Lords Sitting of 19 November 1970

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells.
The Lord Archbishop of York—Took the Oath.

PENALTIES FOR POLLUTION
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend, as the last Government did, to increase the penalties for illegally polluting our environment, so as to bring them into line with the realities of modern economic life.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, we are continuing the review of penalties for contravention of the laws concerned with the control of pollution of the environment which was set in motion by the former Government, but this is a complex and highly technical subject and many conclusions have yet to be reached in the greater part of the field. However, the first instalment in this field, the Oil in Navigable Waters Bill, is already under consideration in another place and, as your Lordships will know, it is proposed to raise very substantially indeed the maximum fine on summary conviction of the offence of illegally discharging oil into the sea.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, may I thank the noble Lord for that reply and ask him if he can indicate whether in point of fact the review will cover the whole field—that is to say, air, land and internal as well as navigable waters—since quite clearly the present penalties are not merely inadequate but utterly ludicrous, when one reflects upon the fact (which I would ask the Minister
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to bear in mind) that the maximum penalty at the moment for allowing effluent to enter rivers is £100 and for discharging oil in navigable waters only £1,000?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I would confirm to the noble Lord that the review is going on over the entire field, but I should prefer at this stage not to prejudge the conclusions of that review by commenting on the precise penalties that exist at the moment.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I wonder if I could ask the noble Lord whether, when the House debates the Motion submitted by the noble Lord, Lord Molson, he will be in a better position than he is this afternoon to reply to some of these points?
LORD SANDFORD: Yes, my Lords, it may well be possible and more appropriate to go into further detail then.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, can the noble Lord do anything to get the laws against litter effectively enforced? Because at present they appear to be a total dead-letter.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the last White Paper on this subject, issued earlier this year, said:
"The Government will in due course amend the law where necessary to bring them"—
that is, the penalties—
"into line with the realities of modern life."?
Do those words "will in due course" still stand, or have they been abandoned by the new Government?
LORD SANDFORD: No, my Lords. I thought that in my original Answer I indicated that not only will the present Government bring legislation before Parliament in order to bring the penalties into line with the realities of modern life but that they have in fact already done so in one particular case.
LORD POPPLEWELL: My Lords, as this Question refers merely to illegal pollution, is the noble Lord able to give any assurance that the Government, in thinking about this matter, will go a little deeper and will think about the legal pollution that takes place? One remembers, during the recent dustmen's strike,

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a lot of newspaper talk about the pollution of the River Aire consequent upon sewage not being dealt with. The Aire is one of the most polluted streams, through industrial waste, that one could find.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order, order!
LORD POPPLEWELL: My Lords, is the noble Lord able to give us an assurance that when the Government are thinking deeply about this subject, such rivers as the Aire will be taken into consideration?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I shall be delighted to answer a Question about that or any other aspect of pollution if the noble Lord will put one down.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, as I was long ago very deeply interested in this question, I should like to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will give special attention to that damning proviso in the Act of 1878 which has been the mother of all pollution ever since.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, is the noble Lord going to answer the question asked by my noble friend Lady Wootton of Abinger? Is it not important, not only to put new legislation on the Statute Book, but to see that that which is already there is implemented?
LORD SANDFORD: Yes, my Lords; but that is another question.

HISTORIC BUILDINGS GRANT
3.12 p.m.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend that money for the preservation of buildings of architectural or historic interest paid on the advice of the Historic Buildings Council shall be £700,000 in the current financial year, as announced by the last Government on May 20, 1970, or shall be cut back, and if so, by how much.]
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, the Government propose no reductions in the present allocation.

JUSTICES OF THE PEACE AND VISITS TO FOREIGN COURTS
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: 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 Government will issue justices of the peace with some form of identification which will assist them in getting access to courts and penal institutions when abroad.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF ST. MARYLEBONE): My Lords, every justice of the peace receives a letter at the time of his appointment to the Bench informing him that the Lord Chancellor has placed his name on the Commission of the Peace. This letter ought to be sufficient for the purpose that the noble Baroness has in mind. If a magistrate wishes for a legitimate purpose a particular letter of introduction to a specific authority abroad, I shall be glad to consider such a request on its merits.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble and learned Lord for that answer.
LORD MERTHYR: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord remind the noble Baroness that facilities such as she desires have been available for a long time from the Magistrates' Association who do a great deal of work in this field? I am sure that if application is made to them she will benefit by it.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, the noble Lord who, I think, for 25 years and until recently was Chairman of the Association has done very right to remind the House of the facilities of the Association. Every magistrate would be well advised to join.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord allow me to say that this is a matter which has been raised by a number of justices who are anxious to improve their knowledge of the judicial systems abroad? I am much obliged to him for giving an Answer that makes it clear how they can do so.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for what she has said.

EAST PAKISTAN CYCLONE DISASTER
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, at a suitable moment after 3.30 p.m. my noble friend the Leader of the House will be making a Statement on the East Pakistan cyclone disaster.

ABERDEEN CORPORATION ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
GLASGOW CORPORATION (WORKS ETC.) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
STIRLING COUNTY COUNCIL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936) deemed to have been read 2a and reported from the Committee.

CONSUMER PROTECTION BILL [H.L.]
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I understand that no Amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript Amendment or to speak in Committee. Therefore, unless any noble Lord objects, I beg to move, pursuant to Standing Order No. 42(2), that the Order of Commitment be discharged.
Moved, That the Order of Commitment be discharged.—(Lord Derwent.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

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

PATENTS (FEES AMENDMENT) ORDER 1970
3.17 p.m.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN) rose THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN) rose to move, That the Draft Patents (Fees Amendment) Order 1970, laid before the House on October 29 last, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the purpose of this Order is to raise the maximum level of fees that may be charged for the grant and maintenance of patents. It has long been the policy of successive Administrations that the fee-earning branches of the Patent Office (patent, trade marks and designs) should aim at breaking even financially. That means that the charges to applicants and patentees should meet the cost of the system. Patents account for some 85 per cent. of the income from fees. In recent years, in spite of periodical increases in fees, the account has always been in deficit.
Present patent fees are governed by an Order in Council, which I myself moved in another place in 1961, laying down the maxima which may be charged on the main revenue producing fees. These maxima can only be changed by means of an Affirmative Resolution of each House of Parliament. Within these maxima the actual fees are prescribed from time to time by Rules made by the Department of Trade and Industry in Orders subject to Negative Resolution. Patent fees were last increased in December, 1969, to the maxima permitted by the Order in Council of 1961. Latest estimates suggest that notwithstanding these increases the fee-earning branches will be no more than in balance in 1970. Unless fees are raised there will be a total deficit of over £2 million for the four-year period, 1969–72. Consideration has therefore to be given to a further increase in patent fees. But such an increase cannot be made until the maxima permitted by the 1961 Order are raised. It is to increase those maxima that this Order is required.
I would emphasise that these are maxima; that is, they govern the discretion given to the Department of Trade and Industry as to the actual fees, subject to Parliamentary procedure. I should also add that there is no intention of increasing the fee in respect of an application for a

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patent, which has been unchanged for many years. This is kept at £1 to ensure that the small inventor is able, very cheaply, to stake a claim to being the first inventor and in the following period of one year, before he is obliged to pay further fees, to try to arouse industrial interest and assess the potential of his invention. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Draft Patents (Fees Amendment) Order 1970, laid before the House on October 29 last, be approved.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Ouestion, Motion agreed to.

COURTS BILL [H.L.]
3.20 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I must apologise to your Lordships that the fortunes of Parliamentary business should lead me so often to intrude upon your Lordships' time. However, on this occasion I think we have moved across from The Mikado back to lolanthe. For the purpose of my present Motion, the Second Reading of the Courts Bill, I think I can claim to embody the law.
In 1873, when the Judicature Act was passed, a number of ancient and venerable courts were seemingly abolished, or rather amalgamated. There was the Court of Chancery, presided over by a long succession of Lord Chancellors. There was the Court of Common Pleas at which the sole right of audience was enjoyed by the Serjeants at Law, and where Mrs. Bardell brought her famous action against Mr. Pickwick. There was the Court of Exchequer, whose judges were called Barons and whose table was covered by a sort of black and white chess board. There was the venerable Curia Regis, the Court of King's Bench itself, at which Sir Thomas More, when he was Lord Chancellor, passing into Westminster Hall, used to kneel to ask for his father's blessing, for his father sat there as a puisne judge. There was the Court of Exchequer Chamber; there were the Courts of Admiralty, and the Ecclesiastical Courts at Doctors Commons. All of these had an ancient and honourable history. All, by the standards of the age, worked well.
But I would point out to your Lordships that none has been mourned, because the new Supreme Court into which
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all were merged maintained their traditions, continued their judgments and fused their jurisdiction. There is to-day, I believe, no one who doubts that by the Judicature Act 1873 the prestige of the English courts, the value of English Law and the service which the legal professions provided to the public were all vastly improved. As an historian of the period has said, the Judicature Act 1873 introduced by my predecessor, Lord Selborne, and traditionally supposed to have been drafted in his own hand without the benefit of Parliamentary counsel, was a classic-example of spectacular reform carried out by consent.
So, my Lords, it will be, I trust and believe, as the result of the Bill now before your Lordships if, as I hope, it soon passes into law. True it abolishes ancient courts of venerable antiquity and great distinction. Commissions of oyer and terminer and general gaol delivery will no longer be issued to the High Court Judges as they travel to the circuit towns, as they have done since the reign of Henry II, to hear criminal cases and to dispose of the list of civil causes. Quarter sessions, also of great antiquity—both borough and county quarter sessions—will no longer sit as such. The office of recorder is given in the Bill a totally new meaning from that which it has always had in the past. But, my Lords, if I thought that by introducing this Bill I was bringing to an end a tradition which has raised the prestige of English justice to a pinnacle from which it is admired all over the world, I would never have undertaken to stand godfather to it this day. But it will not be so.
The red Judge, as before, will still do justice in the circuit towns; although by virtue of the Assizes Order which has just been laid before your Lordships' House, a number of towns where there is little or no busines will next year, even independently of this Bill, cease to be visited by the judge of assize. Magistrates will sit as full judges in more appeals from courts of summary jurisdiction and on more trials on indictment in their respective counties and boroughs than ever they have done before. The Bar will continue to be divided into circuits. There will still be recorders to provide part-time judges and what now are called commissioners, but in the Bill

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are known as temporary High Court Circuit Judges. Indeed, until the new courts are built, putting as it were, flesh on the legal skeleton of legislation, I take it that an outside observer might see precious little different in the actual conduct of criminal and civil cases in the Provinces; though there will, I trust, be immediate benefit from more flexible administrative arrangements.
The abolition of assizes will carry with it certain inevitable consequences. There will no longer be commission days. Many of us will regret that the proper and agreeable ceremonies which have attended the opening of assizes may in the normal course no longer be seen. I hope, however, though this will depend largely on others than myself, that we may continue to have a due and proper amount of ceremony at certain times to mark the dignity of the law and, above all, the fact that it is the Queen in whose name justice is being taken to the people of this country in whatever places it is most needed. Just as we here in Westminster begin the new law year with a service for the Judges in the Abbey, and the Lord Chancellor's Breakfast in the Royal Gallery, I hope that on appropriate occasions early in the term there may be some similar ceremony in the main court centres, and that the disappearance of the particular commissions of assizes may be replaced by a commission of a more general nature which can be proclaimed in public with a suitable degree of ceremony.
But, my Lords, none the less there is a sense in which this Bill is a radical, even a spectacular, reform; the same sense as that in which the Judicature Act was such a reform. Its aim is to do for the criminal law and for the trial of civil causes and nisi prius what the Judicature Act did for civil litigation in the High Court. It aims to merge the old jurisdictions in the Supreme Court of Judicature and thus to provide a better service for litigants and those accused of crimes; but not to alter the substance of justice, the traditions of the profession or the standard rightly demanded of the Judiciary.
With very few exceptions it reproduces the recommendations of the Beeching Report—that is to say, those of the recommendations which require legislation;
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for a number of them (the appointment of circuit administrators and presiding judges, for example) require no legislation and have already been carried out. The basic need for a Bill of this character is seen by the arrears which have been building up in the courts for some years. To delay justice, my Lords, has been well said to be the same thing as to deny justice. Yet justice is being delayed, and the delays, I am sorry to say, are increasing. In the Central Criminal Court, for example, at the end of October there was a backlog of 701 cases. The Inner London Sessions were worse, with a figure of 1,438; and the other London Sessions were relatively also bad. In Liverpool, the backlog was 180, though it was a great deal better in Birmingham and in some other centres, where the criminal calendar had been disposed of at the expense of civil business. The figures for Liverpool represented an improvement as a result of improvising arrangements whereby five courts have been sitting continuously instead of intermittently. These are only examples.
Appendix 7 of the Beeching Report, which relates to 1967, when the situation was less bad than it is now, showed that 3,000 men and women charged with indictable crimes in Greater London, and of course rather more outside over the whole of the country, had to wait 60 days or more before their cases were tried at all—that is, 60 days or more after committal—which means that the charges had been hanging over them for far longer. The total for the country was 6,700 cases. More than 1,300 of these persons were in custody, and not on bail during the time of waiting. Since the Bill was on the stocks, I have heard it said by some who criticise the Bill that quarter sessions have been working relatively well outside London. So they have been; but, again using the 1967 figures, there is nothing to be complacent about even there. They had the less serious cases, and in 1967 about 13 per cent. of the cases, even there, had had to wait 60 days or more for trial on indictment. And that, in my judgment, is too much.
I do not wish to underestimate the extent to which we are short of courts, by which I mean the physical buildings, and of ancillary staff: the shorthand writers, clerks, ushers, gaolers—especially shorthand writers—without which justice cannot possibly be done. We are short.

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But when I came to attempt, as I am now doing, a crash programme in the interval before this Bill becomes law I found that for the present these are limiting factors. Nevertheless, the Beeching Commission established beyond a per-adventure that even the shortages of these adjuncts are exaggerated by time wasted on travelling to outlying courts; by courts' being situated separately rather than in batches; by the absence of administrative centres on circuit; by the excessive use of part-time judges and officials and by the multiplicity of responsibility between the centre and localities, between quarter sessions and assizes in the same locality, and between one locality and another on the same circuit.
It is not too much to say that the basic framework of sessions and assizes was laid down when barristers and judges, and sometimes attorneys, rode around the circuit on horseback, with their briefs in their red and blue bags and their circuit files in hampers. That was before the days of railway trains, let alone motor cars or aeroplanes. The variation in the total number of judges required to keep waiting time at a theoretical limit of 28 days was calculated by the Beeching Commission to vary between 13, if a given volume of work was retained at one centre, to 24, if it were spread over 12; and, of course, the number of judges has to be multiplied several times over if the ancillary staff is also taken into account. The added expense to litigants and to the public involved in some of the consequential troubles—in the absence of fixed days for hearings, in adjournments for want of time and other delays—is of course enormous. The additional capital and maintenance cost in buildings must also be not insubstantial.
My Lords, the basic proposals in this Bill can be reduced, I think, to three in number: first, the merging of quarter sessions, assizes, Central Criminal Court and Crown Court jurisdictions into one organisation with two levels of Judiciary—the High Court Judge and the Circuit Judge; second, the merging of the ancillary staff into a unified administrative court service under the Lord Chancellor's Office and of the fiscal buildings under the responsibility of the Environment Secretary and third (although this is not in the Bill, since the High Court and the new Crown Court can sit anywhere and
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already do so if required) the concentration of actual trials into a smaller number of centres corresponding to ease of access and centres of population and the organisation of the court service into circuits by the Lord Chancellor under presiding judges and circuit administrators.
Your Lordships will find that the Bill is divided into six Parts and 11 Schedules. The first Part amalgamates the new network with the existing Supreme Court in London and the Provinces and gives complete flexibility in places of sitting. The second part defines the Crown Court and transfers to it the jurisdiction, appellate and at first instance, of the courts to which it is a successor. The right of audience will remain as at present, but it will be possible for the Lord Chancellor to direct that solicitors are to have a right of audience in certain circumstances—for instance, at those places at which they have at present a right of audience before quarter sessions. I intend to give such directions at once in respect of the successor courts to those where solicitors have a right of audience now.
Part III deals with Judges of the Crown Court. These will consist of the High Court Judges, the existing county court judges, the official referees and all full-time judges with criminal jurisdiction above the level of the stipendiary magistrates, including the Recorders of London, Liverpool and Manchester, the Common Serjeant and the additional Judges of the Central Criminal Court. The offices of Recorder and Common Serjeant of the City of London will be retained, and the City will have the privilege of paying for their salaries—a very generous exception to the rule that the taxpayer should pay. In return for this, the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen retain their right of sitting with the High Court Judge at the Old Bailey, a right which they have possessed since time immemorial, with almost universal approbation.
The Vice Chancellor of the County Palatine of Lancaster will also be a Circuit Judge but his principal work, which is High Court Chancery work, will continue to be his, and he and his successors will continue to be given by the Duchy the additional title of Vice Chancellor of the Duchy to mark his special

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qualifications and his special responsibility The full-time Circuit Judges and the part-time recorders will be appointed by Her Majesty on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor will also be able to appoint temporary judges wherever the need arises.
In the new Crown Court, justices of the peace will normally sit as full-time members of the Court with the professional Judge, except when the graver offences are being tried or in cases in which the length of the trial or the difficulty of finding magistrates able to sit throughout the year make it expedient that the Judge should sit alone. This represents an increase in their responsibility, since they do not normally so sit at borough quarter sessions and not at all at assizes. The Beeching Commission made no firm recommendation about the position of the justices in this respect, but inclined to the view that when they sat in the Crown Court they should do so merely as assessors. I was at first minded to accept this recommendation as it stood, but on reflection I do not think it would be satisfactory, and I have found that it certainly would not be popular with the magistrates concerned. The Bill therefore provides, as I have said, for their sitting as full members of the Court.
The new Circuit Judges will be appointed on the same basis as county court judges are now, but they will normally be expected to do criminal work. Some may have additional qualifications or responsibilities entitling them to higher remuneration—and the Bill provides for this—though this is a power that I propose to exercise very sparingly. Existing holders of judicial appointments are of course safeguarded as regards salary and pensions, and there is no reason why they should not continue to be described by their existing titles when this would be appropriate.
Parts IV, V and VI of the Bill contain a number of additional consequential provisions. The change postulated by Clause 25 of the Bill relating to Supreme Court Masters and probate registrars was recommended as long ago as 1915 by a Royal Commission, who thought that they should all be appointed by a Minister responsible to Parliament.
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The Lord Chancellor would, of course, not consider making an appointment to these offices without consulting the President, the Lord Chief Justice or the Master of the Rolls respectively. The position, in particular, of the right of existing officers in the Principal Probate Registry to be considered for appointment as registrars will be fully maintained.
Clause 26 gives me a general enabling authority for the appointment of staff. I wish to say something on the position of the staff of existing courts, who have in so many cases had to cope in recent years with the problems of an inflexible system and an ever-growing volume of work. I want to make it clear that it is my firm intention that all existing staff of the courts, whether or not those courts will be changing in substance, will receive fair and equitable treatment when the new arrangements are introduced.
The major courts are already administered by substantial numbers of full-time staff, and where there is to be no substantive change in their staff requirements my intention will be to invite those staff to come over as a body to run the Crown Court that will directly replace them. In the case of other staff, where we shall be replacing the present quarter sessions with a smaller number of Crown Court centres, we shall hope to attract an appreciable proportion of those local authority staffs now engaged for part of their time on quarter sessions work to come full-time into the unified court service. The exact terms of transfer are still being worked out in detail; we need the benefit of the experience which these officials have, and I believe that we can offer them a varied and satisfying career.
Clause 29 enables the Lord Chancellor to set up advisory committees on the lines proposed by the Royal Commission, to bring to the notice of the Lord Chancellor's Office any matters relevant to the work of the courts, and of local significance, of which they should be aware. Such committees must necessarily be experimental, and I propose to take great care in seeking for the services of people of the necessary standing and experience in the various Circuits.
Clause 38, in Part V, provides for majority verdicts in the few civil cases still tried by jury. They have been not infrequent in the past, by agreement between the parties, although I was

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always taught as defendant never to agree to one. Clause 39 puts an end in theory as well as in practice to the old special juries. I myself was sorry to see them go in, I think, 1949 or thereabouts. But the present provision is more theoretical than of practical importance.
Clause 45 is almost the only clause which has nothing to do with Beeching. Advantage has been taken of the legislation to give effect to the proposal in the Banks Committee's Report earlier this year that it was desirable that there should be a right of appeal from the Patent Appeals Tribunal in place of the existing procedure involving a motion for certiorari.
Clauses 46 to 50 give effect to paragraph 405 of the Report recommending that the cost of criminal proceedings in the Higher Courts should in future be borne by the Central Government. Your Lordships will remember the trouble that arose in particular over the train robbery case. The clauses go slightly further than this by including the cost of indictable offences triable summarily and committal proceedings. Clause 48 makes similar provision in regard to criminal proceedings before the Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division.
My Lords, I do not think there is any need to add anything more about this Bill on Second Reading. The Beeching Report was very fully debated in the last Parliament in the House of Commons, where it was welcomed by the present Attorney General on behalf of the Party of which I am a member. Though it was not debated here, I know that it was favoured by my predecessor on the Woolsack, who I believe is to speak next, and by the Labour Administration. It received a warm welcome from the Press, the Judiciary and legal profession. Since this is the first time that this House has addressed itself to the subject, I should like to offer my own thanks, and those of Her Majesty's Government, to the noble Lord, Lord Beeching and to his colleagues on the Royal Commission for their admirable and, as I believe, enduring work. It falls to me now to ask Parliament to bring its main provisions into effect. Although it has meant an immensity of work for my staff, and some considerable study on my part, it would be a failure of
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nerve and not want of conviction that would lead me to abandon it now. I put the Bill forward as a measure urgently necessary in the interest of the due administration of justice. My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.47 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, I should like first to echo the thanks expressed by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack to the noble Lord, Lord Beeching, and the members of the Royal Commission. The House will remember that apart from a judge, barrister, solicitor, clerk of assize, and the former First Permanent Secretary to the Lord Chancellor, the Royal Commission also consisted of Lord Beeching, whose administrative talents we all know, Mr. Norman, then chairman of De la Rue (now Sir Arthur Norman, Chairman of the Confederation of British Industry), Mr. Parker, Chairman of Parkinson Cowan Limited and also the British Institute of Management, and Mr. Cannon,; President of the Electrical Trades Union. All these administrators of note were very busy men. I think we owe them a great debt for the amount of time that they must have given up and the great amount' of interest which they showed in every detail of the Royal Commission's work. It has resulted in a Report of which I would only say that I do not recollect reading a better Report of a Royal Commission.
Next, may I say how much I appreciate the fact that the Government have decided to put this legislation forward and to implement the Report? I should like to compliment them on the speed with which they have prepared this Bill. No words of mine could be too high praise for the Lord Chancellor's staff. They are a magnificent body of men, of great ability, and the only thing that has ever troubled me about them is the number of hours that they work. Probably only the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, and 1 can realise, looking at these 56 clauses and 11 Schedules, what a vast task it must have been to get this Bill ready by this date.

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I suppose the Second Reading of a Bill has two objects: first, to express opinions on the general policy of the Bill and, secondly, to raise any points that it may be necessary to raise in order to obtain some clarification before deciding whether or not to put down Amendments. I hope that I have already said enough to express my enthusiastic welcome for the Bill as a whole. I agree that it is a radical and spectacular reform; it is the biggest reform in the administration of justice which has taken place in this century, and possibly at any time in our legal history.
I should like to mention three points to make it clear that I agree with them. First of all, I agree with the course proposed in relation to rights of audience at quarter sessions, and secondly I agree with the Government in departing from a recommendation of the Royal Commission in relation to the functions of justices in the Crown Court. After I had read the Report for the first time, I said: "There is only one point wrong; that is the proposal that justices should attend the Crown Court but have no say at all." I think there was some misconception. I know how it happened, and I need not trouble the House with that. I thought that I would make it clear that I agree with the Government on that point.
Thirdly, I should like to give a welcome to majority verdicts in civil cases. The House will remember that the last Government introduced majority verdicts in criminal cases, and considered at the same time whether we should not do the same in civil cases. We did not do so for two reasons: first, the case for majority verdicts was not nearly so strong in civil as in criminal cases; secondly, it would have been right outside the scope of the Criminal Justice Bill.
I have a number of points to raise, mainly for clarification, and it may be convenient if I take them in the order in which they appear in the Bill. There are some minor points affecting, for example, panels of juries, and so forth, which, under the Bill, are to be determined by directions given by the Lord Chancellor. When we come to matters of much more importance, which are in a sense the "guts" of the Bill—Clause 2(2), referring to where and when the
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High Court (that is the civil side) is to sit, and Clause 4(5) dealing with who is to sit in the Crown Court, and where, and what cases they are to try—they are all matters to be decided not by the Lord Chancellor, but on behalf of the Lord Chancellor. I should like to ask the reason for the distinction. Is this a disguised reference to the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chief Justice? Is it a reference to the presiding Judge? Is it a reference to the Lord Chancellor's Permanent Secretary? Parliament is entitled to know about these important matters. What is the reason for the change and, who, in practice, is really going to decide?
I then come to a point under Clause 4 on which I am not sure that the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack and I are likely to agree. As the House knows, the present muddled position is that courts of assize and quarter sessions are provided or not provided, as they think fit, by the local authority. The county courts are built, maintained, staffed and run by the Lord Chancellor, and without very much difficulty or complaint. The magistrates' courts are a "fudge"; it is really for the magistrates' courts local committee in the first place to say whether or not their accommodation needs improvement, and they then put the matter up to the local authority. If the local authority will not do what the magistrates' courts local committee want, there is a right of appeal to the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary—and this also applies in relation to courts of assize and quarter sessions—has some measure of control by his loan sanctions. It was this muddled system which faced the Royal Commission. They have said that there is no reason at all why our courts of assize, quarter sessions and county courts should have any connection with local authorities. There must be central control; there must be one Minister who is responsible for them all. However, magistrates' courts as such were outside their terms of reference.
The Bill does this in relation to every local authority in the country, except one, and that is the City of London. I was not born yesterday, and I hope that I am a realist. I appreciate that there are reasons why, particularly at the present time, a Conservative Administration may want to please the City of London. In the first place, the worst court in the

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country from the point of view of delay, as the noble and learned Lord himself has stressed, is the Central Criminal Court. It has a very wide jurisdiction, taking cases from far outside the City of London. The Royal Commission used their strongest terms about it. They referred to the amount of delay that there was, and they then said:
"This poses a serious enough problem logistically, but when it is remembered that some of the cases represent accused persons held in cusctody, and all involve witnesses with fading memories, the situation is intolerable."
Speaking of the Old Bailey, they said:
"The problems at the Old Bailey are more acute than those at any other higher court because of its special position."
The special position is largely due to the muddle. If there are not enough judges, that is the fault of the Lord Chancellor. If there are not enough courts (and there are not enough of them) that is the fault of the City of London. The staff are provided by the G.L.C. Therefore, it is remarkable that, in accepting the general recommendations of the Royal Commission, who only said of the City that if the City wanted to go on paying for the court they did not see why the Government should not accept or reject the offer as they thought right, we find in Clause 4(7) of the Bill a provision which I agree is their historic position. But this is supposed to be a modernising Bill. Clause 4(7) says:
"When the Crown Court sits in the City of London it shall be known as the Central Criminal Court, and, notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (4) above requiring proceedings to be heard and disposed of before a single judge, the Lord Mayor of the City and any Aldermen of the City shall be entitled to sit as judges of the Central Criminal Court …"
That is to say, trying murder cases, or any other cases; and the Aldermen are laymen. I appreciate that they have not done so for a great many years, but I suggest that it is not right, in a modernising Bill, to continue this provision simply because the aldermen of this particular local authority like dressing up in their robes and sitting at the back on the bench.
The Mayor's and City of London court is to become an ordinary county court, but it is to retain the title of the Mayor's and City of London Court. It has nothing to do with the Mayor at all, and nothing to do with the City of London at all.
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It is simply to please the City that it is to be called the Mayor's Court. Recorders, under the Bill, are to be part-time barristers who give up about a month a year to sit in the Crown Court. That is what a recorder is. The Recorder of London, therefore, now has an inappropriate title. He will not be a recorder at all. He is, I suppose, the most experienced criminal judge in the country and that is a permanent appointment. His title, to please the City, is still to be retained; and we learn from another clause that the title of the second senior judge at the Old Bailey, the Common Serjeant is also to be retained. Again, he is not "common" and he is not a "serjeant". The only parallel that I can think of is the title of the Lord Privy Seal, who need not be a Lord, and is not really either a "Privy" or "Seal". In a modernising Bill we ought not to continue these titles. They will also be the only judges in the country who—if I understand it correctly—are to have their pay and pensions paid by a local authority. Unless I can be given some better reasons for the extraordinary way in which the City of London has been favoured in the Bill, I shall consider putting down an Amendment on these matters.
My next point is only a small one. In Clause 16(2) Circuit Judges are to retire at 72, but the Lord Chancellor is to have a right to retain them for up to another three years. I think that on one occasion I did this myself, but I would ask the noble and learned Lord to consider whether it would not really be better to say 72 and have done with it. The Lord Chancellor may know two Crown Court Judges who are just going to retire and both want to stay on, and it is extremely invidious to ask A to stay on but not B. Nothing gives greater offence, and I cannot help thinking that one should say 72 and stick to it; but I should be glad to know the view of the noble and learned Lord about this.
Judges' pensions and so forth, particularly those of the lower Judiciary, used to be determined as matters of detail by the Treasury, but they are now to be dealt with by the Minister for the Civil Service. I hope I am not saying anything improper if I say that I always thought that this title was inappropriate, although the Government of which I was a member chose it. But this work is

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what the Treasury used to do, and the civil servants who deal with these questions of remuneration and pension are the same civil servants moved over from the Treasury to the Department known as the Department for the Civil Service. I have great admiration for my noble friend Lord Shackleton, the former Head of the Department, as I have also for the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe. But they deal with other people besides civil servants and have a much wider interest—those who are in the public service but who are not civil servants. It always seemed to me that to have judicial remuneration or pensions dealt with by somebody called the Minister for the Civil Service was inappropriate. He ought really to be called the Minister for the Public Service.
I thought I would draw attention on pensions to the usual rather complicated provisions. Then in Clause 18(7) it is stated:
"The decision of the Minister for the Civil Service shall be final on any question arising with regard to—

(a) the application of any of the provisions of this section to any person, or

(b) the amount of any pension under this section, or

(c) the reckoning of any service for the purpose of calculating such a pension."

