Lords Sitting of 27 January 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 Chester.

FERTILITY DRUG AND MULTIPLE BIRTHS
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, I bag to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will consider, in view of the over-population of this country, banning the fertility drug until further research can ensure there is little risk of multiple births.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (BARONESS SEROTA): My Lords, fertility drugs are administered in the main by experts in infertility problems at only a few specialised centres in this country. No figures are available centrally for births from patients treated with such drugs, but I understand from inquiries at the centres concerned that the number of such patients is very small indeed. The effect of the very small numbers of multiple births arising out of the use of such drugs on the expansion of the population of this country is insignificant, and in those circumstances Her Majesty's Government see no grounds for seeking to secure discontinuance of the use of such drugs.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that Answer. But would she not agree that the birth of sextuplets could cause shock and embarrassment to the mother? Further, can the noble Baroness say whether there is any risk of the children of multiple births not growing up into normal, healthy human beings?
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, I think, we had better get our definitions right. The term "multiple births" includes, of course, twins: it does not apply only to quads and quins. As regards the parents' reactions, I should think that it would be just as great a shock to the father as it would be to the mother. In reply to the last part of the noble Viscount's supplementary question, I would only say that treatment of this kind is normally initiated at the request of parents who are most anxious to have children; and having recently visited, in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, the quins who were successfully both born and reared, I can only say what immense joy it gave to the parents of the quins to have five beautiful little girls.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, while thanking the noble Baroness for that answer, may I ask whether she is aware that, while I am absolutely delighted that childless couples can have children through the use of this drug, what I suggested was that the birth of sextuplets could cause shock.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, does not my noble friend think that the noble Viscount has probably conceived this problem wrongly; and, if it is a question of preventing over-population, would not a thorough-going inquiry, perhaps by a Royal Commission, into the whole question of contraception yield more useful results?
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend, absolutely seriously, whether she does not think that a much more effective way of reducing the population is not to withdraw the fertility drugs from women but to teach more men birth control?
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and I have I think made clear our very great concern to see the family planning services, both for men and for women, fully developed in this country.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, would not my noble friend agree that it would be a wholly retrograde step to ban the prescribing of these drugs so long as this is retained in the hands of qualified specialists and for so long as the need for further research continues to exist?
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, in reply to my noble friend I would just say: yes, my Lords, I think that all of us welcome the fact that the use of these drugs gives to some women who otherwise would not do so the opportunity to bear children.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness whether the women who take these drugs are fully informed of the risks they may run in having, for instance, quintuplets or sextuplets?
BARONESS SEROTA: Yes, my Lords; without doubt.

STANSTED AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL
2.40 p.m.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: 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 of misgivings expressed by civil aviation pilots concerning existing air traffic control in the Stansted holding area; why Stansted has no radar for traffic control and whether direct telephonic communication exists between Air Traffic Control, Stansted, and the adjacent military airfield of Wethersfield.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government are aware that some civil pilots have expressed some misgivings, although apparently in certain cases with a misunderstanding of facilities already provided. There is direct telephone communication between Air Traffic Control, Stansted, and the military aerodrome at Wethersfield, to assist effective co-ordination of the traffic generated by these two aerodromes. The amount of flying activity at and near Stansted consists mainly of training, and the comparatively small number of public transport movements has not been sufficient to justify the expense of installing, maintaining and operating radar equipment. However, in view of the recent rate of growth of public transport movements at Stansted the possible case is being re-examined for providing radar to serve not only the air traffic using the
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aerodrome but also air traffic in the surrounding airspace.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, while I am very satisfied to know that the matter of radar is being examined, may I ask the Minister this question? Could he give an assurance that financial considerations will in no way stand in the path of the installation of radar if that is considered justified on grounds of safety?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, if there was an absolute safety requirement certainly the money would have to be found; but in this and in most other cases it is question of priorities and of the relative importance of a need. For example, there are certainly other areas to the North of London which would qualify for financial assistance before Stansted. I have in mind, for example, the Luton area.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord this further question? I am rather worried that financial considerations should lead to a series of priorities for radar installation. Would not the Government agree that if a radar installation is desirable in the interest of maximum safety, then financial considerations should not be allowed to stand in the way of the provision of the necessary plant?
LORD BESWICK: Certainly, my Lords. I would say that if the provision of money would definitely provide safety, whereas otherwise there was a lack of safety, the money must be found. But it is the definition of the need which is the only reason why I do not give an absolutely unqualified assurance.
THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: My Lords, may I ask a supplementary question? Could the Minister tell me why Stansted cannot have a control zone or special rule zones together with the necessary surveillance radar?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the difficulty is that the more control zones you have, the less air space there is for other people to fly about in. It is not advisable to have a control zone unless it is absolutely necessary. What is now being investigated is whether the case is proved for having a control space around Stansted. Up to the present time it has not

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been thought that public transport movements there necessarily justify the expenditure of public money for this purpose.

CIVIL AVIATION: THE EDWARDS REPORT
EARL AMHERST: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress has been made in drafting legislation implementing the recommendations of the Edwards Committee on Civil Aviation.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, as the noble Lord will appreciate, a great deal of work has to be done in preparing the legislation to implement the proposals in the Government's White Paper on Civil Aviation Policy. Substantial progress has been made with a view to a Bill being introduced when Parliamentary time permits.
EARL AMHERST: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that Reply, may I ask whether this House will have an opportunity of debating the White Paper on the Edwards Committee Report, issued, I think, last November, which outlined the Government's thinking on the matter? Will that opportunity arise before the House is confronted with the Bill itself? If so, can we be given a date?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, before the White Paper came out the problems were debated on the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Balfour. We had an interesting debate and I think that most people were able to say what in their view ought to be done; but if there is a demand for a further debate, then certainly, in another capacity, I shall be glad to have a look at it.
EARL AMHERST: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that there is considerable interest in the Edwards Committee, not only in this House and the other place but also in the country generally? Would he not agree that a debate on the White Paper is now desirable?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord that there is interest. There has been continuous debate outside in various organisations and in certain journals; and if there is a demand from all parts of the House for a debate we will consider it.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, in referring to the debate that I initiated a long time ago the Minister said that everybody could have expressed his view. May I ask whether the Government have taken account of the views so expressed?
LORD BESWICK: Yes, my Lords. The Edwards Report itself took into account the views that were expressed. I should have thought that the Government White Paper was a reason able and undogmatic statement of policy which, while not wholeheartedly supported by any side of the House, embraced a wide measure of agreement.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That leave be given to the Lord Molson to advance his Motion on the pollution of rivers from the 18th to the 4th of February.—(Lord Shackleton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE BILL [H.L.]
2.48 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Administration of Justice Bill, has consented to place her interest, so far as it is concerned on behalf of the Crown, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a. —(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 3a.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved Amendment No. 1:
After Clause 3, insert the following new clause:
Power of judges of Commercial Court to lake arbitrations
"..—(l) A judge of the Commercial Court may, if in all the circumstances he thinks fit, accept appointment as sole arbitrator, or as umpire, by or by virtue of an arbitration agreement within the meaning of the Arbitration Act 1950, where the dispute appears to him to be of a commercial character.
(2) A judge of the Commercial Court shall not accept appointment as arbitrator or umpire unless the Lord Chief Justice has informed him that, having regard to the state of business in the High Court and at assizes, he can be made available to do so.
(3) The fees payable for the services of a judge as arbitrator or umpire shall be taken in the High Court.
(4) Schedule (Application of Arbitration Act 1950 to judge-arbitrators) to this Act shall have effect for modifying, and in certain cases replacing, provisions of the Arbitration Act 1950 in relation to arbitration by judges and, in particular, for substituting the Court of Appeal for the High Court in provisions of that Act whereby arbitrators and umpires, their proceedings and awards are subject to control and review by the court.
(5) Any jurisdiction which is exercisable by the High Court in relation to arbitrators and umpires otherwise than under the Arbitration Act 1950 shall, in relation to a judge of the Commercial Court appointed as arbitrator or umpire, be exercisable instead by the Court of Appeal."
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the first Amendment. It is the only Amendment of substance to-day, the others being largely drafting or technical. Last summer I issued a public statement as to the likely contents of this Bill. I then said that power might also be taken to enable the judges to sit as arbitrators, in which case it would be necessary to amend the Arbitration Act 1950 so as to provide for taking to the Court of Appeal direct an appeal from the judge's award; and that it might be desirable to postpone the conferring of this power until the new court had been established for some time. Your Lordships may remember that on the Report stage of the Bill I expressed regret that I was not then able to introduce the necessary Amendment, that technical difficulties still had to be overcome.
My Lords, the natural place for the decision of any dispute between citizens
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or corporations is the courts or some special tribunal; but for some years, although we have a Commercial Court, commercial disputes have to a large extent left the Commercial Court and are decided largely by arbitration. More than one of my predecessors has been concerned at this, and in 1962 the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Kilmuir, organised a Commercial Court Users' Conference. It was extremely representative. Among the commodity organisations represented were the Incorporated Oil Seed Association, the London Cattle Food Trade Association, the
London Corn Trade Association Ltd., the Baltic Mercantile and Shipping
Exchange, and the National Federation of Corn Trade Associations Ltd. Chambers
of Commerce were represented by the Association of British Chambers of Commerce and the London Chamber of Commerce. Indus-trial federations and councils were represented by the Federation of British Industries and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders; banking, by a committee of the London Clearing Bankers; underwriters and insurers, by Lloyd's, the Institute of London Underwriters, Liverpool Underwriters' Association, the British Insurance Association, Freight, Demurrage and Defence Associations. In regard to
shipowners, chartering interests were represented by the Baltic Mercantile and Shipping Exchange and the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers. Shippers'
interests were represented by the British Shippers' Council; and shipowning interests by the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom, the Liverpool Steam Ship Owners' Association, the North of England Shipowners' Association, the Cardiff and Bristol Channel Incorporated Shipowners' Association. The ports,
docks and harbours were represented by the Dock and Harbour Authorities' Association. So it was in every way a representative body.
They said, first of all, that it was essential from their point of view that the Commercial Court should continue; that there were three reasons why they tended first to have arbitrations. One was that they did not like our rigid rules of evidence. They said that there is little opportunity to engage in oral disputes; that in cases where one person is telling the truth and another is not, the issue is mainly decided on documents: and that

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some of the documents were not technically admissible in evidence, whereas this is a possibility in an arbitration. Secondly, they liked the more informal atmosphere of an arbitration, with no cross-examination in public; and thirdly, that the fact is that an arbitration award is very much easier than a judgment to enforce abroad —that is to say, our international agreements are much wider in the case of arbitral awards than in the case of judgments.
On the question of evidence, they state in the Report:
"Too often an objection by one party to the admission of evidence in this manner is not due to a genuine desire to cross-examine, but is designed merely to cause delay and create difficulties for the opponent.
We recommend, therefore, that a Commercial Judge should have power to admit in evidence unsworn statements and documents, which are not at present strictly admissible in spite of the objection of one of the parties."
In practice, that is largely carried out now and has been for some years. If you take an objection that something is not admissable in evidence the judge in the Commercial Court says, "But, Mr. Gardiner, this is the Commercial Court. Surely you are not taking a point on the law of evidence, are you?" So that, in practice, one gets shamed out of it.
Then they said:
"One of the important reforms of the practice of the Commercial Court, upon which we are all agreed, is that the Commercial Judge should have power, upon the application of both parties, to sit in private as an Arbitrator. We are of opinion that this practice would greatly enhance the attraction of the Court to the commercial community, as it would meet the objection of that community, to which we have already referred, to the publicity and formality of proceedings in open Court."
They also said that it might be that such power already existed but, if it did not, the necessary statutory provision should be made. They went on:
"We are also advised that the Judge's award would be enforceable in many countries which are parties to the Geneva Convention. 1927; this advantage over a High Court judgment is a matter to which we attach very great importance."
Then, as an illustration of the prevalence of arbitration in commerce they said:
"… we take the Baltic Mercantile and Shipping Exchange. Nearly 80
per cent. of the world's chartering of ships is still done on this Market, but it is subject to fierce and increasing competition from foreign Markets, notably New Yok, Paris, Hamburg and Japan. The great majority of Charterparties negotiated on the Baltic Exchange contain the stipulation that
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any dispute arising under the Charterparty shall be referred to Arbitration in London. We attach great importance to the maintenance of of this type of arbitration clause in Charter-parties. Foreign Owners or Charterers who operate on this London Market could not, we are advised by the Chartering Brokers, be induced to agree, under their Charterparties, to settle their disputes in London otherwise than by Arbitration."
So, my Lords, for these reasons it has seemed right to the Government to include in this Bill a provision enabling commercial judges to sit as arbitrators. There is nothing technically to stop them from doing so in any case, and from time to time requests are made for a judge to act as an arbitrator in a particular case. Naturally, he seeks the advice of the Lord Chancellor of the time as to whether or not he should do this, and the answer is usually not. In 1964, for example, a particular judge was invited to arbitrate in a dispute between two ships, one of which was flying the American flag and the oilier the Russian flag. In 1969, another judge was asked whether he would act as chairman of a standing panel of arbitrators for disputes arising between two large European airlines. Sometimes, however, the Lord Chancellor has thought it right that a judge should accede to such requests. For example, in 1949 Lord Radcliffe acted as an umpire in a dispute between the Sheikh of Qatar and the Iraq Petroleum Company.
My Lords, the whole of English legal history shows—and perhaps particularly Lord Mansfield's reforms of the 18th century—and modern experience confirms, that it is to the long-term interest of the development of the legal system, and of the country, that the courts should go as far as they can to meet the requirements of commerce. It is therefore desirable to cultivate the business and commercial side of the High Court's activities on both national and international grounds, especially in the latter case if the United Kingdom were to join the Common Market. This, my Lords, is in a sense a long-term reform, because there will be an ordinary form of commencement order, and I must make it clear that it is quite impossible to put this reform into operation at once, the reason being that we can do with less work in the courts and not more; for at the present time the courts are under very great pressure with continuingly increasing criminal work and

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civil work. But when we implement—as I hope that we shall do before long— the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Assizes and Quarter Sessions, it will, I hope, have a very real effect on the state of business and the ability of judges to dispose of it, and it may then be possible to put this reform into operation.
My Lords, subsections (1) and (2) of the new clause accordingly provide that a judge can act either as an arbitrator—that is, one arbitrator—or as an umpire, where there are two other arbitrators. The subsections set out the five conditions on which an order may be made. First, the judge must be satisfied that it is a proper case for him to act as an arbitrator in. Secondly, he can act only either as sole arbitrator or as an umpire. Thirdly, the dispute has to be referred to the judge-arbitrator under, or by virtue of, an arbitration agreement within the meaning of the Arbitration Act 1950; that is to say, there must be a written agreement to submit present or future differences to arbitration.
Fourthly, the dispute has to appear to the judge to be a commercial dispute; and, fifthly, under subsection (2) the Lord Chief Justice must have informed the judge that his duties in the High Court and at assizes allow him to be made available to take the arbitration. It is not of course intended that this shall be done in every case. The judge in every case will apply his mind to whether or not it is a proper case, but it is intended that at intervals, particularly perhaps in October, at the beginning of the new law year, the Chief Justice will look at the state of business in the Queen's Bench Division as a whole and will then either tell the commercial judge or judges that he is afraid that, owing to the state of business, they cannot act as an arbitrator, or that they can.
My Lords, subsection (3) provides that fees shall be payable as they are with actions: the amount will have to be determined. Perhaps in connection with this first Amendment I may refer to Amendments Nos. 8 and 12. Amendment No. 8 introduces a new Schedule which concerns the application to such arbitration actions of the existing Arbitration Act 1950. In general, it applies
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the provisions of the Act to such arbitrations, although, obviously, there are some points on which differences will have to be made. I do not suppose that your Lordships will want me to go all through the new Schedule: it is largely technical.
Perhaps the most important change is this. Under the Arbitration Act 1950, it is open to an arbitrator either to state a case—that is to say, to set out a point of law for determination by the court— or to state his award in the form of a special case, which comes to the same thing; and the point of law at issue is then decided by a High Court judge. The High Court judge may himself be an arbitrator, and clearly it would not be right that there should be an appeal from one High Court judge to another. So it is proposed that the appeal decision on a case stated, or on an award stated in the form of a special case, should go to the Court of Appeal, And the Schedule deals with technical points of that kind. Amendment No. 12 is simply the necessary amendment to the Title, if your Lordships approve this Amendment. I beg to move.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord has explained, in the great detail that I think necessary, reasons underlying this Amendment, and I see nothing in it that is at all exceptional. The discussions in the earlier stages of the Bill indicate, I think, that Clause 3, as we now have it, is of a somewhat experimental nature. For instance, under subsection (3)(b), there is the power to sit in private, which probably caused a few eyebrows to be raised, though there are clearly good reasons for it, particularly when trade secrets are involved. I imagine that Clause 3 is to be brought into force at once and is not to wait for later views. It seems to me self-evident that it will have to come in as a whole or not at all.
But I would ask the noble and learned Lord this question. If the new clause is finally brought into force, does he think that the power of the court to sit in private as a court is likely to be reduced? I imagine that that is probably so. It may be that this power, while backed by all the arguments from the Conference in 1962, has the added advantage of decreasing the number of

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times when technically a High Court Judge as such sits in private. This is a small point and otherwise I welcome this new clause and Schedule and the Amendment to the Title.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am much obliged for what the noble Viscount has said. Clause 3 cannot come into operation at once, because rules will have to be made. I anticipate that it will be very little used in fact, except in arbitration.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
3.3 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS moved Amendments Nos. 2 and 3.
Page 9, line 42, leave out (" and ") and insert ("then—
(a) if ")
Page 10, line 3, at end insert (" and
(b) if it appears to the court that there is already in force in respect of the debtor an attachment of earnings order made to secure the payment of another judgment debt, the court shall consider whether the case is one in which an administration order should be made.")
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I know that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said that his was the only important Amendment, but I consider that this one is quite important, too. I must immediately thank the noble and learned Lord and his officials for helping me with the drafting, so as to get the matter right. This is one of those matters which the noble and learned Lord and I discussed between ourselves, but it is a matter of wide importance and other noble Lords will be interested—at least I hope so. The point of the Amendment is to try to deal with multiple attachments of earnings orders. The noble and learned Lord said on Report stage that he was prepared to accept an Amendment which directed the county courts to consider, when a second attachment of earnings order came before them, whether or not they should make an administration order bringing the two together and enabling them to be treated as one, if necessary, by a single attachment order or by one of the other procedures that follow on an administration order.
I have only one disappointment about this Amendment. I certainly hope that it will go into the Bill but. for technical reasons, it does not go so far as I would hope. The noble and learned Lord said
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that the court could not bring in an attachment order for maintenance that had been made by any court, because that could not be proved in administration order procedure. In any case, I do not believe it is proper or good practice to make further attachments of earnings, at any rate, not for a large sum, when already there is an order which is going to take a large proportion of the debtor's free earnings. Leaving that aside, I had hoped that it would be impossible to include under this provision attachment orders that might have been made by magistrates' courts—for instance, orders for fines or costs that had not been paid or for legal aid contributions.
I do not know whether there have been many cases of multiple orders of this sort. Since 1967, magistrates' courts have had powers to make attachment orders for these purposes, but in future we may well have cases—indeed, one of the Schedules to the Bill provides for it— in which a magistrates' court's attachment order will be in force at the same time as a civil debt order issued by the county court. All the civil debt orders are now capable of being dealt with by the county court, because it will know about them. A register will be kept and a copy of any other orders will be sent to the local county court where the debtor lives, so that there will be a complete register in that county court office. That is an admirable tilling. I think that the difficulty in this Bill—it is one we plainly cannot deal with in this House and I hope that it may be considered in another place—is that there is no machinery at all for an equivalent consolidation of orders made by magistrates' courts. I must confess that it was not a point I thought of and I am grateful to those who suggested it to me. I hope that it may be further considered.
With regard to the county court, this is a comparatively simple matter, because in most cases, if not all, the county court is going to be the home court which will be dealing with the whole process of attachment of earnings. But under the magistrates' court procedure attachment of earnings orders can be made anywhere in England and Wales. Orders may follow each other and may come from different parts of the country. Apart from anything else, the employer will have to send

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small sums of money each week to different courts, which will be tiresome and expensive for him, and it may be that after the employer's deductions are made the amounts paid over to the courts will be smaller, which will be a disadvantage to the debtor. Above all, one of the difficulties is going to be that when the magistrates impose an order, they will not necessarily know that another magistrates's court order has already been made. If they do not know it they have no way of bringing together the earlier order and the one they are proposing; so if they decide that there is room for a second order, this will have to run consequentially upon the previous order.
I understand that there are difficulties about bringing the two together. There is some question whether the court which originally imposed the fine, or the costs originally given against a debtor, should not be paid off first. On the other hand, these are all debts to the local or the social authorities and have priority. It is worth considering whether, these being payments to the State as a whole, there may not be something to be said for allowing the orders to be amalgamated and for a magistrates' court which is considering the imposition of a second or subsequent order to see whether it should not incorporate a previous order and so be able to discharge it. It will take a lot of research and further consideration and fresh Amendments to the Bill. But I am concerned about this.
With the help of the noble and learned Lord, the county court side of it ought now to be much simpler than it was. He has explained what is going to happen, and we have Amendments which will implement this simplification. But we have not done anything about magistrates' courts. I do not expect the noble and learned Lord to say a great deal about this point to-day, but I hope that he will consider it and that perhaps his colleagues in another place will be able to introduce Amendments to facilitate the working of the Bill over the whole field and to try to get something on the lines envisaged for the enforcement office. I think that the enforcement office will be able to deal with various magistrates' courts orders, in default of having one order, but we should see whether we cannot devise temporary machinery for this purpose to take the
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place of the enforcement office. At any rate, the Amendment now before the House is not on this broad subject, but is a relatively simple matter. The noble and learned Lord said that he would agree to it on the last occasion, and I hope that he has not changed his mind. I beg to move.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Does the noble Viscount wish to take Amendments Nos. 2 and 3 together?
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Yes.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, the case put by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, was so sensible and appealing that it appeared to me as though nothing more needed to be said. But when he proceeded to expand his Amendments to cover the magistrates' courts my mind went back to a number of cases with which I have had to deal when presiding over a magistrates' court. We frequently find that when a man is fined he says: "I cannot pay the fine for a long time, because I already have fines which have been imposed on me at Bow Street, Marlborough Street, somewhere in Surrey and somewhere in Kent." We then have to give him an inordinate period in which to pay the fine, or we say that we will adjourn the case for six months. That is easily done by the magistrates themselves.
But when we come to consolidating quite a number of fines or maintenance orders under one attachment order, then I think we may be in difficulty. I have known a case where a man deserted his wife and an attachment order was made for payment of so much a week. If subsequently that man rendered himself liable to two or three fines, as was the case in this instance, then if those fines, instead of being postponed, as was done in our court, were consolidated with an attachment order on the man's wages, that might double the amount of wages to be attached, and it might well make it impossible for the wife to receive the full amount of maintenance in respect of which the man's wages have been attached.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: If I may interrupt the noble Lord, I am afraid I did not make myself clear. I accepted that an attachment of earnings order for maintenance must be dealt with

