Lords Sitting of 27 October 1970

Preamble
Reassembling after the Summer Recess, the House met at half past two of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Lincoln):
The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Several Lords—Took the Oath.
The Lord Llewelyn-Davies—Affirmed.

GENTLEMAN USHER OF THE BLACK ROD
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, I have to acquaint the House that Her Majesty has appointed Admiral Sir Frank Roddam Twiss, K.C.B., D.S.C., to be Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, in succession to Air Chief Marshal Sir George Holroyd Mills, G.C.B., D.F.C., and that he is at the door ready to receive your Lordships' commands.
Whereupon the House directed that he be called in. Accordingly he was called in and officiated in his place.

TRIBUTES TO SIR GEORGE MILLS
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I should not like to let this brief ceremony pass without saying a few words in gratitude
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for the services of Sir George Milis. Your Lordships will be aware that the office of Black Rod—of which I think that Sir George was the 55th holder—is an ancient one. Indeed, I have always taken the description of the Porters of the Parliament in the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum—that 14th century forgery which purports to be a contemporary description of the manner of holding Parliaments in the reign of Edward the Confessor—to apply to the Gentleman Usher of the Biack Rod, where the duties of the Principal Porter are described as
"keeping the door so that none come into the Parliament but he which ought to come to the Parliament".
The Modus states that the Porter ought, if it be needful, to have more Porters under him. My Lords, the Modus is now recognised for what it is, and we no longer attach the significance to it that 17th century Parliamentarians did; but I like to think that its description of the Porter and his assistants reflects the importance of the role which Black Rod and his Doorkeepers discharge so ably and so faithfully to this day.
Sir George Mills, after a very distinguished career in the Royal Air Force, culminating in his holding the post of Commander of the Allied Air Forces, Central Europe, and United Kingdom representative on the Standing Group of the NATO Military Committee, became our Black Rod seven years ago, in 1963. If his term of office has been unmomen-tous so far as alarums and excursions are concerned, this is only evidence of the efficiency with which he has discharged

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his ancient office. During his tenure, no fire has started at this end of the building, and his disciplinary powers have not been in demand. I think that Sir George has had little to contend with other than having to mark time on one occasion outside the door of another place, and this is possibly something which his successor, whom I am sure we are all glad to welcome here, will not have repeated.
My Lords, I have no doubt that the whole House will agree with me when I say that during the past seven years Sir George has been unfailingly helpful and courteous in all his dealings with your Lordships, and I know that he leaves a great many friends in your Lordships' House behind him. I hope that during his retirement he will be able to pursue in tranquillity that pursuit of knowledge which I am informed led to the disappearance from the Library from time to time, in alphabetical sequence, of certain volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica while the House was sitting. My Lords, Black Rod's office is a somewhat lonely place, and I hope that during the long hours Sir George spent in it he was able to progress far through the alphabet.
My Lords, I am sure that your Lordships will join with me in expressing our thanks to Sir George for all that he has done for us, in sending our warmest wishes to him and Lady Mills for a happy retirement, and in wishing our new and very distinguished Black Rod good luck in his office.
2.38 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, the Leader of the House has introduced in a most charming way a subject with which I think every Member of your Lordships' House will be in agreement. Indeed, there is in his remarks almost a return to the scholarship which marked my predecessor, Lord Longford; or perhaps the research that is conducted by his office has improved. It seems only a very short time—and I am amazed that it is seven years—since Sir George Mills took over from Sir Brian Horrocks, and again the turn of the Royal Navy has come round. Much as I regret that the Air Force should give up this particular post, I recall that the predecessor of Sir Brian Horrocks was Sir Geoffrey Blake. We are apt to be rather critical these days
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about something known as "Buggins's turn", but I am bound to say that it works extraordinarily well in the case of the Black Rods of your Lordships' House.
I am very relieved to find that Sir George Mills has been employing his time profitably. Many of us remember that Sir Brian Horrocks did a great deal of his broadcast and other work sitting in the Box, and one was happy to see him employed. I am also gratified that somebody who may be older in years than he looks is still very young in spirit. Sir George has brought a great deal of charm and friendliness. I think we should all agree that friendliness and charm are among the qualities of your Lordships' House, and that for the maintenance of this atmosphere we depend not only on your Lordships but on those who serve us so well. Certainly Sir George Mills filled his office with distinction and friendliness and we are very sorry to see him go.
At the same time I should like to echo what was said by the noble Earl the Leader of the House in giving a welcome to Sir Frank Twiss. During my tour of duty as Leader of your Lordships' House we considered very carefully its organisation, and Sir Frank Twiss will be taking on great additional responsibilities. He was highly commended to us by the Ministry of Defence, and no more highly commended than by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, who actually was served by Sir Frank Twiss. We are fortunate that such a distinguished and such an able officer follows an equally distinguished and able officer.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, for myself and on behalf of my colleagues on these Benches may I say that we wholeheartedly support the very well-deserved tributes paid to-day to Sir George. There is always sadness in parting with those one has worked with and has come to know. Sir George has been Black Rod ever since I entered this House and I am personally grateful for all the charm and good humour that he brought to the job. It is not an easy task to knock at irregular intervals on the door of the other place and to disturb the tranquillity and cosiness of the debates that are going on there, but Sir George did it many times without arousing too much opposition—although I understand that one or two Members

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are considering reporting him to the Commission on Intrusion into Privacy. However, I believe there was a very early occasion in his career when, having knocked on the door and having been admitted, he found himself speechless. I will not add, "And who should blame him?" He has served your Lordships' House with tolerance and charm and always appeared to enjoy his work. We hope that he will enjoy his well-deserved retirement as much as he has enjoyed the work he has done in this House. We welcome his successor and we know that he will discharge his duties in the high tradition of this House.

EUROPEAN SECURITY: PROPOSED CONFERENCE
2.43 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: 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 will support the twenty-four Governments and the Vatican in furthering the proposal for a European conference on security and reductions in armed forces.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN): My Lords, Her Majesty's Government would see advantage in a Conference provided that it had a reasonable prospect of resolving issues of substance. NATO Governments offered discussions on mutual and balanced force reductions in Europe as long ago as June, 1968; but the Warsaw Pact Governments have so far ruled this subject out of the agenda for a Conference. We are pursuing consultations in NATO and seeking clarification of Warsaw Pact views.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while welcoming the first sentences in that reply, may I ask the noble Marquess this question? Will Her Majesty's Government bear in mind, in the conversations with Mr. Gromyko, that many of us regard this as the great break-through for peace both in Europe and the world? And is it not the case that the Soviet Government and the Warsaw Pact Governments
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have met the objections which have been urged, including the representations of America and Canada, and that they propose a conference of the Governments concerned at a meeting which will decide the Conference agenda without any conditions.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I will certainly undertake to pass on to my right honourable friend the noble Lord's observations about the conversations that are taking place with Mr. Gromyko, and I am certain that he will bear them in mind. The reservations that we have so far had about this Conference have been purely a matter of clarification as to what the Conference is about. But I will certainly take into account what the noble Lord has said.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, if there is to be a Conference on European security, will the Government see to it at least that the agenda includes a discussion of the so-called "Brezhnev doctrine" whereby the Soviet Union claim the right to intervene, by force if necessary, in support of socialist régimes anywhere in the world? Would not the Government agree that so long as this doctrine is upheld there is scarcely likely to be any real long-term security in Europe?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that observation. I am certain that this is one of the matters that will be borne in mind when the NATO Ministers meet in December to discuss this problem.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, following the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, may I ask: is it not the case that Communist countries in the East are welcoming this proposal for a Conference because it will facilitate the withdrawal of the Russian troops and greater liberalisation in their territories?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I am quite certain that the Warsaw Pact countries welcome the idea of this Conference and, as I said in my original Answer, the Government here also welcome it in principle. All we are interested in at the moment, and to some extent concerned with, is, as I have said before, to get clarification from the Warsaw Pact countries as to exactly how and what they wish to discuss.
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he will agree that one of the positions the Government have taken consistently throughout these discussions has been that this Conference should take place with no preconditions? Is this not somewhat in conflict with the position now being taken, that it should be held on condition that certain things are discussed? Will he accept that we in this side of the House recognise the difficulties of arranging such a Conference, and will he assure us that in conversations that are going on in NATO Her Majesty's Government will do their utmost to bring about such a Conference which is so important for European security?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I think I can give the noble Lord the assurance that Her Majesty's Government will take into account exactly what he said.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, is it really the intention of the Government to embark on a Conference which has no agenda? Is that not a certain recipe for disaster?

FIREWORKS SALES: EXPLOSIVES (AGE OF PURCHASE) BILL
2.48 p.m.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to introduce legislation to replace the Explosives (Age of Purchase) Bill which failed to receive the Royal Assent before the Dissolution of Parliament.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD WINDLESHAM): My Lords, Her Majesty's Government do not intend to introduce any such legislation.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, while welcoming, of course, the great reduction in the number of accidents caused by fireworks, may I ask the noble Lord whether he does not agree that public opinion wants us to advance in some small measure in the direction of better control? Further, would the noble Lord consider with his friends that as some fireworks more dangerous than
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others, namely "bangers", are usually involved in the illegal use of fireworks in public streets and highways that useful legislation might be taken in that regard? Would the noble Lord's friends give fair wind to a Bill to outlaw at least these, the most dangerous and wounding of the fireworks at present allowed?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I can assure the noble Viscount, whose interest in this subject is well known to us, that the decision not to introduce a Bill does not reflect any indifference towards fireworks accidents nor any reluctance towards playing a part in reducing them. But my right honourable friend the Home Secretary is not convinced that legislation of this kind is the right approach. What is needed is a readier and more effective acceptance by parents and other adults of their own responsibilities for ensuring that fireworks, which are not in themselves intrinsically dangerous, are safely handled. There is no doubt that they can be safely handled. The noble Viscount knows of the advances that have been made in recent years, and there is no lack of advice or guidance, which now includes the Firework Code on the lines he has advocated in the past. We feel that this approach is likely to be more effective than legislation of the kind to which the noble Viscount has referred in his Question.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, is the noble Lord saying that this is one element of the Government's new policy of standing on our own feet?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, the point of greatest danger is that at which fireworks are used and not the point at which they are sold; and it is on that single point that our decision has been taken.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, is the noble Lord saying that he thinks that no useful purpose would be served by banning the manufacture and sale of "bangers"? As he knows, these are perpetually used outside the law in public places and are the cause of a great number of accidents. Is he saying that no good could be achieved by legislation banning the manufacture of these fireworks? Is the noble Lord aware that one of the boys in my own club is now

