic speeds can take place over this country? Also, that they feel at liberty to make this decision without any consultation with Parliament at all?
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, I have not said that in any way. This is, as I have said, a question for my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade, and when he has reached his decision he will no doubt announce, explain and defend it to Parliament.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend to clarify this point? The decision that he is talking about, as I understand him to say in his remarks, is only for experimental purposes, whereas I think the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, was referring to flights for commercial purposes. Perhaps my noble friend would make it clear if it is in fact for commercial purposes or experimental purposes.
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, I am not sure that we are not to some extent at cross-purposes. I referred to the fact that my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade will do two things. He will in due course lay an Order before Parliament to extend Section 40 of the Civil Aviation Act 1949, broadly to bring the position of Crown civil aircraft in a number of respects into the same position as the general civil air fleets have been in for more than twenty years. That is the first point. Secondly, he is considering the question of general, commercial supersonic flying over this country. That point is again a matter for the President of the Board of Trade. The Government

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have powers under Section 19 of the Civil Aviation Act 1968. Those powers would enable them to restrict or prohibit commercial supersonic flights over the United Kingdom. My second reference to my right honourable friend, the President of the Board of Trade, was to say that he has not yet reached a decision about what use, if any, he should make, in the case of general commercial supersonic flying, of those powers which are conferred upon him by Section 19 of the 1968 Civil Aviation Act. That is the position.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, could the Minister answer this simple question? No doubt he has powers under the Act, but Parliament has certain powers also, and will the Minister come to Parliament before he makes and announces his decision, so that Parliament can have the chance of saying whether it approves or disapproves the decision of the Minister?
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, the position, as I understand it, is that my right honourable friend, the President of the Board of Trade, has power under existing legislation—power of prohibition—and he will in due course come to Parliament and say whether he intends at all or to any degree to use that power for the regulation of commercial supersonic flying. When he comes to Parliament and makes the announcement of his intentions regarding the use of his power, it will be subject to Parliamentary discussion in the normal way. It is a question of what use he proposes to make of powers which are already in his possession.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, I am well aware of that. What I should like the Minister to answer is quite simple. Without prejudicing what is the right decision, will the Minister come to Parliament before the formal, final decision is made? There is a lot of difference between announcing to Parliament and then giving Parliament the chance of discussing a fait accompli, and coming to Parliament before the decision is taken.
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, I do not think I can give any assurance in any way binding upon this point. I can do no more than bring the point that the noble Earl has raised to the attention of my right honourable friend.
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend for his very extended answer. May I ask two questions? First of all, he mentioned that three years' testing will go on on this route—or did I misunderstand him? But three years' testing would mean an enormous postponement of the actual commercial flight, if ever it comes to that. Therefore it would make this aircraft even more uneconomic than I think it will prove to be in the end. Secondly, may I ask whether the choice of a route over populous areas would not have been better? Would it not be better for a number of people to experience the consequences of what this slight shortening of the travel time from London to New York would be, if indeed this aircraft ever reaches New York from London in one jump?
3.56 p.m.
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, on the first question which was raised by my noble friend, may I say that the first part of the work will be very largely performance testing of the prototype aircraft 002. That is the British-assembled one. In addition, thereafter there may be use of the route for further testing, and the whole of this would be comprised within the three years to which I referred. From the fact that I mentioned this three-year period one should not make any deductions about any modification at all in the Concorde programme. I apologise for the fact that I did not pick up this point earlier, but the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, raised a point with regard to the Concorde programme. There is nothing I can add to the most recent statement made on the subject by my right honourable friend the Minister of Technology.
The second point, raised by my noble friend Lord Balogh, is a matter for judgment and opinion: whether it would seem better to carry out these tests and this testing programme over a densely populated area, rather than carry it out very largely over the sea, touching upon the fringes of this country and, generally speaking, on relatively sparsely populated areas. The Government have felt that on the whole the route which is now proposed is the one which, taking into account the views that have been expressed in the consultations to which I referred, is the best.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, could the noble Lord give any precision of time in regard to when the tests will be carried out next April? If a violent noise were to occur suddenly it might cause alarm and anxiety, particularly among children. There are certain activities—for instance, training a child to ride a horse—which one would not undertake if one of these booms were due to come along at, say, 12 o'clock on that day. If some measure of precision is given, I think an advantage is gained.
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, we have looked at this point. In a testing programme of this sort it is not easy to be absolutely precise as to when every flight will take place and to state such a certain period in advance. Sometimes test flights may be required at short notice; on other occasions an adjustment may be necessary, and the flight may have to be postponed at short notice. For that reason we have decided that it would not be the right course to try to announce individual fights—for example by radio or television. We shall, however, arrange for the Press to be informed that test flights will take place within a certain period, and the police will also be kept informed.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, could the Minister say to what extent this programme of test flying will be complementary to the amount of test flying which has actually taken place in France? Also, has the Minister any information whether the French have similar proposals with regard to this type of test flying?
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, Concorde is a joint programme, and the programme of testing is a joint one, too. Certain tests are to be carried out on British-assembled planes, and other tests on French-assembled planes. A certain amount of experience has already been gained by the French in this regard, and the two programmes of testing are not, as it were, competitive. They are not identical, but they are complementary.
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, is it not the case that the French programme from the beginning has, as arranged, been running slightly ahead of the British programme and that therefore we shall benefit
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from any experience of this type of testing which the French may have carried out before us?
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: Yes, my Lords; to some extent that is so.

DRIVERS' HOURS (GOODS VEHICLES) (MODIFICATIONS) ORDER 1970
4.0 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD TEVIOT: My Lords, before I become a little forthright, I should like to say how much I welcome the exemptions provided in the Order presented to us this afternoon. One could hardly have dreamed of the outcome of Part VI of the original 1968 Transport Act, which has little bearing on what we now have set before us. Your Lordships may recall that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, in his 41-minute speech at the Second Reading of the Bill devoted less than a half minute to this subject. He said, again, that this is a policy to increase safety on the roads. Therefore, the first question that I should like to ask him is this. How with these exemptions have the Government quantified safety and what research have they made into safety? Would they give us the latest figures of accidents involving vehicles in these categories? Have they been rising or decreasing? I feel that this is important because it has a very real bearing on the upheaval that the industry has had to face.
I should also like to ask the noble Lord this question. As it is now February 17, and these Regulations are to come into force on March 1—incidentally, a year after the Government intended— does he really consider that the industry has enough time to study them properly? It is true that this publication was made on January 24, but it still cannot be taken for granted that these Orders are necessarily accept by Parliament. And all these people who have now received exemptions have previously been in the dark.
The third point I should like to mention is the one of records. I very much welcome the abandonment of the horrible tachograph, and fully appreciate that it is essential to keep records in order to enforce this law. But if your Lordships

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will turn to Schedule I, Part II, you will see that the driver's record sheet, which the driver has to fill in himself, although comprehensive, is far too fulsome and it is grossly unfair to expect a driver to fill in all these details after a heavy day. I doubt very much whether he will do it properly. Therefore, could the noble Lord please ask his right honourable friend the Minister of Transport to design a more simple and practical form?
Lastly, with the leave of the House, I should like to say how disappointed I am that, even at this late hour, it is not possible to move the Drivers' Hours (Passenger Vehicles) Order. The industry is extremely perturbed that previous exemptions have been withdrawn and they do not know what the position is to be. Can the Minister give an assurance that these Orders, and a guide to these Orders, will definitely be printed by March 1? Also, with the leave of the House, I would ask the noble Lord whether he can give us a guide as to when the Drivers' Hours (Passenger Vehicles) Order is going to be presented to us.
4.3 p.m.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, I should like to support what my noble friend Lord Belstead has said. I think we can give a qualified approval to these Amendments—they are indeed Amendments—to the Transport Act. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to tell us before this discussion is over whether the Passenger Vehicle Orders are going forward as they are, or whether they are going to be amended further? My noble friend Lord Teviot has made the point that it is now only ten days before these Regulations come into operation. The Government have had eighteen months to produce them, but those who have to operate them—and very many people do—are going to have very little time indeed to digest an extremely complicated packet of rules. There are two Orders; there are two sets of Regulations; there are two Explanatory Memoranda. It is a pretty solid lot, and if any of your Lordships care to put them together and understand them in under three hours, then I think you are capable of absorbing facts very quickly. I agree entirely with my noble friend that these are very complicated matters.
I should like to go on to two other points quite shortly. This Order, we are
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told by the Special Orders Committee, deserves no special attention. I am sure that the Special Orders Committee have dutifully fulfilled their task, but ought we not to give them a rather fuller and more detailed task? There is in these four Orders very extensive use of what is called the "Henry VIII clause"; that is to say, in effect the Bill itself is re-written. It is not simply a question of subordinate legislation; passages have been put in. As my noble friend has said, some of them were admittedly passages which we wanted to put in before, and they have now been added to the Bill. Should we not have these more carefully drawn to our attention?
The disadvantage of these Orders is (hat we cannot amend them. The only thing we could do would be to throw them out. Apart from the time element, which makes it quite impossible, if we threw these Orders out an immediate constitutional issue would arise. This is legislation by bureaucracy, pure and simple. I know that the noble Lord will say that it has been going on for a long time, but this is a pretty extensive packet.
May I also put this point? Are we not really making a terrible blunder of a very simple matter? We are trying to regulate the hours of driving. Broadly, none of us differs on this. This is a perfectly proper subject for a degree of regulation. We have first of all a part of the Transport Act—10 clauses. I do not think many people really understood those clauses. I believe that my noble friend Lord Hurcomb did, because he has worked in the Ministry of Transport and understands the patois which is normally spoken in that Department. I am not at all sure that many other people understood them. There are two Orders, two sets of Regulations, and Explanatory Memoranda. It is a terrible packet for a very simple thing. All I can say is that to a large extent this is being written outside Parliament. I hope that the noble Lord will bear this in mind. I know that this Government are not the only Government who have acted in this way; but, with very great respect, this is a very bad case to achieve an extremely simple result.
4.7 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am not quite certain how the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, could suggest that the Order