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separately. But supposing you have a series of attachment orders for costs, fines or legal aid contributions, nothing to do with maintenance, it is in that case that I have asked for consolidation.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, the noble Viscount has nearly met my point. It would obviously be unfair to the wife if her right to maintenance were to be diluted in some way because of subsequent fines or costs being attached. But the noble Viscount still says that he would leave it to the magistrates to decide whether there should be an attachment in respect of the subsequent fine in addition to the original attachment for the wife's maintenance. However, I do not think the difference between us is wide enough to cause any trouble, and in view of the explanation, that is all I have to say.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I apologise first for trying to take the noble Viscount's Amendment away from him. I have pleasure in advising my noble friends to accept these Amendments. There is no difference between us in principle. When the noble Viscount put down his Amendment on the Report stage of the Bill I indicated my agreement with it in principle, although I said that as it would include maintenance claims it was not possible to accept it in its then form. The noble Viscount, I think, accepts the position that it is not possible to consolidate, if I may put it colloquially, those payments with ordinary debts for the reason which he has given, because maintenance does not constitute a provable debt for the purpose of an administration order. Now he says, in effect: whether you can combine fines and ordinary debts, could not at least fines be consolidated?
I am not at all unsympathetic. I think, in general, I agree with the noble Viscount that the more single administration orders can be made in respect of numerous debts of different kinds, the better. But there are practical difficulties in applying this to the case of a fine, because even if it constitutes a provable debt, an administration order would not free the debtor from liability from the fine or discharge him from process in default of payment. Moreover, under an administration order all creditors rank pari passu and it would be impossible to
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afford the fine priority as under Schedule 4 to the Bill.
However, discussions are taking place with the Home Office on the possibility of having a procedure for consolidating two or more attachment orders against the debtor in respect of fines. There are practical difficulties in the way of doing this, and it is by no means certain that the number of cases in which the procedure might operate would make it worth while. Attachment of earnings for the enforcement of fines has been in operation since the beginning of 1968 when the Criminal Justice Act 1967 came into force, and no trouble seems to have arisen in practice from the making of two or more orders against the same debtor. All I can say, therefore, without being too optimistic about it, is that such discussions are taking place. There is no difference here between us in principle; it is purely a question of practical application.
On Question, Amendments agreed to.
3.16 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved Amendment No. 4:
After Clause 23, insert the following new clause:
Effect of administration order made otherwise than on application of debtor
"Where under section 10(9) of this Act a county court makes an administration order in respect of a person's estate, it shall, for the purposes of the Bankruptcy Act 1914, be an act of bankruptcy by him."
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, the purpose of this new clause is to prevent a creditor being deprived of his right to bring bankruptcy proceedings against the debtor by the making of an administration order under Clause 10(9).
Section 20(3) of the Administration of Justice Act 1965 provides that so long as an administration order is in force a creditor shall not be entitled, without the leave of the court, to present a bankruptcy petition against the debtor unless his debt exceeds £100 and the petition is presented within 28 days after the creditor received notice of the proceedings. At the present time an administration order can be made only on the application of the debtor and Section 21 of the Act of 1965 provides that the making of such an application shall be treated as an act of bankruptcy. A creditor who wishes to avail himself of the

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right conferred by Section 20(3) to present a bankruptcy petition can therefore rely on the act of bankruptcy constituted by the making of the request for the administration order. Bankruptcy proceedings may often be more appropriate than an administration order, especially where the debtor's liabilities are substantial, because bankruptcy ensures strict control over the debtor's assets and preserves the priority of creditors such as the Inland Revenue and rating authorities who, under an administration order, would simply rank pari passu with the other creditors.
The effect of Clause 10(9), which enables the court to make an administration order of its own motion on an application for an attachment of earnings order, would often be to take away a creditor's right to bring bankruptcy proceedings under Section 20(3) of the Act of 1965, since there would be no application by the debtor on which the creditor could rely as an act of bankruptcy. By encouraging the court to make an administration order Lord Colville's Amendments to Clause 10(9) would tend to increase the number of cases in which this difficulty would arise. The new clause accordingly provides that the making of an administration order under Clause 10(9) shall itself constitute an act of bankruptcy by the debtor. There is a precedent for treating something done otherwise than by the debtor as an act of bankruptcy by him, for Section l(l)(e) of the Bankruptcy Act 1914 provides that a debtor commits an act of bankruptcy if execution has been levied on his goods and goods have been either sold or held by the sheriff for twenty-one days. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 34 [Recovery of costs and compensation awarded by magistrates, assizes, quarter sessions, etc.]:
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved Amendment No. 5:
Page 26, line 19, leave out ("a sum adjudged to be paid") and insert ("if the order were for the payment of money recoverable ")
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, this is a small technical point. The purpose of the Amendment is to make it clear that costs ordered to be
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paid by the prosecutor in criminal proceedings—that is to say where the prosecution has failed and the prosecutor is ordered to pay costs—and costs ordered in appeals to quarter sessions in civil proceedings are enforceable as judgment debts. At the Report stage of the Bill the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, suggested that if a person did not pay costs awarded against him in such a case, it would be necessary for the creditor to go back to the magistrates' court and get another order before the costs could be enforced. I do not think that even as Clause 34(2) is at present drafted this would be necessary, as the subsection provides for these costs to be enforceable
"as a sum adjudged to be paid summarily as a civil debt".
That is to say, the creditor is in the position of someone who has already obtained judgment in the magistrates' court.
There is never any harm done by making something which is clear, clearer still, and to make the position clear beyond doubt the Amendment provides for the sum to be enforceable, as if the order were for the payment of money recoverable summarily as a civil debt. This brings it squarely within the definition of "judgment debt" in Clause 9(3)(b), and has the effect that if there is a failure to make payment the creditor can, for example, apply to the county court for an attachment of earnings order without first going back to the magistrates' court to obtain judgment. I beg to move.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, this may be a small technical point, but all the same I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord. It was no doubt my fault for not having fully taken in the purport of lines 19 and 20 on page 26 as they appeared on the Amendment List last time. I had not understood this, and I suppose it is conceivable that there may be somebody else in the British Isles in due course who also will not have understood it in that way. This Amendment makes it perfectly clear and has the side benefit, as the noble and learned Lord has said, of bringing the drafting into line with the earlier subsection, which must be a good thing if it is contained in the same Bill. Therefore, I am glad to see this Amendment

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on the Paper, and I hope it will be accepted.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved Amendment No. 6:
After Clause 40, insert the following new clause:
Amendments relating to guardianship of minors
".—(1) Any order made under section 4(2) of the Family Law Reform Act 1969 (maintenance for persons between 13 and 21 who have been subject to an order under the Guardianship of Infants Acts) may be varied or discharged by a subsequent order made on the application of any person by or to whom payments were required to be made under the previous order.
(2) In the Guardianship of Infants Act 1886—

(a) in section 5, the words from "and in every case" onwards (costs in custody proceedings); and

(b) in section 11 (rules of procedure) paragraph (a) and, in paragraph (c), the words "England or",

shall cease to have effect.
(3) Subsection (1) of this section shall be deemed to have come into operation at the same time as section 4 of the said Act of 1969."
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, with this Amendment may I ask your Lordships to consider also Amendments Nos. 10 and 11. The purpose of these Amendments, which may conveniently, I think, be taken together, is to take the opportunity of this Bill to tidy up three small technical anomalies in the Statute Law relating to the guardianship of infants. A Bill to consolidate this branch of the law is being drafted and is likely to be introduced in the near future; and the existence of these anomalies was discovered in the course of its preparation. It is perhaps one of the advantages of an Administration of Justice Bill that if there are points which ought to be put right in relation to the administration of justice, even though those points are not related to the main objects of the Bill, which in the case of this Bill are a reconstitution of the Divisions of the High Court and the beginnings of the implementation of the Payne Committee Report on judgment debts and mortgage possession actions, they can be put right. It is clearly sensible to put them right before the consolidation is made. They are so minor and technical that I do not think the
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House will wish me to take up further time with them, but if any noble Lord has any points to raise, or questions to ask, I shall be happy to answer them. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved No. 7:
After Clause 40, insert the following new clause:
Minor amendments relating to 1969 c. 54 and certain transitional cases under that Act
".—(1) In sections 2(4) and 104 of the Act of 1952 the references to sections 20 and 21 of that Act (which are repealed by the Act of 1969 and replaced by section 6 of that Act) shall be construed as references to the said section 6; and for the purposes of section 126(5) of the Act of 1952 and section 70(3) of the Act of 1969 (which relate to proof of age) the said section 6 shall be deemed to be a provision of the Act of 1952 and not the Act of 1969.
(2) The following paragraph shall be inserted after paragraph 1 of Schedule 4 to the Act of 1969 (transitional provisions and savings):—
"1A—(1) Where—

(a) before the date when section 1 of this Act comes into force any child or young person (hereafter in this paragraph referred to as ' the relevant infant') has been brought before a juvenile court under section 62. of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 or has been brought before such a court by virtue of a provision of section 40 or 40A of the Education Act 1944; and

(b) immediately before that date that court has neither made any order which it had power to make in respect of the relevant infant under the said section 62 nor dismissed the case,

nothing in paragraph 13 of Schedule 5 to this Act nor in any provision of Schedule 6 thereto shall prevent the proceedings before that court in respect of the relevant infant being continued; but the court shall in those proceedings have power to make any order which it has power to make in proceedings under section 1 of this Act and shall not have power to make any other order, and subsections (3), (4) and (5) of the said section 1 and subsections (10) and (13) of section 2 of this Act shall have effect accordingly with any necessary modifications.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (12) of the said section 2, any order made in respect of the relevant infant by virtue of subparagraph (1) of this paragraph shall be deemed to be made under section 1 of this Act.
(3) Any record of a finding of the fact that the relevant infant is in need of care or protection made in pursuance of section 5 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1938 in any such proceedings as are referred to in sub-paragraph (1) of this paragraph shall, notwithstanding the repeal of the said

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section 5 by this Act, be admissible as evidence of that fact in those proceedings.
(3) In this section 'the Act of 1952' and 'the Act of 1969' mean respectively the Magistrates' Courts Act 1952 and the Children and Young Persons Act 1969".
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, this is, in a sense, a Home Office Amendment. Subsection (1) of the new clause makes two amendments to the Magistrates' Courts Act 1952 which are consequential on the Children and Young Persons Act 1969. Subsection (2) adds a new transitional provision to the 1969 Act. When Part I of that Act comes into force, the existing law on care, protection or control proceedings, and on proceedings in the juvenile court under the Education Act 1944, will be repealed, and those proceedings will be replaced by care proceedings under Section 1 of the 1969 Act. The transitional provision inserted by subsection (2) deals with the situation where proceedings have started under the old law but have not been completed on the day on which Part I of the Act comes into force. It enables the court to continue proceedings under the old law, thus avoiding starting again, but provides that any order which the court makes shall be an order under the 1969 Act and not an order under the old law, such as an approved school order or fit person order, since these orders will then have been abolished. I can go again into further detail if any noble Lord would like me to do so. I hope the House thinks that what is provided for here is a sensible thing to do. I beg to move.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I suppose these are two subsections which ought to have been in the Children and Young Persons Act but for some reason they escaped the very acute scrutiny of those who draft these things. They really are consequential Amendments to that Act, in which case I cannot think that there is anything at all wrong with them.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved Amendment No. 8:
After Schedule 2, insert the following new schedule—
APPLICATION OF ARBITRATION ACT 1950 TO JUDGE-ARBITRATORS
1. In this Schedule—

(a) "the Act" means the Arbitration Act 1950;

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(b) "arbitration agreement" has the same meaning as in the Act; and

(c) "judge-arbitrator" and "judge-umpire" mean a judge of the Commercial Court appointed as arbitrator or, as the case may be, as umpire or by virtue of an arbitration agreement.

2. In section 1 of the Act (authority of arbitrator to be irrevocable except by leave of the court), in its application to a judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire, the Court of Appeal shall be substituted for the High Court.
3. The power of the High Court under section 7 of the Act (vacancy among arbitrators supplied by parties) to set aside the appointment of an arbitrator shall not be exercisable in the case of the appointment of a judge-arbitrator.
4. Section 8(3) of the Act (power of High Court to order umpire to enter immediately on reference as sole arbitrator) shall not apply to a judge-umpire; but a judge-umpire may, on the application of any party to the reference and notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the arbitration agreement, enter on the reference in lieu of the arbitrators and as if he were the sole arbitrator.
5.—(1) The powers conferred on the High Court or a judge thereof by section 12(4), (5) and (6) of the Act (summoning of witnesses, interlocutory orders, etc.) shall be exercisable in the case of a reference to a judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire as in the case of any other reference to arbitration, but shall in any such case be exercisable also by the judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire himself.
(2) Anything done by an arbitrator or umpire in the exercise of powers conferred by this paragraph shall be done by him in his capacity as judge of the High Court and have effect as if done by that court; but nothing in this paragraph prejudices any power vested in the arbitrator or umpire in his capacity as such.
6. Section 13(2) and (3) of the Act (extension of time for making award; provision for ensuring that reference is conducted with reasonable dispatch) shall not apply to a reference to a judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire; but a judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire may enlarge any time limited for making his award (whether under the Act or otherwise), whether that time has expired or not.
7.—(1) Section 18(4) of the Act (provision enabling a party in an arbitration to obtain an order for costs) shall apply, in the case of a reference to a judge-arbitrator, with the omission of the words from "within fourteen days" to "may direct".
(2) The power of the High Court to make declarations and orders for the purposes of section 18(5) of the Act (charging order for solicitor's costs) shall be exercisable in the case of an arbitration by a judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire as in the case of any other arbitration, but shall in any such case be exercisable also by the judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire himself.
(3) A declaration or order made by an arbitrator or umpire in the exercise of the

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power conferred by the last foregoing subparagraph shall be made by him in his capacity as judge of the High Court and have effect as if made by that court.
8.—(1) Section 19 of the Act (power of High Court to order delivery of award on payment of arbitrators' fees into court) shall not apply with respect to the award of a judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire.
(2) A judge-umpire may withhold his award until the fees payable to the arbitrators have been paid into the High Court.
(3) Arbitrators' fees paid into court under this paragraph shall be paid out in accordance with rules of court, subject to the right of any party to the reference to apply (in accordance with the rules) for any fee to be taxed, not being a fee which has been fixed by written agreement between him and the arbitrator.
(4) A taxation under this paragraph may be reviewed in the same manner as a taxation of the costs of an award.
(5) On a taxation under this paragraph, or on a review thereof, an arbitrator shall be entitled to appear and be heard.
9.—(1) In sections 21(1) and (2), 22 and 23 of the Act (special case, remission and setting aside of awards, etc.), in their application to a judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire, and to a reference to him and to his award thereon, the Court of Appeal shall be substituted for the High Court.
(2) A decision of the Court of Appeal on a case stated by a judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire under section 21 of the Act (as amended by this paragraph) shall be deemed to be a judgment of that court for the purposes of section 3 of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876 (appeal to House of Lords); but no appeal shall lie from any such decision without the leave of the Court of Appeal or the House of Lords.
10.—(1) Section 24(2) of the Act (removal of issue of fraud for trial in the High Court) shall not apply to an agreement under or by virtue of which a judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire has been appointed; nor shall leave be given by the High Court under that subsection to revoke the authority of a judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire.
(2) Where, on a reference of a dispute to a judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire, it appears to the judge that the dispute involves the question whether a party to the dispute has been guilty of fraud, he may, so far as may be necessary to enable that question to be determined by the High Court, order that the agreement by or by virtue of which he was appointed shall cease to have effect and revoke his authority as arbitrator or umpire.
(3) An order made by a judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire under this paragraph shall have effect as if made by the High Court.
11. Section 25 of the Act (powers of court on remove 1 of arbitrator or revocation of arbitration agreement) shall be amended as follows: —

(a) after the words "the High Court" where they first occur in subsection (1), where they occur for the first and second time
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in subsection (2), and in subsections (3) and (4), there shall be inserted the words "or the Court of Appeal"; and

(b) after those words where they occur for the second time in subsection (1) and for the third time in subsection (2) there shall be inserted the words "or the Court of Appeal, as the case may be".

12. The leave required by section 26 of the Act (enforcement in High Court) for an award on an arbitration agreement to be enforced as mentioned in that section may, in the case of an award by a judge-arbitrator or a judge-umpire, be given by the judge-arbitrator or judge-umpire himself.
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, this is the Amendment to which I spoke when I was moving Amendment No. 1. I beg to trove.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 4 [Deductions by employer under attachment of earnings order]:
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved Amendment No. 9:
Page 39, line 10, leave out ("under") and insert ("within the meaning of").
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, this is a drafting Amendment. Under paragraph 3(c)(ii) of Schedule 4 the attachable earnings of a debtor are not to include amounts deductible in pursuance of a request by the debtor for the purposes of a superannuation scheme under the Wages Councils Act 1959. That Act does not, however, provide for the making of superannuation schemes. It enables wages councils to fix remuneration and provides that the word "remuneration"shall include any deduction made at the request of the worker for the purposes of a superannuation scheme.
"Superannuation scheme" is defined in Section 24, which says:
"'superannuation scheme means any enactment, rules, deed or other instrument, providing for the payment of annuities or lump sums to the persons with respect to whom the instrument has effect on their retirement at a specified age or on becoming incapacitated at some earlier age, or to the personal representatives or the widows, relatives or dependants of such persons on their death or otherwise, whether with or without any further or other benefits."
The reference in paragraph 3(c)(ii) of Schedule 4 to the Bill to a set superannuation scheme under the Wages Councils Act 1959 is intended only as a reference to this definition. Accordingly, it would be more appropriate to refer to a superannuation scheme "within the meaning

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of" the Act of 1959. This is the expression used in the Schedule to the Maintenance Orders Act 1958, on which paragraph 3(c)(ii) is based. My Lords, I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 10 [Enactments repealed]:
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, this Amendment, No. 10, is the one to which I spoke when addressing your Lordships on Amendment No. 6. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 50, line 12, column 3, at beginning insert—("In section 5 the words from "and in every case" onwards.")—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, the same applies in the case of this Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 50, line 21, column 3, at end insert— ("In section 11, paragraph (a), and, in paragraph (c), the words "England or".")—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
In the Title:
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I spoke to this Amendment, No. 12, when asking your Lordships to consider Amendment No. 1. It simply concerns the alteration in the Title necessitated by the provision for judge-arbitrators. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Line 2, at end insert ("to enable High Court judges to accept appointment as arbitrator or umpire under an arbitration agreement").— (The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that the privilege Amendment be agreed to.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Amendment (Privilege) agreed to.
3.32 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill do now pass. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have shown an interest in the
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Bill. I am sure that it has been desirable to rearrange in a more logical way the Divisions of the High Court of Justice. I have no doubt that it has been right to set up a Family Division of that Court. Although I am as disappointed as some other noble Lords not to have been able to carry out all the recommendations of the Payne Committee on the enforcement of judgments, I am sure we were right to make a start on the essentials, notably the abolition of imprisonment for debt and the constitution of attachment of earnings orders. I am particularly grateful for the assistance given throughout by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross. The remaining provisions of the Bill are, I am sure, sound.
It is not for me to commit the Government to what their legislation for next Session will be, but clearly a high candidate for priority must be an Administration of Justice Bill to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Assizes and Quarter Session: because all the work continues to increase. There are not enough judges; there are not enough courts, in particular, and the time of the judges is undoubtedly being wasted by our present very inefficient system for the administration of justice throughout the country. As the Report has been so widely welcomed, not only by the public but by the judges, the Bar, solicitors, and everybody I think who knows something about the subject, I hope that I can hold out reasonable hopes that these recommendations will be implemented next year. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.— (The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT COLVILLE of CULROSS: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord has made some comments about legislation which may be introduced next Session. He rightly says that he does not know; and I do not know, either, who will be introducing it. But if we may leave aside the Beeching Report, because that is not the subject matter of this Bill (it may be that the House would like to have a debate on it before the end of this Session; it may be that the matter should be left for the Second Reading of a Bill), I do not want to say any more on this particular Bill except on

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Part II. It has aroused very little controversy, and what there was at any rate incipient in my mind was rapidly quashed by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice by his speech on Second Reading.
On Part II, if we have not made very substantial changes in the drafting (there have, I think, been some of some importance), what has been achieved and is of very great use—and perhaps Members of another place will also find it useful when they are considering the matter— is the explanation and exploration of some of the administrative details. These of course will be the factors; that affect people much more closely than the skeleton of the scheme, which is all the Bill itself contains.
As I have said before, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his explanations. They will have done a great deal to avoid further controversy and to show that, as I myself believe to be the case, this is a workable scheme, provided that the numbers of extra staff, and the premises that the noble and learned Lord has estimated as being likely, do prove to be enough to deal with what will certainly be a different type, or at any rate a different scale, of investigatory work by the registrars, and to some extent by the clerks of magistrates' courts (although they do it already), compared to anything with which they have hitherto had to cope. Particularly the county court registrars (the numbers were given, I think, during the Committee stage) are going to find themselves hard pressed; and whether this system works will depend upon their ability to get out of the debtors, through the statements that are required to be made under the Bill, the necessary information. I believe that on paper it should now be workable, and I hope that when it comes to the test that will not prove to be wrong.
On Question, Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

INCOME AND CORPORATION TAXES BILL [H.L.]
3.37 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Triplets! The Bill before the House whose Second Reading I am now moving is the Income and Corporation Taxes Bill. The next item on the Order Paper—quads if you include this!—is the "Taxes Management Bill. I think I told your Lordships on a previous occasion that the Law Commission had, very sensibly no doubt, asked the principal users of the Statute Book—namely, the Law Society—what were the subjects in which they would most like to see consolidation of our Statute Law. They, with a considerable degree of unanimity, said: one, income tax; two, the Rent Acts, and three, estate duty.
They in fact achieved, as your Lordships know, consolidation of all the Rent Acts, going right back to 1920—all those early Rent and Mortgage Interest Restrictions Acts—very much sooner than had hoped would be possible. As to the Income Tax Acts, I thought it was very doubtful whether we should be able to deal with them in this Parliament. I knew that last time the Income Tax Acts had been consolidated—namely, in 1952 —it had taken the draftsmen five years to do it. And, after all, the Law Commission did not start themselves until the summer of 1965. However, this Bill has been not, of course, the work of the Law Commission themselves but, I believe, primarily of the draftsman who is the usual draftsman of the Finance Acts. I suppose that nobody else would have had anything like the same knowledge. But it has now been done. I have tried to find somebody who has ever seen a larger Bill, but I have not succeeded. I am told that that applies also to the weight of the Bill.
This may suggest that as, if your Lordships give this Bill a Second Reading, it will go in the usual way to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills, it will present them with a formidable task. My Lords, I do net think so. I think that the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, is on the Joint Consolidation Committee, and he therefore probably knows more about their work than I do.