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blind and in hospital as a result of a "banger" exploding in his face?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, we are satisfied that the fireworks on sale in the shops are subject—as the noble Lord well knows—to very stringent control. I have recently seen demonstrations of the use of fireworks both of the type that are on sale and also of those which are banned. There is a considerable list of dangerous fireworks, many of them manufactured overseas, which are not available on sale. Those which are on sale, if handled correctly, are safe; and banning the manufacture and the sale of fireworks does not seem to us to be the most effective approach to greater safety. Our aim to achieve greater safety is exactly the same as that of the noble Viscount, but there are two ways of arriving at that.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, will the noble Lord explain a little more clearly what he means by saying that this is not a suitable subject for legislation? Legislation now exists. The only point about the Bill which this House passed before the change of Government was that we amended the legislation and made it more relevant. What is the argument against that?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, my reference was to additional legislation, not to legislation which exists.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord remembers the effect of the television programme last year, and others in previous years, which do not seem to have had any consequence in the way of change in the use of fireworks. With November 5 not far away would the noble Lord give an undertaking that there will be a review of accidents caused by fireworks to see whether anything can be learned from them?
LORD WINDLESHAM: Certainly, my Lords. There is no doubt that the enormous increase in publicity in the last two years has led to a substantial reduction in the number of firework accidents. The B.B.C. are repeating the "Man Alive" programme on October 28—that is, on Wednesday of this week—and we hope that the effect of that, and other publicity, will be a further reduction. The figures are analysed with very great care.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, in view of the fact that in his opening remarks the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, said the protection of the child should be left to the parents, can he tell me what precedent there is for this? Is it not a fact that when a Government recognise that some practice is harmful to a child the Government themselves take action, and do not regard a parent as a sufficiently responsible person to protect the child?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, it is a matter of scale. I believe that 300 million fireworks were sold last year. The number of accidents in relation to that figure is infinitesimal. But, of course, as the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, has just mentioned, examples of individual instances can be very tragic. For that reason, measures to improve the situation—the Firework Code, the control of the type of fireworks being sold and other measures—have been introduced. The noble Baroness may not agree with me, but I came to this subject fairly fresh and I am convinced that this is the way to make progress. The greater the supervision exercised by parents and adults in the use of fireworks, the fewer accidents there will be, whatever may be on the Statute Book.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, although everyone agrees that great success has attended the efforts of the manufacturers, the Government and local authorities in their efforts to reduce accidents during recent years, it is perfectly certain that on November 5 more than 2,000 people will be injured by fireworks, and will have to be taken to hospital. What we want to know is how the Government propose to reduce that number.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, by the measures that I have mentioned.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, does the noble Lord suggest that it is appropriate to express the number of children injured as a percentage of the number of fireworks made?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, it is sometimes helpful to have one or two comparative yardsticks so that one can compare the utilisation of something like fireworks with the accident figures. Of course there is no direct

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correlation, but it was a surprise to me to learn that as many as 300 million single fireworks were sold, and I thought that the information might be of interest to some Members of your Lordships' House.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, on that basis, would the noble Lord reckon that there is a ratio between the number of people drowned and the number of gallons of water in the sea?
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, can the noble Lord assure the House that any publicity in regard to this matter will include a reference to the importance of protection for domestic pets?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, it is unfortunate if a firework does harm, whether to a child or to an animal. But what I have been saying would apply in the case of pets as much as in the case of children. If fireworks are handled carefully no damage will be done to anyone.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, will not a very heavy responsibility—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: No!
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, made reference to the ratio between the number of fireworks sold and the number of accidents. Will he not agree that some fireworks are more safe than others and that there are a number of fireworks which have been banned by law? He says that banning by law is no protection for children. But does he really believe that, when a number of fireworks have in fact been banned by law and have thus ceased to be a danger?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I think that the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, is a great deal more fundamental in his approach. He has on a number of occasions made quite clear that he would like to ban the use of fireworks completely other than, perhaps, at organised displays given by qualified people. That is a point of view. But his own Bill, which sought to achieve that, did not get a Second Reading. I do not think it was granted a Second Reading—the noble Lord may correct me if he likes.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, will the noble Lord answer my supplementary question? He has talked about everything else except my question. Will he please answer what I said?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I think that we really have debated this subject at considerable length—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear!
LORD WINDLESHAM:—and I am unable to add to what I said in my first Answer.

INLAND WATERWAYS: NAVIGATION RIGHTS
2.59 p.m.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to introduce legislation to keep their pre-Election promise to restore the right of navigation on the nationalised inland waterways; and whether in the meantime they would ask British Waterways, when faced with complaints of neglect of upkeep, not to answer that, as the law now stands, they have no duty to keep waterways navigable.]
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government are studying the problems confronting users of inland waterways arising from changes introduced by the 1968 Transport Act to establish what hardships were created and if legislation should be introduced to combat them.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, does that mean that British Waterways are entitled to cease the upkeep of waterways on the grounds that there is now no duty on them? Does it mean that the Party now in Government do not intend to keep the promise they made at the time when the Amendment to the Transport Act was put through the House? Do they not mean to keep subsequent promises to restore the right of navigation? Does the noble Lord's Answer mean that they are having second thoughts?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, it does not mean any of the things which the noble Viscount has suggested. The noble Viscount is a great expert on this subject and he will be aware that under the 1968 Act the waterways are divided into three categories—commercial, cruising and remainder waterways. It is only the remainder waterways that the Board are not under an obligation to keep navigable. As the noble Viscount will be aware, it is possible for these waterways to be upgraded, downgraded or even closed. As regards the commercial and cruising waterways, the Board are under an obligation and are carrying it out. As to the latter half of the noble Viscount's Question, the Government are looking into this subject, as I said earlier and as was said in another place in July. But the noble Viscount will appreciate that it is not a matter of high priority on the Government's list.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, will the noble Lord accept any information that I give him to the effect that it is impossible to navigate on a number of waterways, not just remainder waterways but some in the other categories which it is intended to keep open for navigation, and that the answer from the Waterways Board is that there is no duty to keep them navigable? If it is the Government's intention to restore a right of navigation, will the noble Lord and his friends smile on a Private Bill which would produce that result?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, the British Waterways Board are not aware that they have answered any letter in such a fashion as the noble Viscount suggests. I should be grateful if he would let me know any instance which has taken place and let me look into it.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: Certainly, my Lords.

THE MALAGASY REPUBLIC
LORD MERRIVALE: 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, and when, it is proposed that a Minister from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will make an official visit to the Malagasy Republic.]
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, we value our friendly relations with the Malagasy Republic and in principle we should welcome any opportunity for a Minister to visit Madagascar. But there are no plans for such a visit at the present time.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his Answer. Is he aware that no Minister from the Foreign Office has visited the Malagasy Republic since that country achieved independence about ten years ago, and would he not agree that such a visit would be most desirable? May I ask him to believe that if he did go, he would be warmly received? I would also ask whether he is aware that many people there are conscious of the links which united our two countries during the last century and would like to see a renewal and development of co-operation between our two countries?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I am honoured to think that if a Minister were to be sent to the Malagasy Repubic it should be myself. I can assure my noble friend that we are well aware of the strong links that exist between that country and the United Kingdom. Indeed, as I said in my original Answer, in principle we should welcome an opportunity for a Minister to visit the Malagasy Republic.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, would the noble Marquess bear in mind in this connection the comparative nearness of the Malagasy Republic to Mauritius, which is in the Commonwealth, and the great desirability of establishing friendly relations, so that the overpopulation in Mauritius might be relieved by the vast spaces in the Malagasy Republic?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I think that that is a different point, but I will bear in mind what the noble Lord has said.

OIL TANKERS' COLLISION AND POLLUTION DANGER
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question, of which I have given Private Notice. The Question is:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a Statement on the shipping accident off the Isle of Wight and on the resulting threat of oil pollution?
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn will give an Answer to the noble Lord's Question, at a convenient moment after half past three o'clock, in the form of a Statement. I should also like to acquaint your Lordships that my noble friend the Leader of the House will, at a convenient moment after half past four o'clock, be making a Statement on public-expenditure.

READING CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

AMOCO (U.K.) BILL [H.L.]
3.7 p.m.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
LORD MERTHYR: My Lords, may I be permitted to say a few words on this Bill? I want to make it clear at the outset that I do not want to divide the House on the Bill or even to oppose it in any shape or form, but, to put it shortly, the Bill creates yet one more berth for large oil tankers in Milford Haven, a harbour which, though very commodious, will soon be unable to accommodate any more tankers if the present rate of progress continues. It also creates yet another oil refinery, which will go with the berth. Soon there will be no more room, unless something is done about it.
I apprehend that there will be more Bills seeking to provide more berths and, more seriously—because the only vacant
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space at the moment I know of is one which would excite great opposition if it were taken up by another berth and another refinery—there will be a great deal of controversy between the interests of industry and the interests of amenity and conservancy. I do not think I need say more about that, except to mention that the particular site I have in mind is wholly within a National Park.
What I am asking for is this. Some authority—either Her Majesty's Government or some other—should be empowered to co-ordinate all the applications for sites for berths and refineries. That is what is wanted. Why should such an authority not be set up? Why, for instance, should there be more than one berth required for all these tankers? Why must each company have its own berth? That is really the question I would ask: will Her Majesty's Government set up some body to co-ordinate all these applications?
A few years ago—I am told that it was when I was myself Chairman of Committees—there was a Private Bill in your Lordships' House to do this very thing. Unfortunately, it was thrown out—not through any Motion of mine, I can assure the House, because of course the Chairman of Committees has no concern with the throwing out of a Private Bill in a Committee upstairs. That Bill was supported by the Milford Haven Conservancy Board, which was established by an Act of Parliament in which the Government had a great interest. I have no interest to declare in this matter, except that I am a lifelong resident in the locality, and I know that my plea for some co-ordinating authority to be set up, late though the hour is, would be given a great deal of support locally. I am grateful to the House for bearing with me for a few moments.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (LORD ABER-DARE): My Lords, we always listen with great attention to what the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, says, and I have made a note of what he said today and will certainly draw it to the attention of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Wales. As the noble Lord knows, the planning permission in this particular case is at the moment

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before the Secretary of State and it would be improper for me to go into anything relating to the present Bill. There are two considerations that have to be balanced: one is the fact that for Pembrokeshire it is a great advantage, from the employment point of view, to have these large oil installations, and I do not think we should wish to do anything to discourage major oil companies, or other major industrial users of the magnificent deep water port that is provided at Milford Haven. I take his point, on the other hand, about amenity. On the point he made about co-ordinating applications, it is the case that the Pembrokeshire County Council are the local planning authority and have a policy on this matter. I expect the noble Lord is aware of it, but if he is not, I will certainly tell him about it later. Their policy with regard to the area around the Haven which they are prepared to see used for these oil installations is very clear.
The only other point on which I may comment briefly is on the matter of the sharing of berths. This is a commercial consideration and I understand that not many of these companies are willing to share a berth. But, as I say, I will certainly draw his remarks to the attention of my right honourable friend.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: My Lords, may I remind your Lordships that this is an opposed Bill which was therefore considered by a Select Committee of your Lordships' House. The two Petitions against the Bill were withdrawn by agreement with the Promoters, and the Committee have recommended it for acceptance by your Lordships, subject to the Amendments.
On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

BILL OF RIGHTS [H.L.]
THE EARL OF ARRAN: My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to declare the rights and liberties of the subject.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(The Earl of Arran.)
On Question, Bill read 1a; and to be printed.

CONSUMER PROTECTION BILL [H.L.]
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to amend Section 3 of the Consumer Protection Act 1961. This is in substitution of a Bill to which your Lordships have already given a First Reading. If your Lordships agree to the First Reading of this new Bill I shall presently ask your Lordships to give me permission to withdraw the other one, which was somewhat faulty in its drafting.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Lord Derwent.)
On Question, Bill read 1a; and to be printed.

CONSUMER PROTECTION (AMENDMENT) BILL [H.L.]
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Consumer Protection (Amendment) Bill.
Bill, by leave, withdrawn.