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in front of us is government by bureaucracy. The bringing into force of Part VI of the Act is done, as I understand it, by an Order made by the Minister according to the Act. The Order is laid before Parliament, but it does not require Parliamentary approval. That is my understanding of it. The Order that we have in front of us to-day is to make exemptions from the Act that Parliament passed. I should have thought, then, that the welcome that has been given by noble Lords opposite was thoroughly justified. We have considered, during all the stages of our debates, and since then in consultation with some 200 different organisations, all the points put forward, and we have come forward with these proposals in this Order.
A question has been put to me by two noble Lords about the position of the Passenger Vehicles Order. I understand that this is still subject to the Statutory Instruments Committee procedure in another place. So far as I know, my right honourable friend has no intention, at least from his point of view, of amending the proposals which have already been through our own Special Orders Committee. But I thought it would be wrong to ask this House to approve that Order —the Passenger Vehicles Order—while it was still in that early stage in another place. But I hope that that Order will be before Parliament shortly, and that I shall be able to deal with it at an early date.
I will certainly look into the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, about whether the form can be made simpler. This of course is outside this particular Order, because here we are dealing with exemptions, and not with matters arising under the Act. But I will certainly see what can be done and will write to him. I fear also that I have no figures of the accident rate for this class of vehicle. I will find out, however, and let him have them. In any case, I am certain that the noble Lord, with his own experience, will agree that for this particular class of vehicle the number of fatal accidents is not so serious as that for heavy vehicles, which are involved in very many more accidents. For this reason we felt that we ought to bring this type of vehicle into the general provisions of the Act.
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It would be wrong to say that these vehicles, simply because they do not come under the operators' licence, or the quality licence, will be free to be driven in any condition that the driver may wish to have them; because, of course, they will be subject to the annual test, in common with all other vehicles, and they will be subject to spot checks by the police. So I think the point that was made by the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, does not stand up.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord one question?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I have not even started with the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, yet.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for giving way, because this seems to me to be germane to the basis of the Order. If the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, is referring to spot checks I do not think that is a detail. Surely if drivers' records need not be kept because these vehicles will not be subject to an operator's licence, the system will not work.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, what I have been seeking to explain is that this Order deals with exemptions. The exempt drivers are of a limited class of person, and from all the information that is available to us these drivers are unlikely to reach the type of driving period that we had in mind as regards a safety factor.
The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, asked me about the commercial traveller and the problem of his goods. The proposed Order is specific: the words in Article 3(2)(b)are:
"no goods other than goods carried for the purpose of soliciting orders …"
My advice is that this clearly refers to samples. This would not permit a commercial traveller to carry goods in a van and to sell those goods from that van. The Order has been drafted in this way to permit the driver to carry samples, to take orders, but not to sell those particular goods. If there is any doubt on the legal drafting I think that, as we often do, we shall have to fall back on the decision of the courts.
The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, also asked me whether the list was complete,

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and he suggested we should include probation officers and child welfare officers. All I can say to the noble Lord is that they might well have been included if their associations and organisations had approached my right honourable friend, but in fact they did not. However, we will look at the way in which Part VI of the Act will work, and if further representations are made we will certainly take them into account. I would remind the noble Lord that, as I said earlier, we have already had discussions with some 200 different organisations. The noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, complained that the Order was only just being presented to Parliament, and said that few organisations will know what is in these Orders. But in fact we have been holding these consultations since 1968. We have had close connections with the major organisations, as we always do in the drafting of these Orders; and although the Order is to come into force shortly, I have no doubt at all that the organisations interested in it are aware of the contents.
My Lords, I personally do not think we shall have all the difficulties which the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, had in mind about the dual-purpose vehicle. It is clear that the drivers of these vehicles will be required to keep within the Act, other than those who are exempted by this Order or any subsequent Order, or by the Regulations which I have described earlier, dealing with emergencies. I think the genera! feeling of noble Lords who have spoken is that they welcome the Order, shall I say, so far as it goes. If we go further it will be as a result of careful thought, but always taking the interest of safety as the primary object of our exercise.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

WELLAND AND NENE (EMPINGHAM RESERVOIR) AND MIDNORTHAMPTONSHIRE WATER BILL
4.15 p.m.
LORD REDMAYNE LORD REDMAYNE moved, That it be an Instruction to the Select Committee to which the Bill is referred that they give special consideration to:

(i) the Interim Report of International Land Development Consultants N.V. (I.L.A.C.O.);

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(ii) the effect of the proposed Empingham Reservoir upon local agriculture, visual amenity and local communications;

(iii) the question whether the storage capacity of the proposed reservoir is excessive;

(iv) the possibility of increased supplies from existing sources or major national schemes; in relation to which the Select Committee on the Bill in the House of Commons reported specially as follows: "Your Committee have passed the Bill with Amendments, but consider it their duty to bring to the attention of the House their view that there is an urgent necessity to study alternative supplies of water. They therefore strongly recommend that a feasibility study of the Wash Barrage be undertaken immediately."

And that in order to enable them to examine these considerations fully the Committee should be authorised to hear evidence tendered by persons other than the parties.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the need for this Instruction arises from a situation which was discussed but was not certain on Second Reading, and that is the financial inability of certain important Petitioners to take their case further in your Lordships' House. I will be brief, and I certainly will not rehearse in detail any of the arguments on the Bill, which will be very much the business of the Select Committee. I should like to express to that Committee my thanks for their labours, because those labours will not be small, and my thanks also to the Lord Chairman of Committees for so helpfully ensuring that, all being well to-night, in spite of certain procedural difficulties the Committee will be wholly capable of giving to this Bill the attention which it deserves.
The nub of what I have to say lies in those words, "the attention which the Bill deserves", because although this Instruction necessarily draws attention to some of the factors which make this reservoir undesirable in itself, its broader purpose is to ensure that this House, as represented by the Select Committee, or on consideration of a Report from that Select Committee, will have looked most carefully into the reasons for the Special Report which was attached to the Bill by the Committee in another

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place. As your Lordships will know, the very existence of that Special Report is a warning light that care is needed in respect of this Bill. I think I am right in saying that it is the only occasion on which such a Special Report has been made.
The attention which the Bill deserves is not on account of Empingham reservoir alone but is in pursuance of what one would hope would be a more progressive, and certainly a more urgent, policy of water use and water conservation, not in the distant future, as we so often discuss, but in the near future. For that same reason I hope the noble Lord, Lord Milne, who is going to move the Amendment standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, will not pursue too strenuously his Amendment to my Instruction. The noble Lord, Lord Ilford, has been most helpful to me in withdrawing other Amendments and in discussing in what ways this Instruction could be acceptable to him, and now only this one Amendment remains. Of course I will not discuss it in detail. However, I want to say that the report to which this Amendment refers, which was commissioned by the Petitioners who have withdrawn, suggests that the urgency of this reservoir may possibly have been exaggerated and that there is time to look to other resources. That is the whole measure of this report.
I rather gather that the main argument against having this report referred to the Select Committee may well be that if was not produced in evidence in Committee in another place, and therefore cannot be admissible here. Frankly, I do not believe that that argument can be valid. It may be a legalistic argument (and I say that without any disrespect at all to the profession), but I do not believe that it is a Parliamentary argument. I think that a Select Committee of this House should have access to any evidence which can help them to reach a fair conclusion. In any case, as I have shown to your Lordships, the report is not a very large document.
Let me conclude by saying this. On Second Reading of the Bill on November 11, the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said (col. 604) that on this Bill depends the development of the East Midlands during the next 50 years. With all respect, I
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think that is another over-argument, another exaggeration of the type which has been used throughout the case of those who support the need for this reservoir. At the same time he expressed the hope that the House would give the Bill a Second Reading, as it had done for similar Bills "on every occasion in the last seven years". In the event, the Second' Reading was obtained on a Division. I had a part in that Division, and I was not at all ashamed of that. I think it was a fair warning, as indeed was the defeat of the Calderdale Water Bill in another place a week or two ago, that lowland reservoir Bills will be increasingly difficult to obtain, certainly in this House, unless there are much more positive signs of urgency in seeking alternatives to them.
May I again express the hope that the noble Lord, Lord Milne, will not press his Amendment too far, and hope also that if all goes well this House may look forward to a Report from the Select Committee which will not only guide us as to our attitude in respect of this particular Bill, but also will give us guidance, based particularly on the Special Report in another place, as to what should be our policy in respect of water Bills and water conservation in general. I beg to move.
Moved, That it be an instruction to the Select Committee to which the Bill is referred that they give special consideration to:

(i) the Interim Report of International Land Development Consult-ants N.V. (I.L.A.C.O.);

(ii) the effect of the proposed Empingham Reservoir upon local agriculture, visual amenity and local communications;

(iii) the question whether the storage capacity of the proposed reservoir is excessive;

(iv) the possibility of increased supplies from existing sources or major national schemes; in relation to which the Select Committee on the Bill in the House of Commons reported specially as follows: "Your Committee have passed the Bill with Amendments, but consider it their duty to bring to the attention of the House their view that there is an urgent necessity to study alternative supplies of water. They

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therefore strongly recommend that a feasibility study of the Wash Barrage be undertaken immediately."