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I think it represents a considerable burden to the Chairman, because I believe it is usual for the Chairman to go through the whole Bill with the draftsman. But the reason why I am hopeful that it will not take a great deal of time is that this is, after all, not a 1949 Act consolidation, with minor corrections and improvements; nor is it a consolidation with Amendments proposed by the Law Commission. It is the old straight consolidation which leaves the law exactly as it is now.
Unfortunately, the Chairman of the Joint Consolidation Committee, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Upjohn, has recently had an operation, and will not yet, I think, be able to start on the consolidation. However, I know that he is looking forward to doing so at a fairly early date. If possible, it will have to be completed by Budget Day because this is one of those instances—and there are other subjects to which the same thing applies—where one cannot consolidate the existing law just when it is in the process of being changed. One has to wait for what the draftsmen call "a gap".
My Lords, I think that no useful purpose would be served by my going through the 20 Parts of the Bill. It is the Bill that contains our substantive law. The Taxes Management Bill, which is the next item on the Order Paper, deals with the administration, with the general commissioners, the special commissioners, returns of income, assessment and collection of the tax. No doubt your Lordships will think it is a sensible division.
Before asking your Lordships to give this Bill a Second Reading I would make only one other observation, which those who come after me may remember. Having once done this, we must do it again every year, otherwise in seventeen years' time we shall be in exactly the same position as we are now in. There should be no difficulty about this. Australia, for example, has an annual Finance Act, and immediately afterwards the Income Tax Act is reconsolidated so that all the income tax and corporation tax law is always in one place. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a. —(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I am sure that the Joint Com-
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mittee on Consolidation Bills will get through this Bill. As the noble and learned Lord has said, it is a matter which to some extent has been forestalled by Amendments in the last Finance Act and is in a form where there can be a straight consolidation. I do not think that it will even be necessary to put the Question, That each clause shall stand part of the Bill, because that in itself would take quite a long time. The best news which the noble and learned Lord has
given us is that this is to be a process of running consolidation. I was going to ask him about this because obviously it would be idiotic if, having done this work, we were to allow another gap of something like eighteen years to occur before it is done again. I myself never have to look at the Income Tax Acts for professional purposes. I have some other rather recondite books to look at, but not those. How anybody ever finds his way about them, unless he is a specialist in the existing legislation, I just do not know; and the introduction of this Bill must be a great step forward in the clarification of the law.
LORD MILNE: My Lords, I think it is fair to say that few in this House will comprehend, and still fewer outside will have had time to assimilate, the contents of this Bill. Therefore, I have followed —and I am sure this will apply to those outside—with great interest what the noble and learned Lord said in his introductory speech. Clearly, what is required is an assurance at some point that this and the next Bill are purely consolidation measures, and that the intention is that the law shall not be changed in any manner. From what I have heard of the noble and learned Lord's speech to-day, I think we have received this assurance. This is what is going to be studied by every student and every specialist in tax throughout the country. So all I need do is to say that I should like to be one among many others to congratulate this Government on producing this consolidation, and to express the hope that consolidation subsequent to each Finance Act will be carried out in future. I look forward next to the consolidation of the law of estate duty, but I think that will be a teaser.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, in reply to those observations may I give the assurance for which I was

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asked. This is a straight consolidation; indeed, it is one of the functions of the Joint Consolidation Committee to give us that assurance when they report. I think I can say that estate duty consolidation is making quite good progress.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.

TAXES MANAGEMENT BILL [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a. —(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 2a, and referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT (SHIPS) BILL
3.46 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, MINISTRY OF TECHNOLOGY (LORD DELACOURT-SMITH): My Lords, the purpose of this short Bill is to ensure that the payment of investment grants is confined to ships whose purchase and operation is of benefit to the United Kingdom balance of payments. It therefore empowers the Treasury, who have special responsibility for safeguarding our balance of payments, to prevent the grant being given on a particular ship if in their view this payment would operate to the detriment of the United Kingdom balance of payments.
The introduction of investment grants was announced in the White Paper, Investment Incentives, published in January 1966 and legislative form was given to these proposals by the Industrial Development Act 1966. The White Paper explained the intention to use investment grants to raise the level of investment providing a key to industrial expansion and economic growth. The overriding need—and I quote from paragraph 14 of the White Paper—was:
"to give priority to those sectors of industry which can make the greatest contribution to strengthening the balance of payments".
In this context emphasis was given to machinery or plant used for what was
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described as carrying on a qualifying industrial process, but there were certain types of assets whose eligibility for grant did not depend on their being used for such a process. Ships, along with computers and hovercraft, were included as assets of this kind.
Our merchant shipping fleet clearly makes a valuable contribution to the balance of payments through the creation of invisible exports and so ships were included in the scheme—in continuation of the preferential treatment which had been accorded to the shipping industry under the preceding system of industrial investment allowances.
My right honourable friend the former Minister of State at the Board of Trade very clearly described the purpose of making investment grants for ships, when in April, 1968, he said in another place:
"The real purpose of investment grants is to help the shipping companies to have modern first-class ships, and so ensure that the British merchant service leads the world. … This means that we must encourage the shipping companies to have a sensible, commercially profitable programme for the continuous modernisation of their shipping fleets. … They must get the best ships at the best price, delivered on time, with the right credit."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 726, col. 333.]
From 1966 until December 31, 1969, actual payments of investment grants on new ships amounted to £110 million. In addition to this a further £209 million —making a total of £319 million—will arise over the next few years in investment grant payments on eligible ships which were under construction or were known to be on order at December 31. This clearly represents a substantial contribution towards investment by the merchant shipping industry.
The investment so far has undoubtedly contributed in general to the benefit of the national economy. In 1966, the year in which investment giants were introduced, the contribution which ships owned and registered in the United Kingdom made to our invisible exports was £138 million. By 1968 this contribution had risen to £295 million. At the end of 1965 the gross tonnage of ships owned and registered in the United Kingdom was 17·8 million tons; by July, 1969, this figure had risen to 19·8 million tons. I am not claiming that we can attribute the shipping industry's growth and increased contribution to invisibles directly

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or entirely to the payment of investment grant. There are, of course, other factors at work as well. World seaborne trade as a whole has been buoyant. The volume of goods loaded rose by over 13 per cent, between 1965 and 1967. Hardly any tonnage is laid up.
Almost every significant shipbuilding country, including the United Kingdom, now provides cheap fixed interest credit for ship construction. The world merchant fleet has in fact been expanding at a faster rate than our own, and although between 1965 and 1969 the gross tonnage of United Kingdom ships rose in the way I have indicated, our proportion of total world tonnage fell from a 1965 figure of 12·3 per cent, to a 1969 figure of 10·7 per cent. However, the proportion of world tonnage now on order for British owners is higher than this figure, which means that the decline in our proportion of the total world fleet should be arrested. This expansion of the United Kingdom fleet has brought a bonus for the shipbuilding industry. It has helped to maintain the proportion of the world ship market which is available for competition by British shipbuilders. It has therefore been one of the factors which has enabled the United Kingdom shipbuilding industry to improve their order books so substantially in the last eighteen months.
Existing legislation already requires more stringent tests for investment grants in the case of ships than for other types of assets which attract these grants. Under Section 5 of the Industrial Development Act 1966 an applicant for an investment grant in respect of a ship must be resident for tax purposes in Great Britain and be either a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies or a company incorporated in Great Britain. In either event, the applicant must be carrying on business in Great Britain and must provide and operate the ship for the purposes of that business; the ship must be registered in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, under Section 8 of the 1966 Act the payment of grant on new ships is invariably subject to conditions which apply for five years—as opposed to three years in the case of other assets. Under these conditions the grant becomes repayable, in part or in whole, if the ship is sold during the five year period. Moreover, if the ship is chartered out to other operators we require the rates charged for any
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such charters to be submitted for approval. We can and do thus prevent the benefit of grant passing to foreign operators by way of charter rates which are reduced substantially below the general market level. In no circumstances do we allow grant on a ship which is demise chartered to foreign interests.
Perhaps I should say that it is immaterial for the purposes of grant whether the applicant has the new ship built from scratch or takes over one which is already under construction or is complete, although there may in different cases be differences in the timing of the owner's payments for the ship and hence in his grant claim. At the same time, investment in a ship may, from the balance of payments point of view, have effects which are quite different from those of investment in, for example, a chemical plant sited in Great Britain. Such a plant contributes substantially to the economy of the country by the provision of employment, by the direct contribution which the exports of its products make to the balance of payments, by import savings and in a variety of ways. In the case of a ship, on the other hand, the company claiming grant, although it must satisfy the conditions I have already recited, may succeed in its claim without regard to the nationality of ownership of the company or to the implications for the balance of payments of the capital expenditure upon the ship, its financing or its proposed operation. This fact has made it possible—and in some cases made it particularly attractive—for shipping trans-actions which would otherwise have had nothing to do with Great Britain to be routed through British-registered companies in order to obtain the benefit of the investment grant, thus sometimes involving the United Kingdom in a balance of payments loss without compensating benefit.
To put the matter in another way, the ship may have been built abroad and be manned with a largely non-resident crew. It may be owned by a company under the
control of non-resident interests to whom after payment of tax the profits are remittable. Thus it will be clear to noble Lords that there are ways in which the construction or conversion of a ship may be of little or even no benefit to the balance of payments of this country. Thus there was a difficulty inherent in the Industrial Development Act,

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in that foreign shipping operators could establish new British subsidiaries to own ships which would not otherwise have formed part of the British fleet but which could attract investment grants in circumstances where they made little contribution to the national economy. The Government watched this situation closely and found that there was a real prospect of this taking place.
Accordingly, in January, 1968, my right honourable friend the then President of the Board of Trade announced the introduction of a special scrutiny of the balance-of-payments consequences of certain classes of transaction involving the purchase of an eligible ship by newly-formed nonresident controlled British shipping companies—that is to say, those which had been incorporated, activated as ship-owners, or taken over by non-residents since the beginning of 1963. This scrutiny was operated principally through the existing exchange control machinery Under the scrutiny procedure the Treasury had to be satisfied that the transaction taken as a whole would not be detrimental to the balance of payments in the short term. Since the transactions concerned required exchange control consent under the 1947 Exchange Control Act, those which failed the test
could be dealt with by the refusal of such consent under that Act. A total of 22
cases were considered by the Bank of England and the Treasury under the exchange control arrangements, and of these 22 cases, four were refused. The deterrent effect of the scrutiny was, of course, much greater, since it was known that: no company whose transactions would be subject to scrutiny would be able to get an investment grant on a ship where the short-term effect on the balance of payments would be harmful.
In the light of experience gained in administering this scrutiny, we have kept a close watch on investment grants for ships generally. We have stopped an outflow of funds associated with companies which might have been specially formed to take advantage of the support given to the shipping industry in the form of investment grant. It still remains the case that some part of this support has been going to encourage the building of ships whose net effect on the balance of payments may be a negative one. The Government have therefore decided that it would be right to recast
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the scrutiny which I have described and extend it to many more of the transactions involving the purchase or the conversion of an eligible ship. The present Bill provides for such an extended scrutiny to be applied by the Treasury to the purchases of eligible ships by all eligible claimants—with, however, one very important exception to which I shall come in a moment. It is necessary to apply the new tests in this comprehensive fashion to ensure complete coverage and to enable all cases to be handled on a consistent basis. The new scrutiny will therefore have a wider coverage than the earlier limited scrutiny undertaken by the Treasury and the Bank of England. It will apply to any case in which application is made for investment grant on a ship where the shipowner was not under a binding obligation to buy or convert the ship before November 10, 1969.
The special exemption to the new scrutiny is the one provided in Clause l(2)(a) of the Bill. Subsection (2) provides that the new arrangements will not be applied to ships wholly or mainly constructed or converted in the EFTA countries—which of course includes the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic. To qualify for exemption under this subsection a ship must be wholly or mainly constructed or converted in the exempted area. This means in practice that more than half of the total cost of a ship, whether of construction or cost of conversion must be derived from work carried out in these exempted countries. This includes work on component parts and the work of construction or assembly or fitting up.
The reason for excluding ships constructed in EFTA and Irish shipyards is that our obligations under the EFTA and Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Conventions require it. If less than half of the total cost is derived from work carried out in these countries, such ships do not qualify for exemption and will be subject to the new scrutiny. Noble Lords may feel that this exemption leaves it open to foreign interests to form new companies which will buy their ships from EFTA yards and escape the balance of payments tests upon these ships. The Government recognise this possibility, but I would emphasise that the Treasury still have the exchange control powers under which they operated the previous scrutiny of newly formed non-resident

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controlled companies and that they propose to use them in such cases as are appropriate.
The Bill is a short one and the provision of its clauses can be briefly summarised in the light of the general explanation which I have given. Clause 1 gives the Treasury power to direct the Minister of Technology not to make an investment grant in cases where in the Treasury's opinion to do so would be harmful for the balance of payments. The balance of payments, of course, is one of the major interests of the Treasury, and they are the people to evaluate what is good or bad for it. This clause does not specify the precise nature of the tests which the Treasury will apply. These have been described in some detail in a memorandum published when the Bill was introduced in another place, and copies of this memorandum are available in the Printed Paper Office.
I should perhaps say that in subsequent discussions with the Chamber of Shipping—and I should like to take this opportunity to pay a warm tribute to their co-operation in this whole exercise—a number of details of the proposed tests have been refined or elaborated. In spite of this, the memorandum gives a good general summary not only of the reasons for the introduction of the Bill but of the sort of test which will be applied. The changes that have been made are of an administrative and detailed character and not in policy or in the nature of the balance-of-payments test. To assist ship-owners the Treasury and the Ministry of Technology are ready to answer any advance inquiries on the likely result of the test in any particular case, if the shipowner will provide the necessary information.
Clause 2 of the Bill is clear and straightforward; it empowers the Parliament of Northern Ireland—where the Ministry of Commerce have power to pay investment grants on ships similar to the Ministry of Technology power under the 1966 Industrial Development Act— to make laws for the purpose of applying a balance of payments test. I understand that it is in fact the intention of the Northern Ireland Government to introduce legislation similar to this Bill, and to apply under it a balance of payments test of a similar kind.
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These then are the arrangements which are being adopted with effect from November 10, 1969, to supplement the existing provisions under the 1966 Industrial Development Act. We now have, after all, a good deal of experience of operating investment grants, and this new provision is a logical development from the safeguards already provided in Section 5 of the 1966 Act and extended by the special scrutiny started early in 1968.
The House will, I am sure, agree that this is a useful measure which will ensure that in all cases vessels which are assisted by a Government grant will bring a clear benefit to this country's balance of payments. Having said that, I think it is important that we should be careful not to exaggerate the extent of the problem with which the Bill is designed to deal. So far as the Ministry of Technology's information goes, the total figure of investment grant already paid on new ships, and outstanding on ships for which contracts have already been placed, stood at December 31, 1969, at the total figure of £319 million. It is estimated that this figure represents the grants paid or known to be payable over something like eight years from 1966. Precisely what period it will cover of course depends on how quickly the ships are built and the grants claimed.
Of this £319 million, companies which were non-resident controlled stood to receive £97 million; but of this £97 million some £34 million relates to ships built in the United Kingdom. That leaves only £64 million—one-fifth of the total of the investment grants—paid, or to be paid, on ships built elsewhere for companies which are non-resident controlled. Now of this £64 million—to get again a perspective of the position—over £55 million relates to tankers built, or under construction, for the oil companies, whose important position in our economy is well known to all. Out of the £64 million, again no less than £12 million relates to ships built either in other EFTA countries or in the Irish Republic.
I would stress that from our knowledge of the orders placed for ships which are eligible for investment grants, a high proportion of these orders are being placed in British yards. Many factors are at work contributing to this. I have quoted a figure of £64 million in

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total grants payable to non-resident controlled shipping companies upon foreign built ships. To get this into perspective, I should say that in the last three months from September to December, 1964, this figure has risen by only £3 million— from £61 million to £64 million. But during the same period the grand total of all investment grants on ships rose by £34 million from £285 million to £319 million, and of this increase one half represents orders placed in British yards by resident controlled British companies.
The balance of payments scrutiny will, when the Bill is enacted, apply to new orders placed from November 10, and it may well have been a factor operating on the recent trend of orders by eligible shipowners. I do not want to draw any specific conclusions, but merely to make one general comment. For a long time now orders by British controlled companies have increased at a much faster rate than others and therefore it is plain that there is no evidence of widespread abuse of the system of investment grants for ships such as has been suggested in some recent Press articles. The evidence if anything points in the other direction. But while the dimensions of the problem with which this Bill seeks to deal should not be exaggerated, the Government believe it right to seek legislative provision to put the scrutiny of the situation on the more comprehensive basis which I have described. I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.— (Lord Delacourt-Smith.)
4.10 p.m.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, may I thank the noble Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, for explaining the purposes of this Bill so clearly and authoritatively. May I also welcome the figures he gave us, which explain the progress made by our merchant shipping fleet, and especially the increase in the size of the order book which is an indication of the future. I share with him a wish to see our merchant shipping fleet prospering and continuing to earn the very large amount of foreign exchange that it does. I recognise with him that it has unhappily become the practice throughout the world for all Governments to subsidise their shipping fleets in one way or another, so that help on a big scale is necessary if
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we are to make it possible for our fleet to compete successfully with the others.
So persuasive was the noble Lord that I hardly like to be critical, but I am afraid that I am nevertheless going to be critical on one or two points, as he will no doubt expect. Despite the charming way in which the noble Lord put it to us, this Bill is designed to slop a leak. There has been a leakage of public funds, which have been going for the wrong purpose, and however carefully and persuasively the noble Lord wraps it up, that is bound to be a matter of great anxiety. It was referred to by the Estimates Committee a year ago and it was referred to again in the Report published last month—I shall have a reference to make to that a little later in my speech. As to the purpose of the Bill, however, which is that of preventing the wastage of our hard-pressed taxpayers' money, I of course entirely welcome it, though there are some features of the antecedents of the Bill on which I wish to comment.
As the noble Lord has explained, the leak has occurred in respect of investment grants paid by Her Majesty's Government in respect of ships built in foreign yards—that is to say, in countries like Japan, Germany and so on—for foreign shipping companies who have a brass plate in this country, or perhaps a shipping office in London. Of course, many foreign-owned companies—what are called ''non-resident companies"— with a shipping office in this country are highly reputable, and have made most valuable contributions to the economy of this country over many years. But the point of this Bill is to deal with those who have been using these grants to buy ships the operation of which has not in any way been beneficial to this country.
Thinking back to the days when I was in the Government in another place, I can well imagine what some honourable Members would have said to me from the other side had they had reason to believe that good British taxpayers' money was going to pay for ships to be built in foreign yards and to be operated by foreign operators without much benefit to this country. However, I recognise the complexities of the situation, and that this matter, with certain safeguards, could be all right for this country. The remedy in the Bill is to subject such applicants

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for a grant to a test, and the test to be applied is set out in a Memorandum a copy of which is in the Printed Paper Office. The purpose of the test, which is perfectly clear, is to show whether the operations of a ship are going to benefit our balance of payments. I think the noble Lord told us that this test has to be applied over the first five years of the life of the ship, but it seems to me quite a formidable obligation for our civil servants in Whitehall to have to keep track for five years of the operations of a ship plying for trade all over the world. Perhaps the noble Lord will say a further word about that matter when he replies to the debate, and tell us how it will be done and how many people will be involved in doing it.
The noble Lord gave us a great many figures to show how small the leakage is. I rather fancied that it is not as large as some newspapers have led us to think, since they have rather blown this matter up as if it were a major scandal. I accept the noble Lord's statement that it is not of those dimensions. I was interested to see the official answer given to the Estimates Committee in their Inquiry at the end of last year. They reckoned that this Bill will save about £5 million per annum in due course. That is not a major matter but, as the noble Lord said, it is not insignificant; so it must be very welcome to us all to know that that is what this Bill will do.
There are two points about which I was not clear from the noble Lord's explanation. First, if the Government knew about this leakage a couple of years ago, why did they delay for two years before bringing in this Bill? I think the noble Lord ought to answer that question when he replies to the debate. Secondly, the noble Lord told us that the Government took administrative action a year ago for the Treasury to apply the exchange control mechanism. I think we ought to be told what was defective about that arrangement which necessitated the introduction of this Bill now. The noble Lord made the observation that the Bill goes wider, but it was not clear to me how it does so, and it would help us to know.
Speaking about the Treasury, I should like to refer to a small constitutional
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point which was mentioned in another place and was not satisfactorily answered. In my experience, this Bill is drafted in a unique way. It gives the Treasury power to direct the Minister of Technology not to make a grant. Now the common form of Money Bills, as noble Lords will know, is that the Minister "may with the consent of the Treasury" —those are the hallowed words—make certain payments or grants. But Clause 1(1) reads as though, if the Minister of Technology wants to make a grant, the Treasury can step in and tell him not to do so. This is an innovation to me and I should like to know why it is in this Bill.
I can well remember some years ago in another place when Mr. Aneurin Bevan was in Opposition, that he attacked me because in some Bill that I was dealing with the magic words, "with the consent of the Treasury "were included. Mr. Aneurin Bevan held forth at great length that that was a monstrous interference with the will of Parliament. He made a tremendous speech and it was a formidable task for me, as a junior Minister, to try to answer it. I wonder what he would have said if he had seen this Bill, with the Treasury taking power to direct a Minister. I think he would have burst into flames. I am not going to do that, but I ask the noble Lord to improve on the earlier answer given in another place as to why the Treasury is taking powers specifically to direct the Minister of Technology. I shall be quite content with a simple explanation.
With the background of this leakage in grants for building ships, I think it is also fair to make this point. It is this Government's policy to abolish investment allowances, which were simple and automatic tax allowances, and to substitute instead the system of discretionary investment grants. The total Estimate for all investment grants for this year was £460 million, to which has been added the enormous Supplementary Estimate of another £100 million, making a grand total of £560 million. That is an enormous sum, my Lords. I should be out of order if I wished to discuss this matter further here, but as the noble Lord made the point that the purpose of these grants was to promote investment in industry, the modernisation of industry and growth in the most useful sectors, I think I may say that the figures I have show that in