WATER RESOURCES BILL [H.L.]
3.15 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The object of the Bill is to remedy a serious, but inadvertent, omission from the Water Resources Act 1963. That omission is obliging river authorities to promote Private Bills for all their water conservation schemes when, apart from this one point, they would almost always be able to secure the necessary powers by Ministerial Order. Among other provisions, the 1963 Act placed on river authorities the duty of conserving, redistributing and augmenting the water resources of their area. In pursuance of this duty the river authorities carry out water conservation schemes.
When the Bill was introduced into Parliament its general principles were accepted on all sides. On the particular aspect of the 1963 Act which is relevant to the present Bill—that is, the powers to be given to river authorities to carry

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out water schemes—the then Minister, Sir Keith Joseph, said during the Second Reading in the Commons:
"… the river authorities may be equipped by order of the Minister with compulsory powers in connection with the carrying out of engineering or building operations for the purposes of their new functions; ".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23/4/63, col. 45.]
Later in the same debate Mr. Michael Stewart, for the Opposition, said, among other things, that it seemed to him to be a much simpler method, but it was all very well to use Private Bill procedure for something that was new and exceptional, but in cases such as this it:
"… ought to be done under a procedure that is part and parcel of the ordinary law of the land".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23/4/63; col. 143.]
These works by river authorities principally involve the building of "regulating" reservoirs, and schemes for the transfer of water from one river to another. The Empingham reservoir which the Welland and Nene River Authority were authorised to build by an Act passed in the last Session of the last Parliament is an example of the first, and an example of the second is the Essex River Authority's Ely/Ouse scheme (authorised by Private Act in 1968) for transferring water from the Great Ouse catchment to the headwaters of the Essex rivers. In both types of case the regulated or augmented flow of the river may exceed its natural flow at certain times, and in the latter case the kind of water transferred may be different from that of the river into which it is discharged: that is to say, there may, for example, be differences in hardness. Broadly speaking, the effect of these schemes will be beneficial, but it is always possible that some riparian interest may be detrimentally affected to some degree or another. The risk is that if a riparian owner sought and was granted an injunction by the courts, no river authority, as the 1963 Act now stands, would be able to claim the defence of a statutory authorisation, because the powers of the Minister to make an Order compulsorily authorising the building of the works do not extend to authorising the discharge of water from the works. That is the advice which the Association of River Authorities obtained from counsel, and the Minister's legal advisors agree
20
with the general tenor of counsel's opinion. Thus, although the river authority could be authorised by Ministerial Order to acquire the land, and to build a reservoir or transfer works, such as pipelines or aqueducts, it could be restrained from discharging water from such works, so that the object of the scheme would be frustrated.
The Bill therefore is concerned with putting right this omission from the 1963 Act. It empowers the Minister, on an application from a river authority, to make an Order authorising the river authority, subject to such conditions as the Minister may specify, to discharge water into any inland water or underground strata. The Bill also lays down procedure for the publication and service of notices describing the effect of the proposed Order and for the holding of a local public inquiry or hearing in the event of objection. It also, in Clause 1(3), provides for the payment of compensation to anyone who suffers damage attributable to any discharge of water made in pursuance of such an Order. The Bill also provides for the authorisation of discharges of water by other bodies, such as statutory water companies, by agreement with the river authorities.
There is, I think, broad support for the proposition that in this type of case the Order-making procedure has advantages over Private Bills, from the point of view of Parliament itself, from the point of view of those who are promoting the scheme and—this is particularly important—from the point of view of those who wish to raise objections to it. Parliamentary time is a valuable commodity and Private Bills for water schemes can consume a great deal of it. In addition to the time spent on the Second and Third Reading debates, several days are generally required for the Committee stage in both Houses. The Empingham Bill consumed 14 days in both Houses in Committee. Were it not for this Bill which I am now moving, four river authority schemes would have to be introduced by Private Bills in this Session, and more would be coming along in succeeding Sessions as river authorities prepare their water conservation projects.
Another difficulty from Parliament's point of view is that, by their nature, water schemes are felt to be inappropriate

21
for Private Bills because frequently they introduce considerations of much more than local interest and importance, notably as regards the relationship of a particular scheme to national and regional plans for water resources management and development. The procedure by Order, with its public local inquiry, is also preferable from the point of view of the promoters of the scheme. They are able to relate their case to the wider strategy and at less expense to the public, from whom they derive their funds. And—and I think this is perhaps the most important point for many of your Lordships—the Order-making procedure has considerable advantages for the objectors, if any there be, to a scheme. The greater cost of opposing a Private Bill is a much more formidable deterrent to a farmer who wishes to object or to the amenity society which wishes to object. They can state their case in the less formal and possibly less daunting atmosphere of a public local inquiry, rather than before Committees of either or both Houses. Furthermore, a public local inquiry is held at a convenient place in the locality affected by the scheme, whereas the proceedings on Private Bills must take place in London.
It is these last factors which I have been mentioning that explain the measure of support which I believe this Bill has, not only from the Association of River Authorities representing the Promoters, but from the Country Landowners' Association and the National Farmers' Union. And I understand that, in principle, the amenity associations agree as well. For all these reasons, the procedure involved in the right of objection by all interested parties, with the right of a public local inquiry leading to a decision by the Minister, is, I believe, more apt for water conservation projects than the Private Bill procedure. I should like finally, my Lords, to emphasise that the present Bill does no more than make a minor rectification to restore the position which the 1963 Act was intended to bring about and which was welcomed at the time. I therefore trust that your Lordships will be ready to accord this amended Bill an equal welcome. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Sandford.)
3.24 p.m.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, we on this side of the House are disposed to welcome this Bill because it was, of course, one which we had prepared and it has been inherited, and very wisely introduced, by the new Government. I would add that I say that subject to what we are about to hear from other noble Lords. I would not wish to go overboard in support of every detail of it, speaking as I am doing before those noble Lords who have put themselves down to speak this afternoon who have a very wide and relevant experience in this matter. I should perhaps point out to the House that, although this Bill has the merits claimed for it by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford—namely, that it is easier and cheaper to get your case considered by a ministerial public inquiry than to get it considered by a Parliamentary Committee—it introduces a reduction in the powers of Parliament over this matter. It is a passing of power over the environment from Parliament, from the Legislature, to the Minister or the Executive. This in itself is a matter which may cause one to pause and think. I believe the disadvantages of that are outweighed by the advantages which the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, outlined and which I just mentioned, but I think that point needs considering as the Bill goes through the House.
I have one or two detailed questions on the Bill which are quite simply questions of understanding. If I may put them to the noble Lord now, perhaps he can answer them later in the debate or indeed at a later stage. Clause 1(1) says that the whole Bill is to facilitate
"the performance by a river authority of any of their new functions".
In my ignorance, I just do not know what the new functions of river authorities are. I thought they got all their functions together when they were set up in 1963. I know what the new functions of the Thames Conservancy and the Lee Conservancy are—they come in Clause 2(2)(a). But what are the new functions of river authorities?
Then, in Clause 1(5), and again in the Schedule, we come across that shadowy thing in legislation, "a person". It says that river authorities may release water down a river and that water undertakings may act in that way as if they

23
were river authorities, or in conjunction with river authorities. But then we come across "a person". Who is "a person"? If it is intended that it should be someone other than a water undertaking, then who? If it is not intended that it should be someone other than a water undertaking, why not delete this vague person and keep to the precise "water undertaking"? It raises in my mind the question of industry or the private owner of a reservoir. If a firm or a factory owns a reservoir or has any other kind of discharge of water which is likely to come into question under this Bill, or indeed if a private landowner owns a reservoir or discharges water for any other cause, are they going to be ruled in future by Clause 1(5) of this Bill?
In Clause 2(2)(b) we again come to the new functions, but I have already mentioned that point. As to Clause 2(4), I think the House would be grateful if the noble Lord could give some examples at the present stage of what sort of thing it might be in a Private Act which the Minister would wish to repeal because it no longer seems appropriate when this Bill has been passed. Lastly, the Schedule, in paragraph 3(b), refers to the river authority having to give notice to everybody concerned of what it intends to do, and it says that one may not be able to get that notice, or to talk about it with the river authority, unless one has paid "a reasonable charge for being so notified". I do not know whether the Government have consulted with the anglers and other interested groups about this "reasonable charge". It does not sound too nice. I do not think people ought to be charged for being notified that they are going to be damnified and then compensated. They ought just to be notified free of charge, and they ought to have a right to say what they think about it. That concludes my detailed points.
Lastly, may I make a general point about the spread of reservoirs in this country? This point I think is permissible on the Second Reading of the Bill. The reservoirs grow and grow. They fill up our valleys and our fertile agricultural land. Some of them can be put to good recreational use; some cannot. They are a very great nuisance. Far more people dislike them than like them, and if they
24
continue to spread it will be difficult to keep your feet dry anywhere in the country. There is no end in sight, except one. That one end is the desalting of sea water. I know that we on this side, at any rate, would be very grateful to the noble Lord if, in winding up this debate, he could say a word about what the new Government plan to do on desalination policy in general; and in particular whether they plan to go forward with the production of desalination plant for water supply by freezing on the estuary of the river Deben in Suffolk, which I announced just before the Election that the former Government were minded to go ahead with.
3.30 p.m.
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Sandford has introduced this Bill with a short speech of model clarity and lucidity, and I feel quite confident that all your Lordships will agree that this Bill should be given a rapid passage. Its sole purpose appears to be to remedy an error in the drafting of the Water Resources Act 1963. That Act introduced a new procedure as regards the abstraction of water from rivers. At the same time as the Water Resources Board was set up an attempt was made to have what might be called an overall plan for the water resources of this country which would provide that the normal way in which water would be provided for any particular purpose would be that the River Authority should give a licence for the abstraction of water for a certain purpose. It was not observed by the Parliamentary draftsmen, and it was not observed in either House of Parliament, that while the Act did not alter the existing powers with regard to building engineering works it provided this new and simplified procedure for the abstraction of water.
My Lords, in view of the general tendency nowadays for engineers and river authorities to favour the regulating reservoir instead of the holding reservoir, I think that this Bill can be of immense value. The new idea is that instead of merely storing water in a remote part of the country and conveying it by pipes, which are of course expensive to build and to maintain, use should be made of the existing river.