So, if he has made a mistake, there appears to be no way to put it right. I would invite the noble and learned Lord to comment on that clause.
Clause 29 relates to advisory committees. In these days, we all have to take acount of public relations, but I think the Royal Commission were quite right in saying that on every circuit the circuit administrator ought to get together a committee to include one or two people from the Citizens' Advice Bureau, to represent the public, to see how the arrangements are working and to make any representations which barristers or solicitors or people who have been jurors or witnesses, or members of the public, might wish to make. I am sure that that is very valuable. I will not waste time in inviting the House to consider the law, but the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack will know that it is always a matter of the gravest doubt whether the word "may" means "may" or "shall". I observe that all the clause says is that the Lord Chancellor "may"
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appoint advisory committees. I would ask him: Does he take the view that "may" here means "shall", and what in fact are his intentions?
Then I would ask him to justify, if he can, Clause 34(7). I know that this is existing law, though practically never used; but this is a reforming Bill and it seems extraordinary to continue this particular law. The subsection says this:
"This section has effect "—
this applies to jurors—
"subject to proviso (b) to section 1 of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 (under which a judge may order that a jury be composed of men only or of women only)."
I have never heard of such an order being made for an all-women jury, except once, and very rarely for an all-male jury. In 1970, I "suggest that this really cannot be right. Indeed, I can conceive of its leading perhaps to injustice, because a judge might desire to be exceptionally fair to a person accused of publishing an obscene book and might think, "Women are so easily shocked, I will be very fair to the accused and order an all-male jury." This shows the vice of this sort of thing.
In the Lady Chatterley case some of my friends at the Criminal Bar said, "Well, we suppose you will challenge any woman on the jury?" As it was my opinion that it is not the women who are shocked, but the men, I naturally discussed this with my clients, Penguin Books; and they took exactly the same view. In the result I started with a jury of ten men and two women, and I deliberately challenged four or five men in order to try to get another woman on the jury; and I succeeded. So I cannot think of any case to-day which either men are unfit to hear or women are unfit to hear, and I cannot think it right that this provision should be continued in this Bill.
I will deal as delicately as I can with Clause 44. This follows, in substance, the recommendations of the Royal Commission, but the question is whether it is right. In the Matrimonial Causes Act introduced by the last Government, undefended divorce cases were transferred from the High Court to the county court. The reason was that for about twenty years, when there were not nearly enough High Court Judges to hear all the divorce cases, it was agreed that undefended

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cases should be tried by county court judges, but to please various interests they were to be dressed up as High Court Judges for the day and called "My Lord", instead of "Your Honour". Everywhere outside London all undefended cases, including matters of custody and maintenance and so forth, have for some twenty years been dealt with by the county court judges. In London, for purely administrative reasons, while the cases were heard by the county court judges, who were given jurisdiction as High Court Judges for the day, matters relating to children and maintenance were usually dealt with by the High Court Judges.
When Parliament had to decide, "If you are sending undefended cases to the county courts, what is the definition of an undefended case?" differing views were expressed. Some thought that anything to do with children ought always to go to a High Court Judge. That was I think largely based on the views of those in London who did not realise that for twenty years outside London all those matters had been decided by county court judges. There was a division of opinion, and the decision which Parliament took was this: if there is a dispute between husband and wife as to whether the marriage should be ended, that affected status; and therefore any case that was defended as to whether there was to be a decree or not ought to be tried by a High Court Judge, but if there was no dispute about that then the whole case would be dealt with in the county court. Some learned judges apparently did not agree with that decision of Parliament, and I should like to ask whether this new provision, which would enable any High Court Judge to take away any interlocutory subject, or the whole case, from the county court judge, is intended to be so operated as to contradict the decisions which Parliament has so far taken.
Before I come to a couple of clauses the effect of which I am not quite sure about, may I say just a word on Clause 27? The clause refers to "The Secretary of State" and the accommodation which he may provide. This used to be the responsibility of the Minister of Public Building and Works, but will now be that of the Secretary of State for the Environment. The expression is not intended to refer to the Home Secretary. I always
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find this point rather confusing. Your Lordships know that in a Bill there may be reference to "the Secretary of State" but the definition section never says who the Secretary of State is. The reason for this, as I understand it, is that as Governments are always messing about with he machinery of Government there would be so many changes if the Secretary of State was identified. It therefore becomes necessary to be quite clear who is referred to as the Secretary of State.
Then Clause 54(1) deals with appointed days. I must not ask the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack to do the impossible, but could he give us any sort of idea when, if the Bill receives the Royal Assent next summer, it is hoped that the various parts of the Act would be put into effect?
Clause 54(2) I have not come across before. It deals with coroners, and says:
"Except where the context otherwise requires, this Act applies in relation to proceedings on a coroner's inquisition and to matters arising out of such proceedings, as it applies in relation to proceedings on indictment and matters arising out of them.
Except as otherwise provided, this subsection shall apply for the construction of any Act passed after this Act as it applies for the construction of this Act."
I only ask whether it is not rather unusual to find in the Bill a provision that all subsequent Acts, whatever their contents may apparently be, must be interpreted in the light of this Bill?
Then I would ask whether the Schedules contain any changes of which we ought to be told. It is really quite impossible, particularly in the case of the Schedules dealing with amendments to and repeals of Acts, for any one person to go through them all and see what they amount to. I invite the noble and learned Lord to tell us whether the Schedules, and particularly Schedule 11, contain any change in the law of which Parliament should be told.
Lastly, my Lords, may I mention seven omissions from the Bill? First, although the Royal Commission were good enough to do all the work to determine exactly where Crown Courts should sit, in which places the work should be dealt with only by the Crown Court Judges and which should have a High Court Judge, and so forth, there is nothing about this in the

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Bill because it is being dealt with administratively; but I should like to ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor whether in substance he accepts as being right the places recommended by the Royal Commission. Secondly, the same question applies to what cases are to be tried by whom. The Royal Commission recommended three bands of offences to be tried by the High Court Judge or by Circuit Judges, and so forth. I would ask him again, assuming that this change is going to be done administratively, whether he agrees with the detailed recommendations which they made under that head.
Thirdly, what are the Government's intentions, if any, with regard to further increasing the jurisdiction of the county court and the jurisdiction of the registrar? That was dealt with by the Royal Commission in paragraph 472 of their Report. Fourthly, what is the position about appeals from magistrates' courts? This was dealt with by the Royal Commission in the first place in paragraph 225, and, speaking generally, is there not a case for reconsidering the nature of appeals from magistrates' courts to what will now be the Crown Court? Because as your Lordships know, in that case—and I think that case only—an appeal is a complete rehearing. The whole case having been tried before the justices and the justices having come to their decision, it starts all over again as if there had been no trial at all, and the prosecution call their evidence. It is heard entirely anew. This is historic. May there not be a case for reconsidering the whole procedure of appeals? I invite the attention of the noble and learned Lord to an article about this subject in the current issue of the Justice of the Peace.
Then the Royal Commission said, in paragraph 226, that there was one field in which experience counts for a great deal, and therefore they thought there ought to be a juvenile appeal court. That does not appear in the Bill at all. In paragraph 227 they dealt with domestic and quasi-administrative appeals from magistrates' courts, and in paragraph 228 they observed that it could not be right that appeals from affiliation orders—which are not criminal at all but purely civil—should go to a criminal court. They recommended that appeals in these cases should go to the county court.
In paragraph 229 they recommended, for the reasons which they gave, that appeals in relation to betting and gaming and liquor licences should go to a licensing appeals tribunal. There is no mention of that in the Bill. If the noble and learned Lord says, "Well, I knew you were anxious and I was equally anxious to introduce this Bill as soon as I possibly could; the office have had an awful job getting it ready at all, and these proposals, although they may be right, would have involved so much further research work and drafting that I felt they really could not be dealt with in this Bill ", I should be prepared not to disagree with that. But I should like to know whether their omission from the Bill is due to that reason or to a difference of opinion between the Royal Commission and the noble and learned Lord.
Paragraph 521 is the summary or recommendations. The reasons for it have been given in the preceding part of the Report. It reads in this way:
"The High Court long vacation should be progressively shortened".
As it is by no means the first time that that opinion has been expressed by various bodies, I would ask the noble and learned Lord what his plans are in that regard. Sixthly, may I ask him what has happened to the Report of the Morris Committee of 1965? That was a Committee of which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, was the Chairman, and it was a Committee on juries. It considered a complete overhaul of the qualifications for sitting on juries. I regretted that the last Government had not time to deal with the matter, but they did intend to implement the Report in this Session if they had been returned. As we have heard a great deal about juries, I should like to know whether the Government are going to implement the recommendations of that Committee, and if so what the prospects are from the point of view of time.
Lastly, may I ask what are the intentions of the Government about magistrates' courts? I do not want to express any opinion to-day, but some take the view that there having been this complete overhaul of the courts of assize and of quarter sessions it is time that there was an overhaul of the work of the magistrates' courts. I do not know what the views of the Government are about that,

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but may I ask what are their views about buildings? In paragraph 341 the Royal Commission said:
"Magistrates' courts are outside our terms of reference, but if the buildings are to be used effectively, they will have to continue to share accommodation with the higher courts in many places where High Court and Circuit judges will sit. Therefore, the needs of the magistrates will have to be taken into account, both when planning the use of existing accommodation and when building programmes are being prepared. Accordingly, we hope that the Government will decide to accept responsibility for building and maintaining these courts also, at least in the centres where High Courts and Circuit judges will sit, and we are reinforced in this view by the realisation that the Government already accepts about 80 per cent. of the cost of building such courts."
This is the absurd position: that although the Government pay most of the cost, the local authorities alone decide about magistrates' courts and provide hem, and of course the practical difficulties are great. For a long time the Lord Chancellor has been responsible for the buildings and the administration of county courts. The Ministry of Public Building and Works in my experience are extremely good and they got to know what was wanted for county courts. But you see the most extraordinary buildings under this muddled arrangement about magistrates' courts. I have opened one or two extraordinary buildings. I remember one which was to be for both quarter sessions and magistrates' court, and which was going to cost over a million pounds. It was not wired for tape, and, as your Lordships know, because of the increasing shortage of shorthand writers one of the reasons for the delay in criminal appeals is the delay in getting transcripts. I have always refused to approve new courts unless they are at least wired for sound. The place of honour opposite the Bench was given to the Press, and the dock was put behind the Press. The witness was between the judge and the jury, so that the jury could only see the side of his face or the back of his head.
The reason for this situation is because there is always this difference between the Lord Chancellor's office and the Home Office. I have great regard for the Home Office, but, as your Lordsips know, those who staff the Lord Chancellor's office have usually been in practice themselves; they know what goes on in court. Telling off the Judiciary is a matter requiring tact. Of course a county court registrar is
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a judge; he hears all the smaller cases. If there is some defect in his administration it has to be pointed out to him, but that is all right, first, because the letter always comes from the Lord Chancellor's office, and, rightly or wrongly, this has in legal circles quite a different prestige to that of any other Government Department; and, secondly, the registrar knows that the head of the Lord Chancellor's county court branch was for years himself a very experienced county court registrar. The same applies when we have to deal with justices of the peace and send people to sit in with the advisory committees when they make recommendations to the Lord Chancellor. The three senior members of the Lord Chancellor's staff who do that are in their spare time themselves justices of the peace; so the committees know that they know what they are talking about.
But I am afraid that this does not really obtain in the Home Office, and I was sorry indeed to think that merely because magistrates' courts were outside the terms of reference of the Royal Commission this very unsatisfactory sort of muddled responsibility for the provision of adequate magistrates' courts was to continue. But, of all the courts I have seen—and some courts of sessions and county courts are not what they ought to be—I think that the worst examples are among the magistrates' courts.
May I close by making one or two apologies? I hope that nothing I have said on these, to some extent, minor points will be thought in any way to detract from my enthusiasm for this Bill as a whole. I apologise because, as the noble and learned Lord knows, although I agreed to it, the Bill has been published only four or five days, and in consequence I was not able to give him a note of the points I was going to raise. I have chosen to speak now, partly for that reason, and partly because if we have a very long debate it is possible, because I have an engagement at the Palace this evening, that I may not be able to hear his reply. If that happens, I hope the noble and learned Lord, who I take it is similarly engaged, will not take it as any discourtesy on my part.
I have not said anything about one very delicate point in the Bill; that is, whether solicitors should be eligible to be Circuit judges. Some people feel very

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strongly that they ought to be, and some people feel very strongly that they ought not to be. I do not myself take either of those extreme positions, but I understand that the Law Society are mounting a massive campaign in both Houses, and therefore there is no danger that the point will not be raised for your Lordships' consideration when we get to the Committee stage of the Bill. In all the circumstances. I propose to leave what I have to say about that matter until we come to the Committee stage of the Bill. Subject to the points I have raised and some which I may wish to raise on Committee, we on these Benches very strongly support the Bill; we hope that it will obtain its Second Reading to-day and receive the Royal Assent as soon as possible.

EAST PAKISTAN CYCLONE DISASTER
4.25 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (LORD ABER-DARE): My Lords, I hope that, with your Lordships' permission, this may be a convenient time for me to repeat a Statement being made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in another place. The Statement is as follows:
"With your permission Mr. Speaker and that of the House I wish to make a Statement about the disaster which has overtaken areas of East Pakistan.
"Since my Answer to my honourable friend on November 16 it has become clear that the extent of the calamity is even greater than was then known. The Pakistan Government has officially stated that the number of people who have lost their lives exceeds 200,000. In terms of human suffering this is a disaster of unprecedented proportions and I am sure the House would wish me to renew our heartfelt sympathy to the Government of Pakistan and to the people in the stricken areas.
"It is vital that relief operations should not be hindered by lack of funds. Accordingly the Government has decided to set aside a further sum of £500,000 for the provision of relief
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supplies. We will if necessary be ready to make available additional funds for relief and rehabilitation as the operation develops.
"Some relief supplies in aircraft of the Royal Air Force have already reached East Pakistan from Singapore. The main immediate need, however, is for transport for the distribution of relief. To meet this, thirteen powered assault boats have been delivered to Dacca, and more will follow. Two further consignments of medical stores and other supplies purchased in Singapore by Her Majesty's Government and by private relief agencies are due to leave as soon as loads can be assembled. Further flights are planned.
"H.M.S. 'Intrepid', an 11,000-ton assault ship, and H.M.S. 'Triumph', a heavy repair ship with a landing deck, are due to sail to-morrow morning from Singapore to the Bay of Bengal. They will between them be carrying helicopters and assault craft for the distribution of relief supplies and to help in any other way they can. They will also carry relief stores. A logistics ship, the 'Sir Galahad', is also being diverted to the area, after disembarking her present load. In addition to their other capabilities, these ships can produce drinking water. H.M.S. 'Hydra', a survey ship, is also on her way from the Malacca Straits and will be able to assist in working out new navigational channels. Finally a reconnaissance party with two helicopters will be flown to Dacca as soon as possible to determine how best H.M. ships and aircraft can help when they arrive.
"My right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development, who is flying to Pakistan to-day, will also be informing the Pakistan Government that we are prepared to offer long-term assistance in the form of food under the Food Aid Convention to the value of £500,000. This, however, will inevitably take some time to procure and ship.
"During his visit my right honourable friend should be able not only to assess personally the Pakistan Government's immediate needs but also to discuss longer-term plans for the stricken area. Before the disaster, we

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had informed the Pakistan Government that we were ready to participate in an international aid effort for flood control in East Pakistan as part of our aid programme to that country. Plans for such a programme of flood control were in fact being drawn up, with the co-operation of the World Bank, when the cyclone hit the area on November 13. These plans will no doubt now require to be revised and there will clearly be a long-term need for assistance in which the British Government will be prepared to participate."
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, we should like to thank the noble Lord for repeating that Statement. It is indeed an appalling and tragic disaster in Pakistan, and I am sure that we should wish to ask him on behalf of the whole House to convey to the Government and the people of Pakistan the deep concern and sympathy that we feel. We warmly welcome the Government's response to the Pakistan distress, and we feel sure that it is in accord with the generous reactions of the people of this country to the situation.
We particularly welcome the news that the Minister for Overseas Development is flying (here to-day, and that the long-term problems are to be discussed. I think that noble Lords everywhere have felt that the horror of the disaster has been emphasised by the fact that aid could not immediately be got in to the distressed areas. We should like to ask the noble Lord whether he will urge on the Government—though of course we understand the difficulties—the necessity for some kind of international agency that can be permanently ready to step in when disasters of this kind occur. In the meantime, I would repeat my welcome for the financial and practical aid that is being sent.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, we on these Benches would wish to be associated most sincerely with the sentiments that have been expressed by the noble Lord opposite. This is indeed a horrifying disaster, of unprecedented dimensions. We also welcome the support which Her Majesty's Government are giving, and I am sure that it will be widely welcomed in the
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country as a whole. I would echo also the words of the noble Baroness. We on these Benches, along with others in the House, have been pressing for a long time for some international organisation to be set up to meet occurrences such as this. We have had these disasters in Peru, in Turkey, in Iran; and now this one. We feel that Her Majesty's Government ought in the long term to take some initiative that would lead to the setting up of a permanent force, one which is able to deal with the results of these disasters and will have associated with it a world disaster fund.
On the machinery, I should only like to ask the noble Lord (I do not know whether he can answer this question) what arrangements are being made for additional medical services, which must be required in an area where there is cholera and malaria. Furthermore, can he tell us under whose command these ships will be operating when they get into the territorial waters of Pakistan?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness and to the noble Lord for the kind way in which they have received this Statement. I am sure that those concerned in Pakistan will be grateful for their expressions of sympathy. I take the point made by both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord about an international agency. A remarkable number of different countries are in fact involved in this particular operation. So far as medical supplies are concerned, these, too, are being flown in from all over the world. They include cholera vaccine.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, what I had in mind was the doctor service.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, without notice I cannot answer that question. But I am quite sure that this is well under way, and that my right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development will make sure, when he is there, that if there is a need for further services they will be sent. I am afraid that I cannot answer the question about whose command the ships will be operating under. Certainly our ships are going mainly from Singapore, and come from the Singapore headquarters.

COURTS BILL [H.L.]
4.34 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
LORD PARKER OF WADDINGTON: My Lords, I rise to welcome this Bill. In doing so, I must declare a twofold interest. In the first place, it was as long ago as 1964 when I pressed for some inquiry to be undertaken into what is truly the archaic system of quarter sessions and assizes in this country, in the hope that something could be laid down which would ensure the proper and expeditious use of judge power in the future. Happily, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, set the wheels in motion, with the result that we have had this truly admirable Report and now, today, this Bill to implement its recommendations. Secondly, I confess that I have a real interest in being relieved of the day-to-day, if not the hour-to-hour, impossibilities of endeavouring to see that 100 judge days of work are somehow done in 50 days, and that without any burden on or prejudice to those concerned, whether litigants, accused, witnesses or the judges themselves.
If I had to express in one word what I feel is the virtue of the Report which this Bill seeks to implement, it is in the word "flexibility". In order to explain what I mean, I refer to the wholly inflexible system under which we operate to-day. In the first instance, it must be borne in mind that the towns which are visited and the periods for which they are visited by Her Majesty's judges have to be determined nine to eighteen months in advance—in other words, they have to be settled in Easter of one year for the whole of the next ensuing calendar year. Unfortunately, that is necessary because otherwise quarter sessions, and indeed magistrates, could not arrange their own sittings. One has only to state that to realise that it is quite impossible to determine nine to eighteen months ahead what the work will be at any particular place. It changes enormously. One year one may find that 50 judge days is sufficient to enable the work to be disposed of at the assize town, and the very next year one finds that it requires 100 judge days. There is no flexibility. If a judge happens to be at a place where work is slack and where he has one or two days
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in hand, he cannot go on to the next place because the jurisdiction of that next place depends upon the reading of a commission.
This dependence of jurisdiction upon commissions again causes grave loss of judge power. The commission is read, and has to be read, on the day before the first sitting, the reason being that the circuit staff have to get to the town and have literally to undo their typewriters and hampers and set up office. It is not until the next day that sitting can take place. Commission day is usually on a Monday. Again, in order that the staff can get there on the Monday from the previous assize town and open up the office, the work on the Friday at that previous assize town has to be arranged in such a way that it is bound to finish in good time. In the result, there is the loss of the commission day and of at least half a day on the Friday at 65 assize towns visited three times a year—an appalling waste of judge time.
Another illustration of this waste of time occurs with the multiplicity of assize towns, particularly the small ones. In regard to the smaller assize towns of Wales, for instance, experience has shown that some period, say two, three or four days, must be allowed at each. Yet when the judge gets there, almost inevitably one of three things happens: either there is no work to do and the two days or three days are wasted; or quarter sessions have deliberately retained a case for the assize judge to deal with—another waste of time; or else the judge finds that there is a six-day case which he cannot start because he is due at the next assize town before it could finish. In all these ways the present system is wholly inflexible. Under this Bill there will be no commission days; there will be continuity of sessions; courts will sit day in, day out, except for certain brief vacations, and when a Circuit Judge or a High Court Judge goes out to a particular place he can, and will, stay there until the work is completed, and will not have to rush away to some other place.
I should like to mention one other point in regard to what can be achieved under this Bill; namely, a separation of criminal and civil work. It is a matter which has given me grave concern, because with the increase in crime and again the increase in the number of cases fought—many accused now, with legal aid, plead

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not guilty—the civil work falls into arrear. Crime has to take priority, particularly if they are custody cases, and most unfortunately grave distress is caused to-day, and has been for some time, when civil cases are sometimes not dealt with at all, or dealt with only two or three at a time at perhaps one, two or three assizes. The only course then is to have a special assize, to get somebody to go down specially and, as it were, clear off the arrears. Although we have managed to do that, more or less, over the last five years, it is most unsatisfactory. It is what one might call a "Stop/Go" policy. Under this Bill it should be possible for criminal work and civil work to run concurrently. It should run smoothly, there should be no "Stop/Go", and it will have the added advantage that it should be possible to do what everybody wants; namely, and certainly in some cases, to give fixed days, so as to cause no undue hardship.
The third matter I should like to mention is the one to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, referred, and that is the departure in this Bill from one of the recommendations, or perhaps the absence of recommendation, in the Royal Commission's Report concerning justices. The inference to be gathered from the Report is that the members did not think that the presence of justices was necessary in what was to-day the ordinary quarter sessions work. The passage dealing with this subject gave the impression that if justices were to sit at all, then so be it: but let them be only assessors. I profoundly disagree with that suggestion, and I am indeed happy that that is the view of Her Majesty's Government to-day.
I have always been anxious that those concerned with the administration of justice, whether they be High Court Judges, chairmen of quarter sessions, recorders or magistrates, should develop a team spirit. There is nothing worse for the reputation of the law and the Judiciary than for there to be quarrels between any of them. When a court of quarter sessions holds up one of the local benches to ridicule, attracting enormous publicity, it brings the law into disrepute. People lose confidence in the law. Therefore for years now I have been trying, by meetings, by discussions, and by sentencing conferences, to develop a team spirit be-
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tween all sections of those concerned with the administration of criminal justice. Of course, a considerable development in team spirit has been achieved, particularly between magistrates and county quarter sessions. Quarter sessions there are the focal points of the magistrates; the chairman and the deputy chairman are their friends and people to whom they can turn for advice. When they meet they have lunch together, hold discussions, and so on. It is imperative that this team spirit should be encouraged, and so I believe it will be, under this Bill. Magistrates will be able, as before, to sit on appeals with the Circuit Judge, or whoever is presiding; they will be able to sit on committals for sentence; and they will be able to sit on what I may call the lesser indictable offences.
Nobody desires to bring magistrates considerable distances to sit on a five or seven day fraud case. I envisage the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor giving directions here that the cases, indictable trials, attended by magistrates, should be limited in some way, not only by reference to the subject matter but by the estimated length of time. Magistrates are very public-spirited to-day; they are anxious to do everything they can; but to suggest that they should give up still more of their time merely to come as assessors is clearly wrong. Fundamentally, of course, magistrates get tremendous experience from sitting at quarter sessions to-day. It is experience which is—and I am not decrying training schemes for magistrates—more beneficial than any amount of training, particularly in the difficult matter of sentencing. Conversely, I have yet to meet a chairman of quarter sessions who has not appreciated the assistance he gets by having magistrates sit with him. I have many times heard recorders with whom magistrates do not sit express the view that they wished that they could sit with them, and as full members of the court. Of course, this departure enabling magistrates to sit in the Crown Courts with which I agree so much, may require that a new look is taken at administrative matters.
The recommendations of the Report were for concentrating the work into fewer and fewer centres and sub-centres. Now that the magistrates are to sit, I think we ought to have a new look at the matter, and make certain that there

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are sufficient centres and sub-centres suitably situated to enable a magistrate, without undue hardship, to attend. If these centres are going to be placed at such distances that magistrates cannot reach them at their ease, then it is a waste of time making provision in the Bill for magistrates to sit. However, that is, as are so many other matters here, a matter of administration within the framework of this Bill.
I do not want to anticipate anything that the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack will say in answer to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, but there are two matters to which he has referred and to which I should like to advert. One of them was the perhaps rather curious phraseology of Clause 4(2), which says that what might be called the allocation of work, and who is to try a particular case, is to be in accordance
"with directions given by or on behalf of the Lord Chief Justice with the concurrence of the Lord Chancellor."
I have always taken the view, and still do, that those decisions must be made on the spot at the time. As I, or any Lord Chief Justice, cannot be in each place all the time, it has been arranged that a presiding judge should be appointed in regard to each circuit. In fact, there are two judges and they share the work, but I refer to them just as "the presiding judge". As I understand it—and the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack will correct me if I am wrong—it will be for the presiding judge, under the general directions of the Lord Chief Justice, or after no doubt consulting him on the telephone, to take the decision; but as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is responsible to Parliament in regard to all these matters, it must be done with his concurrence. In fact, however, as I understand it, it will be the decision of the presiding judge on the spot.
The other matter to which the noble Lord referred was the position in regard to the rehearing of cases before magistrates at quarter sessions and now in the Crown Court. As your Lordships know, the prosecution has to start afresh and all the evidence has to be called afresh. It is not an appeal in the
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ordinary sense of the word; it is a new hearing, a new trial. For my part, I should welcome any possibility of its being a true appeal, but I recognise the almost insuperable practical difficulties when there is, anyhow, a shortage of shorthand writers, because unless there is a transcript or a full note of the evidence given it will be quite impossible for the quarter sessions and now the Crown Court to treat it as an appeal.
May I end where I began, by praising the flexibility introduced by this Bill? I think it produces a workable solution for the future—it is hoped, at any rate, for a very long time in the future. It seems to me that it goes as far as it can without defeating the principle, with which we all agree, that so far as possible the law must be brought to the people and not the people to the law. Indeed, under this Bill, where it was necessary the Crown Court could sit in any place in the country. My Lords, I welcome this Bill.
4.52 p.m.
LORD FLETCHER: My Lords, in rising to address your Lordships for the first time, I hope with all due deference and diffidence, I am sure that you will extend to me the indulgence which is customary on these occasions. I understand that it is a tradition in your Lordships' House that a maiden speech should be both brief and uncontroversial. I can certainly promise to be brief, and I hope I shall be relatively uncontroversial.
My excuse for addressing your Lordships on this occasion is that I have been engaged for the whole of my working life in the practice of the law, and I also had the advantage, between 1964 and 1966, of playing some modest part in another place in assisting my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner in introducing a number of measures of law reform with which his name will always be associated. On this occasion, I am sure it is right to recognise, as I think the noble and learned Lord, Lord Parker of Waddington, the Lord Chief Justice, did, that it was due to the initiative and inspiration of Lord Gardiner and his colleagues in the Labour Government of 1964 that, first of all, the Beeching Commission was set up and, secondly, that we now have this Bill before us implementing the recommendations of that Commission.