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the past five years, under this Government, total industrial investment has increased by 23 per cent., compared with a growth in the previous five years, before these discretionary investment grants were introduced, of 28 per cent. So one has this vast machinery for taxing the community to produce this enormous sum and then for distributing it again in discretionary grants, and at the end of it all the rate of growth of the economy as a whole is less than it was before.
The point that can fairly be made here is, as it seems to me, the inherent impossibility, in the distribution of such an enormous sum of money—£560 million— when it is on a discretionary basis, of ensuring that it all goes to the right places. We know that there are thousands of civil servants engaged in this work, and one knows that they are doing their best; but I would suggest that the sheer size of the Supplementary Estimate, which requires an extra £100 million, gives some indication of how tenuous is the control in Whitehall over this vast field of public spending. I would make the comment that, inevitably, the "smart boys" in this country and elsewhere, seeing such an enormous cake there which they might get a slice of, are forever trying to think up new ways of getting a slice, and it is extremely difficult for the civil servants ever to catch up with them.
There is a further weakness in the Bill which the noble Lord will not be surprised to hear about—it was referred to in the other House—and that is that the British Crown Colonies, notably Hong Kong and Gibraltar, are not put on the same basis as Great Britain with regard to these grants. The Bill as drafted, as the noble Lord has told us, permits grants to be paid on ships being built in shipyards in EFTA countries, which of course include Great Britain, and in Eire, without this new stringent balance-of-payments test, but not in British Colonies. British Crown Colonies are going to be subjected to the test just the same as any foreign country. In another place on the Committee stage there was an unusually wise Committee which amended the Bill and put the British Crown Colonies on the same basis as Great Britain. There are quite considerable shipyards in Hong Kong; they earn large sums of money, running into many millions of pounds a year, for this
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country; and therefore it seems only reasonable that they should be put on the same basis as shipyards here. But, unfortunately, wisdom did not prevail on the Report stage in another place. That decision was then reversed, and so the Bill as it comes to us now still discriminates against the Crown Colonies.
My Lords, there is nothing we can do about it, unfortunately, because it is a Money Bill. Therefore it is futile for me to try to amend the Bill; and I can do no more than comment on it. But it seems unfortunate that the form of the Bill discriminates against British Crown Colonies and that they are not put on as good a basis, even, as shipyards in EFTA countries, like Norway, who are competitors of course of ours. The British Crown Colonies have to go through the test, whereas the EFTA countries do not. I know that the Government's explanation is that to include our Crown Colonies would put us in breach of the GATT, and that to exclude the EFTA countries would put us in breach of our EFTA Convention. There are, unfortunately, precedents for it, but I am the last person to encourage them to do it again. Therefore I realise that we have to accept this unhappy little piece of discrimination; but it seems to me that this anomaly, which it undoubtedly is — I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, regrets as much as I do that the Bill discriminates against the Crown Colonies—really is a direct consequence of the structure of discretionary investment grants. Because the grant system operates in this way, it is inevitable that we get an anomaly of this kind. I think that is a great pity.
Noble Lords will have gathered that this little Bill has some unattractive features, although its objective is entirely commendable and is one which we welcome. Its objective is to control an abuse of the scheme, a scheme which helps our shipping substantially; and control of the abuse will save the taxpayers money. In that spirit I am happy to welcome it and to advise my noble friends to give it a Second Reading.
4.27 p.m.
LORD GEDDES: My Lords, I must first declare an interest in that I am a director of shipping companies and am also the immediate past president of the

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Chamber of Shipping which, as the noble Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, told us, has been discussing with the Treasury and the Ministry of Technology the way in which the balance-of-payments test will be administered. I do not propose, for my part, to enter into any wider argument about the investment grant system as a whole. Nor do I intend to compare the relative advantages for the shipping industry of investment grants and investment allowances. These are matters of immense significance; but the Bill we are considering this afternoon relates to present circumstances and not to what might be done at some future date. It is none the less important.
As I have said before in this House, the British shipping industry is justly and enormously proud of its contribution to the country's balance of payments. What has irked it until recently has been that the true facts have not been clearly and sufficiently appreciated. The latest version of the Pink Book produced by the Central Statistical Office goes a long way to correct past misunderstandings. In 1968 the net—and I emphasise "net "—contribution of the industry was £262 million, the largest single contribution by any industry to invisible earnings.
Because of this importance of shipping to the balance of payments; because of the international character of shipping operations, and because, also, of the vast sums of money at stake, I can well understand that Her Majesty's Government wish to satisfy themselves that applications for investment grant towards a new or converted ship should bring a net gain to the balance of payments. We as an industry do not quarrel, therefore, with this as a matter of principle. Indeed, we are glad to see from the way in which the test will be done that the Treasury have focused their attention on the flows of costs and benefits across the exchanges. These are what really count in calculating the value of an investment to the balance of payments.
The Chamber of Shipping has approached this general problem on much the same lines. It means, for example, that the more of the capital cost that can be raised abroad the better for the balance of payments. It means, too, that in this context freights earned in the carriage of imports count just as much as
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those earned in the carriage of exports or in the cross-trades. It means, finally, that profitability in the balance-of-payments sense is not the same thing as profitability in the sense of a profit-and-loss account. In the case of shipping, these can be widely different; though, clearly, the larger the accounting profit the larger the benefit to the balance of payments.
So far, my Lords, so good. But, equally, as a matter of principle, we must be certain that this new test, which is to be applied only to ships built or converted outside EFTA countries, is not intended in any way to restrict the freedom of British shipping companies to build wherever in the world they can find the best terms, in price, delivery and quality. That freedom is vital to us. For we are an industry with virtually no home market, wholly exposed to the keenest world competition. We must be able to build wherever our competitors can build. Otherwise, we are at a competitive disadvantage which will either hurt us financially or, more likely, lead us to decide not to build.
I believe that the Government have no intention in this Bill of restricting this freedom. But, to be plain, so much nonsense has been talked in another place about confining the investment grant to ships built in this country that I feel I must make the voice of the shipping industry heard. In fairness, the Government spokesman in the other place said, clearly and rightly, that the intention of the investment grant is to assist in maintaining the British merchant fleet. That will be achieved only if British owners can build wherever they judge the combination of cost, quality, delivery and punctuality will best suit their particular requirements. And so I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, when winding up for the Government, to give a clear statement of principle that this freedom is not to be impaired.
Equally, let me say clearly that the British shipping industry is opposed, as firmly as I believe the Government to be, to abuse of the investment grant system. We have heard a great deal of "brass plate" devices, whereby the investment grant might be effectively siphoned off to foreign companies. We were glad, therefore, to read the firm assurances given by the Government spokesman in another place that this could and would be

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stopped by the use of exchange control powers. But what I cannot quite understand—and I should be grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, would explain—is why those same powers, allied to the discretionary nature of the investment grant itself, would not suffice outside EFTA just as effectively as within EFTA. In other words, why is the Bill needed at all? Its powers are additional to exchange control powers. Are they a necessary addition or merely administratively convenient? It seems to me that there is a logical fallacy somewhere or other along the line.
Assuming, however, that there is a good and sufficient answer to my question and that the Bill is necessary, I do not quarrel with it as a piece of enabling legislation. I can well understand that to write the test itself into law in some form or other would be to make it much too inflexible. There have been, I know, fruitful discussions between the Treasury, the Ministry of Technology and the Chamber of Shipping aimed at making the test as clear, as simple and yet as comprehensive as possible. It would be wrong not to leave adequate scope for further change in the light of experience.
But there are three particular points that I should like to make. The first is that it seems to me a pity that the Government have refused to extend exemption from the test to ships built or converted in the Crown colonies, notably Hong Kong. The only reason given is that it is undesirable to widen the exemption beyond EFTA. Not very convincing, I am afraid. For in reality the only United Kingdom registered companies likely to want to build in Hong Kong would, I am sure, pass the test easily. Why make them go through such a hoop unnecessarily? Why treat, and be seen to treat, Hong Kong less favourably than EFTA, when there is no justification in practice for doing so? I find it hard to understand.
My second point concerns the scope of the test. The original Treasury Memorandum said:
"The purpose of the test will be to determine whether the transaction of which the payment of the investment grant forms part, viewed as a whole, is, in the judgment of the Treasury, detrimental to the United Kingdom balance of payments."
The crucial words are, "viewed as a whole". For often the operation of a
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particular ship cannot be considered just by itself. The breakthrough into a new market may mean the employment of a loss-leader. And in shipping there is a growing tendency to operate in larger groupings or consortia. Here, the benefit of a particular ship must be seen as but a part of the benefit of the whole operation. The Government spokesman in another place recognised this to some extent when he said:
"We will consider the operations of an individual ship in the context of the whole fleet, but it is still at the individual ship that one must look."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 20/1/70, col. 289.]
I think I can see what he means, but "as through a glass darkly". I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, in replying this afternoon, to be somewhat more specific, for this is an important point. It is only too likely that in any particular case the narrower view will be taken and the application will be turned down, with the result that the balance of payments will lose—which surely is just what the test is intended to prevent.
More generally, the real target of this Bill is the foreign-controlled United Kingdom shipping company, and I have made clear that we as an industry are opposed to the "brass plate" company being helped by the British taxpayer. But there are many foreign-owned companies with a longstanding and beneficial association —beneficial both to them and to our economy—with the United Kingdom. It is highly improbable that they have ever remitted profit back to their parent companies to the maximum degree possible. It is also highly probable that on capital account their remittances to this country have been considerable.
It would be quite wrong to overlook these important factors, although the balance-of-payment test does so, in that it treats the "brass plate" company and the genuine foreign-owned company in much the same way. Prominent in our minds must be the foreign oil companies operating from this country. Their ramifications in our industrial and commercial life are wide and pervading, and applications by them should be treated with full understanding and not in a narrow sense. They are not exempt from the full impact of our tax structure on their operations. It seems invidious to discriminate against them in the context

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of investment grants, and only in their shipping operations, not their wider activities.
My last point concerns a possible retroactive effect of the Bill. It exempts ships from the test where there was a binding obligation incurred before November 10, 1969. The Government elsewhere have defined a "binding obligation" as something which, if the applicant failed to meet it, could lead to his being sued in the courts. But the fundamental fact is that, in shipping, an undertaking between shipowner and ship builder for the construction of a ship can be entirely binding even if the contract is not signed for some considerable period after the initial undertaking. I can recall more than one case where the contract was ultimately signed when the ship was almost ready for delivery. The distinction between a legally binding and a commercially binding obligation is admittedly a fine one— too fine to incorporate in legislation. But I hope that in satisfying himself that there was a binding obligation the Minister will not study legal niceties too finely but will take fully into account the long standing and basic convention of the industry: in brief, that he will act reasonably, case by case.
My Lords, may I, finally, urge that this new test be administered swiftly as well as fairly? World shipping is a hard and fast-moving market. The completion of a complex and important contract can depend on knowing or not knowing for certain, within as short a time as a day, whether or not there will be an investment grant. The Treasury have assured us that they can, and will, act fast in such cases. But I must emphasise the need. British shipowners must be able to match their rivals in speed, skill and certainty. A ponderously administered test may save the balance of payments a little here and there, but it will almost certainly cost much more in business loss to the generality of British owners. Let us not be "Penny wise, and pound foolish".
4.40 p.m.
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, I am grateful to the two noble Lords who have spoken for the general welcome which they have given to the purpose of the Bill and the sympathy
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which they have expressed for its intention. I hope that I shall be able to reply at any rate to a number of the questions which they have raised in the course of their remarks and to the specific points addressed to me.
With regard to the scope of the Bill and its general effect and the situation with which it is designed to deal, I tried to put this matter into perspective when I moved the Second Reading. I of course agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, said about the long-established foreign-owned companies with subsidiaries in this country. Many of those companies have been here for many years and they play a well-recognised and appreciated part in British commerce and the development of trade. The noble Lord made a reference to the information which would be required about the activities of ships which attracted grant and the necessity over a period of time to see whether in fact the performance was measuring up to the expectations held out when the application for the grant was made and the grant was agreed.
I think it has to be borne in mind that under the provisions of the 1966 Act, as I indicated, the Minister of Technology already has power to require a good deal of information about the future of the ship in respect of which a grant has been applied for. Since this point has been raised, I should like to take the opportunity to say that in so far as any further information has to be procured, the obligation to provide that information will rest on the person who as shipowner has received the grant. It is not the intention of the Government to attach to grants any further condition which would have the effect of providing that a grant is repayable if the information given initially by the applicant about the construction and performance of the ship, its financing and the estimate of earnings, profits and so on should not be borne out in practice, provided that the information and estimates were given in good faith in the first place. The law provides penalties for the giving of deliberately false information, but where information or estimates are given in good faith and the facts turn out to be substantially different and show a detriment in the balance of payments, in our view the remedy would be to stop paying any more grant in that case.

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I am afraid that at this stage I cannot give the noble Lord any estimate of any additional burden which may fall on the public service as the result of the operation of this change, but I would emphasise that already a considerable amount of information has to be provided and scrutinised and kept under review as the result of the existing arrangements, and I should not think that the burden will be increased substantially.
The noble Lord asked why the Government delayed before taking this action. I think the reason is to be found in the fact that the Government were unwilling to interfere with the existing arrangements until it was quite clear that new arrangements were really necessary. The obvious leak which was stopped early in
1968 has already been referred to. The Government have now decided that it would be desirable, for reasons which I will try to explain a little more fully in a moment, to put this matter on a clearer and more permanent foundation.
In this connection the noble Lord asked why it was that the measure took this form; why in fact there was a form of words which so far as he was aware was unique. Perhaps I may explain or recall that the 1966 Act conferred on the Minister of Technology a discretionary power. The Act in general conveyed a discretionary power but of course we are concerned particularly with Section 5 which deals with ships. The Minister has a discretion to withhold grants in a particular class of case provided that he is willing to consider any individual application for grant made to him in order to decide whether it has any special features which would justify him departing from his general policy and declining to exercise his discretionary power in favour of the applicant in that case. It cannot be in any doubt that the policy of the 1966 Act is to provide financial incentives to investment in certain types of assets for certain purposes, but it is less likely that the considerations relating to the balance of payments are within the policy of the Act; and of course, as the noble Lord may well know, the precise extent of the Minister's discretion under the Act is still under consideration in the courts and a final appeal on this matter is still to be heard. In those circumstances, it appeared that the
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clearest and best way was to draft the present legislation in the form which it takes and which also, as I said earlier, underlines the fact that the Treasury is the Department which has a particular preoccupation with the balance of payments. Therefore it seemed right to frame the legislation in this way.
Perhaps at this stage I may also mention the point on which Lord Nugent touched and which was also touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Geddes: that is, why there was the necessity for this legislation since there appeared to be some facilities under the Exchange Control Acts for dealing with situations which did not seem to fall within the fundamental national purpose of the making of grants. The arrangements made in 1968 concerned a particular class of case which
it was normally possible to handle under the exchange control arrangements and to refuse consent where this was necessary, since the companies concerned were limited to those of recent establishment. It will be recalled that the scrutiny was limited to companies which had come into this field in this way since 1963, but it appeared to the Government that the new arrangements provided for in the present Bill were necessary; that they represented a more significant development in the general administration of investment grants and they provided a clear opportunity for the matter to be put before Parliament and to be considered, discussed and to be clearly covered in legislation. I hope that what I have said will explain to the House why these particular steps have been taken.
The noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford—I was not surprised that he did so— touched on the question of the respective merits of investment allowances and investment grants. I am sure that he would not expect me on this occasion to follow him into the whole of that field, but particularly in respect of the shipping industry it would hardly be a profitable thing to do at the present time because there can be little doubt that this is one of the matters to which attention will have been given by the Rochdale Committee. As we know, that Committee has reached the point at which we may expect the publication of its Report within a few weeks, and I should prefer us to wait and see whether we can debate this

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matter, if it is felt desirable to do so, at a later stage in the light of their examination of this problem.
Both noble Lords who have spoken referred to the question of Hong Kong and of the Crown Colonies in general. The whole purpose of this Bill is to make sure that when an investment grant is made, it will be for the benefit of the United Kingdom balance of payments and, if possible, we should prefer to have no
exemptions at all and to submit all applications to a scrutiny which would put this matter beyond doubt. But, as I have indicated, we are bound by our treaty obligations to make certain exemptions—for example, in the case of EFTA countries and the Irish Republic—but we wish to keep them to a minimum. In saying that, let me emphasise that we have very much at heart the interests of Hong Kong and other dependent territories. I think that it might reasonably be inferred, from what was said by my noble friend Lord Geddes, that the British owners who have been in the habit of having ships built or converted in Hong Kong should have little difficulty in passing balance-of-payments tests and in getting investment grants.
My noble friend asked me for an assurance that we have no intention of interfering with the freedom of the United Kingdom owners to order their ships wherever it is most advantageous for them to do so. I can certainly give him that assurance. My noble friend Lord Geddes then discussed the extent to which it was reasonable to take the examination of one individual ship rather than to look in a wider way at the operations of the company acquiring the ship. I think we can all appreciate the concern of my noble friend that where over the whole field of its operations a company is making a good and recognised contribution to the balance of payments, it may feel that it is rather hardly used if it cannot enjoy a grant on any ship built at any location while its competitors can do so.
I would say, first of all, that there is no question of any discrimination between companies so far as the balance-of-payments test is concerned. This is a straightforward, factual test, designed for the purpose its name indicates. It is an impartial test, and if the facts indicate that a particular transaction is
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unfavourable to the balance of payments, then the decision upon it is bound to follow from those facts, which would stem from the circumstances of the company's ownership, the proposed operations of the ship and so on.
My noble friend quoted what was said in another place about considering the operations of an individual ship in the context of the whole fleet but still having to look at the individual ship, and asked me whether I could be a little more specific than that. I am sorry not to be able to be more forthcoming, but I really do not think that I can be more specific than that. We are considering the operations of a ship in the context of the whole fleet of which it is part but still, at the end of the day, it is to the individual ship, in respect of which an application is being made, that we have to look and on which we have to make a decision.
I suspect that my noble friend may also have had in mind companies— indeed, he mentioned the oil companies —which are not only shipping companies but carry on shipping activities as part of a wider spectrum of business operations. I think my noble friend rather wanted us to turn our attention away from the effects of a particular transaction or application to a more general view of the company's contribution to the balance of payments. This is a very persuasive argument, but I hope that the House will not find it a compelling or conclusive one, because I think that there is some degree of illogicality about it.
Companies which have interests in the field of shipping and also in other fields freely enjoy investment grants where these apply on assets which are provided by other parts of their operations, and they enjoy them because there is reason to suppose that in these areas there is a gain to the United Kingdom economy as well as to the company as a result of investments which we may make. But there
cannot be an obligation on the Government to pay out public money in circumstances where there is likely to be injury to the balance of payments. The actions and decisions of the Government in a matter of this sort will have different effects on different companies, because the circumstances of those companies differ and any changes in policy will be to the disadvantage of some and to the relevant advantage of others. But

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I do not think that on those grounds the Government can be expected to refrain from action which is intended to promote the economy as a whole and its general benefit.
In conclusion my noble friend asked that the Government, in examining applications, should take a sympathetic view and should not be too narrowly tied to the letter of the law. I hope that we shall operate fairly, always reasonably and as swiftly as the circumstances of applications for grants permit, but I think we must of necessity operate within the terms of the law as it has been approved by Parliament. I trust that with these explanations which I have been able to give, your Lordships will be prepared to give this Bill, as has been recommended, an unopposed Second Reading.
LORD FARINGDON: My Lords, could my noble friend tell me whether Malta will be affected by this Bill and, if so, how?
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, speaking to the best of my information, I think that Malta would not be exempted from this Bill but I will go into the point and confirm or correct this to my noble friend.
On Question, Bill read 2a, Committee negatived.

FOOD AND DRUGS (MILK) BILL
House in Committee: Clauses agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.

