Lords Sitting of 10 November 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 Oxford.

BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE
The Right Honourable Janet Bevan, widow of the Right Honourable Aneurin Bevan, having been created Baroness Lee of Asheridge, of the City of Westminster, for life—Was, in her robes, introduced between the Lord Goodman and the Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, and made the solemn Affirmation.

LORD GEORGE-BROWN
The Right Honourable George Alfred George-Brown, having been created Baron George-Brown, of Jevington in the County of Sussex, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Walston and the Lord Wright of Ashton under Lyne.
Several Lords—Took the Oath.

TRIBUTES TO THE LATE GENERAL DE GAULLE
2.56 p.m.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, your Lordships will have heard this morning with a very real sense of shock of the death of General de Gaulle, the former President of the French Republic. I am sure your Lordships will wish to join with me in extending our deep sympathy to that very distinguished lady, Madame de Gaulle, and all her family.
In 1940 I was a young officer of 22, but those days are still vividly etched in my mind, and I have still a very clear memory of that tall, rather Roman figure of the French General who stood firm when all seemed lost in France. For
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part of the war I had the honour to serve with a detachment of Free French troops in the Middle East. This was in 1942 at the nadir of France's fortunes. Those young Frenchmen were brave, indeed recklessly brave, and firm in their determination to prove to us, their English allies, and perhaps to themselves, the fact that the spirit of France was far from dead, with all that this meant for the freedom and enrichment, the lucidity, and indeed the gaiety, of Western civilisation. One thing was clear to me as I got to know those brave and gifted young men, and that was that they drew their strength and inspiration not only from their innate toughness and belief in their country, the belief which almost every Frenchman possesses, but also from the example of their lonely, brave, ruthless and uniquely dedicated leader, General de Gaulle himself.
It would be idle to pretend, even at a moment like this, that there have not been occasions, in war time and in peace time, when we and de Gaulle have differed; but beneath the sometimes rather rough surface storms there was always, I suggest, on our side a deep respect for a man who we recognised had dedicated his life to his country. I think, too—and this emerges from his Memoirs—that there was on his part a similar recognition of the virtues of our land and of our people.
Few of us who heard the Address which the late President of the Republic delivered in Westminster Hall, on his State visit ten years ago in April, 1960, will forget it. May I recall the concluding words of that memorable speech:
"What other countries have, as much as ours and over and above their divergencies such similar aims? What peoples know better than France and Great Britain that nothing will save the world except just those qualities of which they are par excellence capable: wisdom and resolution?"
And may I also recall the significant fact that General de Gaulle issued the text of that Address to the Press before he made it and delivered it, word perfect, without a note.
What are the characteristics by which we remember this great French leader? There was, of course, his enduring physical courage—a courage demonstrated time and time again in total disregard of personal safety. Allied to this courage were his military virtues and his

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understanding of what war meant, which enabled him to talk in those war-time years to Winston Churchill as a full equal. Then, again, as anyone who has heard a speech made or a Press conference given by the General knows, there was his outstanding literary ability. Allied to those qualities was a creative political imagination and a large vision of the world which enabled him to see events which for others were still sometimes concealed beneath the horizon. I would not claim that his vision was perfect. Like all great men, General de Gaulle made great mistakes; but no one can deny his quality of statesmanship.
Finally, there was the most vital ingredient of all in his formidable personality: that belief in France with which he was born and which burned within him like a flame until his death. I can think of no Frenchman who has had so passionate a dedication not only to the land but also to the idea of France. My Lords, our sympathy on this occasion must be extended not only to the immediate family of the late President, but also to that great nation to whose service his life was dedicated. We are all, I feel, in a certain measure the losers with the loss of this great man.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I have seldom, if ever, heard a tribute which could so clearly and fully represent the views of the whole of your Lordships' House. Every word that the noble Earl has spoken finds full agreement, I am sure, in all quarters, and certainly on this side of the House. I would only add, quite briefly, that we all feel a great sense almost of historic loss. One of the most towering figures of an age which has not been without towering figures has been removed, and a man with an extraordinary range of achievement has left us. Not only was he a great military thinker, a very valiant soldier, but possibly, in his way, as important a Constitution-maker as Napoleon. Some may think this an exaggeration, but we shall see how long his Republic lasts. When we recall the problems that he inherited and the real, astounding measure of his achievements, we should certainly wish to put on record that that famous speech to the French from London in June, 1940, was an inspiration to the British and not just to the French.
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There were, of course, during the war periods of unease and discord with allies, and there will be some noble Lords in the House, like the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, who will remember them directly. But I always find it appropriate that a really great man—this I think can be said of Churchill—can be involved in struggles and at times can seem to those with whom he is working to be unreasonable. After all, what was General de Gaulle's position? He had been sentenced to death by court-martial, yet he was the one hope of France. How he has fulfilled that hope! We ought to recognise that the great services he rendered for France he has rendered in fact for us all. When we look back on those days immediately after the war and remember the concern that was expressed about France and her future, and then look at the achievement, the establishment of a firm sense of national pride, we must recognise that that is a contribution not just to France but to France's ally, Britain, and indeed to all the world. I can only say again that any tribute that the noble Earl has paid is fully echoed by us on this side of the House.
3.6 p.m.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I have been asked to say a few words on this sad occasion on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches, presumably because I was Ambassador to France during the first two and a half years of de Gaulle's second tenure of power, and because I had known him for many years previously and was, I suppose, in so far as this was possible in the circumstances, a personal friend.
In paying tribute to this great man we must all surely first think, as indeed the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, thought, of the war years, when he raised the flag of Free France in London and began that process of building up the shattered morale of France which resulted in the Resistance and in her re-emergence as a nation. It is a fearful thought that, but for him, France might have been divided and torn in pieces by civil strife after the war, and hence, of course, a danger to all the democracies of Western Europe.
De Gaulle's subsequent long sojourn in the political wilderness and deep meditations confirmed him in political conclusions which some may hold were

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good for France, but others hold were bad for Europe. The result, when he came back into power once more, is well known. What cannot be denied is the intensity of his own conviction and the force which he was able to place behind the effort to attain his ends. To this extent he may certainly be said, along with Churchill, to have been the greatest political figure to have emerged in our generation—and indeed no one perhaps was his equal in, as it were, bending history to his will.
My Lords, many think that his attitude towards this country was inspired by jealousy and resentment. They are wrong. As I know from my own experience, de Gaulle had a real and perfectly genuine regard, and indeed I think an admiration, for this country. His great speech in Westminster Hall, to which reference has rightly been made, on the occasion of his State visit in 1960, which doubtless many of your Lordships heard, was not lip service to our institutions; on the contrary, his great ambition was to establish in France that continuity of policy, that basic co-operation for the good of the nation between the Parties, which he rightly thought was the result of our ancient political wisdom; and of course his immense regard for the Royal Family was perfectly sincere.
That, like all great men, he had also great faults few will deny. That his policy or, rather, his foreign policies were rather more suited to the eighteenth than to the twentieth century is a conviction held by all Europeans in this country and I think indeed on the Continent. But that he saved France, that he gave Frenchmen a renewed sense of purpose and a recognition of the great role that France, happily, can still play in the world, and that, to do him justice, he exploded quite a few untenable myths—all this is surely something that we should admit. So we mourn the passing of a great and formidable figure. Certainly, taking all in all, we shall not look upon his like again.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has truly said that I had a great and close working life with de Gaulle during the war. Certainly I cannot add anything to the quite admirable tributes which have been paid and with which I entirely agree. Having had that very close asso
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ciation with the General, I should not like his death to pass entirely in silence from these Benches. I worked closely with him, both in London and in Africa. He was an odd sort of colleague in some ways. One could have awful rows with him—we did—but one would have them and then it was all over. One could have a showdown over quite a number of things, but it was always absolutely frank, and there was certainly never the faintest rancour on his side or on mine. What will always remain in my mind of his great qualities were his courage, his sincerity, his love for France; and what is perfectly true also is that his love for this country, though somewhat slightly disguised, was very real indeed. I should like to join in the tributes which have been paid to one of the greatest Frenchmen in all history.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, may I, as a very humble Back-Bencher add a sentence to the tributes paid to this great man? He will be remembered, perhaps, not so much for the wars he won and came through, but rather for the wars in which he was defeated—the Algerian war, and the war in Indo China—when he threw away pride and prestige and followed a constructive policy.

SOUTH AFRICA: ARREST OF BENJAMIN RAMOTSE
3.12 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, may I just correct the name Benjamin Ramorse, which should be Benjamin Ramotse. The mistake is my fault.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have made representations to the Government of the Republic of South Africa regarding the arrest and trial of Benjamin Ramorse who alleges that he was arrested by Rhodesian troops in Botswana, forcibly abducted to Rhodesia, handed over to South African security police and taken to Pretoria.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN): My Lords, Mr. Ramotse claims to be a Zambian citizen and Her Majesty's Government have, therefore, no locus standi to intervene with the South African Government by reason of his personal status.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that reply, may I ask him, first: if Ramotse was a Zambian citizen, was he not also a Commonwealth citizen? Secondly, was there some dispute as to whether he was arrested in Botswana or Rhodesia? Is it not the case that there is no dispute that he was arrested by Rhodesian police, whose authority we do not recognise? In view of the fact that he has been imprisoned since June, 1968, with alleged severe tortures, is it not the duty of Her Majesty's Government to make representations to the Government of South Africa against this illegal arrest by Rhodesian troops, whose authority we do not recognise under an illegal Government?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, there is some doubt as to whether or not Mr. Ramotse was arrested in Botswana. My understanding is that the Government of Botswana have requested the facts of this from the South African Government. It will be for them to take what action they think they should take when they get a reply from that Government. Regarding the question of Rhodesian troops and the arrest, my understanding is that Mr. Ramotse was handed over to the South African police by the Rhodesian police, but, as I have said, until it is clearly established where this arrest took place I cannot give a more definite answer.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, is it not the case, whether he was arrested in Botswana or Rhodesia, that he was arrested by Rhodesian troops, the legal authority of whom we do not recognise, and who are in rebellion against this Government? In view of that fact, have we not the right to make representations to the South African Government against this absolutely illegal arrest?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have no power to control the activities of Rho-
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desian police on the ground. What we have done is to make representations to the South African Government about the presence of their police in Rhodesia, and this we shall certainly continue to do.

ROAD DIESEL EXHAUST STANDARD
LORD ARDWICK: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the new standard, the highest in Europe, for road diesel exhausts, and the annual instrument check to enforce it, which were announced in Command Paper 4373, are now to be brought into effect.]
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, a draft regulation will shortly be published requiring all diesel engines installed in new vehicles to meet this British standard. The Department's engineers are developing an instrumented method which could supplement the present visual inspection of exhausts at the annual test of heavy goods vehicles.
LORD ARDWICK: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his reply, may I point out that the word he used is "shortly", and the words in reference to the instrument development are exactly those used in the White Paper six months ago?
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order!

HEAVY VEHICLES AND ROAD HAZARDS
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will forbid the introduction of 44-ton load lorries in view of the danger to following cars caused by the obstruction of vision.]
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, the decision of Her Majesty's Government on the proposals for increase in maximum permitted lorry weights will

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be taken with full regard to safety. Weight increases alone, however, seem unlikely to add to the obstruction of following drivers' vision. No width increases, and only a marginal one in lengths are being considered.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that Answer, may I ask whether it is true that the trade, the manufacturers and the owners, are thinking of what they have on the Continent, namely, a tractor of 38 tons and a following trailer, or articulated trailer, of another 38 tons, which makes 76 tons? If they have it on the Continent, and if we are supposed to be following suit in the interests of our export trade, how will that be affected by our lack of suitable roads?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I do not think the noble Earl's figures tally with our information. I understand that in the case of a combination of rigid lorry and draw-bar trailer the road transport industry have asked permission to go up from 32 tons to 59 tons. It is this figure which they have asked for and which is being considered. As to what is happening in Europe, the fact is that road users there are asking their Governments for very similar figures to those for which our own road transport industry are asking.
LORD POPPLEWELL: My Lords, will not the noble Lord agree that this matter must be given very careful consideration before there is any increase either in width or length of vehicles? Is the noble Lord aware that the overwhelming mileage of our roads is totally unfitted to carrying commercial vehicles which are any longer than those at present in operation? If any increase in length is agreed upon, those vehicles must be confined to our motorways and kept out of our towns and cities, because we cannot travel on many roads in our towns and cities even with the present permitted widths.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, there has been no request by the road transport industry for any increase in widths of vehicles used by the road transport industry. With regard to the lengths, they have asked for an extra half-metre, which is 20 inches. That is all they have asked for in increase in length. This subject is still being
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considered by the Government, and I am sure that the points the noble Lord added are also well to the fore in the minds of the Secretary of State and the Minister.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, in giving their consideration, which the Government appear still to be giving, to the proposal to allow greater weight and greater length, will they bear in mind the representations made against these proposals by the Royal Institute of British Architects and, I think, by every amenity society that has considered the matter?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords. I can certainly give that assurance.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, before the noble Lord agrees to the extra half metre of length which is being asked for, may I ask him whether he will stand on the edge of the pavement at the corner of Bridge Street and see how long it is before his feet are run over by some existing vehicle which is too long to be driven around that corner without going over the edge of the pavement?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I should not like to do that experiment, but I am sure that Her Majesty's Government are quite well aware of the position.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, will Her Majesty's Government bear in mind that already the immense weight of these juggernauts passing through narrow and ancient streets often causes severe damage, and sometimes destruction, of buildings alongside, which are often of great historic or architectural value? Therefore, is there not a very good case for prohibiting any increase in the weight, as well as in the length or breadth, of these vehicles?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords. That is the whole point of what the Government are trying to consider. The road transport industry obviously finds it more economic to have larger loads. What the Government have to do is to weigh the interests of other users of the roads, the safety of the people and the congestion of traffic against that factor. It is a matter of balancing and coming out with the right answer.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, when this matter is being considered by his friends, will the noble Lord bear in mind the question whether there could be classification of roads on which certain types of vehicles would not be permitted, so that certain vehicles would be limited to a particular class of road? We might then avoid many of the difficulties and, equally, get our economies right.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords. I am happy to tell the noble Lord that his suggestion about certain routes is one of the proposals which are being considered.
LORD DOUGLASS OF CLEVELAND: My Lords, is the noble Lord now convinced that market forces are not the ultimate in economics?
VISCOUNT ADDISON: My Lords, will the noble Lord not agree that it would save a great deal of difficulty if these heavy loads were carried on the railways? Will he therefore consider giving no further instructions for railways to be pulled up, but rather see that the reverse process takes place so that the roads may be kept more clear?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, we are getting slightly wide of the original Question. As the noble Lord knows, the Government are in no position to dictate to road users or to railway users how they should send goods. They have to use the most economical way. I agree that when the roads are congested one would like to see the railways carrying more traffic. The railways want more traffic, and we know that, too.
LORD BIRKETT: My Lords, will the Government consider that the situation is more urgent even than the question of dimensions, when it is possible in towns like Lewes for pedestrians standing on the pavement to be struck by the wing mirrors of passing lorries, and when the portico of a building, listed as of architectural interest, can be physically demolished nine times in eighteen months by heavy traffic?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I agree that this is very deplorable and very sad, and the Government have every intention of trying to get by-pass roads to meet cases like that. It
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is a question of using the funds as and when they become available.

HEAVY VEHICLES AND VILLAGE AMENITIES
3.24 p.m.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will take steps to bar heavy vehicles from entering narrow village streets bordered by ancient cottages whose windows are penetrated by diesel fumes.]
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, traffic authorities already have the power to regulate the use of roads for, among other reasons, preserving or improving the amenities of the area through which a road runs. In exercising these powers the authorities must of course have regard to the need for vehicles of any particular class to have access to premises.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his Answer. But does he not agree about the need for direct Government responsibility in controlling which roads may be used, and in deciding which routes and narrow market towns are unsuitable, if at the same time they are trying to work with the manufacturers and the owners to get traffic across the Channel and improve our trade with our competitors overseas?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, with regard to the first part of my noble friend's question, I think that under the Road Traffic Regulations 1967, which became law in 1968, control of local roads is in the hands of local authorities. This is not the case with trunk roads, but on local roads local authorities have a power which they can use if they see fit. Of course they have to consider the amenities and access of the people who live in the towns. With regard to the export trade, we are doing our best, as I pointed out, to consider all the pros and cons.
VISCOUNT BRENTFORD: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether in

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considering the classification of roads suitable for these heavy vehicles, his right honourable friend will also take into account the road itself and its suitability and strength for carrying these great weights?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords, I can give the noble Lord that assurance.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, will my noble friend take particular note of the point raised by my noble friend Lord Mansfield? Not only will these poor villagers probably be asphyxiated; they will also be entombed, because the very heavy traffic which is going through these small villages very badly undermines the houses and puts them in a dangerous state.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords. My noble friend the Secretary of State will take that point into account. As I have said, most of these small villages are probably not on trunk roads, and in that case it is up to the local authorities.
LORD GRAY: My Lords, in the light of the Report of the Committee on Highway Maintenance, will the Government urgently consider the question of load restriction on a national basis, in order to end the use of minor rural roads by unsuitable through-traffic?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords. I think I have already said that the Government are considering proposals to restrict the size of certain traffic on certain roads.
LORD GISBOROUGH: My Lords, can the noble Lord say what are the prospects of limiting the height of vehicles? At the moment it frequently happens that they knock down bridges which are put up in these small villages for pedestrians.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I have no particular information on this subject. But I have noticed that bridges normally have a height sign on them, and I should have thought it was up to the driver to take good care.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is impressed by the opinion of this House on this matter?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords. Transport and traffic are one of the greatest problems which, for obvious reasons, we all have to endure these days.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, will the noble Lord agree that almost all of these questions would be wiped out if, instead of meeting to consider how much larger the lorries should be, the Government considered cutting them down in size?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I do not think we have had any proposals to cut down their size. But, as I have said, the Government have not pledged themselves to increase it, and we are still looking at the matter. If noble Lords will have a little patience, I think they will have an answer fairly soon.
LORD HANKEY: My Lords, will the Government consider whether, in the age of containerisation, it is not more important to make the sort of roads which are needed, rather than to put on numerous additional restrictions?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I think that is a different question from the original one which dealt with fumes in small villages.

POLITICAL HONOURS
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, at a convenient moment after half-past three, my noble friend the Leader of the House will be making a Statement on political honours.

COURTS BILL [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF ST. MARYLEBONE): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to make further provision as respects the Supreme Court and county courts, judges and juries, to establish a Crown Court as part of the Supreme Court to try indictments and exercise certain other jurisdiction, to abolish courts of assize and certain other courts and to deal with their jurisdiction and other consequential matters, and to amend in other respects

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the law about courts and court proceedings. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read la.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read la, and to be printed.

RENT (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to consolidate in relation to Scotland the Rent and Mortgage Interest Restrictions Acts 1920 to 1939, the Rent of Furnished Houses Control (Scotland) Act 1943, the Landlord and Tenant (Rent Control) Act 1949, Part II of the Housing (Repairs and Rents) (Scotland) Act 1954, the Rent Act 1957, the Rent Act 1965 (except Part III thereof), Part IV of the Housing (Scotland) Act 1969 and other related enactments. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read la.—(Baroness Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie.)
On Question, Bill read la, and to be printed.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
3.33 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That leave be given to the Lord Carrington to advance the Second Reading of the Armed Forces Bill from Tuesday the 17th to Thursday the 12th of November; and that leave be given to the Lord Shackleton to advance his Motion on the Government's Economic Measures from Wednesday the 18th to Tuesday the 17th instant.—(Earl Jellicoe.)
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl to offer a few words by way of clarification? I was always under the impression (the noble Earl will correct me if I am wrong) that this matter was concerned with the numbers in a standing Army, over which this House has no control at all; it is entirely a matter for the other place. I was
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always under the impression that the matter had first to come before the other place. Am I right in this assumption? Moreover, five years having expired since the matter was last considered, ought not a Select Committee to be appointed to consider it? Perhaps the noble Earl will afford the clarification of which I am very much in need.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am always anxious to give the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, any clarification for which he is looking, but I think that at this particular moment it would not be right for me to go into the areas which he has touched on because the Motion which I have just moved is seeking to do no more than rearrange business which has already been tabled; and I understood through the usual channels that these rearrangements commanded general agreement. If I may say so, the point of substance on which the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, has questioned me—the question whether a Bill should be before your Lordships' House or before another place—is one which should more properly be taken on the Motion that the Bill be read a second time, and I should be very glad to go into it at that time. But whatever the merits, my Lords—and I do not wish to argue that either way at the present time—the Bill in question is before your Lordships' House at this moment, and it is for your Lordships, I would suggest, to decide on Second Reading what should happen to the Bill.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, as the noble Earl is apparently in as much need of clarification and information as I am, I am quite prepared to leave it until Thursday.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, if I may say so with all respect, the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, is misinterpreting what I said. I was merely saying that this was not the moment to give the noble Lord the clarification for which he was asking.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

POLITICAL HONOURS
3.36 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, with the agreement of your Lordships' House I should like to repeat the Statement which my right honourable friend the Prime

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Minister is at this moment making in another place. This is the Statement:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a Statement about political honours.
"It is my view that the services of those who work for political Parties, thus contributing towards the functioning of our democratic system, should not be excluded from recognition by the Sovereign. Nor, if there are to be honours for political and public services, do I consider that they should be confined only to members of the Party in power.
"I have therefore made a recommendation to The Queen, which Her Majesty has approved, that the forthcoming New Year's Honours List and future Lists should include a number of awards for political and public services to members of political Parties.
"I have also invited the right honourable gentleman, the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Liberal Party, to agree in principle to make recommendations for such honours, which I can then submit for the Queen's approval together with my own recommendations.
"All recommendations for honours for political and public services will be considered by the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee before they are submitted to The Queen."
That, my Lords, is the Statement which the Prime Minister is just making.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I do not doubt for one moment the great value of those who work for political Parties, and I should make it clear that my remarks are in no way a criticism. I believe that such people perform a most valuable and important service—indeed, one member of my former constituency was alleged to have been promised a knighthood if he could get me out. In due course I was got out, and he got a knighthood; and now I am in your Lordships' House. But, my Lords, I am bound to say that I regard what is now proposed, and I think it is likely that those who sit on these Benches will regard it, as a retrograde step. It is not a simple matter. There are quite serious difficulties and objections. I take it (and perhaps I could ask the noble Earl to confirm this) that the arrangements concerning honours for
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local government service, which hitherto have been excluded from this category and, as I understand, continued to be granted even when my right honourable friend Mr. Wilson was Prime Minister, will continue, and that local government service will be rewarded.
May I also ask whether the arrangements for Life Peerages, which are of a political nature but are not political honours, will continue as hitherto? I should like to be assured on that. May I also ask whether it is the intention of the Government to revive hereditary titles, baronetcies, which to-day, however relevant they were in times past, now seem somewhat irrelevant; and, even more so, hereditary Peerages? The fact that we know so many able, competent and charming hereditary Peers in your Lordships' House does not alter the fact that we regard the hereditary Peerage system as a nonsense in this age. This is not just a partisan view, because I know people in all Parties who take that view. It may be that any concern I may have on this matter is unjustified, and that there is no intention of reviving hereditary titles. Generally, however, I would say that this is a retrograde step. I do not know whether the Labour Party will co-operate, but I doubt it.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords—
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, may I reply at once to the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, who has put three questions to me? I know the noble Baroness's special position in this matter, if I may so term it, but I should like to answer the three questions put by the noble Lord while I have them in mind. In the first place, as a second-rate, second-generation hereditary Peer, I should like to thank him for his kind references to hereditary Peerages, if not to my right honourable friend's Statement. The noble Lord asked me three questions, the first of which was the position regarding recognition of the services of elected representatives in local government. The position there, as I understand it, will remain as it has been since the then Prime Minister's Statement of October, 1966, when provision for such recognition was made—and, indeed, effect has been given to it. No change is proposed in those arrangements. But as

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noble Lords will be aware, those arrangements made no provision for Members of Parliament, for local Party supporters or workers, or for national or local Party officials.
Secondly, the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition touched on a matter of interest to us all: the position regarding Life Peerages. It is my understanding that my right honourable friend takes the view that Life Peerages should be conferred on the basis of what would strengthen your Lordships' House rather than of their being used as some form of grand or super honour. But, by the same token, I think he also takes the view that he would not wish completely to exclude the possibility that some Members of another place might have it in their power to make a useful contribution to your Lordships' House.
My Lords, on the question of hereditary Peerages, it is my understanding that my right honourable friend will not be recommending hereditary honours in the ordinary course of business; although this is a possibility which he would not wish completely to exclude.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, may I, on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches, welcome the Statement which has been made? This is not the moment to discuss whether the whole honours system is, or is not, a good thing. Leaving that aside, we see no reason why those who work in the political Parties for the good of democracy should be excluded, We welcome very much the proposals to make this as multilateral as possible; it shows a very distinct improvement on the attitude of the last Conservative Government to these matters. May I ask one question about the minor Parties—for instance, the Scottish Nationalists, who are represented in the House of Commons? As long as we have an unjust electoral system which does not represent the votes cast in the country, it is absolutely right that we should safeguard as much as possible the position of those Parties. Can the noble Earl say whether they will be taken into account? And may I express the pious hope that political honours will be given for real merit and not be just a matter of "Buggins's turn"? I can assure the House that we will do our best to follow that.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, for the welcome that he has given to the Statement, and I should like to echo what he said about "Buggins's turn". So far as other Parties are concerned, it is my understanding that although the majority of awards will, normally speaking, go to members of the Party in power, other Parties will be adequately represented. That includes the Liberal Party and other Parties.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I was going to ask the noble Earl whether he would define more closely what he means by "a political honour". He said something in a rather ambiguous way about "by virtue of" my "position"—and presumably he was referring to the fact that I was a member of the Committee that he was talking about. I was under the impression that we had been taking this into account.
LORD REA: My Lords, as another member of that Committee, may I support the noble Baroness? So far as I am aware there has been no suppression of political honours in recent lists. Both the noble Baroness and I have been through long lists of decorations of the Order of the British Empire.
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK: My Lords, would the noble Earl also tell us whether his right honourable friend is prepared to take into consideration those Parties in this House which are not Parties in the accepted sense—for instance, the Peers on the Cross-Benches? Would it not be appropriate if they were allowed to submit names? I am sure that they would be able to suggest people who might greatly strengthen your Lordships' House? And my own Benches may possibly be able to do that. Perhaps we could clear up certain doubts; because there are clergymen in your Lordships' House (Lord Beaumont of Whitley and Lord Sandford) and sometimes it is thought that they are our nominees. I think it ought to be made clear when people are nominees of this Bench and when they are not.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I say, before the noble Earl replies, that I am not sure whether we discuss the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee in public. Do we?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I do not think that it is a matter that we should go into in any detail. I made reference to it in repeating the Prime Minister's Statement. Of course, we know that there are distinguished Members of your Lordships' House who are members of that Committee. But I think that this is a matter which we should not go into too deeply. Bearing in mind certain honours that have been conferred in the not-too-distant past, I think one can easily exaggerate the drama of the change now proposed.
I will bear in mind and report to my right honourable friend the views expressed by the right reverend Prelate; but he should remember that we are talking of political honour. He, I think, was distinguishing between political honour, proprement dit (as we are speaking French so much this afternoon) and the reinforcing of your Lordships' House from whatever Bench it may be.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, surely there is a good deal of difference between political honours of the type we are now discussing and membership of your Lordships' House. This is a matter which I think will give very considerable concern to many people in all walks of life and particularly political life. I can understand the difficulties about having a debate, because this question of honours is the prerogative of Her Majesty the Queen, but I wonder whether there is not now a real case for meetings between the two Front Benches in both Houses for this matter to be looked at coolly, calmly and sensibly, not only for the immediate future but for the long-term future. I wonder whether the noble Earl would address his mind to that and ask his right honourable friend the Prime Minister whether the time has not come, in the interests of democracy, that this matter should be carefully looked at, preferably not by question and answer but by means of a proper discussion, informal if you like—a cool and sensible airing of the subject.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I should like to support what the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd has said. I have views on Life Peerages, but it did not occur to me to mention them because we were discussing political honours generally. I would echo this question to the noble Earl, the Leader
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of the House, as to whether there cannot be conversations respecting this House.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, arising out of the original reply, may I ask whether Her Majesty's Government realise that a great many of their own supporters and persons in other Parties are in favour of the retention of the system of creating hereditary Peerages? Will they therefore consider the advisability of reversing the lamentable decision of the last Prime Minister that baronetcies should not be given to the retiring Lord Mayors of London; and will they consider the advisability not only of conferring such baronetcies on future holders of the office but also on those who were unjustly deprived of them by this action of the last Government?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I must confess I have some considerable sympathy with the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, and echoed by my noble friend Lord Ferrier, that perhaps, with all the inadequacies of question and answer in this House, we should not try to go too deeply into this matter at this stage. I will gladly undertake to bring to the attention of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister the views expressed by the noble Lord and my noble friend, and, indeed, by my noble friend Lord Mansfield.