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It was obvious to all of us who considered the administration of the law a few years ago that radical and far-reaching changes were necessary in the construction and management of the courts and in the organisation of the criminal law, and it is most satisfactory to know that the recommendations of the Beeching Commission have been received with such widespread enthusiasm by the Bench, by the Bar, by the legal profession and by the Press. Obviously, widespread reforms of this kind cannot be undertaken without the preliminary work undertaken by the Royal Commission, and it must be very gratifying to the noble Lord, Lord Beeching, and his colleagues to know that their work has received so many encomiums. Credit is also due to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and his colleagues, for the speed with which they have introduced this Bill giving effect, in the main, to the recommendations of the Royal Commission.
In view of the detailed explanation of the contents of the Bill given by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, and in view of the penetrating analysis by my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner of some of the details which will require examination in Committee, I feel that it would be wrong for me to do more than draw attention to two or three major points. Everybody who has studied this subject is aware that not only has there been a considerable waste of judge power, as the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chief Justice, said, arising from the antiquated system by which the criminal law is administered; there has also been very great hardship and inconvenience to litigants, to practitioners and to the public arising from the existing system. I doubt whether those who are not familiar with the matter are fully aware of the chaotic conditions which exist in a great many court buildings at the present time, due to the confused state of responsibility for the provision of court accommodation.
In drastic language, the Report deals with this subject in paragraph 109, and states:
"… in many … of the large towns, the court buildings are a disgrace to the bodies which own and maintain them."
They give particulars of a very startling nature to those who are not familiar with those conditions. Therefore, I am very
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glad that one of the central provisions of the Bill, as recommended by the Royal Commission, is that there should now be, for the first time, a unified centralised responsibility for the provision and maintenance of all buildings in which the administration of justice is conducted. It is clearly right that this should be the responsibility of the Central Government, and that there should be one Minister of the Crown responsible for the discharge of this task. It may well be arguable whether the right Department is that of the Lord Chancellor, as I think the Royal Commission suggested, or whether it should be the Secretary of State. I should prefer the former. But the important fact is that this antiquated system which has grown up should now be swept away, and there should be one centralised authority.
As the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack said, the second most significant feature of the Bill is the fact that the assizes and quarter sessions are swept away. The provisions of this Bill are bold and imaginative, but I am satisfied, as I think is, everybody else who has studied this subject, that they are justified and necessary. It is only in this way that we shall be able to remove the rigidity which has grown up in the administration of the criminal law. While one must appreciate that a number of people in various cities, which with a due measure of civic pride have enjoyed a measure of judicial privilege over the centuries, will resent the disappearance of historic privileges, I am quite sure that those considerations must give way to the overriding public need for the maximum flexibility in the geographical distribution of the courts, and in the arrangements made for administering justice.
I shall not detain your Lordships by asking a number of questions about the detailed provisions of the Bill, many of which are no doubt suitable for consideration in Committee. Perhaps I may say how glad I was to hear the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack say that it is his intention to exercise his powers under Clause 12, which deals with the right of audience for solicitors, and that it is his intention to give immediate directions, as the Bill will enable him to do, that those solicitors who have had rights of audience heretofore in certain courts

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of quarter sessions shall continue to have those rights.
My Lords, it would be wrong for me, I think, not to say a word about what is perhaps the most controversial aspect of this Bill, which my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner referred to at the end of his speech in saying that he was sure that there was no danger of its being overlooked. I am afraid your Lordships must face the fact that the provision in Clause 15 in regard to the appointment of Circuit judges, providing in terms that:
"No person shall be qualified to be appointed a Circuit judge unless he is a barrister of at least ten years' standing",
is a provision which, without using exaggerated language, has caused great consternation at the Law Society and among solicitors generally. Your Lordships should know that very great indignation is felt on this subject, and in some quarters this provision is regarded as being a flagrant insult to the profession to which I belong.
That feeling is very largely reinforced by the fact that it goes contrary to the recommendations of the Royal Commission. I grant at once that there was no emphatic recommendation by the Beeching Commission on the subject, but bearing in mind that the Commission consisted both of lawyers and of laymen it is significant that the majority thought
"it would be wrong to restrict the appointment of men whose knowledge and experience may qualify them for appointment to the Circuit bench … and … incline to the view that solicitors should be eligible for such appointments."
I would remind your Lordships that whereas courts of assize and quarter sessions are now being abolished and replaced by these Crown Courts, the present position is that solicitors are eligible for appointment as chairmen and deputy chairmen of quarter sessions, and in fact sit as such, with very great satisfaction.
My Lords, this is a matter which I am quite sure that this House, when in Committee, will have to ventilate in greater detail than is possible now, but I would venture to hope that your Lordships will preserve an open mind on the subject until all the views on one side or the other are canvassed. For my part, I would not put the case for making
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solicitors eligible as Circuit judges on the ground that their non-eligibility is resented by the solicitor members of the legal profession. I would put the argument on the ground that the public interest requires that they should be so eligible; and in support of that argument I would draw attention to the fact that this Bill will involve a very considerable extension in the number of judicial appointments. The number of practising barristers is limited, whereas, on the other hand, there are a very large number of solicitors some of whom must be, to put it at its lowest, at least as well qualified for appointment as Circuit judges as some of those who are now sitting or who will be appointed.
My Lords, I am bound to say that I think it would be misconstrued by the public at large if there were thought to be in the legal profession, or in any other profession, a demarcation dispute that worked against the public interest. A demarcation issue in the professions could be just as serious as a demarcation issue in the shipyards, and perhaps much less easy to justify. Therefore, without proceeding further on this subject, I would again remind your Lordships that this is a matter which will require very close examination at the Committee stage. I conclude by saying that I have endeavoured to be commendably brief, and I hope that I have not been unduly controversial.
5.7 p.m.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Fletcher, and to convey to him, on your Lordships' behalf, my congratulations on the way in which he surmounted what always is an ordeal—addressing a new Assembly such as this for the first time. He fully complied with the traditions of this House. He was brief and, although he touched on what was clearly a controversial subject, I do not think it could be said that he was controversial. The noble Lord and I were Members of another place for many years. I do not think it would be right to say that in those days he enjoyed a reputation either for brevity or for being non-controversial, but to-day he has certainly complied with all the traditions.
My Lords, if I may just say something about the main topic of his speech—namely, the limitation of qualification for

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appointment as a Circuit Judge to barristers of ten years' standing—that may be, and no doubt will be, a subject on which there will be considerable controversy. I agree with him that the sole test must be, not the ambitions of solicitors or the desires of barristers but the public interest. I hope he is wrong in thinking that, because the Government have for the moment come to the conclusion that the Bill should be drawn as it is, that really was intended to be, or should be interpreted as being, anything like a flagrant insult to members of a most distinguished profession. But the position is that solicitors as a whole and barristers as a whole lead very different lives. Barristers spend most of their time engaged in litigation in the courts, in advocacy. Solicitors far outnumber barristers, but there are not so very many solicitors who themslves engage in advocacy and litigation in the higher courts.
I do not doubt for one moment that there are many solicitors who would make good judges: there are many laymen too, who would make good judges. But some regard must be had to training and experience. I am not myself by any means satisfied at the moment that shortage of numbers requires a change to be made. I am not going to say any more on that subject to-day: no doubt we shall debate it later, in Committee. That is one reason. Another reason is that I do not want to trail my coat too much for the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, to tread upon on this particular subject, bearing in mind that one has had the advantage of a preview of his speech in The Times to-day.
The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor gave a very clear exposition, and an excellent exposition, of this Bill and the reasons for its introduction. It has been generally welcomed by all who have spoken, and certainly it is not least welcomed by me. The case for a fundamental change in our legal system has been fully made out. It is no use tinkering with our present system, which is on the verge of breakdown. But, my Lords, while saying that, I am not entirely happy about some of the proposals in the Bill; and, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, I think it might serve a useful purpose to draw attention to some features of it—not that I expect the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor,
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who already has so many questions to answer (and I hesitate to add to them) to reply to-night, though I hope that he will give further consideration to these matters.
Great responsibilities are being cast under this Bill on the Lord Chancellor. He has to give directions as to where courts should sit, as to what kind of work they will take and as to the kind of cases in which justices shall sit. I am rather intrigued to know in what form those directions will be made. They will not be, as I read the Bill, in Statutory Instruments—though I may have got that wrong. But if there are to be directions on these important matters, as I regard them, I think it desirable that they should be printed in a form readily available. I am not at all sure that in matters which can be of such great importance to members of the public, they really ought not (at least some of them) to be embodied in Statutory Instruments against which it would be possible on occasion to lodge a Prayer; because some of the Lord Chancellor's decisions on matters such as this may raise issues about which there is considerable public anxiety. People may want to make sure, through their representatives in Parliament, that factors which they regard as important have not been overlooked. It may be to the advantage of the Lord Chancellor, should a Prayer be lodged, to have the opportunity of making his case for his decision. I should like to ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to look at that point. It is really no sufficient answer to say that this will be done administratively and free of all Parliamentary control. If I read the Bill correctly, it is free of Parliamentary control at the present time; and I think that the Bill might be improved if it were not.
I think that the great advantage of this Bill is, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Parker of Waddington, has said, its flexibility. I do not know and the Bill does not reveal (and this is something to which the noble and learned Lord. Lord Gardiner, referred) to what extent the Lord Chancellor intends to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission as to the locations of courts. I hope that he will not feel bound to implement them just as they stand and that he will consider them carefully; because I must say that in one or two

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respects I think the process of centralisation may have gone a little too far. There is a map on page 92 of the Report which shows the short-term and long-term proposals. Clause 7 of the Bill requires magistrates, when committing a person for trial to
"have regard to … the convenience of the defence, the prosecution and the witnesses."
That is right. But if the Royal Commission recommendations are implemented as they stand it will sometimes, I fear, be the case that the parties to litigation and the witnesses will inevitably suffer much more inconvenience than they do at present.
If I may, I will give as an example, Devizes. That is to be a Crown Court for a Circuit Judge. Presumably cases from all parts of Wiltshire will be committed there. I doubt if that will be very convenient, because Lord Beaching, in another guise, has cut off all passenger trains from Devizes. At the present time, quarter sessions sometimes sit at Salisbury: there is a court there. There is a great shortage of courts, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said, throughout the country. I would ask him to consider whether it might not be to the convenience of the public and the litigants, and would not interfere with the speeding up of the administration of justice, if on occasion the circuit court should sit not only at Devizes but also at Salisbury. It might in winter save some people a tiresome journey over Salisbury Plain. I give that as an instance, because I hope that the proposed location of these circuit courts will be carefully looked at. I am inclined to think that it might facilitate the administration of justice a great deal if there were just a few more of them. I recognise that one must strike a balance; and that a great deal of the value of the Royal Commission will be destroyed if there is too great a proliferation of courts.
Again, I welcome what the Royal Commission have said about civil actions, but I hope that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will look at this point again. There is one big area of the country, stretching from the Fens down to Oxford, which is getting a vast increase of population. It is a part of the country that I know very well. There has been a great growth at Peterborough
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—so much so that when I was Lord Chancellor, now six years ago, I was giving serious consideration as to whether or not it was necessary to make Peterborough an assize town. You have a very big population in Leicester and in Leicestershire. You have the belt through Kettering, Wellingborough and Northampton. Northampton is to double in size. You have the New Town of Milton Keynes, and big developments in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. And in none of those places are there any facilities for the trial of civil actions. They all have to go elsewhere. Cases from Northamptonshire will have to go cither to Birmingham or London—or possibly Warwick; and it is not easy to get from Northampton to Warwick by public transport. Similarly, cases from Oxford will have to be taken a considerable distance away.
I should like the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to consider (and this is not special pleading on my part for I have no particular interest in a court being sited there) whether it would not be to the advantage of all if enlarged facilities for trial of civil actions were provided at a centre like Northampton, which is more or less in the middle of that belt and to which access is pretty easy. If that is not done I fear that the litigants in these civil actions will have to balance the more speedy trial of their actions against an increased liability for costs; and I think that the costs which will be involved may be very substantial indeed. I would ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to look at that again.
When the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor comes to reply, I hope that perhaps he may be able to explain to me something that I find very puzzling. It is paragraph 10 of the Explanatory Memorandum of this Bill, which says:
"The new court service will include the existing Supreme Court and county court staffs, together with those court staff employed by local authorities on a full-time or part-time basis who transfer to the new service. There are at present some 2,700 staff so employed, who will be replaced by approximately 1,000 additional staff in the central government service."
My Lords, if you are replacing 2,700 staff by 1,000 staff, I do not quite know where the word "additional" comes in. Be that as it may, I do not know, either.

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whether the 2,700 staff includes the Supreme Court and county court staff, or is confined only to the staff employed by local authorities on a full-time or part-time basis.
I welcome what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said about those who are to be offered employment in the new service being offered fair and equitable treatment. I think there is an omission from the Bill. There is no statutory provision for their treatment. We have provision made, as the Royal Corn-mission recommended, for the existing judges. In paragraph 268 of their Report the Royal Commission said:
"It would be unjust for any of the judges whom we recommend should become members of the Circuit bench to suffer financial loss as a result. We recommend, therefore, that in any case where a judge's salary and pension, or other terminal benefits, are more favourable to him than those of the Circuit bench, he should be entitled to retain them on a personal basis."
I suggest, my Lords, that the same provision should be made for those in whole-time employment in the courts at the present moment, if they are to be taken on into the new service. I can see no justification in drawing a distinction between the judges, for whom provision is made in the Bill in accordance with the Royal Commission's Report, and the permanent officials.
Take, for example, the officers and servants of the Central Criminal Court. There are nearly 100 of them. Their salaries are now paid by the G.L.C., as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, pointed out. They participate in a superannuation fund. Why should not they be dealt with in the same way as the judges? I am sure that they will be offered fair and equitable treatment, but that is not quite the same, I suggest, as making statutory provision for them. There are precedents for doing so in the London Government Act 1963, where, in Section 85, it is provided:
"Any order under section 6 or 84 of this Act may contain provisions as to the transfer of any person who is, on such date as may be specified in relation to him in the order, the holder of any place, situation or employment who is affected by any provision of, or of any instrument made under, this Act. and shall contain provisions for the protection of the interests of such persons."
It goes on in subsection (3) to provide that:
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"so long as he continues in the employment of that other authority by virtue of the transfer and until he is served with a statement in writing of new terms and conditions of employment, he enjoys terms and conditions of employment not less favourable than those he enjoyed immediately before the date of transfer."
Then the section says that the new terms and conditions, if offered, must be
"reasonably comparable to those in which he was engaged immediately before the date of transfer,"
and that the scale of salary or remuneration and other conditions of his employment must not be
"less favourable than those he enjoyed immediately before the date of the transfer."
Also my, Lords, if his employment is terminated, there is provision in another Act, the Local Authorities Social Services Act 1970, by Section 9(2), to make provision for compensation for loss of employment or loss or diminution of emoluments. I should have thought it desirable that this Bill should contain some provisions of that sort, just as it does in relation to the judges.
I feel some regret at the abolition of quarter sessions. I am one of those who sat for some time as a deputy chairman and upon whom the Beeching axe now falls. But I should like to endorse and support everything the Lord Chief Justice has said about the advantage of sitting with lay magistrates. I have always found that most helpful—I think that they may perhaps have done so too—and I am very glad indeed that the Bill makes provision for the participation of lay magistrates in the work of the Circuit courts. I hope it will be possible to secure their participation to as great an extent as it is now at quarter sessions. I am a little doubtful whether that will prove easy because of the greater distances that so many of the lay magistrates would have to travel. But I still hope that that will be carried on.
I am a little puzzled by Clause 6(4), which refers to:
"the practice by which, on any one indictment, the taking of pleas, the trial by jury and the pronouncement of judgment may respectively be by or before different judges."
My Lords, I must admit that I am ignorant of any such practice, and if there is a practice of one judge trying a case and another judge passing sentence, I think it is to be deprecated; certainly

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not encouraged, although where difficulties arise there might be power for that to happen. But the Bill refers to "the practice".
If I may, I will follow the example of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, and draw attention to one or two other points which strike me as a little odd. The noble and learned Lord drew attention to a clause at the end of the Bill which apparently sought or attempted to bind what might subsequently be done in other Acts of Parliament. I think that Clause 8 is somewhat unusual. I cannot recollect ever having seen a clause which simply says that a Schedule to an Act of Parliament "shall have effect". I should have thought the right thing to do, if there is any doubt, would be to put the Schedule, which is extremely short, in place of what is now Clause 8.
My Lords, I am very glad to see that Clause 9 enables the Crown Court to vary sentences passed by magistrates, not only by reducing but also by increasing them, and that it enables the Court to do so whether the appeal is against conviction, or against sentence, or whether or not the appeal is against the whole of the decision. While recognising that that is right, surely it is anomalous that the Court of Appeal Criminal Division should not have a similar power. I have urged this in the past and I remain of the view that even if the power to increase a sentence is seldom used it is a power which is well worth having. It has been suggested that something should be done about the hearing of appeals from magistrates' courts. I see great difficulties in that. Most of the cases tried in magistrates' courts do not involve questions of law at all: they are matters of evidence. In my experience, most of the appeals to quarter sessions from decisions of magistrates' courts do not involve any question of law. They are appeals because the parties in the case before the magistrates are dissatisfied with the magistrates' conclusions on the evidence which the magistrates have heard. I should be sorry to see that practice interfered with, although I know that it places a considerable burden on the courts from time to time.
One other clause in the Bill which surprised me was Clause 16, dealing with
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Circuit judges. Subsection (6) reads as follows:
"So long as he holds office as such, no Circuit judge shall practise as a barrister, or act for any remuneration to himself as arbitrator or referee, or be directly or indirectly concerned as a conveyancer, notary public or solicitor."
I should not have thought that it was necessary to make any statutory provision of that kind. I should have thought that everyone knew that if one became a judge, one could not practise as a barrister or do any work of that kind. If there is to be such a clause inserted in the Bill, should it be limited to, "so long as he holds office as such"? Surely it cannot be contemplated that a Circuit judge, after he has ceased to be a judge, can return to the Bar or act as a solicitor. Yet the clause, being prefaced by the words "so long as he holds office as such", may lead some to infer that that bar was removed when he gave up his office. If there has to be such a clause, does it go far enough?
When I read it, I thought that in view of recent events it might be desirable to insert a provision enabling the Lord Chancellor to require an undertaking that a person appointed a judge should not retire from that office and go into business. Speaking for myself, I do not think it is a good thing for a Lord Chancellor who has retired from that office, maybe due to circumstances wholly beyond his control, to go into the City, though there are, I know, some precedents for that. What I think is unprecedented, and I myself think inexcusable, is that someone who has accepted the appointment by Her Majesty as a judge should thereafter relinquish that appointment and take one in business. It should be clear, surely, to everyone at the Bar that if one accepts a judicial appointment, there are obligations attached to it; that one cannot return to the Bar and practise as a barrister and that, having embarked on a judicial career, one is under a moral obligation to do the job and not to give it up in favour of one that appears more attractive.
I shall not put down any Amendment to this clause to deal with this point, because on reflection I have come to the conclusion that it would be somewhat derogatory of the high office of a judge to insert a provision enabling the Lord Chancellor to extract such an undertaking. But if it is necessary to stipulate that a Circuit

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judge should not engage in certain activities while he is a judge, I would ask the Lord Chancellor to consider whether it is not equally desirable that it should be made clear that he cannot do so after he has ceased to be one.
Attention has been drawn to a number of points. I do not intend to refer to any other points to-night, except that in conclusion I should like to comment on one point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner. I do not believe that the delays in the Central Criminal Court are in any way due to the division of responsibility for the administration of that court. That court has grown tremendously in recent years. Many more courts are there than were there only ten years ago. The City really has done a great deal in trying to make provisions for the demands that are made upon it. It is not the division of responsibility that is causing the delays there. It is the congestion of work. There has been so much criminal work sent for trial to the Central Criminal Court that these delays have become inevitable, though I am sure that all the judges and all the staff there have done their best to overcome them. I deplore such delays. I deplore them wherever they may occur, and I trust and hope that, with the flexible system that this Bill contemplates, they may be materially reduced.
5.35 p.m.
LORD GOODMAN: My Lords, may I first say how grateful I am to the speakers who should have followed me for their courtesy in allowing me to speak now, otherwise, perhaps to no great loss to your Lordships, I should have been precluded from speaking at all. May I also add my congratulations on the maiden speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Fletcher. He is a speaker of such accomplishment and experience that it is a little otiose to compliment him. He is from my point of view a particularly welcome addition to your Lordships' House, because he is a walking demonstration of the obvious eligibility of solicitors for almost every kind of appointment.
I do not wish to speak on this Bill exclusively from the parochial point of view of the interests of solicitors or even on the important question of whether the range of appointments to Her Majesty's Judiciary should be extended. I have some comments to make on these subjects
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and if I speak in some little detail where your Lordships may consider the matter would be more appropriately dealt with on Committee stage, it is because I still entertain the hope, though slight, that the ears to which I am addressing these observations are not totally incapable of assimilating them and it may perhaps not be necessary to divide the House on an issue of public interest, on which I believe most people who judge the matter objectively would arrive at the conclusion that there should not be controversy. There should be general agreement as to the persons who are eligible as judges. Therefore, I make the plea that careful attention may be paid to this matter, whatever conclusions may be reached at the end on whether or not my arguments have sufficient validity to carry this relatively unimportant point.
May I join in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Beeching, who, obviously to avoid embarrassment, has departed, on this remarkable Report. He and his colleagues have done a splendid job. I wonder whether I may especially refer to Mr. Cannon for his participation in view of the unhappy intimation the other day of his ill-health, and express the hope that he may be restored very shortly to the indispensable career of public service for which he is rightly reputed. The Beeching Report demonstrates something I have always believed—perhaps it is easier for a lawyer to say it than for anyone else—that no effective reform of our legal system would come except from laymen. I do not believe that we should have achieved these remarkable recommendations if a strong contingent of sensible laymen, who were not inhibited by traditions and considerations of loyalty, had not been furnished with the opportunity of considering the whole subject and arriving at a conclusion on pure common sense.
I believe, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor rightly said in his most interesting introduction of the Bill, that these are memorable recommendations. They are historic changes. To what extent we shall be able to congratulate ourselves upon them depends not upon their present structure but on what use we make of these recommendations. We are given a new framework. It is for us to etch within that framework a suitable and sensible legal system. We

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are given an opportunity of solving many problems. The inaccessibility of justice is now to be solved. The expense of justice may be partially solved. Many of the things in the great system of law we enjoy as one of the great heritages of this country, at the moment not available to a great many people, may now be rectified, and it may be that, for the first time in our history, this magnificent system of law will be available to all.
Hence I join with other lawyers and some who are not lawyers in welcoming the Bill introduced this afternoon. There are various matters on which I wish to comment. One is to urge the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor on in his meritorious campaign to secure that proper buildings are available for the administration of justice. Nothing is more awful than to see a case being tried under some of the physical conditions which now attend—Nissen huts in which gentlemen distinguished for their eminence in learning, replete in their magnificent robes, are seeking to carry out justice in insufficient light, with no means of writing a note, nowhere to consult with clients or instructing solicitors or anyone else concerned in the case, making it almost impossible—not impossible to carry out justice, because the circumstances in which justice has been effectively carried out under such conditions is a remarkable tribute to the practitioners concerned. But it makes it very difficult for the persons concerned to feel that justice has in fact been carried out. If a little money has to be spent on this matter it will, if I may say so, be as wisely spent as any public expenditure that we can envisage. It is absolutely right that new buildings should be provided.
Another matter on which I should like to comment—and I think the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, made an observation on this—is the absence of any provision in the Bill to carry out the recommendations for the enlargement of county courts' jurisdiction. I believe that such enlargement is most necessary and wise. I myself, judging it only on my own experience, should have been very willing to see that jurisdiction substantially enlarged beyond even the £1,000 recommended in the Beeching Report. There is no reason why, if we are now
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to have judges who are considered to be competent to carry out the most important criminal duties, they should not be able to discharge a civil responsibility of a very responsible character.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Perhaps I can save time on this. The Bill does not contain it, but further increases are already possible by Order under the Administration of Justice Act 1969, Section 10. Therefore it was not necessary to put it in the Bill.
LORD GOODMAN: I am obliged to the noble and learned Lord. One earnestly hopes that consideration will be given to extending that jurisdiction rapidly, because it achieves great saving. both of money and time, for the litigants. I believe that now that we are thinking in terms of territorial courts, which are on the whole designed to have fairly equal jurisdiction, this is a progressive move, consistent with the whole rationale of the Beeching Report.
Another matter on which I think it is appropriate to touch is the question of majority verdicts of juries. Until recently I had serious misgivings about this, but I think that on the whole the recommendation is a wise one. It should, however, be the subject of consideration: it should not pass through unnoticed: because it is an important change in many of our legal conceptions. But on the whole, the notion of a litigant being involved in a case which may go on for days, and cost great sums of money, finding himself frustrated from a verdict because of the obstinacy of a single juror, is. I believe, an overwhelming argument in favour of this recommendation.
I recently heard of a case—and I have no reason to disbelieve the circumstances—where 11 jurors in a libel action were unanimously agreed that the verdict should be given for the plaintiff. The twelfth juror turned out to be an Irishman, and he expressed the view that he was not going to participate in any judgment in favour of anyone in this country. As a result, the entire proceedings, which had lasted for many weeks, were rendered a futility and a total waste of money. If in fact that did occur—and there seems to be valid reason for believing that it did—it is an invincible argument in favour of this change. I think that, much