COPYRIGHT (ROYALTIES ON RECORDS) BILL [H.L.]
5.0 p.m.
LORD WILLIS: My Lords, I hope that this is a measure that will commend itself to your Lordships' House, because it is a simple and straightforward one. It is in a sense a rescue operation, directed towards helping a small yet very important section of our population. It seeks to remedy an injustice which was recognised by Parliament as long ago as 1956, 14 years ago, but on which no action has yet been taken. This Bill is concerned
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primarily to improve the conditions of songwriters, composers and music publishers. It will also affect to some degree the interests of those companies who manufacture and produce gramophone records and other recordings of various kinds.
Before I go any further, I think I should declare a kind of negative interest, because it may be that at some time in the future, if this Bill is passed, I may well benefit. I am, as it were, a sort of failed lyric writer or lyricist. Some three years ago I wrote a book of lyrics for a musical which, after a successful out-of-London season, was booked for the West End. Just before it opened in London I wrote to the Performing Right Society— the organisation which collects money on behalf of composers, book writers and so forth—applying for membership and asking them to collect the performing rights for me. I imagined in my dreams that the 14 songs in the show would be sung and played on the radio and television; that there would be recordings and albums of sheet music, and that the money would begin to pour in. The Performing Right Society must be used to this sort of thing, because they sent me a polite little note in return which told me, in effect, not to count my chickens and to wait and see.
The show duly opened in London; the critics were almost unanimously disdainful, and it closed ten days later. Although some of the critics said some complimentary things about my lyrics, there were no broadcasts, no records, no publishing; and consequently no royalties. However, I have a bit of a taste for lyric writing, and it may be that one day I shall go back to it. If I do so, I hope that this Bill will then be the law and that I shall gel a reasonable return for my effort.
What I did not know when I wrote that unsuccessful musical was that my dream of a great torrent of royalties flowing into my packet was simply a dream, an illusion, and no more. The illusion was understandable, and it is one that is shared by a great many people: because success makes a good story, an interesting headline, an entertaining film; and nobody really wants to read about failure or about the average success. The public as a whole have little or no contact with, or experience

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of, composers and songwriters. What image they have has been provided by the newspapers, by the cinema or by television.
We read that a certain song has become a fantastic hit, and that the songwriter is going to make a fortune out of it. We read of fortunes made by people like Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein or the Beatles. We see Hollywood films in which a songwriter sits down at a piano, with a cigarette dangling from his lips, and in five minutes flat composes a song which becomes the rage of the world and makes him a millionaire. Or we see a film in which the young composer, with a fine Viennese haircut, struggles for years to write a concerto which is finally accepted by a great composer. It is a tremendous success, the audience, in their white ties rise to acclaim him, and from then on the young composer is rich and famous —and gets the girl.
My Lords, that may be entertainment, but it is not true. It has about as much relation to reality as Cinderella. Of course, there are songwriters and composers who do very well, just as there are a few, a handful, of very successful people in every profession. But these are the exceptions, the very rare exceptions. For every Cinderella among songwriters and composers who makes it rich, there are a hundred plain sisters who get left behind.
This Bill is concerned not with the highly successful few but with the many. It is concerned with the average, even successful, composer or songwriter whose works give immense pleasure to thousands of people, but who cannot make a consistent or fair living from his profession. I will give your Lordships in a moment some facts and figures which will prove this contention beyond any reasonable doubt, but I should like first to fill in a certain amount of essential background information.
A songwriter or composer earns his living from three different sources: first, from the sale of sheet music, on which he gets a fixed percentage of the sale price in the form of royalty; secondly, from performances of his work, the fees being collected in various ways by the Performing Right Society; and, thirdly, from a
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statutory royalty payable on the sale of gramophone records and similar recordings. This Bill is concerned only with the third type of income, that
which comes from recordings of all kinds. This royalty was first fixed by the
Copyright Act 1911. The manufacture of gramophone records was then in its infancy, and to provide some protection for songwriters and composers Parliament laid it down that the copyright owners (composers, songwriters and publishers) should be paid a fixed rate of 5 per cent. of the sale price.
In those days records were on one side only. But very soon the manufacturers and their backroom boys found a way of putting songs on both sides. The simpleminded among us might think that, since the producers were now getting two for one and putting two songs on each record, the songwriters would now get two royalties, 5 per cent. for each song. Not at all! Although when the publisher in the book world publishes two books by the same author the author enjoys two royalties, this does not apply so far as songwriters and composers are concerned. In fact, the royalty remained fixed at 5 per cent. per record, and though the manufacturer was getting two for the price of one, at one stroke the songwriter's income from records was halved. That was the first step in a long process of erosion (which has been going on ever since) into the financial position of songwriters and composers.
The next significant date is 1928, when a public inquiry was set up. This inquiry recommended an increase in the statutory royalty, on the grounds:
"that the value of money has fallen severely since the Copyright Act of 1911 was passed and the sale price of records has not risen to compensate for this drop in money value."
The royalty was then raised from 5 per cent. to 6¼ per cent. That, as I say, was in 1928.
We now move to 1956, when Parliament again took note of the matter when it debated what is now the Copyright Act of that year. The present Solicitor General, Sir Arthur Irvine, speaking in that debate in 1956, described the royalty of 6¼ per cent. as derisory. The Government of the time showed some sympathy with this view, but declined to alter the Bill or the statutory rate. Instead, the Copyright Act 1956 was amended to provide for a public inquiry to be set

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up by the Board of Trade after the Act had been in force for one year. The idea was that a new, more equitable, royalty should be fixed, and that this should be reviewed every five years.
My Lords, that was 42 years ago, and nothing has been done about this. No public inquiry has been set up by the Board of Trade, and no regular five-yearly review of the royalty rate has been carried out. Substantially, it has remained static since 1928. That surely must be an all-time record. Is there any other section of the public whose income is pegged to the 1928 value of the pound?
The pound to-day is worth about one quarter of what it was in 1928, and most people connected with the recording industry have had an adjustment, in common with other people. The wages paid to technicians, the salaries paid to recording engineers, have been increased to about six times the 1928 level. Prices have also been adjusted, the retailer's margin has been adjusted, profits and dividends have been adjusted, all to take into account the changed value of the pound. Everyone in the business has had some financial advancement except the people who are the cornerstone of the whole thing, the songwriters and composers, without whom there would be no records to make, no songs to sing, no music to entertain us.
I do not wish to stun your Lordships with statistics, but I should like to give you some fairly simple and relevant figures. We hear a lot about "hit" records and the "Top Ten". A "hit" record is one which probably sells about 100,000 copies. Forget all the stories you read about "golden discs" and so on—they are the freak, runaway successes, and they are very rare. The average record in the top ten will sell 100,000 copies, and that is considered to be a substantial success. There are, as I say, the odd freak successes which sell double or treble that number and even more; but they are the very rare exceptions.
Now 100,000 records, selling as singles at 8s, 6d, each, will bring in a total of £42,500. Of this, the copyright owners— the songwriters, composers and music publishers—will get about £2,000. I suppose that £2,000 out of £42,500 does not sound too bad, until you realise that there are two songs on each record, so
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that there are about six people who have to divide this sum between them. First of all, the music publishers take half, which leaves £1,000 for the songwriters and composer. This sum is then divided between them, and there may be a team of two or three people working on one song, so it is quite possible— in fact it is quite usual—for the writer of a "hit" song to end up with the princely sum of £250 for his success, as his share of the sale of records for which the public has paid £42,500.
From an equivalent revenue a novelist would make ten or twenty times as much in royalties. The Government themselves take in purchase tax fifty times more than the songwriter gets, and record manufacturers and artistes between them take sixty times more than the writers. And this, I would stress again, is for a success. When you remember the great mass of songs which sell 15,000 or 20,000 copies —and which are just as essential to the industry as the "hits"—then I think your Lordships will agree that Sir Arthur Irvine, in 1956, was being modest and controlled when he described the remuneration of songwriters and composers as "derisory".
The position is just as bad—or even worse—if you turn to long-playing records—the L.P.s. There may well be as many as 12 songs on one record. For every thousand sold at around £2 each, the songwriters will have just over £3 10s. to divide among themselves for each song. A serious composer, whose work might take a year to compose and cover both sides of an L.P., may be lucky to sell 1,000 records. Do you know what he would get for that year's work, my Lords? It would be £42. That is how we value these people who bring us so much pleasure. On low-priced budget L.P.s, which are basically a good thing, the songwriters or composers get about one-eighth of one per cent. as their share.
That is the background, my Lords; those are the figures, and there is the reason for this Bill. What we have here is an inverted pyramid in which the songwriter and composer is the tip of the pyramid, and above it is this huge superstructure of manufacturer, and so forth. I do not intend to go through each clause of the Bill because its purpose and intent is clearly explained in

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the Explanatory Memorandum. In brief, it seeks to amend Section 8 of the Copyright Act 1956, so that the royalty to be paid to copyright owners shall take into account the depreciation of the pound. In effect, it increases the royalty to about 12 per cent., which is what it should be if the position is to be restored to what it was in 1928, when the original royalty of 6¼ per cent. was fixed. However, instead of a percentage rate it provides for a fixed payment of 1½d. per minute of playing time per record.
Why a fixed rate instead of a percentage? There are two very good and cogent reasons. First, since the abolition of resale price maintenance there is in effect no fixed price. It is hardly possible to tie a royalty to an unknown and floating figure. That is, in effect, what we have with the abolition of resale price maintenance. A composer must sign a contract that he would have a certain percentage on records selling at 40s., only to find that this price could not be maintained, or was not maintained in the shops, and that in fact he was going to get a good deal less because the records were sold more cheaply.
The second reason—and this is probably more important—is that in the next few years we shall undoubtedly see tremendous technological advances in mechanical recording. Already it is possible to compress a programme which runs for over two hours into a cassette not much bigger than a paperback book or a tin of sardines. Just as the manufacturers were able, after 1911, to develop a two-sided record and thus effectively halve the royalty due to songwriters, so it will be possible very soon for dozens of songs to be compressed on to a single tape or recording. A percentage royalty would clearly be disastrous and unfair to the composers and songwriters. Those are the reasons why in this Bill we have gone for a fixed sum and not a royalty. I believe this is a sensible precaution, and it is one that works well in other fields. I have not yet heard any really sound arguments against it.
There is no magic about the idea of a fixed rate. If someone can suggest another way which will meet the problems I have outlined, I shall listen with interest. As I say, I have heard nothing yet which shakes me in my conviction
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that it is much better to have a fixed rate, especially bearing in mind these great technological advances that are going to be made in the next few years.
Finally, my Lords, the Bill provides that this whole situation shall be reviewed every five years by the Board of Trade, and it makes it an offence to pay a lesser rate of royalty than is laid down by the Bill. Both of these points are clearly sensible and reasonable precautions. Before I sit down I should like briefly to touch on one or two questions that have been raised in connection with this Bill, in conversation with various organisations and in the Press. First: why do the songwriters and composers not press for a public inquiry now? The answer is that the songwriters are organised in a very small guild, called the Songwriters' Guild, which has done yeoman work on behalf of songwriters in the past few years. But it is a very poor organisation, and it is estimated that it could cost them between £8,000 and £10,000 to brief the necessary counsel to appear on their behalf at an inquiry. It is something quite beyond their pocket or their possibilities.
Therefore, one has to reject the idea of a public inquiry—at least from their point of view—unless something else can be suggested which would take the burden of expense from them. The machinery may be there, but at the moment it is almost impossible for anyone to be able to afford to drive it. It has been suggested that the position of songwriters and composers is not really so bad because the increased volume of sales of records has more than compensated for the decline in the value of money. I think that any impartial survey would show that this is certainly not the case. Songwriters have been forced by economic necessity to take up other jobs, to enter publishing, while composers are forced to teach, to take pupils to make ends meet, and it is practically impossible for all but a tiny handful of people to make a living from their profession. In any case, the argument is a false one. Why should a man be penalised by his success? An increase in the volume of sales means that the song is more successful; and the 1928 Inquiry, commenting on this, took the very sensible view that the return to authors and composers should be correspondingly greater if there is

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greater use of their work. One does not penalise a man because his songs are being sung everywhere, and say that he does not really need any more money.
Finally, what is most important is that the songwriter and composer formerly enjoyed a very healthy income from the sale of sheet music. To-day, this has so declined as to be negligible. This decline is directly and mainly due to the increased volume of sales of recordings of all kinds. The songwriter has lost on the swings, in the sense that he has lost his sheet music royalties, and he has not gained on the roundabouts anything like sufficient real compensation.
The other question concerns the possibility that the price of records would be increased if the principle behind this Bill were to be adopted by Parliament. It is quite possible that there would have to be an increase; although I would point out, in all humility, that the Government, by making even a tiny concession in the matter of purchase tax, could more than cover the extra money required. But if composers and songwriters are denied a legitimate increase—an increase for which they have been waiting 42 years— because there is a fear that prices will go up, surely this is all wrong. What Parliament would then be saying to this small body of people is that they should indirectly subsidise this huge industry which has a turnover every year running into hundreds of millions of pounds.
My Lords, there can be nobody in this House, and I would think very few people outside it, who has not at some time derived pleasure and comfort from a song or a piece of music. The history of these Islands could be told through its songs. At moments of crisis, simple, sentimental, even "corny", songs have somehow caught the imagination and become something greater and more meaningful than even their composers intended— "Tipperary", "Keep the Home Fires Burning", "Roses of Picardy" in World War 1. And in the last war, such pieces of sentiment as, "We'll Meet Again", "Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover", and "Roll out the Barrel"— "corny" every one of them, but they were sung by millions of men as they marched out to war from 1939 onwards. We found during the last war how valuable it was to have broadcast music and
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songs in the factories. Who can possibly measure the value of a song, or of such songs, and who can imagine what life would be like without songs, without singing, and without music?
To look at the other side of the picture for a moment, I could name a dozen songwriters and composers who have written songs which we have all known, which we have all whistled, which we have heard literally thousands of times, and our gratitude to them is that they have died in abject poverty. It is for them, my Lords, for the songs and the songwriters who are to come, that I ask your Lordships to move this Bill forward to-day. Parliament made a firm promise, an implicit promise, in 1956. I am now asking that it should redeem that promise. My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.— (Lord Willis.)
5.24 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Willis, I start by declaring an interest, as I am a director of a small company that makes recordings. I do not think it is very much more profitable than he told us his experience was, although this particular company does not sell records to the public and therefore is not involved in paying these royalties. I have the greatest sympathy with the noble Lord. From the moment I heard of his Bill, and from the time I read it, I found myself in full sympathy with the contention that perhaps we are not being fair to our composers in the matter of the rate of royalty to which we entitle them. Certainly at a time like this, with floods of wage demands and strikes for increased pay, it is quite remarkable that, as the noble Lord has pointed out, the rate of reward for a composer remains to-day the same as it was in 1928.
However, I am bound to confess that when I had a chance of looking more closely at the Bill, and taking advice on it, I was not sure that it provided the right way to put matters right. Perhaps I may give some of my reasons. In the first place, as the noble Lord quite frankly told us, the Copyright Act 1956 contains a provision for the review of the rate that is paid. Section 8(3) gives the Board of Trade the right to hold a

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public inquiry if they consider that the royalty rate has ceased to be equitable; and the Board of Trade may as a result of such a public inquiry make an order varying the rate. It seems to me to be wrong to try to alter the law before this procedure has even been tried out. The noble Lord said that nothing had been done by the Board of Trade, but so far as I know no one representing the composers or the publishers has ever approached the Board of Trade with a request for a public inquiry. He made much of the fact that this was an expensive procedure. But of course there are other bodies in this field besides the Songwriters' Guild, and all of them have expressed their sympathy with the underlying cause that he has at heart. I will say a little more about the other bodies later in my speech.
I should have thought that surely the first step, if one wants to increase the rate of royalty, should be to do so under the present legislation, which gives an opportunity for seeking a public inquiry, before trying to introduce new legislation. Certainly this procedure worked well in 1928, when a public inquiry was held and the rate was raised from 5 to 6¼ per cent. Although I know your Lordships pride yourselves on the expertise available in this House, I suggest it is rather difficult to expect us to decide on the rate of copyright royalty. It is an immensely complicated subject and one which, to my mind, should be properly sorted out in front of a competent tribunal, to which lawyers, accountants and those concerned in the various organisations affected can give proper evidence. I am quite sure that the musicians have a good case, and I should like to see them go to a public inquiry.
The second doubt I have is whether the time basis suggested, l½d. per minute, is indeed preferable to the present percentage basis, which stands at 6¼ per cent. It would, it seems to me, discourage the sale of cheap records. The noble Lord implied—in fact, I think he said—that the composers were suffering from the numbers of cheap records that were sold. To some extent this is true; to some extent, I should have thought, the opposite was true. He mentioned a record that could no longer support itself in the shops at 40s.—I think that was the figure he mentioned. If the alternative
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were to cease selling that record, the composer would get nothing. As it is, there are now these cheap labels and the record continues to be sold at a cheaper price, and the copyright owner continues to receive the same percentage royalty as he would have done before. To introduce a fixed sum per minute would undoubtedly discourage companies from issuing the cheaper records which sell in many thousands.
The only other country that works its copyright royalty payments on a time basis is the United States of America, and even there considerable effort has been made to change it and make it into a percentage system. An Amendment to the copyright law was moved in the Senate last August, and for very much the same reasons that I am trying to argue this evening.
The other point to be made on the percentage basis is that all other European countries use it, and therefore all the countries within the Common Market use it, and if we are considering joining the Common Market it would obviously have advantage if we continued to use the same system as they use rather than switching to a fixed rate per minute system. Another much smaller, but interesting point that was put to me, was that the l½d. suggested by the noble Lord does not lend itself easily to conversion to decimal currency, though if he had chosen l¼d. it might have been much easier.
There is another rather more detailed objection to Clause 1(d); namely, the introduction into Section 8 of the 1956 Act of a new subsection (12). The position at present is that a copyright owner may make an agreement with a commercial firm for the exclusive use of his music on a record which is not for
sale but which is used for free distribution for advertising purposes. I believe this is true at the moment, for example, of the song "Tea for Two", which is used by Brooke Bond and Company Limited. This is a right which at the moment the copyright owner enjoys; he can arrange the rate direct with the advertising firm, and to remove this right will only make the copyright owner suffer. He will be giving up a right that he has at the moment, and it is most unlikely that a commercial firm would wish to use a song in a similar fashion if it was open

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to anybody else to use it as well. Frankly, I do not see how this subsection helps the cause of the copyright owner at all.
The last point I wish to make is on the question of the other bodies concerned in this matter. Perhaps I may briefly describe who they are and what they do. There are six of them. The Songwriters' Guild and the Composers' Guild between them represent the writers of music; the Music Publishers' Association represents the publishers; the Mechanical Rights Society negotiates agreements on behalf of owners with the record companies. The Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society Limited collects royalties for British owners of copyright, and the British Copyright Protection Society collects royalties for overseas owners, it is somewhat complicated, the more so because all these bodies are known by initials; but I have mentioned these six bodies simply to make the point that of all six of them only the Songwriters' Guild supports this Bill. The others are in varying degrees opposed to it, not because they are not sympathetic to he composer and the copyright owner, but for the general reasons that I have tried to give, that this is not the right way to set about improving the situation. That is my feeling, too, my Lords.
I have great sympathy with the motives that impelled the noble Lord to bring forward this Bill. I would go further, and say that he has done a real service in highlighting this situation. I would hope that as a result of what he has done it may well be that these bodies will get together and ask the Board of Trade for a public inquiry. But I hope the noble Lord will feel that he does not need to press this Bill too far.
5.35 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, we had a moving oration from the noble Lord, Lord Willis, on the subject of keeping the home fires burning on the white cliffs of Dover, and I was indeed moved. However I could have wished that he had spent a little more time on explaining some of the more detailed reasons for the changes that he wishes to introduce.
I have no interest to declare in this debate, the reason being that I have no particular expertise. But it is possibly as well that one Member of your Lordships'
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House should query some ideas in this Bill which do not by themselves seem to be self-evident. For instance, if I correctly understood the noble Lord, Lord Willis, he said that the royalty was tied to the 1928 value of the pound, and was one of the few things that was so tied. But surely this is not so. Surely the royalty is tied to the sale price of the record, which has changed since 1928. The noble Lord said that the value of the pound had decreased to a greater extent than the price of the records had increased since that time. But one would have particularly liked to know the result of a comparison between the value of the pound and the cost of records since 1956, when the royalty rate was established because that would provide some key as to whether in point of fact since 1956 the songwriters and others have been "losing out."
I entirely agree with the noble Lord that, on the figures he has given, it would be better if the songwriters and other owners of the copyright could get a better deal, but I am loth to abandon the principle of a percentage increase, because even during the period of the five years between the Board of Trade inquiries which the noble Lord would make compulsory, and with which I have some sympathy (though I shall say a further word or two about them later), the percentage method catches up to a certain extent with the cost of living and the decrease in the value of the pound. It is highly unlikely that the cost of living will go up and the cost of records will go down. Almost certainly there will be some way in which the cost of records will go up.
The change in the methods of production seemed to me to be a valid point which the noble Lord put forward, but in effect what he wants to do is to have a situation where the changes in the method of production are looked after by this permanent arrangement of 1½d. a minute, and the changes in the cost of living—changes in the value of the pound sterling—are looked after by Board of Trade inquiries every five years. I would rather see a situation which it seems to me is dealt with to a certain extent by the 1956 Act, whereby the change in the value of the pound is looked after by means of a percentage system; and changes in the method of production

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could well be the moment when there should be investigations by the Board of Trade as to whether there should be a change in the method of assessing royalties.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, when he says that we should have liked to see some real effort made to invoke the present system before it is changed. Let us see whether or not it works. Indeed, it may have been that an Unstarred Question in your Lordships' House, asking for such an inquiry, would have had support from many parts of the House. Moving on to the question of the Board of Trade inquiries themselves, I do not know why it is that a Board of Trade inquiry at the present time is so expensive for bodies like the songwriters, whereas if it was held compulsorily every five years it would not be so expensive. It may be that the reason is that the only subject such an inquiry would be required to examine would be the value of the pound sterling; but, if so, that would seem unduly to limit their consideration, if they are to make changes in royalties. It seems to me just as costly to have that kind of quinquennial review as to have the occasional one we should be having now.
Lastly, apart from a passing phrase to say that it was obviously a good idea, the noble Lord did not say why this Bill of his
"renders the sale of a record in respect of which any less sum is paid by way of royalty an actionable infringement of copyright".
It seems, on the face of it, a sensible suggestion; but, since it does not appear to replace any particular provision in the 1956 Act, why was it not in the 1956 Act? That is a question I think we should like answered. Were there good reasons then which have now come to an end? To sum up, I think there are a
large number of questions which the noble Lord, Lord Willis, has not fully explained and which I hope he may be able to explain. On the face of it, it seems to me that the present system, produced by Parliament in 1956, has not been given a fair trial, that it has a very considerable weight of argument in its favour and that we certainly should not change it lightly or inadvisedly.
5.43 p.m.
LORD CAWLEY: My Lords, about eighteen months ago I introduced in your Lordships' House a Bill from another place to amend the Copyright Act 1956, and it finally became the Design Copyright Act 1968. The noble Lord, Lord Willis, did not speak against my Bill, and I hope he will not think it churlish of me if I point out various defects which I think are fatal to his present Bill. There is obviously necessity for legislation on this matter and legislation quickly, because when the Resale Prices Act 1964 was passed the draftsman failed to notice that he was depriving a phrase in the Copyright Act 1956 of any meaning, the phrase being "ordinary retail selling price". That phrase no longer has any meaning, and, so far as I can see, it puts the whole royalty system into a state of confusion and uncertainty. I think that in all probability the present royalty rate of 6¼ per cent. is very low, but the Act of 1956 supplies a perfectly reasonable method of having this rate reviewed; and I must say that I think the estimate of the amount of money spent on counsel at a public inquiry is grossly exaggerated.
Copyright law is a very difficult subject and nothing is simple or straightforward, as suggested by the noble Lord. Some of your Lordships may remember that when the Copyright Bill was before this House in 1956 it was taken
by the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft. He had been a pupil at the Bar of Mr. Skone James who was possibly the greatest authority on copyright in this country. We spent many hours on the Bill here, and honourable Members spent many hours on it in another place, but I think I can say that the Act that was produced bristles with ambiguities and is as full of lacunae as is sponge. In particular I would refer to Section 9(8) which was put into the 1956 Act for the first time and which has amazed the Court of Appeal and caused tremendous trouble. That is only one of the difficulties that arise in copyright law, and even my little Bill, or the little Bill that I introduced into this House, has produced various side effects that I did not realise would be attributed to it when I introduced it.