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In the debate which we had on the purification of British rivers at the beginning of this year I and many other noble Lords drew attention to the immense possibilities of meeting the ever-increasing demand for pure water by using the existing rivers, if only they were purified. I believe that there was almost a consensus of opinion—and certainly it received favourable notice from the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, who was at the time speaking for the Government—that our general policy should be so far as possible to purify our rivers and in that way to obtain large quantities of pure water without the expense, and the dislocation and destruction of the countryside, involved in holding reservoirs.
So far, this Bill is a most desirable amendment of the Water Resources Act 1963. But just as the Parliamentary draftsmen and the Government of that day failed to observe a defect in the Act, so, I fear, the amenity interest for which I spoke were oblivious of a certain change that was being made which would very much reduce the control of Parliament over Orders of this kind and thereby diminish the opportunities of the amenity societies to oppose Orders that were going to have an adverse effect in submerging attractive parts of the countryside.
My Lords, in 1945 the late Lord Kilmuir, when Solicitor General, was responsible for devising what was called Special Parliamentary Procedure with a particular view to its being used in the Water Act 1945. That Bill, which he had drafted during the time of the Conservative Government, was in fact passed by the Labour Government when they came into power and, subject to certain reservations which we put forward in another place and which were accepted by the Government of that day, Special Parliamentary Procedure is a speedy, relatively inexpensive and satisfactory way of enabling Orders to be made effective while at the same time retaining the control of Parliament over the general policy. What we did not observe at the time was that the effective control by Parliament through the Special Parliamentary Procedure contained in the Water Act 1945 was to a large extent done away with by the Water Resources Act 1963.
The Government may say that the amenity interests were like Homer and nodded in 1963, and that this general
26
principle was then accepted by Parliament that the safeguards which had been contained in the Act of 1945 could properly be done away with. The Government may say that it is now rather late in the day for us to wake up to this fact, and to raise this matter on what is only a Bill to amend defective drafting in the Water Resources Act 1963. I would ask them, however, to take a slightly more generous view. And since even the Parliamentary draftsman now admits that he was at fault, and a Bill is being put forward to rectify that defective drafting, I hope that the Government will look sympathetically at an Amendment if I put one down for the Committee stage of this Bill which will go some way towards restoring the control of Parliament over these measures and enable the amenity interests, and other people who are concerned with the broad national interest in these matters, to have, in the last resort, recourse to a Joint Committee of both Houses to review the decision taken by the Minister.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, rightly pointed out—and I entirely agree with him—that in matters of this kind it is cheaper, better and more effective for the procedure to be by Order and for the Minister to consider the recommendations of a public inquiry. But I think it is desirable that, where public opinion is really deeply moved about some proposal of this kind, the Special Parliamentary Procedure which was devised for this special purpose of retaining ultimate Parliamentary control should be restored; and I hope, therefore, that if I put down an Amendment on these lines the Government will look at it with a sympathetic eye.
3.39 p.m.
VISCOUNT INGLEBY: My Lords, I believe that when an inspector is appointed to preside at the public local inquiry envisaged by this Bill under current practice he will be a water engineer employed by the Ministry. I would just ask your Lordships whether somebody whose whole life has been devoted to the provision of water is necessarily the best person to undertake the completely objective inquiry and to assess objections which may not be only on water grounds, but on grounds of hardship, environment, amenity, and so on. Would it not be

27
better if somebody completely impartial could be chosen to preside at these inquiries? Would it not be better if it were someone just to say something "off the cuff"—possibly somebody like a county court judge who would have no axe to grind in the matter?
Secondly, I support the noble Lord, Lord Molson, in what he said just now about Special Parliamentary Procedure. As I understand it, Parliament would not be altogether excluded from consideration of future reservoir proposals, in that where there was a proposal com-pulsorily to acquire National Trust land or common land the Special Parliamentary Procedure would still apply. But I am not entirely happy that where the future of a whole community may be at stake, where people's livelihoods may be altered—in fact their whole lives changed—Parliament should have no say at all except in certain very limited cases. On this point I would support the noble Lord, Lord Molson. Could not Special Parliamentary Procedure apply to all reservoir proposals, so that there would be an opportunity for Parliament to debate the Minister's Order and, if necessary, it could be referred to a Joint Select Committee of both Houses? Under English law, if a man is being tried whether he is guilty or not is decided by the jury, not by the judge, and I cannot help feeling that here, too, where people's livelihoods are at stake a final court of appeal consisting of a jury of five people might be better than one man's decision.
So I come back to my two points: could we not have a completely impartial person to act as inspector on these local public inquiries, and is it right to exclude Parliament altogether from these proposals?

OIL TANKERS' COLLISION AND POLLUTION DANGER
3.42 p.m.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN): My Lords, in answer to the Question put by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, it may be for the convenience of your Lordships if I repeat the Answer which is being given by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Trade and
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Industry to a Question in identical terms in another place.
"An explosion in the engine room of the Libertan tanker 'Pacific Glory', following a collision with the Liberian tanker 'Allegro' on the evening of October 23, led to a serious fire. Search and rescue operations were undertaken at once and the survivors were brought ashore at Portsmouth; I very much regret that 13 of the crew are presumed to have lost their lives in the explosion. During salvage and fire-fighting operations under the control of the Navy the vessel stranded on a shingle bank about 4 miles off the South-East Coast of the Isle of Wight. During the weekend there was some escape of diesel oil from her bunkers and of crude oil from a damaged cargo tank. Tugs and naval vessels under the control of my Department succeeded in dispersing the oil before beaches were polluted. Local authorities in the area were alerted and have been standing by to deal with oil on their beaches, but this has not so far been necessary.
"Salvage of the vessel and her cargo is now being undertaken by a Dutch salvage company appointed by the owner, who will be working in conjunction with the Navy and with Shell, the vessel's charterer. Officials of my Department are keeping in close touch with the salvors. There remains a threat of serious pollution if the vessel were to sustain further damage during attempts to refloat her, and vessels equipped for dispersing oil are continuing to stand by.
"The causes of the collision between the two tankers and of the explosion on the 'Pacific Glory' have not yet been established. Marine surveyors of the Department of Trade and Industry are carrying out a preliminary inquiry under the Merchant Shipping Acts. In the light of their report I shall consider what further action is required.
"The responsibility for the organisation to deal with pollution of beaches rests with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. Since the incident involving the 'Torrey Canyon' all the coastal authorities in the area have prepared contingency plans for dealing with

29
coastal oil pollution. On Saturday, October 24, my right honourable friend asked that the nominated oil pollution officers in the area be contacted to ensure that their organisations were in a state of readiness and that their equipment capability was adequate to meet the immediate threat. My right honourable friend was encouraged by the assurances given and on his instructions an operations room in the Department of the Environment is manned on a 24-hour basis to receive reports on the risk of pollution of the beaches. By daily contact with local oil pollution officers the local authority capability for dealing with any actual pollution is being kept under constant review.
"I should like to pay tribute to those concerned with the containing of the fire and the spillage."
LORD KENNET: My Lords, the House is grateful to the noble Lord for repeating the Statement made in another place. May I first of all associate noble Lords on this side of the House with the expressions about the loss of life, and the compliments rightly paid by the noble Lord to those whose responsibility it has been to look after the ship and to stand by to clear up the mess, if there is one. I am particularly glad to hear that that drill is working well, because the last Government took a great deal of trouble to get it set up after the "Torrey Canyon" incident. I ask the Government to remember that this is the second potentially major disaster of this nature in three years. I hope that the Government will take an early opportunity of reviewing the entire flag of convenience system in the oil shipping world, and of reviewing, where appropriate, in the International Maritime Consultative Organisation, the present system for checking on the initial and continued ability of masters to conduct their ships safely, the system controlling lighting of super tankers and the possibility of introducing a traffic control system in crowded seas which should be more than advisory or optional.
Finally, I hope that the Government will insist on holding a full inquiry into the cause of this accident. If it is found that the accident took place outside British territorial waters, nevertheless I
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hope that the Government will either find a way of holding a full inquiry or will agree that it is necessary to consider the extent of territorial waters themselves.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for the very careful way in which he has put his questions and for the contribution that he has made to the action that may be required once the preliminary investigations are completed. I think he will agree that it is desirable to await the completion of those investigations before I make any further comment on that aspect of the matter. I note what he says about the further investigation in this country. From what he says it is plain that he is well aware that the power to investigate a casualty involving a foreign flag ship outside territorial waters is given by the Merchant Shipping Acts if witnesses are found in the United Kingdom, but the main investigation of course has to take place under the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organisations rulings in the country of what is called the flag Government, that is, the country whose flag the ship flies. In those circumstances, I think it is right to say that it would be necessary to wait for the Liberian Government itself to conduct an inquiry. In the meantime, of course, a preliminary investigation will be carried out, and as I have already said, my right honourable friend will consider in the widest aspect what action is required.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for making the Statement. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has asked several pertinent questions about the causation of the accident, but I should like to ask one question about how we should deal with it. Can we be assured that a full report will be made to both Houses of Parliament, indeed, to the nation, on how the pollution, if such there be, is dealt with this time? On the last occasion there was considerable disquiet about the amount of pollution that resulted from such an accident. Steps were taken by the last Government. We should like to know how they work on this occasion. We hope the pollution will not be as great, but we should like a report as to what happens.
3.50 p.m.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, we shall all agree that there must be the fullest possible inquiry into this accident and into everything that has happened, but would it not be possible immediately to set on foot some proposal, in regard to which I suggest Her Majesty's Government might take the lead, to try to get international agreement on how these tankers are to operate? What is quite intolerable is the occurrence of these sudden accidents. I say nothing against the Chinese, who are admirable people, but there does not seem to have been a single European on either of these ships. It is quite intolerable that two tankers should be so close together so near to these shores. Surely, what is required, and what every nation would, I believe, welcome, is a plan under which there are agreed international rules as to how tankers should operate and how near one tanker should get to another. I greatly hope that Her Majesty's Government will take the lead in proposing such a negotiation.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for that important suggestion which I shall certainly convey to my right honourable friend. In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, I would repeat that the pollution that has occurred so far has been dispersed and there does not seem to have been to any extent any pollution of beaches. Should there be, then we shall have to consider what action should be taken, and no doubt the results will be reported; but I very much hope that that contingency will not arise.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, may I pursue a little further the point raised by the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, that not only should there be international regulations dealing with these matters but that there should also be an international tribunal or control in case those regulations are breached?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, coming from the source it does, I think that that is a most important suggestion. Again, I shall pass it to my right honourable friend.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, emphasis is quite rightly laid by the
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Government upon the problem of these big tankers and their operation. There is, I think, another point which arises in connection with some of the accidents which have occurred; namely, the risk of explosion. That has occurred in this last case. I happened to be sailing up the Channel yesterday on the "France" and I saw this tanker beached off the Isle of Wight. It is rather a grim sight. But also one notices the mass of shipping in the Channel. Most of it to-day seems to comprise tankers. Obviously this presents a great risk; but the risk of explosion is most serious. It has happened in this case, and as one knows it has happened with certain large tankers which have not been in collision at all. It seems to me that the Government should initiate an inquiry into the problem of explosion.
During the last war I was associated with aircraft. There was always a big risk of explosion with aircraft engines, and great precautions were taken in order to avoid it. Proper methods of extinction were used for all aircraft engines. Methods of detection have improved enormously, so that to-day it is possible to contain an explosion after it has started. This involves a quite ingenious device. It seems to me that these precautions are not being practised on tankers to-day, and that therefore this is not merely a matter of pollution, which is grave and serious, but also one of avoiding the risk of explosion.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, again I will ask my right honourable friend to take into account what the noble Lord has said. I believe that it is true to say that this matter is under investigation by Lloyd's marine underwriters. However, I should not like the noble Lord to think that any such matter that arises out of the investigation will not be thoroughly dealt with.
LORD NUNBURNHOLME: My Lords, would the Government consider setting up an international committee to deal with narrow waters such as the English Channel, so that the spacing of shipping should be controlled, and that oil tankers should take one route and ordinary commercial shipping should take another up and down the Channel? Thus, an accident such as here occurred could not occur in future.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, certainly we will consider the noble Lord's suggestion. I am afraid I am not qualified to say whether this should be done or not.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, would allow me, perhaps in the form of a question, to help the House. IMCO has published a traffic control system for the Channel, and indeed for many other congested waters around the world; but so long as territorial waters extend for only three miles what happens outside those three miles is utterly uncontrollable by any organisation whatsoever, whether national or international.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am very much obliged to the noble Lord for his helpful answer.