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as we may regret the fact, the unanimity of jurors, which is a splendid principle and conception, has to be compromised in this way; it is desirable in a modern society.
That brings me to another consideration of no less importance: whether we are not a little too sentimental over this notion of the total egalitarianism of most jurors. I think it is an injustice to a litigant that he now has the situation where he has to have his case tried by a jury of completely indeterminate qualifications. I do not believe that it is in any way undemocratic to ensure that a man who is going to try a complicated case is tested as to his qualifications to try that case. It must be an absurdity that a man, for instance, who can neither read nor write, or who has the most deficient understanding of complicated matters, finds himself engaged in determining issues that require a rather sophisticated, and at least cultivated, approach and a general adequacy of intelligence. I think we have reached the stage where we need not fear for our democratic conditions, and we ought to have a good hard look at this again to see whether people should have visited upon them jurors who are entirely unqualified for the task they are called upon to perform. As I say, I do not think there is any question of democracy involved in this; it is simply a question of efficiency and common sense.
I should like to make one observation on some words that fell from the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, on which I had not intended to comment, because I had not noticed the point in the Bill. He made some reference to the situation of a judge who retires during the course of his appointment. I certainly should not wish to make any comment that relates to a particular case. I am wondering whether the noble and learned Viscount is not, in one sense, a little over-severe (and one can understand why a lawyer who has added such distinction to the profession should feel as he does in this matter), and whether it is not on the whole wiser that a man who, after all, finds he has not got a calling, as he thought, and feels it is not appropriate that he should continue in his position, should be given or should take to himself, the opportunity of retiring. If the
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noble Viscount's suggestions were adopted, such a man might find that economic factors required him to remain on the Bench unless it was possible for him to find other employment. I wonder whether the conclusion that the noble and learned Viscount arrived at is not a little too harsh, and whether, in the end, the decision arrived at may not be in the public interest. I venture that observation because it seemed to me that the remarks might pass unnoticed, and that elementary justice required that perhaps some contrary point of view should be put.
Having said that, I should like to come to the major point with which I am concerned, and that is the ever-green question of solicitors and the Bar, and their appointment to the Judiciary. I would start by saying that I wholly agree with the noble; Lord, Lord Fletcher, when he says that this issue should be determined solely on the question of public interest. It is not a question of whether further available employment is extended to solicitors or whether the Bar retains its monopoly. I believe (and I am anxious to give the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor this point) that the Bar is wholly honest in this matter. I believe that they do, with total integrity, consider that it would be contrary to public interest if the extension for which we seek were granted.
In this matter I am very much reminded of a novel that most of your Lordships will know by Jane Austen, where a delightful conversation takes place between the husband and wife who are considering what bounty they should bestow upon their sister-in-law, recently bereaved, whose inheritance they have in fact, through the law then operating, themselves inherited. They start off by considering that it would on the whole be desirable if they gave her a small annual annuity. Then they think that this perhaps might be a little too much—in her own interests, I may say—and that they should give her slightly less. They end up by deciding that, in her own interests and for her own welfare, it would be entirely wrong to do more than send her an occasional pot of home-made jam. I see that as exactly the attitude of the Bar in this matter. They have mesmerised themselves into the belief that it is entirely in the interests of the

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public and of solicitors that this bounty should not be extended.
I should like to examine the extraordinary range of arguments that have been deployed on this matter by the Bar, and only the Bar, because, so far as I can see, this is an issue between the Bar and the rest of the civilised world. I have not yet met any layman who would do otherwise than occasionally mouth one of the Bar's arguments, and hastily repudiate it when the true facts were explained to him. The arguments that have been deployed by the Bar in this matter are various, colourful and, one might even say, occasionally wet. The first is the one that was advanced by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, when he was in the position of the present Lord Chancellor. I may say, I hope without any tinge of reproach, that Lord Gardiner was no better on this matter than his successor. Of course, he is a member of the Bar. So far as the Bar are concerned, that Free Masonry will not be altered by any considerations from any other part of the world. Lord Gardiner's argument was that the Bar would be discouraged from taking employment if it was thought that judicial appointments were made available to solicitors. My only answer to that is this. Would Lord Gardiner or the present Lord Chancellor have been remotely discouraged from embarking on the career in which they became such distinguished ornaments by the knowledge that a group of miserable solicitors were likely to be competing with them for some junior judicial employment some thirty years hence? If I may say so, the idea is totally fanciful.
The second argument used appeared in The Times this morning and came from Sir Peter Rawlinson in another place. He said that solicitors are always immured in their offices: they never come out to meet the world; they would not know anything about the Judiciary; they would not know how to conduct cases. There are two answers to that. One is that solicitors are not always immured in their offices—there is a respectable sprinkling of them here this evening. Secondly, solicitors are frequently engaged in litigation and advocacy, and have a great experience in learning of these matters. But if they are, the answer to this sugges-
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tion is contained in the Beeching Report itself. If your Lordships will look at page 141 you will see there is an interesting and totally valid recommendation which reads:
"… judges should not sit continuously in one place and ought not to be restricted to work of substantially the same kind without change".
What in effect that is saying is that if you get a man of reasonable intelligence, a man who has had a wide education, adaptability is an ordinary feature of his behaviour. It is nonsense to suggest that a man who knows the law and has practised the law in one field cannot adapt himself to the small changes required to practise the law in another field. That argument seems to be as untenable as the rest.
Then we come to three other interesting arguments. These were discovered by the present noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. One was that solicitors do not want the jobs; that they are too prosperous; that they are doing so well in these offices in which they are immured that they would not for one moment consider taking them. There are three answers to that. First, if this were true, there could be no harm in offering the jobs to them; the Bar would then have the satisfaction of seeing them all refused, and better conditions would prevail than prevail at the moment. Secondly, I do not for one moment believe it to be true that they do not want the jobs—they are not as prosperous as is suggested. Thirdly, solicitors have an excellent record of public service, and if they think that there is public service to be done they will make the necessary financial sacrifices to enable themselves to do it. So that argument holds no water of any kind.
The next point was even better. It was that if you were to add 22,000 possible candidates to the existing list of 2,000, or whatever the nominal roll of the Bar is at the moment, it would be impossible for the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to know everyone concerned, and he would not be able to make the choice as he does now. I can only say, as I said in an article that I wrote on the subject this morning, that it is perhaps kinder not to deal with that argument. I will merely answer it by saying that if one has to choose between

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a method of choice where a single individual has to range over the qualifications of 22,000 people who otherwise would be regarded as eligible, or devising some other system of selecting the Judiciary, there are strong and powerful arguments for finding another system for selecting the Judiciary and not depriving the public of an opportunity of a much wider range of choice.
One other matter was brought to my notice (I am not sure that it should have been) and that is that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is apparently seized of a forbidding technical point that is going to demolish my case completely. I do not know what it is going to be, and I shall not, alas!, have the opportunity of being here to hear him expound it, because I have to absent myself; but in advance of hearing the technical point I will only say that it will have to be a very remarkable one indeed if the sovereign power of Parliament cannot put it right.
There is a nominal roll of 2,000 barristers. If you deduct from that number those who, for a variety of reasons, must be ineligible for judicial appointment, because they are too young, too foolish, too clever, too rich, or because they do not want to take an appointment in Warrington or Cullompton; if you deduct the high specialists who could not take the job because they are not general practitioners, there is a tiny handful left to fill what amounts to something like 900 judicial appointments which are at the moment exclusively reserved for barristers. The arithmetic is overwhelming. The public interest cannot be served by continuing restrictive practices of this character.
At this stage, my Lords, I have said enough. There is much more to be said, but I will reserve it for the Committee stage, although I earnestly hope that there will not be need for a Committee stage on this matter. May I conclude on quite a different note? We should not allow the important proceedings in your Lordships' House to-day to be entirely occupied with this consideration. We should not forget that we are engaged in an important and very memorable stage in the development of English law and its practice, and we should not on
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that account cease to welcome this most important Bill.
5.55 p.m.
LORD CAWLEY: My Lords, as a practising member of the Bar I am not going to be provoked by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman. I am going to talk about the only clause which the noble and learned Lord said had nothing to do with Beeching. This concerns the patent law. So far as I can see, there is considerable doubt as to whether it falls within the Long Title of the Bill. That does not stir me at all because I am totally in favour of these provisions. We are a great industrial country, and our patent system is of very considerable importance to us. I think it is only fitting that somebody should tell the House in more detail what this clause achieves.
The Patents Appeal Tribunal originated in the Patents Designs Act 1932. Prior to this Act. appeals from the Comptroller-General of Patents, who heard the proceedings as opposition proceedings, went to the Solicitor General. This was all very well at the end of the last century, when they were few and the subject matter was simple. But during the 'twenties and 'thirties, the complication of the matters became such that it was rumoured that one Solicitor General's early demise was definitely hastened by the fact that he had to take appeals from the Comptroller-General of Patents, although when Sir Stafford Cripps was Solicitor General there was no difficulty. So in 1932 the Patents Appeal Tribunal was set up. Solicitors and patent agents had a right of audience before the Solicitor General and when the Appeal Tribunal was set up they continued, under the Act of 1932, to have a right of audience, even though the Tribunal was to be a Judge of the High Court appointed by the Lord Chancellor—that is to say the Judge of the High Court was sitting in an inferior capacity.
Under the Patents Act 1949, certain rights of appeal to the Court of Appeal from the Patents Appeal Tribunal were included on certain grounds. Shortly thereafter it became apparent that parties before the Appeal Tribunal were dissatisfied with certain decisions of the Appeal Tribunal on points of law. They therefore took the matter to a Divisional Court to obtain an order of certiorari. This

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first occurred in the case of Baldwin and Francis in 1957. Now I must read a short paragraph from the judgment of Lord Goddard in that case:
"Both my brother and myself have said that we cannot go into the technical details because if we did we should not understand them. We have had no training in these matters. We are not supposed to be gentlemen of particular scientific attainments."
I say that the present noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice, who I see is in his place, is a gentleman of scientific attainment, and is able to understand these matters perfectly. I do not know whether that applies to all of his brethren. It is obviously extremely unsatisfactory that on these points of law one has to go to such a Tribunal. Although (I say this with very great respect to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice) the decisions have been extremely satisfactory, obviously it is not the right Tribunal to hear appeals on questions of law.
This summer the Committee on the British Patents System, under Mr. Banks, reported to the President of the Board of Trade, and I have here in my hands the Report that the Committee made. I should like to refer to paragraph 166, in which they said:
"To sum up, we recommend:
The establishment of a Patents Court of High Court status to hear all patent actions including appeals from decisions of the Comptroller."
I will leave out the next paragraph, and come to the third recommendation:
"That when the Patents Court is sitting as an Appeal Court, the procedure and provisions relating to the right of audience and instructing counsel should remain the same as those of the present Patents Appeal Tribunal and that the present practice of the Tribunal of awarding a lower scale of costs than the High Court should be continued."
Your Lordships will see that that is suggesting the creation of a Tribunal which will have High Court status, but at which patent agents will be entitled to appear and argue the cases. So will solicitors—though I do not want to say anything controversial about solicitors, because in the last twenty years I can think of only one solicitor who has appeared before the Patents Appeal Tribunal and he is a Member of your Lordships' House. But this proposal means that this new Patents Court would have High Court status, yet cases would
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possibly be argued by patent agents who have no legal training at all except for the specialist Acts. That is obviously extremely unsatisfactory.
The reasons for recommending this new Patents Court were these. The first was the unsatisfactory nature of the application for an order of certiorari, and the second was the one I have already given: that the Court would have High Court status and its decisions could be taken as authoritative. I am glad to say that this recommendation has not been accepted by Her Majesty's Government. I am glad to see they have substituted a right of appeal from the Patents Appeal Tribunal on points of law and of jurisdiction, either with the leave of the Tribunal itself or with the leave of the Court of Appeal. That will channel all possible appeals to the Court of Appeal and not to the Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division. I have no doubt that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice is pleased about that, because in the Baldwin and Francis case there were in fact five different proceedings: before the Comptroller General, the Patents Appeal Tribunal, the Divisional Court, the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. It was highly unsatisfactory. If we can cut out one stage it will be a great improvement.
I should like to suggest to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor that this is possibly a case where the "leap-frogging" procedure provided for in the Administration of Justice Act 1969 should be invoked. It is a fact that the first case of "leap-frogging" has been a patents case; and it has entirely justified itself. The House of Lords, by a majority, gave a very startling decision which showed a very serious defect in the Patents Act 1949. That defect would possibly not have been noticed if the case had had to pass through the Court of Appeal on its way.
The second part of this clause, Clause 45, refers to the Scottish Appeals Tribunal, and will no doubt give considerable pleasure North of the Border. This Tribunal has had a strenuous life. On January 1 next it will celebrate its twenty-first birthday. Up to now, no person has been appointed to carry out its functions and no rules have been made to regulate its procedure.

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My Lords, there is one other point that I wish to raise at this stage (I have given the noble and learned Lord notice of it) and it is not concerned with patents at all. There is considerable disquiet among the county councils that the provisions of Schedule 3, paragraph 1, will be interpreted widely, and if there happens to be a magistrates' court embedded in a shire or county hall the powers to take over the whole of the building may be invoked. I should like to ask the noble and learned Lord whether, in his reply, he can give me an assurance that compulsory purchase will be resorted to only in exceptional circumstances, and that, if possible, a list of premises to be acquired should be available as early as possible, preferably before this Bill becomes law.
6.5 p.m.
LORD DENNING: My Lords, I am sorry that I was not able to be present for the first stages of this debate, but I should like, if I may, to say how much the whole country owes to my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner for being the initiator of this great and important reform. For over 600 years the Judges of England went on Assize and the magistrates kept their county quarter sessions and the recorders their courts. That was the basis of our administration of justice all these years. But it has been shown to be outworn. Particularly as regards quarter session, when I was called to the Bar they finished their work in two or three days; latterly they have been in almost continuous sessions. Whereas previously, too, the judges had to go on circuit because the means of communication were very poor, now with motor-cars and the like the system can and should be more centralised. There is no doubt whatever that the proposals in the Beeching Commission's Report should be implemented, and I think all those who gave evidence were in line with the recommendations that were made.
It is important that in the Crown Courts the magistrates should sit with the judge and should have a voice and participate in the proceedings of the smaller cases, as they do now in quarter sessions. I myself sat as chairman of quarter sessions for several years and always I found the magistrates of the greatest help and support. The recorders
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never took part in this way, but under this new system they will in proper circumstances, so that they are not overburdened; they will be able to sit with the Circuit judges and the High Court Judges, for that matter, in proper cases.
The Bill deals with several matters which are not embodied in the Beeching Commission's Report. One small instance was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Goodman: that in civil cases there should in future be available verdicts of a majority. When that proposal was made in regard to criminal cases I felt that it was too radical and I spoke and voted against it here. But it has been proved in practice to be the right decision and the right course. On all the information I have, majority verdicts are a great improvement on the system we had before. Now it is quite time and quite right that that practice should be extended to civil cases, where there may be long cases of trial by jury. Majority verdicts should equally apply there.
May I add one word of caution. This Bill will lead to a great deal more centralisation of the administration of justice. The Lord Chancellor's Department is bound to be, whatever it is in name, a Ministry of Justice. Great powers are given to the Lord Chancellor and his Department. Take, for instance, the Circuit judges who would be appointed by him, or on his recommendation, and the salaries of each one—the provision in the Bill says, "each". They are to be fixed by him. Furthermore, the power of removal of Circuit judges for misconduct or inability is in the Lord Chancellor's hands. In having this Ministry of Justice, so long as we have Lord Chancellors such as the Lord Chancellor and the ex-Lord Chancellors we have in the House to-day we need have no fear that the independence of the judges will be assailed. I only hope that this will always be so, because the independence of our judges is perhaps the most important feature of our whole Constitution. If salaries can be altered, if dismissals can be made, by a Ministry of Justice, unless carefully watched—if need be by Questions in Parliament—independence might be assailed. Fortunately, it is still maintained in regard to High Court Judges.

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As to the small clause which my noble and learned friend Lord Dilhorne mentioned—that, so long as he is in office, a Circuit judge shall not take on any other work—perhaps it is to be remembered that in this country alone, so far as I know, by a convention, a judge on his retirement does not return to the Bar or engage in legal work at all. In the United States, in Canada and in many other countries it can be done and is done. I venture to think that that is unsatisfactory, because during his tenure a judge might have his eye too much on what he was going to do after he ceased to be a judge; and I hope, whether expressly or by convention, it will remain the case that a judge on his retirement does not return to the Bar or undertake legal work.
My Lords, there are one or two matters which perhaps I might mention and which cause me a little apprehension on this very point of the independence of judges. Clause 19 says that a judge of the Court of Appeal or a High Court judge or a recorder may be asked to serve as a county court judge. It says that he shall be capable of sitting as a county court judge and shall be available to sit as such a judge at such times and on such occasions as the Lord Chancellor considers desirable. One would have no fear of the present Lord Chancellor or any of those whom we know, but might it not in the future—perhaps far ahead—be rather different if some Lord Chancellor thought that he might demote a judge of the Court of Appeal and send him off to a far off county court? It is those little things that I would ask your Lordships to observe. We must not in any way allow the independence of the judges to be impaired.
There is another small matter which I would raise. The Lord Chief Justice and I, with the help of the Lord Chancellor, alternately appoint the masters of the Queen's Bench who do all the preliminary work on the cases in our courts, and we are able to see the possible candidates. We know them all; they present the cases in our courts; we know how suitable they are, and that system has worked well in the past. Is there need for a change and that it should be vested in the Lord Chancellor, as Clause 25 purports to do? I would urge that we should be careful not to get over-centralised by this system.
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Perhaps I ought not to pass over the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Goodman, and also to say how glad I am to see the noble Lord, Lord Fletcher, back in his place, to whom I, too, would pay tribute. As to the argument put forward by my noble friend, I suppose I may be said to be on the barristers' side by reason of my training, but there are important matters to be considered here. It is not a question of ability or knowledge of the law. Solicitors are equally able, and I have known many who are just as able, qualified, of high standing, integrity and judicial qualities as members of the Bar. It is a matter of experience in the work which a judge has to do. I would remind your Lordships that now it is exceedingly easy for any solicitor who wants to do so to become a barrister.
Under recent regulations made under the authority of the Inns of Court it is little more than a formality for him to be able to change from being a solicitor to being a barrister. So a young man who feels that he would like to become a judge can easily set himself on that training and then he will qualify. But by the time he becomes, say, 48 or 50 years of age—the age when a judge is appointed—as a rule a suitable solicitor is engaged in big work; it may be big business with corporations and the like and it may be 20 or 30 years before he is engaged in any advocacy. But the member of the Bar—such a one as is appointed a judge—throughout his career will have been day by day in practice, procedure and work of the court. It is that experience which a member of the Bar has and which a solicitor as a rule has not, which means that the qualification should perhaps be not so much as a barrister but one experienced in the practice and procedure of the courts. I think that is the telling reason why we should be slow in departing from a system which has worked so well for so many years. My Lords, these are small points. This great Bill should be welcomed everywhere, and I am sure that we all would join in the welcome which has been given to it.
6.17 p.m.
LORD ILFORD: My Lords, I have to begin what I am going to say to-night by offering an apology to the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack for my

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absence during the early part of his speech. I regret that I had to leave the Chamber for a time, but other things have been going on here this afternoon besides this Bill, and that must be my excuse. I shall detain your Lordships only long enough for me to express to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor my own appreciation of this Bill and the changes which it will make in our judicial system. That, I believe, will be the view generally acceptable by the Bar—if one who has been absent from the Bar for a good many years now may be accepted as an interpreter of their views.
My Lords, this Bill, and the Administration of Justice Act which we passed last year, may be regarded as completing the reform of our judicial system, just as the great judicatory Acts of the last century completed the process of law reform in that century. I was glad to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, refer to the historical aspect of the Bill. I think it is worth remembering to-night that this Bill represents something like three-quarters of a century of law reform. In the same way, in the 19th century three quarters of a century had passed before the great judicatory Act set up the system with which we are familiar to-day. Just as the Act of 1873 cast off the mantle in which our judicial system had then existed, so to-day this Bill and the Administration of Justice Act will cast aside the mantle of the 19th century, though not until it is worn almost threadbare. So every century produces its law reformers and so tonight, my Lords, let us cast our crowns before the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack and his predecessor and recognise him as the master lawgiver of our generation.
My Lords, may I now turn to another aspect of the Bill which is perhaps less agreeable than that with which I have been endeavouring to deal? Under the terms of the Bill the Lord Chancellor exercises very wide and very unusual powers in the requisition of buildings. The local authorities may be required to provide what is called a courtroom. There is no definition of what a courtroom is to be. I think we can all appreciate the sort of premises which the Bill contemplates will be subject to requisition. But it is a very wide power indeed. Does it
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include the town hall? Does it include the chamber where the council usually meet? Does it include the court in which the magistrates sit? There is no indication. It could even be made to include the mayor's parlour, which might be very usefully employed as the judges robing room. These are the powers the Bill will give to the Lord Chancellor.
That is not the whole matter, because the Lord Chancellor will not only be entitled to requisition them but will be under no obligation to pay for them. There is provision for payment of compensation in certain cases, but in the generality of cases there is no obligation to pay anything at all. It seems to me that that is going a little far, and it really is not surprising that the local authorities regard it with a certain amount of distaste. After all, there is no reason why the cost of the national system of jurisprudence should be placed on the ratepayers. I should have thought it rested on the national organisation. It is true that some of the premises which will no doubt be taken are used for the administration of justice; they are used at the expense of the local authority because the obligation is upon the local authority to provide them. Indeed, the only buildings the Government are required to provide are the county courts, which are under the control of the Lord Chancellor. I mention these matters to-night, not because they are matters we can properly deal with to-night; they are matters we shall have to deal with at the Committee stage of the Bill.
In conclusion, may I say that, apart from those aspects to which I have referred, I welcome this Bill. I believe, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, said, that it represents an important historical step in the advance of our judicial institutions. With those observations, I hope that it will pass into law—without, of course, those features to which I have referred—without undue obstruction.
6.23 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, at this late hour I do not propose to detain the House for more than a few sentences. I had intended to deal, perhaps in some detail, with the effect of this Bill—which everybody greets, I think, with enthusiasm—upon the local authorities and their

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position; but the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, has already indicated the lines on which they feel considerable apprehension about some of the provisions of the Bill. Although I know it is a minor detail, it would be a pity if a great improvement of justice and its organisation in this country were accompanied by perhaps a certain amount of injustice to the local authorities and their position.
The effect of the Bill is intended to speed up the work of the higher courts which has fallen into arrears over the past years, and to ensure that resources, both of judges and of court accommodation, are used effectively and economically. The Association of Municipal Corporations, who represent local authorities, most emphatically agree broadly with the Beeching Commission's recommendations as to reorganising these courts, and consequently they are in almost enthusiastic appreciation of the main objects and provisions of the Bill. But they do feel this apprehension about the power which the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, will have, to do all the things which were detailed by the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, just now, within the next ten years while the new buildings and new courts and so forth are being made. For that reason, I would ask that further consideration may be given to these aspects, and no doubt that is a matter to be dealt with properly in Committee.
6.26 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I think I should be less than courteous if I did not thank your Lordships for the generally friendly welcome which this Bill has received from, I think, every Member of your Lordships' House who has addressed it in our debate. In particular, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, was extremely kind in the references to my office and staff and to the Government of which I form part, for the speed and expedition with which they have brought this Bill out. If I may say so, I think that this provides a general answer, although not a specific answer, to some of the questions which he posed.
I found myself in the position of a legatee of a partly finished work. The
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Beeching Commission had reported. The noble and learned Lord who preceded me on the Woolsack and the office which I inherited had done a certain amount of work upon what was by then a partly finished Bill. I had certain options in front of me. Obviously, I could start from the beginning again. I fancy that that would have taken three or four years, by which time there might have been another Lord Chancellor who had the same option. That was not really "on". I had to get on with the job. Secondly, I had to get Government approval. It is one thing to get Government approval if you are the Lord Chancellor who set up the Commission and if everyone knows the situation and what you were trying to do. But after the General Election we had a clean sweep. and I had to explain what it was about and why it was important.
It is never easy to get Government approval for a Bill. You have to get Parliamentary time, and it is obviously a very difficult thing to get a high place in the queue for any particular piece of legislation. Thirdly, I had an office which, as the noble and learned Lord said, had been extremely hardpressed. To produce a Bill of any proper dimensions and accuracy in the timetable which it was necessary for me to observe in order to get Government approval for a Bill at all, broadly speaking I had to set myself the task of seeing what was essential or easy. The essential and the easy had to be given priority over a great many of what I might call fringe benefits which I might have sought had I been looking for perfection or for a Bill in respect of which there was unlimited Parliamentary time. So I went for the Beeching proposals as a whole. I did what could be done administratively—and admittedly there were a number of recommendations outside the main purpose of the Bill—or alternatively that which I thought would not take up a great deal of unnecessary internal work or an unnecessary amount of Parliamentary time.
This is basically a radical Bill for the radical reform of the structure of certain of the courts, and although I have put into it as much as I thought we would take, if I put any more on the plate I would either have failed to get the Bill through in a Session or I would have failed to get through my colleagues the

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necessary approval in regard to it. Therefore, it does not necessarily follow from the fact that some of the particular recommendations of the Commission are not implemented in the Bill and that others have been dealt with administratively, that there is any policy difference in respect of this matter.
The noble and learned Lord began his speech by asking me a question about the draftsmanship of two of the earlier sections where the phrase occurs:
"by or on behalf of the Lord Chancellor".
I think I accept the explanation which the noble Lord the Lord Chief Justice gave in a subsequent speech. I do not think there is anything either difficult or sinister about it. It simply means that the Lord Chancellor can in fact delegate to the man on the spot some of the functions but retains his Parlimentary responsibility to this House for what is done. He has to answer for it, but he may in actual practice have delegated the power. A wide range of things have to be done in regard to which the Lord Chancellor's concurrence is necessary, but he remains the responsible Minister and therefore he has to concur. In some cases the presiding judge will do it; in other cases the circuit administrator may do it, and in other cases it may be done in his office.
As I pointed out to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, there is power by order now to increase the jurisdiction of the county court, a matter about which the noble and learned Lord asked. But it was of course recently raised to £750 and to £75 for registrars, and the advice I have been given is that the courts must be given time to absorb this increase in jurisdiction before a further step forward is made. I will be perfectly candid with the House. I should have liked this Bill to have done in relation to the county courts broadly speaking what has been done in relation to quarter sessions. I should like to amalgamate the jurisdiction of the county courts. But this is utterly out of the question at the present time. I suppose it would require another Commission, and it would need years of work. The result is that there we have left things as they are.
The noble and learned Lord asked about the juvenile appeal court which was recommended by the Beeching Commis-
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sion. It is the Government's intention that appeals in juvenile cases should continue to be heard by a legally qualified chairman and juvenile court justices. This will be provided for in the rules to be made under Clause 5 on how the Crown Court is to be constituted. But we see substantial administrative advantage in the administrative staff of the Crown Court being able to provide the infrastructure. We think this is a more flexible way of dealing with the same thing, and therefore we see advantages in having done it in this way. It is not that we reject the policy outlined in the Report.
The noble and learned Lord asked about affiliation appeals. There is, of course, room for the view that these should go to the Family Division of the High Court. But if they did it might involve bringing witnesses to London. Often, the issues are issues of fact, and lay justices bring their contribution to these issues. For the moment we have left them where they are. I confess that I have a hankering after domestic courts which would handle this and other kinds of issue and which would be somewhat differently constituted from either the magistrates' courts or the county courts as they now are. But that again is. I think, out of the question at the present time, although I hope that it will not be indefinitely out of the question.
The noble and learned Lord also asked whether there was anything in the eleven Schedules which I ought to have brought to the attention of the House and have not. It is rather difficult for me to answer this with complete candour or with complete certainty of being accurate. I felt that I could not take up the time of the House with a good deal of interesting material in the Schedules, but, on the whole, I thought I had done my duty by them.
It may be of interest to the House to notice the amendment of the House of Commons (Disqualification) Act, although perhaps it would be better discussed in another place. I took the view that we ought to rationalise the disqualification of Members of another place in relation to the tenure of judicial offices. One view, of course, would be that they ought not to be appointed to any of these positions. I did not myself take that view. I have always regretted that in recent years some