REORGANISATION OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
3.49 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE EARL JELLICOE rose to move, That this House takes note of the White Paper, The Reorganisation of Central Government (Cmnd. 4506). The Noble Earl said: My Lords, we are now to debate an important subject, the reorganisation of Central Government. It is, I feel, a subject which has perhaps received too little attention in Parliament, although I recall the very interesting debates initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, I think in 1964, and by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, in 1968.
The White Paper deals not only with the major changes in the structure of Departments and the structuring of the new central mechanism designed to serve the Cabinet collectively; it also deals with the broad principles underlying the Government's decision as announced in

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the White Paper. Because of this I felt that it might be helpful if this afternoon we were to stand back a little and attempt to look at the broad picture—the wood rather than to concentrate too specifically on the trees—of the individual Orders before your Lordships' House. It is my understanding that after this general debate we shall deal with the Orders formally.
My Lords, still by way of introduction, may I say how glad I am that our debate this afternoon will be distinguished by the inclusion of no fewer than four maiden speeches; those of the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale; the noble Lord, Lord Diamond; my noble friend Lord Reigate and the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon. We look forward very much to hearing from them. What I can do is to undertake to listen to those speeches and the other speeches, attentively, and when I wind up—I must apologise for having already spoken too much this afternoon—I hope to try to answer the particular points of doubt or difficulty which noble Lords may have put to me.
May I first make one observation from my Civil Department perch? I notice that although the White Paper was approved without dissent in another place there was some criticism that it made no mention of Fulton, or of the establishment of the Civil Service Department, or of the reforms which have followed from that. Far be it from me, my Lords, to belittle the Report, or the Department, or the reforms; but it must be quite clear to anyone who has read the Fulton Report attentively that the reorganisation of the machinery of Government, far from being a sin against Fulton, is a necessary complement to Fulton. Indeed, the Fulton Committee itself urged that consideration should be given to a general review of the machinery of Government, and the White Paper represents the outcome of just such a review, which, if I may say so, was a particularly searching one. It also, I trust, represents a real attempt to achieve greater stability within that Government machinery.
I think we have all had too much chopping and changing, too great a reshuffling of the Departmental pack, in the last decade or so. I would not, of
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course, claim that the mould suggested in this White Paper will be fixed for all time; or even until the time—undoubtedly many years ahead—when next we have a Labour Government. We know that in certain areas—for example, defence procurement and aerospace—further changes are foreshadowed in the White Paper itself.
The machinery of Government has, necessarily, to be kept under close and constant review. Nevertheless, my Lords, the changes announced in the White Paper, which are really of some quite considerable magnitude, are intended to be the basis for a period of stability lasting certainly through the present Parliament and, I would hope, beyond. Apart from the review, which I have already mentioned, in the defence procurement and aerospace field, I think that the reviews which the Government will be conducting in this sphere, at least within the lifetime of this Parliament, will be concerned more with the organisation inside Departments rather than with the boundaries of the Departments themselves. In any event, my Lords, I am quite certain that we need this plateau of relative stability, and we must try to keep ourselves on it if we are to realise the benefits which I hold to be implicit in the present changes; and if we are to avoid the damage which constant shuffling of the Departmental pack does to Civil Service efficiency and indeed to Civil Service morale.
The first element in the new structure is, I suggest, the new central policy review staff designed to give Ministers in their collective role as members of the Cabinet a degree of staff support which they have, I think, lacked hitherto. There are a great many old Ministerial hands in your Lordships' House this afternoon and they will know that when Ministers exercise their individual responsibility in their Departmental sphere they have the very powerful backing of a very strong and skilful Departmental machine. We all know, however, that to-day many of the most vital Government decisions are increasingly collective ones. They are decisions which straddle Departmental boundaries. And, more than that—and let us frankly recognise the fact—even if we are considering a major programme within the area of a single Department, that programme in itself raises questions of priority between other claims on the

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nation's resources. Increasingly, therefore, my Lords, the determination of priorities, the choice between almost equally attractive options, is a matter for collective decision.
But when Ministers go to Cabinet, or to one of its Committees, and try to exercise their collective responsibility; when they are called on, for example, to pass judgment on affairs outside their own particular Department, then I think most of us would recognise that they very often lack—more often than not in my view—the degree of consistent staff support in depth which is available to them in their Departmental spheres. I think this is one of the main reasons why so many of the big decisions taken by Governments of this country in the last decade or so have been rather hit or miss affairs. They have been taken too hastily, or not taken at all; and very often the options for the Government of the day have been closed without Ministers of the day even realising that those particular options were open to them. I submit, my Lords, that this cannot be right.
We must, of course, all recognise that the present Cabinet Office does its job with quite extraordinary efficiency and devotion. I know that all those who have been served by that Cabinet Office, and who are in your Lordships' House this afternoon, would agree with that view. But in my view it is not equipped to take on the quite different tasks which we envisage for the new unit; and therefore we need a new staff, properly within the Cabinet Office as it will serve Ministers collectively, to give them the support they require so that they can discuss issues and exercise their political judgment in a more informed way than has been possible in the past.
Judging by the comments which I have seen in the Press or heard in the debate—it was a very good debate, I thought—in another place, a number of misconceptions seem to be current about the proposed central policy review staff. It is argued that it will be some sort of secret cabal, taking decisions out of the hands of political Ministers where they properly belong. I can assure noble Lords that there is no question of this staff acting like another Department and superimposing its views on the rest. Nor would it be able to take away from Ministers their responsibility for taking decisions
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and exercising responsibility. It is not a question of substituting the views of experts who are not accountable to Parliament for the judgment of Ministers who are. Rather, my Lords, it is a question of giving Ministers a better base of information and analysis on which to rest their political judgment and exercise their collective responsibility.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl one question arising out of what he has said? I think that probably the answer is plain, but perhaps it should be given. This new unit will operate within the Cabinet Secretariat. Does that mean that the head of the new unit, Lord Rothschild, will come under the authority of Sir Burke Trend, the head of the Cabinet Secretariat?
EARL JELLICOE: As I have already said, my Lords, It will operate as part of, and within, the Cabinet Secretariat; and to that extent the head of the new unit will be responsible to Sir Burke Trend. But I do not think that this will mean that the head of the new unit will not also be reporting directly on occasions—the precise guidelines will have to be worked out—to Ministers collectively or, indeed, to the Prime Minister.
My Lords, if I may go on from that, I would touch on another Aunt Sally which has been put up with respect to the policy review staff and which I should like to knock down. Critics have suggested that the new staff is a further move towards Presidential government. And with this in mind they have summoned up the ghost of the late Lord Cherwell in order to disturb our dreams. I would suggest that this view is bunk. The new staff will be working with the existing grain of Government, not against it. They will be working in co-operation with Departments and reporting to Ministers collectively. The services of the new staff will not therefore be the prerogative of the Prime Minister of the day. They will be common to all Ministers. To liken this new unit to a shadowy figure relying on personal influence with the Prime Minister of the day, without defined responsibilities and having no clear place within the machinery of Government, is, frankly, absurd.
There is a further fear on which I should like to touch—that the new cog

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in the wheel means that the wheels of Government will turn more slowly.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, before the noble Earl goes further, may I raise a point? He may say that some of the criticisms are absurd, but I am still not clear how this new unit will work. He may say that they will work with the grain. He says that they will report to Ministers collectively. How do they do that? We are not even clear about the head of the unit. We know that in some sense he comes under Sir Burke Trend. It may be that the Government have not thought this one out. What precisely do they mean by "reporting to Ministers collectively"?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I can assure the noble Lord that the Government have thought this out, but the noble Lord, who is more versed, or more recently versed, in these matters than I am, knows that it is not customary to reveal the Ministerial structure of Government. I could not give him a precise answer to this question without revealing that, but I should be glad to discuss this matter privately with him at any time. There is a convention here and I think it is one which I must honour in your Lordships' House this afternoon.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, it really becomes impossible to discuss this problem. I am fully aware of the convention, but this is an interesting proposal and I acknowledge its potentiality. However, I will keep that for my speech. But the unit cannot report to Ministers collectively in the abstract; the phrase must mean something concrete. Perhaps the noble Earl will consult with the Secretary of the Cabinet so that revelations may be given to those noble Lords who, by good luck or misfortune, have not been in the Cabinet. It is difficult to know how it is going to work.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord has a point; but I also have a difficulty. I will gladly take advice on this and see whether we can reveal more without doing damage to these conventions, which I think are important.
Before the noble Lord rather mischievously interrupted me, I was dealing with the fear that this new review staff would somehow slow the processes of govern-
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ment. I would only ask your Lordships to suspend judgment here until the new unit is in situ and working. But if the new unit will help us to get decisions right the first time, and I believe it will, a major cause of delay in Government decision-making is eliminated at one blow.
May I summarise my views on the new proposals as follows? It would be foolish for me to make exaggerated claims about the benefits which will flow from any particular new piece of Governmental machinery, particularly one which has yet to be established. I certainly do not see this new unit in any such dramatic terms. Nevertheless, I am confident that this will be a durable part of our machinery of Government over the years and that it will contribute to better decision-making by Ministers, certainly collectively and I would suggest also in their more purely departmental capacity.
In any event, I think that those of your Lordships who know the noble Lord, Lord Rothschild, will agree that we have been fortunate to secure him as Director-General of the new staff. His is a particularly distinguished mind, and he has had a distinguished career in a great variety of ways. I believe that he is admirably qualified for this arduous job.
I now turn to paragraphs 49 and 52 of the White Paper, that part of it which is concerned with the rather dry matter of analysis of public expenditure programmes. What we have in mind here is a new system of regular reviews of all departmental policies and programmes on an annual basis, designed to complement the existing annual public expenditure survey—PESC, as its familiars, like the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, know the animal. I believe that PESC is a very valuable adjunct of Government but it has its limitations, not least that it is conceived mainly in expenditure terms and does not always draw out the real objectives behind departmental policies and programmes. Under the new system which we have in mind, which is. I must emphasise, designed to dovetail with PESC, not to replace it in any way, the costs of the various programmes and the objectives of those programmes will be more closely related, and this should enable Ministers to take better informed decisions between all the competing priorities which any Government have to

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face. As we know, "Gouverner c'est choisir".
I would remind your Lordships that there is a general trend towards this type of analysis in most Western countries. It is also rather fashionable of late to criticise P.P.B.S. (programme planning and budgeting system), certainly as introduced in the United States. Only the other day I read an interesting article by a former member of the last Government. I would ask the critics not to jump to the conclusion that we are about to introduce a system on the American model. We hope that we have learned from North American experience. In fact we have made, with the help of the businessmen in the Civil Service Department, a very careful study of their experience, and it is certainly our aim to avoid some of the pitfalls and difficulties that have arisen across the Atlantic. I believe that P.P.B.S. was applied too fast, too rigidly, too comprehensively and too much, as it were, imposed from above in the United States. What we are planning to do here is to build up our system from the grass roots, with the help of Departments, flexibly, pragmatically (to use a hallowed phrase) and selectively.
My Lords, I believe that these changes, together with the changes in Departmental structure which I shall touch on briefly in a moment, offer the promise not only of more efficient and effective government but also of better government; and by better government I very much include more open government. It is not mere words when the White Paper states that these changes will give Ministers the opportunity for greater openness and for more responsiveness to the needs and wishes of the community and of individuals.
The essence of political decision is the choice between alternatives, the response to different voices and the persuasion of the community to accept the choice once it has been made. Ministers in the new unified Departments will to a greater extent than before be able to see their decision and the available choices in the round. For example, patterns of settlement and patterns of surface transport now both fall to the same Minister, the Secretary of State for the Environment, and the decisions that are taken in that field emerge not as a result of co-
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ordination, however close, between two Ministers, each with his separate responsibilities, but from a single Minister whose responsibility will stretch right across the board. The boundaries will of course still remain—as long as there are Departments there will be boundaries between Departments—and it is always at the boundary that difficulties tend to crop up. But I would ask your Lordships to recognise that when we took office there were 19 main Departments of State. Only a few years ago there were a good many more than that. When the changes announced in this White Paper are complete there will be at most 14. The amount of co-ordination that has to extend across into Departmental frontiers will thereby be greatly reduced.
I grant that there is a perfectly respectable corpus of opinion which says that there should be more, not fewer, Departments, but I myself cannot go along with that view, and I shall explain why. I suspect, too, that there are noble Lords present this afternoon who have served in Governments with anything from 25 to 30 full Departments, and they know only too well the problems of co-ordination and the sheer difficulty of getting a decision which that proliferation of Departments entails. We are now, rightly or wrongly—and I hold rightly—treading the opposite path, not as a wholly new departure but taking up and carrying forward the moves already made under the last Conservative Government in the defence and foreign affairs fields, and carried through by the last Government in those two areas. But we do not believe that simply bringing together a large array of functions into a single Department and placing a single Minister at their head can possibly work. To operate—and this is the point—the new Department of the Environment or even the Department of Trade and Industry on that basis would be impracticable and would make everything far too remote.
The problem, as I see it, is to get really effective delegation from the top and at the same time to preserve the necessary accountability of Ministers to Parliament. This is not an easy problem to solve. How do we think it can be achieved? So far as the management of these functions within a Department is concerned, we have ensured that the necessary delegation will take place.

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Under the two Secretaries of State very senior Ministers have been appointed to take charge by delegation from the Secretary of State of whole blocks of functions, with their own official as well as Ministerial command. To preserve the unity of the Department the Secretary of State in charge will have final responsibility for all its work. He will have the strategic oversight of the Department and will, of course, be able to call in (to use the hallowed phrase) any big or politically charged issue which is being handled by one of the Departments under him. He will need a strong policy staff at the centre to advise him on all those matters which run across the Department as a whole. These measures, coupled with the development of the post-Fulton system of accountable management within Departments, with which we are pressing ahead, should, we believe, enable us to realise the advantages of unifying broad fields of policy without paying quite unacceptable prices in size or remoteness.
However, internal organisation and management is only half the story here. As my right honourable friend the Lord President has said in another place, Parliament's own acceptance of and co-operation with these arrangements will be essential if the new unified Departments are to succeed. We need better Parliamentary control, and we believe that the new Committee structure for another place suggested in the Green Paper will help towards that end. But there are other ways in which Parliament can assist. The Minister for Trade and the Minister for Industry in the Department of Trade and Industry, and the three Ministers in the Department of the Environment, under the Secretary of State, will have very real responsibility and real authority within their fields. It is, I suggest, in Parliament's own interest to recognise that and to hold them to account where appropriate, leaving the Secretary of State responsible for the overall strategy of the Department and for those areas where he exercises a direct personal responsibility.
Now, my Lords, for the main changes (I propose to deal with them quite rapidly) in the Departmental structure. I believe that most people think that we have got the new Department of the Environment
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pretty well right. Indeed, the right honourable gentleman the Leader of the Opposition claims it as his own. But more doubts have been raised about the Department of Trade and Industry. It has been suggested that this unified Department will be quite unmanageably large and cumbersome. I suggest that this criticism ignores two factors: first, the Department of Trade and Industry will in fact be much smaller than the Department of the Environment, at least judged by the number of civil servants; secondly, in terms of total staff the new Department will, even at the outset, be considerably smaller than the old Ministry of Technology. It will, of course, have lost the whole spectrum of functions concerned with aerospace research, development and procurement.
That brings me straight away to the new free-standing Ministry of Aviation Supply. I think it fair to say that the range of functions with which that Ministry is concerned, and how they are best fitted into the structure of Government, is something which has vexed and baffled all those who have sought to solve it since the war, and not least the last Administration. I wish to make no bones about the fact—and we have made it quite clear in the White Paper—that we have set up this new Ministry in order to buy time for a thorough review in the next 18 months. The review staff looking into this will be headed by Mr. Derek Rayner, one of the very able businessmen who are now attached to the Civil Service Department. They will look at defence procurement as a whole, and will aim to reach lasting conclusions to end the constant reorganisation in this field which has plagued us ever since the war and which I suggest is one of the factors that has contributed to at least some of the difficulties in which our aerospace industry is placed at the present time. I trust and believe that this review foreshadows a more stable and rational solution of what is admittedly a difficult problem.
I now turn to the transfer of responsibility for primary and secondary education in Wales from the Secretary of State for Education and Science to the Secretary of State for Wales. May I say at the outset that this transfer was a plank in our Election Manifesto—the Welsh Manifesto—and we are entitled to regard it therefore as an act for which we were

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elected. It is not altogether clear to what those who have voiced objections to the transfer are opposed. Some complain that it does not go further and involve the transfer of higher education as well. But there is a general view that polytechnics and universities should be a United Kingdom responsibility, since they are not, and should not be, confined to a local catchment area for their intake. That, I think, would be to make us all impossibly parochial. School education, I suggest, is a different and primarily local matter. This transfer, as my right honourable friend said in another place, is about the education of Welsh children who live in Wales, and this must be of the closest interest for any Welshman. Recognition of this by giving the Secretary of State executive responsibility as a further measure of devolution to the Welsh Office, coupled with the special arrangements that have been made to maintain close co-operation between the Welsh Office and the Department of Education and Science at the point where their responsibilities meet, will, I am sure, be welcomed in Wales.
Finally, I come to the change which was most discussed before the event and has been most criticised since; namely, the integration of the Ministry of Overseas Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I must frankly say that I find many of the criticisms here a little overdrawn, a little over-emotional and somewhat ill-conceived. We have made it clear in the recent White Paper on Expenditure that, far from proposing to cut the aid programme, we propose to continue to maintain its substantial expansion. That, surely, is an answer to those who say that this is an indication of some lack of interest on the part of the present Government in the aid programme itself. We have likewise made it plain in this White Paper that the maintenance within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the autonomous Overseas Development Administration means that the body of undoubted expertise and skill built up by O.D.M. will not be dissipated. I cannot see anything to complain about there.
Nor, my Lords, do I understand the criticism that the move somehow implies a subordination of aid policy—which is looked upon as holy—to the short run, unholy considerations of foreign policy. I do not accept that distinction, though it
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is perfectly legitimate to distinguish, in overseas policy as a whole, between short-run and long-run aims. I can assure the House that there will be no sacrifice of the longer-term interests, either of the developing countries or of the United Kingdom herself. Nor, for that matter, do I regard it as a choice between, on the one hand, the interests of the developing countries and, on the other, our own national interest. The Government's view is that this country's overseas policy can only be looked at as a whole, but this does not imply any subordination of any particular part of it. The fact that aid will now have the powerful support of a senior Minister in the Cabinet to speak for it can be only, in my view, an advantage for those who, like me, believe in a substantial and continuing policy of aid to the developing world from this country.
Before concluding these remarks, I should like to take this opportunity of announcing a decision in the field of scientific research which flows from the departmental changes upon which I have been touching. With the reallocation of functions among Departments, responsibility for certain specialist research laboratories, which were previously part of the Ministry of Technology, has been reviewed. These are the Water Pollution Research Laboratory, the Hydraulic Research Station, the Forest Products Research Laboratory and also the Fire Research Station. The four laboratories will be transferred to the Department of the Environment, with effect from January 1, 1971, together with the responsibility for administering grants to the Water Research Association, the Construction Industry Research and Information Association, the Heating and Ventilating Research Association and the Timber Research and Development Association. These research activities mainly support the functions of the new Department. As regards fire research, the transfer of the Fire Research Station is without prejudice to further consideration of the recommendations of the Holroyd Committee on the Fire Service relating to the future organisation of fire research. The Fire Offices Committee, which shares with Her Majesty's Government the financing of the Fire Research Station, will be associated with this consideration.
My Lords, may I conclude these perhaps overlong introductory remarks by

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saying that I believe that hitherto—and this is no Party point because the situation existed under Government of all political complexions—there has been something missing at the centre of the machinery of Government. I believe that the new structure which we are hoping to build into the centre of the machinery of Government will enable Ministers in the future to discharge their collective responsibility more effectively; and in that I believe that over a period of time there will be gain for us all.
Furthermore, I believe the new structuring of Departments is a more rational basis for the future, and will enable Government business to be handled and dealt with more effectively than in the past. By the same token I believe that the new system of programme analysis and review, which we are hoping to build into the machinery of Government, will enable the Government of the day to see more clearly where the options truly lie, and will help them to choose more wisely than we have all sometimes chosen in the past between those options. I believe that the proposals in the White Paper (though I recognise that there may be those who dissent from this proposal or that proposal), taken in the large, are a considerable step forward and offer a platform for stability for Government organisation which we have not had for quite a long time. With those words I commend those proposals to your Lordships' House.
Moved, That this House takes note of the White Paper, The Reorganisation of Central Government (Cmnd. 4506).—(Earl Jellicoe).
4.26 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, this looks like being rather a weighty debate, both in the length of the speeches and in the heaviness of the intellectual effort that is necessary in discussing subjects which, when one gets down to detail, become rather abstruse. I should like to congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, on his speech and, on the whole, on his White Paper. I shall have some things to say which are seriously and genuinely meant to search for information. This White Paper provides us with an opportunity to have a serious discussion on a very fundamental question, and we shall no doubt have some very worth-
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while maiden speeches from noble Lords. I hope that it will give rise to the type of debate at which your Lordships are so good.
I shall have a number of questions to ask the noble Earl. If I may say so (if I may have his attention for a moment; I know it is very difficult after he has made his speech, for he no doubt has one or two things to sort out), it is not my intention to approach this debate from a Party political point of view, but I am bound to say that there are some rather Party political noises in Part I of the White Paper—particularly in the underlying flavour of it. There is quite a difference between Part I and the rest of the Paper. There is not very much correlation between some of these rather pious, not to say bombastic, statements, and I wonder whether the first five paragraphs headed: "A new Style of Government: Aims" did not come from the fluent pen of the noble Earl's Parliamentary Secretary. I shall not ask him to answer that question because that is another of the secrets of Whitehall in this new period of open Government to which we shall not be told the answer. I do not think I would disagree with most of the aims at the beginning, but I slightly resent the idea that it is somehow the private property of the Conservative Party—a blinding light which has struck them. I cannot agree that this four month review can properly be described—and I know that a great deal of work was going on at Selsdon and elsewhere—as it is in the Paper in paragraph 5:
"This review differs fundamentally both in the depth of its aims and in the breadth of its scope from previous piecemeal changes in the pattern of departmental responsibilities."
I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, to whom I always look for guidance on the English language, to study some of the language in this White Paper, for some of it is of a positively obscuring kind—I say again, "positively obscuring".
What the new Government have done is only the last in a large number of such reviews and changes, and I am not sure (although if it is a matter of adding up, we do not necessarily want to score more points on this) that what is now proposed is quite as extensive as the changes carried out by the previous Government. It is because of the suggestion