And that in order to enable them to examine these considerations fully the Committee should be authorised to hear evidence tendered by persons other than the parties.—(Lord Redmayne.)
4.24 p.m.
LORD MILNE LORD MILNE rose to move, as an Amendment to the Motion, to leave out paragraph (i). The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to move the Amendment which stands on the Order Paper in the name of my noble friend Lord Ilford. I am sure the House will hear with regret that Lord Ilford has met with an accident and cannot be present here to-day. I do not know whether more sympathy is due to him or to me, in the predicament in which I find myself in attempting to act as his understudy at such short notice.
My Lords, I feel that paragraph (i) of the Instruction contained in this Motion is more likely to confuse and delay matters rather than to assist. The noble Lord, Lord Redmayne, as he has stated, would instruct the Committee at this late hour to take notice of a document which we have not seen and which, though it was in existence at all times and was commissioned by an earlier Petitioner, was never put in evidence before the Committee of another place. Nor in fact did its authors even represent the Petitioners before that Committee.
LORD REDMAYNE: My Lords, may I intervene? The noble Lord says that we have never seen the document; but he will of course agree that this document is in this House.
LORD MLNE: My Lords, it may be in this House, but it has been in this House for such a short time that I have not seen it yet, and I am sure that a great many other noble Lords in this House are in the same situation. While all this may be unfortunate, it does not seem to me to pose nearly the difficulties which appear to arise if this report is to have the special consideration of a Select Committee of your Lordships' House. That report is presumably the private property of a Petitioner who has since withdrawn, and although no doubt it will be made available such a document
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will require expert evidence in support. Here the Committee will be in a difficulty, for questions of cost will arise, not to say the necessary powers to compel the attendance of witnesses, if necessary, from overseas. I will not dwell upon these difficulties, as the noble Earl the Lord Chairman of Committees will no doubt explain these when he comes to speak.
What of the document itself? The little we know of it is derived from the evidence. It is variously described as a report, an interim report, a sort of feasibility study needing some two years to complete its object. Even the Petitioners' water engineer was not clear on this, or about the terms of reference. These appear to have been stated variously: one, to find an alternative to Empingham; two, to survey the water resources of South-East England. In any event, so far as Empingham is concerned, it was stated in evidence by the water engineer of the Petitioners himself to be a failure, since no alternative to Empingham was suggested, and as:
"useful, but not meeting the urgent needs of Northamptonshire."
This, then, is the document which the noble Lord, Lord Redmayne, in his Instruction, seeks to direct the Committee to consider: one which I submit, on the evidence, is inconclusive and irrelevant to the problems of the Bill, and one which will pose considerations to the Committee that it is not really within their province 1o consider. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Line 4, leave out paragraph (i).—(Lord Milne.)
4.27 p.m.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I should like, if I may, to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Milne, on his courage in stepping into the shoes of the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, at such short notice. I believe that he heard only this morning about Lord Ilford's accident. Much as we regret the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, and the reasons for that absence, no doubt we would agree that he has found an intrepid substitute.
My Lords, there are certain procedural considerations relating to matters raised

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in the Instruction and the proposed Amendment to which, if I may, I should like to draw the attention of the House and ask the House to consider. This Bill, as the House knows, is an opposed Bill and is referred to a Select Committee as there is a Petition against it deposited by the Peterborough Corporation. This Petition deals with rates of abstraction and seeks protection in regard to the discharge of sewerage effluent. The House will appreciate, therefore, that it is in fact a Petition for amendment rather than a Petition of general objection to the Bill. As the Petition is concerned only with sewerage effluent, the matters raised in the Instruction of the noble Lord, Lord Redmayne, would not be considered by the Committee without an Instruction from the House. If the House wishes to agree to paragraphs (ii), (iii) and (iv) of Lord Redmayne's Instruction, there is no procedural objection to their so doing. The effect of the agreement of the House will be that the Committee will be required to consider specific matters not raised in the Petition, and to hear argument and evidence on them. The Committee may also be expected, as this is the usual procedure, to make a special report to the House on these questions.
Regarding paragraph (i) of the Instruction, which instructs the Committee to give special consideration to the interim report of International Land Development Consultants N.V., which is, I believe, usually referred to as I.L.A.C.O., I think I must point out certain procedural difficulties and objections to its inclusion in the Instruction.
This report was compiled by the I.L.A.C.O., who are a firm based in Arnhem in Holland, in December, 1968, at the request of the Rutland County Council and the Rutland County and Stamford Branch of the National Farmers' Union. As both noble Lords who have spoken have pointed out, it deals with present and future water use; with future water demand in the Welland and Nene river areas; with the reservoir calculations, and comments on the proposed Empingham Reservoir and other types of reservoirs. It is an extremely complicated and technical report, but it is evident that it deals with the subject matter of the Bill and is
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therefore entirely relevant to the Instruction of the noble Lord, Lord Redmayne.
Practice would require bodies commissioning such a report—bodies such as I have already referred to—and who wished to have its conclusions considered by a Select Committee on a Bill to deposit a Petition against the Bill. This would enable them to appear as parties to the proceedings and to adduce evidence to amplify and support the report and to answer any arguments against it. The Select Committee would thus have sufficient evidence to assess the value of the conclusions contained in the report.
In this case, however, I must point out to your Lordships that none of the bodies who commissioned the report have seen fit to deposit a Petition against the Bill in this House, and I understand that the report was not made available and was not, therefore, considered by the Select Committee on the Bill in another place. It is correctly stated in the Notes for Peers which have been sent by the Promoters of the Bill on the Motion for the Instruction of the noble Lord, Lord Redmayne, that only certain references were made to it before the Select Committee in another place by the Petitioners' consulting engineer. For these reasons—and I must emphasise the importance of the fact that the parties responsible for the report are not parties who would appear before the Committee —I must advise the House that in my opinion it would be inappropriate to refer this report to the Select Committee on the Bill.
However, should the House see fit to agree to this paragraph of the Instruction, further difficulties will then arise. The Select Committee will wish to hear witnesses, but the Committee itself has no power to send for them nor to pay their expenses or any fees that may be incurred. In my view, this is a case in which the responsibility for doing so should not fall on the Promoters of the Bill. If this responsibility were carried out by the Promoters, they would be expected to call witnesses on behalf of the Committee, and to pay their fees and expenses. They would then cross-examine them on their evidence in support of the report, and of course in opposition to the Bill. I think it would be unreasonable to expect the Promoters to do all this.

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Lastly, with regard to paragraph (iv) of Lord Redmayne's Instruction, I should like to make a general observation on the current practice of instructing Select Committees on Private Bills to consider matters which go right outside objections contained in Petitions against a Bill. As Members of the House who have sat on Select Committees will know (and I see many noble Lords who have done so present in the House this afternoon), normally they are asked to consider the provisions of a Bill in the context of local need balanced against local opposition. However, there have been a number of cases recently where it has been felt that the powers asked for in certain Private Bills raise considerations of public policy. In such cases the House has seen fit to agree Instructions to Select Committees requiring them to consider and call evidence on matters which are not raised in Petitions. In the long run, if it were generally adopted, this practice could have the effect of transforming Select Committee proceedings into a type of general inquiry such as is more usually carried out by Select Committees on public matters or. indeed, by a Royal Commission. The parties who appear before such a Select Committee cannot always be expected to adduce the kind of evidence which will enable the Committee to reach a decision on the matters raised in the Instructions. The Committee may, therefore, find themselves at a grave disadvantage in endeavouring to carry out the duty imposed on them by the House.
The type of procedure to which I am referring is not envisaged in Private Bill Standing Orders. For instance, as in this case, the authority of the House is required if a Committee is to hear evidence other than that tendered by the parties. It is important, I think, to remember that such authority has only rarely been given in his House, and not in the House of Commons since 1896. But with the increasing interest which this House is taking in the public policy aspect of Private Bills, I think that this practice is likely to increase. If this proves to be the case, I am sure that the House should be aware of what is involved, and of the extent to which this new procedure differs from that which it has evolved to deal with the ordinary Private Bill. Current Committee procedure is perfectly adequate to deal with Bills in
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the usual way. I think I can say that it is completely satisfactory to all concerned with the passage of Private Bills through this House. I think that the House can take some pride in the reputation it has acquired for the manner in which it deals with Private Bills. But this ordinary procedure cannot be expected, without grave distortion, to suffice when a Committee has received a wide ranging Instruction from the House and perhaps, in addition, authority to hear evidence other than that tendered by the parties.
The House will note that the noble Lord, Lord Molson, has a Motion pending proposing a Select Committee to consider how far, and in what manner, matters of public policy should be allowed to affect the consideration of Private Bills in Parliament. The debate on this occasion will give the House a useful opportunity to express its views on this problem. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Molson, for the chance he has given the House to express its opinion about the desirability of inquiring into this matter by means of a Select Committee. My own view is that the House would be well advised to take advice from a Select Committee which would enable it to reach a considered decision, rather than to drift, which is the danger at the moment, into a new procedure which may prove unsatisfactory.
4.38 p.m.
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, I am sure that we are all very much indebted to the Lord Chairman for the careful way in which he has dealt with the various procedural matters which arise under this Instruction. I do not know what view by noble friend Lord Redmayne will take of the Amendment to delete paragraph (i). I must say that I was impressed by the arguments on procedure which the Lord Chairman of Committees adduced against this particular paragraph. I feel rather inclined to ask exactly what would be the effect of omitting this paragraph.
Speaking for myself, I do not think that anything much would be lost if deleting this paragraph meant only that the Committee were not required to give special consideration to this report, in view of the difficulty that undoubtedly would arise in probing the facts and the figures adduced when the report is from a foreign firm of consultants and, as the