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of the more distinguished members of the Bar have not been able to secure the experience of public life which was open to them when I was younger; and I should like to retain the marriage (if I may put it in that way) between the practising profession and the public career of politics.
There were arguments both ways and your Lordships can see how it is presented in the Schedule. I thought that we ought to continue to allow part-time judges or recorders to be appointed from the ranks of the House of Commons, but that whole-time judges should be disqualified. The present limit of disqualification is not altogether rational. I feel that the Bill is about right. Apart from that, I do not think there is any other point in this great mass of material which I ought to have brought to the attention of the House on Second Reading.
The noble and learned Lord also asked about the justification for all-male or all-female juries. The real truth is that, broadly speaking, we retain the existing law as it is, largely because of the general reasons which I stated a moment or two ago. He asked also about the appointed day. I hope—though I am not promising—that it will be January 1, 1972, for all purposes. But that is a target and not a promise. The Morris Report on Jury Service is, strictly speaking, a matter for the Home Secretary and not for me. I cannot make any announcement. It has no Parliamentary time this Session, and I do not think that my right honourable friend has come to any other conclusion except that.
The only point of criticism that I noticed in the noble and learned Lord's speech related to the City of London. Well, that is a point of difference between him and me. I think it is extraordinary that two such different animals as he and I are should differ so little, because we have had very different lives and we have very different outlooks on many things. But in this respect I have a wholly different approach from him to the matter. I think I share the view that my noble and learned friend Lord Dilhorne voiced in the course of his speech; that the delays in the Central Criminal Court are not in any way due to the fact that the Mayor sits with the High Court Judge on the Bench. Therefore I could not see the
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relevance that that kind of observation had to the particular point at issue. The truth is that the Mayor has sat on the High Court Bench without interfering for I do not know how many hundreds of years, and I do not see why we ought to change the custom. It does nobody any harm, and it would cause a great deal of ill-feeling if one changed it.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, delicately suggested that I might be influenced by the friendship of my Party for the City of London. I equally delicately, I hope, venture to suggest to him that on this occasion he might have shown a slightly unreasonable prejudice against the City who have, at great expense to their own funds, undertaken a great public burden. The new courts going up there will greatly ease the situation. I have been in touch with the Recorder about the delays in the Central Criminal Court. One of the reasons for the delays in the Central Criminal Court, apart from anything else, is that it is such a convenient venue that from all the way round London justices commit there. What I have, which is the reality of power, is the circuit administrator, and the transference of staff.
If the Mayor and Aldermen, or the Sheriffs—or whoever may be the people entitled- like to sit on the Bench with a High Court Judge as technically members of the Court, I am quite happy to let them stay there. Indeed, I was sorry when the noble and learned Lord stopped me from being a magistrate. I have never sat as a magistrate, and I never wanted to as I was far too busy; but the fact was that for "donkey's years" Privy Counsellors were automatically magistrates. He took that away from me—I did not really understand why. This just indicates that we are rather different animals. I did not want to sit, and it made no difference, but he thought that as part of the process of modernisation he ought to stop the magistrates from including ex officio, Privy Counsellors. Well, good luck to him But I would not have done it that way.
Similarly, I remember that when I was Lord President of the Council I was on the Commission of Assize. I did not care whether I was on the Commission of Assize or not, but my circuit, oddly enough, used to read out my name with that of the judge because they thought it

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was rather a joke on commission day to have read the rather strange figure of the Lord President who was also a member of the South-Eastern Circuit. Again that was all abolished; but that only indicates that the noble and learned Lord is rather a different person from me. I cannot complain that it has done any harm; I hope he will not complain that I have done any harm by leaving the Lord Mayor undisturbed on the Bench of the Central Criminal Court with a High Court Judge. It is not a matter which is going to bring the administration of justice into disrepute whatever we choose to do.
The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice gave me a valuable degree of support in his remarks about the Bill. He stressed, as I would have stressed, the importance of flexibility, and stressing, I was glad to hear, the explanation offered for the drafting in Clause 4(2). As regards the rehearing of appeals at quarter sessions, he did answer the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, that in the absence of a transcript you are pretty well bound to have a rehearing. I am afraid my own approach to the problem is even more pragmatic: that it would have involved a rather radical change in the law which would have put too much on the capacity of the whole judicial system and of the Office to absorb in addition to what I am already doing. I shared the view, up to a point, both of the noble and learned Lord and of the Lord Chief Justice on the matter.
I was glad to welcome my old colleague, if he will allow me to say so, the noble Lord, Lord Fletcher, on what was his maiden speech. He will be a great addition to our debates; both our general debates and our specialist legal debates such as we are having now. I am very glad indeed of the remarks which he made. I shall come back to some of them when I turn to deal with part of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman.
The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, asked me a number of questions, some of which I may be able to answer. The first was on Clause 16(6), about barring Circuit Judges from practice, which also led him to a disquisition about the desirability of High Court Judges retiring from practice. The actual clause on which he hung his argument
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is only a simplified version of the County Courts Act 1959, Section 6. Following on our general policy, we maintained the state of the law exactly as it was, except where we considered it necessary to reform it. It is, of course, perfectly arguable whether one puts in that kind of thing if we are discussing the matter de novo.
As regards the possibility that the Lord Chancellor could impose a condition of appointment on judges who afterwards found that they had made a mesalliance with the Bench, I can only point out to the House that such a condition, if I were to impose it, would be unenforceable, so far as I can see. Perhaps noble and learned Lords who are better qualified than I am can think of a way in which I could enforce it; but personally I cannot. I venture to tell High Court Judges, when I interview them before appointment, that I regard their irremovability by Parliament as one reason for treating the career as a permanent one, and I tell them that I think they should approach the Bench with the enthusiasm of a bridegroom approaching marriage, or of a priest approaching priesthood. Whether I can go further than that, I really do not know. But I have not yet thought of anything more effective than a little homily—which I am sure will have little more effect than my other homilies. I hope, none the less, I shall inspire them to actions of one sort of another.
The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Dilhorne, also asked me about locations, citing Devizes and Northampton. I would tell him this in general, which I hope will satisfy him up to a point: that the locations are not yet sacrosanct. They will begin to be crystallised when a start is made on building the new courts, because we shall not be able to go back on them when we have erected our grand new palaces of justice. In the meantime, I am still open to persuasion, both about the boundaries of the circuits and about the status of individual towns.
I must issue a warning that I receive a great number of representations from individual places who wish to retain the equivalent of their quarter sessions and assizes, and I am afraid that the great majority of them must expect a fairly negative answer. The whole purpose of the reform would be defeated if every time there was a strong constituency point

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to be made in another place, or the local trades council, county council or town council thought it was an insult to their town that we were closing down the quarter sessions or assizes, or were closing the assizes for civil business, they were to have their way. I am not really a very hard-hearted man, but I am afraid that I shall have to be fairly hard-hearted about this particular matter, and I hope that I may have the support of those who realise what is at stake in turning down most of the requests. That does not mean to say that individual cases will not be considered again. Obviously, Devizes might be one case; and also Salisbury, which is part of the same complex.
Passing over the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, for a moment, I come to the noble Lord, Lord Cawley, who raised two very different points. One was to do with patent appeals. Clause 45, as he pointed out, provides for appeals on points of law to lie from the Patents Appeal Tribunal to the Court of Appeal. This will in fact remedy one of the main weaknesses of the existing structure, in which, since the Patents Appeal Tribunal is an inferior tribunal, appeal by application for an order of certiorari to Divisional Court is sometimes the only remedy. The rest of the recommendations of the Banks Committee, which are of a more radical kind, are the departmental responsibility of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. All that I am really able to tell my noble friend this afternoon is that my right honourable friend is at present considering the recommendations of the Committee, including those relating to appellate jurisdiction, and hopes to make an announcement about his intentions in the near future.
My noble friend also raised questions, as did my noble friends Lord Ilford and Lord Milverton, about the local authorities. Clearly, one has to distinguish here between the temporary provisions of transition, before the new system really gets into play, when one is dealing with existing court buildings only and the ultimate aim where some court buildings will be kept for permanent use and others will be built quite afresh by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment.
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As regards the transitional provisions, and indeed as regards compulsory acquisition generally, I think I can tell all three of my noble friends that compulsory power will be used only as a last resort. In regard to some of the points which they raised, acquisition will be restricted to buildings which are wholly or primarily court houses in the sense in which everybody would understand them to be court houses; that is to say, mayors may remain with their sherry in their parlours, eating their bread and honey, without fear that the Lord Chancellor will seek to intrude. My powers will not be used for the acquisition of any of the administrative centres of a local authority. Indeed, I hope that we may settle all these complicated matters by good will and by negotiation, without the use of any compulsory power at all, although it is of course there in the last resort.
I was grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, for his intervention. He quite rightly stressed the importance of the independence of judges, and I feel sure that anyone who held my office would be wholeheartedly with him in that respect. I rather shy, if I may say so, at the description of the Lord Chancellor's Office as a Ministry of Justice. No Minister of Justice sits on the Woolsack as Speaker of any Legislative Assembly of which I am aware, except the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain. Many Ministers of Justice not merely appoint judges, but also look after prisons and start prosecutions. To my mind, this would be something altogether dreadful in the British system and I would fight that in the last ditch.
What we have, however, is a centralised administrative court service. Admittedly, members of my Party are against centralisation and this runs counter to our general philosophy; but I am convinced that it is necessary in this case. The administration of justice is, broadly speaking, accepted as a function of central authority in the great majority of civilised States. Obviously, America, as in everything else, is to some extent an exception, because the Americans regard their States for some purposes as independent entities at the base of their Constitution. But I think the administration of justice is a central function and a function of Central Government. If it

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were not, this Bill would be wholly wrong in its conception, because it does centralise. But I hope that the Lord Chancellor is not an empire builder, and he certainly will not encroach on the independence of the judges.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, raised a point on Clause 19 (2). I understand that the Lord Chief Justice is going to move an Amendment requiring the consent of a High Court Judge before he is the victim of this particular power; and if he does move it I shall accept it in Committee. So that would meet the noble and learned Lord's point. He also asked about Clause 25, which deals with the Queen's Bench masters. The modest fact about this is that a Royal Commission recommended this as long ago as 1915, so I can hardly wear the red robe of a revolutionary in this respect. The Royal Commission of 1915 had advice from such eminent and respectable lawyers as Lord Haldane, Lord Muir Mackenzie (who was in those days the Lord Chancellor's Permanent Secretary and held office for about forty years), Lord Wrenbury and Sir Thomas Heath, who was a Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. Lord Loreburn held an intermediate position which certainly was not that of the status quo. So I think I am in very good company if I have erred there.
I should have thought it was constitutionally desirable that the person who appointed to remunerative offices paid out of the Consolidated Fund ought to be somebody responsible to Parliament, rather than somebody not responsible to Parliament who could be removed only by a very complicated procedure. One has to recognise that the appointments to masterships have caused at least two Lord Chancellors to lose their positions in the last 250 years. I should have thought that the noble and learned Lord would be only too glad to get rid of this dangerous possibility, even although it may happen only about once a century. However, I do not think this need cause us any ill-feeling, because, as I said, I shall not dream of exercising any of these powers under Clause 25 without the closest consultation—which indeed I always have with heads of Divisions on any
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matter of importance affecting judicial patronage.
This brings me back to the only allegedly controversial point which has been raised during the course of this debate; that is the, to my mind, relatively unimportant question of Clause 15(3). The fact of the matter is that in relation to that, I have followed exactly the same principle as I have followed in relation to almost every other feature of the Bill; that is to say, I have maintained the status quo. The reason why I have maintained the status quo is quite a simple one; that this is a Bill about the structure of the courts, and not a Bill about the structure of the legal profession.
I myself share the view of the noble and learned Lord the Master of the Rolls. As every noble Lord who has spoken has said, the test is, of course, the public interest. But it seems to be generally accepted, even by those who want to change, and even by those who want to insert the change into this Bill by a side wind, which I think is most inappropriate, that what is wanted on the Circuit Bench is what there is now; namely, very considerable experience of trying cases—I use the verb in the American sense—and taking part in litigation in court. It is open to question how many solicitors possess that necessary qualification, or whether the Law Society really understands what a very high standard of experience is demanded by Lord Chancellors in making appointments to the Bench at the present time.
The noble Lord, Lord Fletcher, used the phrase—I think not in relation to his own feelings on the subject, but in relation to the feelings of others: "insult to the solicitors' profession." I hope that nobody will run away with that sort of idea—I am the last man to bite the hand that has fed me for 36 years. Indeed, two of the hands that have fed me at one time or another have been those of the noble Lord, Lord Fletcher, and the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, who has now blown out, as well as having blown in and blown off during the course of the debate. But really I do not think any question of prestige arises here. If I thought that,, of course I should have to concede that a great number of chartered accountants or patent agents who

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I know have all the qualities necessary to be judges. So, perhaps, have some of the Bishops. But I do not regard it as an insult, either to the Bishops or to the patent agents or the accountants, that I do not include them at the moment in the status quo for appointment to the Judicial Bench.
There are a good many misconceptions about this matter. Of course, as I think one noble Lord said (it may have been my noble friend Lord Cawley) the fact is that, given complete transferability between the two branches of the profession, there really is not an arguable case on either side. By the present qualifications—I forget what the actual statutory provisions are—a solicitor who becomes a barrister can count his years as a solicitor as part of the qualification for this purpose. The idea that one thinks that they cannot be judges is laughable when one considers that Lord Justice Widgery, Mr. Justice Plowman, Mr. Justice Withers Payne, Mr. Justice Megarry, Mr. Justice Caulfield and Mr. Justice Wien were all solicitors. So, on the County Court Bench, were Judge Rowe Harding, Judge Steel, Judge Harold Brown, Judge Wallis-Jones, Judge Brooke Willis and Judge Curtis. The idea that there is any prejudice against this profession when it has already provided such a high proportion of both Benches is little short of ridiculous.
But the point, really, is this. The Circuit Bench will of course be that much more exacting than the County Court Bench. The only change I have made in the law with regard to qualification is that I have made the qualification ten years' continuous practice, instead of seven. The requirement of advocacy in the courts is going to be a little more onerous in the future. The requirement is a high one because they will now have to try a great number of what will be virtually High Court cases, both, I think, in a civil capacity and more particularly in a criminal capacity. Nobody pretends that there are many criminal courts of higher jurisdiction—that is, criminal courts trying cases on indictment—in which solicitors have a right of audience as advocates. As I explained to begin with, I have maintained the status quo there: solicitors will be admitted to those
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courts where they already have a right of audience and where a case is made out, but in the main they have not got it.
I myself would not contemplate with anything like conviction appointing to the Circuit Bench somebody who had never appeared in a criminal court at assize or Crown Court level over a number of years. Occasionally, of course, there are exceptions. The Vice Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster would probably be such an exception. And, equally, some of the official referees who are also Circuit Judges might occasionally be exceptions—although I think that already, even in my short tenure of office, I have appointed more official referees as commissioners of assize than most Lord Chancellors. But in fact considerable experience at Crown Court level as an advocate would be necessary.
I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, that it is all very well to laugh at these arguments, or to suggest that these things are really of very small matter. But the fact is that if we allowed this to happen it would be fundamentally altering the structure of the legal profession, because it would mean raising the whole question of the right of audience in the higher courts. This may be desirable, and it may be a battle that we shall one day have to fight. But I said quite clearly in the course of my opening remarks that I do not want to put more on this plate than deals with the structure of the courts; and I regard this raising of the position of solicitors as an attempt to introduce into a Bill about the structure of the courts a rather fundamental provision about the relationship between the two branches of the legal profession which may be one day desirable but for which there is no case here.
When I am reminded of the Beeching Commission's recommendations, I reply that it must be remembered that not only was it a majority recommendation only, but it was a recommendation in the terms, "We are inclined to think", not, "We recommend"; and that is not very strong ground for a Lord Chancellor to act on. When I add that the Commission did not take any evidence on the subject (they did not. so far as I know, consult the Lord Chancellor's Office, which might have given some quite useful evidence; and as far as I know they did not consult anybody else, before being "inclined to

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think" in that rather tentative kind of way) it seems to me to be very unstable ground on which to ask me to act.
The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, referred to the fact, which is the case, that solicitors were eligible for the paid employment of chairmen and deputy chairmen of quarter sessions. So they are. I wonder if your Lordships really would have gathered from what the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, said that that power has existed for some thirty years. And how many people do you think have been appointed in that time? Two. So it does not really look as if there is this enormous queue of available talent being held back only by a restrictive practice of a Lord Chancellor who happens to have practised at the Bar for most of his life.
The fact of the matter, my Lords (and I will say this both to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, who is not here, and to the noble Lord, Lord Fletcher, who is), is that the one thing they did not say about this job is that they would like to have it for themselves. I will tell the House why they would not like to have it for themselves. They are far too prosperous where they are, and it really would ruin them. It is all very well to talk about their desire for public service, but if a senior partner in a first-class solicitors' office, who is the head of a really big business with, I suppose, an invested capital of £500,000, is so full of public zeal that he wants to become a county court judge or its equivalent, then all I can say is that he needs his head examined.
My Lords, I went to the Bar not because I thought going to the Bar was much superior to becoming a solicitor but for four very good reasons. The first was that my father was a barrister, and I had come to think it was a good thing to be—which does not involve any insult to any other profession. The second was that I do not like writing letters, and solicitors do practically nothing else. The third was that I do not keep accounts, and solicitors have to keep not only one set of accounts but at least two, or they get turned out; and the last was that I cannot be trusted with my own money, let alone anybody else's. All these are good reasons for going to the Bar, provided you have a fairly lucid mind and a capacity for marshalling facts and
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cross-examining and examining witnesses, which you can acquire by training if you can pass the necessary number of A-levels. So I went to the Bar with a considerable measure of hope—and look where I have ended up!
A solicitor is a very different kind of animal indeed. He does not spend most of his time doing advocacy except in his early days, when he is sent off by the senior partner who cannot stand him in the office; and when he finds that it is rather fun, he then transfers to the Bar and becomes a Judge, as Lord Justice Widgery did. If, on the other hand, he does not like it at all, he becomes a senior partner in Goodman, Derrick and Co., and manages to accumulate a huge fortune, which he would not have done at the Bar. And as, when you are at the Bar, you cannot save very much, owing to the penal rates of taxation—and even when you leave the Bar you are not now allowed your post-retirement earnings—of course this is a great inducement to barristers to join the Circuit Bench, and the Lord Chancellor has his fishing line out on almost every well-known member of the Bar to see whom he can bring into his keep-net. The result, of course, is that this is a very convenient arrangement. Whether at some time it will need alteration, I do not know. What I am pretty sure of is that we should be mad to try to alter it in this Bill, which is really not about that subject at all. I thank your Lordships very kindly for being so patient with me. I hope that I have set out what has been passing through my mind during the debate.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

WATER RESOURCES BILL [H.L.]
7.10 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Sandford.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD JESSEL in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Discharge of water by or by agreement with river authorities]:
LORD ILFORD LORD ILFORD moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 26, at end insert ("save that in its application to compensation under this subsection, the said subsection (5) shall have effect as if after the words "section 2" therein there were inserted the words "(other than subsection (3))"").
The noble Lord said: I think I can explain the purpose of this Amendment quite briefly. It is at first sight a complicated piece of draftsmanship and it does not become any more translucent when one looks through it. Clause 1 incorporates in the Bill a section of the Land Compensation Act 1961. The section incorporated includes a provision that only one expert witness shall be called in a case before the Lands Tribunal. There is a discretion in the Tribunal to allow more, but the rule stated in the Act is quite firm: there is only to be one expert witness at the trial.
When the question is the assessment of land value it may be that one expert witness is usually sufficient. The issues are not difficult and no doubt one can get on quite well with only one expert. This section is now being applied to quite different classes of persons, to water undertakings, river authorities and so forth. The subjects which arise in the disputed case in which those bodies are involved are really quite different from those arising on an assessment for compensation of land. They are quite different things. They involve different problems and many of them are of a highly scientific character. There are questions of water pollution and matters of that sort involving examination at some length of quite complicated and involved scientific problems. That being so, it seems that the Tribunal, if they are to give their decision properly, will require the assistance of more than one expert witness. I ask the Committee to leave out this provision, as the Amendment proposes, in order to allow more than one witness to be called if the parties consider the evidence of more than one witness is necessary. I beg to move.
LORD SANDFORD: If the situation was as the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, fears it to be I think there would indeed be
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grounds for this Amendment, but I am advised that his fears can reasonably easily be allayed. The purpose of the restriction—and there is a restriction on the number of expert witnesses in cases such as these—is to avoid unduly protracted hearings and unnecessary expense to the parties. But the Tribunal has discretion to allow more than one expert witness on each side, and it exercises this discretion when there is a case for doing so. Very often the parties reach agreement among themselves about the number of expert witnesses, and the normal practice on tribunals is to accept such agreements. As the noble Lord says, there may be a number of cases where the matters in dispute are highly technical and the Lands Tribunal already deal with a number of very technical cases in other fields. The purpose of giving them a discretion over the number of expert witnesses is to allow for such technical cases. So far as is known, there has been no complaint or difficulty over the way in which they exercise their discretion.
The cases brought under the present Bill are not likely to be very numerous and they will not necessarily be particularly technical, although some may be. I think noble Lords will agree that it would be really curious to take the matter out of the Tribunal's hands in this type of case while leaving it in their hands in every other type. Moreover, it would create definite anomalies; for while there would be no restrictions on the number of expert witnesses in cases under this Bill, there would continue to be restrictions on those brought under the 1963 Act. It is for those reasons that I would assure the noble Lord that his fears are groundless and that there is no need to incorporate this Amendment to secure what he wishes.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: I quite expected the noble Lord speaking for the Government to say that, of course, the Tribunal had discretion and was always likely to exercise that discretion reasonably. But I think it really goes a little far to say that the position is all right under this Bill. If one turns to the actual section in the Land Compensation Act 1961, one sees that Section 2(3) quite specifically says:
"Not more than one expert witness on either side shall be heard unless the Lands Tribunal otherwise directs; except…"

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where there is a claim for minerals and so forth, and then it sets out the exceptions. This must mean that the Tribunal, following those directions under this clause will normally and in nearly every case allow only one expert witness. What we are asking for is not that there should automatically be more than one expert witness, but that the Tribunal should not be quite so rigidly bound as I feel that it now is—speaking not from a lawyer's point of view but in the plain sense of the words under the Act. I cannot see what harm there could be if our Amendment were accepted so that the Tribunal could have as many experts as necessary in a particular case.
LORD SANDFORD: I am sorry that I have not been able to reassure the noble Lord, but the Lands Tribunal deal with a number of cases at least as technical as these case and do exercise their discretion. Therefore the fears of both noble Lords are groundless on that score. Furthermore, if we accept this Amendment there would arise the anomaly that for the particular purposes of this Bill (which is only an amending Bill for the 1963 Act) we shall have introduced a further degree of discretion in the Lands Tribunals but shall have left the matter as it now stands in respect of the whole of the rest of the Bill. I think that noble Lords will agree that that would be a curious anomaly.
LORD KENNET: Noble Lords on this side of the House—both of them—have heard Lord Ilford's fears and the Government's attempt to allay them, and Lord Waldegrave's reassertion of those fears and the Government's renewed attempts to allay them. Speaking as I think I am, for this side, I am inclined to think that perhaps this restriction is one that might be got rid of, and we invite the Government to consider the matter again between now and a later stage to see whether this restriction, even if it is not always enforced, might not be done away with. On the point of anomalies, the noble Lord will agree that all democracy and all democratic law is a tissue of anomalies and none the worse for that.
LORD SANDFORD: Of course I can give the assurance that the restriction can be looked at and considered in a wider context, but I am sure that it would be
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a mistake to consider an Amendment in this very narrow context.
LORD ILFORD: My noble friend has not convinced me by his assurances, but in view of what he has said I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
EARL WALDEGRAVE EARL WALDEGRAVE moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 2, line 4, leave out ("(3)") and insert ("(4)").
The noble Earl said: With the permission of the Committee in moving Amendment No. 2, I should like to speak also to Amendment No. 3. I have some little embarrassment in moving these Amendments, because I have the honour to be the vice-president of the River Authorities Association and it might be thought by members of the river authorities that these Amendments (and also Amendment No. 6, which I hope to move later) are Amendments whose only origin can have been that the river authorities might be unreasonable or intransigent, or do things not in the public interest. Of course that is the furthest possible thought from my mind; I do not wish to feel that these Amendments are unduly critical of river authorities. But they would have the effect of removing from river authorities, for the purpose of agreements under this Bill, the absolute discretion that they enjoy at present under Section 81(3) of the 1963 Act. I am sure that the river authorities will normally use this discretion wisely, but when legislating I think it wise to do so as well for—shall we say?—the sinners as for the saints, although I am sure that the river authorities will normally be saints.
This absolute discretion could be thought to go much too far and to be too one-sided. It might be thought that it could be used either to secure conditions which are excessively unfavourable to the statutory water undertakers (in respect of which I declare an interest as I happen to be associated with statutory water undertakers) or to frustrate their intentions altogether. The new subsection would be a more reasonable provision than Section 81(3) of the Act. I would stress that there is a real apprehension here. We think that if the procedures in the Bill were to be followed, absolute discretion could lead to a situation in which

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a river authority might insist on including in an agreement provisions which appeared to them to be necessary or expedient; and there could be no redress for a statutory water undertaker who might regard such provisions as being far from necessary.
Under Part IV of the Act of 1963, which deals with licences to abstract or impound, in Sections 38 to 41 there is a right of appeal to the Minister which could be exercised either in the event of a refusal to grant a licence by a river authority, or in respect of conditions sought to be imposed by the authority; or, indeed, in the event of failure by a river authority to determine an application for a licence. I am not able to find anywhere such a right of appeal existing in connection with agreements under the Bill as drafted. Yet such agreements for discharges (that is what this Bill does: it brings forward machinery for dealing with discharges; whereas the principal Act seems to have dealt only with agreement for impounding and abstractions) may be quite as important to a statutory water undertaker as a licence to abstract or impound. The subsection which I now seek to add to the Bill would at least put the bodies on an equal footing when it came to negotiating the terms of an agreement, even though it would still not provide for a right of appeal to the Minister for arbitration. I very much hope, therefore, that the Government will be able to accept the Amendment and think-that this request is not unreasonable.
7.25 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: I think it would be convenient to deal with both these Amendments together. Once again I hope to be able to assure the noble Earl that his fears about the disadvantage under which any statutory water undertaker who enters into this kind of agreement might be, are groundless. The words in the 1963 Act to which exception is being taken are:
"… as appear to the river authority necessary or expedient …",
but it seems right to include them in the Act because, after all, the object of the Act, which this Bill amends, is to facilitate the performance of the river authorities' functions. In any case, the words in question are primarily declaratory. It
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certainly does not—and this is the first thing I should like to stress—confer any compulsory powers on the river authority. It does not put the authority in the position of being able to impose an agreement on a water undertaker. The river authority will consider the terms of any agreement proposed in the light of its statutory functions, but, equally, the statutory water undertaker will consider them in the light of its own interests; and no agreement, however hard the river authority may insist, will be concluded unless the terms of the agreement are acceptable to both sides. So I do not think it matters how much of a sinner the river authority may be; the saintly water undertaker is not in a position of having an agreement imposed on it against its will.
Furthermore, under Clause 1(4) noble Lords will see that there is a further safeguard; not just a right of appeal to the Minister but the fact that the Secretary of State's consent is required to any agreement arrived at under this clause. Therefore I think the Amendment is unnecessary, and the points which the noble Earl is anxious about and particularly wants to safeguard are in fact doubly safeguarded.
LORD KENNET: I think that the Government are wrong. The 1963 Act says that such agreement may contain such financial provisions as the river authority shall consider desirable and necessary. That means that if the authority does not consider a financial provision desirable or necessary, the agreement may not contain it. The Amendment gets rid of that and says that the agreement may contain financial provisions, whether or not they are considered necessary or desirable by either party to the agreement.
LORD ILFORD: The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, is right about this. It is always a desirable thing that when two people enter into negotiations they should do so on an equal footing, and that does not happen under this clause.
LORD SANDFORD: I agree that in a Bill amending an Act to do with the functions of river authorities there is bound to be a certain bias in favour of the river authorities, but the bias does not go anything like so far as the noble Earl, Lord Waldegrave, fears. It does