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This present Bill is, in my view, unsound for various reasons. First, "playing time" has the meaning which shall be prescribed to it by the Board of Trade. "Playing time" is a phrase which is beset with difficulties. For example, the same piece of music played under two different conductors may have quite a different time, so you get two records of the same piece that pay different royalties to the composer. I am told that there is a new type of music called aleatoric music, of which I knew nothing until yesterday, and in this the composer merely produces the framework and apparently the artists fill in the gaps. When dealing with playing time, a point of that sort would I think raise considerable difficulties.
What this Bill does is to put an onus on the Board of Trade to produce a definition that covers playing time. It further appears that this definition will be immutable; that once the Board of Trade has prescribed playing time, nobody can do anything about it; it will have a given definition. I feel that it is the duty of Parliament to decide what "playing time" means and not hand it over to the Board of Trade. Indeed, in the 1956 Act, in Section 7, which deals with the supply of copies of articles from periodicals to libraries, Parliament has laid down a number of criteria which the Board of Trade use when making regulations under that section. There certainly should be some form of criteria that the Board of Trade should follow in deciding what "playing time" means in this Bill.
We have heard a certain amount about the action against someone for infringement in the case of a record which is sold to the public and on which an insufficient royalty has been paid. It appears that the Bill as it stands would make it a tort on the part of a retailer to sell a record on which the manufacturer has not paid a sufficient royalty. It appears to me also that the copyright owner would have no right of action against the manufacturer; he would have a right of action merely against the innocent retailer. I do not know whether that is the interpretation put by the Parliamentary draftsman upon Clause 1(b), but it is the one that seems to me to be the correct one.
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The question of minimum royalty has been raised. Of course, as my noble friend Lord Aberdare said, it is in our present monetary notation and not in the form of ·625p, which is, I believe, the conversion. In view of the fact that we are going to convert to decimals next February and that this Bill will not come into operation for six months after it has been passed, I think some effort should be made, if the Bill does get to the Committee stage, to convert this sum into a decimal payment. Another point arises as to why, after five years, the only reason that can be adduced for changing the rate of royalty is in relation to the purchasing power of the pound sterling. Surely, as the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, said, the change of the processes used in making records must be relevant and the inquiry cannot be confined merely to the change of the value of the pound sterling. I would conclude by asking whether the noble Lord, Lord Willis, has considered the question of the cost of collection. It might easily be considerably higher than the present royalty on selling price rate. I am not averse to a change in the law on royalties, but I consider that the present Bill does not fulfil the purpose for which it was introduced.
5.51 p.m.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I should like at once to express sympathy with the thought behind the Bill which the noble Lord, Lord Willis, has so eloquently introduced. I am only sorry that on this occasion he will not get the "girl", if I may use that euphemism, thinking of the Government in the feminine sense.
I should like to underline what various noble Lords have already said. We have had mentioned the interests of another group concerned with this Bill in the person of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. We have also had the layman who has taken a very intelligent and knowledgeable look at the Bill in the person of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, and we have had the splendid analysis from the noble Lord, Lord Cawley, who is extraordinarily skilful in this matter, as I know from the baptism of fire that I had when I had to deal with the original Trade Descriptions Act. I would merely repeat to the noble Lord, Lord Willis,

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some of the points which have already been raised and which make the Bill defective.
The Explanatory Memorandum on the Bill is said to amend the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956, to take account of the Resale Prices Act 1964, and of other factors which render the existing royalty rate inequitable. The royalty prescribed by the Act is 6¼ per cent. of the ordinary retail selling price of the record and, because it is a percentage, it of course automatically takes account of changes in the price of gramophone records. The noble Lord, Lord Willis, said, of course, that the royalty is too low, and he also mentioned that the figure of 6¼ per cent. was decided on after a very full inquiry in 1928. But I must remind him that there were 20 witnesses representing music publishers, composers, lyric writers and record manufacturers, all of whom gave evidence.
If the copyright owners, or the record industry, feel that the rate should be revised there is, as we have heard, Section 8 of the Copyright Act which gives the Board of Trade power to hold a public inquiry into the royalty rate and, if the inquiry reveals a need for it, to make an order changing the rate. As your Lordships have already heard, no request has been made for such an inquiry. It appears to be a sensible and equitable means of setting the current rate, and no
good reason has so far been advanced by the noble Lord for ignoring this machinery and making the arbitrary choice proposed by the Bill. I take his point about the cost, but I think this has been disposed of in subsequent discussion.
As to the effect of the Bill on the price of gramophone records—and the noble Lord, Lord Willis, made much of this point—the royalty on a record with a playing time of 40 minutes and selling at 14s. 6d. would be 9d. under the existing Section 8 of the Copyright Act, and the proposed Bill would make it 5s. Even a record costing £2 and having a playing time of 40 minutes on which the royalty is at present 2s. 6d., would show an increase in the royalty of 100 per cent.
However, I can give the noble Lord, Lord Willis, a little comfort. It is true that since resale price maintenance in gramophone records came to an end, the wording of the regulations framed under
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the Copyright Act may not be quite apt for enabling the royalty to be calculated —though there is the point about the highest price at which it is sold—because the connection between the marked or catalogued price and the actual selling price cannot any longer be relied on. Some change in the wording of the regulations may prove to be desirable, and Board of Trade officials have been consulting the Mechanical Rights Society and the British Record Producers' Association and are awaiting their replies.
As the noble Lord, Lord Cawley, has pointed out, there is a further defect in Clause 1(b). The note which I have received suggests that the effect is not clear, and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Willis, could make his point when he finally winds up the discussion. Taking into account the defects within the Bill, I should like to repeat what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, that I hope the noble Lord, Lord Willis, will not feel that he needs to press the Bill at this time.
5.56 p.m.
LORD WILLIS: My Lords, perhaps I may say to my noble friend that in this particular debate it was not so much the girl I was after as the money. In that sense, I do not think that we have received a great deal of comfort. A number of the points that have been made have been really points of detail which one would normally thresh out in Committee. However, perhaps I may just deal with one or two of the arguments that have been raised—and I should like to refer first to all the points that have been made about this question of the public inquiry.
The history of this matter goes back quite a long way. I was trying to be a little careful in my opening speech, for reasons which I think will probably be obvious to your Lordships. All I will say is that one must remember that in this field there are powerful vested interests who are not concerned and do not want any particular change in royalty. Therefore at a public inquiry they are able, because of their resources, to deploy the greatest legal brains, accountants, and so on; and to compete against that is a pretty hefty proposition.
The second point is that one should remember that these vested interests overlap in a great many areas, and in fact

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some of the other organisations in the industry are to some extent so dependent upon the great record manufacturers that it is very difficult for them, as it were, to go out on a limb. I am trying to put it as tactfully as I can, but I think your Lordship will probably get the drift of what I am saying.
We are here dealing literally with a situation that occurs quite rarely, I suppose, where we have on the one hand a little group of creative people, with very few resources, and on the other a very large body of vested interests. I am not saying that they are necessarily bad vested interests—on the contrary. But clearly they have their business to attend to; and the less they have to pay out the better. And they have very long arms and very great influence. Those points have to be borne in mind when we hear in this debate about the reluctance of some others to come forward.
The little Song Writers Guild did, in fact, reach a situation some years ago when it got together some of these other organisations with a view to invoking the 1956 Act and getting a public inquiry going. However, at the last moment, alas!, most oil the other organisations dropped out, and it was not possible to get unanimity on the need for a public inquiry. Why some of them should suddenly drop out, after showing great enthusiasm at the beginning, must be left to the imagination; but that was the situation. Whether it would be possible to get them all together now, and press for a public inquiry, I do not know. It might be worth having another try. But one has to bear in mind these two points that I have made about the cost and about the vested interests.
The point was made about budget records, and I think that on this point there was some confusion in the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. A budget record is not a record that has been turned out at £2 and is marked down because it cannot be sold; a budget record is a record that is deliberately turned out to be priced at about 15s., and to hit a certain market. Naturally, of course, if a certain number of records are processed at £2 each, and if half of them remain unsold, it is in everybody's interests that they should be marked down and sold. Long-playing records which
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are sold at 14s. 6d. or 15s., and which are deliberately turned out on a budget basis, are a much different proposition. I accept the point made by the noble Lords, Lord Cawley and Lord Aberdare, about the decimal and the 1½d. and that is something which clearly could be adjusted.
I was asked by the noble Lords, Lord Beaumont of Whitley and Lord Aberdare, about the removal of the right of the copyright owner to sell music outright. Again, this is a rather long and complicated question and it has a great history. The history of songwriters and composers, many of whom have died in poverty, is littered with cases of people who have sold copyrights on very valuable material outright and lived to regret it afterwards. Unfortunately, there is a large number of these people whom one has to protect, as it were, against their own circumstances. There are many people who would be quite prosperous today if they had not been "broke" on one occasion, walked into a music publisher's or producer's office and sold outright quite a valuable copyright. It is impossible to stop them from doing this unless some restraint is, so to speak, put on the other side. Just as with door-to-door salesman we now have a 36-hour or three-day thinking period, we need protection, if not necessarily what we have in the Bill, so that copyright owners do not sell on the spur of the moment without adequate protection or thought. That is the purpose behind the provision. I am sure that some way could be devised of not interfering with those people who write advertising jingles and so on and who want to sell them outright.
The noble Lord, Lord Cawley, made a point about getting a criterion for "playing time". I must say that I do not agree with his pessimism on this matter. There is clearly a certain limit to the speed at which one can play a piece of music. One conductor will play it a good deal faster or at a greater tempo than another, but the frontiers between which that piece of music can be played are not so very extensive—a minute or two either way. So I do not think that that is necessarily something which should worry us. I do not share the noble Lord's views about the difficulty of finding a criterion. I take his

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point about the complications of copyright law. The more I have gone into this subject, the more I realise how complicated it is in many ways. I once spent the worst two days of my life in Berne at a copyright convention, where I am quite sure I did not understand a word, from morning till night, throughout the entire conference. But I came home an acknowledged expert among my friends on the subject of copyright.
I have been turning over in my mind, in the light of the debate to-day, whether I should keep the option open and ask your Lordships to give this Bill a Second Reading, or whether I should withdraw it for further consultation among the organisations mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, with the possibility, if they were unsuccessful, of reintroducing the Bill later on, perhaps in an amended form. In these circumstances, and in view of the fact that I do not think one speaker has supported the Bill, though there has been obvious sympathy for the plight of songwriters, I shall not ask your Lordships to give the Bill a Second Reading on this occasion. As I said, we shall try to get together at these consultations to see whether we can back a proper public inquiry; and if that fails we can reintroduce the Bill in an amended form to meet some of the objections. I beg leave to withdraw the Bill.
Motion for Second Reading and Bill, by leave, withdrawn.

EXPERIMENTS ON ANIMALS: THE LITTLEWOOD REPORT
6.5 p.m.
LORD SILKIN LORD SILKIN rose to ask Her Majesty's Government:

1. When they propose to introduce legislation to implement the Littlewood Report;

2. What information they now have as to the export of animals for research and whether they will introduce legislation at an early date to control the export of animals for research so as to restrict the export to countries where the law against cruelty to animals is equivalent to our own.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, the questions which I am asking Her Majesty's Government are really two aspects of the same subject: the use of animals for experiment and research, and the avoidance of pain. I am glad that this matter, although it is raised only in the form of a Question, has aroused a certain amount of interest in this House, and it is quite understandable since this House is peculiarly concerned with the welfare of animals. It has been shown to be so over a long period of years, and I hope that this concern will long continue.
The first part of my Question is an inquiry as to whether, and when, the Government propose to implement the Littlewood Report, which is concerned entirely with animals used for research in this country. The second part of the Question relates to the export of such animals. To deal with the first part, a Departmental Committee under the chairmanship of the late Sir Sydney Littlewood was set up by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, on May 23, 1963, when he was Home Secretary. It was a result of a considerable amount of pres-sure from animal lovers and those concerned with this subject. The purpose of the Committee was, quite simply, to consider the present control over experiments on living animals, and to consider the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876, how it was working after nearly a century and what changes in that Act or in its administration were desirable. Surprisingly, the Act of 1876 was a most enlightened one. It was the result of many years of pressure, and I think it can be regarded as one of the best Acts of the second half of the nineteenth century. But there have been enormous developments since 1876 in the use of animals in research and for experiment.
When the Act was first in force, under 1,000 experiments on animals were carried out each year. In 1906 the number had risen to some 3,800. To-day the number has grown to approximately 5 million. As medical knowledge and experience have developed, and the use of drugs for curative and even, we now learn, for sterilisation purposes has become commonplace, it has been thought necessary to test drugs more and more on appropriate animals. I am not one of those who complain about the use of

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animals for this purpose, but there is a very strong body of opinion in this country which holds that the use of animals for experiment is unnecessary and cruel, and that the same objects could be achieved in some other way.
For the purpose of this discussion I am prepared, without prejudice, to accept the fact that animals are necessary for the purpose of carrying out research. My sole interest in this matter is the avoidance of pain, particularly acute pain, following these experiments, and to see that where acute pain is unavoidable an end is put to the life of the animal as speedily and as painlessly as possible, once the experiment has been completed. I need not enlarge on this aspect of the matter because I am sure that every Member of this House agrees with these objectives. Nevertheless, with the passage of time and the immense growth in the number of experiments, to which I have just referred, defects and inadequacies in the Act have become manifest, and it must be made to fit in with the tremendous developments which have been made and with present-day conditions. It was for that reason that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, decided to set up the Littlewood Committee.
At this stage I should like to put in a word about the implementation of the Reports of Select Committees and Committees generally. As I have said, the Littlewood Committee were appointed in May, 1963. They published their Report after deliberations which lasted for nearly two years. They saw a large number of witnesses, professional and scientific; representatives of public bodies concerned with the welfare of animals; scientific organisations and laymen. They finally completed their Report to the Minister on February 19, 1965—five years ago. The Report is a monumental piece of work. It contains 87 recommendations, of which more than half would require legislation for their implementation and the remainder of which could be dealt with administratively.
It is most discouraging to anybody who is asked to serve on a Committee of this kind, and who devotes some years of his life to it, to find at the end of the day, when the Report is eventually submitted, that it is ignored by the Government. No wonder there is a certain
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amount of cynicism about these Committees! They are regarded in many quarters—and perhaps not unjustifiably— not as a method of giving the Government information, following a detailed investigation, in order that they may take appropriate action, but merely as a way of shelving a problem which has become somewhat inconvenient. I recognise that the Report was initiated by the previous Government, but this is not a Party matter, and I deplore the fact that it has taken so long, without result—five years—as I deplore, speaking generally, the frequent ignoring of these Reports once they are made. It is certainly no inducement to anybody to serve on such a Committee to know that as likely as not all the work he puts into it may well prove abortive.
I do not wish to go into the Littlewood Report in any detail. There has been no amending legislation to the 1876 Act since it was first passed. There was an inquiry in 1912, but no specific action was taken. It is alleged that there is a certain amount of duplication about these experiments, and that they could be curtailed. This is one of the points to which the Report draws attention; but I do not wish to express any view on this. Scientific and technical knowledge and skill have increased so much since 1876 that there is obviously a need, as the Littlewood Committee recommend, for a substantial amendment of the Act to make provision for the entirely new conditions and circumstances in which experiments are being carried out to-day.
The matter of the Report has been raised in another place from time to time, and I would refer particularly to an Answer given by Miss Alice Bacon to a. Question on November 17, 1966. She admitted that there was considerable sympathy in all parts of the House for a Bill to deal with this matter. She said that inquiries were then being made— this was over three years ago—of 16 organisations, that 10 had submitted views, and so on. She implied that as soon as all the replies had come in she would deal with this matter. As I say, that was over three years ago. Surely there has been ample time for the Government to act.
We all recognise the value of these experiments to mankind, and even to animals themselves, and nothing I have

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said should be regarded as in any way hostile to the practice of conducting, humanely, experiments on animals—although it may be as well to make it abundantly clear that there is no alternative to carrying out these experiments. I hope that the Government will be able to-day to give a definite assurance that early action involving legislation and administration will be taken in carrying the Report into effect.
Now I come to the second part of the Question; namely, whether the Government will introduce legislation at an early date to control the export of animals for research so as to ensure that these animals are not exported for research to countries where there is no provision for ensuring the avoidance of pain, both during and after the experiments. In this country we are assured that an animal does not suffer pain during an experiment by its being rendered unconscious during the experiment, either by the use of anæsthetics or by some other means; and where the animal on recovery is suffering acute pain, there is a requirement in the 1876 Act that the animal should be put to death.
These are very strict requirements, and there is a body of inspectors appointed by the Home Office to ensure that, so far as possible, they are strictly adhered to. Indeed, the Littlewood Committee's Report recommends certain ways of strengthening these safeguards. Nevertheless, we appear to be indifferent to the fate of these animals once they are exported. No licence is required for the export of animals for research. We do not even know how many are exported; and so far the Government have taken no steps to ascertain the number or any information about the fate of these animals. But we do know that the number is very considerable and that it is growing. We also know that a number of breeding establishments have been set up for the express purpose of providing animals for export and that this is a growing business. We further know that in a number of countries these experiments are conducted in a very inhumane way.
The noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, when introducing his Bill some time ago, referred to certain pictures of animals treated in a very cruel
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way indeed. When the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, came to reply he rather made light of it by saying that these are not animals which have been imported into the country; that they are their own animals. But as I understood the noble Viscount, the point of referring to it at all was not to show that these are
animals which are being exported from this country but to indicate the way in which that particular country regards animals which are being used for research. I think he made his case. Some countries are better than others; but few have legislation corresponding with the 1876 Act in this country.
When the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, introduced his Bill there were a number of very powerful speeches, particularly one by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, speaking for the Home Office. Every speaker expressed his sympathy with the purposes for which the Bill was introduced; but almost every speaker also pointed out the impracticability of its terms, and eventually the noble Viscount, to my regret, with-drew the Bill. I should have liked to see it get a Second Reading and go into Committee and then to see what we could have made of it; but he thought discretion the better part of valour and withdrew the Bill.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, was not the Bill put to the Question and the Second Reading lost?
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, may I intervene? I withdrew the Bill because it was obvious that the opposition was so great.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, I beg the noble Viscount's pardon.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I should like to comment on that point. The opposition among those who spoke was great; but I should have hoped that if the view of the House as a whole had been tested the result might have been different. But these are tactics; I do not blame the noble Viscount.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, it was rather a thin Chamber; there were very few people in the Library. My information was that it would have been rather a waste of time to proceed.
LORD SILK1N: My Lords, probably the noble Viscount was right.
I was saying that in another place several Bills have been introduced but none of them, mostly for lack of time, has been able to get a Second Reading. I do not wish to minimise the great difficulties which would face such a measure as that introduced by the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, or one that I had in mind to introduce. These difficulties were fully set out in speeches by the noble Lord, Lord Molson, and by other noble Lords in this House who spoke with great authority. The noble Viscount's Bill placed on the exporter the onus of deciding whether the country to which he desired to send his animals had legislation corresponding with our own. I recognise that this was too great a burden on the exporter; and I also realise the possibilities of avoidance. As I have said, I have myself drafted a Bill which would have required a licence from the Home Office before any animal could be exported for experimental research. It would have been for the Home Office itself to decide what were the conditions in the country to which the export was proposed. I admit that this, too, would have been somewhat invidious.
There are very few countries which have any legislation at all on the subject
and it might have meant that in practice no animal would be exported for research and experiment. I certainly do not wish to go so far as that. I realise that there is an important interchange of trade, if I may so call it, of animals for research. Possibly, if we were to introduce a measure as drastic as that, we should suffer by not getting certain animals that we require for our own research. There are countries where, although there is no legislation on the subject, the practice is very similar to our own. I should not wish to bar the export of animals to those countries. But where it is notoriously evident that there is no such legislation or practice, then we ought to be firm in refusing permission for the export of such animals to those countries until we are satisfied that the conditions are suitable. At any rate, there should be an obligation to obtain a licence to export to a specified consignee and the Home Office should satisfy itself as to the bona fides and suitability of the con-
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ditions under which the animal would be dealt with.
A further problem has now arisen in connection with the breeding of animals that will, I am sure, accentuate the difficulties which already exist. We are all concerned that, as laid down in the Act of 1876, these experiments should be conducted with the minimum of pain for the animal. It is ironic that while we are genuinely concerned with what happens to them in this country, we appear to be indifferent when these animals are sent abroad. While I recognise the great difficulties, indeed, the impossibility, of exercising control once the animals leave our shores, I feel that control of a sort ought to be exercised, probably by means of a licence.
I think that that is all that I am in a position to say about the matter. I hope I have not been too dogmatic about this problem. Although in my Question 1 have indicated that the control of exports by the Home Office is a solution, I would not necessarily insist upon that. It may well be that the right thing would be for the Government to sot up a new Commission to look into the question of the export of animals for research and experiment. If they did, I should like to see a Commission with fairly wide terms of reference, including an inquiry as to whether it is really necessary to use animals for this purpose. There is in this country a strong feeling that it would be a good thing to have an authoritative view—I am not expressing an opinion myself—about whether there is no alternative, in the Interests of mankind, to the use of animals for the purpose of experiment and research. This is the question which I beg to put, and I hope that the noble Lady, whom I congratulate on the very important part she is playing this afternoon, will be able to give a satisfactory answer.
6.31 p.m.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, the main subject of this Unstarred Question is a Report widely acknowledged as most informative and balanced. In addition to his great services to medicine and the law, this is surely a remarkable document for which the late Sir Sydney Littlewood will be gratefully remembered. It is curious that in neither House has the Littlewood Report ever been fully debated. We are, therefore, indebted to

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the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for giving us this opportunity for discussion and to ask Her Majesty's Government their intentions.
At the beginning of his remarks, the noble Lord gave the House some statistics to demonstrate the importance of this matter. On February 18, 1966, just about the time of Miss Alice Bacon's Parliamentary Reply, in a reply to an adjournment debate in the House of Commons on the theft of pet animals Mr. Maurice Foley said:
"I hope, however, that I shall not be out of order in reminding the House that my right honourable friend intends to give very careful consideration to the Departmental Committee's recommendations as soon as he has received views from all of the interested bodies."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons; 18/2/66, c. 1800.]
The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, referred to those bodies. Well, my Lords, four years later, and seven years from the time that my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor appointed the Littlewood Committee, the Minister remains silent on this Report.
We on this side of the House have, as you might say, given notice that we are deeply interested in this question. My noble friend Lord Brooke raised the matter on the debate on the gracious Speech at the beginning of this Session. Twice last year the noble Earl, Lord Forteseue, tabled a Question. On the second occasion, November 20 last, it was the noble Baroness, Lady Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, who told the House that Her Majesty's Government were very sympathetic; that they intended to legislate but could find no guidance in the Report as to the urgency required. I feel that this evening, noble Lords would be grateful to hear in a little more detail where the Government now stand.
Since February 18, 1966, the Minister must have received all the views from the interested bodies to which Mr. Foley referred. What is it that now stands in the way of legislation? As the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, made clear, whatever the reasons, they will be addressed to those who only wish to see the 1876 Act brought up to date in the best way that the Government can devise; but who also feel that the time is now overdue when the Government should clarify their position in this matter.
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Perhaps I may briefly draw the attention of your Lordships to the viewpoint which lay behind the Committee's conviction that animal experiments are a necessity which, however, must continue to be vigilantly controlled by legislation. The latest figures, the 1969 return, show that out of over 5,200,000 experiments nearly 4,600,000 were carried out under Certificate "A" without anaesthetic. One may reasonably suppose—perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Platt, may be able to tell us more about it—that these experiments were therefore of (may I say?) a minor kind. The Royal Commissions of 1875 and 1912 both recognised the need for such experiments and paragraph 69 of this Report draws attention to the vital importance of drug testing in "normal and infected animals." Chapter 9 is devoted entirely to a description of acts and codes requiring experiments on animals. Paragraph 71 tells how witnesses repeatedly welcomed the possibility of tests on an isolated organ or tissue, but apparently this is only rarely possible. Let us also in fairness remember that although the Report made certain proposals about improvement of husbandry in premises, paragraph 234 stated specifically:
"We have seen no foundation whatever for any general suspicion, let alone sharp criticism, of the concern of licensees for their animals."
My Lords, for those who feel deeply opposed to all animal experiments—and such people are invariably the kindest and most understanding—perhaps these few points will carry a little weight, especially when it is considered that what seems so detestable could have averted the heartbreak of thalidomide and may one day help to overcome the tragedy of cancer. Yet some people there are who believe deeply that these experiments are cruel in themselves. Surely, everyone would support legislation to minimise animal suffering. May I, therefore, ask the views of the Government on three parts of the Report which, if implemented, could perhaps help to satisfy a wide range of opinion?
Chapter 11, "Pain in animals," makes no fewer than eight main recommendations. What importance do the Government attach to the proposed rewording of the pain condition as proposed by the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare and dealt with in paragraphs 185