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that this is something much more fundamental that I am critical. I very much hope that the view stated, that the results will remove for a considerable period in the future the need for continual changes, will in the event be fulfilled. I am not very optimistic about this, for I do not believe we have reached, or ever shall reach, a certainty. None the less, I would wholly agree with what is said in the White Paper (I suppose this is a sort of apologia; all Governments say this; we certainly did): that frequent changes are disturbing and damaging to the machinery of Government and the efficiency with which its tasks are discharged. I agree that Governments, and particularly the Government of which I was a member, have placed very heavy burdens on the Civil Service. It is a remarkable tribute to the Civil Service that they have always contrived to take a deep breath, adapt, and make sense out of the many different variations in policy which have taken place. Indeed, I congratulate the Civil Service on managing to keep under control some of the barmier ideas which I know were floating around in the best Conservative circles.
I know that it is beginning to look otherwise, but in fact I am not trying to make a Party political speech, because I know that all political Parties go in for thinking of this kind. But I do not believe that we have yet reached any single, underlying system of organisation which will meet indefinitely the needs of an enterprise so varied as Government. This is also true to a large extent of industry. Noble Lords who are in industry will know the enormous variety of organisation structures and non-structures that exist in parts of industry. I do not think one need worry about this, because I rather hope that we shall gradually improve our techniques. I think that what is now called the central policy review staff, rather than the central analytical capability, really is a bit of a chameleon, and I shall have something more to say about it later. I hope that at some stage, even if not now, the very social scientists will begin to make some contribution in the field of Government. Certainly I doubt whether any of them have been consulted on this.
My second criticism, as I have already mentioned, is about what are styled as the new discoveries the Government have
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made. Most of the principles with which I agree, and which are stated in this Paper to be very fundamental, as new discoveries, have been expressed time and again. The last thing I wish to do is to criticise the civil servants who have written the Paper, who have had to fill it up and have obviously drawn on the best sources (even without acknowledgment), but most of what has been said in Section II on the functional approach, as opposed to the analytical approach which I am sure excites the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, has in fact been said in the Haldane Report, which was published in 1918. I hope the noble Earl has read the Haldane Report. If not, there has been something remiss in the briefing in my old Department, because I read it as soon as I got in. But the headings are the same.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, may I assure the noble Lord that I read it before I joined.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am delighted. I am only sorry the noble Earl has forgotten it, because he might have made some acknowledgment of the Haldane Report. I found that I had completely forgotten it when I read it for the 1964 debate. However, the White Paper states:
"Government departments should be organised by reference to the task to be done or the objective to be attained "—
some people might say that this is again rather a blinding glimpse of the obvious. And:
"… this should be the basis of the division of work between departments rather than, for example, dividing responsibility between departments so that each one deals with a client group."
What Haldane said 52 years ago was that there appeared to be only two alternatives, briefly described as distribution according to the persons or classes to be dealt with and distribution according to the services to be performed. The White Paper continues:
"The one we recommend for adoption is that of defining the field of activity in the case of each department according to the particular service which it renders to the community as a whole"
I congratulate the Government on confirming in 1970 Haldane's principle, for Haldane said it all very well. There is no harm in restating such principles, but

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it is a little ungenerous that so far (and I do not think this is characteristic of the noble Earl) the Government have not made a little more reference to what had been done by their predecessors, particularly in the setting up of the Civil Service Department. This document gives me the impression that the Civil Service has contrived to keep the Whitehall machinery on the rails, and to carry out proposals most of which were already in the pipe-line under the previous Government; and they have also succeeded in confining the businessmen in an area in which they will not do much harm and will almost certainly do some good.
There are great and continuing improvements that can be made within the machinery of Government, but most of these will come, not by apparently striking and sweeping decisions, but by painstaking and detailed improvements in management methods, in grading structures, in the dissemination of new techniques; above all, in the training and the reorientation of attitudes which come after, and not before, the spadework. The Paper makes passing references to subjects such as accountable management, but we shall not get that kind of accountable management without a great deal more work in the fundamental management of the Civil Service. I am sure that the noble Earl, with his responsibilities, will not disagree that this is an essential and parallel activity.
I do not propose to discuss many of the actual changes, because other noble Lords will know of these and will wish to deal with them. The Department of the Environment we support. As is known, this was a decision which in fact the previous Government had taken, although I am bound to say that there are some awkward frictions on the borderlines touching the old Transport Ministry; and some of my noble friends may wish to deal with this question. The setting up of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, again, is open to serious criticism, but I will not go into that. The decision on Welsh education seems to me to be absolutely barmy. It breaks all the rules actually contained in this document, and I am bound to say that the only justification for it is that it was in the Conservative Party Manifesto. It is a great pity they did not take a little
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I longer to deal with it. Again, some other noble Lords may want to deal with that subject, as undoubtedly they will, with regret, with the change with regard to O.D.M.
I should like, however, to turn now to the central analytical capability. which I think has now changed from an abstract into a concrete phrase. Capability, I suppose, can mean a lot of chaps. It is now called, I believe, a central policy review staff. This, of course, has caused a good deal of frivolity, not least within the Civil Service itself. We all know—at least, I hope we all know—that big advances are made in the presentation of options and benefits and, in particular, in the establishment of quantitative yardsticks. We know all I too well that the pressure of events means that Cabinets frequently have to take decisions where much more detailed analysis—and very often it is a matter of time—would have pointed the way out more clearly, or at least identified the different options in a more factual form.
Of course, some real progress has been made. The noble Earl referred to programme-planning budgeting systems, but of course it is an illusion; and again the noble Earl, who has been in the Ministry of Defence, will know that none of these methods, whether they are cost-sensitivity studies or other sophisticated techniques to get at a meaningful cost benefit analysis, can be introduced overnight, or done—and I put this as a serious point to the noble Earl—on a wide range of the sort of issues that come to Cabinet, without a very great enlargement of resources. This is not an objection to making a start. The idea that it will very quickly—I apologise; I know that noble Lords in Waiting have other things to do, but I am on a serious argument and I will either stop for a moment or move to a less interesting part of my speech if the noble Earl would prefer that.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I must intervene, if I may. I apologise to the noble Lord for the fact that my attention was momentarily distracted, but the noble Lord knows perfectly well that the business of the House comes up suddenly and one cannot always pay unbroken attention to what is being said. I really think it was unnecessary for him to make that last crack.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, it was not meant to be a nasty crack and the noble Earl should not be oversensitive. It is rather disturbing when one is expounding an argument. If the noble Earl thinks I was offensive I can assure him that I was not, and if he still thinks that I was offensive I will apologise for it, but I am on a very difficult part of my argument. I do not believe that the technicians are available to carry this out on the extensive scale that the Government appear to have in mind. Cost benefit studies take a lot of skilled manpower, and when one is trying to compare options in the social field—education versus roads—one has to use all the most sophisticated techniques if it is to be at all meaningful. That is not an argument against having this capability and I am sure it ought to be started, but I do not believe it will yield very rapid results, and there are dangers in expecting too much.
Let me echo the noble Earl in paying a tribute to the Cabinet Office. It is a pity, and I think we are in real difficulties at this point, if he still maintains that we are not freer to talk about the system of Government and Cabinet committees and their detailed work. I am sure the noble Earl will agree that the work of Sir Burke Trend and the capacity of the officials who serve him and who make sense out of the sometimes inevitably confused discussions that take place, is very remarkable. Unfortunately, I do not think the country will ever know what we owe to them.
The first Parliamentary reference to the new central review staff and the analytical capability was made by the noble Earl on July 22, when he said:
"One area, among others, where I believe that their assistance can be useful is in helping to develop what central Government has hitherto and rather conspicuously lacked; and that is a serious capability at the centre for analysing programmes and for assessing the longer-term options…."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22/7/70, col. 1055.]
The businessmen appear to have been shuffled off. There is no mention of them in relation to the new central policy review staff. They are now based in the Civil Service Department, developing a system of regular reviews.
The noble Earl really must not be surprised if we say that the Government apparently have not thought this
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out. They have gone out and bought the businessmen—perhaps "bought" is not the right word, because I do not doubt that the businessmen are largely giving their services, and no one would pay a higher tribute than I to the way in which industry has supported Government in lending people, as they did in the days of the previous Government. But, my Lords, where in fact are they going to operate? Are they going to be in this new unit? In any case, are businessmen particularly suited for this? I believe that most of the best analysts in this area are to be found either in universities or actually in Government itself, particularly in the Ministry of Defence, the Treasury and elsewhere. I am all for bringing them in. A greater sophistication will help, but even then it will not remove the area of controversy; and any noble Lord who has had anything to do with the Ministry of Defence, which has the most sophisticated forms of analysis of any Government Department, will know that the controversies go on as much as ever because, fortunately or unfortunately, there will always be—and some noble Lords may say, "Thank God for it!"—a large area which is not susceptible to quantification and where judgment of a subjective kind will have to come in. But that is no reason why one should not have all the best figures possible.
My Lords, assuming that the means are available—and this is really the crucial difficulty which to my mind raises a quite important constitutional point—where in the machine is this to operate? We know that the system of Cabinet committees is supposed to be secret, although we can read about them in countless memoirs. So let us therefore assume that the situation existed, not in the lifetime of this Government but in that of an earlier Government which has been written about. If Departments disagree with some aspects of the analysis, or the conclusions that may be drawn from it, who will argue the central policy for that Paper in Cabinet? The noble Earl talks about reporting to Ministers collectively, but our system of arriving at collective decisions depends to a large extent on the Ministers being responsible.
One could go on at great length in this very difficult area of the extent to which officials and Ministers can mix. I

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believe that this central review staff can be useful, but it would be highly dangerous if the conclusions were not to be disputed in Cabinet and were to be largely settled outside, where the influence of Ministers, and the critical influence, will be diminished.
There are many people who hope to see Governments become much more analytical, and decisions taken much more on a sort of computerised basis. But this is a real difficulty, and already there are controversies as to the exent to which these analytical techniques, valuable as they are, are diminishing the flow of political exchange, the conflict of interest. I am sure the noble Earl will forgive me if I refer to the Schultz-Lindflom controversy: I will not say where I got this information from, because I am not allowed to talk about the briefing I had from officials. But there are quite considerable anxieties in this area, especially among those who think that decisions must, in the last resort, come from the clash of political thought and interest. I admit that I am encouraged by the statement made by the noble Earl's Parliamentary Secretary in the debate in another place, which clearly recognised the importance of, in the end, Ministers taking decisions. I believe that there is more explanation to give on this. I am sceptical as to whether we have reached satisfactory finality on how this is to operate, and I do not doubt that the Civil Service, as much as the noble Earl himself, will be concerned with these problems.
May I conclude by saying that while we welcome anything that improves the analysis and the quantification of options, I do not believe that this has yet been fully worked out. Any explanation the noble Earl can give to the House will be useful, because I really believe that this is a tremendously important subject, and one which, although it contains long words, is really of great significance. I hope that, whatever is achieved in this area, this Government, in a way that previous Governments have not, will contrive to find time for Ministers themselves to talk together. They are all overworked. I know that the noble Earl rushes from meeting to meeting and that he is not able, any more than I was, to finish one meeting he is in. I hope that
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somehow someone will build in moments of peace for Ministers to sit and talk about long-term strategy. They do this when out of Government, when they do not have all the facts and figures, and that accounts, no doubt, for some of the sillier things Governments do when they come into office. But when they are in office they never take time to discuss with their colleagues the fundamental strategy. I know that this is an important subject. I wish the noble Earl success, and I hope that when he comes to reply, he will face some of the dilemmas inherent in the proposals in this White Paper.
4.52 p.m.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, in spite of the concluding words of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and in spite of the obvious importance of the subject, I shall be very brief. We on these Benches naturally sympathise with any proposal to simplify Governmental procedures and disentangle the issues, which get ever more confused and complicated. But, though we have great good will towards this White Paper, we rather doubt whether it will achieve the end desired. I must say that I personally arrive at this tentative conclusion the more readily owing to its highly abstract language (which was, I admit, not so much employed by the noble Earl who opened the debate), which makes it a little difficult to understand who exactly will do what.
Another reason for not being too optimistic about efforts to reform the whole Governmental machine is the fate of similar attempts to reform it in the past. Perhaps the present scheme was the result of more profound reflection than the rather ill-fated attempt which resulted in the setting up of the Department of Economic Affairs. At least. I doubt whether Mr. Heath and Mr. Peter Walker devised it in a taxi on the way to a meeting. There was, nevertheless, an intellectual case for setting up the D.E.A., and no doubt it could have worked had it not been for the not unnatural opposition of the Treasury, referred to so graphically in Lord George-Brown's Memoirs, which we are all reading at the present time.
One reason, perhaps, for thinking that the latest scheme will come up against fewer difficulties is that, with luck, there may not be, under this scheme, any great

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continuing inter-departmental rivalry resulting from the present proposed amalgamations. But much will depend, of course, on whether the heads of these vast machines have sufficient stamina and strength of character to make them run smoothly and effectively. If they do, so much the better; then it will work.
I agree that in principle there is reason to have, as it were, a small inner circle of Ministers with really great areas of responsibility. Indeed, I made this one of the central features of the proposals for reform of Government which I advanced in the House over three years ago, in a speech to which the noble Earl was good enough to refer. I sympathise also with the apparent intention of the Government to cut down on inter-ministerial committees. But, of course, the interests of the old Ministries, which have now, as I understand it, been incorporated bodily and with their own Ministers in the new machines, will have to iron out their difficulties with the other "wings", as I think they are now called, so I suppose there will not in practice be any great diminution in what are now effectively inler-departmental meetings. As against this, the total number of Cabinet committees may well be reduced, and no doubt that is in itself desirable. So far so good.
But if we are to be guided in any way by the lessons of the past, perhaps we ought just to have a look at the famous system of "Overlords" devised by the late Sir Winston Churchill, in, I think, 1951. Everybody soon recognised that this system could not work, if only because the Ministers officially "coordinated" by the Overlord were in the Cabinet, too, and in practice, like nation States, they simply refused to sacrifice any of their so-called sovereignty or independence. The same applied, as we all know, to the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence appointed by Mr. Chamberlain just before the war. I take it that a similar difficulty will not arise out of the present scheme—at least, I hope not.
But supposing that, for instance, Mr. Noble has an acute difference of opinion with the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, will it be in order for him to have it out in Cabinet on the basis of a brief prepared by his own officials, no doubt on quite contrary lines to the brief prepared by Mr. Davies's officials? I do
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not know the answer to that question. I should be much happier if there were no possibility of such a situation arising, and I would welcome any reassurance that the Government can give us on this essential, if perhaps elementary, point.
It is not quite clear whether the two Ministers who, in the words of the White Paper, will "support" Mr. Davies will have a right of appeal to the Cabinet or whether they will not. Their status, we read in the White Paper, but not their legal position, will be equivalent to that of a Minister in charge of a separate Department not represented in the Cabinet, the same applying to Mr. Walker's "supporters". How is this to be interpreted exactly in practice? It is very important to be clear, and on the answer to this question will largely depend the judgment which we on these Benches shall be inclined to form of the whole new proposed set-up.
I myself, however, should be considerably more doubtful about the wisdom of establishing what the White Paper describes, in its polysyllabic way as
"a capability at the centre for assessment of policies and projects in relation to strategic objectives",
the full nature of which, as Lord Shackleton has said, is revealed in paragraphs 43 to 52, where it is, rather more briefly and graphically, termed
'a small multidisciplinary central policy review staff".
This staff, it seems, will be at the disposal of the Government as a whole but will be under the supervision of the Prime Minister, and its task is quite lucidly set forth as
"to identify those areas of policy in which new choices can be exercised and to ensure that the underlying implications of alternative courses of action are fully analysed and considered."
This is indeed a mouthful. What it all comes down to, I suggest, is in modern parlance, this. First of all, you prepare a "think-tank" and then you drop into it a "whizz-kid". Whether this arrangement works or not depends on whether the "whizz-kid" can swim—politically, that is. This is not so easy as it sounds, and there are indeed some who say that the admittedly brilliant Lord Rothschild (whom I have never met) has not yet learnt!

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Moreover, the experiment has to some extent been tried before. The last Government had its "think-tank", or a think-tank of sorts, at Number 10, but they had not one "whizz-kid" but two "whizz kids", Messrs. Kaldor and Balogh (as they then were). This small review staff was, I suppose, multi-disciplinary—certainly it had no common discipline: that at least can be said. It is arguable that it possessed considerably more economic expertise than the present "whizz-kid" designate. Opinions differ, however, I think I am right in saying, as to its utility, though I have no doubt that it was constantly at work
"analysing and considering the underlying implications of alternative courses of action",
to revert to the splendid language of the White Paper.
But it seems that the new "think-tank" will not confine its activities to economics. This may be where it could be quite an innovation. For instance, it may well be supposed that one of its more urgent tasks will be to think out an alternative course of action in respect of the prospective sale of arms to South Africa. I can well imagine Sir Alec Douglas-Home coming to Lord Rothschild and saying, "Look, we really have got ourselves into rather a mess on this tiresome issue. Would you please devise a scheme whereby we can get out of it without too much loss of face?" Certainly if Lord Rothschild can do this, he will deserve well of the State; but it might tax even his very considerable ingenuity.
What I do rather fear, however, is that. in spite of what the noble Earl, Earl Jellicoe said, if the "think-tank" is successful it may well be too powerful, whereas if (as is perhaps more likely) it is unsuccessful, it will simply get in the way. In the first case it might develop into something equivalent to the famous Lloyd-Georgian Garden Suburb; and in the second case it could, I am afraid, like Lord Cherwell and his team, become a major menace and a distinct clog in the Governmental machine. I know that the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, said it was absurd to suggest this possibility. But I do not think it is; I think it is a real possibility that it may so develop if things go wrong. So my concrete suggestion is, why not merge it altogether
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into the Cabinet Secretariat and suppress it as a separate entity under the supervision of the Prime Minister? New blood is always a good thing. I am all for bringing it in. I am sure that Sir Burke Trend would himself welcome the addition of Lord Rothschild to his staff. which ought surely in itself to constitute the co-ordinating body, the evident need for which clearly emerges from the rather nebulous prose of the White Paper.
In conclusion, may I just say how we shall look forward even more eagerly to the promised Green Paper on the Re form of the House of Commons. If any thing wants reforming it is what used to be called, I believe, the Lower House. If democracy is not to perish in this country, two things seem to us Liberals, al any rate, to be necessary. The first is devolution, and on that I suppose we shall have to await the publication of the Crowther Report—
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord to say that my right honourable friend the Lord President has anticipated the noble Lord's anticipation, because the Green Paper has in fact been issued.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I shall then look forward to reading it. I did not know that it had been issued. I thank the noble Earl very much.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, Haldane was on this subject, too, fifty-two years ago!
LORD GLADWYN: Anyhow, two things are necessary, as we see it: first of all, devolution in a general way; and, secondly, the exercise of rather more control over the Government by the House of Commons itself—that is to say, by the intervention of the representatives of the people at a rather earlier stage in the policy-making process. If, as the White Paper says, the Executive, even if pruned and streamlined, is, by becoming more efficient to be greatly strengthened, it is important surely that the Legislature should not be entirely put into the shade. The frequent references in the White Paper to the need to prepare our whole Governmental machine for what will be expected of it when we come into the Common Market are greatly to be welcomed, but this, after all, will also apply presumably to the strengthening of the

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Legislature. So your Lordships will see that we on these Benches have rather ambivalent feelings about the White Paper. We should not like to condemn it hastily, but we are rather doubtful about the usefulness of some of the proposals, and in any case we should like an answer to the various doubts expressed and to the questions we have raised.
5.5 p.m.
LORD REIGATE: My Lords, I ask for the indulgence which your Lordships customarily afford to someone who addresses you for the first time. In fact, my voice has been heard here before because, like other speakers whom your Lordships will hear, I made a maiden speech in another place but within these four walls. There is, however, a distinct difference between the two occasions. In 1950, when I made my maiden speech in another place, (here was a sense of urgency which is lacking to-day, because the Labour Government had been returned with an infinitesimal majority, and many of us were very frightened that we might have to return to our electorate without having made a maiden speech at all; and I feel that had that happened I should have lost many votes to my then opponent, who is now my old friend, the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy. It is fair to say that I beat him five times to another place, but he has beaten me to your Lordships' House.
May I say that I welcome very much the general approach of the White Paper. The sentiments to me are impeccable, even if sometimes I think that the English is not as lucid as it might be. I do not propose to go into too many of the general principles involved, because I am anxious not to detain your Lordships too long in view of the number of speakers. I should like to limit myself to points of criticism and praise of detailed proposals.
May I begin by welcoming the return to the Board of Trade (a Department in which I had the honour to serve) of the responsibility for monopolies and restrictive practices. Quite frankly, I could never understand how on earth that particular subject could ever find an appropriate home in the Department of Employment and Productivity. But secondly and even more, do I welcome the transfer of the Children's Department from the Home Office to the Secretary of State for Social Services. To my mind,
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it never made any sense at all that the care of children should be in a Department mixed up with the police, prisons, fire brigades, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and all the other odd jobs which the Home Office do, not least of which, may I say, arising out of the discussion earlier this afternoon, is the maintenance of the standing roll of the baronetage. It never made any sense to have the Children's Department there. The worst argument of all was that put forward, I think, by a previous Home Secretary, that its right place was there in order to humanise the Home Office. It seems to me that the interests of children should never have been sacrificed in so hopeless a task as that.
May I turn to certain functions and duties of the Department of Health and Social Services, since I also had the honour of serving in a small part of that large Department? When the amalgamation of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance was first put forward in my Party's Manifesto, I must frankly say that I thought it was nonsense. I thought it was a foolish idea—and I knew it was when the Labour Government adopted it. It seemed to me that the merger of those two great administrative machines was a marriage of chalk and cheese and not likely to prove a very fruitful union. I must, however, say to your Lordships that I am now beginning to revise my opinion. The accretion of the Children's Department and the implementation of Seebohm seem to me to mean that that merger is beginning to make sense, since the Department is now developing into a Ministry of Social Welfare in the widest sense. If I may use a perfectly horrible, technical jargon phrase which is creeping into discussions, it is becoming a "policy cluster". I am sure that my noble friend Lord Conesford will share my horror at such a phrase, but it is an extraordinarily appropriate one for this happening.
But now it is time to release some of the bees in my bonnet and, if I may take the senior one, I deeply regret once again the failure to transfer the responsibilities of industrial health from the Department of Employment, as it is now called, to the Department of Health and Social Security. It has seemed to me for many years that it is quite wrong that

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we do not seek to integrate health at work with health at home or in the hospital. I will not enlarge too much on the arguments, but may I remind your Lordships that it is now 22 years, I think, since the Dale Committee reported on this matter, and virtually no action has been taken by any Government at all. I have held views on this matter for some 17 years, and there was a time when I managed to convert a Minister of Health. Indeed, he needed no conversion; he was of the same opinion and he decided to submit a Cabinet paper; but, alas, the worst happened and he was transferred from being Minister of Health to being Minister of Labour, the radical reformer overnight became the empire builder, and nothing more has been heard since of that proposal. But I notice that in March of this year the former Secretary of State—and I am quoting from Hansard—decided to
"set up a small, high-powered body to conduct a general inquiry across the whole field of health and safety legislation."
My Lords, it is really a matter of regret and concern that the terms of reference of that body make no reference to the need for integration with the National Health Service.
I should like to turn for a moment to the duties now assigned to the Department of the Environment. I notice with pleasure that it now takes responsibility for the control of air, water, and noise pollution. I speak with some feeling on this matter, because when I was a Member of another place I was one of the four Members whose constituencies bordered on Gatwick Airport, and my file on this matter at the last time of reckoning weighed about 2½ lb. I have seen that airport grow for 17 years. I have seen it grow piecemeal and overshadow and spoil the lives of many hundreds, and indeed thousands of people, for the worse. There has never yet been a full public inquiry into the manner in which that airport has grown from being an alternative to Heathrow to being our second airport. There has never been anything comparable to the Roskill Commission and, as a result, there has been this haphazard growth, almost unplanned. Those who live nearby are now faced with an extension of the existing runway, and possibly a second runway as well, and I hope that the new Secretary of State into whose lap
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this matter will fall will as soon as possible grant the local request for a full public inquiry.
There is some anomaly to be explained as to what is meant by his "duty of control". There are controls now. If there are complaints about low-flying aircraft, or about excessive night flights, which are all in breach of the regulations, I must remind your Lordships that the necessary monitoring and policing is done by officials responsible to the Board of Trade. The Board of Trade is responsible for airport policy. If ever there was a case of, not a poacher turning gamekeeper but a poacher combining his duties with those of a gamekeeper, this is it; and either the word "control" in the White Paper is meaningless as regards the Secretary of State for the Environment, or else the duties should be changed.
I should like to make one final point. In paragraphs 55 and 56 the Government make it clear that it is their purpose and intention first to reduce the numbers of the Civil Service and, secondly—and I particularly welcome this—to reduce the numbers working in central London. I presume this will mean less strain on accommodation in central London, and perhaps particularly on accommodation in Whitehall. Does this mean that the Government are going to abandon the Whitehall Plan? Will they announce their firm rejection of a proposal which would destroy three buildings of great historic moment in order to build a new Home Office? I hope we shall hear from my noble friend that it is the Government's intention to hold up this plan, and then we should know indeed that they mean business in this particular respect.
5.16 p.m.
BARONESS SHARP: My Lords, it gives me very great pleasure to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Reigate, on his most distinguished maiden speech. His long apprenticeship in another place has clearly given him a fluency and a competence which those of us who have spent our lives in one of the silent services must envy. In addition to this, he brings a knowledge and an experience to contribute to our affairs which will plainly be of the greatest usefulness. I am sure we must all hope that we shall have the pleasure and stimulus of listening to him on many future occasions.