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noble Earl the Lord Chairman has pointed out, no funds are available for bringing witnesses over and for having the whole matter probed. On the other hand, I should like an assurance that the deletion of this paragraph does not mean that the Select Committee would be debarred from reading this interim report and, if necessary and if they wished to do so, asking questions of witnesses in order to ascertain whether the facts and the figures are correct.
This is an interim report which is admittedly chiefly destructive in its nature, because there was neither time nor money to enable this firm of consultant engineers to go at immense length into the very great problem of what, if any, alternative source of supply there might be. But I think it certainly should be open to the Select Committee to read the facts and figures as adduced by the consultants. For example, the kind of thing that they point out is that the calculation of the water requirement in the year 2000 is not the minimum but the maximum which is possible. They naturally ask whether it is reasonable to plan all that distance ahead on the basis of a figure which is only the maximum which might be reached.
Similarly they draw attention to the topography of the site and show that it is an extraordinarily unsuitable place for a dam, according to any normal engineering considerations. An immensely large area of land has to be submerged in order to obtain a relatively small quantity of water. The topography of the land is such that after a drought it is quite likely that one-third of the whole area will be mud and not water. I do not want to go any further into the details of this matter; I only want to be assured that if we agree to the deletion of this paragraph it does not mean that the Select Committee will be obliged to blind themselves to facts and figures which are available and which are extremely relevant to the consideration of this difficult and extremely controversial Bill.
I was grateful to the Lord Chairman of Committees for what he said about the Motion for No Day Named which I have put on the Order Paper. We have now had a lot of Private Bills where various considerations of public policy have arisen, and we have dealt with them in
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this House with a flexibility which, if I may say so, does credit to your Lordships' House and enables the normal procedure to be modified in order to meet the special requirements that arise. A Private Bill is by way of being a dispute between two private individuals as to whether certain things are to be done which otherwise would consist of an infringement of the right of one of them. It is extremely expensive to argue cases of this kind before a Select Committee in either House, and when some general matters of public policy arise it is almost impossible to find any means of having those considerations put before a Select Committee, with the expert witnesses, Parliamentary agents, expensive counsel and so on, which are necessary.
That is why I ventured to put this Motion on the Order Paper, and I am very glad indeed that the Lord Chairman of Committees welcomes my initiative in this matter. I shall certainly take an early opportunity of trying to obtain a day for putting it forward, and I am glad to know that the Lord Chairman, with his extensive experience of these matters, welcomes the initiative that I have taken. I should be glad if the Lord Chairman could give us an assurance on the point I have tried to put, that the deletion of this paragraph will mean only that the Committee will not be obliged to give special consideration, and that they will not be obliged to blind themselves to the facts and figures that are contained in the memorandum.
4.45 p.m.
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, I would not have entered this debate this afternoon but for a statement by the noble Lord, Lord Redmayne, that the urgency of water supplies in this area had been overstressed. As some noble Lords may know, I had the honour for 15 years of representing in another place the Wellingborough Division. The urgency of the need for better supplies of water was evident in those days, and that is ten years ago now. During the period of that time there has been extensive development at Corby; Welling-borough is an expanded town; Daventry is an expanded town; Peterborough has been made an expanded town with a development corporation, and the question of water supplies for this area is a

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very urgent matter if the water undertaking is to fulfil its obligation to supply a pure and satisfactory water supply to the residents in that greatly expanding area. It is on the urgency of the matter that I lay stress. I should not like to go unchallenged the inference from the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Redmayne, that this problem was not urgent and that the urgency had been over-stressed.
LORD GRENFELL: My Lords, I have no interest to declare, in that I am not the chairman or a member of the Committee concerned, but I am deeply worried about one statement which my noble friend Lord Molson made. He said that supposing this first Instruction was deleted, it would not prevent the Commit-tee from studying carefully the I.L.A.C.O. paper. It certainly would not, to my mind, with the experience I have had on Committees—which is a fair one—prevent the Committee from studying that paper; but I know that the Lord Chairman will tell me if I am wrong. However, if it is to be produced in evidence, brought up in the Committee, then it has to be proved and evidence has to be called as to the accuracy of the figures. That would entail, to my mind, as the Lord Chairman has said, our having to bring people from abroad. That was the fear I had in regard to this paragraph (i).
The only other point I should like to make is that on instruction (iv) I have discovered—and I am speaking only for myself—that there is great difficulty in calling witnesses other than those called by the Promoters or the Petitioners. Whom do you call? When are you satisfied that the evidence they have given has proved the case on an enormous question such as the Wash Barrage? It widely extends the situation of the whole Committee. It is not that I would vote against this paragraph at all but I think one has to be very careful when giving an Instruction of this sort. One must realise the difficulty it puts on the Chairman and the Committee as a whole.
4.49 p.m.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I have only one point of substance to make, and that is that the noble Lords, Lord Molson and Lord Grenfell, both spoke as though the Water Resources Board did not exist. When the Committee come to consider
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this Bill they will not do so in a vacuum, but will do so in the knowledge that the Water Resources Board has surveyed and published a survey of water resources in the South East of England for the next two or three decades. In that survey the Water Resources Board, which is the statutory adviser to the Government in these matters, considered various combinations of means for obtaining the necessary increase of water in the South-East. None of these combinations excluded a reservoir at either Empingham or Manton. Manton is now forgotten, so it is fair to say that none of these possible combinations excluded the reservoir at Empingham.
I turn now to the question of the Amendment to the Instruction. I am advised that if the Amendment is carried the Committee will not be debarred from reading the I.L.A.C.O. report, nor from asking questions about it. On the matter of witnesses, the Lord Chairman has already given the House his advice. I think it only remains; for me, on the point of the Instruction and the Amendment to it, to say, first of all, that I hope the noble Lord, Lord Redmayne, will agree to accept the Amendment to paragraph (i), in view of what the Lord Chairman has said, and to advise the House that that would be the best solution. On the general question of Instructions and Private Bills, about which the Lord Chairman has spoken, I would only associate the Government with what he said in welcoming the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Molson, for a debate on this matter not too far ahead.
4.52 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, may I add one word from these Benches on this matter? I do not wish in any way to be thought to be taking sides in the dispute which has led to the proposed Instruction and the Amendment to it, and I must immediately confess that I am bound to approach this from a legal point of view, because it is my nature. But I am very concerned about the points made by the noble Earl the Lord Chairman of Committees. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has said, it may well be that if the first paragraph of the Instruction is removed the Committee can read for their own benefit this I.L.A.C.O. report. It is a very technical report and it contains a number of graphs

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and figures, with which I should think other authorities concerned with water in this country would not necessarily agree. But be that as it may. They can also, no doubt, read the reports of the Water Resources Board and any information produced publicly by river authorities or water undertakers or anybody else.
But the point I am concerned about is whether there should be argument based upon the contents of the I.L.A.C.O. report. These matters of reservoirs are sometimes dealt with by a Private Bill but much more frequently by way of a Water Order. If it is done by way of a Water Order, the procedure is not dissimilar in that it is a quasi-judicial hearing, but the inspector who presides over these matters is a qualified man, and the Minister who finally makes the decision is ably assisted by a number of highly qualified people in his Department. They are therefore able to assess the argument, as well as the evidence, given on the one side and on the other. In the present case, if the I.L.A.C.O. report is to be the subject of argument, without any evidence having been brought by either side upon which the strength of the argument can be assessed, then (although I do not wish in any way to disparage the wisdom of noble Lords who might be sitting on the Committee) I myself should be very hesitant indeed in knowing what to make of the figures and the technical information in the report. I should not consider that I was able to judge whether this is the correct conclusion or an incorrect conclusion, or whether the real truth lies somewhere in between the two.
Therefore, although the report may go informally before the Committee for reading and background material, this Instruction seems to me to require formal notice to be taken of it, to invite argument about it and to bring in all the difficulties about evidence which the Lord Chairman mentioned. I very much hope, therefore, that my noble friend Lord Redmayne will accept this Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Milne, particularly as the noble Lord, Lord Molson, has now received the assurance that he sought, and that we shall not have what I believe could be a very unfortunate precedent in the way of an Instruction of this nature.
LORD REDMAYNE: My Lords, I am very grateful to noble Lords who have
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taken part in this debate, and I certainly accept the good advice that has been given. I should have made the same point as my noble friend Lord Molson, and I am grateful for the assurance that has been given. I perfectly well understand the misgivings that have been expressed. That would therefore seem to be the end of the matter.
At one moment I rather trembled when I thought the Lord Chairman of Committees was going to refuse me my Instruction as well. I assure your Lordships that it is not my wish that I should be in any way an accessory to"drifting into new procedures", and I think the House will acknowledge that. But it is very hard in respect of these Water Bills to be asked on every occasion to consider only the Bill and to leave the policy rolling on without discussion. This is where the House is grateful to my noble friend Lord Molson for the opportunity which will come to us, and no doubt there will come a considerable and beneficial change in our procedure. I accept the Amendment as it stands.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Motion, as amended, agreed to.

EDUCATION OF AUTISTIC CHILDREN
4.57 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY rose to ask Her Majesty's Government: What steps they propose to take to ensure that autistic children receive an education suited to their needs. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I do not propose to detain your Lordships long in asking this Question. The first reason for this is that, although the Answer may be complicated and detailed, I do not think the Question is. The second reason is that I am delighted that a number of noble Lords are joining me in asking this Question tonight, and I am sure that all noble Lords interested in this subject will be delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, who is President of the National Society for Autistic Children, has her name down among those who are to speak.
Autism is not a new condition. It is, however, a fairly modern diagnosis. In my extremely brief account of this condition, I shall be relying to a large degree