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to 188? Clearly it is undesirable to proceed in a piecemeal fashion with this Report. But as the avoidance of pain lies at the very heart of the 1876 Act, and is at the root of so many objections, I wonder whether the noble Baroness can tell us if the Government have reached any conclusion on this important chapter. Secondly, hand in hand with Chapter 11 goes paragraph 297 at the conclusion of Chapter 16, where it is recommended that the Act should apply to experiments
"in which there is a risk of pain, discomfort or stress or other inteference with the normal well-being of animals;"
and that the Act should apply to:
"the use of animals in teaching, training, production, testing and passaging whether or not there is a risk of pain."
It is the very fact that animals cannot tell us the extent of their pain, discomfort or suffering which makes many people uneasy about the subject to-day, and if the Government could tell us that paragraph 297 is acceptable and that legislation is going to follow within the foreseeable future, possibly that would go a considerable way to set many fears at rest.
My Lords, Chapter 11 deals specifically with pain, and the acceptance of paragraph 297 would remove doubts about what is and what is not an experiment by widening the scope of legislation. From these two areas of the Report flows a whole host of recommendations contained in Chapters 17, 18 and 19 on general restrictions, licensing and control and usages—perhaps, to the layman, the most informative part of the Report. The vital point in these three chapters, surely, is that Sir Sydney Littlewood and his colleagues were not planning more complicated legislation, but less. The Universities Federation for Animal Welfare has described the present licensing system, although it works, as archaic, inconvenient and wholly unrealistic. I wonder whether Her Majesty's Government would agree that this part of the Report could rectify this state of affairs by its common sense proposals on sponsorship and by its proposal that the licence should be the sole document setting out the limits of the holder's authority within the Act.
May I just tack on these questions? Would the Government perhaps reconsider their views on the urgency of
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legislation, bearing in mind the Committee's wish that the Home Office should issue a code of practice and should be assisted by the Advisory Committee with somewhat greater frequency? The first of these views shows that a document is needed to standardis2 practices and ideas. The second has demonstrated the Committee's apprehension that the public, the Home Office and experimenters should be brought into closer understanding; and many people would hope that the Advisory Committee, with its wide spread of knowledge, could achieve just this. Possibly, the noble Lord, Lord Platt, when he comes to speak, will tell me whether or not this is a fair question.
There are of course many more recommendations with which other noble Lords will perhaps be dealing—such as wastage and the supply of animals, the latter perhaps the most emotive subject for anyone who has ever lost a pet animal. And is it really not possible to put into effect now, without fresh legislation, the Committee's interim recommendation that purchase by laboratories should be only from approved collectors or registered breeders? Have the Government yet taken any action over the final words of the main Report, where the Committee declare that the problems of animal supply should be the subject of an urgent inquiry by the interest concerned? Many of us hope that possibly the noble Baroness will be saying just a word about recruitment and salaries in the inspectorate.
On the second part of the noble Lord's Question, I would identify myself with much of what he has said, except that surely this part of the Question would fall mainly outside the terms of reference of the Littlewood Committee. A full and informed Second Reading debate was provoked by my noble friend Lord Massereene and Ferrard, with his Export of Animals for Research Bill, on January 30 last; but in that debate there was obviously a difference of opinion on standards overseas. I am really following the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, in asking whether Her Majesty's Government have any evidence that the best standards abroad, which I believe are excellent, are not complied with in some places. If so, do the Government believe that no action is possible to protect our exported animals?

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I would also ask for reassurance on transport conditions of animals exported. I ask this only in the rather guilty knowledge, as a farmer, that it is all too easy to take the utmost care of animals in one's charge and then to forget that their transport to market should be of a similar standard. It is to be hoped that the Government reply this evening will not echo Lewis Carroll's Bellman:
"It is excessively awkward to mention it now".
For your Lordships will recall the fate which befell the Bellman and his crew:
"Their quarry softly and silently vanished away."
This is a fate which Parliament must not permit with so fine a Report and so important an issue.
6.45 p.m.
THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: My Lords, having listened with great interest to the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Silkin and Lord Belstead, I should like to say this. Having spent many years of my earlier life in Australia, where in the Outback country man's most trusted friends are the horse and the dog, I have all my life loved animals, and when I hear or read about, or see with my own eyes, animals turned out of their homes to wander the streets and be run over, or to finish up in a house for strays and finally be destroyed for want of an owner, my blood boils. And when I think that people can perpetrate these despicable acts, I wonder how we can call ourselves a nation of animal lovers.
There is in this country a moral entity inherent in the methods of research practised under the Care of Animals Act 1876. In vivisection establishments in many countries abroad there is no protecting legislation at all to safeguard animals from severe pain. I should like to quote some figures (of which your Lordships are probably aware) issued by the Home Office on August 12, 1969, relating to experiments performed on animals during 1968. The total of experiments performed during 1968 was over 5 million. The number of persons licensed under the 1876 Act to perform experiments was over 12,000; premises registered for experiments numbered 609; experiments without anæsthetic accounted for 88 per cent. of the total, which comes to 4½ million; experiments carried out under
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anæsthetic totalled 166 out of 626; experiments carried out in the course of cancer research, 306,352; experiments for the testing of drugs, 1,204,000; and the number of inspectors, 10. These are pretty startling figures. At this point I would strongly urge the Government to do everything they can to ensure that every facility is provided for research workers in this country in order that they can carry out their research programmes without the use of live animals.
I should like to say a few words on the inspectorate which the Home Office sets up for the supervision of experiments. When the 1876 Act came into force, there were something like 300 experiments per annum, and at that time two inspectors were appointed. Now in 1968 we have a figure of over 5 million experiments, with the inspectorate increased from two to 10. An inspector, giving evidence before the Royal Commission on Vivisection, stated:
"I was not expected to act as a detective."
Express instructions were received by him from his superior officer. We can gather from a Question in Parliament a few years ago that much of an inspector's working time is taken up, not in visiting laboratories, but in administrative duties, such as issuing licences and certificates, at Headquarters. I could say a great deal more on vivisection, which I have always been strongly against. In conclusion, with regard to the exporting of animals to foreign vivisection laboratories, I would urge the Government to legislate for a total ban on a great and shameful evil.
6.49 p.m.
LORD AILWYN: My Lords, I should like to express the thanks which I am sure are felt by all noble Lords to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for asking this Question this evening, and for the manner in which he has dealt with the subject. His interest in and care for animals is well known to us all, and his persistence in returning to any subject relating to their welfare is wholly admirable. We are most grateful to him.
I myself hold what I believe are considered in some quarters rather extreme views on experiments on animals, and I have wearied your Lordships on more than one occasion with my feelings of horror and dismay at the continuing practice of carrying out these loathsome

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operations. The assurances of eminent scientists and distinguished doctors cut no ice with me at all. Their assurances do nothing to alter my views or to modify my strictures on this unholy activity. But I realise that this is not the occasion on which to pursue once more my condemnation of this whole practice of animal experiments, and my conviction that it is utterly evil to torture animals in the hope of benefiting mankind.
Let me say that I find myself in cordial agreement with the Memorandum by one of the three ladies on the Littlewood Committee, Mrs. Butler, which is to be found at page 201 of the Report, following the Committee's summary of conclusions and recommendations. She is referring to paragraph 237, on page 79 of the Report, and she says this:
"I am convinced, however, that unless or until answers are found to these questions there will remain room for doubt about the need and justification for the use of animals for laboratory purposes".
The questions to which Mrs. Butler was referring lay, alas! outside the terms of reference of the Committee; but they lie, surely, at the very root of the ethics and the propriety of this hateful subject.
I have only one further thing to say. Referring to the second part of Lord Silkin's Question, how much happier one would have been if it had read:
"What information they now have as to the export of animals for research, and whether they will introduce legislation at an early date to prohibit the expert of animals for research."
Only complete prohibition of this experimenting on these wretched, unhappy animals would satisfy me and those who think with me along those lines.
6.53 p.m.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, I am bound to confess that I speak as a member of the Advisory Committee of the Home Office on the subject of the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876. I have been a licence holder and have myself carried out animal experiments, always, I may say, with distaste but because I am convinced that they are necessary to medical research. I will come back to that in a moment or two. As a former President of the Royal College of Physicians, I have had to countersign hundreds, if not thousands, of applications for animal licences, and I have been a member of
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the Medical Research Council. So I have seen this problem from the practical side.
I do not like animal experiments, and I only wish that the dreams—because I am afraid they are dreams—of those like the noble Earl, Lord Buckinghamshire, and the noble Lord, Lord Ailwyn, could come true, and that all these modern remedies could be discovered and tested, and their safety assessed, without animal experiment. If that were possible nobody would be more pleased than I. But at the present time it is quite impossible for this dream to come true. I only hope that, in the meantime, people who feel so strongly on this matter are themselves refusing to have, for instance, antibiotics, insulin or hormones, or any treatment of that kind—and, of course, any of the modern anæsthetics, because all these have been brought in on the basis of animal experiment. Whether you like it or not, this is a fact. It is also a fact that our own legislation, and our care and inspection of animal experiments in this country, is, as I think we all acknowledge, better than that anywhere else in the world—and I have travelled in a good many parts of the world.
I deplore the kind of anti-vivisection propaganda—though I have a lot of sympathy with the abolitionists—which in vivid headlines points out that out of 4 million or 5 million experiments 88 or 90 per cent. are done without an anæsthetic. I ask you, my Lords: if you are going to have an experiment on the diet of puppies to see what produces rickets—some extremely important experiments which I happen to remember well, because I had something to do with them years ago—would you give the puppies an anæsthetic in order to give them a diet? Would you give rats anæsthetics in order to give them an injection of a drug or some kind of immunisation? Would you give me an anæsthetic in order to give me a subcutaneous injection? I hope not.
We all know that most of these 4 million experiments carried out without anæsthetics are experiments of that kind: I know it, having signed all these forms. I would say that the least objectionable experiments are precisely those done without an anæsthetic, because we know that we cannot do painful experiments, or experiments producing any significant pain beyond pricking a leg, without an

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anæsthetic. So the really excusable experiments, from the pain point of view, are those 4 million, or 88 per cent., or whatever the proportion is, that are being done without anæsthesia. There is an enormous amount of misunderstanding and, one almost feels, an enormous amount of deliberately misleading propaganda. I am sorry to say this, but I think it is quite true and has to be said.
Lord Silkin's Question comes in two parts. Let me say at once that I agree with almost every word which he and the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, have said in this debate, and I think that I can be fairly brief with the rest of my remarks. The Littlewood Report dates, unfortunately, from 1965, and little or nothing has yet been done. I should be very pleased to hear that the Government are going to find time very soon to go into the Committee's recommendations and try to produce some legislation, because I am sure it is time that the Act was reviewed and brought up to date. But I do not say that because I believe that things are going seriously wrong. Indeed, on page 190 of the Report, in paragraphs (8) and (9) of the general findings, the Committee say:
"There is no evidence of serious wastage of animals in recent years.
"There is no foundation for any general suspicion of the concern of licensees for their animals."
Then paragraph (11) says:
"The increase in the numbers of animals used in research is largely to be explained by the expansion of biological science and the mandatory testing of biological substances."
In other words, my Lords, the Littlewood Committee did not find that a great many things were going wrong. They thought that a great many things should be tidied up, with clearer legislation, and that certain improvements might be made; and among their recommendations were two which they thought might be brought in without any fresh legislation.
The first was that the number of inspectors should be increased. I understand, and no doubt we shall hear from the noble Baroness who will wind up the debate on this question, that the number of inspectors has been increased. I agree that statistically the number seems ab-
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surd, if we look at the figures which the noble Earl put before us of so many experiments. They have increased absolutely out of recognition, yet the number of inspectors has gone up hardly at all— I forget exactly what the noble Earl's figures were.
Here is another misunderstanding. You may have a great pharmaceutical firm, or a big department of medical research, which has hundreds of cages of rats and mice who are undergoing comparatively trivial procedures in the testing of drugs or something of this kind; and it does not take a thousand inspectors to inspect ten thousand animals. The figures are really misleading from that point of view. I am informed (because I am a member of this Advisory Committee, and have access to certain information about these things) that the inspectors are still quite able to visit three or four times in any year all the premises licensed for animal experiment. If so, I would say that that is completely adequate.
In my department we always welcomed the visits of the inspectors because, first, we knew that our own procedures were beyond reproach and, secondly, because they could perhaps help us in suggesting some improvement in the conditions in which we kept our animals and, if so, we were only too pleased to receive their suggestions. We did not really need them to come round every three weeks to see whether, behind their backs, we were doing some frightful procedures on our animals. They came, of course, without notice, and we did not mind when they came. That I am sure is true of most research institutes in this country. Nevertheless, I think we shall be told that the number of inspectors has been increased, that their conditions of payment and recruitment are improving, and that a number of them are people with veterinary qualifications, with or without medical ones.
The other matter which the Littlewood Committee thought might be brought into
practice without legislation was changes in the Advisory Committee. As a member of the present Advisory Committee I may say that I should not resist any such changes which the Government might suggest at this time. The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, suggested that the Advisory Committee might take very seriously the whole question of public

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relations in regard to animal experiments, and I think that that is a very valuable suggestion which we might well act upon. With regard to the export of animals, which is the second question of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, I am in complete agreement with all those who ask, "Why should we export animals for research to countries where we know conditions are not nearly as good as they are at home?", This was closely debated on the Second Reading debate on the Bill of the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard on January 30, 1969, in which I spoke, and I was convinced at the end of it that there was really no very practical way in which this export could be prevented. Animals could be exported as pets to France, and we could not prevent them from being used for experiment in Japan a week or two later. It seemed to me impracticable.
I was impressed with the argument that people in Japan are rot going to import dogs from Britain when there are so many stray dogs in Japan that they do not know what to do with them. If they are going to pay a lot of money for highly bred animals for medical experiment, those animals are going to the people who are likely to use them properly. Nevertheless, if the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, or others could draft some Bill whereby the export of animals for research could be controlled in a practical way, I am sure I should be one of the supporters of it.
7.6 p.m.
LORD SANDYS: My Lords, we are indeed grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for calling our attention once again to this very important subject. It is almost exactly twelve months since my noble friend Viscount Massereene and Ferrard introduced and ultimately withdrew his Bill on the export of animals for research. Before coming to your Lordships' House I read again the Hansard of that debate. It is illuminating and it casts light on the reason why progress is so slow.
The Littlewood Committee's Report aimed to redress some of the gross abuses of the 1876 Act. That antique piece of legislation was, however, defended by a number of scientists who spoke, and with your Lordships' permission. I will recall again the words of the
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noble Earl, Lord Halsbury. In his opening remarks, he said:
"I commend to your Lordships the structure of the 1876 Act. It is a good Act; it is well drafted. The fact that after 92 years it has never been necessary to take it to court to find out what it means is a point in its favour."
That is in column 1346 of Hansard for January 30 last year. I choose to
differ from the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury. I feel that this Act is a piece of solid Victorian mahogany-dead wood—which should have been removed from the Statute Book and replaced by modern legislation long ago. It provides in my view—and I speak subject to correction here—a foolproof cover for the experimenter, and very limited protection for an animal.
Let us turn to page 79 of the Littlewood Report, paragraph 237, to which my noble friend, Lord Ailwyn, referred. Attention was drawn in this paragraph to three major questions of ethics. Of these I should like to quote the first one only, which reads:
"Who can say whether, if certain biological tests were forbidden, satisfactory chemical or other methods of testing would not be developed?"
I was most interested to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Platt, say that alternative methods were a dream and no more than a dream. With respect, I should like to draw his attention to the address delivered by Professor S. T. Aygun to the World Congress against Vivisection in August, 1967, on cell and tissue culture, and their use as an alternative to vivisection. Cell and tissue culture is fairly old, and many lines of investigation which it was once thought
required animal trials can now be dispensed with. I would put it to the noble Lord, Lord Platt, that embryology, parasitology, immunology, certain branches of genetics, radiobiology and especially virology can benefit from cell tissue experimentation rather than vivisection. The noble Lord nods his head. I am grateful for his agreement on that point. I feel it is extremely important because that is the line which medical research, and indeed agricultural research, should be following. In my view three separate Committees who have reported—Littlewood, Brambell and Cooke—are all linked together in the matter of animal welfare.

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In the last debate, on January 30, I asked two specific questions, one of which has already been asked by Lord Silkin far better than I could do so. The second one relates to paragraph 350 of the Littlewood Report. Their recommendation is quite clear and I should like to repeat my question: when are we going to see a code of practice?
In regard to the second part of Lord Silkin's Question, I would urge the Government to consider the real evidence of maltreatment of dogs in experimental establishments abroad. On the last occasion I quoted evidence from Japan, and I make no apology for a second quotation from an eye-witness report of a tour by a trained laboratory technician belonging to the Japan Animal Welfare Society, in November of this year. It was during her visit to Tokyo Women's Medical College. Her report is as follows:
"The second room held dogs which had just been operated upon. The whole room was packed with tiny metal cages so ridiculously small that the larger dogs could hardly move. The dogs had no resting boards. The cages were too small to fit them in, and the floors of the cages consisted of six metal bars, which made it very difficult for the dogs to stand on. This room had not been cleaned, either. The noise the dogs made was absolutely deafening.
"I was then shown by the English-speaking Japanese doctor, a woman, their brand-new dog room which had only just been completed. There were no dogs in it. It consisted of rows of these metal cages built slightly larger than the others I had seen—all completely useless for keeping dogs in for the long-term experiments that they conduct there. They must have cost an absolute fortune to install and will probably last for twenty years."
This report, from a trained expert witness of establishments of experiment abroad, makes heartbreaking reading, and, I feel, needs no further comment.
To return to the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, urging Government action on the Littlewood Report, I would make only this final comment. If stray dogs and cats were enfranchised and formed part of the floating vote, we should have had action long before now.
7.13 p.m.
EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, it is getting late and I shall be very brief. I should like to start by saying, "Thank you" once more to the noble Lord, Lord
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Silkin, for raising this Question. I wish to impress most strongly upon the Government the urgency of doing something about this matter, and doing it quickly. The noble Baroness who replied for the Government on the last occasion, and who is to reply tonight, made what I thought was a rather rash statement: that she did not think that five years was a very long delay about doing anything. Five years, plus or minus, may mean very little to somebody in the prime of life, but it is a darned long time to 5 million of God's creatures who are awaiting the knife or the needle: and I urge the Government to do something quickly.
We have had mentioned this evening a certain number of figures, all of which are frightening. I should like to summarise them. The number of experiments is counted in millions; the number of experimenters is counted in thousands; the number of premises where these experiments are carried out is counted in hundreds; the number of inspectors is about a dozen; the number of sponsors (of whom the noble Lord, Lord Platt, is, or was, one) is half a dozen. Now, with the best will in the world, what can half a dozen sponsors and a dozen inspectors know in detail about 5 million experiments being done by thousands of experimenters all over the country? I urge the Government, when legislation comes along, to consider very carefully a revised form of supervision.
I should like to bring out two other points. Are the Government satisfied that there is not unnecessary duplication and unnecessary repetition of experiments? I should have thought that, in these days of television, repeated experiments for purposes of teaching should to a large extent be unnecessary. All that could be done by television. The other point I want to emphasise is this. Is it not absolutely abhorrent that animals should be experimented on for purposes of cosmetics? Surely, if the ladies want bigger and better cosmetics they can find some humans on whom to experiment, instead of experimenting on dogs.
7.16 p.m.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, I also should like to add my thanks to those of other noble Lords to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for bringing up these Questions. I shall be very brief. Regarding the first

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part of the noble Lord's Question, on the Littlewood Report, I would only say that it is said in that Report that the role of animal legislation should be to prohibit objectionable activities. Coming to the second part of the noble Lord's Question, surely the export of animals for research to countries that have no equivalent law to our own to protect animals from cruelty is an objectionable activity and would come under the Littlewood Report.
It is true that the majority of animals exported from this country—we have heard a figure of, I think, 5 million—are rodents, the majority of which are rats and mice. In the Bill which I introduced —and which the House did not accept— regarding the export of animals for research, I said that if the Bill had a Second Reading and we reached the Committee stage, it would be possible to except from any legislation cm the export of animals for research pure breeds of rats and mice, which of course are used in research into cancer and genetics and general toxicology by scientists all over the world confirming each other's experiments.
It may not be rational—indeed, it is really irrational—but what I think the public are really concerned about is the export of dogs and cats for research to countries where they may be tortured. Although I agree, as I have said, that it is irrational and illogical, if only the Government could do something to try to stop this trade in dogs and cats it would be at least a step in the right direction. I find it highly objectionable that we have institutions in this country that in fact breed dogs for export for research. When the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, was answering the debate I initiated he said that, so far as he could ascertain, there had been only 8,000 dogs exported for all purposes, including pets, during the year 1966–67. I have no figures for the last year. In the debate in January, 1969, we had evidence from the R.S.P.C.A. hostel at Heathrow that they were handling 300 puppies a month to Japan; and the same source said that so far as he was aware there was an even larger export trade from Manchester Airport. It would hardly seem likely that all these dogs were going to Japan as pets, because so far as I am aware the average Japanese does not keep a pet dog.
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I agree that in practice it is difficult to carry out legislation, because one cannot prevent the exporters saying that they have exported the dogs for the purpose of selling them as pets. Nevertheless, the very fact of having such legislation, even if to a certain extent it can be thwarted, would certainly act as a deterrent and to a certain extent would stop this disreputable trade.
My Lords, we have always led the world in the humane treatment of animals and it would be a great pity if we were to nullify that record by becoming (as we appear to be becoming) the greatest breeders of export animals for research for vivisectional purposes. As I have said, I have no objection if they are exported to countries which have equivalent legislation to our own regarding the treatment of animals, but I can-not understand why, as it is freely admitted that we in this country breed the best animals for this purpose, the Government cannot say to other countries, "If you want our finest strains of animals for research you must start to improve your legislation for the protection of animals". I should have thought that the scientists in this country could have asked their colleagues abroad to lobby their Governments in an attempt to get them to do something about this problem, but so far as I am aware our scientists have not made any such approach.
We have heard from one noble Lord that the tragedy of thalidomide would not have occurred had there been more experimentation on animals, but in fact I have been informed that in the case of thalidomide the proper substance on which to experiment would have been tissue. I believe it was my noble friend Lord Sandys who said that a great advance has been made in research formerly practised on animals by carrying out the equivalent research on tissue. I hope the Government will be able to give some lead to induce scientists, where possible, to carry out their researches with tissue.
I do not want to detain your Lordships much longer, but I would point out that it has also been stated by some doctors that tests on animals do not afford a 100 per cent. guarantee that the results obtained will be reproduced in men. Doctor Starr, who is the honorary director of the N.S.W. Cancer Research Unit, made a