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not enable a river authority to impose an agreement on a statutory water undertaker against its will. So far from there being no appeal to the Minister, the agreement cannot be ratified and confirmed except with the Minister's consent. To that extent I believe that the fears of the noble Earl are not well-founded, though I would agree with what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: May I add a word? I understand the wish of my noble friend Lord Waldegrave to strengthen the standing of the water undertakers—for the moment discarding his hat as Vice-President of the Association of River Authorities, of which body I have the honour to be President, and therefore I wear only their hat. But when we are looking at this little amending Bill we must look at the broad purpose of the 1963 Act which is the present Act; and the broad purpose of that Act was to set up an authority to manage rivers. It is not possible to get satisfactory management of rivers, with all their diverse interests, unless one single authority is made responsible for doing it—and heaven knows! it is difficult enough then.
When setting up the river authorities under the 1963 Act Parliament had many long, complicated and very interesting debates, very much on this theme. Those particularly interested in water undertakers put forward ideas that water undertakers were the right bodies to do this, rather than the river boards which existed at that time. But, in the event, the Government of the day—and Parliament supported them; there was no Division and it was agreed on all sides—thought that this was the best solution, that it would be better, despite the acknowledged and great technical and commercial strength of the water undertakings, to make these new bodies, the river authorities, which broadly speaking were the old river boards with new powers and functions grafted on to them, responsible. I suggest that the basis of my noble friend's thought here is to strengthen the status of the water undertakings vis-à-vis the river authorities in this context. I should have thought that that was a mistake. By all means let us be sure that there are adequate safeguards, but for heaven's sake! do not weaken the
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responsibility or powers of the body which is ultimately responsible for managing the whole river. And only one body can do that.
That must be true of this Bill which is dealing with the discharge of water. One authority must be responsible for making up its mind, subject to the safeguards that are here, upon what is the best arrangement with regard to the discharge of water, in the interests of the abstractors, including all public water undertakings. Though I understand my noble friend's point, he is really opposing the philosophy of the 1963 Act in asking for this concession. I do not think that makes sense. I should have thought that, if anything, there were many more arguments for strengthening the position of the river authorities in order to carry out the big tasks they already have and the much bigger tasks which come on them every year in order to meet the demands of the nation for extra water.
Therefore I hope that the Committee will not be persuaded, even by the persuasive manner in which my noble friend presented his case, because I think that the substantial point made by my noble friend Lord Sandford, that at the end of the day the Minister's consent is required before: an agreement of this kind can become operative, is sufficient safeguard to make sure that no injustice is going to be done here. So I would most earnestly hope that my noble friend will hold his hand and say that there is force in the arguments which have been put to him.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: I hope that your Lordships will not be burdened by a hat-changing operation between my noble friend and myself. I am now rather puzzled. When I introduced this Amendment, I was at pains to say that I was not doing so for the motives which my noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford has imputed to me: that is. as a means of getting at the river authorities and strengthening the hands of the water undertakings. What I was trying to do. putting it in the simplest possible terms, was this. I was asking why, if it is right that there should be a power of appeal to the Minister if an undertaking cannot come to an agreement with a river authority on an impounding or abstraction, there is no such right of appeal to the Minister if they cannot get

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an agreement with the river authority for a discharge? In his reply my noble friend Lord Sandford said that there was a right of appeal to the Minister, but my noble friends have advised me that there is not. I suppose that it must come under Section 81 of the principal Act. If my noble friend can show me exactly where it comes, then he has exploded a good bomb under me and I should be much inclined to withdraw my Amendment.
LORD SANDFORD: I am afraid that either I did not make myself clear or my noble friend misunderstood me. I did not say that there was a right of appeal. So far from there being a right of appeal, there is the positive necessity for the Minister to give his consent to an agreement, which I should have thought is an even stronger safeguard from the point of view of the river authority.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: I am still not happy about this matter and I wonder whether my noble friend can at least give an undertaking that he will consider it, and whether I may leave it open to come back to on Report stage.
LORD ILFORD: I cannot add much to what has already been said. I have had some difficulty in finding the provision for this appeal. It does not astonish me that my noble friend has come to the conclusion that in fact there is no appeal. That being so, I think that the best thing to do is to withdraw the Amendment and perhaps bring it forward again on Report stage.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 agreed to.
7.36 p.m.
LORD MOLSON LORD MOLSON moved Amendment No. 4:
After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause:
Orders authorising construction of works and discharge of water
".Any order made under section 67 of the principal Act authorising the carrying out in a National Park or in an area designated as an area of outstanding natural beauty of engineering or building operations for the purpose of or in connection with the discharge of water of such a nature or size as will have a materially adverse effect on the natural beauty of the countryside or on flora, fauna or geological or physiographical features of
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special interest shall be subject to special parliamentary procedure and any question as to whether the engineering or building operations to be authorised by the order fall within the terms of this subsection shall be determined by the Minister after consultation with the Countryside Commission and his decision shall be final."
The noble Lord said: On Second Reading I pointed out that the Water Resources Act 1963 had effectively but, I thought perhaps inadvertently, removed a valuable safeguard which amenity interests had previously enjoyed, and I indicated that I should move Amendments at Committee stage to restore the safeguard. Where Her Majesty's Government are seeking to repair an oversight in the drafting of the Bill by the Parliamentary draftsman, I thought they might be tolerant in looking at an Amendment which I moved, where perhaps there was an oversight on my part in not quite realising what we had lost under the drafting of the 1963 Act.
The Act of 1963 substitutes a licensing system for the provisions of Section 23 of the Act of 1945 enabling orders to be made to authorise the compulsory acquisition of water rights. Having made this substitution of procedure, the Act of 1963 repealed those provisions of Section 23 of the 1945 Act and consequently those of the Water Act 1948 enabling orders containing those provisions to be made subject to special Parliamentary procedure. The Amendment I am now moving seeks to restore the availability of special Parliamentary procedure in the case of these orders.
If your Lordships will allow me to take advantage of the flexibility of the procedure of the House, I should like to speak both to this Amendment and to my subsequent Amendment, explaining the differences between them and why I prefer the first and hope that your Lordships will accept it, but also stating why, on the principle that half a loaf is better than no bread, if the first Amendment is not acceptable, I should propose to move the second.
As your Lordships are aware, the special Parliamentary procedure is a system by which a Joint Committee of both Houses, sitting upstairs, with the advantage of counsel and expert witnesses, with examination and cross-examination, where maps and diagrams can be pro-

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duced, finds it is possible to explore exactly the problems which are raised. This procedure, which dates from 1945, was largely designed for the express purpose of Water Orders. It was explained by Mr. Morrison in another place that it was with a special view to the Water Act of 1945 that this special Parliamentary procedure was introduced. It has the great advantage that not only has it the machinery for going into the merits of a complicated technical system of this kind, but the Joint Committee is able to amend the Order. I hope therefore that it will appear reasonable that in the case of Orders of this kind, which before 1963 would have been subject to special Parliamentary procedure, this procedure should be restored. If that is not acceptable, then I should be disposed to move my second Amendment, which provides that Orders of this kind should come within the section of the Act of 1963 which provides that such an Order may be annulled by an adverse vote in either House.
The first Amendment is confined entirely to National Parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty. In the case of the second Amendment, where it is a rougher bludgeon which it is proposed to use, and one which I am sure would be very much less effective, I am proposing that it should be of general application. It is surely wrong that in a matter of this importance Parliament should not retain in its own hands the ultimate authority for deciding whether an Order, which may be of great importance and affect a large area of great beauty and of interest to the country as a whole, should be dealt with by the Minister, based no doubt on the findings of an inspector—although, as we were reminded last night, the views of the Minister may differ from those of the inspector. Surely it is wrong that Parliament should abandon completely its control.
The reason why I prefer the special Parliamentary procedure which was devised for this special purpose is that annulment by the Negative Resolution procedure is such a clumsy weapon. It is a clumsy weapon for a number of reasons. In the first place, in a matter of this kind, where it is important to advance technical arguments and to prove facts, it does not lend itself to debate on the Floor of the House. Allegations
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may be made and contradicted, and it is quite impossible for the House as a whole to form any informed opinion as to which of the two technical arguments is right. In the second place, there is no chance of amendment: it is a matter of either accepting or rejecting the Order. When it is a matter of rejecting an Order which has been put forward by a responsible body, and has been approved by the Minister, or saying that it should be thrown out and that the whole thing must begin again from square one, naturally any responsible legislative body is reluctant to throw the Order out.
Finally—and this is argumentum ab dominos—your Lordships normally decide that you will not throw out an Order that has been passed by another place. There have been two exceptions to that convention. One was when the noble Earl, Lord Longford, sought to throw out an Order relating to the Prison Commissioners; and the other was when the Conservative Opposition sought to throw out (and succeeded) an Order in relation to Rhodesia. But apart from those two exceptional cases, which perhaps we should not normally wish to treat as precedents, your Lordships are not disposed to throw out any Order of this kind.
Therefore, although it may be advantageous for the sake of constitutional propriety to retain a power of this kind, as would be done under my second Amendment, it certainly would not be the effective and precise instrument that would be provided by my first Amendment, providing for the Special Parliamentary Procedure to apply. For those reasons, I beg to move the first Amendment standing in my name.
LORD SANDFORD: It may be convenient if, with the agreement of the Committee, I intervene briefly at this stage to make three small points. First, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Molson, that it is convenient to take the two Amendments together. Secondly, I would mention that I am not absolutely certain that the Amendment that has actually been moved falls entirely within the scope of this Bill, which has to do with the discharge of waters, because it also refers to works in connection with water undertakings. The third, and most

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important, point I would make is that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has considerable sympathy with what the noble Lord is seeking to achieve here, and I feel reasonably certain that, if not at this stage then at a later stage, it will be possible to go some way towards meeting him. But before indicating more precisely what I mean by that, I should like to hear what other noble Lords have to say.
7.47 p.m.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: I have listened with great interest to my noble friend Lord Molson moving his Amendment, and indeed discussing both his new clauses. I say at once that I sympathise with his general wish that these important and very sensitive issues should be able to find their way before Parliament. Therefore I am with him in principle. I am doubtful about his first new clause relating to Special Parliamentary Procedure. I thing it is rather an elaborate procedure, and I presume that that is why it has been so little used. It has one specific disadvantage, which I imagine would be the same as the disadvantage of the Private Bill procedure. The Private Bill procedure, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, will remember with a certain trauma, has been much used in recent years in order to promote these developments required by river authorities, either acting on their own or jointly as water undertakings, because of the defect in the 1963 Act which this amending Bill now sets out to cure.
I am advised—and I believe it is correct advice—that where the Private Bill procedure is used it is impossible for the Minister to order a public local inquiry, because Parliament would consider that the Private Bill procedure, with its very full machinery for providing for petitioners to appear before Committees in both Houses, had given sufficient opportunity for objection to the petition. My experience, in so far as I have been dealing with one of these major water conservation schemes, is that, so far as the people affected by the development are concerned, what they want above all is a public local inquiry to which they can go, without any cost, without any inconvenience to themselves, in order to express their views, and their objections to the proposal. This means much more to
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them than any opportunity to come before a Committee here, either on a Private Bill or, for the same reasons, a special Committee set up under the Special Parliamentary Procedure.
I do not know—but no doubt others better informed will know—exactly what the rules are with regard to a special Committee set up in this way. I suspect that they are probably the same as they are for the Private Bill procedure, where a petitioner must establish a specific status before he can appear. This means that local people who dislike a proposed development because they feel it would spoil the local amenity, and have a big effect on their lives, have no status at all. This has been a great disappointment to many people who wished to appear in connection with the Private Bills that we had in the last Session. I am not speaking about the merits of their objections: I am simply stating a fact. Then there is the second objection to the Parliamentary procedure on Private Bills, which I suspect applies here, and that is that a petitioner can only appear by counsel. This is extremely expensive and, therefore, does not meet the needs of the average citizen a fraction as well as the public local inquiry.
So far as the river authority are concerned, when they promote a scheme of this kind they will normally welcome a public local inquiry. They are promoting a scheme which they know will benefit the community, and they are only too glad to have the opportunity to appear at a local inquiry to explain their scheme in detail, to answer any questions and deal with any objections. In fact, this is just what they want to do. The great problem is to try to explain to everybody exactly what the promoters of a scheme are trying to do. So I welcome the procedure which will flow out of this Amendment, which will make it possible for these water conservation developments to be made by order, when the Minister may order a public local inquiry. And, I do not doubt that in almost every case he will order such inquiries, because that will meet the needs of the average citizen rather better than the Parliamentary procedure.
Coming to my noble friend Lord Molson's "second barrel"—his second new clause—I am in sympathy with this.

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My experience is that it is a positive help to be able to tell local people who are worried that at the end of the day, after the public local inquiry has been held, an order will be subject to Parliamentary approval; that Parliament may have a say in the matter. This is an attractive scheme, although I do not say that all my friends in the river authority world agree with me. But on the whole it is an advantage, because I am quite certain we have to do everything possible, both at Parliamentary and at local level, to explain what we are doing with these schemes, to explain what the necessities and benefits are, in order to carry reasonable public opinion with us. There are bound to be some objectors; but we have to stand up to them and convince people that the balance of advantage is to go ahead with these schemes.
So, in principle, I am in favour of my noble friend's second Amendment. I understand, however, that there are certain difficulties in the Ministry concerned that the application of this principle might be extended to the mass of other orders which the department in the Ministry has to make. It seems to me that it may be necessary—and no doubt my noble friend will be telling us about this—to restrict this Negative Resolution procedure to developments in National Parks, and not to apply it to all orders coming under Clause 1. But as I have said, I am in broad sympathy with my noble friend's intention—I think it is right in principle—and I should be prepared to support my noble friend Lord Sandford if he wishes to make some concession on these lines. I think it would be for the general benefit of Parliament and everybody.
7.55 p.m.
LORD MOLSON: If your Lordships will bear with me again, I should like to elaborate just a little further about this procedure. I am naturally gratified that the Parliamentary Secretary has expressed a certain measure of sympathy and that my noble friend Lord Nugent also has expressed broad sympathy. Perhaps, therefore, I may set the matter out in greater detail, since there is reasonable prospect of my persuading your Lordships to accept one or other of these Amendments.
I venture to disagree with my noble friend Lord Nugent when he says that
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Special Parliamentary Procedure has not proved a satisfactory method of proceeding. It was prepared by the Conservative Government at the end of the last war, and it was passed by the Labour Government, with Mr. Herbert Morrison, as he then was, making the speech in which he explained the procedure. He set the matter out in full. He explained that originally the only way in which a statutory undertaker had been able to obtain these powers was by promoting a Private Bill. It was because this was a cumbrous and costly procedure that the Provisional Order procedure was introduced. Mr. Morrison said:
"To take the Provisional Order procedure first,"—
that is before he came to the new proposals—
"I think it will be generally agreed that it is slow, cumbersome and expensive."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 18/10/45; col. 1376.]
It was less slow, cumbersome and expensive than the Private Bill procedure. The only reason that there had been so many Private Bills after the introduction, first of Provisional Order procedure and then, in trying to produce something cheaper, more expeditious and efficient, the Special Parliamentary Procedure, is that owing to a number of oversights—matters, for example, relating to common land and, in the case of this Bill, to discharge of water—it has not been possible to avoid using Private Bill procedure. There is no doubt at all that Special Parliamentary Procedure is much more expeditious and cheaper than proceeding either by a Private Bill or by a Provisional Order. One main feature is that instead of there being Committees in both Houses going into the matter, under Special Parliamentary Procedure it is dealt with by a single Joint Committee of both Houses.
It is because this (to use a modern expression) streamlined procedure was designed to give reasonable facilities to water undertakers and, subsequently, river authorities to do what is required without any unnecessary obstruction or delay that it was introduced. I hope and believe that it will prove to be effective for that purpose. But, as was made quite plain by Mr. Herbert Morrison and by Viscount Kilmuir, then Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, they had devised this procedure in order that Parliament should

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retain an ultimate control and that that control should be exercised by means of a Joint Committee of both Houses, able to go into the matter in a careful and scientific way, with the help of counsel and expert witnesses, instead of its being merely debated on the Floor of the House. In the case of the other place, which can and does sometimes throw out an Order of this kind, Mr. Morrison explained the difficulties very frankly and plainly. He said:
"The classical objection … is that it puts the burden on a Private Member of keeping a House, getting his friends to stay there, and introducing a Motion for Annulment in a House which is tired after Government business and wants to get home. That is a fair point which we have to recognise."
Sir David Maxwell Fyfe concurred in those difficulties, and they both agreed that the procedure of having an Annulment carried by a Private Member in another place late at night after Government business is over imposes an almost intolerable burden upon him. Sir David Maxwell Fyfe carried the same argument further—and this of course applies equally in this House—by saying:
"The other point which can fairly be made is that it is difficult for a Private Member to work up the requisite technical knowledge which may well be involved."
Those are two of the main reasons why the Special Parliamentary Procedure is a far more effective and efficient and fair way of dealing with this matter, rather than asking a legislative body such as your Lordships' House to listen to a number of speeches contradicting each other and then coming to a conclusion upon an extremely difficult and technical matter. It is for that reason that I believe that this Special Parliamentary Procedure which was devised for this purpose is the suitable one for your Lordships to introduce in an Amendment to this Bill.
LORD KENNET: I should like to divide what I have to say into two parts: first of all, the relative merits of the Special Parliamentary Procedure and the Negative Resolution Procedure of a Motion for Annulment; and secondly, if either of these is desirable, in what parts of the country, and what sorts of parts of the country, should they be applicable. On the first point, I must with great defer-
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ence and regret differ from the noble Lord, Lord Molson, because it seems to me that the reasons he was advancing in favour of having Special Parliamentary Procedure and the Committee of Inquiry were reasons which hold good only if there has not been a prior public local inquiry—this is the first inquiry into the matter. It seems to me that, if the Minister has held a public local inquiry, received his inspector's report and taken his provisional decision, there is no point in Parliament holding another prolonged, detailed and technical inquiry in London into the matter. Let the Members of both Houses read the inspector's report. If they are interested they will. Therefore, I plump for the Negative Resolution procedure, and I think that even if it is late at night, if people are interested enough they will show that interest; and it is of course no less trouble to read a Select Committee's report than to read an inspector's report.
Coming now to the question, "In what parts of the country should it be done?" I think we have here, if the Government were to accept the idea of the Negative Resolution procedure of a Motion for the Annulment, a procedure whereby Parliament may simply tell the Minister that in its opinion he got it wrong. We had an example yesterday of an issue in another field where this might have been the case; I do not know whether it would have been or not. I have in mind a case where the Minister, after reading his inspector's report, takes into account the balancing factors. Let us, for instance, take Dartmoor. There is, let us say, an enormous reservoir bang in the middle of Dartmoor. It could be that the inspector would say, "No. This thing is going to look too horrible. It will ruin our National Park. So the people of Plymouth and surrounding parts must get their water by another means, which they can although it will be a lot more expensive." Then let us say that the Minister says, "No. The inspector is wrong. Cheapness is all and to hell with beauty! We shall have the reservoir in Dartmoor." It could then well be that one or both Houses of Parliament would simply think the Minister had his priorities upside-down and would wish, quite shortly and sharply after a simple debate, to reverse that decision and knock the Minister down. This I could

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well imagine, and this would be provided for by Negative Resolution procedure.
On the question whether this procedure should be, as the noble Lord, Lord Molson, proposes, country-wide (that is the second part of his Amendment), or as the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, proposes only in National Parks—and I was very interested to hear that Lord Nugent, who as we know is the keeper of the conscience of ideals and ambitions of the Association of River Authorities, accepts this; this I think is good news for all people who love the beauty of the country—is a difficult question to determine. I will wait to hear what the Government have to say on this; I hope that they have something to say.
I would suggest that perhaps it would not be right to confine it to National Parks. Because what if it is a site of special scientific interest—S.S.S.I.; what if it is an area of outstanding natural beauty—A.O.N.B.; what if it is V.H.L., or whatever very high landscape value is called? There are so many of these gradations, each of which is entitled to consideration more than one would extend to the whole of white land in the country. I therefore propose tentatively, and subject to what the Government have to say at this stage or later, that it might be best to have a Motion for Annulment procedure in National Parks, A.O.N.Bs, sites of special scientific interest, high landscape value areas, and possibly other special parts of the country which I do not have in my mind at the moment; but not absolutely countrywide.
LORD ILFORD: I should not like to appear as the only person who is not in broad sympathy with the proposal of my noble friend Lord Molson. I do not propose to enter into a detailed discussion on what has been proposed. All I desire to say is that, whatever procedure is ultimately adopted, there is no doubt that the procedure under which water undertakings obtain their powers to-day is urgently in need of revision. What these procedures should be I would not care to say, but I am quite sure that the time has come when we must get rid of some of the difficulties that water undertakers experience in obtaining essential powers to do their job.
8.6 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: It has been extremely helpful to have the views of so many noble Lords on this particular point, and particularly noble Lords whose interests are so germane to this matter. It is a difficult matter to decide exactly where to draw the line. But I think we must start from the point that since the 1963 Act the intention—the frustrated intention, but the intention—has been to proceed by means of public local inquiries to secure what the river authorities require for the discharge of their functions. I think that by and large there is general satisfaction with this intention. If it had not been so frustrated by the omission which we are trying to correct we should be able to judge that better. But on the whole I should have thought that these are technical matters which are best settled at a public local inquiry where models and maps and so on can be deployed and all and sundry can become involved.
That is not to say that the Special Parliamentary Procedure, which has been advocated so eloquently by my noble friend Lord Molson, is not a good deal less cumbersome than the whole Private Bill procedure. But, though it is less cumbersome than that, I believe it is open to much of the same objections as a Private Bill, particularly from the point of view of those whose opinions are of so much value now; namely, bodies such as the Council for the Preservation of Rural England and objectors who want to object on grounds of amenity and who have not unlimited resources to enable them to engage counsel and so on, which is necessary in using Special Parliamentary Procedure. It is not as expensive as Private Bill procedure; but it is expensive; it is time-consuming, and when compared with the procedures of a public local inquiry it is inconvenient, and particularly inconvenient to people who have to come to defend causes in, say, the Yorkshire Moors or Exmoor or Dartmoor. It still means that objectors and Promoters have to incur considerable expense and spend time presenting their case in London, instead of in the locality affected. For that reason, I join with the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, and the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, in feeling that, within the context of a public local inquiry, and on the assumption that the whole procedure is going to begin with a public local

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inquiry, the Special Parliamentary Procedure, although it was an advantage in its time, is no longer the most apt.
For that reason, I come down very much in favour of the Negative Resolution procedure, because when that has been preceded by a public local inquiry it is not open to the same criticisms as is the Special Parliamentary Procedure. Compared with the Special Parliamentary Procedure, a Negative Resolution procedure debate is not a duplication of what went before but complements it. The public local inquiry is complementary to the debate in Parliament. At the public local inquiry there is an opportunity to deal in considerable detail and quite informally with all the issues involved: maps are produced, models are shown and it is held in the locality that is most affected by the proposal. All and sundry can come forward as well as those objectors who have a particular standing in the case. There is an opportunity to make adjustments, to consider the conditions, and so on. Everybody is able to state his views; it is done in the locality, with local publicity.
If we have the Negative Resolution procedure there is the further procedure which is entirely complementary to that. There is the debate up here in the capital, in Parliament. At that point the broader issues can be debated, deployed by the Secretary of State and his spokesman in this House; the issues can be rehearsed again within their national context on the Floor of the House with maximum national publicity and—I should have thought that this was tremendously important—at no cost whatever to the Promoters or the objectors. It is for that reason that I come down quite strongly and firmly in favour of the Negative Resolution procedure.
I now come to the extent and the area to which, if we decide in that way, this should be applied. Here I would agree that it is difficult to come to the right judgment. I think what the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said about this indicates the difficulties, and for that reason I would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, that considering everything it would be better to go for the National Parks and draw the line there. If we do not draw the line there we shall go into a long tradition of areas of outstanding
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natural beauty, landscape of high quality, green belts, areas of special scientific interest, and so on. Furthermore, it then raises the question in rather a marked degree that if this is all right for water undertakings, what about other kinds of undertakings which affect areas of outstanding natural beauty? Then, I think your Lordships will agree, we should have driven the thin end of the wedge fairly well in, and the whole thing might fall into disrepute.
LORD KENNET: I think it would help the Committee very much if the noble Lord would say what sort of other undertakings proceeding by Order he has in mind.
LORD SANDFORD: Highways, electricity pylons—a whole range of things. How many proceed by Orders precisely similar to the one we are considering I should not like to say without advice, but that is the kind of thing we have in mind. Another reason for sticking to National Parks in this particular case is that I really do believe that they are the areas which, by their very nature, are the ones most affected. I think that without exception they are uplands, where the rainfalls and the rivers rise, and this is the point where the conflict almost always will be. By confining ourselves to these clearly defined areas, I do not think we shall let many cases of water undertakings that should be considered by this procedure fall outside the net. I think this will include the great majority of them.
That being so, and if your Lordships agree with me, what I suggest is this. If the noble Lord, Lord Molson, will agree to withdraw his two Amendments, with which we all have considerable sympathy but on particular points of which we are in disagreement, I will undertake that between now and the next stage I will have these matters reconsidered, and will bring forward an Amendment which will secure that orders to do with discharges from reservoirs in National Parks should be subject to the Negative Resolution procedure. That is the broad intention which I should like to leave with your Lordships. It will have to be considered and looked at in detail. There may be some slight adjustment, but that is the intention which I should like to carry away as the result of this debate.
8.15 p.m.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: Perhaps I may say one thing before the noble Lord sits down. What he has said has been most helpful and most interesting, but do we understand that the noble Lord is quite clear that he must limit his help in this regard to National Parks? We are not now dealing, under this Bill, with impounding and abstraction, but with discharge; and it might well be that the discharge to which objection might be taken, or which ought to fall under this Negative Resolution procedure, would be well downstream outside the National Park, but in an A.O.N.B.—an area of outstanding natural beauty. I should have hoped that he would at least have left the door open for further debate on a future occasion (because there are not many noble Lords present to-night), so that we could at least reconsider whether it should be confined to National Parks or whether some specified addition to National Parks, such as A.O.N.Bs and S.S.S.Is. could be included.
LORD SANDFORD: I should have hoped that the assurance and undertaking I have given would be enough for tonight. The kind of detail which the noble Lord has mentioned is just the kind of detail that needs to be looked into with great care. We are taking a step of some significance, and we are attaching it to a Bill which is only an amendment to the main Bill; so we must proceed with caution. I wanted to indicate in my reply how much sympathy my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has with the broad intention of the Amendments which have been put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Molson. Having said that, I hope I shall be able to persuade him to withdraw these Amendments.
VISCOUNT INGLEBY: I should like to say just a word, if I may. I am not entirely happy about excluding places other than National Parks. I have a great love for them and care for them, but in terms of human hardship the hardship involved in making a new reservoir may be greater outside the National Park. So far as my part of the world in North Yorkshire is concerned, there are two reservoirs under consideration at the present time, Farndale and Hellifield. Farndale is in a National Park and Hellifield is not, and it may be that in human terms
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of hardship to farmers there would be perhaps greater hardship to have it at Hellifield than at Farndale.
I am given to understand, on the authority of the Chairman of the Water Resources Board, that surface reservoirs are a dying breed, though we have to have them for the next ten years in order to buy time for an investigation into less damaging means of supplying water. And here, if I may, I would congratulate the Thames Conservancy on their researches into the underground reserves in their area. I very much hope that these investigations will prove helpful elsewhere. For the reasons I have given, I am not entirely happy about confining the Negative Resolution procedure to National Parks. If these surface reservoirs are a dying breed, I think they ought to be prayed against very hard everywhere.
LORD MOLSON: I am most appreciative of the response that all your Lordships have made to my Amendments. I regard the sympathetic attitude of the Government as being an extremely good augury. The flexibility of your Lordships' procedure has enabled us to have a broad discussion such as would have been completely impossible in another place. I trust that your Lordships will bear with me if I indicate that there is still a broader matter which I hope the Government will consider, in consultation with us, before the Report stage of this Bill. I have had down for a long time, under "No Day Named," a Motion
"That a Select Committee be appointed to consider how far and in what manner matters of public policy should be allowed to affect the consideration of Private Bills in Parliament."
And the words "Private Bills" do not in that connotation exclude Provisional Order Procedure or Special Parliamentary Procedure.
The Lord Chairman of Committees, on the advice of the authorities of this House, has expressed a good deal of concern at the limited opportunities that exist under Private Bill procedure for broader interests to be represented. There is, I think I can say, general dissatisfaction among informed people with the existing procedure on Private Bills. In the case of public inquiries one comes up against very great technical difficulties. It is only possible in a very general way to oppose