1115
on the extremely useful pamphlet, Children Apart, by Dr. Lorna Wing, published by the British Medical Association; as, indeed, for the rest of my speech I shall depend upon the equally important Report, Misplaced Children, published in November last year by the National Society for Autistic Children. These children—and, indeed, adolescents and adults—have a very severe learning problem. This arises, apparently, at some stage in the interpretation that goes on between their perfectly normal eyes and ears and their brains. They are, in the words of Dr. Wing,"tone deaf to any kind of language ". They are also unable to entertain concepts and to work out causal connections.
Very little indeed is known about the causes of this condition, but it is quite obvious that not only is it a vast and tremendous handicap to the child affected, but it places a particular strain on the family which has a child in that condition. This is the more so because at the moment there is no medical treatment for autism. Nevertheless, very considerable progress has been made in teaching children to find a way round their difficulties, so that at the very least they can become acceptable members of society, live with their own families and, indeed, learn basic skills which enable them to earn their own living. For this reason it is particularly important that the right kind of education should be given to the autistic children in this country.
My Lords, it is calculated that in England and Wales there are about 3,000 autistic children of school age and 2,000-odd below school age. A survey reported in Misplaced Children deduces that there are well over 700 young children in this condition in mentally subnormality hospitals who should not be there at all. They are autistic children who should be receiving proper education, and they are there in these hospitals only because there is nowhere else for them to go. For the 3,000 autistic children in this country there are only 21 educational centres; and all of them, incidentally, are in the South-East.
One of the ways of overcoming this problem, of course, would be to provide more autistic centres in different parts of the country and/or more residential schools. For various reasons, which have been dealt with in the Report, mental subnormality
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hospitals are particularly bad for autistic children, apart from cheating them of the possibility to learn to cope with their situation. The children are there, as I have said, because there are not enough special schools. Quite often they are there because the education authorities are not as aware of this problem as they ought to be; and although some authorities are extremely good, and have a very good record in this matter, others are obviously still behind the times and ignorant about it.
The necessary framework within which these children can be treated, within which the local education authority can work, is laid down in Section 33 of the 1944 Education Act—and, if I may say so, extremely good machinery it is. The Secretary of State is empowered to lay down special categories of children which, when they are diagnosed, can be treated —indeed, must be treated, according to the regulations; and there is a duty on the local education authority to see that they are so educated.
Under this section a number of conditions (I think ten in all) have been laid down by regulation as demanding a special treatment. They range from blindness and deafness to such rather indeterminate categories as "delicate" children. Autism has not been included so far, partly because it is a fairly new diagnosis, partly because it is difficult to diagnose, and partly, I believe, because the Department of Education and Science has certain doubts about the whole future and rightness of categorisation. I do not think there can be very much doubt that if autism were categorised, and special regulations made, this would have a tremendous effect on seeing that autistic children received the right kind of education, and that the right kind of schools were provided for them in the right place and at the right time.
In a letter to the National Society for Autistic Children, dated February 4 of this year, Miss Alice Bacon intimated that one of the subjects that would be dealt with by the forthcoming major Education Bill, and therefore in the White Paper—or, as some of us hope, the Green Paper—which we may expect this year, is the whole question of categorisation, and that the present view of the Department of Education and Science is that there should be less rather than

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more categorisation. I understand that categorisation can give rise to difficulties in cases where children suffer from multiple handicaps, but I would maintain that no better machinery could be found for dealing with small and relatively obscure categories of children than Section 33 of the 1944 Act.
It may well be that there should be less categorisation. It may well be that there is no longer a need to categorise such groups as the blind or the deaf, simply because their education is now recognised by all local education authorities as a duty, and there is no danger that such people will not be educated, even if not necessarily completely, at any rate as adequately as possible with the money available. Nevertheless, I would urge that in the case of autistic children there is still need for categorisation. The idea put forward by the Department, as I understand it—that is to say, that, instead of categorisation, there should be tailor-made treatment, education, for each individual child, not straitjacketed by categorisation—is a very attractive and appealing one. But it appears to me to be idealistic and a little naive to think that we have reached this stage, even if after Maud, say, we have only the number of local education authorities which is envisaged in that Report.
It has been suggested that we do not at the moment know the best way to educate autistic children, and that therefore it is difficult to lay down the regulations or to know what the result of them would be. There is of course some truth in this statement; and I think all noble Lords will be delighted that there is a project, supported by the Department of Education and Science, to compare and evaluate the education and training being given to these children. Nevertheless, there is enough first-class educational treatment of autistic children now going on, as some of your Lordships will have seen, to make it quite clear that progress can be made.
The idea has been put forward that autistic children are better educated when mixed with non-autistic children, and receiving stimulus from them, than when in special units. I am not an expert on the subject, but it does not seem to me that the stimulus they get from their
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fellow children can be any substitute for the stimulus that one sees they get from teachers who are particularly trained in and concentrating on giving this stimulus; and, however good the teachers are in a mixed unit, they will undoubtedly respond more to the lively children than they will to the children who have this problem of almost total non-communication. However that may be, there is no dispute over the need to make sure that autism is diagnosed early and that sufferers are given the best possible treatment.
If categorisation is to continue, surely it is to the benefit of these children that they should be categorised. If it is not to continue, may we not have categorisation until the new Bill comes in, which must at any rate be a couple of years off, if not more? It would help reassure a large number of parents and children, and it would give us some experience of what the results of categorisation are, which in any case surely cannot be harmful. Nothing will be lost; and even if categorisation is not continued, experience will have been gained. If the whole future of categorisation is still in doubt, these arguments surely still remain. It would be a fairly simple and easy thing to apply categorisation by way of a regulation under Section 33 of the Education Act, whatever is going to happen in the Education Bill two or three years ahead, which may depend upon what Government are in power and may be longer ahead anyway than any of us anticipate.
But whether or not we get a favourable reply from the Government to this particular point that I am urging, I am sure that all noble Lords will agree that we must have—and I know that the Department will be only too delighted to give— some really definite assurance that the kind of tragic cases which have been reported of the misplacement of autistic children will not occur in the future. There must be something more than pious hopes that local education authorities will be able to see that these children are diagnosed and that treatment is given. Now that a considerable scandal has been exposed, there must be some plans to see that these things do not occur again. A civilisation and education system is surely judged by the treatment that it gives to its most unfortunate members. The autistic children, and to a certain extent their parents, are indeed among some of

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the most unfortunate members of our community, and we must do everything we possibly can for them. My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, we are all very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, for having drawn our attention to the difficulties and needs of autistic children. I make no secret of the fact that I am very ignorant on the subject and, in fact, before the noble Lord put down his Question I really did not know what autistic children were. I should like also to express my gratitude to the National Society for Autistic Children whose secretary, Mrs. Everard, was very helpful and also Mrs. Elgar of their school at Ealing where I have seen something of what is done for them. This is a school well known to my noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood who founded it and has had a great deal to do with encouraging it. I feel very humble in the presence of so many great experts on this subject who are speaking in this debate to-day and I hope that my remarks will be accepted for what they arc worth, as the first impressions of an ignorant observer.
I know that there is some controversy about the causes of autism in children, and I know that there are different views on the best method of treating them. But one thing seems clear: and that is expressed better than I could by Dr. Michael Rutter in his book Schooling and the Autistic Child from which I will briefly quote:
"In our present state of knowledge education probably constitutes the most important aspect of treatment and it is to the school in one form or another that we must look for the greatest hope of bringing about improvement in the child."
This is certainly the overwhelming experience of those working at the school in Ealing which I visited. Some of the children benefit to the stage that they graduate into the ordinary world and can take a place working in the normal world; others will need care and help all through their lives; but all of them will have benefited to some degree or another from their years at the school and, at the very least, they will have learned socially acceptable behaviour.
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The one thing that struck me personally at this school, where many children had been severely disturbed, was their immensely good behaviour. They are all of ages between five and eighteen and, although they found speech difficult and although they were undoubtedly very backward at reading and writing, they obviously enjoyed themselves doing all the usual school activities. Some were painting, some were doing pottery, some were enjoying music. All seemed happy; yet among them were children with an I.Q. lower than thirty—well below the normal standard of fifty which usually determines whether a local education authority considers a child educable. Some of them in the school had been too disturbed even to take a test. Yet here they were happy and in pleasant surroundings doing elementary lessons and joining in many of the usual school activities.
We speak so often of education as the bringing up of a child in the whole sense; not just encouraging his mental ability but caring for his or her physical, moral and psychological development. How shocking then, my Lords, to categorise any child as ineducable. So much depends on the local education authority where the child lives. A so-called "ineducable" child or an untestable child may be lucky enough to live in an area where there is some provision for autistic children. If not, he or she is likely to be sent to a Junior Training Centre and here, among a mass of children suffering from other mental handicaps, the autistic child, unable to communicate, often becomes utterly withdrawn or violent. In either case he is difficult to deal with and in the end is probably sent home or ends up in a mental hospital—and as the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, said, already there are well over 700 autistic children in mental subnormality hospitals. With the best will in the world the overworked understaffed hospital cannot possibly care for the needs of these unfortunate children who, above all, require individual attention.
As the noble Lord has said, we are fortunate in the South East of England in having increasingly good provision for autistic children. Many voluntary bodies are doing an excellent job: the National Society for Autistic; Children, the

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National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children, the Invalid Children Aid Association, the Rudolf Steiner Homes, and I have no doubt that there are others. Many local education authorities can also be included; and personally I think particularly of the Inner London Education Authority. They have been particularly generous. For example, at the Ealing school they are paying the fees for one young man who is 18 years of age whereas they need not have paid beyond the school-leaving age. But in other parts of the country the pattern is not nearly so satisfactory; there are far too few special schools for autistic children and the result is that far too many of them are in the mental hospitals.
My Lords, one way to assist this problem is the way that the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, suggested. He made the case admirably in favour of adding autism to the statutory categories, and I would not say any more on that beyond saying how much I sympathise with his views. But I should like to add that in making provision for these children, it is not necessary to undertake any new building at all. It is much better to adapt existing buildings. The school at Ealing is particularly successful because it exists in four small, separate houses where the atmosphere is very much more homely and pleasant than any kind of institution would be. So far as money is concerned, I think that we should bear in mind that these children, even in such units, may eventually have to go into mental hospitals where I understand each child may cost upwards of £1,000 per annum to maintain. How much better to keep them in special units where they can benefit.
I should like to make one other point. Perhaps it goes slightly beyond the Question but, on the other hand, the Question asks that autistic children "receive an education suited to their needs", and the needs of autistic children go rather further on in life than those of normal children because their progress is that much slower. There is an urgent need for hostels for these children after they leave school. Many of them may find places in industrial rehabilitation centres or in sheltered workshops but most will continue to need help in their
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normal home life. The more willing and self-sacrificing the parents are—and they so often are—the greater the worry is that when they are not there the child will be left on its own and may well fail to cope and finally will end up in a mental hospital. Knowing that these autistic children can benefit from suitable education, it surely is a tragedy when, after all the devoted care that has been put into their education, they should be allowed to slip back. At the age of 18, they are still mentally years younger. Ideally, their education should go on far longer. But in any case I would hope that some provision could be made for them, after they leave the special schools and units, where they could find pleasant hostel accommodation and be sure of a home base for the rest of their lives. This surely would enable them to play a useful role in society which would not only be in the interests of society financially but is morally our duty to help them achieve. I hope that the noble Baroness can give us some encouragement.
My Lords, to sum up, I feel that there are especially two needs: first, more schools and more special units throughout the country to cope with the education of these children; and secondly, the need after they leave school for hostels where they can continue their education and where they may be looked after permanently.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, has posed a question to Her Majesty's Government for which we must all, I think, accept some responsibility. Like the last speaker, I must confess with some shame that until this matter was brought to my notice recently, I was quite ignorant, as I imagine is the bulk of the public, of the nature and situation of this particular group of children. It could be accepted as axiomatic throughout the country that there is within limits a right of education for all children; and the limits, presumably, would be either what they are able to take or what the country is able to provide. Although there may be areas of concern for other handicapped children, the problems of education do not leave them out of it. What has been said and stated elsewhere seems to put these children, so far as they can be diagnosed,