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May I now turn to the White Paper? I should like, speaking as a former civil servant, to welcome the proposals in this Paper. They seem to me to make a start on trying to achieve a more rational organisation of Government, which is desperately badly needed. Only those who work inside the machine can have any idea of the confusion and duplication, the friction, the wealth of interdepartmental committees—which to some civil servants have become now a total way of life—that exist in certain spheres of Government. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, suggested that the Government had no cause to claim anything very new in what they have done in this Paper. But I think they have, for this seems to me to show an effort to produce considered and objective improvements in the organisation, which is something we have not seen for many decades—and I am not speaking of one Administration rather than another. For decades we have seen so much ad hoc change in the Ministries, quite often related to the personality of individual Ministers who nearly always disappear a few months after this great change has been made. I think all of us in Whitehall have desperately wanted this kind of approach to rationalising the structure of Departments.
Having said that, I want to add that this is only a start. The White Paper itself says that this is intended as the foundation of future changes. There is a great deal still to be done. I do not mean only in spheres which the White Paper has not yet touched; I mean also in the spheres which it has dealt with. I welcome these two great new Ministries, the Ministry for Trade and Industry (I never could see any sense in having two Ministries dealing with trade and industry), and also in the sphere with which I myself was once concerned, a Ministry for the Environment which covers traffic and transport, as well as planning, housing, and local government. All of us who have worked in this field have known for a long time that this is something badly needed.
At the same time, I believe that both these Ministries, as they stand, are too big. That may seem a contradiction, but I do not think it is. The important thing is that in both Ministries there should be, and I think there can be, some shedding
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of the load. Some of the load, some of the work, can be shed entirely, and with no visible loss to the efficiency of Government. Some of it which cannot be shed can be provided for in other ways: by organisations for which Ministers have an overall responsibility, but no direct responsibility for the day-to-day operations—the type of arrangement which is often described as "hiving off". There is certainly scope for that.
I look at my own old Department, now part of the Department of the Environment, and I confess to some concern at the inclusion in it, lock, stock and barrel, of the whole of the Ministry of Public Building and Works. This seems to me to be a pretty large tail to a rather highly strung dog; and I think that, just like that, it will not work well. But then in relation to some, and perhaps much, of the work that is covered by the Ministry of Public Building and Works there can be a good deal of shedding and, perhaps even more, a good deal of arrangement to handle it differently. I think of the whole work of providing Government accommodation, which, incidentally, has almost always been abominably done. We should do better if all of that work were in the charge of a Board for which a Minister, not necessarily the Minister for the Environment, had overall and financial responsibility, but no day-to-day responsibility. I also think that all that part of the Ministry which deals with the building industry needs a long and hard look. I suspect it to be quite unnecessarily inflated. That is only one example.
In looking at the size of a Ministry to consider whether it is unduly big, it is not the total size of the staff that matters; it is, on the one hand, the number of major political issues that must land finally on the desk of the Minister ultimately in charge. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, who asked whether it might happen in these big new Ministries that one of the Ministers responsible for one part of it—say the Minister responsible for local government and development—could, if he was at odds with his Secretary of State, argue the matter out in Cabinet. That seems to me a quite extraordinary idea, and I do not for one moment suppose that the Government can have any notion that the system will work like that. So I think that right across these Ministries

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there are major political issues, and political issues of some diversity, which may in the end land on the plate of the Secretary of State and may prove too much. I think that only time will show this. But it is possible that too much has been brought together—certainly in the Department of the Environment. I am very much less well acquainted with the work of the Department of Trade and Industry.
The other criterion by which one judges whether a Ministry is too big is whether it is too big for efficient management; and here I feel a good deal more sure that these Ministries really are uncomfortably big. Again, I am not quarrelling with the idea of the Ministries: I am urging that they need to be cut down, and I think they can be. When you look at whether a Ministry is too big for competent management, you look not at the total number of staff, but at the number of really senior staff. If this is too big for the management to know individually, or too big for the management to comprehend the work, then there will be difficulty. Therefore, while welcoming these Ministries I want to add that they are in great danger, unless a real effort is made—and I think it can and should be made—to cut them down.
Having said that, I want to come to the central machinery which in the White Paper is labelled "the central policy review staff", and by others the "central capability unit"—of all phrases—and finally, and worst, the "think-tank". To me, this piece of central machinery is, quite simply, an Office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet; and a much overdue and badly needed office it is. I know that it is dangerous to call it the Office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, because everybody says that this is going for the Presidential system. But there is a lot more in the Presidential system of the United States than competent advice for the Head of the Government; and that, after all, is all that is being talked about here. So there is no reason why we should not go for that, even if it happens also to distinguish the American system.
As I think the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, said, there has been some misunderstanding about the function of this office. It has been implied in some
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quarters that its function will be to know better than the Departments what they should be doing, or to criticise the proposals coming up from Departments, or to interfere with the way in which a Department intends to set about its own business. I do not think that is so at all. I do not read the White Paper in that way, and I certainly hope that that will not be so. It seems to me that the function of the Office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet is to advise the Prime Minister and the Cabinet on their collective responsibility—and I emphasise the Prime Minister, as well as the Cabinet.
I remember talking to Mr. Macmillan just after he became Prime Minister. I had been with him when he was Minister of Housing and Local Government. I was telling him that he was making far too heavy demands on the then Secretary of the Cabinet, Sir Norman Brook (Lord Normanbrook, as he became), because in the Civil Service, in the machinery of Government, we desperately needed some of his time and capacity and thought. This was part of his job. Mr. Macmillan said to me, "I am the Prime Minister and I also need some help. It is a strange thing that, in the greatest office I have ever held, I have less assistance than I have ever had." I need hardly say that he was not in any way denigrating the assistance he received from Sir Norman Brook and the Cabinet Office; he was relying on it enormously. But that was all he had, and this was not, in fact, their job.
This is what we want now. It is not only advice to the Prime Minister; it is advice to the Cabinet. I think the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, asked: "How will that advice get to the Cabinet?" The noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, said that we could not discuss it, but I cannot for the life of me think why not. Nothing is secret about this. The advice may come partly from the Prime Minister, in taking part in Cabinet discussions. He will have had that advice and help behind him. Or I can see no reason why papers and memoranda should not be presented by this staff to the Cabinet. There is no natural law which says that the head of this unit should not, if so requested by the Cabinet, appear before the Cabinet and advise them or answer their questions or tell them what he thinks. I can see no

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difficulty in this. It seems to me that the real function of this Office is, first and foremost, to assist the Government collectively in forming their ideas about priorities and central strategy and then, where necessary, judging the proposals that come forward from Departments against those priorities and central strategy. It will not be concerned with every paper that comes before the Cabinet; perhaps not with the great majority of them. In many cases these questions do not arise at all.
The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, referring to the function of this unit, talked as though it was a tremendously sophisticated affair—cost benefit and all that. I do not see it like that at all. I see these people like any other civil servants in any other Department, advising their particular Minister—in this case the Prime Minister and the Cabinet—on how a thing looks from their point of view; that is to say, from the point of view of the overall strategy of government. Perhaps the most obvious example of the kind of issue on which the Office should be advising is the great debate and struggle as to the priorities between, on the one hand, economic issues—economic needs and the growth of the economy—and, on the other, the growth of the social services.
At the moment, the only central machinery for looking at the totality of what the Government should do lies in the Treasury—and, of course, it is vital to look at the cost and the future rate of expenditure. But this is not the only test—in fact, it is a short-term test. Government needs to look at its functions over the long-term. I think back to my own days in the Ministry of Housing. Ever since the end of the war we were set on getting more houses built, and primarily our concern always was whether we were building houses for those most in need—for the poor, for the old, for the clearance of slums and so forth; because those were our priorities within the Department, though they varied from time to time.
It has always seemed to me, looking right back to the years soon after the war, that the Government might have been very much better advised to say, "That must wait until we get our industry in order, until we have made a real industrial recovery from the war; we
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have to make this our priority." This, I think, is what some other countries did. This, I think, is what Germany did. No doubt she had to; she had suffered so much worse destruction than we had. But, as a result of it, almost all other European countries have now outstripped our housing performance. They, I think, got their priorities right.
This is only one example; there art others in other fields. But this is the kind of field in which I think Government collectively need advising. They will not be quarrelling with any Minister's view of his Departmental priorities, but will only be saying to him, "For our long-term strategy we think there has to be some rather different emphasis."
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, before the noble Baroness leaves this point, may I say that she is making it all sound very simple and very nice, and for all I know she may have had a hand in thinking this out. But the phrases "central analytical capability" and "new techniques in decision making" are ones which the Government have used, and they surely presuppose the use of some of these more sophisticated techniques. Perhaps I am wrong: but the noble Baroness says that they do not mean that.
BARONESS SHARP: My Lords, I did not mean to imply that it did not entail the use of these techniques at all; but that it is not the whole of it. It is not, so to speak, just a cost-benefit exercise being done for the Government. I think the essential function is to advise the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, as in other Departments other senior civil servants advise Ministers, on what seems to be, from both the political and the economic points of view, their right long-term strategies. They will, of course, be aided by analytical capacity—though I hasten to assure the noble Lord that I had no hand in drafting this White Paper. I am saying only how it seems to me the thing ought to work, and the sort of organisation that I think we have needed for a long time.
My Lords, I do not think there is much more that I want to say about it, except just this. While I have welcomed these changes, as a former civil servant, and have even said that I think a lot more change is still needed in the spheres which are now covered as well as elsewhere. I

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should like to say from my own bitter experience that this sort of change is murder for the Civil Service. It is a really appalling business, because the reorganisation must go right down the line. This is not just a matter of, for example, taking the old Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and the Ministry of Public Building and Works and saying, "There they all are, remaining much as they have always been, each under their own Minister, with a central Minister on top". There has to be a great deal of reorganisation as between the Departments right down the line, at every level, and it is an appalling business.
For a time, I do not have any doubt, the confusion, the incoherence and the lack of certainty of purpose in Whitehall is likely to get even worse. I say this for two reasons. The first is to invite your Lordships' charity towards the Departments struggling with this business. The second is to underline what has been said earlier in the debate: that these changes in the machinery of Government, important though they are, need to be made as infrequently as possible, and need to be made (and this has been agreed, I think, on both sides of the House), so far as possible, to last. Of course, they cannot last for ever, because Governments differ in their objectives, in their priorities, in the load of their work, in where they want to put the main emphasis; and this is bound to have reactions on the machinery of Government. But so far as possible it is supremely important for the efficiency of Government, and therefore, finally, for the prosperity of this country, that changes in the machine should be considered, should be objective and, in the words, I think, of the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, should give as much promise of stability as possible.
5.37 p.m.
LORD DIAMOND: My Lords, there must be many reasons why a maiden speaker is wise in seeking the indulgence of your Lordships' House, as I do, with respect, now. In my case there is a very special reason and a grave one. I am asking your Lordships to bear with me for a short time while I pay my short tribute to the memory of a very great man. I should not be able to face myself
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in the mirror to-night were I not to take this, the first public opportunity which has presented itself to me, to say a word about the tragic death of Iain Macleod. I worked with him and opposite him for a great number of years, and the more I came to know him the more I came to appreciate his great ability and his endless patience, particularly in the other place and in its Committees, and the more I came to admire his tremendous, overwhelming, personal courage. It has been a tragic blow to many of us that he should have met his death in such an untimely and unfortunate way, and it has certainly been an enormous loss to our nation.
My Lords, the White Paper which is before us makes a plea for less government—I nearly said "shorter government": my enthusiastic support would have been even greater had that word been used. However, it makes a plea for less government and for better government, and I want to say a word or two in support of the first and to raise one or two questions in relation to the second, and then, if I may, to invite your Lordships to share with me the tremendous entertainment that is to be obtained from a careful reading of the wording of the White Paper itself.
I have a certain sympathy with the point of view of a new Government—any new Government—which is predisposed towards less government in the day-today affairs of the nation than its basic philosophy would indicate, rather than the reverse. I say that because of the pressures that exist which continually tend to drive a Government—any Government—into more and more intervention and into extending the area of government involuntarily. You will have seen that whenever anything untoward occurs the first public reaction is, "What are the Government going to do about it?", and by the afternoon, "What have the Government done about it?". I think it is unfortunate that there should be developing an attitude of mind in which, as soon as the going gets a little rough, either for the individual or for the business man or for the institution, there should be a tendency to call in the Government, to lean on the Government. I take the view that whatever the framework of government is, and of course it will be a different one according to the philosophy of the Party

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in government, whatever be this framework, to the extent that it has been revised or not, it is up to the individual to use his own capabilities and exercise his sense of responsibility to the full. And he should be encouraged to do so. Only in this way will the community derive the greatest benefit—as it needs to—from his work. Only in this way will that individual be able to enjoy that real happiness which comes from a sense of achievement.
So I would regret any tendency which would turn our Welfare State into a Lean-to-State. That would be an unfortunate development and I should be unhappy if that climate of opinion grew. If anybody were to say to me, "How do you reconcile that view with your well-known progressive views on all matters?", I would say, "I have observed that a man may find it extremely difficult to make rapid progress in a leaning attitude." As I have said, what the individual needs, and what we need from him, is his own maximum achievement. Therefore I am in favour of starting any new Government's period of office with a pre-disposition against a greater intervention in day-to-day affairs than their philosphy would require. So much for less government.
My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot summon a great deal of enthusiasm for some of the proposals—I repeat, some of the proposals—for bigger government. The real question I pose—and it follows very naturally from the most interesting and absorbing speech to which we have just listened—is this: Is "bigger" the same as "better"? I have very grave fears that it is not. I do not want to seem to be in the position of someone who has been accustomed to a certain structure of government and is therefore opposed to any variation from it. That is certainly not the case. I can well understand a merger of Departments proving highly successful where an overlapping of duties or a duplication of services has previously been the case and where this is overcome as the result of a merger.
But as far as two of the proposals are concerned—and I say this knowing that my noble friend is listening very carefully and has much more knowledge of this than I—what we are dealing with cannot by any stretch of the imagination be
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called "mergers" they can be called "conglomerates". I do not think that these two are the same thing at all. I want to put on record that at this early stage I have no doubt that the burden on the Secretary of State for each of these two Departments will be too great for him to bear. He cannot—and it is not the Government's intention that he should—divorce himself from his Parliamentary and democratic responsibilities; he cannot divest himself of the final responsibility. He has to come before whichever House is the case, he has to meet fellow-Members in dining rooms and elsewhere, he has to answer important questions, he has to run his Department. If he is a Member of the other place he has to go down to his constituency regularly and he has to deal with all his constituency correspondence. He has to attend every Cabinet meeting and some Cabinet Committees in addition. He has to do all these things.
This I believe to be a burden upon an individual which no one that I know of, or can conceive of, could support and still do his job sufficiently well to be answerable (as a Department head must always be answerable) to Parliament and to the people for his actions. What we shall see will be skimped work; inevitably so, because papers will have to be read. There is no use his saying that a colleague is dealing with this matter or with the other matter: he will have to read all the papers necessary in order to be himself aware of the policies that are being carried out and the way they are being executed. He will have to do all this. Inevitably he will find the paperwork just too much. He will have to do this paperwork in the time left after attending functions affecting members of trade groups for his Department or after other duties, and I am suggesting that he will simply find it an impossible burden. We shall see a succession of errors, of delays, of illness and, finally, of resignations. I cannot conceive of any satisfactory way of giving one person such a responsibility. I have listened carefully to the noble Baroness who preceded me; but what was being suggested was not entirely consistent with my view, that the first responsibility of the Minister is his responsibility to Parliament. I do not think it was entirely consistent with that point of view.

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I should like to say a word about the question of Cabinet rule, which is the basis of our Constitution. Are the—if I may so call them—supporting Ministers, or junior Ministers, in the "conglomerates" going to take up in Cabinet an issue with their chief, even if the constitutional position would allow it? I suggest to every noble Lord who has served in a Government that at all events such an appeal would not be taken twice. In fact, therefore, we know that a difference of opinion between a Minister of a Department within a conglomerate and a Secretary of State (perhaps a difference of opinion of a kind that ought to be settled by discussion in Cabinet or Cabinet Committee, of a kind which might raise important issues and which previously might have been so discussed) will now be settled according to the judgment of one man acting on or being persuaded by arguments about which his Government colleagues know nothing.
I am suggesting that in that case—and I am grateful to the noble Earl for the use of the word—instead of Cabinet government, we should find government by cabal. So, for the reasons that I have given, I feel that these two proposals are in many respects unwelcome. I am, inevitably, speaking from my own experience (as we all speak from our own experience, however much we try to be objective) but in particular I think these proposals impose an intolerable burden on a Minister.
Finally, may I say one or two words about the document itself; and within the limitations which I impose upon myself as a maiden speaker may I say that I am bound to describe it as at least a pretentious document. It pretends to find, for the first time, a set of golden rules, a set of all-pervading principles, which will guide every Government through every difficulty of organising Departments and the structure of government. Every one of us who has had experience of this—and everyone who has not knows it as well—knows that this is utter pretentiousness. Very largely, on many of the issues the arguments are evenly balanced. We have heard from the speeches this afternoon that that is so. There must be enormous flexibility; and, of course, the structure must change in order to keep pace with changing ex-
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ternal circumstances. So I think it is unfortunate that this grand pretence has been put forward. And if you make these pretences you get into trouble very quickly. I want your Lordships to bear with me while I draw attention to some difficulties which have resulted from this.
The first principle which is newly discovered is the functional one. No one will complain about the functional principle being applied so far as is appropriate, or being an element in the consideration; but it has been elevated into a principle which will see one through all the organisation, all the reconstruction, and. indeed, for all time. Well, my Lords, I will not say any more about that.
How long does this functional principle, this permanent principle last? It lasts precisely two paragraphs, because it is proposed in paragraph 8 and then, in paragraph 10, we see: "Well, of course, this functional principle is not to apply to Scotland and Wales." Then, as we go a little further on, we find that the functional principle is applied in an unusually original way so far as overseas aid is concerned. It is made perfectly clear that the management of overseas aid is a totally different function from the operation of the Foreign Office, and therefore the two are to be merged. Really, my Lords, I do not think the arguments there sustain the case.
If I may give one more example before I finish, there is the argument of stability. We have heard from a most reliable and well-informed source how important that is. Of course I recognise its validity, too; and so does the Government. To be fair, the Government say, "We are thinking in particular about future stability." But this same White Paper makes the point that the Civil Service, as we have heard to-day. has already been considerably disturbed and inconvenienced by the changes which have taken place previously, So the argument for stability becomes a present and pressing argument. What does the White Paper say in pursuance of this argument? I will read what paragraph 18 says in support of stability:
"The changes in departmental responsibilities involve re-ordering of responsibility for functions between the departments dealing with trade and industry, aviation supply, the environment, overseas aid, the personal social services, and education and the urban programme in Wales."

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All those changes as a result of the Government's great desire to provide stability! And there is, of course, a further change which is to be a temporary change: the change of the Ministry of Aviation Supply, as I believe it is called. But there the error is compounded because we are now told that that change is to be changed once more in another 18 months' time—and that, again, under the banner of stability. I am bound to say, to be fair to the Government, that they tried to justify that second change, but I doubt whether the argument is very helpful to the Government, because it makes clear that the second change is to take place 18 months later than all these other changes because that second change, in contradistinction to all the other decisions, is to be taken only after full consideration.
My Lords, that is all I wish to say. I have made my views clear, but I hope not offensively so. I permitted myself to do that because I take the view that the structure of Government is of enormous importance; that good structure is a great aid to good Government and, after all, good Government is what we all seek, on whichever side of the House we sit.
5.55 p.m.
VISCOUNT CALDECOTE: My Lords, it is my good fortune to follow the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, and so it is my happy task to congratulate him warmly on a most sincere, well-informed and interesting maiden speech which I know we have all greatly enjoyed. His contributions in the field of economic policy in the last Administration and his expertise in financial affairs are well known. Perhaps what is not quite so well known, in connection with a field in which I have some personal experience, is the contribution he made to the relations between Government and the defence contractors; in that he initiated the setting up of the Review Board for Government contracts which I believe was a tremendous step forward in the very difficult and important relationship between Government and defence contractors. I know that we all hope that the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, will come to many of our debates and contribute in the splendid way in which he has contributed to-day.
My Lords, overall I warmly support the reorganisation proposals in the White Paper. I have always felt that it was
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wrong—as I think the last Administration did to some extent—to treat technology as something separate, something valuable in its own right. Technology's main purpose, surely, is the support of trade and in this country our export trade; and so I welcome very much the setting up of the Department of Trade and Industry combining the old Board of Trade and the Ministry of Technology. I like, too, the emphasis on the environment which is given by the setting up of the new Department of the Environment. It is no use having a high standard of living from an efficient industry, with huge exports and balance of payments and the like, if we are to live in a drab, dull and polluted country.
I should like to make two comments about the reorganisation. First, in connection with transport. It is true, I think, to-day that transport, all forms of transport, are becoming more and more integrated. This applies particularly in freight transport. For instance, containers are used in road, rail, in air and in sea transport, and it is important that the same standards should be used in each form of transport so that the handling machinery may fit them all equally well to achieve the maximum efficiency. This is a really important point. The exports and imports go to inland clearance depots, for loading, in the case of exports, into containers very often; and for clearance under customs supervision in the case of imports. Some of these inland depots are needed near rail heads; some near convenient road access; some near airports; some near seaports, and the siting and access is very important.
Increasingly, our exports are conveyed on roll-on, roll-off lorries which go to the docks, drive on to the ships and are conveyed across the Channel or the North Sea: they go on railway wagons and on cross-Channel ferries, first by road or rail, then by sea and finally by rail or road to their ultimate destination. If Britain is to become a real part of Europe, and trade with efficiency, surely we have to regard the North Sea and the Channel, not as barriers to trade, but as broad highways for the carriage of our goods abroad. No longer must they be regarded as barriers to the movement of our exports. Again, my Lords, more and more exporters, at least the efficient ones, are searching among the great variety

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of methods for the most efficient means of transporting their goods. Maybe it is a combination of road and air, or rail and ship.
Why then in these proposals do we have air transport in one Department and roads in another, sea transport in one Department and rail in another? Why are seaports in one Ministry and airports in another? The answer, I believe, is historic, because it was thought in earlier times that only the Board of Trade knew about foreign agreements and international negotiation. But nowadays the Ministry of Transport (it is called something else now, but in effect it is the Ministry of Transport) is doing a lot of work in negotiating containers for lorries that pass between this country and Europe and vice-versa. Very difficult negotiations are being carried on with success and efficiency by that Department. I know that these matters are all questions of a balance of advantage. I believe that the shipping industry is against coming under the Ministry of Transport. I do not know why that should be, because if a change were made in that direction no doubt the efficient civil servants would move over and deal with the problems of the shipping industry just as they do now. I believe that there is a cogent case for a rethinking of this policy on the ground of the increasing interdependence of all forms of transport.
But there is another and perhaps even more cogent argument, and that relates to the importance of the environment. Seaports are under the Ministry of Transport and not under the Department of the Environment. They are a minimum problem in connection with pollution or other environmental effect. On the other hand, airports are under the Department of Trade and Industry. Are they not a very much greater threat to the environment than seaports? The same, surely, must apply to airlines. We have great problems to-day with noise at civil airports, particularly at night, with great airliners coming and going. Surely these are a problem for the Department of the Environment, if anything is. To-day great ships, great tankers like the "Pacific Glory", threaten the environment. Ought they not to come under the Department of the Environment? I believe that all
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these arguments point to the need for the Government to rethink this issue. It would not be very difficult to make these transfers of responsibility, and I believe that on further consideration it might be found that this would be a much better arrangement. Certainly it would be much more in line with the principles laid down in paragraph 8 of the White Paper.
My second point relates to research. One of the best jobs that the Ministry of Technology did was to bring together the various Government research establishments and to do their best to ensure that the information available in these establishments was sent out and made available to industry where it would do most good. I would pay tribute to the work that has been done by the devoted staff in the Ministry of Technology in that direction.
There are three types of Government research establishments. There are departmental research establishments like the Road Research Laboratory, which is tied to the Ministry of Transport. We are not concerned with these to-night. There are Government industrial research establishments, such as the National Engineering Laboratory, and defence research establishments, such as the National Gas Turbine Establishment, the Royal Radar Establishment, the Royal Aircraft Establishment and many others. I welcome very much the setting up of the project team on aerospace supply problems. We cannot anticipate the report and recommendations they will make, but it is at least possible that the responsibility for aviation supplies will go under the Ministry of Defence. Then, presumably, the research establishments which are involved will also go under the Ministry of Defence, whereas the Government industrial research establishments, such as the National Engineering Laboratory, will remain outside.
There will be a danger of a big barrier being created between these laboratories, making it much more difficult to get from the Defence research establishments information of value to industry. Enormous sums of money are involved in these research establishments. They do most valuable work, and we have seen how important the fall-out from research is from the great American research effort.

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It would be a tragedy if the reorganisation which the Government now propose led to any increase in the difficulty or any hindrance to the spread of this important knowledge throughout industry. So I would urge the Government to have a serious look at this problem during the course of the next 18 months while the project team is deliberating. Subject to those two matters, I warmly welcome the proposals in the White Paper.
6.6 p.m.
LORD GREENWOOD OF ROSSEN-DALE: My Lords, the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Reigate, reminded me that I am in very much the same position as he is, because it was on this exact spot nearly 25 years ago that I craved the indulgence of another place on the occasion of my maiden speech. At that time this place was in another place and another place was here! Once again I crave the indulgence of your Lordships' House, with due humility and with a proper sense of the conventions of the House.
My justification for intervening in this debate is that I have presided as Secretary of State or Minister over three Departments, all of which have been subsequently abolished or absorbed; and two of those Departments—the Ministry of Overseas Development and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government—are covered by the White Paper we are discussing this afternoon.
I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I start with a brief reference to the absorption of the Colonial Office, first into the Commonwealth Relations Office and then into the combined Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I am, I confess, an unashamed and undefeatist believer in the Commonwealth. I suppose that I must declare an interest, as a member of the Board of the Commonwealth Development Corporation.
The point I want to make is that caring for our dependant territories calls for very different qualities from those which are normally required in our overseas relations. The task is very different and it is one which calls for immense and consistent sensitivity. I hope that I shall be forgiven for saying that I do not think that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have so far been conspicuously
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successful in the field of caring for our dependant territories. If I may speak as the father of the Associated States in the Caribbean, I cannot believe that the subsequent handling of Anguilla will go down in history as one of the truly great episodes in the story of the Commonwealth.
I have the feeling that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office sees itself, understandably enough, as primarily the advocate and defender of our own United Kingdom interests abroad rather than as the protector of British citizens in those realms overseas which still form a part of the Queen's Dominions. And I hope that I shall not seem unduly cynical if I say that if there was a clash of interests between the United Kingdom, on the one hand, and, say, Gibraltar or the Falkland Islands or British Honduras, on the other, I have a shrewd suspicion that the views of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office would prevail. I have made that point because it applies, in a somewhat similar way, to the work of the Ministry of Overseas Development. Everybody accepts that that Ministry has won worldwide acclaim for the way in which it has administered our aid policy.
I was visiting the United Nations and Washington when the rather vague news of this restructuring broke. It is no exaggeration to say that it caused deep dismay among many of our friends in other countries—dismay which I did my best to allay, in so far as I was equipped to do so. It seemed to me unlikely that there would be any administrative economies achieved; and in view of the Government's stated policy on aid, which was repeated a few days later by the Prime Minister in his speech to the General Assembly, it did not seem that there was likely to be any intention to cut our aid programme, although, of course, we shall have to watch and see how things develop.
But what worries me, my Lords, is this—and I say it from my own experience. I believe that the Minister's hand is seriously weakened by the changes that are being made. When I was myself Minister of Overseas Development it was not always easy, even as a Member of the Cabinet, to concentrate attention on the relative developmental importance of rival schemes which came up for consideration. I suspect that the present

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Minister, for whom I have the most profound respect, however autonomous he will be on paper, will in practice be in an even more difficult position than I was as a Member of the Cabinet. The Foreign Office view, I think, is more likely to prevail than that of its subsidiary Overseas Development Ministry. Politics, in fact, will take priority over development, in spite of the assurances of the Lord Privy Seal, which of course I gratefully accept.
The real tragedy, I think, is that this country seems to be moving in the wrong direction. Clearly there is a strong case for some aid to be given on wholly political grounds. If it contributes to the stability of a country or to the stability of a region, then it is money well spent. But there is a strong case, too, for giving aid on purely developmental grounds, regardless of political calculations; and the Overseas Development Ministry has won great confidence in the work that it has done. My own view is that, if the Ministry had to be restructured, I would sooner have seen the Foreign and Commonwealth Office distributing part of the money available for unashamedly political ends, and the rest being administered by an agency whose sole test would be the developmental importance of the schemes submitted to it, with, of course, particular stress on the Commonwealth countries. In fact, if our policy had to be changed, it should have been changed to make it less political rather than, apparently, more political.
If I may now turn to the Department of the Environment, I agree with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has said. My attitude is much less critical, however, to the Department of the Environment than to the change in the Ministry of Overseas Development. But I confess that I am less enthusiastic than some of my right honourable friends. I welcome the fact, as we must all do, that the public and the Press have at last woken up to what so many of us have been saying about pollution for so many years. At the same time, I wish that there was rather more recognition of the progress which has been made in cleaning up our rivers and the air that we breathe, and in giving this country the best planning system in the world. Our new towns alone are evidence of the effort that we
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in this country make to deal with the pressures of an expanding population without doing damage to the environment.
I wish the Secretary of State for the Environment well, but, like the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, I have my doubts about these mammoth Departments: and I listened with great sympathy to what my noble friend Lord Diamond had to say. I am disturbed at the spread of the canvas on which the Secretary of State is expected to paint, and which he will have to know in something more than broad outline if he is to keep his Cabinet colleagues fully informed. After three and three-quarter rewarding years in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, I know how heavy is the responsibility of running that one Department alone: and I count myself fortunate in having had Sir Matthew Stevenson as my Permanent Secretary throughout that time.
Most of the Secretary of State's responsibilities—and it must be remembered that the statutory powers are those of the Secretary of State alone—are clearly defined in the White Paper: they are manifold, they are very grave, and they are politically highly sensitive. I have some doubt in my mind, just as my noble friend Lord Diamond has, whether it is sensible or practicable for one Minister to cover so wide a field. However much the structure provides for devolution, he will find that it is difficult over a wide range of subjects to decline to meet local authorities or his colleagues in another place. For it is he who has the statutory powers; it is he who accepts the ultimate responsibility; and it is he who will be regarded as the final court of appeal.
I think, too, that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, will agree with me that the local authorities, even when they have been in political disagreement with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (and most of them, of course, were in disagreement with me), have nevertheless all regarded the Minister of Housing and Local Government as in a very special sense their own Minister, to whom they always had the right of access. I think it will be a pity if there is a growing remoteness between the local authorities and the man who is really at the top of the structure inside the Government.