WATER RESOURCES BILL [H.L.]
3.57 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, resuming the debate on the Bill amending the Water Resources Act 1963, I should like first of all to congratulate my noble friend Lord Sandford on the extremely lucid and efficient manner in which he introduced the Bill to the House. I must declare my own interest in the matter, first as Chairman of the Thames Conservancy, and secondly as President of the Association of River Authorities. In both capacities I welcome the Bill: undoubtedly it is needed. My noble friend Lord Sandford, was quite right when he said that the major purpose of the 1963 Act had been frustrated because of this defect which has been mentioned. As I see the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, looking at me, I should remember to thank him also for his good offices, together with his right honourable friends in another place in drafting this Bill while he was in office and for meeting the urgent representations made to him by the Association of River Authorities.
The fact is that in recent years river authorities, in any scheme they have brought forward for water conservation, have been obliged to proceed by Private Bill. Several such Bills have come before us, promoted jointly by river authorities and water undertakings. Each
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time the Private Bill procedure has had to be used and, as the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, has said, although in certain matters it is an excellent procedure, it is not particularly suitable for this purpose. It is very time-consuming for Parliament; it is restrictive from the point of view of objectors, who may well not have a status to appear before the Private Bill Committee, and it is also most expensive because they must appear by counsel. So there is no doubt that the procedure which will be possible when river authorities are able to proceed entirely by Statutory Order will have advantages for Parliament, on the one hand, and for objectors, on the other. This is especially so for local people, who will be able to go to local inquiries which the Minister may, and I should think undoubtedly will, set up. They will be able to go there and give their evidence conveniently to themselves in their own locality, and without cost to themselves.
It has certainly been my experience, in so far as I have been responsible for promoting a water conservation scheme, that this matters a great deal to the average person who is interested in these matters. The Private Bill procedure does not seem to them to be a safeguard which is really effective; and, as noble Lords will understand, if one of these projects is proceeding by Private Bill it would constitutionally be impossible for a Minister to order a public inquiry as well because it would be redundant: so they are mutually exclusive. But where I have been able, as I have recently, to tell a number of people in the locality concerned with a scheme in which I am interested that we are proceeding by this Statutory Order procedure, and therefore the Minister may order a public inquiry, there has been great relief. People have felt they really will get a chance to go and express their view without any cost to themselves and at maximum convenience.
I am sure that this will meet the needs of the public, and I think that it will also meet the Parliamentary needs. I am not absolutely convinced that this is reducing Parliamentary control, as has been said: I think that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, made the point. In fact, this amending Bill, in Clause 2(5), subjects to Parliamentary control the power which may be given by the Minister to a river authority to discharge water into

35
a river. This is a considerable development over the Part V powers in the 1963 Act, under which all the Orders can be made by the Minister without reference to Parliament, and I am sure that noble Lords should congratulate my noble friend Lord Sandford in that he has seen fit to put into his Bill this particular safeguard.
I do not know why it has gone in; I am not privy to these secrets. But I should think that probably it reflects the difference between 1970 and 1963: that in 1963 the general public were not particularly interested in these developments, and in 1970 they are. Therefore, Parliament wants to have a say, and I certainly would not complain. I think this does no more than reflect the general state of feeling outside the Houses of Parliament. This is an advance, and whether or no there would be any advantage in making amendments to subject to Parliamentary control the other powers in Part V—that is, the Minister's power to grant a compulsory purchase order for a river authority to acquire land; for the Minister to grant powers to do engineering works, and so on—I am not absolutely sure, because where any scheme is proceeding by Statutory Order Parliament will always have this power if the Order is prayed against. I note the Negative Resolution procedure, but I think the point is worth making.
Of course, river authorities are in the position to-day where they are the wholesalers of water. It is their responsibility to get the extra water that the water undertakings want; and they are wanting more and more every year. Therefore, if this had not been done there would have been an absolute spate of Private Bills. My noble friend Lord Sandford mentioned four. My information is that there would have been six in this Parliament, and in the next one I should think there would have been more, as there are at least eight or ten in preparation. This would have been intolerable, as both Houses would have been flooded with these Private Bills, and it would never be the wish or the intention of Parliament to proceed in that way.
I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Sandford in his reasons for the four advantages that he referred to, but I particularly stress the advantage of the
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local public inquiry. That is a major advantage in terms of the movement of public opinion. I am sure that there are big advantages here, and I hope that noble Lords will be willing to give this Bill their approval (there is every indication that they will) and that the other place will do so, too.
I should only add, from the point of view of river authorities, that although we are thankful for small mercies there are a number of other amendments to the 1963 Act that are needed, which the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, certainly knows, and others may know as well. I hope that it will not be too long before there is further legislation from the obviously very productive source of my noble friend Lord Sandford to deal with these other defects, some of which I know will be more controversial. I realise the reason why the amendment now being made was kept to such a limited scope, in order to confine it to a field that would not be controversial and so that it could be easily carried through. This will be a great help, as it will save a great deal of public money in promoting Bills, and it will give much satisfaction in permitting public inquiries in the localities concerned. I warmly commend the Bill to your Lordships.
4.5 p.m.
LORD ILFORD: My Lords, I shall detain your Lordships this afternoon for only a sufficient length of time to enable me to associate myself in the congratulations that have been offered to my noble friend Lord Sandford, who introduced the Bill in a most lucid and attractive form, and to say that this Bill is accepted and welcomed by water undertakings. It is, in itself, rather a complicated Bill. It will certainly require careful consideration at the Committee stage. It is surprising that the amendments which the Bill seeks to make are matters that were overlooked in the Committee stage and in the Second Reading debate. In particular, that applies—and perhaps this is the most important point—to the provision of Clause 1(3), which provides that a public authority shall be entitled to obtain certain compensation in certain circumstances. It was really astonishing that apparently it did not occur to anybody that a "public authority" might not include a statutory water company. Nevertheless, the water companies are

37
advised that that is the case; I have no doubt that the advice which has been given to them is right. At the Committee stage I hope that that point and a number of other important matters will receive the attention they merit.
May I turn for a moment to another aspect of the Bill. I know my noble friend Lord Molson has referred to the procedure which applies to the obtaining of water powers and that that is a subject on which my noble friend has spent much time and much energy; and indeed the results of his energy are always of particular interest. This afternoon he added that the special procedure which was included in the 1945 Act should be revived and re-introduced into this Bill. There may be a great deal to be said for that view, but I hope we shall not change an established procedure which is relatively simple. I hope that we shall not go back on that and introduce amendments which will destroy the simplicity which the procedure now possesses.
It seems to me impossible for Parliament to consider water powers without becoming involved in the most complicated and protracted procedures and legislation. To some extent that is true in this case. It is true that when the amendment is made, a number of cases which at present have to come to Parliament as Private Bills will be determined by local public inquiries. Up to a point, that is a thing everybody will welcome, and certainly the water authorities will welcome, but it is of interest to look at the procedure by which a water undertaking will obtain the powers which this Bill seeks to give it. I hope I have correctly enumerated the various legal steps which must be taken, and if I have made a mistake then no doubt my noble friend will put me right when the time comes.
According to my calculations, in order to obtain the benefit of these powers a statutory water company would have to obtain two Ministerial Orders, two Ministerial licences, and one agreement under Section 81 of the 1963 Act. I should like to enumerate the Orders and the licences which they would have to obtain. They would, first of all, have to obtain an Order under the 1945 Act, authorising the construction of the works. They would
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then have to obtain a licence under the 1963 Act, authorising abstraction from rivers and streams to fill the reservoir. Then they would have to obtain a further licence under the 1963 Act, to impound the river or stream for the purposes of the reservoir. They would then have to obtain an agreement, under Section 81 of the 1963 Act, with the river authority, for regulating the discharge from the reservoir.
It is a most protracted and complicated procedure, and I hope that when your Lordships come to look at the procedure which is to be applied to these Water Bills you will bear in mind the fact that in order to give effect to this Bill something like five different Parliamentary steps have to be taken. That is realiy too many and too complicated. I hope that one day Parliament will set itself the task of trying to simplify the conditions under which water is obtained; indeed, they are so complicated that I am sometimes tempted to wonder how we manage to get any water at all. At any rate, I hope that this Bill will simplify matters, although it will not simplify the matters to which I have been referring, which I think can only be done by an amendment of the Act of 1945. The Minister should be given power to deal with the question of discharge from a reservoir at a time when he is authorising the construction of the reservoir. That seems to me the most convenient arrangement and it would go a long way to overcome the difficulty to which I have drawn your Lordships' attention.
4.12 p.m.
LORD SINCLAIR OF CLEEVE: My Lords, I rise to support the Motion, That this Bill be given a Second Reading, and in doing so I must declare an interest, inasmuch as I am chairman of a statutory water undertaking in the West Country. In that capacity I can certainly confirm all that my noble friend Lord Ilford has said, to the effect that this Bill will have the strong support of all sections of the water supply industry, local authorities and statutory undertakings alike. There are, however, a few points on which clarification or amendment will be required and, while it is obviously right to leave detailed discussion to the Committee stage, it might be helpful if I were to indicate now very briefly what those points are.

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First, although it may be argued that the powers given to the Minister under Clause 1 are sufficiently wide to cover the discharge by one river authority of water obtained by that authority from within the area of a neighbouring river authority, it is not, I understand, incontestably clear that that is so. Therefore it might be desirable and proper, in order to avoid future doubt and argument, to include in this Bill a specific provision to enable that to be done by order or by agreement between the two authorities, with appropriate sharing of costs. It occurred to me, when my noble friend Lord Nugent was speaking, that this is a matter on which I might very well have given him advance notice or consulted him about beforehand. I apologise to him now for not having done so, and perhaps he will accept this as a point for later consideration.
Secondly, I should like to confirm the point which my noble friend Lord Ilford made, that it would be very desirable to include in the Bill a short paragraph to make it clear that the definition of "public authority" includes a statutory water authority. Thirdly, the Bill as introduced makes provision for a river authority to apply for an Order to discharge water, but there is no provision for a statutory water undertaking similarly to make application for discharge. Moreover, under the Bill the Minister may only make the Order with a view to facilitating the performance by a river authority of any of its new functions, which I believe are defined—this is the point which the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, raised earlier—in Section 3(5) of the 1963 Act. But these as so defined, as we can read them, are far from covering all the types of discharge that are or may be required, and I submit that it would be wise, in any event, to consider in Committee an Amendment whereby a statutory water undertaking would itself be able to make application for an Order with respect to the discharge of water from any works belonging to that undertaking.
Fourthly, subsections (4) and (5) of Clause 1 appear to require some clarification. For example, from time to time there must be discharges from mines or from industrial users and some of such
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discharges may involve some degree of pollution. So it would seem, in principle, desirable to provide in the Bill that where the consent of the Minister is required in such cases, that consent should be given by Statutory Instrument, thereby involving some degree of publication and giving agricultural, fishing and other interests which might be affected the opportunity to lodge objection. In conclusion, may I express the hope that reasonable time will be found between the Second Reading stage and the Committee stage to enable points of amendment to be discussed with industry.
4.17 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate and who have given a welcome to this Bill. I assure them that the points which they have made will certainly be taken into account by Her Majesty's Government, even if I do not mention them further in replying to this debate now. There are a number of points which I think your Lordships will agree can be better pursued when we come to the Committee stage, but there are a number of more general ones with which I should like to deal now.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, very rightly and properly, asked us to bear in mind that in dealing with this Bill we are dealing with something which, in his view, will have the effect of reducing the power of Parliament. I do not think I would have put it quite like that. I think that, in accepting and passing the 1963 Act, Parliament took a deliberate decision not to use the powers which it had in respect of certain events; namely, by granting power to river authorities to take the action set out in the Water Resources Act 1963.
The noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, has done your Lordships service by reminding you of what is set out in Clause 2(5)(a):
"a statutory instrument containing an order under the preceding subsection shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament".
So that the whole matter is before Parliament at that point.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? He said that