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in a very peculiar category of their own. They are not within the realm of the usual subnormal group. Therefore it is a tragedy that there are so many of them at present in larger hospitals for the subnormal, where they cannot profit and where, probably, the nature of the environment is likely to do them damage to a greater degree than to other patients in the same place.
On the other hand they are not like some groups with rather particular handicaps which can be analysed and met. There is a larger number of deaf children in the country; I understand that there are not so many blind children. We can perhaps understand their needs. But these autistic children are, if I may say so, not so fortunate as blind or deaf children. If I might use the phrase of the Psalmist:
"… eyes have they, but they see not; They have ear, but they hear not;"
They have the ordinary organs for receiving through their senses the experiences of the world out of which we build our personalities; but, somehow or other, they lack entirely a capacity to co-ordinate, assess and build these up into a framework of life which can be theirs. They are therefore in a rather particular situation in which they are cut off as others cannot be cut off; condemned, so it seems, to be alone and remain alone in increasing isolation as time goes on.
The first question that must be posed is whether there is an educational case to be made out for dealing with this particular group. I think we ought to have sympathy for them, when we reflect that those children are deprived of just the normal processes which education takes into account and by which we build up our life through simply receiving them through the senses. It seems to be partly a question of unlocking some doors somewhere so that they can come to terms with the normal world and, indeed, with themselves. The first question that is put to us is: Is there a real educational problem to be looked at on its own? In a sense, that is another way of saying, is there a particular category? In spite of what the noble Lord said, I think that the aim in many of these special categories should be not merely to bring them up to such a standard of enlightenment as they can receive but to bring them into the normal community. If there are special units,
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it is desirable to try to make them as closely linked as possible with the normal school and educational world in which other children will be.
My Lords, we do not want to assume wholly that they must always remain separated from normal school life— indeed some of them do not so remain. But it is clear that normal school methods cannot be used to deal with them. The Department published a pamphlet two years ago called Slow Learners at School. It was posited there that learning is not primarily acquiring knowledge; it is coming to know yourself and entering into relationships in the world around you, particularly with other people round you. That is far more important to the building up of a human personality than what actual knowledge one acquires, and it is here that the slow learner can best be met. It is at this very point, because of an inability to know themselves and an inability to face relationships with other people, that these particular children are so sorely handicapped. Yet there is evidence that, after immense care and research, at least some of these children have responded in a way which has brought them back almost to a normal life. I think we must build on the evidence of those who have tried. We recognise the difficulties of diagnosis; we recognise that in some autistic children there are other complications at work. But if there is this educational case, ought we not, as society, to take it up?
If we ask that question we must go on, as indeed the noble Lord's Question implies, to ask one other question. If there is an educational case particularly for these children, what practical provision would it be possible for society to give to meet that need? None of us perhaps—certainly not I—would presume to answer that question here. I suggest that the first thing needed would be a much closer and wider examination of the total situation of these children and what would be involved, either in strengthening the units that are there, encouraging research or enlarging the field. Admittedly it would be in buildings, in other units; and some of it, surely, might be in remembering that there is another element in the scene, and that is the parents and those related to these children so much more intimately in their own homes.

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We ought to spare a moment of understanding for the parents of such children. Here are children who apparently in many cases look normal. They are physically normal yet they do not proceed to become normal. They are much more difficult, therefore, to understand. It may be that parents are trying their best to offer them the kindness, the love and the care which a child needs, and yet that is being rejected by the child—which is something that the parents cannot understand, nor perhaps can their neighbours. It is a very great strain on the parents, and I understand that there is pressure from many parents of such children for further steps to be taken to meet their particular need. Perhaps it could be done in practical ways; partly by having more day centres for such children and providing further domiciliary help for parents so that they may be free to do their part. I am sure that they ought not to be left out of account, any more than should the particular need for teachers of remarkable capacity and patience who can be equipped and, I hope, remunerated adequately for doing this kind of work. But if, in the end, it is a question, apart from that, of funds, I think that is something we should want to pose specifically to any Government.
I spoke to a representative of one local authority on the work in his county area. It was clearly an area where there was great sympathy for this work. There was no particular unit in the area, but there was no problem about it, inasmuch as, if there was a special case that could be identified, they were prepared to spend money on it. Indeed, there was a case where they provided one full-time teacher for one child in order that that child might be at school. Not all authorities would be in a position to do this as things stand at present; therefore it might mean some further undertaking on the part of the Government themselves. But my friend echoed the point that in present circumstances there is a great shortage of places where such children can go. It is a sorry tale, of children being taken from one centre to another, almost month after month, because nobody can find the right place to put them in. In such cases, the last state would be worse than the first.
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More provision for places or units will be required and for people to man them, but I take it that in the end more public sympathy will be required. This may seem almost irrelevant, but if it is a question of the further provision of money it is ironic that we have given a lead to the country over other questions of life, we have had debates about the abolition of hanging, about moral rights and about the protection of society and I never recall the question of money coming in, though it may be a consideration in those fields, too. Therefore, I hope that in the case of these children we shall not make money the consideration there, either.
LORD GRENFELL: My Lords, in a book called The Special Child, written by Mrs. Furneaux, head of "The Lindens", a school for autistic children in St. Ebbas Hospital, Epsom, under the Surrey County Council, a chapter on autism begins with the following words:
"There are some stories common to the folk-lore of many countries. Among these is the legend of the changeling child. In these old stories a beautiful human child was stolen soon after birth by the fairies, who left in its place a child of their own.
"This child was sometimes described as being ugly, but more frequently as a dainty fairy-like creature, who yet was totally cold and unresponsive, to the despair of its parents, for it brought nothing but grief and anxiety to them.
"Sometimes it cried ceaselessly and unconsolably, at other times it lay quietly for hours totally self-engrossed, again sometimes it was a voracious eater, at other times it required the utmost patience to induce it to take enough food to keep it alive. It seemed indifferent to pain and pleasure, heat and cold, and never responded lovingly in any way to anybody.
"One is tempted to speculate whether these old stories are not the first accounts of children suffering from early infantile autism, for there is a great similarity between them and the behaviour which is now beginning to be regarded as typical of these children."
In the days of these stories, the children were hidden away or placed in asylums, where they were, sad to say, treated as dangerous beasts, but now efforts are being made by eminent men and women not only to try to discover the reason for this state in a child but also to do everything possible to bring the child to a normal life and to alleviate the suffering of the parents.
Autism in modern language is very hard to define and many opinions differ, but I believe a description which would not be

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challenged is "a totally withdrawn child". This may occur from birth or may be caused by a shock of some kind, by ill treatment, lack of love, broken marriage or some terrifying experience, which makes the child, so to speak, renounce the world and all its works.
The I.Q. of the child, if it is possible to test it, is highly varied, and a large proportion would be assessed as educable and hence not mentally handicapped. The education and rehabilitation of this child is expensive, as individual care of the most intensive sort must be given to each child, if any results are to be attained. At the Edith Edwards Home, a residential school at Banstead run by the Invalid Children's Aid Association for autistic and highly disturbed children, the staff consists of a headmistress, three teachers, six child care workers and one permanent volunteer, teaching 21 children. The annual fee paid by the local authority concerned is £1,320 per child; and this is by no means the highest.
The greatest problem which must be faced by the teacher is gaining the confidence and co-operation of the child, as little can be attained until this is done, and the greatest degree of skill and patience is required at this stage. I know that we are deeply grateful to the teachers who look after these children, but I fear that in spite of ail the efforts being made by the teachers, the necessary education of these children is far from satisfactory.
As the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, said, the National Society for Autistic Children state that there are 700 autistic children in hospitals for the mentally handicapped. This is not because they are mentally handicapped but because there is simply nowhere else for them to go. There are far too few small units for these children near their homes. We at Edith Edwards have one child from Cardiff and one from Cheshire. "The Lindens" is almost completely a day school, so that the family ties so essential are maintained and I understand that some families have moved to be near their children. At Banstead, which is residential, except for holidays, the family have little chance of frequent visits, which are so important to the whole future of the child.
The fact that there are 700, as reported, in mental hospitals is very disturbing.
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The teaching of the mentally handicapped is quite different from the teaching of the autistic, who will gain little from that type of education. It is also a fact that these children are taking up beds which are so badly needed for those mentally handicaped children who urgently need hospital care.
Finally, perhaps the most important matter is the lack of any homes or hospitals for the adolescents, who either have to return home or go into mental hospitals. The small number of schools which exist cannot keep them into adolescence, and certainly in the case of Edith Edwards School it is exceedingly difficult to place them if for some reason they cannot return to the family. It is indeed a sad story if, after all the money spent and improvement achieved, the child must be abandoned, maybe to return to its worst state.
I have made a number of speeches in your Lordships' House on the various handicaps to children and adults, and in preparing these speeches I invariably find that I come to the same conclusion; that is, that no reorganisation of hospitals, no Green Papers or White Papers will be of any use until successive Governments will understand that it is of vital importance for all handicapped people who need special education to have half-way houses outside the hospitals or schools which will carry out the final task of conditioning them to live happily in the community.
In thanking the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, for asking this Question, I would again ask the noble Braoness to consider with the local authorities the great need for hostels and the further requirement of more small units for autistic children who need our help so urgently.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, for putting this Question on the Order Paper. I am sure that we shall hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, an extremely sympathetic reply, since nobody on the Government Front Bench knows more about children and leaching than she does, having spent a good deal of her life in that profession.
This debate is to me of great significance, since it is now some ten years