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I make one last point, my Lords, and it is to lend my support to what the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said in her concluding remarks. It is not really very good for the efficiency of Ministries, or for the morale of civil servants, to whom we owe so much, and who at the upper levels are so over-worked, if the machinery of Government is dismantled, inspected and re-assembled too often; and, moreover, it is extremely confusing to the public as well. So I conclude by saying that I believe the changes in the Ministry of Overseas Development are misconceived and damaging. I hope that the Department of the Environment will succeed, and I shall do what I can in my own small way to help it to do so. But I am afraid, my Lords, that my optimism is qualified indeed.
6.20 p.m.
LORD HURCOMB: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Earl the Leader of the House that I was prevented from hearing his opening speech. My regret at that is to some extent assuaged by the fact that I am able to congratulate the noble Lord who has just spoken on what, under a curious and unnatural use of our language in this place, is called a maiden speech.
I intend to confine myself wholly to the functions of the new arrangements in regard to the environment. I think I can say for all those who are interested in the conservation of Nature, and in natural amenities, that we are very glad indeed that the present Government, like the previous one, have fixed the responsibility for the environment upon the Minister who is responsible for town and country planning. That seems to me, for many reasons, to be completely right. He has the responsibility of taking a great many individual decisions; he has at his disposal a trained staff who are able to see that his decisions are carried through—and I hope that they will be carried through—by the host of subordinate authorities who now deal with these matters. I do not suppose Whitehall itself would admit that everything that happens now is not almost perfect, but I wonder how many members of some remote river board or agricultural committee, whose powers enable them to do a great deal of damage to the environment, if they like to do so, are even aware of the principles on which they
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ought to act. There will now be a Secretary of State charged with that responsibility as one of his major functions. This is a great gain.
It is also a great gain (and there is a good deal of importance in the point that has just been made) that the machinery in that respect has not been changed. It was really a decision of the last Administration, and it has been adopted by the present one. It may be argued that it has been carried too far. One is alive to all the problems of overloading a Department. The Prime Minister himself—not speaking in a political atmosphere—said, very wittily, that when you begin to think about these things there is a lot to be said for going back to the eighteenth century and having only two Secretaries of State—one for the North, and one for the South. We cannot do that; but the present Government, and the White Paper, have been right in making some step forward.
As regards the Ministry of Public Building and Works, with which I have had a good deal to do in recent years, I have found it an admirably managed Department. But surely there is some advantage in giving emphasis to the fact that the care of the natural environment, and the care of the man-made environment in which we live, and which is largely the creation over the centuries of our architects, are both parts of one civilised outlook and process. And if those issues are presented to the Cabinet by the same Secretary of State I should have thought that is a move in the right direction. The size of the Ministry of Public Building and Works is not such as to be an obstacle to administrative efficiency. That part of a new arrangement can be made to work without much difficulty.
When we come to Transport (of which I know more than I do of the Ministry of Public Building and Works) I confess that I have some doubts. I may be prejudiced, because I remember that after I had been made what was called the Permanent Secretary of that Department a few months earlier, Sir Winston Churchill announced his intention to abolish it. He never did so. and the functions of the Minister of Transport, and the interests of transport, grew steadily until it may now have become oppressively large.

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It must surely be right that the Minister responsible for the environment should also be responsible for the layout of new roads and general works of that magnitude which, again, have an enormous effect on the environment. That can be made to work only on one condition: the new Secretary of State ought not to try, and I hope will not try, to act as an overlord over the whole of transport. I think he ought to say that the Minister for Transport is answerable for all things like the Use and Construction Regulations for motor vehicles, and for the finance of the nationalised industries and that the Secretary of State is not going to be occupied by those matters. The risk is that, not in this House but in another place, the Secretary of State will be forced into a position where he has to answer questions on all sorts of day-to-day matters, and indeed on very important matters, which have nothing to do with his main co-ordinating function. It is going to mean a great deal of firmness by the Secretary of State, and some restraint by the two Houses themselves in not pressing him to give his time to things which are best left to the Minister more directly charged with those functions.
I do not feel that we can expect to get transfers of functions of this kind quite right at the first set-off. So far as the associations and bodies with which I am connected are concerned, I am sure they are not going to be unreasonably critical if the new arrangements do not work perfectly from the start. Therefore on this side of the White Paper, and on what has been done, I feel that the Government have been right in establishing the Secretary of State for the Environment, and in extending his functions some distance, but in not going too far, and in not trying to make him an overlord over the whole work of these other Departments of which one—Transport—is pretty vast in itself.
There are one or two other points that I should like to raise because they are also fundamental, although not perhaps soluble at this moment. In a report, for which I was responsible, to the "Countryside in 1970" Conference, my colleagues and I urged that, while in England, Scotland and Wales the respon-
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sibility for the environment should be concentrated on the Ministers responsible for local government and town and country planning, they ought to be advised by an especially qualified officer at the level of the chief scientific adviser. I should be very glad if the noble Earl could say something more on that point at this stage.
There is a Royal Commission on Pollution, set up by the late Administration, and it has scientific advisers. The prevention of pollution is of great importance to the environment. But I think we need as the Secretary of State's adviser on all aspects of the environment someone who is highly qualified, of great public standing, and whose advice cannot be lightly ignored, He need not be a biologist trained only in some narrow aspect of his subject. He might be a geographer, but he must be someone who is familiar with the natural environment, both in the aspect of wild life and in the whole of the problems of land use. I will not say that there is a gap, but there is a place which has not yet been said to be clearly filled.
I have only one other point to make. Being against an overlord, I recognise the necessity for having on great issues of policy some senior Cabinet Minister of great experience and ability who can act as a referee or umpire when clashes arise. It is rather fashionable at the moment to say that all these questions can be solved by a little reasonable give-and-take here and there, and compromise, but I do not think that that is true. There will be some very real clashes between the needs of conservation and other interests—perhaps industrial interests, perhaps agricultural interests, or defence. When those clashes arise we shall surely have to fall back on the well tested machinery of reference to a small Cabinet Committee composed as the Prime Minister of the day thinks fit, under the chairmanship of someone who will look at all the issues impartially and present them without bias to the Cabinet.
There, again, one cannot reasonably ask that everything should be solved and tidied up at once, but I should like to feel that these matters were being considered both at Cabinet level, where decisions will inevitably be difficult, and more immediately at the official scientific level, where I feel the Ministers

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charged with this great new responsibility will need very powerful advice. Having said that, in general, my Lords, I am strongly in favour of the direction in which the Government are moving. They may soon be able to go further without getting into all the difficulties that obviously can arise if too much brigading of Departments is carried out merely on the ground that they seem in some aspect to deal with more or less the same subject matter.
6.34 p.m.
BARONESS BACON: My Lords, in rising to address this House for the first time, I would ask the indulgence of your Lordships in the customary manner. Like the other three maiden speakers this afternoon, I can say that this is not the first time I have made a maiden speech from these Benches. Indeed, it is over twenty-five years since I made my maiden speech from this very Bench when, as my noble friend Lord Greenwood of Rossendale said, this place was really "another place". And it is not only the building which is familiar. When I look at your Lordships on the Benches this afternoon and think how many were present here in 1945, I can be forgiven for thinking that I have put back the pages of history some twenty-five years. It is perhaps a sign of advancing years when I feel I know more people in your Lordships' House than in another place. I know that a maiden speech should be short and non-controversial. I am sure my speech will be short; I hope it will be non-controversial and that the noble Earl who introduced the subject this afternoon will think so.
This is a very important debate on the reorganisation of central Government. Anybody who has been a member of the Government realises that the organisation is not perfect. But it probably never can be perfect. As time goes on, changes in society will always mean necessary changes in our Departments of State. In a democracy I do not think we can ever get a tidy, logical organisation. My noble friend Lord Diamond has spoken to-day about the dangers of some of our Departments of State becoming too big. I agree with him in this. We all know from our experience in Government of the position as described by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. We all know the delays caused by discussions and depart-
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mental consultations. But it is difficult to get clear-cut demarcation lines between Departments, unless of course we go to the ultimate and have one Department for all business of State.
The noble Earl who opened the debate this afternoon hoped that we should deal with the broad outlines of the subject and not go too much into the details. But I sometimes think it is the details which are interesting, and I hope he will forgive me if I deal in detail with two paragraphs in the White Paper which are of particular interest to me. I refer to paragraphs 35 and 37: the decision to transfer responsibility for primary and secondary education from the Secretary of State for Education and Science to the Secretary of State for Wales; and secondly, the decision to transfer the child care services from the Home Secretary to the Secretary of State for the Social Services, while leaving the problems of juvenile delinquency with the Home Secretary.
For the last three years I have been the Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science, dealing, among other things, with primary and secondary education. Before that I was the Minister of State at the Home Office—as the noble Earl once was—and one of my responsibilities there was the child care services. Because of this I am extremely interested in these decisions, and I make no apology for dealing with them in detail because they affect thousands of children and young people.
I turn first of all to the point about Welsh education. During my three years as Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science I visited Wales on several occasions and met many deputations. At no time did I have any representations for the transfer which has just taken place. I am not denying that there are some people in Wales, and perhaps outside Wales, who would have been in favour of this transfer had it been a matter for discussion; but there was certainly no immediacy about the problem and no reason to take an early decision. What is being suggested in the White Paper, and what has become already an accomplished fact, is that primary and secondary education shall be transferred to the Secretary of State for Wales, leaving other parts of the Welsh education service—further education, the training

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and supply of teachers and the Youth Service—with the Department of Education and Science.
The noble Earl in speaking about this subject to-day said the reason why it had been done was an Election promise. I hope it will not be considered too controversial if I say that even that is no excuse for taking the wrong decision in a hurry and without any consultation. The General Election was on June 18 and that is the day that I left the Department of Education and Science, and up to that time there had been no overtures of any kind. Yet this decision was announced in the Queen's Speech on July 2; on October 19 there was the publication of the Order, and it came into operation on November 5. The noble Earl will know that many bodies have protested about this—The National Union of Teachers, the National Associaton of Schoolmasters, the Association of Education Committees and the Welsh Joint Education Committee.
I know that, as the noble Earl said this afternoon, there are two points of view about the transfer of responsibility for education from the Secretary of State for Education and Science to the Secretary of State for Wales. I should have been against this had it ever been a problem when I was a Minister, but I know equally well that some of my noble friends and some of my honourable and right honourable friends in another place would have been in favour. But we are all united in questioning the wisdom of splitting the responsibility for various parts of the education service. One of the features of our education service in the last few years has been the blurring of the edges between the sixth forms in our secondary schools and the 16 to 19 age group in colleges of further education. Some of our young people take A-levels in sixth forms, other take A-levels in colleges of further education. We have to-day in many local authorities linked courses whereby some young people in sixth forms go to the colleges of further education for some courses that are not available in their secondary schools. There are even some local authorities who, in their plans for the reorganisation of secondary education on comprehensive lines, have combined completely the sixth-form college with the colleges of fur-
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ther education. This is being done in Exeter and in Barnstaple, and it is being looked at with great interest by other local authorities.
It will be difficult in the future for any local authority in Wales to do this because the responsibility for sixth forms in secondary schools will rest with the Secretary of State for Wales and the responsibility for the 16 to 19 age group in colleges of further education will still rest with the Secretary of State for Education and Science. I believe it is impossible to divorce primary and secondary education in this way from the rest of the education service. I think it is difficult to divorce the responsibility for primary and secondary education from teacher training and supply, and I am wondering who is going to organise the in-service training, a great deal of which goes on at the present time. I know that the Welsh people value their education services, and some local authorities in Wales have been pioneers in secondary education. I hope, therefore, that the Government will look at this matter again and will realise that perhaps this has been a mistake and has been done in too much of a hurry to give it the proper and serious consideration which it deserves.
Now I turn to the paragraph about the child care service. Following the report of the Curtis Committee the Act of Parliament of 1948 gave responsibility for the child care service to the Home Office, and having served at the Home Office and been responsible there for the child care service I feel that I cannot let this service pass to another Department without paying tribute to the way in which the Home Office has carried out this responsibility in the last twenty years. Now the building up of the children's service within the Home Office has I believe been one of the success stories of the last twenty years. The great expertise and humanity of Home Office officials and inspectors, combined with the devotion and patience of local authority child care officers, has produced a first-class service. I know that sometimes we see a headline about a child who may have been fostered wrongly, but we must remember the many thousands of children who have been helped to a happier life by the children's service. I have attended many conferences of child care officers and I have always been most

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impressed at the way in which their agenda has never been about their own conditions of service or their pay; their agenda has always been about the children that they have done their best to help.
The Home Office has also led the way in training schemes for its field workers. I recognise that with the publication of the Seebohm Committee's Report and the reorganisation of social services at local authority level there must inevitably be some changes in Ministerial responsibility. I was at the Home Office when the Seebohm Committee was appointed, and our chief concern then was to have some kind of family service at local authority level which would unify the existing social services. We wanted a service which would help particularly in the preventive work with families at risk, and especially where children were likely to get into trouble. We have had two Acts of Parliament, one dealing with local authority social services and the second with juvenile delinquency. But what disturbs me about this paragraph in the White Paper is that while the children's service is being taken from the Home Office to the Secretary of State for Social Services, the problems of juvenile delinquency are still to remain with the Home Office. I can see that there is a point in the juvenile court, so long as it exists in its present form, being under the general jurisdiction of the Home Secretary, but I do not believe we can divorce child care from the problems of juvenile delinquency and I am not at all sure how this is going to work.
In the past few years the children's service has done a great deal of preventive work to try to keep children from delinquency, and the new Bill which has been passed, dealing with children in trouble, is to set up new community homes in which there will be delinquents and non-delinquents. Somebody once coined a phrase about the "deprived" and the "depraved". The deprived can so easily become depraved if no help is available, and it is sheer chance whether help comes before or after a child gets into trouble. I want to know how this proposed change is going to work. How are we going to be able to have the children's service in one Department and the problems of juvenile delinquency in another? It may be that these are
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regarded as minor matters in the White Paper as a whole, but I regard them as very important matters because, after all, the children and the young people are our country's greatest assets.
My Lords, I hope I have not been too critical for a maiden speaker, and I hope that the Government will look at these two matters again, because I fear that if these two paragraphs go through in their present form and these changes are made there will be some dislocation and suffering among the children, whom we so greatly love.
6.50 p.m.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, I feel very diffident indeed in offering the normal formula of congratulations to such an accomplished, eloquent and attractive speaker as the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon. But I do so on behalf your Lordships' House, to tell her how much we welcome her contribution. We welcome her arrival here in our ranks. We know that her knowledge of the social services and her experience is very great and will be of great assistance to your Lordships' debates on these subjects in the future, and we shall be gravely disappointed if she does not continue to contribute regularly to the proceedings of your Lordships' House.
Perhaps I may also say that I greatly welcome on personal grounds the arrival of three other maiden speakers this afternoon, my noble friend who has changed his name since I knew him, Lord Reigate, the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, and the noble Lord, Lord Diamond. The noble Baroness, Lady Bacon is quite right when she says that if it goes on like this the House of Lords will be indistinguishable from the House of Commons in the early 1950s. But it is very pleasant to have old friends—I speak personally here—in your Lordships' House as colleagues once again.
I am not going to follow Lady Bacon's theme. I am going to precede her by one paragraph in the White Paper, paragraph 34, which deals with overseas aid, and I will, with your Lordships' permission, declare an interest; because I think I am right in claiming that the formation of the Ministry of Overseas Development originated in a proposal which I put forward, I think in 1958, to the then Secretary of State, and which subsequently

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was acted on and produced a development, a small development no doubt but in my eyes an important development, in our governmental machine. I remember very well the reasons why that development took place and why we advocated it strongly at the Commonwealth Relations Office of the day. It was because we believed that aid for development could only be effective in linking this country with independent countries of the Commonwealth and with foreign countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, if it was seen to have no political strings attached to it and if it was seen not to contain any political content.
In those days three Ministers were concerned with overseas aid, and when the provision of aid was increasingly taking the place of direct administrative control by Departments of State over Commonwealth countries, it seemed right that there should be a single authority which would reconcile the often conflicting attitudes of the Foreign Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Colonial Office. There is, or was in those days, as the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, has said, a difference of philosophy in relation to aid between the Foreign Office on the one hand and the Commonwealth Office and the Colonial Office on the other. To the former, aid tended to be—not always, but tended to be—an instrument to serve the political interests of this country. To the C.R.O., aid was primarily a service made available by Great Britain in order to promote development of the Commonwealth and of the then British dependencies. It was not, as some people like to believe, a payment intended to make good the alleged neglect and exploitation and the so-called deficiencies of colonialism. Indeed, I might remark that my recent tour of Africa left me with a strong feeling of pride in what we in Britain had achieved in our colonial rule and in the great legacy we have bequeathed to the peoples of Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi, and equally to other newly independent territories in that part of the world.
Overseas aid, as represented by the Ministry of Overseas Development, and by the contribution made over decades by British colonial rule, to the progress and welfare of millions of people in
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Africa and Asia, will be fully justified by history. And it seemed to me that the pattern of aid which was used in those days is just as important if we are to maintain our relationships with countries in Africa and Asia on a healthy basis to-day. In those days it was, as I say, a service, sometimes given, it is true, with a political objective in view, but far more often with the genuine purpose of ensuring development of underdeveloped territories, in the interests of their peoples, without providing any calculated political advantage so far as Great Britain was concerned.
To-day the atmosphere of politics has in some degree changed, just as the status of our country has changed. It may be right that the criterion to be employed in this sort of thing is how far do the sacrifices made by the British taxpayer in relation to aid serve British interests. It may be right that aid, instead of being a service provided by the greatest of the Commonwealth countries, the old imperial Power, for underdeveloped and dependent territories, is now to be an instrument of foreign policy. It is logical, if that is the case, that it should be controlled in the interests of foreign policy policy by the Foreign Office. Aid is now, therefore, to be related directly to our trade interests, to defence, to political influence, to the manipulation of political relationships in the interests of the people of Great Britain, struggling as they are to hold their own in a difficult world. Charity in future is going to begin at home.
This Order, which my noble friends regard as perhaps just another administrative measure, may appear to some of the older people like myself to mark a further stage in Great Britain's progressive abandonment of the Commonwealth, and its determination to shed the great historic responsibilities which it inherited from the imperial past. "Historic responsibilities", my Lords, "imperial past"—I recognise that I, too, am a voice from that past. Britain to-day, so it appears, is a country purged of sentiment and antique idealism, concentrating on the maintenance and development of its national interests, sensitive about its rights, hard-boiled, materialist, inward-looking, a country being shaped to the needs of a technological, overcrowded, managerial age.

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My noble friend the Leader of the House would say that I am being exaggerating and emotional. I realise that in a Britain of this sort there is no good use for a "do good" organisation like the Ministry of Overseas Development, but I think there are millions of people in Africa and elsewhere who will regret the changed face of Britain and remember with pride the days in which the policies of a great country were able to promote the needs of remote and underprivileged peoples without a demand that in return for the money which they expend there should be either any political advantage or the return of, not 5 per cent. but 5 per cent. over bank rate.
6.59 p.m.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, I propose to be as brief as I can and to confine myself mainly to the Ministry of Overseas Development. Many noble Lords have referred to the capability unit, and I should like to congratulate Her Majesty's Government on turning to these Benches when they need a really expert, original and forceful talent to be head of such a unit, and to say that we have an infinity of resources of that kind should they need us again. We wish the experiment a great deal of luck. I must say that if I were a member of the Government I should have some anxieties about whether the ever-resourceful Departments of State might not each think up some scheme of having a capability unit of their own, but maybe that is a little bit cynical.
Before going any further, I should like to say just one word about the remarkable four maiden speeches that we have had to-day. It is always specially delightful when speakers from this side of the House make such particularly distinguished speeches, as our three have done; but it is equally special when we get from the other side of the House such a wise and witty speech as Lord Reigate gave us to-day. I think that the House is particularly fortunate, and we look forward greatly to again hearing these speakers.
If I may, I will turn straightaway to the Ministry of Overseas Development. I was rather surprised that the noble Earl opposite should have said that he felt that the criticism that has been expressed about the Government's proposals over
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this matter was over emotional. Indeed, I feel that he has been more than adequately answered by the splendid words of the noble Lord, Lord Alport. My noble friend Lord Greenwood of Rossendale also turned to this matter of overseas development. I think that the Government ought to listen to the combined experience of the noble Lord, Lord Alport, and of my noble friend Lord Greenwood.
May I turn for a moment to the White Paper? It recognises that:
"It is important to maintain the valuable body of expertise and skill in aid administration that has been developed in the Ministry of Overseas Development."
That is welcome so far as it goes; but we need more clarification of what all this means. I think I shall probably deal more with the "nuts and bolts" of this matter than have previous speakers. Above all, I think that in the House there is a strong feeling that the Government are flying in the face of all expert opinion in what they are doing. To start with, they are turning their back on the advice of the Estimates Committee of 1968, which considered that any such merger would be a retrograde step. Among the evidence was that given, for instance, by the Overseas Development Institute, an independent centre of research and information. They said—and here I quote:
"We believe that Britain has got as near an ideal instrument with a separate Ministry, as any aid donor has."
This view has been echoed by many people abroad. I should like also to quote the view of the then Opposition spokesman for Overseas Development, Mr. Bernard Braine, who said:
"Under that Department's roof is to be found one of the best aid management teams in the world."
My noble friend Lord Greenwood of Rossendale told us about the views that he found abroad, in the United Nations and in New York, about this move; and I am bound to ask the noble Earl, and noble Lords on the Benches opposite, why they want to change this unique machinery for aid and development which the country has built up over the years, only to substitute for it something that is not only less independent but is manifestly so—and manifestly so both to the doner countries and above all to the developing countries themselves.