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a Bill that Smith's land should be acquired for a reservoir on the ground that Jones' land is more suitable, because it is more or less res inter alios acta, as regards a Private Bill, which is in fact an application by one subject to Parliament to grant him rights which otherwise he could not acquire.
In the last Town and Country Planning Act a new procedure was devised, called the planning commission inquiry, and I have had correspondence with the late Minister of Housing and Local Government as to how far this wider kind of procedure would enable broader matters to be taken into account than are permissible under the procedure of a local public inquiry.
Therefore, while welcoming very much the friendly and sympathetic response which the Government have given to my proposals, I hope that they will be willing to discuss with all those people who are interested, including the authorities of this House with experience of Parliamentary procedure in the matter of Private Bills, what can be done in order to ensure that all interests, including the national interest, can be fully expressed when inquiries are taking place. I apologise for referring to this matter. It is very closely connected indeed with what we have been discussing. I gladly withdraw my Amendment, on the understanding that we can have discussions with the Government, I hope on these broad matters, and try to reach a satisfactory arrangement, not only on this particular issue but on this broader matter of procedure. I ask your Lordships' permission to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
EARL WALDEGRAVE EARL WALDEGRAVE rose to move Amendment No. 6:
After Clause 1, insert the following new clause:
Discharge of water by statutory water undertakers
".—(1) On the application of any statutory water undertakers the Minister may with the agreement of any river authority appearing to him to be affected, make an order authorising the undertakers to discharge water in like manner and subject to such conditions as are specified in the preceding section in relation to an order made on the application of a river authority.
(2) Subsections (2) and (3) of the preceding section shall, with any necessary modifications.
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apply to an order under this section as they apply to an order under that section."
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD AILWYN): I think I should point out that Amendment No. 6 should have been starred on the Marshalled List.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: It should have been starred because the Amendment has been slightly amended, not because it is a new one. If I had got on better with my Amendment No. 2 I should not have had to trouble your Lordships with this one. It is still on the same point, but as we have to go through the Bill in the order of the clauses I had to move the other one first. I now come to this one, which is moved for the same reasons and about the same point as the one I moved earlier.
If we refer to Clause 1, line 4, of this Bill we see that the Minister
"may on the application of the authority make an order authorising …"
The authority there is the river authority, but my Amendment says:
"On the application of any statutory water undertakers"—
as well, of course, as the authority—
"the Minister, may …"
Again, I have to envisage, if the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, will forgive me, the very unlikely event of there being such a thing as an intransigent or unreasonable river authority. If such an unfortunate thing should occur as that such an authority should come into existence, it could, as I see it, simply not be inclined to come to an agreement with a statutory water undertaking. It simply would not take any action at all. Nothing could compel this hypothetical authority to come to an agreement for this discharge.
Therefore I beg to move this Amendment to the Bill, which inserts a clause which says (though it does not spell it out, this is the reason) that in those circumstances a statutory water undertaker would have the right to make an application direct to the Minister. Then the Minister, in agreement with the river authority—and that is what caused the star on the Amendment, because we added the words "with the agreement of any river authority" whereas the original Amendment had said "after consulting

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the river authority"—would have the right to allow the order to be made on the application of the statutory water undertaker, because the river authority had, for some reason best known to itself, perhaps because it had got out of the bed the wrong side, refused to make an application itself. I beg to move.
LORD SANDFORD: I am afraid I cannot be as helpful as I should like to be to the noble Earl, for rather different reasons from those which inhibited me to begin with. Discharges—this is what we are concerned with in this Bill—from works owned by statutory water undertakers can already be authorised under Clause 1. Under subsection (4) a river authority and a statutory water undertaker may enter into an agreement providing for such discharges, and by virtue of subsection (5) the order obtained by the river authority under subsection (1) may operate to authorise the agreed discharges. The main purpose of this Bill and the main purpose of the Act it amends is to facilitate the performance by river authorities of their water conservation functions, and the suggested clause seeks to give statutory water undertakers a power to discharge water irrespective of that purpose and appears, therefore, in the first place, to be outside the scope of the Bill. At the very least, it would, if passed, involve an Amendment to the Long Title by the insertion of the words "and by statutory water undertakers" after the words "river authorities".
But even if this clause were to be amended to bring it within the scope of the Bill so that it merely provided another means of authorising discharges which could be authorised under Clause 1 as it stands, I think it would be undesirable. The reason why the Bill confines the right to apply for an order to river authorities is that they were established in order to secure the comprehensive management of water resources within the whole of their area. They already control abstractions of water under the 1963 Act, and giving another type of body the power to apply direct to the Secretary of State for an authorisation to discharge water would, I believe, substantially derogate from the responsibility of the river authorities for the comprehensive management of the water resources in their area.
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One result would be disagreements as to who should apply for an order in a given case, with resultant delays. We have already been into the question of the desirable provision in the Bill for securing agreement, and I made it plain that there is no power in the Bill to enable a river authority to impose an agreement on a water undertaker. I have explained that there is a safeguard that such agreements must be with the consent of the Secretary of State, and so on. This Amendment, if agreed to, would result in disagreements as to who should apply for orders for discharges. It is for that reason that I would advise your Lordships not to accept this Amendment.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: May I add one point to the excellent reply which my noble friend Lord Sand-ford has just made? It is this. I wonder whether my noble friend Lord Walde-grave has really focused his mind on the reasons for these discharges. Why should a water undertaking want to make a discharge into the river? What would be its purpose? Does it want to empty its reservoir? What does it want to do? A river authority wants to make a discharge into a river in order to amplify the flow of the river, so as to provide for the various abstractors at a time when the natural flow is low. That is part of the general responsibility of river authorities to manage the river in the interests of all abstractors.
Although I understand, and do not complain about, the wish of my noble friend Lord Waldegrave to put water undertakings on the same basis as river authorities, it really is slightly unreal in this context. Why on earth should a water undertaking want to empty its reservoir into a river? Surely there should be only one body that should try to manage the river in the general interests of everybody, and that should be the river authority. Does my noble friend wish to intervene?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: Yes, my Lords; as my noble friend has asked me a question I should like to answer it. Why should a river authority not wish to come to an agreement with the water undertaking about a discharge? That is the point. The sort of thing they might not wish to agree to a discharge about is,

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for example, if alkaline water was turning to acid water, or vice versa, and affecting the fishery interests or something like that. I do not know whether that is likely or possible.
I told your Lordships that I would much prefer to have achieved acceptance of the previous Amendments rather than this one. I do not propose to press this Amendment. It was, in my view, a sort of stop-gap. If only we could have the same powers and rights in any difficulties we have with the river authorities over discharges as we do in impoundings, we should be perfectly happy. But as my advisers and the water undertakers read the Bill, they feel—and we shall examine in Hansard what the noble Lord has said—that where matters of discharges are concerned, which is what this Bill is about, we have not the rights of appeal to the Minister, if we cannot reach agreement, as we have in impoundings and abstractions. We do not see the logic of that.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: I thank my noble friend for his further eludication of his point. But his Amendment is asking for powers for the water undertaking to make application to the Minister to make a discharge. I still ask the question: what on earth would they want to make a discharge for? Why a river authority want to make one is quite obvious. They want to make it in order to amplify the natural flow of the river at a time of low flood, to meet the needs of the various abstractors. But why should a water undertaking want to empty their reservoir into the river? This really is unreal.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: The water undertaking would wish to make the discharge into the river in order to abstract lower down. They have a regulating reservoir. They discharge from that reservoir into the river and abstract from the river to take it into supply. This is the coming method. My noble friend said that the surface reservoir might be a dying thing, but I think that is a long way ahead. Certainly the regulating reservoir is much more likely. It is much more on the tapis. When you regulate waters in the uplands you then release them into the rivers further down and abstract from
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the river further down. Discharges of this sort are vital to a water undertaking for the purpose of abstraction later on.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: That, of course, is absolutely right. But these regulating reservoirs will normally be built by the river authority, and not by the water undertaking. My noble friend has really got this thing wrong. Of course the principle that he is enunciating is perfectly right, but all the schemes that are now coming forward—there are a number in the pipeline for just this purpose—are being promoted by the river undertakings. One or two in the last year or two have been jointly promoted by river authorities and water undertakings together. It has been a valuable thing to do jointly. It shows that the interests are complementary and that they must work together. But my noble friend's implication that water undertakings are normally going to be operating river regulating reservoirs I should have thought was completely false.
Looking at the further point that my noble friend asked—namely, why should these discharges not be subjected to the same safeguard and the same rights of appeal as the powers for impounding—I should have thought that a simple answer was that river authorities are not going to be able to make discharges unless they have already impounded water in some way. That is the crucial point, and quite rightly the 1963 Act has these safeguards. But I should have thought that my noble friend is here asking on behalf of the water undertakings for something which does not have great substance in reality. I cannot see why water undertakings would normally want to do this. I am glad to hear that my noble friend is not going to press his Amendment. There is no competition between river authorities and water undertakings. I think that a friendly, complementary relationship is growing up. River authorities fully understand that it is their job in some way or other to provide the extra water that water undertakings want, and they want to do this in the closest possible co-operation with water undertakings. But I do not see how this particular Amendment would in any way further that desire.
LORD KENNET: When the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, comes to sum up the debate on this Amendment, I wonder

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whether he could tell us when we can expect the Report of the Central Advisory Water Council on the overall reform of the water industry.
LORD SANDFORD: That, if I may say so, was a helpful intervention, because although I cannot give a categorical answer to it, I may say that the review that has already been going on and will be brought to a focus by that Report will enable a number of these issues to be discussed and considered at considerable length in what I should think to be a much more appropriate context than the present one.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: I have indicated that I do not propose to press this Amendment. I beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.40 p.m.
LORD ILFORD LORD ILFORD moved Amendment No. 7.
After Clause 1, insert the following new clause:
Agreements for transfer of water from one area to another.
".—(1 ) Agreements may with the consent of the Minister be made between any two or more river authorities with respect to the transfer of water from the area of one such authority to the area of another such authority.
(2) Agreements under this section may contain such incidental and consequential provisions (including provisions of a financial character and with respect to the construction of works) as the Minister may approve.
(3) The Schedule to this Act shall have effect in relation to applications and orders under this section as if any reference to the discharge of water were a reference to the transfer of water as aforesaid."
The noble Lord said: I hope that the Minister is going to give me this Amendment. Its intention is to make it possible for agreements to be made between two or more river authorities in respect of the transfer of water from the area of one authority into the area of another. I understand that the Minister considers that provision is already made for this in the Bill, and that this clause is unnecessary. If that is his view, I suggest to him that it is better to be certain about these things than to speculate. We sometimes get surprises when a Statute comes to be construed, and we might get one here. If there is any doubt about the ability to make these transfers, then surely it ought to be cleared up now by
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adopting this clause in which we try to deal with it.
These transfer agreements are of growing importance. Water is transferred from one part of the area to another for the purpose of amplifying the natural flow. Indeed, the transfer is a matter which requires a good deal of attention, because it happens that in some places water from one area will not mix satisfactorily with water from another, and the consequence of trying to mix the two waters is deleterious. Here the mixing would take place only by agreement between the parties, and I think we can assume that the operation of transfer would not be followed by any undesirable circumstances. I beg to move.
LORD SANDFORD: I am grateful to the noble Lord for setting out the purpose of his Amendment. In so far as it seeks to empower river authorities to enter into agreements with one another, I assure him that it is unnecessary. It is implicit in the duty of a river authority under Section 4 of the Act
"to take all such action as they may … consider necessary or expedient … for the purpose "
This includes the transferring of water resources to the area of another river authority. For that they can enter into an agreement with other authorities. They can also carry out operations in the area of other river authorities, and under the terms of the present Bill they could be empowered to make discharges in the areas of other river authorities.
In so far as this Amendment seeks to make agreement between the river authorities subject to the Secretary of State's approval, I think it is undesirable; and it also runs counter to the Government's general policy of relaxing central Government controls. On the other hand, I appreciate that there may be anxiety about the effect that such an agreement may have on the licensed abstractors in a giver river authority's area who have to meet the authority's expenditure through its charging scheme. From that point of view, I should say that there is already a safeguard on this point, in that the charging scheme is subject to the Secretary of State's approval, and there is normally a public inquiry. I hope that, with those assurances and those explanations, the noble Lord will not feel

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it necessary to press this particular Amendment.
LORD ILFORD: I still think that the Minister would have been wiser to make quite sure about this and to insert this clause. If he prefers to take a different course I shall not press the Amendment, and I ask leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 [Supplemental]:
LORD SANDFORD LORD SANDFORD moved Amendment No. 8:
Page 2, line 20, at end insert ("and 'public authority' includes any company authorised by a local enactment to supply water.")
The noble Lord said: This is in the nature of a technical Amendment. It deals with the doubt which has been expressed as to whether the term "public authority" is adequate to cover all statutory water undertakers. It clearly covers those undertakers who are local authorities, or joint boards of local authorities, but it arguably does not cover, or might be thought not to cover, the substantial number, amounting to almost a quarter of the total of water suppliers, who are statutory companies supplying water under local Acts and paying dividends to their shareholders. The present Amendment is designed to put this matter beyond doubt by including in the term "public authority" statutory water companies of that kind as they are defined in Section 59(1) of the Water Act 1945. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SANDFORD LORD SANDFORD moved Amendments Nos. 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13:
Page 2, line 35, leave out ("and 132(4)") and insert (", 132(4) and 133(1)")
Page 2,line 37, leave out ("and")
Page 2,line 38, after ("property") insert ("and the repeal and adaptation of local enactments")
Page 2,line 39, at end insert ("and as if in section 133(1), so far as it relates to this Act, the reference to the second appointed day were a reference to the date of the passing of this Act.")
Page 2,line 40, leave out from beginning to ("section") in line 6 on page 3 and insert ("(4) The power to make orders conferred by the preceding section shall be exercisable by statutory instrument, and an order under that")
The noble Lord said: With the agreement of the Committee I should like to suggest that Amendments Nos. 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13, which all hang together, should be taken together. The object of these Amendments is to replace Clause 2(4) by an adaptation of Section 133(1) of the Water Resources Act 1963. Clause 2(4) was designed to enable the Minister to secure a uniform code for authorising discharges by river authorities by repealing previous river authority Private Acts. It has been realised that it may also be desirable in the future to repeal, or to modify, the provisions of area enactments governing the nature of the actual discharges themselves. For example, there might be a discharge from an existing reservoir which ought to be harmonised with a discharge from a new source authorised under the Bill we are now considering. Similar situations, for example affecting pre-1963 abstraction provisions in the area enactments to conditions in licences issued by river authorities, are dealt with by orders under Section 133(1) of the 1963 Act. But Section 133(1) only applies to things done under that Act and not to things done under this Bill, and only to enactments passed, or made, before the coming into force of the 1963 Act.
These Amendments, therefore, do the following things: they apply Section 133(1) of this Bill, and for that purpose we are using Amendments 9, 10 and 11; secondly, they update its application to enactments made, or passed, before this Bill comes into effect, and for that purpose we use Amendment No. 12. It deletes subsection (4) of Clause 2, and subsection (5)(a), which made Orders under subsection (4) subject to the Negative Resolution procedure, but which is now unnecessary because Orders under Section 133(1) are already made subject to the Negative Resolution procedure by the 1963 Act. Finally, it redrafts what is left of subsection (5), that is to say, the opening words of subsection (5) and paragraph (b). I hope that explanation is sufficient for your Lordships. I beg to move.
LORD KENNET: In order to save everybody the need to have recourse to a computer to-morrow morning when they get Hansard, may I put to the noble Lord what I think that adds up to in layman's language, and then he can say

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whether it is right? Does it mean that these Amendments will allow the Minister, by Order, to repeal any part of a local Act passed before this day which appears to him to conflict with the Bill now before the Committee, and that such Orders will be subject to the Negative Resolution procedure?
LORD SANDFORD: Yes. I think that is a very good way of summarising the whole situation. We are relying on the fact that orders made under Section 113(1) are already made subject to the Negative Resolution procedure, so we do not need to make that provision in the Bill now before us. The general effect of all these Amendments together is to enable the Minister to harmonise the effects under the previous enactment and under this enactment.
On Question, Amendments agreed to.
Clause 2, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Schedule [Orders authorising discharge of water]:
EARL WALDEGRAVE EARL WALDEGRAVE moved Amendment No. 14:
Page 4, line 9, leave out ("stratum") and insert ("strata").
The noble Earl said: All the way through the 1963 Act the word "strata" is used, and in the interpretation Section, Section 135, there is reference to "underground strata". Perhaps it is a little pedantic to say this, but the word "stratum" is now beginning to be used. I beg to move.
LORD SANDFORD: I do not know about being pedantic. I should have thought it was ungrammatical to use the word "strata", because it is quite clear in this part of the Bill that the singular is needed. There are cases at the beginning of the Bill where the plural or the singular would have been correct—for instance, in line 11 on page 1, which refers to "any inland water or underground strata "—but in this case it is quite clear that the singular is called for. On the whole, I should prefer to be grammatical, even at the expense of being pedantic.
LORD KENNET: I think there is more to it than that, because the Amendment would mean that if there were only one
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underground stratum which might be affected, there was no need for public advertisement. There would have to be two, before the duty to advertise publicly fell upon the river authority.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with the Amendments.

LONDON FLOOD DEFENCE LEVELS
8.55 p.m.
LORD BOWDEN LORD BOWDEN rose to ask Her Majesty's Government: Whether they are satisfied that the statutory defence levels which have been established by the Greater London Council are adequate to protect the occupants of the London flood plain from the risks to their lives and property which are undoubtedly to be expected if a tidal flood occurs this winter; and whether they are satisfied that arrangements which have been made by the police will be adequate to remove those whose lives will be in danger by a very high tide.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am sorry that what I believe to be one of the most: urgent matters which have been before the House for many years should come to be discussed at such a late hour. Nevertheless, I have to draw your Lordships' attention to what I believe to be the very great danger which confronts this city of ours at this very moment.
Last week, on November 13, a great wind of cyclonic force in a sea which shelves at one end created the most devastating floods in Pakistan and. as we have already heard this afternoon, killed a number of people estimated at perhaps 100,000, 200,000 or 300,000. As the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said some hours ago, this may prove to be one of the greatest disasters of which history has record. It may come to rank with the effect of a great cyclonic storm in the 16th century in another shelving sea, which drowned something like 200,000 people on the East coast of England and in the Low Countries. Storms of this magnitude occur from time

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to time in all parts of the world. Their effect can be devastating; their incidence is unpredictable, and they are among the hazards with which mankind must learn to live.
The last great storm of this kind occurred in the North Sea in 1962, and devastated the port of Hamburg, drowning several hundreds of people. In the winter of 1953 there was a great storm which, as your Lordships may remember, caused devastation on the East coast of England, caused a certain amount of flooding in the River Thames and devastated part of Holland. The Dutch discovered that the flood water had risen to within two or three inches of the top of the great dyke which protects the ports of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and they knew that had the great storm occurred a month earlier or a month later, at the time of spring tides, the water would have risen several feet higher and almost the whole of Holland would have been inundated.
The Dutch realise that such a storm is very improbable, but they decided forthwith to protect themselves against it. Since 1953 they have raised by about six feet the height of the dykes which protect Holland, and they have nearly completed the most tremendous programme of dams and barrages to close off the waters of the estuaries of the Rhine and the Meuse—the so-called Delta Plan. They can now await with some confidence the onslaught of a storm which is unlikely to occur more often than once in a thousand years.
If this thousand-year storm, if I may so describe it, were to come next week, Holland would be safe. But what would happen in London? The answer to this extraordinary and appalling question is to be found in a large document which
I have in my hand, which is called, rather oddly, Thames Flood Prevention. It might be better described as a prospectus for a catastrophe. There can be no doubt at all that, were such a storm to occur, large parts of the flood plain of London—an area perhaps 10 miles long and up to 2 miles wide, which includes Wapping, the Isle of Dogs, Tower Hamlets and large areas of Richmond, South Kensington, and even Westminster—would be flooded to a depth of perhaps 10 feet.
The document states that large parts of the Underground, all the way from Hammersmith to Mile End and from King's Cross to Clapham, as well as the Rother-hithe and Blackwall Tunnels, would be flooded. It is very probable, if the flood in Hamburg is to be taken as any guide, that the number of casualties would be at least comparable to the number of people who have been drowned in the devastating floods in Pakistan; in other words, a number of the order of 100,000, 200,000 or 300,000 people.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, is the noble Lord saying that in his opinion 100,000, 200,000 or 300,000 people would lose their lives in such an event?
LORD BOWDEN: My Lords, I say that the risk is very real. The order of casualties cannot be predicted, but it may well amount to something like that were a thousand-year-storm to fall on London at any time within the next few years. Your Lordships may say that this risk is extremely improbable; that we have lived with it for many years, and we have never been so devastated—and of course that is true. But this is the risk against which the Dutch felt it worth their while to protect themselves. Of course, the Dutch understand these things better than we do. There is an old proverb:
"Though God made the earth, the Dutch made Holland";
and it is worth remarking, too, that the engineer who is in charge of the water defences of Holland is a Cabinet Minister. We have never expected devastation on this scale; we have never guarded against it; and we have always felt that the risk was one we may have to live with.
My Lords, this may seem to be simply scaremongering. On the other hand, what would happen if there were some time this next winter a flood on the scale of 1953? The answer is that a large area of London—evidently much smaller than the area to which I have referred, but a fairly substantial area of London—would be flooded; and there is considerable risk that the Tubes would be flooded as well. One could expect, in fact, that a flood of that order would do harm at least on the scale, let us say, of the disaster in Aberfan. These are the

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points to which I feel we must devote our attention.
May I now pause for a moment to consider some other implications of this Report—and may I say that it is, I think, the most sombre document I have ever read: a document prepared with great care under the auspices of the G.L.C., a document which has been studied at great length by its engineers and all the advisers they could find, and a document which in fact describes in the most lurid detail the risks to which our great Metropolis is exposed. I find it, in a way, the most extraordinary document I have ever seen. There can never have been a time in history when a great natural disaster has been so plotted out in detail beforehand and described with such loving and academic precision.
The final conclusion of this document is:
"It is not possible to assess the indirect costs to business and industry, which would be very great, but it is probable that in the event of catastrophic flooding in London the damage would be of the order of at least £1.000 million."
It goes on to say that Professor Bondi has said that in his view the flooding of Central London should not be allowed to happen. This of itself is helpful, for Mr. Bondi, whom I know well, is a great cosmologist, and he has described to me with very great precision the reasons why the sky is dark at night. But my own reaction on reading this document was to remind myself of a phrase that was used some many years ago in another place, and I hope your Lordships will allow me to quote it without thinking that I am offending against the traditions of this House. It is this:
"The Angel of Death is abroad in the land, and we may almost hear the beating of his wings".
My Lords, may I be allowed to describe how this extraordinary situation has arisen? The defences of London against flood have been the responsibility, successively, of the L.C.C. and the G.L.C. and the statutory bodies concerned are required at all times to insist that the appropriate level of defences should be assured all along the river entrusted to their care. They have the same statutory responsibility for doing this as, let us say, they have for condemning meat
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which is found to be faulty at an abattoir. This is an inalienable responsibility of theirs which they have been expected to discharge for many years; and when the time came to build up the great sewers, the covers of which form the Embankment that we know so well, the authorities chose a level for the risk of flooding which in those days—that is. almost exactly 100 years ago—seemed to be adequate.
But it has been discovered—and it has in fact been known for many years—that the whole of this part of England is sinking slowly into the sea at the rate of perhaps a foot, or rather more, every 100 years. It has also been discovered that, apart from the sinking of the land, the level of high tides is rising by about 18 inches every 100 years; and it has also been discovered by examination that many of the barriers to the sea, the banks of the river, are sinking under their own weight into the London clay at perhaps 6 inches every 100 years. So the consequence of this is that the effective barrier we have in front of this House at this minute is lower, in proportion to the risks that it has to run, than it should be by an amount which would be 3 feet were it not for the fact that after the great flood of 1928 the level was raised by about one foot. So that outside here the barrier confronting the Thames is in effect 2 feet lower than it was 100 years ago.
After the disaster of 1953 the Dutch clearly understood the importance of raising their dykes, as I have said, and they have done so by about 6 feet. On the other hand (and here I speak, I am afraid, without any complete knowledge of events; but this is what I infer from documents I have read), after 1953 the G.L.C. contemplated the idea of raising its sea defences but were dissuaded from doing so by the Government on the grounds that there was a proposal to build in due course a barrier which would make everything safe. For this reason the G.L.C. did not in fact raise the barriers alongside the river over a period of 17 years, from 1953 to the present moment.
Two weeks ago the Minister announced the site for the barrage or barrier, or whatever it is to be called, and this, I suppose, will be built in something of