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since I first came into contact with an autistic child. This child, whom I loved very dearly, and who in himself was the most beautiful and lovely child, was yet completely cut off from us by this condition, which in those early days was hard to diagnose and very baffling to know how to deal with. It was because I had this compassionate interest in this one child that I found myself linked up with a number of other families all of whom had the same tragic and difficult conditions in their families, with perhaps only one child out of several suffering from this condition.
As a result, we got together and formed a small Society which we called the National Society for Autistic Children. It is only about fifteen years' or possibly a few more, since autism was diagnosed. Before that time there was no mention of it in the categories; and even to-day I know, from my experience of talking to doctors and to other people, that many still do not realise what an autistic child or a condition of autism really is. Therefore I think it is important not only to draw the attention of the Government to this matter—because they know something about it—but that the publicity we receive from the noble Baroness's Answer should help in bringing this information to those people who are, or should be, anxious to know and understand the problem created by this condition.
The National Society, small as it is, and voluntarily supported, has had the help of many distinguished doctors and psychiatrists, both from the Maudesley Institution and from other hospitals, and our efforts have led to a considerable amount of success. We can now say (and nobody, I think, will dispute this) that any child diagnosed as an austistic child is educable; that is to say, that some education will help, and in some cases help to a great degree, to bring the child into a fairly normal state: in most cases one cannot say entirely normal, although this does sometimes happen. This is a big step forward. Of course we need special methods of treatment in special schools, but we can say that all children can benefit by education. In the early days this was not known and not thought possible, and that I believe is why so many children are today to be found in subnormal hospitals and mental hospitals.
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This, as other speakers have said, is the worst way of treating them, since they become more and more withdrawn, and are less able to understand their surroundings; because, as we know, mental hospitals to-day are extremely overcrowded and understaffed. It is not their fault that they cannot deal with a category of child that should never be there.
So it is in order to ask that this category shall be both recognised and helped that this Question has been put down to-day. There are some schools which have been set up to deal with these children, and the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, has mentioned two which are very successful. The National Society has three schools. One, at Ealing (and I must thank the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare and Lord Beaumont, for going to see it), is very well run by a remarkable person, and has had great success. It caters for some 40 children. It was not more than three or four years ago that I had the honour to be asked to open this school which now makes such a valuable contribution. There is another school at Gravesend, Kent, and another at Dedisham, near Horsham. In addition, there are seven other private schools in and around London, and 11 special schools which are run by the Inner London Education Authority. All deal with this area. Outside this area there is a school in Birmingham; one at Eccles, in Lancashire; two in Cheshire—one in the Wirral and the other at Upton—and one at Bath. All these schools are doing a remarkable job. But, as your Lordships will understand, they deal with only a small number of children.
Dr. Lorna Wing, one of the medical doctors who has made a great study of autistic children, has estimated that in a population of 250,000 at least twenty children will be autistic, as well as sixty adults—that is to say, persons over fifteen years of age and into adulthood. A medical study made by the Medical Research Council and the Middlesex County Council showed that four in 10,000 children in that area are affected. This adds up to the large figure that has been mentioned, of 3,049 autistic children in the country to-day.
If this is compared with blind children, where the United Kingdom figure is 1,427, or with deaf children, totalling 3,356, it shows that autistic children are, alas!

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in a very high category indeed. The special provision for them nowhere compares with the special provision for deaf or blind children. In fact, if one looks at the problem as individually as possible —and, after all, that is the way that one should look at it, because these children must have a large amount of individual attention—we want 800 units now to deal with autistic children. This is a large number, but when one compares it with the children who are being catered for who are deaf or blind it is something that I think is well within the capacity of the local authorities to deal with. As my noble friend has said, the importance of keeping these autistic children outside mental hospitals is vital, because in a mental hospital they will never get the kind of treatment and encouragement which will bring them up to the standdard of the ordinary child, or even of the child who can manage in an ordinary society.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, about the question of categories. I have in my hand the categories which are mentioned in the Education Act; there are ten of them, but autism is not mentioned. It has been suggested that it is better not to have too many categories, and that they should be ended. That is one point of view; and if we could be sure that in doing away with categories the services—whether by doctors, psychiatrists or local education authorities—would include all these varieties, then I should not object to the ending of categorisation. But if the categories are there and autistic children are not mentioned, then I think it is a great mistake; because it is true (and the right reverend Prelate said himself he had not heard of autistic children until quite a short time ago) that people do not know anything about autism as a category. I meet this all the time from many people. This is because autism is not on the list, and they have not heard of it in any other way. I hope the noble Baroness will urge the Minister of Education to consider this point, because it is a pity that autism should not be brought to the attention of the local education authorities, in the same way as the other categories are brought to their attention.
One of the things that has brought autistic children to the public eye has
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been the publication of one of the Reports put out by the National Society. This one, Misplaced Children, has been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, and many other people, and it drew a great deal of publicity because it is simple and brilliantly produced. It states the problems very clearly. It is because of the publicity received for that particular Report—and there are two others —that the whole subject reached the minds of the public; and I imagine that this is one of the reasons why the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, put down his Question. So I would back up the noble Lord in asking that if we are going to have any categories, then autism should be mentioned.
I should like to stress a point which has been made by other noble Lords, and it concerns what we can do for these children when they leave school and go out into the world to earn their living, or to live in a special place, because their parents cannot manage to keep them in their homes or, perhaps, because their parents have died. Hostels should be provided for these children in such cases. We want hostels for many other reasons —for instance, for children on probation, and that sort of thing. I think that a hostel for autistic people would be of enormous help. I would also ask that they should be included in the sheltered workshops activities, which deal with many other handicaps and I believe are handled by the Department of Employment and Productivity. If they could participate in this type of work it would be of enormous help to many of these boys and girls leaving school.
My Lords, I have sat, as I expect many noble Lords in this House have sat, on education committees, and I have been a chairman of an education committee. I know that it is sometimes very difficult to secure recognition for children as between one diagnosis and another. If a child is diagnosed as ineducable, and is sent to a day centre, it is very difficult, if that child can be educated through to another category, to get that child moved from the day centre into the educable category. This is one of the reasons why it is extremely important that these children should not be put into the in-educable grade without a great test of education. Local authorities are very reluctant to move children from one

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category to another, yet it is often very important that they should be able to graduate from the less educable into the higher grade, if they can make it.
I know that there are children in these special centres such as the one which the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, saw at Ealing. I have just learned that of the children there one boy has attained G.C.E. standard in art; one boy has a certificate in art and arithmetic up to the G.C.E. level. Two children have gone to normal schools from the Ealing school; two, it is hoped, will make the grade for a normal school quite shortly, and another has been accepted for industrial training under the Department of Employment and Productivity. That shows that these children can graduate into these other categories if the possibilities are there, and I would therefore plead for a very careful assessment before any child is put into the ineducable grade.
I know that the problem is extremely difficult. I have had years of experience on local authorities, and I know that almost all local authorities are anxious to do everything they can for the children in their care. But the fact remains that they are often short-staffed, and it is difficult for them to deal with these individual difficulties. These difficulties, however, should be dealt with because, at the end of the day, not only will it save children and their futures, but, to put it at its lowest, it will save the State a great deal of money and trouble because in all probability the people will be able to look after themselves, even if at the end they find themselves in mental institutions, which we know happens with many people.
So I would ask the Minister, through the noble Baroness, to look at the problem. In years gone by, schools for the deaf and blind were unusual, and had to be started; but they have now spread all over the country. I hope that some treatment for autistic children will be included in the demands which we make on local education authorities. This is a subject which should be regarded as of great importance, and it will in the long run be of enormous importance to the country. If we can also spread the interest beyond the schoolchildren to the young adults, those who, having begun in their handicapped world, have reached
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a stage where they are almost able to look after themselves, it will be of even greater value. We should see that those who suffer from this condition do not slip back for lack of special provision after they leave school. If the noble Baroness will draw the attention of the Department of Education to what we have been saying here this afternoon, I am sure that this will achieve a tremendous amount of good, and she will earn the gratitude of a great many people in this country.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I should like to say at once to the noble Baroness, who has just been listened to with great pleasure, that she is probably quite correct in saying that I am as sympathetic in this particular matter as any other member of the Front Bench. I have been interested in this problem for many years, since I taught at one stage a group known, rather curiously, as "dull and backward". I grew very fond of that group; I realised that they were all very individual. All children are individual and all adults are individual, but this group particularly were very individual and their needs were very different. I like to feel that I was able to help some of them back into the main stream of life. From that point I have become very interested in just the kind of child the noble Baroness has herself been working for—we know that she is President of the Society.
I should like to say straight away that I found the particular papers to which she has referred extraordinarily easy to read. As she said so rightly, they are in simple, straightforward English; they are factual and very useful. I have to-day also had a Paper from the Parents' and Professional Workers' Association for Psychiatric Provision for Adolescents, and again it is a splendid Paper which I hope I shall be able to study and follow through.
Her Majesty's Government are extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, for providing an opportunity to debate the plight of these children and their parents. As the noble Baroness so rightly said, the debate not only is a sounding board in this House, but we hope will be a means of establishing a wider interest. Knowing the noble Lord as I do, I feel certain that if he does not like my reply