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I think that one of the troubles we have to deal with is that in this White Paper, as in the mini-Budget, there are no details to tell us just how the thing is going to work out—details which are vital to our understanding of how it is going to work, and indeed to the actual working of the plans themselves. The White Paper states that the Government's decision about the O.D.M. is taken against
"the need to engage the private sector of industry, commerce and finance to a greater extent than before."
But there is absolutely no guidance about how this is going to be done.
Those noble Lords who are concerned with this will know the almost inevitable unpredictability of private finance in developing countries. Have the Government plans to engage private investment and industry in the developing world, especially in those parts whose needs are most desperate and on which there are fewer returns? Are they going to utilise further the experience and the expertise of the Commonwealth Development Corporation? Such plans would be welcome in all parts of the House. But we know now that the great "in" phrase is to "stand on our own feet". Is private enterprise going to stand on its own feet in the remote developing areas? Are the Government going to produce guidance and support? We should very much like to know.
I beg noble Lords opposite to accept that noble Lords in all parts of the House are deeply disturbed that the Ministry is to be subordinate to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Why cannot the Ministry of Overseas Development stand on its own feet? Even if the Minister of Trade and Industry considers them to be webbed feet, why cannot they stand on their own? When your Lordships last discussed aid and development great praise was expressed from all sides for the high quality of the Ministry, and above all for its unique position as the only Ministry of its kind in the world. We agreed that the existence of the Ministry was not only good in itself but good for our image in the rest of the world.
In the past, many regrets were voiced that the Minister of Overseas Development himself was not actually in the
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Cabinet, but could attend only when development was specifically going to be discussed. As my noble friend Lord Greenwood graphically described, we have seen our great complex of overseas departments progressively eating its tail, like Alice in Wonderland's whiting, which, your Lordships will remember, was thrown out to sea. First, the C.R.O. swallowed the Colonial Office; then the Foreign Office swallowed the combined Commonwealth Relations Office and the Colonial Office. But all this time the Overseas Development Ministry had its own separate identity and independence. not merely at home but also in the eyes of the world. Now, the combined Foreign Office, Commonwealth Relations Office and Colonial Office are swallowing the Ministry of Overseas Development.
My Lords, I cannot see that this can be anything but retrograde; and if it does not make any difference to its authority and autonomy, as the noble Earl said, then why make the change which is so detrimental to the image of our country in the world elsewhere? We are glad the phrase in the White Paper runs:
"it is important to maintain the valuable body of expertise and skill…"
We find this reassuring up to a point. But there is another point, one that has not been mentioned to-day: is this enough to attract to the Civil Service the kind of brilliant and devoted recruits who up till now have had the confidence to opt specially for this particular Ministry? It would be a tremendous tragedy if these people were lost to the United Nations Agencies, to the universities and elsewhere. I think this is a point that must be safeguarded. I would go further. To maintain that expert staff is not enough. Many noble Lords will remember developmental projects which took more than nine months to prepare. Aid is no good unless it is effective; and aid is much less effective if it takes a long time to produce. We do not need fewer of these men and women, we need more of them.
We were glad to hear that the present Administration are to continue the same amount of aid and development as was proposed by the last Administration, but we should like to know that they are wholeheartedly identified, and growingly

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identified, with the development projects that will inevitably ensue. I think, as the noble Lord, Lord Alport, said, that nobody has any doubt that our kind of aid was specially appreciated by the developing countries precisely because it was not tied to the apron strings of the Foreign Office. It has been, as I say, very difficult to find out exactly what the Government propose, and in another place, when Ministers were asked what was their defence for their actions, the defence put forward was that the present Secretary of State was known to be favourable to overseas aid. We accept that, as indeed he is; but on this side of the House we feel that since we have to co-operate with the United Nations so much in these aid projects, it is the wrong moment that this matter should be put under a Secretary of State who is at the same time defying a resolution of the United Nations on arms to South Africa.
I think we need clarification. I have read very carefully the debate in the other place. I know that noble Lords have the highest respect and regard for the present Minister of Overseas Development. Nevertheless, noble Lords will want to know, as did honourable Members in another place, whether the Minister will be able to present his views with maximum effect when the allocation of resources and the emphasis of policy are being settled at the highest level—by which, of course, I mean the Cabinet. Mr. Wood was only able to reply to this question:
"As I see it, the job of myself and my successors is to convince my right honourable friend and his successors … of the importance of this question."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 3/11/1970, col. 1024.]
Asked further whether the Overseas Development Administration of the future would continue to be represented on interdepartmental Cabinet Committees, the Minister replied (col. 1025):
"I am glad to be able to say... 'Yes'."
But he went on to say (col. 1026):
"This is only my guess, and I give it for what it is worth. I believe... that aid in the future will continue to be based... on the criteria of the need for development in the developing countries. That is my guess, and only time will show whether it is justified by the facts."
Those seem to me to be very sad answers. and I think the whole House would like to take it a little further than that.
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There is one other point which I think has not been touched on, and that is the question of voluntary aid. I know that many noble Lords have been deeply interested and active in this kind of activity. I also think that the United Kingdom clearly has an unrivalled reputation because of the work of our Church organisations, bodies like Oxfam, the Save the Children Fund, large and small trusts, and the rest. But when asked about the aid lobby the Minister in another place was only able to say (col. 1026):
"All I can say is that the future organisation in this respect will increase the alliance between the aid lobby and the overseas aid administration, because it will realise that the Minister for Overseas Development needs pushing very hard if he is going to succeed in convincing his right honourable friend the Secretary of State."
I think the whole House will see what I mean when I say that those replies were rather despairing.
I want to be as brief as possible, and, indeed, as helpful as I can. The House will be most grateful to the noble Earl, if, when he replies, he can give us some reassurance. I have asked him for reassurance on three points, of which I have given notice. They are as follows. First, can he assure the House that the views and needs of the Development Department will have positive access to the basic policy-making machinery of the Government? Secondly, can he assure the House that the Government are committed, not just immediately but for the foreseeable future, to maintaining the present O.D.M. as a domestic Ministry whose members will not be subjected to pressure to accede to the conditions of service of the Foreign and Commonwealth Departments? It is not quite clear from the White Paper. Thirdly, can he assure us that the expert personnel of the O.D.M. will not only not be reduced but will be maintained, and, if necessary, expanded to fulfil the Government's declared aim to expand the present contribution towards aid and development?
I should like to assure noble Lords on the Benches opposite that we do not ask for these assurances in any controversial spirit. Noble Lords in all parts of the House are so deeply concerned with the importance of development that this supersedes Party political points. If we can have these assurances there will be deep relief in all parts of your Lordships'

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House. We need them very badly. I think we all hope that the situation may be better than it appears at the moment, and we look forward to the noble Earl's reply. We need reassurance, first, for the morale of the brilliant and devoted men who are engaged in the work; and secondly, and even more important, for the continuing good name of our country, not only in international organisations but in the whole developing and, to a large extent, non-committed rest of the world.
7.17 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, in the whole of my experience in this House, I think this has been the most remarkable debate that I have listened to or taken part in, not only because of the distinguished speakers that we have had but because of the approach that has been made. There has been no attempt whatever to treat this as a political matter, or to score Party political points. Every speaker has made a contribution according to his experience. Some of the contributions have been critical, but I am sure that everyone will agree that they have been perfectly sincere. We have also had a remarkable series of maiden speeches. I cannot remember four such distinguished maiden speeches as we have heard to-day. Full tribute has been paid to them, and they do not need any further words from me, but I should like to say that this will be a memorable day in the history of this House. It is rather extraordinary that, I think without exception, each one of the maiden speakers had previously made a maiden speech in the same place, and very often from the same seat. That may perhaps explain the excellence of the speeches that they have made; they have had a preliminary experience.
I want to refer to one of the maiden speeches, which is an unusual thing to do in this House, because my noble friend Lord Diamond so very exactly expressed my own views on a major aspect of this debate that it is hardly necessary for me to say much more about it. He was critical of the enormous size of some of the new Departments of State and the effect it would have on the new Secretary. He put his criticism in very graphic terms, which I certainly cannot improve on. I should like to go a little further than even he did. Undoubtedly, if the Secretary of State of one of these large Departments
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is going to do his job properly (without even encroaching unduly on the work of the Minister to whom he has delegated certain functions, but merely to keep himself acquainted with what is going on), and to be able to speak in the other Chamber with some authority, and if he is also going to do his duty to those who want to see him, perhaps local authorities or other public bodies, and generally keep in touch merely with the work of his Department, he will be a very tired man in the course of 12 months. I have seen Ministers gradually deteriorate physically because of the enormous amount of work which they have had to do—and that within a very short time. I pity any of the Secretaries of State who will have to handle enormous Departments of this kind.
But it goes beyond that. These are Cabinet Ministers as well. The number of Cabinet Ministers has been reduced to 17 and, therefore, there is a much greater responsibility on each of them. How on earth can such a Cabinet Minister keep abreast of all the matters that come before the Cabinet, and be able to give a useful opinion on them? He will be so much immersed in the work of his own Department that he will have no time at all even to give proper thought to that, let alone to matters which come before the Cabinet as a whole.
I know that he will have the services of the capability unit and that they will advise him on priorities. I congratulate the Government on having decided to set up such a unit and, equally, on the person whom they have chosen to be in charge of it. I think it is a very good move, and it should certainly help the Cabinet. Nevertheless, there is a minimum amount of thought which a Cabinet Minister has to be able to give to the work of the Cabinet, and even to appreciate the recommendations that he will get from the capability unit.
I feel in my bones that the work of the Cabinet is going to deteriorate, because the members will be so hard pressed, and that in the long run we shall get worse Government than we are getting to-day. I recognise that the amalgamation of these Departments is logical and can be justified on paper, but would rather take a pragmatic view. On the same line of logic, one could perhaps make the Departments even larger and

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bring in other Ministries, but while that may be a logical course to take I wonder whether it would be practical.
I am not asking the Government to change their mind over this. The Government are a new broom. They are entitled to sweep as clean as they think it is right to do, and to carry out their own ideas. But I deplore the fact that they are so self-satisfied about this that they say that this is going to last a very long time. In winding-up in another place, the Minister in charge spoke of at least 10 to 15 years, and the White Paper itself indicates that this set-up is so good that it is going to last a very long time without change. I know that the noble Earl somewhat modified that, because he is an honest man and could not justify those words. He said that the Government will be thinking about this as time goes on, and I trust that they will. I hope that they will regard this as experimental and tentative. My own view is that, probably within two years, if the present Government are still in existence, they will find it necessary to make radical changes in the work of the various Departments and to think again about the whole matter.
I should like to make one more point. The Government have made a very great feature of the fact that they want to cut down the number of functions of Government, and to leave out those tasks which it is not appropriate for a Government to do. But they have not given a single example in the White Paper of what they have in mind. I wish they could tell us what it is that the present Ministries are doing which they ought not to be doing and which could be done by somebody else—by private enterprise, by private initiative or whatever it may be. I cannot think of anything. On the contrary, all the indications, not only from the number of Private Bills which have already been introduced from the Government side, but also from what has been indicated by the Government themselves, are that Government functions are going to expand.
I cannot see that that will result in a reduced amount of work for the Government. I think it is more likely to increase the amount of work, especially as life becomes more and more complicated. If and when we get into the European Economic Community, the
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functions of Government will increase and the Civil Service will increase. It is absurd for the Government to take the view that one of the purposes of this reorganisation is to reduce the size of Government and, I suppose, to reduce the number of Ministers. In fact, the number of Ministers is exactly the same as it was on June 17 this year, although some of them have been demoted and are merely Ministers of Cabinet rank instead of Cabinet Ministers.
All I am trying to do is to make a plea that the Government should not imagine that they have said the last word on the reorganisation of government, as they appear to do. They should not regard themselves as infallible, and they should be very prepared to come to the House again and to say that in this or that respect, "We feel that our reorganisation needs improvement or even radical change"; and, perhaps, "We want to go back to the previous state of affairs." I assure the Government that if they do that they will meet with a very charitable reception, and we shall try not to say, "We told you so." In the meantime, I wish them every success in what they are trying to do. I know that they are trying to do it quite sincerely and in the firm belief that they are working for the best.

BUSINESS: SOUTHERN RHODESIA ACT 19(55 (CONTINUATION) ORDER 1970
7.28 p.m.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, it might be for the convenience of the House if I say a word about business for the rest of the day and to-morrow. It had been represented to me by a number of Peers who wished to speak on the Southern Rhodesia Act 1965 (Continuation) Order that, in view of the length of this debate, the Motion for the approval of the Order would really be coming on too late for such an important subject. It has therefore been agreed through the usual channels that the Southern Rhodesia (Continuation) Order should be taken as first business tomorrow, but that the Southern Rhodesia (Matrimonial Jurisdiction) Order will still be taken to-night.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, if that has been agreed through the usual

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channels—and I have the greatest sympathy for the jam which the noble Earl was in—I am bound to say that the decision is very hard on the Metrication debate (I know that that is a Government Motion) and it is likely that more speakers will come in on the Rhodesia debate. The Chief Whip has only recently returned to his onerous duties, and perhaps he does not have quite the sure touch which he had before, but I think this is a little regrettable and there may be some protests from speakers in the Metrication debate. It looks probable that to-morrow evening we shall again sit rather late. It will be the speakers on that Metrication debate who will suffer; and I know that one noble Lord will not be able to speak to-morrow because he will not be here.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, as a private Member who was on the list to speak in the debate on the Order later this evening, may I say that I feel it right to make at any rate some protest against this very sudden change in the business of the House? Your Lordships are not paid Members of the House of Lords or of Parliament: we do our best to attend and contribute to those subjects on which we hope we may help to promote more understanding. We make arrangements specially in order to attend in accordance with the business about which we have been told some days before, and a sudden change of this sort very often prevents Members from carrying out at any rate what they regard, rightly or wrongly, as their duties. In my case this will certainly be so. It is also unfair to some of the younger Members—maiden speakers, for instance, who are all keyed up and ready to make their maiden speech—suddenly to find that the business has been changed, for reasons which I do not understand, with the result that they have to go through all the period of waiting again. Although I understand that this is something which has been agreed to by both the Front Benches, I feel it should not be allowed to pass without a protest, at any rate, from a private Member.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I have great sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Alport, has said, but my task is to try to organise business so that it
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is as convenient as possible for as many Members of the House as possible. Inevitably, if there is a change it is bound to be inconvenient for some Members; but I must be guided by the majority of those affected, and in this case I think I was.

THE REORGANISATION OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
7.32 p.m.
Debate resumed.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, the painful process of parthenogenesis has taken a new form to-day, when four old colleagues and welcome new colleagues have demonstrated the beauties and glories of a second maidenhood. At more than one point in this debate there has been a reversion to the tradition of the Whig historians to besmirch the record of the Cabal—in which, of course, I have a certain historical interest. But rather than delay your Lordships and talk about the Cabal, I should like to point out that the philosophical origins of the present White Paper go back a lot further than Haldane. Thomas Paine wrote:
"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil".
Wendell Phillips wrote:
"All governing over-much kills the self-help and energy of the governed."
And Pope gave us these lines:
"For forms of Government let fools contest;
Whate're is best administered is best".
So I would first of all welcome the functional principle as leading to the purpose of removing as many functions from government as possible; to make possible the aim to correct the diffusion of economic control that existed before, and to sharpen the distinction between the fiscal management of our economy that one associates with the macro-economic power of the Treasury and industrial policy sustained and supported by a Ministry of Trade and Industry specifically to sponsor that side of our economy. All this topped, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, interpreted the situation for us, by the central review staff.
The sharpening of this very fundamental distinction between fiscal management and industrial planning, if I may

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use that word, leads both to a real embarrassment with regard to regional policy and to the very necessity for the Rothschild staff. Regional development is a critical area of our policy problems. When outbreaks of violence readily attributable to a distorted society demand a fresh balance between development and the conservation of nature's womb-like role for man as a refresher and inspirer of citizens environmentally illiterate; and when the movement anatomy of our society is changing so fast that one expects air travel to multiply four times by 1980 and air freight five times, so that V/TOL sites are needed to be reserved now in some cities, and indeed plans are needed now for 7,000-feet runways for every two million cluster of our population—when these are so, then surely we need land use and physical planning along with the industrial weapons of I.D.C. control, of BOTAC, as we used to know it, and of loans and investment incentives—these weapons to plan the workshops of our country. Surely we need those things brought together.
What we find, as I interpret the White Paper, is that Trade and Industry develops a general picture of the British workshop's economics in terms of trade, both private enterprise and nationalised industry, marine, aviation, power and the rest, while Environment deals with the strategic layout of the British workshop. And if we are not a workshop, my Lords, then we are nothing at all. Out of these things one can at least expect that one of the recent enormities of compartmentalised government, when great pits were dug along the M4 to provide fill for the new motorway at a time when grant-aided colliery spoil could have been brought from South Wales—that sort of thing, one imagines, will now be avoided. Likewise one hopes decisions on, let us say, a Channel Tunnel, which will bring a growth point involving the movement of thousands and thousands of people, since it is a matter for the former Ministry of Transport, will indeed prove to be with the Department of Environment, and therefore under one physical planning hat.
But, my Lords, I should like to echo the reserves expressed by the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, when he drew attention to an abundance of confusion.
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We find that airlines and airports are with Trade and Industry, while transport is with Environment. We find that aircraft noise, for some reason, is with Trade and Industry, but noise otherwise is with Environment. We find from all this that the siting of the third London Airport, which is going to involve the movement or siting of homes for probably a quarter of a million people, is with Trade and Industry, when surely it involves major environmental considerations. We find that Maritime Industrial Development Areas are with Trade and Industry, while ports are with Environment. We find that BATOC, as it used to be, and I.D.C.s, are with Trade and Industry, while physical planning is with Environment. And the White Paper's paragraph 12 refers to the need
"to explore and resolve conflicts... within the line of management rather than by inter-departmental compromise".
But almost the same day we have the Treasury's Bulletin No. 9 of November listing the activities of the two mammoth Departments and referring to the Department of Environment as being in charge of
"Regional development (in co-operation with the Department of Trade and Industry)".
We go further and we find that another White Paper—namely, that on investment incentives—tells us at paragraph 11 that
"a thorough-going study of regional development policy (as recommended by Hunt) has been set in hand".
But it also suggests that this is to be related to
"additional incentives to encourage the location and expansion of manufacturing industry in the development areas,"
This implies that this review of development area policy is again primarily a matter for the Department of Trade and Industry on its own. It does therefore look as if, instead of resolving the dichotomies of October, 1969, between regional policy, on the one hand, and industrial controls, on the other, these dichotomies are simply being deepened and strengthened.
That observation leads me to several questions; and I am sure that if my noble friend Lord Jellicoe cannot answer now (because I have not given him notice) he will be able to write later. I put these four questions. Does Mr. Walker have, as Mr. Crosland did, total control

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of regional strategy within which Mr. Davies (like Mr. Benn before him) simply manages the industrial component? Secondly, if we are not to have interdepartmental committees to settle differences, as seems to be implied in the Treasury Bulletin No. 9 of November, is this reconciliation between Environment and Trade and Industry to be a matter for the Rothschild staff advising the Cabinet? Then, third, since the study of Maritime Industrial Development Areas is now to be with Trade and Industry, and therefore influenced by its conjunction with BOTAC and all those weapons of I.D.C. control, instead of being with ports and planning, will not this distort thinking about MIDA against the Thames Estuary and against the south bank of the Bristol Channel, as well as against the Lune and the Humber, all of them outwith development areas? Perhaps at some stage, if not to-day, the Minister can also tell us what has become, or what will become, of the inter-departmental study group on MIDA hitherto chaired by an officer of the Ministry of Transport and now, presumably, an officer of the Department of the Environment?
It was Carlyle who wrote of the lot of the Governor, that it is:
"Double, double, toil and trouble"
and this was also said by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, just now. Do all these proposals really mean less government by fewer people? Admittedly, there are now four Ministries fewer; but merging Departments does not necessarily diminish problems or the number of civil servants. Indeed I should like to support what was said both by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and by the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, on this very point: the burden that there must be on the Ministers of these gigantic Departments. One cannot help remembering that Sir Keith Joseph, in a debate on the same subject in another place little more than a year ago, referred to these great "jelly fishes" of Departments. They will be jelly fishes unless the Fulton principle of paragraph 8 is applied ruthlessly. I refer to the promise that executive blocks of work are to be delegated to accountable units of management—the only way, it seems, that these great burdens can be hived off.
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In an industrial society growing daily more complex we do confront Carlyle's "impossibility of self-government of a multitude by a multitude". All the more suitable, then, as the hiving off process gets under way (or, indeed, as it tends to slacken through time and fatigue) these lines should forever adorn every Ministerial mantelpiece:
"All governments are to some extent a treaty with the Devil."
and:
"That Government is best which makes itself unnecessary."
And finally:
"Nature our father and mother
Gave us all we got …
The State our elder brother
Swipes the lot."
7.44 p.m.
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, apart from the memorable four maiden speeches, we have had an uncovenanted bonus in the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, which dissected one part of the problem of the Government's reorganisation—to wit, the environment part—in a masterly fashion which therefore I do not have to follow.
I always find it a daunting thing to address your Lordships on great matters of State because there are always serried ranks among our Members who in one way or another were personally involved in, if not responsible for, these affairs—and who are now responsible. New ideas and new approaches, however much they may be needed, must necessarily be resented by some; and in no field is this more apparent than in the matter of Government machinery. In our ranks both ex-Ministers and ex-Permanent Secretaries abound; and therefore one really speaks between Scylla and Charybdis, not knowing whether the Ministers are Scylla and the Permanent Secretaries Charybdis, or vice versa. The debate on the Fulton Report which was a memorable occasion shows this danger really very interestingly. Still, despite all these dangers and despite the fact that I am sure I shall get a wigging from my side, as much as from the noble Earl, I have to intervene in this debate; because I have, without the panache, occupied for a time—four years—the same role as Lord Rothschild I presume is going to occupy. Therefore I think that some of the remarks I make may be of interest.

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My right honourable and honourable friends in another place, as well as some noble Lords here, had tremendous fun with the language of the White Paper. Who would grudge them this? I must say that I did not find in the presentation the usual reticence and English understatement which mark the true representative of the comprehensive school between London and Oxford. I can understand that. We were told that we shall have a new style of government. Perhaps this is the explanation. I firmly believe that the new idea about this unit (I would call it an "economic planning unit"; but I quite understand the noble Earl's right honourable friends calling it a "capability unit" because, obviously, capability is good and planning is bad) is excellent.
I do not know how they thought it accords with their new credo—this new Whiggish-Tory credo. If you believe in the invisible hand, why do you have the Rothschild finger in the pie? After all, the invisible hand does it so automatically and without very great difficulty—not even criticism from the Opposition Benches. The price mechanism and profit motive will do the job for you. Once you admit that competition is imperfect, that the prices are manipulated and the State must actively intervene, then, obviously, a central co-ordinating agency is needed. This will tell you, for instance, that an expansionary Budget, such as we had, wage inflation and the credit squeeze are not altogether compatible measures. Perhaps we have to regret that this unit was not already in existence; because I am sure that, had the unit been in existence, historians thirty years hence would have had some very illuminating comments to discover—just as we now discover comments made to various Governments before the war.
I think that this capability unit is extremely important, and a very good thing; and I do so for reasons which are slightly different from those of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and from those expressed by the Minister in this House. I think that this capability unit, or planning unit, as I should like to call it, is extremely important because the character of the State has changed; and with the change in the character of the State the characters of Ministries have changed also. The Ministries have become spon-
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sors and they have sponsored interests; and the more concentrated the Ministry are on the subject, the more intimate is the connection and the sponsorship. For Ministers and for civil servants it is obviously good sense not to have too many conflicts. Therefore they want to live amicably with the sponsored interest.
It is very seldom that one sees a Minister of Agriculture who is really savage with agriculture in the Cabinet. Afterwards, outside, he may appear to be savage; but, as happened in our last Government, that attitude has been dictated, either by the Chancellor of the Exchequer or by the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, as a Treasury Minister. It was obviously the mouth of the Minister of Agriculture, but the hand, apparently, was the hand of someone quite different. Therefore it follows that one must not entrust Departments with schizophrenic tasks; that is to say, with tasks that conflict with the basic sponsorship interests.
For instance, I understand (I hope that the noble Earl will enlighten us) that the new unit will not have power to analyse matters now under the jurisdiction of the Treasury. I very much hope that this is not so. This was the interpretation put by some of my friends in another place on certain phrases used there by the noble Earl's right honourable friend: that the Treasury's jurisdiction will be inviolate. The Treasury is going to advise the Cabinet. The most important function of this unit, in my opinion, just as it was with the D.E.A., will be to advise how far the Treasury's general policy—called, in the horrible language of the economists, a "macro-economic policy"—really squares with the policy of the Government as a whole.
The Treasury is a sponsoring Deparment with very important and very necessary sponsorships. It sponsors the Budget surplus and low taxation, whatever the Government. It sponsors the City; it sponsors free capital exports and all sorts of things. And very rightly so, because these are important considerations which ought to be taken into account. But they ought not to dominate, and there ought not to be a monopoly of macro-economic advice. The Treasury, as we all know from Hankey's and Jones's diaries and memoirs (and, of course, the situation has not changed much since) is

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a very important sponsor, and therefore has to be checked. So I hope that Lord Rothschild will have a locus standi even in policies put forward by the Treasury.
To come back to this sponsorship and the need not to entrust schizophrenic things to Ministries, one of the examples which I will quote (because this is really a question of non-political discussion of a very important problem), one of the reforms under the late Government which I deplored was entrusting the Ministry of Labour with both prices and incomes. The Ministry of Labour ought to be a concilation Department, and conciliation and arbitration do not go together. And as they did not go together very well, we had all sorts of difficulties. Now neither function is to be done, according to statements which we have seen; the whole responsibility has been passed over. But I think the Government will see in a very short time that this will not do. In that case I hope, again, that a certain balance of discussion will be arranged, because otherwise the Government will be ill-advised.
My Lords, it is no use to pretend that the Departments have the ultimate truth and that if a Department submits a Paper to the Cabinet everything has been said that can be, and ought to be, said. That is by no means so. Departments, obviously, are interested parties as much as anybody else, and we must have a system of Government which is not based upon supermen but on ordinary human beings. In that connecton I must say that I did not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, that we want simplification and fewer inter-Departmental committees. In my experience inter-Departmental committees are the only way in which you can get a really honest, savage discussion of problems. Without inter-Departmental committees and without a supra-Departmental planning unit, decisions will get through which ought not to have been let through. It will mean that policies are determined not by the political heads but by the officials, and I do not believe that is a very good thing.
The noble Baroness, Lady Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, dealt with the Aid-problem so thoroughly that I shall not refer to it, but I should like to say something about the Ministry of Technology.
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I always deplored that the Ministry of Technology, after it was formed, absorbed the Ministry of Power. I. do not believe that the Ministry of Power industries and the Board of Trade and Ministry of Technology industries are compatible. If the Minister comes to the Cabinet about a Ministry of Power industry, either he will favour—for internal reasons; for his own reasons or for Departmental reasons—the supply industry, which is the Ministry of Power industry, or the buying industry which is alimented from there; which buys its energy and steel from the late Ministry of Power industries. If this was so before, how much more complicated a situation has arisen now.
I must very humbly submit to the noble Earl that it is no use telling us how many civil servants there are. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, rightly remarked, it is the higher civil servants who matter. We have 76 Under-Secretaries under the present Secretary of State. I would venture to tell your Lordships that it is quite impossible for a single Minister to oversee 76 Under-Secretaries and it is absolute nonsense to believe that it is. We have no Secretary of State who is a Newton or even a Galileo. Perhaps he is a Ptolemy in the wrong era.
I hope that we shall get the proper staff for Lord Rothschild and I very much hope that when Labour returns to power we shall not merely have a continuation of Lord Rothschild's unit but that we shall term it differently and that the unit will be put under a Minister who will be under the Prime Minister. Because obviously the Prime Minister also is mortal, and the amount of work which he has, compared with the crushing burden of ordinary ministries which was adumbrated by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, is far more crushing. I think that the the central unit is essential, but so is a Minister of State for the Civil Service Department—a role which members of this House have frequently fulfilled. I hope that we shall see a vigorous use of this new unit.
8.0 p.m.
THE EARL OF SHANNON: My Lords, I must ask your Lordships' indulgence for a short intervention at this late hour, especially as my name is not on the scheduled list of speakers. I intervene