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the whole matter is then before Parliament, but subsection (5)(a) states
"a statutory instrument containing an order under the preceding subsection",
which I take to be simply subsection (4) of Clause 2, which covers the Minister repealing provisions which are for local legislation, which seem to him to conflict with this.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, it is certainly not the full range of what we are discussing. In addition, I should like to add two other matters which the noble Lord, Lord Ingleby, and the noble Lord, Lord Molson, mentioned which also have a bearing on this point. A Bill would be necessary if the water conservation scheme involved the compulsory acquisition of certain categories of land; for instance, common land in the ownership of the Crown or land forming part of a metropolitan common. I think that is the point to which the noble Lord, Lord Ingleby, referred, and the noble Lord, Lord Molson, was more concerned with the continuation of the special Parliamentary procedure. This would in fact be continued in a number of cases because there are some categories of land which are specially protected with regard to compulsory acquisition in a different way.
These latter categories include inalienable National Trust Land and land in the ownership of local authorities and of statutory undertakers, and under the Acquisition of Land (Authorisation Procedure) Act 1946, any compulsory purchase order in respect of such land is subject, in the event of an objection which is sustained after the Ministry has confirmed the order, to special Parliamentary procedure. The order, as the noble Lord said, remains provisional until it is confirmed by Parliament, and for this purpose it is examined by a Joint Committee of both Houses. Whether or not noble Lords will want to pursue the matter further at the Committee stage in the light of those remarks I will, of course, leave to them, but the fact is that in all the normal cases the effect of this amending legislation will be that, instead of Private Bills, public local inquiries will be set up if there is any objection to the schemes being put forward by the river authorities, and these inquiries will be held under experienced and impartial inspectors, with a
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planning inspector sitting as an assessor if need be.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, asked me one or two more detailed points. I will not deal with all of them, but some of them I can deal with fairly readily. As to the meaning of the word "new" in Clause 1(1), this refers to the new functions conferred by the Act of 1963. The reference to a "person" in Clause 1(5) is designed to cover such cases as that of a canal, the discharges of which could be usefully engaged in the conservation scheme which has been put forward by the river authority. As to the kind of thing referred to in Clause 2(4), this subsection is going to be used to bring into line powers which have hitherto been obtained by Private Bills but which are now in need of tidying up to bring them into line with the powers conferred by this Bill. I will not go into the other matters which the noble Lord mentioned except perhaps to say, in answer to his inquiry about desalination, that of course this is something which the present Administration are looking into and research into which is proceeding. I will not, if the noble Lord will excuse me, go further than that. As he will know, the research has not yet proceeded to the point where this can be considered as an economic alternative to the kind of water supplies for which this Bill will provide.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I say, on desalination, that the Deben River plant, about which I specifically questioned him, was not intended to be economic. The idea was to get it there and, by experience, to reduce the cost of water, Is the noble Lord able to say anything about the present status of that project?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I regret that I am unable to add to what I have said; namely, that this, together with a number of other research projects designed to find alternatives to the kind of reservoirs which we are considering, is being looked into.
LORD KENNET: I am sorry to harry the noble Lord, but this was not a research project. This was a construction project for water supplies.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I did not say that it was a research project. I said that there were other research

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projects which are being looked into, such as the Wash barrages and the Morecambe Bay barrages. I hope that I have dealt with the various questions and points which have been raised. There were many other useful suggestions which noble Lords introduced into the debate, and these my right honourable friend will be taking into account and we shall be ready to look at again at the Committee stage. Meanwhile I hope your Lordships will give this Bill its Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

DRUGS (PREVENTION OF MISUSE) ACT 1964 MODIFICATION ORDER 1970
4.25 p.m.
LORD W1NDLESHAM: My Lords, I beg to move that the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964 Modification Order 1970, a draft of which was laid before the House on July 9, be approved. I am afraid this is a very technical Order, and its effects are difficult to assimilate at first glance. The basic issues, however, are relatively straightforward, and I hope to be able to make these clear to your Lordships by explaining their scope and implications as simply and as briefly as I can.
Essentially, the Order is intended to bring certain additional substances within the Schedule of the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964, and to remove others from that Schedule. The result of these changes is as follows. When a substance is scheduled under the Act, there are three consequences. First, manufacturers and dealers in bulk have to be registered with the Home Office. Second, import is prohibited except under licence. Third, anyone who possesses the substance commits an offence unless he has obtained it on prescription or is a practitioner or a member of certain other defined classes who need to possess the substance for professional purposes. The substances affected by the draft Order are listed on pages 2 and 3. There are three lists. The first, in Schedule 1, is of substances added to the Schedule to the Act and so brought under control. The second, in Schedule 2, is of substances removed from the
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Schedule to the Act and so relieved from control. The Appendix beginning two-thirds of the way down page 2 is a statement of the complete Schedule to the Act with these additions and deletions, the additions being marked in bold type.
My Lords, I propose now to deal with the additional substances listed in Schedule 1 which are brought under control. Item (a) refers to the chemical substances which are contained in the plant cannabis, and which are responsible for producing its harmful effects. Natural cannabis itself is already controlled by the Dangerous Drugs Act 1965; but synthetic forms of cannabis, which are reportedly being developed, cannot be controlled under the 1965 Act unless the World Health Organisation or the United Nations Narcotics Commission decide to list them in the international treaties. Such action has not happened, and seems improbable. On the other hand, the World Health Organisation's Expert Committee on Drug Dependence has classified these synthetic constituents—commonly known as THC—as especially dangerous, and it seems right, therefore, to place them under the control of the 1964 Act pending the enactment of the comprehensive provisions in the Misuse of Drugs Bill which has been reintroduced in another place. It is likely that this measure will soon be introduced in your Lordships' House and, if agreed, will become law some time next year. But the making of regulations under the new legislation is bound to be a lengthy business, and it will be some time before its provisions will be in force. It therefore seems right to take action now in respect of THC under the existing law.
Item (b) in Schedule 1 relates to a drug which has been misused in the United Kingdom. This is methaqualone, which is an active constituent in various proprietary tablets, the best known of which is Mandrax. Although these tablets are normally made available to the public only against a medical prescription, recent history has shown that they have become widely popular among young people who are intent on drug misuse. The usual method has been to take these tablets, in excess of the recommended dose, together with beer or cider, and this practice can be dangerous. It has resulted in young people being found comatose in the streets; there have been assertions

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that in some cases it has been responsible for subsequent criminal actions; and, indeed, in some instances it has been a factor in fatalities. Medical practitioners, social workers, the police and others have urged that the drug should be more strongly controlled. The manufacturers have made clear that they will welcome any measure to prevent drugs falling into irresponsible hands. We cannot claim that scheduling this drug under the 1964 Act offers any guarantee that misuse of the kind involved here will be prevented; but it is possible that such control will deter some from beginning and others from continuing to misuse the drug. It will signify more generally to the professional and other interested bodies that this is a drug to be distributed with care.
Items (c) (d) and (e) in Schedule 1 have somewhat elaborate formulae which I shall not attempt to pronounce. Fortunately they have code names and are described as DET, DMT and STP respectively. Like THC they have been classified by the World Health Organisation Expert Committee as especially dangerous, and none of them is required in the United Kingdom for legitimate therapeutic purposes. They are therefore also brought under control.
Items (f) to (h) in Schedule 1 are necessarily expressed in technical terms and they are included to cover other forms of the substances now added which I have described in order to avoid loopholes, particularly if clandestine laboratory operators ever become active here. Then, to complete the control, the salts and preparations of all the additional substances are included by items (i) and (j).
My Lords, I turn now to Schedule 2 which lists the substances which are removed from control under the 1964 Act. This is a somewhat more complicated exercise which can best be described as the jettisoning of a generic formula in such a way as to leave a list of specific named substances still under control. Item (a) and the first three lines of item (b) of Schedule 2 to the draft Order were included in the original Schedule to the Act as a composite generic formula to bring in a wide range of substances as a buttress to the new restrictions imposed by that Act against the misuse of amphetamines. The idea was to extend control over
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those drugs to which amphetamine misusers might be tempted to turn as alternatives, but without adding to the risk of temptation by naming those possible alternatives. As things have turned out, people who misuse amphetamines have not significantly moved on to alternative drugs. But in any event the formula has become something of an embarrassment, because it has now been found—in this complex field of organic chemistry—that it is capable of interpretation as covering a much wider range of substances than was originally intended. For example, forensic chemists have formed the view that the formula takes in a substance known as ambutonium bromide which is used as an ingredient in a well-known indigestion remedy called Aludrox. This remedy is not known to be misused, does not seem likely to be misused and was certainly never intended to be controlled under the Act.
It is obviously right to remove ambutonium bromide from control, but we cannot stop at that because many other harmless substances have been unwittingly caught by the same formula; scores of them in fact; so many that a guaranteed exhaustive list cannot be prepared. So the best way to proceed seems to be to repeal the formula, which is the effect of the inclusion of the first three lines of item (b) of Schedule 2—thus decontrolling in one sweep every substance that could possibly be interpreted as containing these elements but to go on to list as exceptions to the repeal those specific substances within the generic formula which we think should continue to be controlled. There is now a specific list of 10 substances all of which are included in the Misuse of Drugs Bill which will be arriving in this House shortly. A similar approach is used with items (c) and (d); substances of academic interest only are descheduled and control is retained only over two substances which might be capable of being misused.
Finally, my Lords, as I have said, the Appendix to the draft Order sets out, for convenient reference, the Schedule to the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964 as it will be in future after these various amendments have been made. The rather esoteric formulæ of the existing Schedule have gone; the substances will be named individually as far as the necessarily technical matters will

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allow. The changes are proposed with the full support of the Poisons Board and I hope they will commend themselves to your Lordships' House. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Draft Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964 Modification Order 1970, laid before the House on July 9, 1970, be approved.—(Lord Windlesham.)