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statement saying that it is not possible to apply to the human species information derived from inducing cancer in animals by means of experiments. That makes one think. I suppose eventually it will come about by international agreement that the export of animals for research to countries which have no
proper legislation will be forbidden. But in the meantime a great number of animals will suffer, and I press upon the Government that they should do everything they can to speed up the process and to give a lead by means of some such legislation as that suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin. My Lords, I can only end my speech to-day as I ended my speech on my Bill: that if we consider ourselves to be the highest form of life we should try to behave as such.
7.28 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM: My Lords, I apologise for not having put my name down to speak, but I did not think that I should be in your Lordships' House when the Question was raised. I am glad to have this opportunity of saying how grateful I am to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for raising the matter.
My main point, which I will deal with quite briefly, is that this topic is all the more important and all the more urgent because it embodies a pattern which repeats itself increasingly in our contemporary society and already extends to questions about human beings. Here is a medical-social matter of both immense scientific and immense moral importance, when questions of truth and morality come together, and yet here, as elsewhere, they are often in conflict. On the one hand there is the scientific exploration of life: the development of medical techniques and medical research for the health and well-being of man—the whole quest and search for truth, and all that points in one direction and wins universal approval. On the other hand, this whole area of research is one that plainly bristles with moral problems, where there is a constant hazard of encouraging moral insensitivity; and while a respect for human life need not be transferred uncritically to animal life, surely the greatest care must be taken in this area lest it encourages a growing insensitivity and fosters inhuman attitudes. This is surely
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all the more important because, as has so often been said, animals cannot speak for themselves. As Appendix VII of the Littlewood Report makes clear, where it deals very critically with the physical and mental overlap between men and animals, there is nevertheless quite a considerable overlap, and perhaps more than some critics might think.
Plainly, in an area as complicated as this there are no simple answers. In a criss-cross area where research and morality are often in tension we must have all the knowledge and expertise and safeguards that we can have. Here we have the Littlewood Report, produced after a thorough study of this complicated field; well informed, sensitive, careful and balanced—the very thing we need in an area like this. Why on earth not do something about it? Here is an issue that is of importance in itself, but I have tried to argue that it is even more important because it combines themes with which, for the social good, we need to show ourselves urgently and increasingly and evidently concerned. And here in this Report is a wise, balanced, practical way forward. It is for these reasons that I certainly hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to give reassuring answers to the points which the noble Lord has raised in his Question this evening.
7.32 p.m.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I yield to no one in my devotion for animals. I had not intended to speak, but there are one or two threads which I think require to be drawn together. I was stung, I must say, by the implication in some speeches that licensed experimenters may be callous. My experience, which though not extensive is considerable, has given me the impression that rather the reverse is the case; and, respecting as I do the views of the noble Lord, Lord Ailwyn, and his passionate devotion to them, I think it a pity, and unfair, to suggest that people in medical research or the pharmaceutical businesses would "torture animals for the benefit of man". Surely even the 1876 Act, and certainly the ramifications of it which have developed under the inspectorate of the Home Office, ensure that animals who are put into pain and should be painlessly destroyed,

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are painlessly destroyed. That is what the inspectors ensure.
The noble Earl, Lord Fortescue, mentioned the size of the figures which of course all noble Lords will have received from the Anti-Vivisection League. But of course they themselves show that, of the 4½ million experiments carried out without anæsthetics, only 10,636 were on cats, dogs or horses. This proves the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Platt, that the vast majority of experiments are carried out on rodents and are painless; they are very largely experiments with diets, or involve the drawing of a drop of blood from the ear. In one organisation with which I was concerned we had a rabbit which died at the ripe old age of five years having had an experiment carried out every fortnight of its life, the testing of a drug by a drop of blood drawn in order to ensure the correctness of a batch for curative purposes in human beings. The animal was not put to any pain and lived a comfortable life.
I read through the report of the debate on the noble Viscount's Bill and was greatly impressed to re-read the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stamp. I would urge noble Lords who wish to turn it over in their mind to read it. He made an interesting point, which I will not elaborate, about the importance to the researcher that the animal should be well and contented. Furthermore, he brought out in his speech that the trade in rodents for export and import (there is an exchange in it) is very largely dependent on the breeding being of a pure strain, an infection-free strain, and that is the great bulk of the experiments done without anæsthetic.
I support everything the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, has said, and, as an animal lover, feel, like the noble Earl, Lord Buckingham, absolutely revolted by the theft of pets and the submission of pets to experimenting. It is not that I suggest that they are put into pain by the experimenters, but those of us who love dogs and cats know what the companionship of human beings means to them; and for them to be caged and deserted is something quite intolerable. I believe that whatever else the Government do they should find time for the development of some of the suggestions made in the Littlewood Report, and I think Chap-
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ters 25 and 26 are the ones chiefly concerned. I feel that it is a pity that such an enormous pool of potential animals for testing—puppies and kittens from unwanted litters—are destroyed by the R.S.P.C.A., daily, weekly and yearly. If, as I believe, the important thing to a pet is its association with man and its friendship with human beings, would it not be one way to avoid the risk of the stealing of pets if some use could be made of the little blind puppies at present destroyed in in their thousands every week by putting them at the disposal of licensed suppliers to fill the need, if such need exists, above the supplies available from the premises of licensed breeders?
I would refer to one point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sandys. I cannot find the exact point in the Report at the moment, but somewhere it is clearly said that witnesses declared that they would rejoice at any alternative that could be given to them other than experimentation on live animals, if it was going to be effective for their purpose.
With regard to the export of animals for research, I would ask: how is one to know? This point has been made by other speakers, so I will not develop it. I shall be very happy if the noble Baroness is able to tell us that she has had any assistance from, say, the Kennel Club, or organisations of that sort, as to what they know about the disposal of dogs that are shipped overseas to customers who may talk about them as pets but may intend to sell them for experimentation. At the same time, let us be tolerant. There are large areas in the world where, we must remember, dogs are bred for food, and it must also be remembered that whereas we delight in association with our dogs as pets, and as aids to our work, our farming and our sport, the whole world which is covered by the Mohammedan Faith regards the dog as an unclean animal.
I would join other noble Lords in the thanks voiced to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for raising this matter, and I look forward with the utmost interest to the reply which we are to hear from the noble Baroness.
7.40 p.m.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, I think I have quite a heavy task to try to reply to all

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the questions which have been put to me, but I will do my best. I am sure the whole House will agree that this has been a most interesting and indeed a most moving debate this evening. We are deeply grateful to my noble friend Lord Silkin for putting down his Question. The Government are, of course, well aware of the deep concern in all parts of the House about the welfare and the export of these animals, and perhaps especially since this is the third or fourth time that the House has given full consideration to these matters in the space of about a year. The actual history of the Littlewood Committee has been very well
dealt with by various noble Lords, and I think I need not repeat it. However, I should like to say to my noble friend Lord Silkin that although the Littlewood Committee were set up by the previous Government there can be absolutely no question of this being a Party matter. That does not influence the Government in the slightest degree, and I should like to give my noble friend my complete assurance on that because I should not like him to think it otherwise.
It is a little difficult to know quite where to begin. I took very seriously the points raised by the right reverend Prelate about sensitivity and the increase of inhumane treatment to man arising out of insensitivity to cruelty done to animals. I am quite sure that the Littlewood Committee were extremely well aware of that. As your Lordships know, they themselves stated that this was a moral and social problem of the first magnitude which did not only or exclusively concern the experts. That is a measure of the kind of spirit in which the Littlewood Committee deal with these matters. They felt that anyone who makes use of an animal in research incurs a moral responsibility to justify his action, and of course a duty to limit pain and give proper care.
I should like to say to the noble Earl, Lord Fortescue, that the Committee also found that the risk of unnecessary repetition of experiments was very small and that the scale of duplication was not serious. I think we can take the Littlewood evidence on that as sound and rational.
EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, has not television been enormously improved since that Report was written?
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: Yes, my Lords, indeed it has. But television is used mainly to demonstrate by surgeons the way to operate, how to do it. I do not think you could find the actual results of research in specific animals by watching television; you have to have the actual experiment itself to find out the different things for which you are looking.
I think the next point is probably the one which worries many noble Lords: that there has been an increase in the number of animals used in research. This is absolutely self-evident, and was recognised by the Littlewood Committee. As the noble Lord, Lord Platt, stated, this is of course due to the gigantic steps forward that have been made in medical knowledge and in the diagnosis and cure of killer diseases by the use of drugs, and I am afraid it is inevitable that this will go on increasing the number of experiments. The Littlewood Committee recognised—as I think most noble Lords know—that before a new drug can be marketed each batch of that drug has, by law, to be tested on animals; and this in itself will necessarily increase the experiments. Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Platt, pointed out—as I did in answer to the noble Earl's question— most of these experiments are a prick in the ear to obtain some blood and injections such as we ourselves are all too often subjected to, and are not the kind of horrific experiment which one can so easily imagine.
One of the problems regarding the swift implementation of the Littlewood Report is that the Committee recommended that piecemeal changes would not be appropriate. They wanted to see the proposals carried out completely, and obviously this would have tremendous advantages. If it was done piecemeal it would cause tremendous confusion among the public, the licensees and everybody else. Legislation would be needed to implement many of the proposals—and I say frankly that this is one of the Government's main difficulties. Many of your Lordships will know from personal experience that priority in legislation is always extremely difficult to determine, and although noble Lords feel, and the

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Committee felt, that there is room for improvement, the Committee, as has been said, laid no emphasis on the need for urgency.
May I illustrate one of the Government's difficulties? Shortly after the Committee reported to the Home Secretary some 40 organisations—not 16 as was said—which submitted evidence to the Littlewood Committee were invited to give their views on the Report's recommendations. The replies disclosed a substantial measure of agreement with a number of the Committee's conclusions and recommendations, but also disclosed the complex character of the basic problem and the very different views—and this is important—among the representational bodies. This emphasised that there would be disagreements continuing about the subject in general.
The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, kindly gave me notice of some of the points that he raised—in particular whether the Government accepted various of the detailed recommendations. He referred particularly to the proposed rewording of the pain condition and the recommendations in Chapters 18, 19, and 20; and he said that this really represents the nub of the Report. I entirely agree with the noble Lord. Those three chapters contain about thirty recommendations, some of which are fundamental. I very much took the illustration that the noble Lord gave us of the Bellman. We quite agree with his problems, but, unlike the Bellman, we like the matter being mentioned, we like it being debated, and we welcome every single constructive suggestion we can get on this matter. However, I should like to point out to the noble Lord that some poems have sad endings,
"For the Snark was a Boojum, you see."
My Lords, we want to arrive at a proper conclusion, at a really workable solution to this problem. As some of the recommendations do not propose radical changes, it might be thought that we could implement them. But the Government must still explore them thoroughly, not only with scientific bodies and lay organisations, or both, but in general, and put it in the context of the whole subject; and of course we could not guarantee that they would be followed to the last detail. Recommendation No. 18, which the noble
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Lord specifically brought up (paragraph 297) would be a major departure from the present practice and again will need more detailed consultation and general agreement. I know this all sounds rather long drawn out, but it really has to be done.
The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, also asked whether we could implement recommendation No. 44, proposing that the Home Office should issue codes of practice. Obviously the Committee were thinking in terms of codes relevant to new legislation, but anything issued now would be applicable only to the 1876 Act and only so long as the Act remained in force. But I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, and the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, will be glad to know that, acting in the spirit of this recommendation, the Home Office have produced three sets of Notes for Guidance. They are available to licensees, to intending licensees and to registered authorities, and they contain very valuable information. Therefore I hope that your Lordships will agree that we have gone as far as we can go without introducing legislation on this particular matter.
I know that many of your Lordships feel that there is a need for early action to be taken, but it is extremely difficult to reconcile differing views on this problem; and it is essential to reconcile them while the legislation is being planned and drafted, rather than have implacable opposition from opposite ends of the scale when the matter comes up for debate on the Floor of the House. I am sure it is better that we should continue with our consultations, which are active, and get the matter right in the end.
The Government understand and share the concern of those who feel that action should not be indefinitely delayed, but I am bound to repeat that in the light of the Committee's findings there is no reason to think that the welfare of research animals is ill-safeguarded under the Act. Indeed, many noble Lords have said—and I believe it to be true—that British standards are the best in the world. At this stage, therefore, I am afraid that the Government cannot justify according this new legislation the priority which my noble friend Lord Silkin desires.
There is one point which I should like to raise about legislation—it is a

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rather sad one. There is, I am afraid, a confusion in the minds of the public generally about what would happen if the Littlewood recommendations were to be implemented straight away. From the letters I received after the Question of the noble Earl, Lord Fortescue, last November, it is clear that many people believe that if Littlewood were implemented the experiments using animals would cease, or at any rate would be drastically curtailed. But this is not at all what the Committee themselves recommended, and I am afraid that that would not be the result.
Many noble Lords asked about the Inspectorate. It is true that we have been able to increase their numbers. There are now twelve inspectors. They are very highly qualified and highly experienced people. They are paid at a salary parallel with the scale of medical officers in the Civil Service, and the Chief Inspector is paid on the Principal Medical Officer scale. Your Lordships will see, therefore, that they are highly qualified officers, and well paid. We have an immense admiration for the work they do. Indeed, I wish that noble Lords could meet them as I have done, and could see their absolute devotion and highly-skilled approach to their work. I do not think we can praise them too highly. Of course the right people are not easy to find, but I have every hope that, within the next year, two more members will be added to the Inspectorate, which I hope will comfort noble Lords who are worried about this point. We are keeping the whole matter under active review, within the context, of course, of the manpower policy of the Civil Service, and I have every hope that we shall be able to add to their number.
There are one or two points of the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, and the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, to which I should like to refer before I turn to the export of animals. I know that the noble Viscount would like to have special statistics on what animals are exported for research and what are merely exported. I am afraid that this would be extremely difficult to find out, as he knows, but I am sure that everyone in the House will have sympathy for his special pleading for dogs and cats. These are animals which are
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more or less members of our families —in fact my own family is entirely dominated by a very dictatorial marmalade cat which nobody dreams of crossing. I am sure that we all have this kind of relationship with dogs and cats, and we should all be delighted if someone could devise a method of keeping their statistics separate.
The noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, made an interesting suggestion about the blind puppies which are destroyed. But one of the difficulties (and this is an answer to the noble Viscount about puppies in Japan) is that puppies take a very long time to mature—unlike rats and mice, which take only a few weeks—and are therefore extremely expensive to use as research animals. For this reason I think it very unlikely that the 300 puppies a week going to Japan, which the noble Viscount mentioned, could possibly be used for experimental purposes: it would cost far too much. However, I was interested in the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, and I will bring it to the attention of my right honourable friend.
We all know how deeply the noble Lord, Lord Ailwyn, feels about these matters, and we all sympathise with him in the way he thinks and in the great passion which he brings to the subject. But I was a little worried when he said that he would not accept the assurances given by eminent doctors and scientists. I wondered whether when he went to consult his own doctor he had the same feeling of no confidence in him. I think that if he has confidence in medical authorities in one subject, he ought to have it in another which is very closely allied to it. I say that with respect, and I hope without being contentious.
May I now turn to the export of animals? Contrary to what one or two noble Lords implied, the Government are not at all indifferent to this matter, and we have thought about the possibility of making some kind of safeguards for these research animals for export. But, as noble Lords themselves have said, it is an extremely difficult problem and it is very difficult to know how we can deal with it. Nevertheless, we have consulted many organisations of every kind—lay, scientific, medical, veterinary—as well as the public and interested bodies, to see

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whether they could find evidence of inhumane treatment of research animals abroad. But very little factual evidence was available. I do not know whether we actually consulted the Kennel Club, but I think it would have been represented by one of the bodies. While we were having consultations with all these bodies we discovered one very important fact, which was that restrictions on the export of our animals would be deeply resented by Governments abroad and would almost certainly lead to counterrestrictions on our own animals, as my noble friend Lord Silkin himself stressed. I am sure noble Lords understand that this is a two-way traffic.
I think the noble Lord, Lord Platt, answered many of the points that were made on this subject. Our researchers need animals of special strains to carry out experiments, particularly into killer diseases like cancer and leukaemia. These animals are specially bred abroad and come to us for our research. I should like to remind the House, as my noble friend Lord Stonham stressed, that insulin, for example, which has proved revolutionary in the treatment of diabetics, was discovered through research in Canada. References have been made to the thalidomide tragedy, and I should like to confirm that this might well not have occurred if thalidomide had been tested in more animal species and not simply in tissue. The authority for this is Mr. John Bleby, who is Director of the Medical Research Council Laboratory Animal Centre, which I think is a very good authority. If we were to restrict the international exchange of special strains in animals there might be another disaster. In the very full debate that we had on the Bill introduced by the noble Viscount, my noble friend Lord Stonham, in what I am sure your Lordships will agree was a masterly speech, explained in detail why we could not do very much about this. He put the whole question into perspective with one very wise remark when he said:
"… we should not approach the subject of animal welfare on a parochial basis; our aim should be to do what we can to eliminate unnecessary suffering wherever it occurs and whatever the animal's country of origin".— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 30/1/69, col. 1333.]
The truth is, my Lords, that by exporting our specially bred high-grade animals we are encouraging doctors and research
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workers in less developed countries to take particular care of such animals. If we put it at its lowest level, strict control over pain, and attention to the animals' well-being, is essential for most animal experimentation to succeed, irrespective of whether that is required by national law or not. Further, the better-quality animals produce much more reliable data and much better results and therefore reduce the number of animals required. Then there is the very important point that animals specially bred here and exported abroad cost much more than animals which are found locally, and would be used only in very serious research projects.
I think these conditions provide an effective safeguard for the use of our animals abroad. Indeed, I think they provide a good example and a good beginning for the kind of conditions which must be used in all research laboratories. There is no doubt that science, and particularly medical science, is growing increasingly international, and this must be encouraged for the benefit of humanity generally. I am sure my noble friend Lord Silkin appreciates this fully.
I would also say that animal research greatly assists in dealing with animal disease. As the noble Lord, Lord Stamp, pointed out in that debate,
"… almost the only satisfactory vaccine against enteritis affecting cats has been developed abroad from breeding stock imported from Britain".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30/1/69, col. 1340.]
So there are, my Lords, many sides to this question. I know that noble Lords are apprehensive about conditions in laboratories overseas, as indeed I am, particularly in the developing countries. Nevertheless, I think we all wish to encourage just those countries to play their part in trying to help to reduce world-wide disease. The use of expensive, first-class animals will do much to encourage researchers to raise their standards, and this should be our aim.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I feel the noble Baroness is reaching a conclusion. May I just ask her if she has anything to say to us on the Advisory Committee? The noble Lord, Lord Platt, is a member of it, and the chairman of it is now in the House. I did put a suggestion to the noble Baroness that

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possibly the Advisory Committee could be helpful by way of publicity. To be frank, there is a feeling, I think, that, with its wide spread of talent, possibly the Advisory Committee is not being allowed to do quite as much as some people would wish.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, I entirely agree that the Advisory Committee is a magnificent body of men and that we should use them as fully as we possibly can. I am not sure how they themselves would feel about being responsible for publicity, since they are an Advisory Committee to the Government; but I am quite sure that my noble friend would be very willing to discuss that matter with them, and they have the welfare of animals so closely at heart that I am sure they would be prepared to do anything which might help in that regard. But publicity I am not quite so sure of.
I am not quite finished, but I nearly am, and will try not to keep your Lordships much longer. One point was raised about alternatives to animal experimentation. Alternatives are actively being sought all the time, because of course everybody would prefer that; and when we find satisfactory alternatives they are always used. But not many suitable ones are found, and the Littlewood Committee itself, and scientific opinion generally, would I think agree that even if we find alternatives and use them there is no doubt that there will be an increase in animal research, and I think we have to face that point.
My Lords, I am afraid that in some ways what I have said may have been a little depressing for some noble Lords. I have given all the reasons why the Government do not see a compelling need to restrict the export of animals specially bred for export. But I should nevertheless like to say again to my noble friend Lord Silkin that we are deeply grateful to him, and that of course I will
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bring his suggestion of a new Commission on the export of animals for research to the attention of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. Responsibility for the export of animals for other purposes rests of course with my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture; and I will consult them both.
I am sure my noble friend will understand that I cannot accept his proposals outright to-night, but I should like to thank him, if I may say it with respect, for the most temperate way in which he put his questions. We shall consider them, and the whole House will accept that he asked them in the most helpful way.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down may I point out that, whilst I agree with her that animals for export must be kept in good conditions for the experiments to be performed on them, what we are worried about is that while the experiments are being performed, while the animals are under the knife, they probably do not have any form of anæsthetic, or anything like that.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, I do not think the noble Viscount should worry quite so much as he does. If, as he puts it, one puts an animal under the knife without anæsthetic, it is far less useful in giving back the results that one wants. Furthermore, ether, which is the anæsthetic commonly used abroad, is extremely cheap. As I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Platt, would agree with me, experts who go abroad, as they often do, have never seen animals being carved up, as I am sure the noble Viscount is afraid, without a drop or two of ether, or something of that kind, on their nose; and I hope that the same is true of killing them before they come round from the anæsthetic if extreme or any kind of pain is going to be experienced.