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because of the small announcement at the end of the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe. His speech was one of great weight on matters of high strategy. Then, perhaps slightly incongruously, at the end of his speech he made an announcement in considerable detail regarding the transference of certain research laboratories. I think the House is too well aware of my interest in industrial research for me to declare it further, but that is the reason for my intervention. I had a feeling last July that some step like this was being considered. On July 8 I asked a Question in your Lordships' House to elucidate the situation and was met with a direct, monosyllabic denial from the representative of Her Majesty's Government. Well, Her Majesty's Government have seen fit to change their minds and now we have this announcement.
Arising out of it, I should like to ask the noble Earl one or two questions to elicit a little further information. I hope that the noble Earl's brief runs to answering them. If not, perhaps he will be good enough to let me know the answers later. With reference to research associations, have there been any previous consultations with those research associations, their controlling councils or the members of the industries which supply the major portion—I repeat, the major portion—of the finance of those associations? Will the general grant for research of a comprehensive nature still be continued as has been done in the past? Further, will the existing commitments regarding general and specific grant still continue to be honoured? Is it foreseen that the Department of the Environment will be linking up in any way with the National Environment Research Council now that the Department will have many research functions similar to those of NERC?
In addition, what arrangements are being made so that the new Department can have an appreciation of research philosophy and an understanding of research processes? Are suitable personnel to be transferred from the old Ministry of Technology and the Department of Trade and Industry? In view of the announcement of the policy that publicly financed research should be the responsibility of the Department whose functions it mainly supports, may I
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further ask what other research associations are likely to be similarly affected and to which Department or Departments their responsibility is likely to be transferred? Finally, as research associations are independent, autonomous bodies, owned and controlled by the industries which they serve, may I seek an assurance from Her Majesty's Government that no attempt will be made to violate that independence by using the grant as an excuse to subordinate them to the requirements of an executive Ministry?
I am sorry to face the noble Earl with that list of questions, but he did tuck in that little announcement towards the end of his speech, and I shall be grateful, as I am sure other noble Lords and other people will be, if we can have the answers.
8.6 p.m.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I know that your Lordships are anxious to hear the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, and I will not detain you for very long. It falls to my lot to congratulate four maiden speakers, all of whom delighted the House in different ways. I may refer first to the noble Lord, Lord Reigate, who was a good friend of mine at Oxford forty years ago, though we have hardly seen each other since. I am never sure, when one sees an old friend, whether one wants to see him much older than oneself or much younger. If he is much older, one is rather shocked by the idea that that is probably how one looks to other people; and if he looks much younger, one is envious. And envy is my sentiment at the moment, not only of the noble Lord's appearance but also of his speech.
I must congratulate my own three political friends very warmly. My noble friend Lord Diamond made his apologies because he was compelled to leave, and I believe he has offered the same apologies to the noble Earl. He spoke with the authority of someone who has been a Minister in the Treasury for a whole number of years and a Cabinet Minister for some part of the time. I will come in a moment to a point raised by my noble friends Lord Greenwood of Rossendale and Lady Bacon, with both of whom I have collaborated on all sorts of subjects very intimately in the past. But perhaps I may just say, having followed my noble friend Lord Greenwood at the Colonial Office, that I hope that

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in times to come the true value of his work there will be fully recognised. He certainly left a great mark, and that was well understood by those with whom he worked and all those who knew about it from outside. When my noble friend Lady Bacon spoke about the Family Service she was too modest to say so, but the fact is she has done more than any one person to make that Service a reality.
Let me turn briefly to the main issues of the debate. I suppose that the two heads have been the conglomeration of Ministries and the central capability unit. I have a word to say, but not much more, about the principles of conglomeration. I endorse strongly what was said so well by my noble friends Lord Greenwood of Rossendale and Lady Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe about the absorption of the Ministry of Overseas Development. I am quite sure, as the noble Lord, Lord Alport, said, that this represents a weakening of this cause. I cannot say that at the moment it represents any particular loss in pounds, shillings and pence: I am sure that the Government intend no such thing. But over the years I saw the way in which this Ministry was gradually losing ground, even in our own time.
When my noble friend Lord Greenwood and my right honourable friend Mrs. Castle were in charge, they were in the Cabinet and I am sorry to see it moved out of the Cabinet. From my own experience I am sure that this is a corner that has to be fought extremely hard. It is the one really altruistic Ministry we have. Other Ministries may be high-minded, in the sense that they are concerned with large numbers of our population; but this is the one Ministry that is of no direct benefit to the voters. I am not one of those, I may say, who can always make out some crafty argument for overseas aid on the ground that it helps us in the long run. This in my opinion is sacrificing overseas aid. It will always have the hardest task of any Ministry, and I am sure that this is a backward step.
I turn now to a technical but highly important and human point raised by my noble friend Lady Bacon, when she referred to the movement of the Children's Service from the Home Office and its being handed back to the Secretary of
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State for Social Services. I join my noble friend in paying tribute to the work which the Home Office, or many officials in the Home Office, have done, and also to the great work of the child care officers themselves. This is undoubtedly a difficult subject. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, and I. and my noble friends, Lady Bacon and Lord Greenwood, all investigated these things intensively together, just before the Government came into power, in a committee over which I presided. There is certainly no easy answer. One answer is to move the whole of the new Family Service into the Home Office, If you do that, then the Home Office becomes too big, and you have to move something away from the Home Office. I personally feel that, on the whole, that would have been the most constructive solution. But if you are going to do that I agree that you are forced towards something like this.
There certainly is language in the relevant paragraph which I hope the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, will at least reinterpret. In paragraph 35 there is the suggestion that this is a fairly easy distinction, because you move the Family Service into one Ministry and that leaves the Home Office with the overriding responsibility for protecting the public. Well it can be put in that way, but I think it is a very old-fashioned and superficial way of putting it. After all, most of us are aware (and the noble Earl himself has in his time done a lot for the Child Care Service in the Home Office) that it is impossible in practice to separate the work (shall I say?) of the Child Care Service from the Probation Service. Therefore, in a sense, there is no perfect answer. I think that the Government have an answer which makes tolerable reading; it is a second-best answer, but at any rate it is their answer, and I hope that they will succeed. But let us at least try to extract from the noble Earl an assurance that it is realised that there must be the closest co-operation between the Children's Service and the Probation Service. Perhaps he will reassure us on that point and relieve anxieties created by this particular paragraph.
With such good speeches it is tempting to try to comment on them. There was the speech, for example, of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, about these conglomerate Ministries. In view of the

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time, I am not going to pursue that subject to-day, except to offer my personal thought. I have had a great deal of experience of what might be called the mezzanine levels of ministerial life. In the Attlee Government I was never in the Cabinet, but I was what I might describe as almost everything else. Like my noble friend Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, I have presided over at least three full Ministries which have now disappeared, and one other where I was the Minister for Germany but not in supreme charge. So I know this kind of world, as one might say, extremely well.
Here again, there is no perfect answer, and one must not be unduly dogmatic. The real problem, if there are to be these conglomerate Ministries, is to ensure that delegation is effective. As has been explained, and as we are all aware, it is extremely hard on you, if you are a top Minister, to delegate something to a secondary Minister who can make a mistake for which you are held responsible. Even in some quite middle-sized Ministry, such as Civil Aviation, when I was Minister for that, years ago, it was easy enough to say, as I might have said, that I would hand over to the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, when he was Parliamentary Secretary, safety, which he would understand much better than I did. Nevertheless, if you are the Minister and some accident occurs you have an uncomfortable feeling that you will be held responsible at some point or other. Therefore this problem of delegation will never be an easy one.
My own view, for what it is worth, is that one should, if possible, delegate to what I call the secondary Ministries. It is not quite clear to me how far this is intended under this reorganisation, although I think it probably is intended. For example, when I was Minister for Germany everybody knew that I was Minister for Germany—in fact they thought that my role was rather bigger than it was. But it was Mr. Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary, who enjoyed the supreme responsibility, and therefore I was not likely to take any step which was not approved by him. However, it did enable me to give some kind of leadership; and of course in the Service Ministries equally it had various phases. But the bigger the conglomerations grow, the more we have to work out new con-
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ceptions of delegation. This is a challenge for the Government, and here again I can only wish them well with it.
Before I close, I should like to say a few words about the central capability unit. Of course, we on these Benches are very much complimented that one of our number, if not perhaps our most active Member, should have been selected for this onerous position. It is clearly a tribute to our philosophy, if not to the work in existence here. The noble Lord, Lord Rothschild, is a man of the highest intellectual powers, and no doubt he will fill the bill very well. I should think that here there are several different jobs, but I will mention only two of them. I think they are quite different, but they may be performed by this unit.
In the first place, there is the task of helping individual Cabinet Ministers to do their work much better than they have done it in the past. Like the noble Earl now (though he has a Department, and perhaps he may be more strongly equipped than I was), except for the few months when I was at the Colonial Office I was a Cabinet Minister in the last Wilson Government for a matter of three years, with no Department at all. When a great issue comes along—shall I say the question of devaluation?—a Minister in that position, While other Ministers may have all sorts of experts on education or transport, will not have economic experts for this sort of purpose.
What I say about a Minister without a Department applies, mutatis mutandis, to most Ministers in one way or another. When something like devaluation comes along, the individual Cabinet Minister not in an economic Department wants to make his contribution. In our time, such a Minister might, if he was lucky, gain access for a few moments to the noble Lord, Lord Balogh. That was granted as a supreme concession and as an act of grace on his part. But there was no hope of maintaining any prolonged dialogue with somebody as busy and preoccupied as that. In my time, if one wanted advice on particular issues—and that would really mean all the issues, apart from the business of the House of Lords—while there is a big Cabinet office there, full of brilliant and helpful people, one found they were not there to give the help sought.

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There is one aspect of this, which is not, I think, the most important aspect, but which could be made useful to individual Cabinet Ministers. But if that were all, one could achieve the result simply by doubling the staff of the Cabinet Office. There is no need to work out a new philosophy of government. I treat that as a secondary though not unimportant matter which does not require any far-reaching change. What is really intended here is clearly something wider. It is still very vague, and it may not be a criticism. It may be wisdom on the part of the Government to wait for these discussions before attempting to make their plans final, and then to see how things work out. I do not say anything nasty about that. It is impossible to know what they have in mind. I have read debates elsewhere; we have heard the noble Earl this afternoon, and unless he is going to reveal something just before closing time—which in the circumstances would rather surprise me—I suspect that we shall go away to-night with no very clear idea of what this unit is supposed to do.
May I, therefore, submit one or two thoughts? How is this unit supposed to improve on the kind of work that would be done by a strengthened Cabinet Office? If it is simply a question of more Government officials, obviously you can double the Cabinet Office—many of them are brilliant people—and it can be done in that way. Something new is clearly intended here, something other than that. I rather wonder what fresh contribution to our affairs will be made by this new unit which could not be made by an increased Cabinet Office. I would ask, in the first place, whether it is intended that they will operate under a new authority. I put that question, I hope not impertinently, to the noble Earl. Will they come under the authority of the head of the Cabinet Office? Will he be their master? We assume that they are all gentlemen of extraordinary efficiency, but the time might come when some of them have to be removed, not for misconduct but just for inadequacy. Somebody has to be their chief—I gather that if it is anybody it is the head of the Cabinet Office. Yet there was a hint in what the noble Earl said to me at the beginning of the day that for certain purposes they come under other authorities; they look
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elsewhere. That is a point which I am sure we should all wish to explore further to-day, or on some other occasion.
The noble Lord, Lord Balogh, suggested that they should in some sense be the servants of the Prime Minister. He has already worked them into that position in his mind, because he said that the noble Lord, Lord Rothschild, would be in the position which he himself once occupied, and I always understood that he was a personal adviser to the Prime Minister.
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, I was an economic adviser in the Cabinet Office.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, it was generally understood that the noble Lord enjoyed what is sometimes called a "special relationship" with the Prime Minister.
LORD BALOGH: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Rothschild, will enjoy very special relationships.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, the point I should like to lay before the House is that it is one thing for one particular adviser to have a special relationship with the Prime Minister, but quite a different thing for someone in charge of a large and powerful unit to come under the control of the Prime Minister in practice, whether or not in theory. The danger is that it would make the Prime Minister too powerful. This is something we have to dwell on, at any rate for a passing moment. Many people would say that the Prime Minister to-day, whether it is this Prime Minister, the last Prime Minister or the next Prime Minister-but-two, is too powerful. I do not know that you could say that at the present time; but if he had a large unit like this, which equipped him to stand up to the Treasury in some new fashion and to intervene effectively all over the field, he would be as powerful as Sir Winston Churchill was in the war.
No one, except possibly the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, has quite so high an affection for the late Lord Cherwell as I have; nevertheless, there was a general reluctance to see someone installed in the kind of position which Lord Cherwell occupied. Personally, I do not want to see this new and powerful

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unit brought directly, whether in theory or in practice, under the control of the Prime Minister. One could imagine that he might come under some other Minister—a kind of inspector-general. I do not think that idea would get much support. If we are to ask what this unit is going to do, not just by way of informing individual Ministers but by way of helping to plan and co-ordinate the whole policy of the Government, I submit that we must see it as coming under some Cabinet Committee. We are all entitled to offer our personal views, and I suggest that a; time passes if this is going to be an effective unit of planning and coordination it will have to come under some Cabinet Committee which is especially charged for that task. The other alternatives are for it to come under either no Ministers or under the Prime Minister, and I have suggested that neither course would be satisfactory.
I do not know how this unit will fare; I do not know the kind of people it will consist of. Is it suggested that they are to be more equipped by their training for tasks of planning and co-ordination than those in the Cabinet Office already? I have no reason to think that that will necessarily be so, but I am sure that they will be gentlemen endowed with much experience and intellect. Therefore, speaking for this side, and whether or not everything I say is precisely in the minds of everybody else among my colleagues, I welcome the attempt to work out something new along these lines. At present it is quite woolly, but I do not think we need necessarily condemn it because it is woolly. So to this woolly idea I give a warmish welcome, and in (those words give way to the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe.
8.26 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, in rising to reply to the debate, may I say that I have heard a great many people refer to the fact that this has been a good and useful debate. I sincerely say that I have found this an extremely useful debate. What is more, I am grateful to noble Lords on all sides of the House—not least the noble Lords opposite—for the constructive way in which they have put their views to us this afternoon. I wish to study those views closely and, meanwhile, I will offer some comments on some of the suggestions which have been
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made, the ballons d'essai which have been launched, and so on.
I do not wish unduly to discriminate by singling out for special mention speakers in your Lordships' debate this afternoon. I should like to add my tribute to the others which have been paid to our four very heavily disguised maiden speakers this afternoon. I was particularly glad to hear my noble friend Lord Reigate make his maiden speech; not least because he had the distinction of being the only noble Lord to make it from our own Benches. I enjoyed very greatly the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, who has tendered his apologies for not being able to hear my winding-up remarks. The noble Lord, Lord Diamond, made a witty speech with just the right touch of asperity. I also greatly enjoyed the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, and the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, not least because I had the honour to occupy a post in Government which she filled at one time with great distinction. In all sincerity I can say that this House has been powerfully reinforced by these three former distinguished Ministers, and we all look forward to hearing them again.
Since I am discriminating, I should like to take one step further down that dangerous path and say how much I, like many of your Lordships, enjoyed the quiet, considered, yet compelling, speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. The noble Baroness always intimidates me; she intimidated me when I was a "new boy" in her Ministry; and this afternoon she gave me one of those gentle reproofs of hers, and I find that her power to intimidate is no less than it was seven or eight years ago. I greatly enjoyed her speech, as I think the whole House did, not least because of its studied moderation, and not least because of its general welcome for the White Paper now before your Lordships.
My Lords, we have had a rather long discussion this afternoon and I think it would be wrong if I were to detain your Lordships for too long, bearing in mind too that I made a fairly long speech at the outset of this debate. As I see it, certain common themes have emerged from this discussion. In the first place, I think there has been a general, if in certain quarters rather muted, or indeed

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woolly, welcome for this White Paper, albeit—
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I did not actually say that. I said that it was a warmish welcome to a woolly White Paper.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I was fully aware of what the noble Earl said, and I apologise for misquoting him on purpose. I recognise that that welcome has in certain respects been highly critical. Secondly, I think it right to say (at least this is my impression) that, albeit with qualifications, there has been in most quarters of your Lordships' House a general blessing for the two major items of Governmental restructuring. First, the formation of the Department of Trade and Industry, which to my mind at least has very clear advantages, the bringing together in one large Department of export considerations and export policies and considerations of home industry; the bringing together of the public sector and the private sector, and not least making for once what I think is desirable, a clear and identifiable point of contact for the man in the street, be he a businessman or an industrialist. These are great advantages, and again I think there has been a welcome with qualifications.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, before the noble Earl leaves that point may I ask him one question, which is in fact meant to help him, although he may not think so? How many buildings will this new Department be spread over? I am sure he cannot answer. I suspect it is about twenty buildings, and I want to give more power to his elbow in getting the resources to house civil servants properly. Has he any idea how many buildings?
EARL JELLICOE: Quite a few buildings, my Lords. I have an idea, but it would be a wild guess. I might just add to that point that right at the end of the White Paper there is a paragraph or two, not unimportant, on dispersal policy. One of the considerations which we have in mind there is that, apart from considering dispersal, it is the aim to consider concentration at the centre as well; that is, not to increase the number of civil servants at the heart of White-
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hall, but to see that those who are there are not fragmented as they are at the present time. This aim will be engaging our most lively attention.
May I go back to where I was diverted, but agreeably diverted, by the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, to describe the advantage which I see in the creation of the Department of the Environment. I feel that there is a great advantage, or a great potential advantage, in unifying all the fields of policy which affect both the natural and the built environment. This is what I understand we are getting at in creating what is of course a very large Department indeed. I think that follows the thought which was expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hurcomb—who, again, has told me he had to leave—in his speech. But of course, having said that, I recognise straight away that very understandable doubts have been expressed about the mammoth size of these Departments; and I take the point fairly put by the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, that it is not just the gross number of civil servants in a particular Department which is important, but the functions, represented perhaps by the number of Under-Secretaries. I accept that point.
I remember the phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, that bigger is not necessarily better. Of course, I can only say, "Granted". But fewer and smaller is better. We have already achieved fewer Departments, and we have laid the foundations for achieving smaller Departments out of those fewer Departments.
One essential foundation, of course, is the review of functions. The Prime Minister has instructed ail departmental Ministers now to review radically and from the roots all the functions of their Departments to see which functions can be eliminated or amputated—these are the remedies which the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, herself advocated; to see what loads can be completely shed—and I am quite certain myself that some can be; to see where hiving off is possible, whether it is hiving off right outside the public sector, or by what I call the post-Fulton system of accountable management units. This review will not be once and for all; there will be a continuing process of review.

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The results of the first review which is now being carried out as a result of a very firm directive from the Prime Minister will be, if not evident, at least coming in fairly soon.
Having said that, I fully agree with the noble Earl, Lord Longford, that these large Departments will not be manageable unless there is a real degree of delegation within them. Perhaps there are new conceptions, to use his phrase, which we must try out here. I should only like to add in that context one further comment. The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, asked me what happens in the case of disagreement between one of the Ministers responsible for a department under the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State himself.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, would he have the right to appeal to the Cabinet over his boss?
EARL JELLICOE: No, my Lords. I should like to make this perfectly clear. Final responsibility rests, as it must rest, with the Secretary of State, who will be the sole voice for his Department in the Cabinet. That is the position, and I hope that the answer is quite clear.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, singled out in her disquiet which she was expressing as part of her general welcome of the new Department of the Environment the fact that what was formerly the Ministry of Public Building and Works carries with it a very wide and varied cluster of what I think are technically called service functions. She suggested that, perhaps as part of the process of hiving off, those functions could well be subject to critical examination. I would agree with what the noble Baroness has said, and I would go one stage further and say that that aspect of the functions of the Department of the Environment will be getting just that kind of critical examination.
In this context (and I come on to this in answer to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and a question put to me by him), I was asked by my noble friend Lord Reigate about dispersal. All I can say in amplification of the White Paper is that we really mean business in this respect. We are about to undertake, using modern systems and methodologies (to use the awful jargon
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developed in the Civil Service Department under the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton), a very searching review here; and that review will be completed within the coming year. I do not wish to prejudge what the results of it will be. But this is a more radical examination of the possibilities of Governmental dispersal, coupled with sensible concentration, than has been envisaged in the past. Certainly we intend to do this in a very thorough way indeed.
My Lords, that said by way of introduction, I turn now, if I may, to some of the particular points—areas about which questions have been put to me. My noble friend Lord Caldecote, and my noble friend Lord Lauderdale, were both anxious, as I understood it, about the allocation of responsibilities in the transport field. They asked me why responsibilities for shipping and civil aviation have not been transferred from the Trade and Industry sector to link up with the other transport industries—rail and road—in the new Department of the Environment. Well my Lords, those are very understandable questions. When this whole process of restructuring was under consideration I remember posing exactly the same questions myself, because at first blush it is an extremely attractive idea to group together these four major transport industries.
All I can do now is to assure my two noble friends that this matter was very carefully examined and they are wrong if they think that the present division is the result of history or just of this matter not having been examined. That is not the case. The matter was closely examined and was examined ab initio, and we came to the pattern which is the White Paper because we discerned certain clear linkages between these groups of functions. The dominant linkages of shipping and civil aviation work are international, whereas the dominant linkages of road and rail transport are internal. That is why, in our view, it makes better sense for the Department of Trade and Industry to have responsibility for shipping and aviation and why it makes sense for the Department concerned with our own physical and built-up environment to have responsibility for the road and rail transport industries. However, at first blush I would agree that one might well come to another conclusion.

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As to responsibility for our airports, in our view these clearly go, as a matter of operational necessity, with the main civil aviation responsibilities. That is why airports are to be found in Trade and Industry. On the other hand the analogy with shipping, where responsibility for ports rests with the Department of the Environment and shipping with Trade and Industry, is not one that really stands up to examination. The reason is that, plainly, when we look at it the ports/inland transport link is closer than the ports/shipping link in terms of Government responsibilities.
My Lords, I know this means that airport policy and significant planning decisions, such as the siting of the third London Airport, will rest with the Department of Trade and Industry. These, of course, have massive implications for physical planning, as my noble friend rightly pointed out. But such decisions arise very seldom indeed, whereas the functions which link airports and airlines are continuously and closely related. So in our view it is right to make very careful arrangements for co-ordination between the two Departments concerned on airport planning, but not actually to transfer responsibility for what can only be a fragment of a function. I hope I have made the logic behind these decisions clear to my noble friends. On the basis of one quick explanation I do not ask them necessarily to agree, but all I can say is that these particular decisions were very carefully considered indeed.
My noble friend Lord Caldecote asked me some questions about research and development and whether there was a danger of new frontiers being established between the research and development institutes which are mainly in the defence sphere and those which have been in the sphere of technology. That is my understanding of the question he put to me.
VISCOUNT CALDECOTE: My Lords, my point was between the Government industrial research and the Government defence research establishments.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, my noble friend has re-phrased the question very accurately. I take the point. My own view is that there have been fron-
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tiers in the past and there are frontiers at the present time, and that those frontiers are more likely to be broken down as a result of the examination which is going to be carried out under Mr. Rayner than under the present situation; but we shall have to wait and see. By the same token, if the noble Earl, Lord Shannon, will excuse me from answering his very detailed questions at this stage I should prefer, if only because of the time, to do so in writing. He accused me of tucking in my statement on research associations towards the end of my speech, but he tucked in his questions rather towards the end of our debate. But I will write to him about them and I shall be very glad to go into them in debate later, if the noble Earl so wishes.
I now turn to three areas of difficulty about which I have been asked a number of not easy questions by noble Lords opposite. First, there is the question relating to Wales and the transfer of certain education responsibilities to the Secretary of State for Wales. I listened most carefully to the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, and at this hour I do not wish to go over this whole ground in great detail. What I should like to put to her, however, is this: once the office of the Secretary of State for Wales had been created and once the principle of a certain devolution of functions to Wales had been accepted, there was surely a strong case in logic for saying that sooner or later it should be given education powers. There have been many, not only in this Administration, who have taken this view and who thought it was a matter of real difficulty to Secretaries of State for Wales that they had no more than oversight of educational functions in Wales; and it seems to me that if functions are going to be transferred, primary and secondary education are the obvious choices.
I realise that this again immediately raises problems of what might be called "frontiers". I prefer to leave this subject at this stage of the debate, but I might just add this. The noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, asserted that there had been little or no consultation on this matter, but our intentions were stated very clearly in our Election manifesto, they were reiterated in the Queen's Speech, and, since the publication of the White Paper, the Secretary of State has deliberately delayed the implementation of these