PUBLIC SPENDING AND ECONOMIC POLICY
4.35 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE:: My Lords, it may be convenient if I now repeat a Statement which has been made by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in another place. Before doing so, I should like to tender two apologies to your Lordships. The first is for the length of the Statement, which I fear is considerable; and the second is for its timing. I think that my right honourable friend has been on his feet for a considerable period of time. The reasons for the timing will become apparent to your Lordships towards the end of the Statement which I shall be repeating. This is the Statement which my right honourable friend has been making:
"Mr. Speaker, with your permission and that of the House I should like to make a Statement on new policies for the public sector, public expenditure and related matters.
"2. Her Majesty's Government have begun a fundamental reform of the role of the Government and public authorities. Our object is to concentrate their activities and their expenditure on those tasks which they alone can perform; and to enable the individual citizen to keep more of the money he earns, have greater incentive to increase his earnings and have greater freedom in how he spends or saves his income.
"3. The public services, thus redefined, will still have a vital role in the life of the nation. Yet they must be subject to firm control to secure economy and efficiency.
"4. We intend to adopt a more selective approach to the social services.
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There will be increases in expenditure on the basic structure—schools, hospitals and payments to those in need. But we aim to confine the scope of free or subsidised provision more closely to what is necessary on social grounds.
"5. Many arrangements which might have been appropriate a generation ago have now been overtaken by economic and social progress.
"6. The same principle will be applied by the Government in its relations with private industry. Government Departments and other bodies have spread their activities too widely, drawing in resources and skilled manpower which ought to be more productively engaged in private industry or commerce.
"Our object is to lessen Government interference and reduce Government subsidies; to extend the opportunities for profitable enterprise; to widen the area within which industry rather than Government will take decisions.
"7. The review of Government activity and involvement will be a continuing process. The proposals announced recently by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister on the reorganisation of Central Government are designed to increase the efficiency of the whole public sector and to make the control of public expenditure more effective.
"8. A thorough review of the functions of Central Government Departments is now in hand. It is important that local authorities should approach their expenditure planning in the same spirit, and in the negotiations for rate support grant we shall assume that they will improve their efficiency.
"9. The effect of the policies which have been applied in recent years is all too clearly seen in the way the national income has been used. In 1964 the public sector accounted for 44 per cent. of the gross domestic product. By 1969 that proportion had risen to 50 per cent.—exactly half our national output. In our view this trend is unacceptable.

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"10. I now summarise the main policy changes resulting from our review. All the figures I give are in terms of 1970 prices and incomes.
"Defence and Overseas Relations
"11. I start with defence and overseas relations. In accordance with our Election pledges we intend to maintain a United Kingdom military presence in South-East Asia as part of a Five-Power defence arrangement. We shall also be expanding the Territorial and Army Voluntary Reserve, and taking various other steps to strengthen the country's defences. But defence, like all other public expenditure programmes, has been rigorously examined.
"12. The House should know that, when we took office, we found that the long-term costings of the previous Administration's defence policy were considerably in excess of the figures which had been published in their last White Paper on Public Expenditure (Cmnd. 4234). Nevertheless, despite the Government's additional commitments, defence expenditure will be contained.
"13. In 1971–72 it will not exceed £2,327 million at 1970 prices—the same figure (allowing for pay and price changes) as that published by the previous Government in their last White Paper on Public Expenditure (Cmnd. 4234). This is after taking account of the additional expenditure which must necessarily flow from the new commitments which we shall be assuming.
"14. In 1974–75 defence expenditure will not exceed £2,300 million at 1970 prices. This will represent a net saving of over £130 million on the long-term costings total for that year. My noble friend the Secretary of State for Defence will be giving fuller details in a White Paper to be published tomorrow.
"Passport charges
"15. The fee for a new passport will be raised to £5 and other related charges and consular fees will be increased. These measures will yield an additional £5-£6 million in 1971–72 and £6 million a year thereafter.
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"Overseas Aid
"16. The previous Administration provided for an expanding programme of overseas aid up to 1973–74 as further steps towards the UNCTAD 1 per cent. target. Our policy is to maintain that programme and to continue the progress to £340 million in gross cash terms in 1974–75. My right honourable friend announced last week in the United Nations that we will do our best to reach the 1 per cent. target by 1975, in the expectation that private flows will be able to make a substantial contribution.
"Industry
"17. I come next to industry. Public expenditure on trade, industry and employment—exc1uding investment grants and excluding the nationalised industries—is at present costing some £650 million a year. Much of this should be provided by industry itself, and not by the taxpayer.
"18. We will wind up the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation. After meeting existing commitments, a sum estimated at £20–30 million, which otherwise would have been drawn in 1971–72, will remain undrawn. Of even greater consequence, this decision will mean that we shall avoid a liability to find up to an estimated £40 million extra a year which would otherwise have been incurred in the years ahead.
"19. The regional employment premium costs about £100 million a year. We do not regard it as a sufficient stimulus to regional development to justify its cost. We will continue the arrangements made by the previous Administration to maintain these payments up to September, 1974, but they will be discontinued from that time.
"20. Further economies will be made in expenditure on support for industry. These economies will rise to some £70 million in 1974–75. This will affect a wide range of activities, existing or planned. Throughout this field we will apply strict criteria as to what are proper functions and activities for Government to carry out or finance, and what should be eliminated, reduced or undertaken by industry itself.

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"21. The scheme of grants and loans to hotels will be brought to an end when it reaches the time limit under existing legislation. Commitments under the existing scheme will be honoured, and will be in excess of the previous forecast. There will be a new limited scheme of assistance to tourism projects in the development areas. There will also be additional expenditure on other selected activities, including new industrial training projects. The grant to the British Productivity Council will be phased out, and that to the Consumer Council will be discontinued.
"Research Councils
"22. Public expenditure on the Research Councils is now running at £110 million a year and is rising at the rate of 5–6 per cent. a year in real terms. This programme will be cut by £2 million in 1971–72 rising to £5 million in 1974–75. This field of expenditure is now being critically reviewed to establish whether activities are being carried on which might more appropriately be financed by industry, and whether there is duplication of effort.
"Agriculture
"23. Next I come to agricultural support. We intend to introduce a system of import levies so as to improve the method of agricultural support and reduce the cost to the taxpayer. This involves international negotiations. We hope that the result of these negotiations will have a beneficial effect on the agricultural support bill as early as 1971–72, but it is too soon to be precise about the amount of the savings for that year. They could be substantial. In the longer run we expect to make a major saving on the deficiency payments of the order of £150 million by 1974–75. In addition to this the Exchequer will also benefit from the proceeds of the levies themselves.
"Nationalised Industries
"24. Existing plans for the capital expenditure of the nationalised industries would require about £1,600 million next year, rising to some £1,900 million by 1974–75. These estimates now
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appear too high by £25 million and £50 million respectively after considering latest estimates of shortfall. We shall save £30 million in 1971–72 and £10 million in 1974–75 by not proceeding with nationalisation of the ports. Furthermore the programmes of the nationalised industries have been examined afresh and the consequent savings will result in an additional reduction of the total programmes by £42 million in 1971–72, rising to £73 million in 1974–75.
"Housing
"25. I come next to housing. The present system of subsidies, rents and rebates will be entirely refashioned. Instead of the present indiscriminate distribution of subsidies, help will go where it is most needed. My right honourable friends the Secretaries of State for the Environment, for Scotland and for Wales will shortly give a full account of the Government's proposals. They will also be undertaking the necessary consultations with the local authorities. By the middle years of the decade this reform will be transforming housing finance and should lead to a saving in public expenditure of £100-£200 million a year as compared with the level of expenditure which would have flowed from the policies in operation when we took office.
"Local Authorities
"26. There is scope for saving on the capital expenditure programme of local authorities, for instance by reducing the part played by local authorities and new towns in financing commercial and industrial development outside development areas; I am counting on £10 million a year from this source.
"Roads and Transport
"27. Expenditure on the main road programme, including motorways, is due to rise from £394 million this year to £552 million in 1974–75. There will be no change in the motorway and trunk road programme but some other works of relatively low priority are being deferred. The allocations for capital works by local authorities on minor roads, where the general standard is good, will be

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restricted. More stringent criteria will be applied to new transport infrastructure schemes in cities.
"28. As a result of these measures total expenditure on roads and transport will be some £13 million lower than previously planned for 1971–72, and £43 million below the figure implied in existing plans for 1974–75.
"29. The level of grants to the railways for unremunerative but necessary passenger services is being reviewed. Among other measures the grants to the London area commuter services will be eliminated by 1973. This will reduce the level of grant by £10 million in 1971–72 and £15 million a year thereafter. Port modernisation grants are also being reviewed.
"Social Services
"30. I now come to the social services. Here we shall establish more sensible priorities. We shall expect that, where the user can afford it, he should bear more of the cost and the taxpayer less; but we shall give more help to those who need it. At the same time we intend to add substantially to the resources devoted to the basic structure of the health, welfare and education services and to introduce a new social security benefit.
"31. This shift of the burden from the general taxpayer to the user will be achieved partly by the abolition of subsidies and partly by new or increased charges, but with exemptions and better remission arrangements for those who are poor or who have special needs. Many services are subsidised to an extent which is unnecessary and out of date in our present society.
"32. In the health and welfare field, cheap welfare milk, now subsidised by the taxpayer to the extent of 6d. a pint, will cease to be available: but the present arrangements for free welfare milk will continue unchanged.
"33. We shall in due course introduce measures to relate prescription charges more closely than now to a proportion of the cost of the individual prescription, but with a ceiling on the amount of the charge: in the meantime, the existing flat rate charge will be raised to 4s. per prescription item,
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the arrangements for exemptions remaining the same.
"34. For ophthalmic and dental services, tests and examinations will continue to be free, but charges for dental treatment will be related to approximately half the cost of the service actually provided, and charges for spectacles will be increased so as broadly to include the cost of dispensing: the present exemption arrangements will remain unchanged, except that in due course the upper exemption limit for dental charges for young people will be reduced from 21 to 18.
"35. In the field of education, the charge for school meals, which is at present 1s. 9d., will be raised by two stages, next year and in 1973, towards the actual running cost, which is at present about 2s. 10d.
"36. The supply of free milk to pupils over the age of seven will be discontinued, although they will continue to receive it until the end of the summer term following their seventh birthday. However, pupils up to the age of 12 who have a medical requirement, and pupils in special schools will not be affected by this change. The practical arrangements will be discussed with local education authorities.
"37. We shall also discuss with those authorities, in England and Wales, increases, from next September, in the fees charged in further education establishments for nonvocational courses and for vocational courses for those already in employment: but we do not intend that there should be any tuition charge for students under 18 attending full-time courses.
"38. Also, in common with most other countries and with the private sector, we shall introduce charges for admission to the national museums and galleries.
"39. Finally, in the field of social security, we have concluded that higher wages and benefits together with better provision through sick pay and redundancy payments have rendered anachronistic the present arrangements under which flat rate unemployment, sickness and injury benefit is paid for the first three days of absence from work, provided that the claimant is unemployed

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or sick for a period of twelve days or more. In future no benefit will be paid for the first three days of absence. Legislation will be introduced to end this entitlement.
"40. I have already mentioned the arrangements which will continue to exempt altogether large numbers of people from the social service charges, including people who are on supplementary benefit, and of course there is a system of refunds available for those who, though not exempt, are unable to afford the charges. In future the gross income levels for entitlement to free welfare milk and to exemptions and refunds of the new charges will be raised by amounts up to about 30s. a week, so that the remissions will, in future, cover more families.
"41. In this way we shall extend protection to those with incomes above the supplementary benefit level, but still too low to bear the increased charges. We shall also intensify Government publicity for the entitlements of those with low incomes, to ensure that as many as possible of those who can properly claim exemptions and refunds, do in fact do so.
"42. The timing of all these measures will depend on the completion of the statutory and administrative arrangements, including consultations where necessary, but in no case will any new or increased charge have to be paid before 1st April 1971.
"43. I come now to the other half of our policy for the social services. As I said earlier, having achieved savings by transferring more of the cost to those users of the services who can afford it, we intend to switch part of these savings, first, to giving more help to those who need it, for example through the higher remission limits, and second, to improving the services themselves.
"44. In the health and welfare field, we have decided to allocate, over the years 1971–72 to 1974–75, an additional £110 million to provide new resources for the further development of these services, including hospital facilities, particularly for the elderly and mentally handicapped.
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"45. In the field of education, in that same period, we shall provide for additional expenditure on educational building amounting to £28 million. This will enable local education authorities to make a substantial increase in their school building programmes for 1972–73 and in particular—as we promised in our Manifesto—to make faster progress in replacing and improving old primary schools.
"46. In the field of social security, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services will tomorrow be introducing, as an immediate step in tackling family poverty, a Bill to provide a new cash benefit, to be paid from August, 1971, to be called the family income supplement. This will be additional to existing family benefits, and will be paid to poor families with children where the wage earner is in full-time work, using a simple test of income. It will provide maximum benefit of £3 for the poorest families of all, tapering to a minimum benefit of 4s. at income levels roughly equivalent to supplementary benefit levels. Full details will be in the Bill.
"Investment Incentives
"47. In our Election Manifesto we declared that we would abolish the present scheme of investment grants and replace it with tax allowances or reductions.
"48. Accordingly, investment grants will not be paid in respect of expenditure incurred after 26th October, 1970, unless the applicant satisfies the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry that the expenditure was incurred under a contract made by him on or before that date. Legislation will be introduced in due course.
"49. The ending of the investment grants scheme will yield substantial savings in public expenditure amounting to £670 million at constant prices by 1974–75, subject to the residual grant payments arising from existing contracts.
"50. But the present level of company profits and liquidity makes it desirable that a large part of these savings should be channelled back to the corporate sector, and this will be achieved through the tax system.