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on this occasion he will return to the question, in this form or another, at a later date. I can assure your Lordships that Her Majesty's Government share the concern that has been expressed this evening. The disturbed behaviour of the children, their lack of meaningful speech and the fact that, as so many noble Lords have described, they have the inability to communicate, cast a dreadful, heartrending emotional strain on their parents and on those who have to care for them. To the parents I believe it also brings a feeling of desperation; it is something they have to cope with which has no apparent remedy.
I should like to sound at once a note of hope and of inspiration. I would remind your Lordships that the Prime Minister announced that in future no child was going to be written off as incapable of education. I tremble to use that horrible word "ineducable", which I have always disliked because it is very difficult to say in any event; it is jargon of the worst kind. It seems to typify exactly some of the points that have been referred to this evening. Nobody is incapable of education. Teaching the group that I did, I became convinced that every human being has a talent, but unfortunately many people go through life and their talent is never discovered This is one of the inspirations one draws from teaching these children. One knows they are capable of something, which has to be discovered.
I would remind your Lordships that the direct responsibility for providing education, including the special education to meet the particular needs of all handicapped children, lies (I am sure your Lordships are well aware of this, but I have to remind you) with the local education authorities. My right honourable friend does not directly provide this education, although, as we have been reminded this evening by several of your Lordships, he is responsible under the Education Act for defining various categories of handicapped children for whom special education is provided.
Perhaps at this point I may refer to the suggestion that autistic children are at a disadavantage because they are not specifically mentioned in the statutory list of categories. Under the Education Acts local education authorities have a duty to provide such a variety of instruction
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and training as may be desirable in view of the different ages, abilities and aptitudes of the children, and in fulfilling their duties they are required to have regard to the need for providing, either in special schools or otherwise, appropriate education for pupils who suffer from disability of mind or body. There is no question, therefore, of the authorities lacking the powers to provide whatever education autistic children may need, and in fact they have the duty to do so. The fact that autism is not a separately listed category of handicap in the Secretary of State's Regulations has not, to the best of my knowledge, deterred local authorities from providing special educational treatment appropriate to the age, the abilities and the aptitudes of the autistic child.
The value of the present arrangements whereby children who need special educational treatment are classified by handicap and placed in special schools will be one of the subjects for consideration in the planning of new legislation to replace the present Education Acts. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science has announced his intention to issue shortly a Green Paper on his proposals for future legislation, and this will provide an opportunity for a public expression of views. I am quite sure that the views of your Lordships will not be lacking in this respect As advances in surgery and medicine enable more children to survive to school age with complex and multiple disabilities, the task of classifying them by handicap becomes more difficult and its relevance becomes more questionable. I think we should agree that what is needed is that local education authorities should make whatever provision is best suited to the needs of each child, and this seems to point to fewer rather than to more categories. In any case, it would be unwise to add to the list of categories at the present juncture, and noble Lords can be assured that the difficulties in educating autistic children cannot be ascribed to the lack of a specific statutory label.
I would here make a personal note. I would suggest to your Lordships that in present society we label people far too much. I think we should hesitate very much before we add to the categories. Whether my medical friends would agree

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with me is another point, but as an educationist I would say that the fewer categories we have, the better. The particular class I looked after was known euphemistically as "the Remove", but the children called it "the daft class". So whatever categories we devise, I think children will devise their own names. I would, however, seriously suggest that this is not a limitation on attending to the needs of the autistic child. The powers are there.
Autistic children, as various noble Lords have mentioned, are not an homogeneous group and their educational needs and capacities are widely varied. I am not certain that enough emphasis has been laid on this point. Autism is frequently associated with other handicaps, and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, will have noticed this when visiting the school referred to. Also, I am certain that the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, will appreciate this. This point has to be borne in mind in deciding the educational programme for the child. It has been claimed that all autistic children should be educated in units specially set aside for them. In some cases this may indeed be the right course. Even there, however, this causes a great difficulty to all but the heavily populated areas of the country in organising viable units; and this is probably the reason why we have found this type of situation only in the South-East. This is especially so with younger children whose parents are unwilling to let them go away from home.
In the present state of knowledge it would be wrong to suppose that a separate unit is needed in every instance, or indeed in even a large proportion of instances. There is still a great deal to be found out about this condition. The more one discovers about it, the more one realises how little one knows about it. The best methods of educating children who suffer from it have yet to be discovered, but where one of the principal difficulties lies in the failure on the part of the child to communicate with others there would seem to be grave objections to a uniform type of education which involves separating the autistic children from those with better powers of communication, thus depriving them of stimulation to progress. I got the feeling
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that the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, does not quite take this point. I think he felt they were not necessarily stimulated by other children. I would say that, again in my own small experience, children do stimulate one another—sometimes to do the wrong things, but certainly in communication.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, is not one of the troubles that these children appear to be so normal and yet they are not quite normal, and therefore they suffer rather badly in company with other normal children who cannot see their disability? If a child is blind or maimed other children can see that he is disabled, but if he looks normal another child cannot understand why he is not the same as a normal child, and very often the autistic child suffers.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: Yes, my Lords, I take that point, but that is true of only certain groups and does not apply to all autistic children. We must be very careful not to generalise. I think the noble Lord will agree with me that these children can look normal, and indeed they can look attractive and be bright, but the expert quickly recognises that there is this difference. The inability to communicate is something which is quickly recognised within a group. Nevertheless, I have seen people stimulated to communicate by others, although not of course if they were in certain stages of this condition. I think we are up against the difficulty of definition. It seemed to me that there were nine symptoms, many of which could be symptoms of other medical conditions, and not all the children show many of the characteristic symptoms.
As to the treatment, again this varies and not all children require the same educational treatment. We must bear this in mind. We need much more experience and knowledge of the effect of the different forms of education for these children, and a research project financed jointly by the Department and the Gulbenkian Foundation is being conducted to make a comparative study of the progress in three units in London which provide various forms of education for autistic children. But research of this kind is complex and difficult and therefore it must of necessity be slow. It takes time to get firm results, and I am afraid

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that the results of the investigation are not expected earlier than 1972. In the meantime, discussion continues among professional staff as to the type of education and the type of environment in which the children will flourish. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science is giving the whole of this complex problem his careful attention and he has under consideration the guidance he can give to local authorities in the light of what is already known, and what further information must be sought on the numbers of children in various parts of the country and the provision which is at present being made for them.
As I have said, the range of abilities of the children varies greatly, and about half of them function mentally at severely subnormal levels. Under the present law they may be treated as being unsuitable for education in schools and placed in the junior training centres run by the local health authorities or the mental subnormality hospitals. In view of what I felt was a slight air of criticism, I think we must pay tribute to the devoted staff both in the training centres and in this kind of hospital.
I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, suggested that the teacher is drawn instinctively to the lively child. I would almost put the emphasis the other way: that the good teacher— and, let us face it, like the people who work in hospitals teachers are generally very dedicated; they certainly do not take on this work for the salary—is drawn instinctively to those who seem to be in need of extra care and attention. If I had any criticism of teachers I would say that they tend to give more attention to that group than to some of the highly intelligent. So I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, on that point.
Noble Lords will know—and again I think this is a great note of hope— that legislation is being introduced in the current Session of Parliament to transfer from the Health to the Education Services the responsibility for the education and training of all mentally handicapped children. I feel certain that the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell—although I thought that in some ways he seemed to be a little despondent—will appreciate the enormous change which is to take place there and which will bring about many
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of the things for which your Lordships have been asking. It is fair to say that our present information indicates that many of the children have a limited capacity for education. Of course, this does not mean that they have none, and I should like to emphasise that point.
May I now reply to the suggestions which have been made that because these children are slow to acquire education they need extra attention when they are adolescents. The view of Her Majesty's Government is that the powers and duties of the local education authority are already sufficient. Unlike other children, the children in special schools already have to remain at school until the age of 16, and where the parents wish the child to continue to remain at school the local education authority has the duty to provide full-time education, not to the age of 18, but to the age of 19. In addition, they have a duty to provide facilities for further education for young people over compulsory school age. Any autistic boy or girl who has made reasonable educational progress in school and who has some degree of attainment can be helped to make use of these facilities.
I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and I think the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, referred to the fact that the young autistic adult might benefit from a sheltered workshop; and I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, suggested a protected environment. Unhappily, this is not peculiar to this group in the community. The provision for these needs, the shelter, or the hostel, is the duty of the local health authority and it would be difficult at this point of time to single out a particular group. This does not mean, of course, that it has not been looked at.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness whether it is not the fact that the Ministry of Employment and Productivity is responsible for the sheltered workshops? Would it then be the duty of the local health authority to provide the hostel? I should have thought the hostel would be part and parcel of the sheltered workshop.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, as I understand the position the hostel is the responsibility of the health authority, whereas the sheltered workshop is the

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responsibility of the Department of Employment and Productivity. I would say to the noble Baroness that a great deal of research is being carried out, and in that connection my right honourable friend is also looking at the various provisions for the different types of people within the community who are not necessarily getting the best type of employment. This, again, I feel is a matter which we can usefully raise. I would assure your Lordships that I am quite happy to follow all these points through to the various Departments because I feel so strongly on this matter. I give your Lordships that solemn assurance.
The Secretary of State for Education and Science proposes shortly to lay before Parliament a Bill which will give effect to the acceptance by the Government of the proposal that the responsibility for the education of mentally handicapped children shall be transferred. I have mentioned this before, but I am repeating it because the appointed day on which that will take effect is to be announced shortly, and I feel that this is heartening in the context of this debate. My Lords, I would express deep gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, and to all noble Lords who have taken part in this discussion. It has given us the opportunity to bring to the notice and the sympathy of the general public, as well as to the Department, this subject of great complexity and concern to us all. Autism is a difficult and discouraging condition and there is a great deal yet to be found out about the methods of dealing with it educationally, and I hope that from this debate this evening some great good will flow.
LORD GRENFELL: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, may I ask one question? Does she really believe that in the case of an autistic and a thoroughly withdrawn child in a class of about 14 or 15 mentally handicapped children, the teacher will have the time or the possibility to give all the attention which is essential to that child?
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, the noble Lord has touched on the most delicate point in this type of work. Obviously the group should be smaller, but equally I can say to the noble Lord that within that group of 15 there will
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be other conditions which will also call for special and individual treatment. In my small experience I have found that the teachers genuinely try to give it. Just how well they succeed we have yet to discover. This is something we always work towards—the smaller group—but I should be raising false hopes if I were to say from this Box this evening that we may expect those smaller groups immediately. What we can expect, and what we are going to get, is a new look at this problem—and not only at the autistic child but at all the children for whom I know the noble Lord has great feeling: the mentally handicapped.