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measures until there has been time for consultation. I would ask the noble Baroness to accept that as my understanding of the position.
BARONESS BACON: My Lords, can the noble Earl say whether or not there was any consultation with either the teachers' bodies or the Association of Education Committees and the Welsh Joint Education Committee before the publication of the Order?
EARL JELLICOE: No, my Lords, I think it was after the publication of the Order; but the implementation of the Order was held up so that that consultation could be undertaken thereafter.
With regard to another difficult area—that is, the transfer of the Children's Department responsibilities to the Department of Health and Social Security—I should only like to say that I very much share the affection and respect which I think anybody who has worked in the Home Office has for the Children's Department and those who work in it. As a result of my experience in the Home Office I have come to the same conclusion as has the noble Baroness about the worth of the Children's Department. But it seems to me that, as the noble Earl, Lord Longford, very fairly said, we were presented by a choice which would be difficult either way. It is quite clear that, following Seebohm, if all the social services are to be integrated at the local level, which I think we all hold to be right, then it is only sensible to integrate their supervision at the ministerial level.
We then have the choice whether the Children's Department should go to the Department of Health and Social Security or whether that side of the Department of Health and Social Security which deals with the personal services should somehow be brought into the Home Office. This is a very difficult area of choice. In my view, the right decision was taken, although as a Home Office sentimentalist I saw it taken with a good deal of regret. But I think it was the right decision; and, that having been done, straight away one runs into the difficulty that this means some fragmentation, admittedly, of responsibility for dealing with children in trouble, the point on which the noble Earl, Lord Longford, rightly dwelt. All I would say to the noble Earl is that this is a point of difficulty which is very much
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recognised by Her Majesty's Government, and it is certainly our intention to ensure that in this area there is the closest possible co-ordination between the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Security. I think I can therefore give the noble Earl the assurance he asked me for.
If I recall correctly, there was one further area of lively criticism of the proposals in the White Paper expressed in your Lordships' debate this afternoon, and that is the proposal to bring the Ministry of Overseas Development within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I do not wish to go over all the ground again. I gave my views on this subject at the outset of our debate. I emphasised that there was no intention on the part of Her Majesty's Government to slacken the momentum behind our aid effort—in fact, very much the reverse. I assured your Lordships that the staff of the O.D.M. would be retained as an autonomous whole within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and I pointed to the advantages which, in my view, would flow from a senior Cabinet Minister being able to speak up for aid within the Cabinet.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, I do not want to interrupt my noble friend, but surely in the past when aid was distributed among three Offices there were three Secretaries of State and Cabinet Ministers well able to speak up for aid. Now there is one rather more remote, while the actual responsibility for aid rests with a Minister within the Foreign Office.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, knowing the personal attachment of the present holder of the office of Foreign Secretary to aid, and his belief in development aid, I should have thought it was not fair to categorise Sir Alec Douglas-Home as being remote in that respect.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, may I interrupt for one moment? Surely it is not right that we should be dependent on the personality of the existing incumbent of the Foreign Secretaryship. Foreign Secretaries come and go, and we all know that their personalities are very different. I do not think that that is an answer to that particular point.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think it was a part answer to the charge of remoteness. But the real point is that Her Majesty's Government are committed to an expanding aid programme, and it is therefore inconceivable that one would have in Her Majesty's Government as Foreign Secretary someone who did not hold a strong personal commitment in this sphere. I understand the emotion which this particular transfer of functions has aroused; nevertheless I do feel that there is an undue scepticism about the attitude of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office inherent in that point of view. It has certainly not been my experience, as an old member of the Foreign Service, that my fellow members were uninterested in development aid; indeed, very much the reverse. Moreover, it has certainly been my experience as a merchant banker in the last six years or so that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in many respects—for example, in their preference for multilateral aid, which I hold to be usually desirable—were extremely advanced. But, be that as it may, I do not think I am going at this hour of the night to persuade the noble Baroness or noble Lords opposite, or indeed my noble friend, that this is the right decision. Perhaps I may parenthetically apologise to my noble friend for being necessarily out of your Lordships' House when he was speaking earlier.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, the noble Earl is doing his job very thoroughly and we much appreciate it. We do not want to waste time on the Order later to-night, because it is getting rather late; but what really alarms me is that he has failed to understand the points that have been made. I recall my own experience in the field of foreign affairs when I have for political purposes sought to get money out of the Department of Overseas Development which went against their judgment as to its development value. It may well be that we shall return to this subject on an Un-starred Question on some occasion, and then the Minister particularly responsible will be able to deal with it.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I would gladly fall in with that suggestion. The noble Baroness, Lady Llewelyn-Davies, asked me three specific questions of which she was kind enough to give me notice.
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Unless she would like me to reply now, I would, in view of the time factor, send her written replies to those three questions.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, would the noble Earl answer the question about staff?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, again I was out of the House when the noble Baroness spoke, but I think she asked whether Her Majesty's Government will continue to retain the O.D.A. as a domestic office without pressing the staff to join the Diplomatic Service. The answer is Yes; as stated in the White Paper the Overseas Development Administration of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will continue like the Ministry of Overseas Development to be staffed by home civil servants, although the existing provisions for secondment in both directions with the Diplomatic Service will continue. It is an essential part of the change that a separate O.D.A. should continue within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and that the skilled body of aid administrators who have been brought together initially in the Department of Technical Co-operation and then in the O.D.M. should continue to be managed and function as a cohesive unit.
I come in conclusion to the central policy review staff. Although this has been very central to our debate, I shall necessarily be a little cursory in my treatment of the issues. We have had a great deal of fun about the semantics of how this animal has changed its name as it has gone along the road. But I think it is "central policy review staff" now, and I think it is likely to remain "central policy review staff" unless your Lordships can think of a better name.
So far as the scope of the staff is concerned, I would only say this: I see it playing an essential and continuing part in the annual review by Government of their priorities and of their expenditure options. I also see it playing an important and continuing part in the annual exercise in which the Government will be engaging, the Programme Analysis and Review which will be the complement of PESC. These will be two year to year important continuing functions of the central policy review staff as I see it. But,

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of course, it will not be precluded from long range studies; in fact it will be encouraged, ad hoc if need be, to point out to Ministers the options open to them on particular decisions; and of course, as is made clear in the White Paper, it will be carrying out or commissioning special studies itself.
If I may now reply to the noble Lord, Lord Balogh, and to the specific point about its functions which he put to me, I would certainly not wish to see the central policy review staff restricted in its scope in any artificial manner, and I would certainly not rule out its being involved in the area to which he drew attention. But I would not at this stage wish to go further.
So far as the collective responsibilities of the review staff are concerned, I think that perhaps it was my fault that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, made rather heavy weather about that matter earlier in our debate. What I should like again to emphasise is that the services of the review staff will be common to the Prime Minister and to Ministers in their collective responsibility. It will be providing common services, and I do not myself see any particular difficulty in the mode by which those services will be rendered, by which its reports will reach the Ministers concerned. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, pointed out that they could receive them as members of the Cabinet. They could also receive the reports as members of the Cabinet Committees on which they sit. They could receive them in their individual departmental capacities. But the point which I was anxious not to be drawn on was the precise Cabinet Committee structure which might or might not embrace the central policy review staff. This would be going against our normal conventions, and on that I would not wish at this stage to be drawn. But I was most interested in the remarks made in that respect.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I hesitate to prolong this debate in any way, but could the noble Earl explain why the central policy review staff might not be a special section of the Cabinet Secretariat, of course ultimately coming under the Prime Minister through Sir Burke Trend, without being set up as a sort of autonomous unit?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think what is likely to evolve may be very close to that; it will be part of the Secretariat, but a distinctive part of it. I believe it is important that it should preserve its own identity, but it will be part of the Cabinet Secretariat. So far as staff are concerned, the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, expressed the hope that Lord Rothschild will be able, or be enabled, to recruit staff of the highest quality. I can only echo those admirable sentiments. Certainly it will be my desire, with my responsibilities within the Civil Service Department, to do anything I can to further that desirable objective.
As for numbers, the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, perhaps being under some misapprehension about the degree to which the central policy review staff will itself develop an independent analytical function, thought that it was going to have a huge number of analysts accommodated within it. I think this is not the case. I think the analytical capability available to Government will be mainly within the Departments themselves, and of course within the Treasury, But this does not mean that there will not be analysts within the central policy review staff itself, but I think they will be quite small in number—very limited indeed.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, if the noble Earl has finished on that point, I should like to correct one matter. I never sought to get from the noble Earl the existing Cabinet Committee structure, and in the sense of his batting me down on that I would merely say that I was asking how it worked. I even suggested relating it to an ancient Cabinet Committee structure. The noble Earl has been most patient, but perhaps I could ask one further question. Are there going to be some businessmen qua businessmen in this? This is how publicly it all started, in his first statement. Secondly, I did not say there would need to be a large number of analysts. I said there are not available a large number of people who are expert in this type of activity, and over a wide area one could run into trouble. But these are merely points of correction.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I entirely accept what the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition has kindly said.

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So far as his specific question is concerned, if there is a businessman or businessmen appointed to Lord Rothschild's staff, the appointment will not be qua businessmen, or if there is an engineer, he will not be appointed qua engineer. I think it is possible—I would not wish to rule out any possibility—that anyone who is appointed to the central policy review staff will be appointed because of his particular personal qualities.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am delighted to hear that.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, we have had a rather long discussion, and I fully recognise that there are a great many points which I have left unanswered. But I should like to say, by way of conclusion, that I think we can fairly claim that during our years of Opposition we engaged in some pretty fundamental thinking about the machinery of government. Moreover, since we took office in the summer, we have, with the assistance of some very skilled and experienced civil servants, done a lot more hard thinking. That thinking is embodied in the changes announced in the White Paper. I know that I shall not carry all noble Lords with me, but it is my belief that these changes, and the principles and thinking on which they rest, are valid, and that their practical effect will be good. But I do not for one moment wish to assert that they could not be improved, and it will certainly be our aim—and we have been helped towards that aim by a very constructive debate this afternoon—to do what we can over the months and years ahead, whatever it may be, to improve this machinery, but on the basis of trying to achieve that stability in government structure which we all wish to see achieved.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

TRANSFER OF FUNCTIONS (OVERSEAS AID) ORDER 1970
9.9 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Transfer of Functions (Overseas Aid)
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Order 1970, be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 27th October.—(The Marquess of Lothian.)
On Question, Motion agreed to: The said Address be presented to Her Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT ORDER 1970
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Secretary of State for the Environment Order, 1970, be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 27th October.—(Lord Sandford.)
On Question, Motion agreed to: The said Address to be presented to Her Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.

SOUTHERN RHODESIA ACT 1965 (CONTINUATION) ORDER 1970
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN had given Notice of his intention to move, That the Draft Southern Rhodesia Act 1965 (Continuation) Order 1970, laid before the House on 27th October, be approved. The noble Marquess said: My Lords, I understand that this Motion is being postponed until to-morrow, and I therefore do not move it this evening.

SOUTHERN RHODESIA (MATRIMONIAL JURISDICTION) ORDER 1970
9.11 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF ST. MARYLEBONE): My Lords. I beg to move that the Southern Rhodesia (Matrimonial Jurisdiction) Order 1970 be approved. I wish to say a few words in support of the Motion and in explanation of it, notwithstanding that noble Lords who are interested in the matter have had to wait a long time for the item to come on for hearing. The effect of the Motion will be to bring into force on November 16 the Order which

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was laid before your Lordships' House on October 23.
Despite its technical nature, which I shall endeavour to explain, the underlying object of this Order is quite simple. It enables individuals who in the normal course of events would petition for divorce or nullity of marriage in Southern Rhodesia to seek matrimonial relief in the United Kingdom without having to meet the normal qualifications of domicile or residence, provided, of course, that they have been residing here for the past six months.
It is notorious that almost nothing that touches the Continent of Africa is uncontroversial, but the modest Order now before the House will, I hope and believe, prove to be an exception. It does not affect, and it has been framed so as not to affect, the political issues surrounding the Rhodesian question. It does aim at mitigating hardship caused to certain individuals in this country who are innocent of any part in the political dispute. The Order is, of course, of a general character. But the problem which gives rise to it is well illustrated by the particular case of Mrs. Adams, which brought it to a head; and the decision has been reported. There are other cases to which it will bring relief. I simply give the facts in an individual case by way of illustration.
Mrs. Adams was, and is, an Englishwoman. She is not a Rhodesian. She married an Australian and went to live in Rhodesia where the Australian husband was, and so far as I know is, domiciled. Since he was domiciled in Rhodesia, by private international law, as it is interpreted in the United Kingdom, the Rhodesian courts have in general an exclusive jurisdiction to decide the matrimonial status of husband and wife. Apart from special legislation, therefore, the wife could not, and cannot, be divorced either in Australia or in the United Kingdom. Of course before the unilateral declaration of independence this circumstance would have given rise to no difficulty. Rhodesian divorce would then have been recognised outside Rhodesia, both in Australia and in the United Kingdom.
In the events as they occurred after the marriage, the Australian husband treated the wife badly. He deserted her and committed adultery against her. So
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she divorced him, or purported to divorce him, in Rhodesia and went back, with her unhappy memories, to live in her own country—which was this country. She now wants to marry again, and I suppose that, unless one holds religious views forbidding completely the dissolution of marriage, there is not a single person who would grudge her the opportunity of doing so.
Unfortunately, it has been decided by the High Court—and in my judgment rightly—that she cannot do so. If she did so she would be committing bigamy. This cruel anomaly which afflicts her is of course no fault of hers: it is the unfortunate, and I would think wholly unintended, result of the unhappy tangle which has taken place as a result of the unilateral açtions taken by Mr. Smith in purporting to declare Rhodesia independent, and of the legislation which we have passed to deal with the situation that resulted.
After the declaration of alleged independence we asked the courts of Rhodesia to continue in operation. That was the act of our predecessors, the previous Government, and this invitation at least met with support in all quarters of, I think, both Houses. We did not intend to disrupt social or family life, least of all for our own citizens. We did not wish to undermine the fabric of law and order. Our quarrel was with the alleged Government and with the illegal Parliament which supported it.
Unfortunately, as matters turned out, the judge who pronounced the Adams divorce in Rhodesia had not been properly appointed. He had been appointed very recently by the illegal authorities and had been dispensed by the illegal Parliament from the oaths of office and allegiance prescribed by the only Constitution we regard as lawful. In law, therefore, as it is recognised here, he was no judge at all, and in consequence the decree of divorce that he purported to pronounce was not an effective decree of divorce. That might have been of less importance had the wife gone on living in Rhodesia. But she had come back here: she had come back to her own country, and now wishes to marry an Englishman. We think that she should be allowed to do so. Since our action, the Rhodesia Order and legislation of 1965, has deprived the

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Rhodesian decree of validity, we think that the English courts should be given jurisdiction in place of the court from which we have taken the jurisdiction. Unfortunately, Mrs. Adams is not alone in her unhappy position. We think therefore that legislation is the answer.
Her Majesty's Government, therefore, now wish to provide an alternative venue where people in the position of Mrs. Adams can seek matrimonial relief in place of that which, on account of political circumstances, is no longer available to them. This the Order does by conferring on the courts in the United Kingdom jurisdiction to entertain proceedings for divorce or nullity of marriage of a person domiciled or resident in Southern Rhodesia, as if that person had been domiciled or resident within the United Kingdom, provided that the petitioner has first spent a qualifying period of six months' residence in this country before instituting proceedings here.
My Lords, it may be suggested that a simpler course would have been to validate divorce decrees granted in Rhodesia, but unfortunately this is not possible, or not desirable, since it would have awarded a degree of recognition to the acts of the illegal régime. It would thus have injected political controversy into a simple humanitarian measure. We have therefore pursued a different course which does not have that consequence. It must be remembered that this situation is one of the consequences of the illegality of the present régime, and although of course I am aware, as I suppose we all are, that the possible invalidity of other acts of the régime and its officials may also cause certain hardship (the quickest way to resolve these problems would be the restoration of normal relations between the two countries) this is the only legal problem so urgent and so simple that it can be dealt with out of hand in this way.
I feel sure that your Lordships agree that the problem of invalid divorces, and the distress necessarily associated with it, demands our sympathy and support. Indeed, the whole problem of what are called, I believe, "limping marriages" is one which I think ought to be dealt with by the Legislature as and when solutions prove possible. If we approve this Order,
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those who, as a result of the Adams case, could not get remarried here will be able to bring proceedings—for which, of course, legal aid will be available, if necessary, on the usual basis. Mrs. Adams herself will have to go back to the High Court, to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division, but this time I hope with a reasonable certainty of success. In the present state of the lists she should be free, if I may coin a phrase, within weeks rather than months of the presentation of her petition. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Southern Rhodesia (Matrimonial Jurisdiction) Order 1970, be approved.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
9.21 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for his clear explanation of this Order. The first thing I would say about it is that no Government, of course, could have dealt with this matter until the courts had decided what the law was, because your Lordships know that in this country it is for the courts and not the Executive to decide what the law is. But we have now had this case of Adams v. Adams, and I observe from a report of the judgment of the learned President that he said:
"Last March Mr. Stewart, then Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, stated that the effect of the changes of status on individuals in Southern Rhodesia would fall to be considered by courts in this country.
"Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the present Secretary of State, had certified for the purposes of the present case that Southern Rhodesia had been and continued to be a colony within Her Majesty's dominions"—
I remember being in some trouble with the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, when I said that Southern Rhodesia remained a colony—
"and the United Kingdom Parliament and Government had responsibility for and jurisdiction over it as to the extent provided in section I of the 1965 Act. The British Government did not recognise Southern Rhodesia (or Rhodesia) as a state either de facto or de jure, and had not at any time since November 11, 1965, recognised any persons purporting to be constituting a government there either de facto or de jure".
The learned President then dealt with the law, and, he having done so, the report goes on:
"The only decree purporting to dissolve the marriage was that of April 9 by Mr. Justice Macaulay. Unless it was effective, Mrs. Adams

721
continued to be married to Mr. Adams. His Lordship was compelled to hold that Mr. Justice Macaulay was not a judge de jure of the High Court of Rhodesia".
The learned President then dealt with the argument that the decree could be held to be valid as being one by a judge de facto. The report continues:
"His Lordship held that the doctrine of the validity of the acts of a de facto officer did not entitled him to recognise Mr. Justice Macaulay's decree as valid by the municipal law of Rhodesia".
My Lords, that being the legal position, there is undoubted hardship in the most important and personal aspect of anyone's life, and we on this side of the House are not less ready than the Government to see that hardship disposed of so far as possible. I must say clearly that if the Government had taken the alternative course to which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor referred—namely, of seeking to pass some form of legislation which validated the decree of the court of the illegal régime—we should have opposed it. Apart from anything else, that would have been contrary, of course, to the resolutions of the Security Council of the United Nations, to which we were parties. But this Order does not do that. It merely confers jurisdiction on cur courts to deal with the marriage, and cannot be said in any way to be a recognition of the courts of the illegal régime.
This of course leaves open certain questions. There has yet been no decision as to whether the position would be the same if a decree had been granted by a judge who had been appointed a judge before the date of the illegal declaration of independence but who had since announced that he no longer considers himself to be sitting under the only valid Constitution but under a later and illegal one. Nor does this Order touch adoption or other fields of family life, and there are other possible difficulties; but in view of the hour I do not propose to take up your Lordships' time with them to-night. These difficulties may have to be met, if they can be, at a later date. For those reasons my noble friends offer no objection to the making of this Order.
9.25 p.m.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, I hesitate to intervene in a debate which so far has been graced by the present Lord Chancellor and by an ex-Lord Chancellor; but I should like to put a point which I think is relevant to this particular case. I do not know of any authority which has withdrawn from the judges of the High Court of Rhodesia their de jure jurisdiction in respect of the recognition that their judgments be recognised by the courts in the United Kingdom. It is my impression that all judges who were appointed before U.D.I. by Her Majesty the Queen and who continued afterwards still remain, at law, judges having legal authority in respect of the domestic law in this country where their judgments are made in Rhodesia. If I have put my point obscurely and without technical expertise, I hope that your Lordships will forgive me.
There are five judges in the High Court of Rhodesia at the present moment, the Lord Chief Justice and four puisne judges, who were appointed before U.D.I. It is the practice of the courts of Southern Rhodesia to publish the names of judges sitting on particular days in the High Court and it is open to advocates who are representing petitioners in relation to causes coming before the High Court to request that their cases be heard by a particular judge. In those circumstances, it would have been open for the advocates who represented Mrs. Adams during her divorce proceedings in Rhodesia to ensure that the case was heard by a judge appointed before U.D.I.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, has said that there is no case so far to say whether a judgment by such a judge would have been valid in the United Kingdom courts. But I do not think he would argue that there is a very strong; probability that such a judgment would have been invalid. In fact it may be—though I have no evidence of the fact—that re-marriages have taken place subsequent to judgments of that sort given in the courts of Rhodesia since U.D.I. which are legally recognised in the United Kingdom. In those circumstances, if my argument is correct,

723
Mrs. Adams could have had a valid divorce in Rhodesia.
I do not wish in any way to criticise or to stand in the way of a lady who deserves our sympathy and who wishes now to remarry and to resume a happy life here in the United Kingdom. All I am saying is that I am not sure why Her Majesty's Government have taken this particular case as a first step in ameliorating the hardships which are undoubtedly being inflicted upon a large number of individuals in Rhodesia as a result of sanctions following U.D.I.
My Lords, there are many faithful and loyal individuals in Rhodesia who have done their best to support the cause of Great Britain, supported by previous Governments and the present Government, in trying to ensure that Rhodesia remains part of the association of British countries and in the Commonwealth. Those people have suffered—and far more so, if I may say so—than Mrs. Adams. I know, and have represented to the Government, individual cases that relate to passports, to the financial hardships of elderly people whose funds are blocked here and who perhaps have only a very few years to live and are living in Rhodesia in increasing austerity and difficulty. I do not have anything against helping a particular individual like Mrs. Adams, but if this principle is to be accepted, why does it not apply to other far more deserving cases—people who have made far greater sacrifices on behalf of what they believe to be right and what we believe to be right—than this particular lady? Yet I find the Government hurrying through legislation for a particular case, legislation which in fact is the first part of the amelioration—other than the removal of the surcharge on stamps—of individuals who have suffered hardship.
My Lords, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, rightly said that the way out of our present problems over Rhodesia is to find some political solution, and I have no doubt that the Government will try to do so. Those of us interested in this subject will watch carefully the conditions under which the negotiations which have started are carried on. We shall do our best to ensure that there is no departure from the principles which both Governments have
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laid down as being the prerequisite to any settlement. But we must consider what would be the position if in fact no settlement proves possible. What are the Government then going to do, on the principle of the amelioration of the situation of Mrs. Adams, in respect of other British people in Rhodesia; and, even more, in respect of the African population which has had no part in, or no control whatever over, the existing circumstances, and certainly is not a beneficiary from those circumstances?
I have been greatly tempted, because of the sudden change in the business of your Lordships' House, to put forward ideas on the more general subject which would have been appropriate to the other Order. But I realised, on more mature thought, that this would be against the interests of the House, and certainly against its practice, and so I have no wish to do so. But I want to make the point, with great sincerity and all the force at my disposal, that I think it very peculiar that Her Majesty's Government should take up this particular case as, presumably, the first step towards some amelioration of the impact of sanctions on innocent people, when there are so many other much more important and much more demanding cases which they should have taken up before. However, as I say, I do not want to stand in the way of the passage of this particular Order. I only hope that the Government are doing something which is necessary, though from my reading of the legal situation, and the relation between the Judges of Rhodesia and the High Court here, I do not think that it was really necessary at all.
9.34 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, perhaps I may reply seriatim to the two speeches which have been made, and in, I hope, relatively few words. I am grateful for the general blessing that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, gave this Order from the Opposition Front Bench. I must say to him that if there is any vice in the Order I must accept the responsibility of it myself. And if there is any virtue I am entitled to claim some small credit. It seemed to me there was no reason to delay a modest measure to alleviate hardship which arose out of a question of status when a device (I use the word

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without, I think, and I hope, any pejorative connotation) could be employed to give relief without raising the political questions which were very present in the minds of both the noble and learned Lord and also my noble friend Lord Alport.
I rather suspect that my noble friend Lord Alport made the speech he did because to some extent he was frustrated by the course of events which led to the postponement of the other Rhodesia Order about which, I suspect, he really wished to make his views known. I must tell him that his criticism of this Order is wholly unreasonable. In the first place, made it absolutely plain, in moving the Order, that it does not relate to an individual case, but relates to a limited class of case. I mentioned the case of Mrs. Adams only because the facts of her case were public, and I could dilate upon them without embarrassment to her or to the Government. But I did so solely by way of illustration, and I made that plain. This is not a particular case we are dealing with; it is a group of cases.
Secondly, hardship does not fall on people in Rhodesia at all in this class of case. If a person has been divorced in Rhodesia, the fact that that divorce is not recognised outside Rhodesia is for him no hardship at all because, rightly or wrongly, it is recognised inside his country. The hardship arises when a person who has a Rhodesian "divorce" (I use the word in inverted commas and without prejudice) comes to live somewhere else where it is not recognised and wants to marry again. Then he is faced with the alternative, as in all limited marriages, of committing bigamy in the country where he has come to reside or of living in sin. Personally I think that that is intolerable.
I cannot see why my noble friend Lord Alport sees fit to say that it is unnecessary to deal with it when a perfectly legitimate way of dealing with it is open to the Government.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, I did not say that it is unnecessary, but that there are other ways in which it could be dealt with. The fact that the lady in question has been misled by her advocate in Rhodesia should mean that something has to be put right; but what I said was that there are many other cases of hardship far
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greater to which the Government should pay attention.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I think that when my noble friend comes to read in Hansard what he actually said he will find that my account of this is more accurate than that which he has just given. In the first place, I think it would have been impossible, in the context of what is happening in Rhodesia, to ask for a particular judge on the precise ground that the other would not have given a decree valid in Great Britain. I think that that is a fatuous suggestion. Secondly, it would have been extremely injudicious of her to do so, from the point of view of English law.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, made it perfectly clear that it has not yet been decided by the courts in this country that a judge who was appointed before U.D.I. but who has now given his adherence to the new Constitution would be delivering a valid decree if he gave a decree of divorce affecting the status of an individual and that individual were then to come to this country or go somewhere else outside Rhodesia. I do not venture to express an opinion, either Aye or No, about that problem because it would have to be decided by the courts, if and when it should arise, and the learned President in the Adams case, though he raised the issue, did not find it necessary to decide it.
All I can tell my noble friend is that there is a formidable number of people who take a view opposite to that which he thought fit to express, and anybody who took his advice on this would be taking the advice of someone who is not qualified to give it. It would be most injudicious to assume that divorces pronounced by judges who have adhered to the illegal régime would be recognised in this country. They may be or they may not be, but if I were in that position I should not like to take the risk, or to assume before a valid decision was made in this country asserting it, that such was the case.
Any form of quarrel between two countries leads to hardship among the persons who reside in either of them. This is common to all disputes of a political character between two nations. Some of it cannot be avoided. Obviously,

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those which arise from financial regulations and restrictions cannot be avoided. We in the Government want to solve the problem, if we can, but if it is going to be solved, it is going to be solved by political means and not by a legal device one way or the other. This is a problem which affects status and not contract, which can be met by a device which does not involve solving the political issues. I must say that I do take amiss my noble friend's criticism of the Government for alleviating a hardship in a way which can be done without offending anybody at all.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

FUTURE BUSINESS: METRICATION
9.40 p.m.
VISCOUNT GOSCHEN: My Lords, I should like to inform the House that following discussions through the usual channels it has been decided, in view of the debate on the Rhodesian Order, which is now to be taken as first business, and of other business which is likely to take some time, that it would be unreasonable to hold the debate on metrication down for to-morrow. It is hoped to arrange a new date for this before Christmas.

TRENT AND LINCOLNSHIRE WATER BILL [H.L.]
The Queen's consent signified, and Bill reported from the Select Committee with Amendments.
BRITISH RAILWAYS BILL
Brought from the Commons, read 1a, and referred to the Examiners.
CITY OF LONDON (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL
Brought from the Commons, and (pursuant to the Resolutions of May 20 last, a declaration of the Agent having been deposited in the Private Bill Office) Bill read la and, pro forma, read 2a, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.