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the order of about six, seven or eight years. Until then, my Lords, nothing whatever that we can do will in any way minimise the danger we have to run from the possible (as I may call it) thousand-year flood against which the Dutch have protected themselves. But it is my belief that much could be done to protect us from the risk of other, smaller floods which in fact are far more likely to occur. I have said to your Lordships that there is a probability of a quite significant flood every 10, 20 or 30 years. There was one in 1928; there was another in 1953 and two or three times since then there have been alarm of floods which did not eventuate.
I think perhaps the best way to summarise the situation is to say that one might perhaps try to insure against the catastrophe which seems possible. Of course, no one can conceive of a market which would possibly cover a risk of the order of thousands of millions of pounds and the ultimate total destruction of our great city. But since it is so improbable, were a market to be found to insure against it the cost would undoubtedly be of the order of £1 million, £2 million or £3 million a year—not much more than that. On the other hand, the cost of insuring against what I might call a middling-sized flood of the kind which could probably occur once every 20, 30 or 40 years and which might do perhaps £100 million worth of damage, would probably be at least £10 million or as much as £20 million or £30 million.
Taking the other extreme, there is the possibility, almost the certainty, of every year a minor flood somewhere which may do damage. The cost of insuring against this might be perhaps £1 million. In other words, the really expensive insurance would be against what I may call the middle-term catastrophe, the Aberfan-sized disaster, and this might demand a premium of the order of at least the cost of the barrier itself. I may be wrong by a factor of 2; but no man can be sure either of the cost of the barrier or of the cost of the insurance. But it is true to say that the cost of insuring against disaster is so great (or would be were the Greater London Council to embark on it) that to double
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the price of the barrier would be worth while if one could have it one or two years earlier.
So I believe that, when the decision is taken to build it, the most important single parameter in the building programme is the speed with which this monstrous but essential device can be constructed. The problem of designing it is, of course, still to be faced. There are many problems concerned with the effect it will have on the water below the barrier and on the possibility of silting above it. These are all being studied. I have no doubt that some kind of scheme can be got under way, and I hope very much that the programme will be finished before long.
But the point I want to make is that, according to the G.L.C.'s own figures, the risk of a major flood (or even a minor or serious flood) is of the order of 1 in 20 in, say, the Isle of Dogs and the risk of the Tubes in some degree being inundated is, say, 1 in 34 in any given year. And we may have to wait six, seven or eight years before we are safe. It is fair to say that a risk of the inundation of the Isle of Dogs in the time which remains to us is of the order perhaps of 1 in 2 or 1 in 3; and the risk of the inundation of the tubes system is of the order of 1 in 5 or something like that.
It is my belief that although we cannot protect ourselves against a major calamitous disaster, we can do much to protect ourselves in the meantime against smaller-scale flooding, and it is this that I should like to urge the Government to do. I should like to suggest that since the G.L.C. figures have shown that a raising of the banks by something of the order of 2 feet reduces the risk of flooding by a factor of nearly 10, this is significant. I would therefore urge on the Government that they should, where possible, insist that the banks be raised by as high as can be, because although no protection is certain because some of the sand banks may prove to be unstable, nevertheless they would significantly reduce the risk to which so many people are at present exposed.
I should like furthermore to suggest that we could do far more than we have done to alert the people who live in these dangerous areas to the risks they run. It has been suggested, for example,

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that someone might paint the lamp posts at a point equivalent to the height to which the water would probably rise, let us say once in 100 years, or once in 1,000 years. I ask noble Lords to remember, if they feel that this is going to produce unnecessary public alarm, that there was a time in the Second World War when the general public was totally ill-informed and unaware of the risks they ran from bombing. It was when the Home Office abandoned its attempt to make the Home Office gas-proof room, which your Lordships will remember, in the privacy of Whitehall, and took the public into its confidence, that some steps were taken towards protecting the populace against the risks it ran from the Germans. I believe, my Lords, that the risk now facing many people in London is at least as great, if not greater, than anything to which they were subjected from the forces of the enemy.
There is much that can be done, and I should like to make a series of quite specific proposals for the Government to consider. The first is that it is extremely important that a decision should be made forthwith on the question of finance. Who is to pay for the barrage and who is to pay for any increasing of the height of the banks, if it were decided that this must be done as a matter of urgency? I do not believe that the Minister's Statement in the Commons, made about a week ago, gave any hint at all about the financial implications of building a barrage. He merely announced the site and, so far as I can make out, left the world in very considerable doubt. Although, of course, the matter may be well known to the authorities concerned, I have not found evidence that a decision has been made. I should like to ask whether it is the Government's view that the G.L.C.'s own desire to raise the statutory limits of the banks should be accepted, and that the statutory limits should be raised as soon as possible.
Finally, my Lords, I would ask whether the Minister can decide if appropriate arrangements have been made to rehearse the various schemes in preparation for safeguarding people in case of emergency. Your Lordships doubtless know that there is a complicated system involving the use of sirens; that people in Tower Hamlets, for example, have been circulated with documents describing the dangers to
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which they are exposed, and that it has been explained to them that the risk, although small, is nevertheless real; and that if flooding is thought to be imminent, a siren will be sounded and they will be asked to leave their homes, or to go to higher ground, or whatever may be thought best for them to do. I have the impression that much could be done to improve the efficiency of these arrangements; and that furthermore, much could be done to improve the efficiency of the protection for the Underground railways.
I have the impression that much of the difficulty which has prevented effective action from being taken hitherto has been due to arguments between the G.L.C., the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, as to who is responsible—
LORD KENNET: No, my Lords; that is not so.
LORD BOWDEN: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Kennet can explain it in more detail than I can, but that is the impression I have formed from reading the documents. Whatever the cause, I believe that the matter has now become urgent; that the general decline in safety of our great City—due to geological forces evidently totally beyond our control—has reached a point when action is essential, when the danger is great and when we can no longer pretend that if we forget it, it will be all right. The last time that the statutory level of the Embankment was raised was in 1930, nearly half a century ago. Since that time, as I have said, the effective height has risen by something like eighteen inches.
There are two other points that I should like to make, and they are both to be derived from this document which I hold in my hand and with which I am sure some noble Lords are familiar. This is, as I have described it, the G.L.C.s own account of the risks which they run. The first diagram shows that if another flood at the 1953 level occurred, it would overtop practically all the statutory defences by something of the order of one foot. This is in large part due to the fact that in 1953 London was saved because the banks at Canvey Island broke; the Island was flooded and so was some of the Essex marshes, and that saved

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London; it saved Kensington and may even have saved Westminster. These defences have been strengthened, so that relief is improbable in future.
The next diagram to which I must refer also is extremely important because it shows how it comes about that for every 2 feet more we raise the bank, the risk of a flood in any given year is diminished by a factor of 10. It shows furthermore—and this is terribly important—that by the year 2050, which is not so very long in terms of the time scale with which the G.L.C. has worked hitherto, the statutory flood level will be breached on an average every year. So that work done now to raise the banks will certainly not be wasted.
I have formed the impression—a layman's impression, I must admit—on reading these documents that the efficiency of the barrage is considerably in doubt. Although it is thought that it will usually work, there are considerable risks that there may be a sudden flood before the barrage can be closed—perhaps it may jam or a ship may get into it. So money spent on raising the banks above the barrage would not be wasted. This is the policy which the Dutch have followed for some time. They have raised the dykes and constructed an enormous series of barrages across the mouths of the Rhine and the Meuse.
I have spoken over long perhaps at this late hour, but in my view the problem is one of immense public concern. The risks are great. Our great metropolis is in peril. I believe that remedial action should be taken as a matter of urgency so as to reduce by a factor of perhaps 10 the risk to which the inhabitants of London are exposed. In my view, there is not a day or an hour to be lost.
9.22 p.m.
LORD COTTESLOE: My Lords, at this time of night I shall not say very much. Indeed, after the complete exposition of this subject which the noble Lord, Lord Bowden has made, there is not a great deal more to be said. I must first express my apologies to the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, himself, to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, who is to follow me and to my noble friend Lord Sandford, who is to reply for the Government, that I am so much already overdue for another
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engagement that I am afraid I shall not be able to hear the rest of the debate after I have said what I have to say. I shall read every word of it, I need hardly say, with extreme interest.
We must be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, for bringing this matter to the attention of the House, for it is certainly one of extreme importance to the people of London and of Greater London. I have been familiar with Thames flood prevention from the time of the alarming surge in 1953 to which the noble Lord referred, when I was concerned as a member of both the London County Council and the Port of London Authority. On that occasion there was mercifully no loss of life and little damage, because although the surge that came from the North Sea, raising the level of the Thames by some eight feet, almost coincided with the top of a spring tide, there was at that time no great amount of water coming down from the upper reaches of the Thames. Had there been flood water coming down from the upper reaches, the water level in London, which lapped over the top of the river wall, might have been some five feet higher. If that had happened there would have been serious and extensive flooding, great damage and possibly loss of life, as there was in the disastrous flood of 1928 which was responsible for 14 deaths and, incidentally, for damage to a large proportion of the 20,000 or so water colours by Turner at that time housed in the basement of the Tate Gallery.
The flood defences were raised after the disaster of 1928 but, of course, the embanking of the river that is always going on up and down the Thames adds to its flow and to the height which the tide reaches. And the land level in South East England, as the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, said, is gradually sinking all the time, and in London this sinking is accentuated. These processes are slow. but they are enough in a half century to cancel out the raising of the river wall that was carried out after 1928. So although the probability of flooding is statistically no more than three times in a century, its incidence is all the time increasing. The risks are great and the matter is urgent.
After the flood of 1953 a committee was set up under the chairmanship of

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Lord Waverley to go into the whole question and to make recommendations. It consulted, among others, the Dutch engineers who have a great knowledge and experience of flood prevention, and it reported with commendable speed. It recommended two things. The first was the setting up of a system to give warning of the surges that come down into the North Sea, which are produced apparently by winds of hurricane force in the region of the Arotic Circle. It recommended, secondly, the construction of a tidal barrier that could be lowered to take the top off the tide when there was an exceptional surge and an expectation of flooding.
The Waverley Committee reported; the warning system was brought into being, and it exists. It cannot, in the nature of the case, be perfect, but it is, in my belief, well-conceived and about as good as a warning system of this kind can be. But for the last 16 years the barrier has been bandied to and fro between expert consultants; the question of who should pay for it has been argued between the Government and local government, and nothing has been done to provide the vital safeguard for London of a tidal barrier. We must all be grateful to my noble friend (I use the word in a personal and not in a political sense) Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, who, as I understand, before leaving office took the decision that a barrier of the drop-gate type should be created in Woolwich Reach. That is probably the wrong place: almost certainly it should be further down the river, in Long Reach. There it would, indeed, be more costly, and would take longer to build, but, on technical grounds, as was confirmed by the expert consultants, it would be better placed there and would also have the advantage of protecting the 60,000 inhabitants of the great development on which the Greater London Council are embarking at Thamesmead.
But we should be thankful that a decision has been made in this matter. A second best decision is better than no decision. Even so, it will, I understand, be at least two years before a start can be made on the building of the barrier, because of the purchase of land, the investigation of the soil conditions and all the rest of it that is necessary. I should like to join with the noble Lord, Lord
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Bowden, in urging the Government and the G.L.C. to press forward with it as a matter of the most vital urgency. I should like to ask whether the possibility of an inflated barrier on the river bed, as a short-term interim measure of protection, suggested, I think, by Professor Schofield, has been examined, and whether, if it is feasible, it cannot be put in there without the delays that are inevitable in the major project. The risk of a disaster may not be statistically very great at any one moment, but it might happen—I was going to say to-morrow, but if not to-morrow, by the time of the next new moon, the next full moon or the next spring tides. It might happen in six or twelve months' time. The protection of London is a matter of most vital urgency, and I hope that my noble friend Lord Sandford will be able to tell us, when he replies for the Government, that the barrier will now be at long last built, and built with all possible speed.
9.31 p.m.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, we are indeed a phlegmatic race. Yesterday, at an hour a little earlier than this, when we were discussing matters of great moment, but not of life and death, there were some 330 Peers present. There are now three noble Lords opposite and four or five on this side I do not know whether the Government intended it to be this way, and, if so, whether they think Parliament is unimportant, or London is unimportant—I am not sure how this goes. I did not expect to find so thin an attendance in the House—and the Government Benches in particular so thinly covered—on a matter of intense and tormenting; magnitude.
Almost all of what my noble friend Lord Bowden said I should like specifically to endorse out of an experience which I will mention to your Lordships in a moment. I must make three exemptions from that blank endorsement. He said that he believed that there might be 100,000, 200,000 or 300,000 dead in the event of a major flood in London. I do not believe that; I believe that the warning system we have is such as to ensure that if dead there were—and there might well be dead—it would be a small number. It would be possible to get people out, or to the tops of the tower blocks, in time. We are talking about

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catastrophic damage, and £1,000 million may well be right, with another £1,000 million derivative damage., with the Underground system out of action for a year and the cessation of the functions of London as the capital of the country. This is what we are talking about, not a very great loss of life.
I also know that the noble Lord is wrong in having said that delays, and the time it has taken to reach a decision, were due to disagreement between Departments about which should do what. This is not so. There have been no disagreements in this field, although they are common enough in less important ones. The gravity of this matter has been sufficient to avoid departmental squabbles. The time has been taken in research, which was necessary, and in composing honest differences—differences which were maddening, dangerous and, in some cases, irresponsible—about what should be done. There has been no buck-passing until now. I do not believe that when the barrier is built there will be any appreciable danger of a flood coming up so fast that there is no warning to enable the barrier to be brought into operation in time. That is not the way the warning system has been set up, and we need not worry about that. But that still leaves enough for us to worry about.
The barrier has been talked about since the mid-19th century. It was the 1953 flood which brought it to be a practical possibility. The Waverley Committee reported and said that there should be a barrier or barrage; then there were 14 or 15 years of muddle; technical reports were submitted; two firms of consultants who were brought in contradicted each other, and the Government did not know quite what to do. And by the time the last Labour Government came into office the subject was lying in pieces all over the floor. We therefore commissioned Professor Hermann Bondi (and I should like to join my tribute to that which has been paid by my noble friend to a very remarkable man) to report on the matter. He did so, and said that we had not looked widely enough at all the possibilities, and, above all, that we should stop worrying about the magnitude of a disaster; we should stop trying to put a
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price on it, and stop trying to calculate the exact number of people who would be homeless. The disaster would be so terrible that it must not happen: action must be taken by the Government, and that action should be the building of a barrier in a place which should be determined according to wider views and criteria than any that had yet been used. As a result, in 1967 or 1968 the Government took two steps. They commissioned the G.L.C. to carry out a detailed study on the right site and type of barrier that should be built. Then my noble friend Lord Greenwood of Rossendale set up a Policy Committee on this whole matter, as Chairman of which he was rash enough and confiding enough to place me. It was, of course, by far the greatest and most alarming responsibility I have ever faced in my life, or that I think I ever shall face in my life, to bring the correct policy out of this matter over the two-year period. This Policy Committee represented all the public bodies concerned. We kept finding more public bodies which were not represented on it and should have been. It became very large and it was a difficult but an absolutely necessary, life-and-death task to drive it forward to its conclusion.
The G.L.C. reported in the document my noble friend referred to. This Report came out in January of this year, and in May of this year my noble friend Lord Greenwood of Rossendale was able to announce that he had that day asked the Greater London Council to proceed with the studies necessary to enable them to recommend a precise site for a drop-gate barrage. He asked them to choose the precise site and he named the type. Those are the two great questions: where and what. That went forward, and we came to the Written Answer by the present Secretary of State for the Environment, Mr. Peter Walker, on November 4 of this year, in which he said that he agreed
"with the view of the Greater London Council that the right site is at Silvertown in Woolwich Reach."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 4/11/70; col. 352.]
Good! The site is chosen. In my view it is the right site, and in the view of the overwhelming majority who have studied this matter for so long it is the right site.

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I wish one could confine oneself to cheering. But in the next paragraph Mr. Walker said:
"Detailed design work will begin as soon as a decision can be taken on the type of barrier."—[col. 352.]
A decision had been taken by the last Government on the type; it was to be a drop-gate. Unfortunately, the present Government have gone back on this decision and so the question is open again. They have taken one step forward in choosing the site, and one step backward in unchoosing the type.
I come now to the Adjournment Debate in the other place on November 9, when Mr. Eldon Griffiths, speaking for the Department of the Environment, said one or two things which I hope the House will bear with me if I take up, because it was not possible for anybody to take them up in the other place at that time. He said:
"… it would have been so easy to postpone a decision as our predecessors did."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 9/11/70; col. 169.]
My Lords, I must utterly reject that: his predecessors postponed no decision. They went forward a great deal faster than had ever been done before towards a decision, and I hope that the noble Lord who is to reply to this Question will accept from me that it is right for me not to allow those words to stand uncorrected on the Record of either House.
Mr. Griffiths also went to to say:
"All I can say in answer to his question is that the type of barrier constructed, depending on what is chosen, will certainly not exclude the possibility of tide control in the future"—
which was one of the matters looked into—
"but for the time being I think this is a matter for consultation with the G.L.C. and the Port of London Authority."—[col. 169.]
We are right back, still consulting between two public bodies. I thought we had reached a decision on that. His last words were:
"Further investigation will be required in respect of a site. More discussions are needed in respect of the money. Full consultations will be required at all stages, but nevertheless the decision has been made and the action can now begin."—[col. 171.]
Well, it has been made on the site, and that is good. It is in my view a great pity that it has been unmade on the type.
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All sorts of ideas are floating around. There is the idea of a great nylon bag downstream which can be hoisted up to keep the water out. There is the idea of the so-called rising gate, where air is allowed into a great drum at the bottom of the river and it comes up and holds itself there by flotation. There is the idea of bank-raising upstream of the frontal side of the barrier to give interim protection, or even indeed to give us belt and braces once the barrier is built. It would not be right for me to urge the Government either to do, or not to do, any of these alternatives by supplementary means; but this I will urge them not to do. I beg them—and I think that everybody who knows the facts could only beg them—not to allow investigation of these possibilities, not to allow any further research, not to allow any further discussion, to delay the building of the barrier at the site chosen. And I would add, not to allow these discussions and researches and possibilities to delay the building of a barrier of a type that we know will work, namely, the drop-gate, and not to risk fiddling around with untried technologies of a sort which exist nowhere in the world and which may or may not work. If they did not work one would then have to start on the long, slow task of building the known type of certain protective barrier, namely, a drop-gate.
9.41 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am sure that the whole House, or such Members of it as are here, will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, for his initiative in raising this important matter. I think the whole House would want to acknowledge the responsible and valuable part that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has played in bringing this matter to the point at which it now stands.
Perhaps I ought to start by spelling out more precisely than has been done so far the dangers to be apprehended and to be met by these measures. They arise from a combination of high tides, strong gales in the North Sea, a spate in the Thames and this rather mysterious Rossiter factor which the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, enlarged upon, which has the effect of raising the high tides in relation to the land by about two and a half feet a century. It is the combination of these four factors with which we have:

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to contend. Facing those, and in the light of the disasters that occurred in 1928 and 1953, it has been agreed, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said, that the building of a movable barrier was urgently necessary and that it should be built at Silvertown. That was a decision taken by our predecessors and announced by the Secretary of State for the Environment in another place on November 4.
The G.L.C. have been asked to press ahead with the detailed site investigation and also with the completion of the remaining studies which, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said, include confirming the choice of the barrier to be used. The detailed design work will begin as soon as that decision has been taken. The G.L.C. are therefore now proceeding to carry out the work necessary to enable them to decide on the precise site and on the particular type of barrier to be used.
LORD KENNET: Will the noble Lord give way for a moment? He is not, of course, disputing the fact that Mr. Greenwood's announcement in another place in fact chose a type of barrier, namely the drop-gate, and therefore this is a step backwards?
LORD SANDFORD: I am not disputing that for a moment, my Lords. I am just setting out precisely what the position now is. When the design has been chosen, the barrier will take about two years to design and about five or six years to construct. Therefore, if a decision on the precise type of barrier were to be reached early in 1971, and if authorisation to build the barrier followed immediately upon completion of the design it would be completed in the late 1970s.
The choice about which the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, spoke is between a drop-gate (or a guillotine) type of barrier with a single opening 450 feet wide, and a rising sector type of gate (with submerged gates between the piers of the river) with several openings, each 200 feet wide. The issue is a navigational one and hinges upon whether the navigational interests will be content with 200 feet openings. The rising sector gate will be cheaper by £9 million and will take about a year less to complete, but the navigational interests may feel compelled to
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insist on 450 feet in the interests of the safety of shipping. This is among the many issues which the G.L.C. are at present investigating.
In considering the whole question of a barrier siting and the difficulties of London in the downstream area, it is important to bear in mind that it would be necessary not only to construct a barrier but also to carry out a complete survey of the riparian banks and walls downstream and to raise them where necessary. A major effect of damming a flood tide by means of a barrier will be, of course, to raise the high tide level downstream, and this will have to be contained. This work will be programmed and carried out in conjunction with the construction of the barrier, by the G.L.C. and the Essex and Kent river authorities as flood protection authorities for their respective areas.
I turn to the question of cost, on which the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, asked me a particular question. The cost of the barrier and the related works will be borne by the Greater London Council with financial assistance from Exchequer funds. The rate of grant will be calculated in accordance with the method normally used for flood protection works carried out under the Land Drainage Act, which takes account of the burden placed by any project upon a local authority's financial resources. The Government recognise that works of improvement may also be necessary on riparian defences, banks and walls, downstream of the barrier site in the areas of the Kent and Essex river authorities, and to the extent that such works can be regarded as associated with measures to protect London, the Government are prepared to pay grant. Broadly, the terms will be those applicable to flood protection schemes undertaken by river authorities under the Land Drainage Acts. Details of these grant offers are about to be discussed with the river authorities concerned. I hope that that is a satisfactory answer to Lord Bowden's question of who pays.
The noble Lord also asked me about warnings. Since 1953, when the tidal floods caused widespread damage and loss of life along the eastern seaboard, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food have administered a flood warning system for the whole of the East coast

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including the Thames estuary. This system, known as the Storm Tide Warning Service, is operated by the Hydro-grapher of the Navy on behalf of the Ministry. Officers of the service stationed at the Meteorological Office in Bracknell are equipped with repeater tide gauges which continually reproduce the analogue record from gauges at Stornoway, Wick, Aberdeen, Tynemouth, Immingham, Lowestoft, Walton-on-Naze and Southend. The information is transmitted to Bracknell by direct private telephone lines. Warning information is sent by the Bracknell unit jointly to the river authorities, who are the local bodies directly responsible for the sea defences, and the police in their areas. But because not all river authorities are on the telex network, messages go directly from Bracknell to county police headquarters, and the police pass them to river authorities by the quickest means, usually telephone.
From this stage the river authorities monitor the situation locally by means of their own gauges, and the police, acting on their advice, give warnings to the public. The 12-hour warning, the alert, is a warning that meteorological conditions are such that tidal flooding could occur. To distinguish between marginal and more dangerous situations, the four hour warning is in two classes. "Alert confirmed" means that the tide is expected to be within plus or minus six inches of danger level, and "Danger", the second class of the four hour alert, is when the next tide is expected to be a certain number of feet above prediction.
Now I come to the London flood warning system superimposed over that. In 1968, a special flood warning system for London was devised and introduced by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. This is in effect a more elaborate local system grafted on to the system I have just described. The nerve centre is the Ministry's flood room, which is manned jointly by their engineers and engineers of the Greater London Council. The flood room is equipped with a continuous tide gauge repeater for Southend, backed up by repeaters for Tilbury and Tower Pier. It is also connected by direct telephone lines to the hydro-graphers at Bracknell, the Metropolitan
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Police, the control room of London Transport and the B.B.C. The primary function of the flood room is to warn the general public in the flood vulnerable area. This is done by sounding 80 or so strategically selected air raid sirens, 30 seconds on and 15 seconds off alternately for two minutes about one hour before flooding is likely to occur. The later a warning is given, the more accurate will be the forecast on which it is based. It is important not to alert the public unnecessarily, and one hour is regarded as sufficient time for the necessary action to be taken by them.
The public have already been advised through regular Press, radio and television publicity what to do when the flood warning sirens sound; an important instruction is to listen to B.B.C. Radio 1 for announcements on the situation given by the flood room over its direct telephone line to the B.B.C. Certain organisations require a longer period in which to make preparations—for instance, the Underground; and local authorities who need to safeguard elderly or handicapped people living in basements. Arrangements have been made to give them earlier warnings according to the period of notice they require. These early warnings are given through the Metropolitan Police communications network on the advice of the flood room.
Each riverside London borough council has prepared its own plan to meet local circumstances in a flood emergency. In general, these plans provide for key personnel to be alerted on receipt of a warning four hours in advance of likely flooding. If the risk continues, a three-hour warning is issued on which operational teams and equipment are mustered. The one-hour public warning is the signal to evacuate elderly and handicapped people to prearranged places of safety and to move people from extremely low lying areas.
So much for the warning. Now for the practical preparations. Emergency accommodation in public halls, schools and so on, with supplies of blankets and feeding arrangements, have been made by the borough welfare organisations. The Underground has a scheme—the noble Lord asked me if the scheme had been tested, and the answer is that this one has—which can evacuate everyone within one hour.

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He asked me particularly about the statutory defence levels. The concept of statutory defence levels is, for all practical purposes, somewhat obsolescent now. After the floods of 1928, in which lives were lost, the L.C.C., pursuant to their powers under the Thames Flooding Acts, prescribed various levels for the riparian defences in their area. In some places frontagers were required to raise defences to comply with these levels, while elsewhere the L.C.C. themselves raised the defences. But after the emergency of 1953 it became quite clear that these levels were no longer adequate. However, fresh levels have not been prescribed since: if there is to be a flood barrier at Silver-town, the whole nature of the defensive system will be altered and conditioned by it. The G.L.C. are therefore at present carrying out a separate investigation into the possibilities of providing different interim protection.
There is, of course, a strong case for providing such interim protection, either generally, by means of the temporary raising of existing walls, or selectively for areas or installations particularly at risk—for example, Underground access points. The provision of such protection is attended with considerable difficulty—for example, the extent of the work that may be necessary to ensure the stability of higher walls; the detriment to amenity likely to be caused by raising the height of embankments in central London, and the complications involved in access to a great deal of private land in different ownerships. There is also the question of how much cost it would be reasonable to incur to give protection for a few years when we are simultaneously incurring a total cost of over £80 million on permanent defences operative in the late 1970s. But all the views expressed to-night—
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, he says that there is a strong case for increasing the height of walls. After what has been said, I should have thought that to be something of a understatement. Can the noble Lord not say when a start is to be made on increasing the height of these defences?
LORD SANDFORD: NO. I said that there was a strong case for providing different interim protections from the
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simple one of raising the statutory defence level; and this is a matter which the G.L.C. are investigating.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, my question now is when is this work going to start.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, as soon as the G.L.C. have reported on the precise nature of these different interim protections and their report has been considered and accepted.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, has the noble Lord set, or is he going to set, some sort of time limit for these considerations?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, as the noble Lord will know—and in fact his noble friend explained—the G.L.C. were asked in 1968 to start studying this problem. The first phase of their considerations, as I understand it, was directed to coming to decisions about the flood barrier, which they have done. That major decision having been taken, there is now the subsidiary question to which the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, was primarily directed, to establish whether or not the interim protection consists of just raising the statutory defence level, or whether the whole question needs to be looked at afresh and a different form of interim protection provided.
LORD BOWDEN: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt, but what I was trying to get at is this: I believe that something could be done by starting work somewhere to-morrow morning. We have been told of delays and delays, discussions and discussions, and arguments and differences of opinion between firms of consultants, and heaven knows what! The fact is that all this time London has been sinking, the Dutch have been improving their very much more complicated defences, yet we have done nothing. My plea is that something can be done, starting almost to-morrow morning. I do not mind where, and I do not think it matters very much. It may even turn out that the work which is first done is totally useless. Nevertheless, something could be done quickly, I am quite sure. What I am so anxious about is this interminable delay while a final definitive solution is produced—a solution which may come too late to save London from catastrophe.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, we have had, and we are very grateful for it, a clear recommendation about the Thames Barrier, and the general site for this has been selected. That is a firm, constructive decision. In the light of that—and only in the light of that—it is now possible to go on to the further question of the interim protection. It is quite impossible to do things until it is clear, from the recommendations of the G.L.C., what they consider to be the priorities. What is now becoming quite apparent is that it will not be sensible just to raise the statutory defence levels.
I am almost at the end, and I hope that by the Answer I have given I have made it clear that, following the main basic decision to defend London from flood by means of a barrier in the Thames, Her Majesty's Government, and the G.L.C. in particular, are now pressing forward to the next stage of implementing that decision. The site at Silvertown having been chosen, the design of the barrier has to be considered. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, believes it is quite straightforward to take that decision, and I hope it will not be long before a decision—if not the one that our predecessors arrived at, at any rate another decision—will be taken. The design of the barrier has to be settled; and, meanwhile, the floodwarning system, which I have described at some length because I think it is important, is being kept up to date and is in full working order. The G.L.C. are investigating what further interim and different defence protection is best in all
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the circumstances until the barrier is completed. We expect their report, after which action can be taken very shortly.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, when is this report now expected?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, very shortly.

GATESHEAD CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments; the said Amendments considered and agreed to.