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"Tax Allowances
"51. I believe that a system of depreciation allowances which permits a rapid write off of expenditure on plant and machinery is the best way of encouraging effective industrial investment. For the country generally—I will deal with development areas in a few minutes—the new system of depreciation allowances will combine an improved rate of initial allowance with improved and simplified annual writing down allowances.
"52. Under the new system there will be a new first-year allowance which will enable 60 per cent. of the expenditure to be written off for tax purposes in the year in which the expenditure is incurred, and a standard rate of writing down allowance which will enable 25 per cent. of the reducing balance of the expenditure to be written off successively in later years.
"53. The new system will apply to expenditure incurred after 26th October, 1970, on plant and machinery, except for expenditure on motor cars not now eligible for initial allowance and on assets in respect of which an investment grant is paid under the transitional arrangements to which I have referred.
"54. I also propose to simplify the rates of writing down allowance for expenditure incurred before November. 1962.
"55. In addition to concentrating as much as possible of the benefit of capital allowances at an early stage these arrangements will represent a simplification of the present allowances system. Provisions to implement these arrangements will be contained in the Finance Bill 1971.
"Development Areas
"56. In our Manifesto we declared that there would be differential arrangements in favour of the development areas. To encourage the location and expansion of manufacturing industry in the development areas, certain forms of capital expenditure for industrial purposes in those areas incurred after October 26, 1970, will receive free depreciation.
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"57. The assets covered will include immobile plant and machinery used in all forms of industrial processing, together with mining and quarrying, and construction and civil engineering.
"58. Free depreciation will not apply where an investment grant is paid under the transitional arrangements. The service industries in development areas, together with mobile plant and equipment, will receive the new allowances I have already outlined for the country generally.
"59. The House will remember that in this year's Finance Act the initial allowance for new industrial buildings and structures was raised to 40 per cent. in the development and intermediate areas, and 30 per cent. elsewhere but that these increases were limited to the period of two years ending April, 1972. I have decided to retain indefinitely the 40 per cent. allowance for industrial buildings in the development and intermediate areas instead of allowing it to fall back to its earlier level in 1972 as this year's Finance Act provides.
"60. On top of free depreciation for industrial investment in the development areas, we have decided on a number of measures to extend assistance to those areas by grants and loans under the Local Employment Acts. In particular the rates of building grants will be raised by 10 points to 35 per cent. and 45 per cent. and greater use will be made of infra-structure schemes assisted by grants under these Acts.
"61. We will proceed with these measures without delay, so as to give an early stimulus to growth in the development areas. The additional expenditure which they involve is estimated to build up to £25 million a year.
"62. The total value of all these differential arrangements is, as nearly as can be judged, no less than the total value of the differential arrangements at present in force. But we are confident that the new arrangements will prove more effective. We have thought it right to set these measures in train now, and we are, of course, continuing with our review of longer-term regional policies.

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"Ships
"63. The termination of investment grants, except in respect of existing contracts, will apply to ships as to other assets. Capital expenditure on ships will retain the free depreciation which it already enjoys but on 100 per cent. of the cost of a new ship instead of on the cost net of grant. Ships will in fact, along with capital equipment for scientific research, be the only assets which will qualify for free depreciation outside the development areas.
"Agriculture and Fisheries
"64. The proposals I have outlined will have implications for the proposed farm capital grant scheme and the horticultural improvement scheme on which my right honourable friend will be making a separate statement. The rates of grant for fishing vessels which were increased when investment grants were introduced will revert to their previous levels. Free depreciation for fishing vessels will continue.
"Northern Ireland
"65. The Government will be discussing with the Northern Ireland Government the implications of these changes for matters within their responsibility.
"Result of changes so far announced
"66. I now sum up the results of all the changes of policy which I have outlined to the House.
"67. The net effect on the public expenditure plans for the next financial year, 1971–72, as they stood and were costed when we took office, is a reduction of about £330 million.
"68. Some of the policy changes require extensive consultation and negotiations and time will therefore be needed to work out their full implications for expenditure in later years. But so that the House may have some measure of their significance, I should tell the House that by 1974–75 the total reduction in public expenditure which we expect from these changes is nearly £1,600 million, including the saving from the abolition of investment grants. After allowing for the increased tax allowances for industry which I have announced,
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there will be a net saving to public funds of nearly £1,100 million. This means that our plans will be achieved within an average annual rate of growth in public expenditure, excluding investment grants, between 1971–72 and 1974–75 of 2·8 per cent., as compared with a rate of 3·5 per cent. which previous plans would have implied.
"69. Two White Papers which will be available in the Vote Office when I sit down summarise the public expenditure results for 1971–72 and 1974–75, and the proposed changes in capital allowances for industry."
May I interrupt my repetition of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Statement? I think I am correct in saying that the White Papers are now available in the Printed Paper Office.
"Further detail for the whole period will appear in the next annual series of White Papers on Public Expenditure.
"Monetary Policy
"70. This Statement has been concerned primarily with public expenditure and taxation, but I must also refer briefly to another matter with which I will deal at greater length in the debate next week.
"71. In the period ahead, it will be necessary for a firm grip to be maintained on the growth of money and credit. I will not detain the House further with this now. But I want there to be no misunderstanding about our resolve to take the necessary measures to this end.
"Conclusion
"72. The changes which I have announced and which will now progressively be put into effect will mean that, instead of facing the depressing need to increase tax rates to finance the public expenditure programme, we can now look forward to the prospect of tax reductions.
"73. So far as companies are concerned, both the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. have expressed to me their concern about the prospective level of investment; and it is the case that the trend of company profits has been downwards, and that in some sectors there is an inadequate cash flow.

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"74. It has been suggested that the most effective way of dealing with this situation would be to reduce company tax liabilities which will generally fall due on January 1 next. These liabilities arise in respect of trading profits of the financial year 1969 for which the rate of corporation tax was fixed in this year's Finance Act at 45 per cent. I propose to reduce the rate to 42½ per cent. This will be the first reduction in the rate of corporate taxation for 11 years.
"75. In cases where corporation tax for the financial year 1969 has already been paid at the old rate of 45 per cent. this reduction will be put into effect by way of repayment in due course. The net result of this reduction will be to improve the financial position of industry and commerce by £60 million this financial year and £90 million next year.
"76. Before I sit down there is one other matter to which I must refer. I am very conscious that it is now 11 years since there was a cut in the standard rate of income tax. I have this afternoon announced a reduction in public expenditure which will total £330 million in 1971–72. As a consequence—and all my colleagues share the credit for this—I have decided that, with effect from the earliest practicable date, April 6 next, the standard rale of income tax will be cut by 6d.
"77. The House may remember that when a change in the rate of income tax is made in an April Budget it takes between two and three months before the change is reflected in the pay packet. In order, therefore, to ensure that tax deductions can be made at the new rate from the very beginning of the next income tax year a short Bill will be introduced next week. The same Bill will make provision for the cut in corporation tax.
"78. A cut of 6d. in the standard rate will cost the Exchequer about £315 million in the first year and £350 million in a full year. The reduction in income tax and the reduction in public expenditure, taken together, will, therefore, be broadly neutral in their effect on demand in 1971–72.
"79. It is, as I have said, 11 years since there was last a reduction in either
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the rate of corporate taxation or the standard rate of income tax.
"80. I believe that the whole House will agree that it is right to take action to break out of the depressing cycle of high taxation and low growth which has bedevilled our country in recent years. These measures are designed to give the British nation new impetus, new opportunity and new hope for the future.
"81. My right honourable friends and I ask for the support of the House."
That concludes the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Statement.
5.8 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Earl for reading so clearly such a complicated paper. Perhaps the noble Earl has lost something; has he not another little tax concession to offer for all the cuts he is making in the social services? I find this a most depressing, not to say shocking. Statement. Certainly it has been received with great depression on this side, and it does not seem to have been received with much enthusiasm—but it may be lack of comprehension—on the Benches opposite. It represents the most old-fashioned type of philosophy.
I thought the Tory Party were advancing from this idea about Government interference: this argument that the I.R.C., for example, is Government interference. The noble Earl knows as well as anyone that there was no Government interference from the I.R.C. He also knows, as I know—having talked to various industrialists lately—that there there will be a pretty gloomy reaction at the removal of an instrument which was calculated to do something about restructuring British industry. Improving cash flow through a reduction in corporation tax is not going to solve this problem, especially since there seemed to be remarks which suggested that there were going to be even tighter squeezes on credit.
It appears that a number of cuts—and it is very difficult to evaluate them—in social insurance, the Health Service, school meals and milk, have been made, and so far as I can see this is the direct swap for sixpence off the income tax. I should like to know how far the noble

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Earl is satisfied in these matters that in the promises to the Child Poverty Group, for instance, the Conservative Party are honouring some of the undertakings given in the course of the Election. I find the philosophy behind this Statement a travesty of the representation of the real needs of this country. It seems to me that what we have is a series of attacks on agriculture, on industry, on the poor, on travel, on culture. They have searched everywhere to find cuts which do nothing to help the basic problems, although the Conservative Party promised that they would bear directly on prices. There is not a word of that.
I should like to ask the noble Earl one or two questions. Clearly, this is such a big subject that we shall, in one or more debates, have to probe very much further. If the noble Earl cannot answer all my questions now, I sympathise. He had quite a mouthful to absorb. The Statement is a ragtag of mixed things thrown together to achieve certain notional figures to get 6d. off income tax and the 2½ per cent. alteration in corporation tax. Those changes were based on the curious belief, which still seems to be widely held in the Tory Party, that this country is more heavily taxed than its principal competitors, which it is not. We are going to have a debate on defence. The noble Earl made a remark about long-term costing. I hope it was fair. And there was a rather curious remark about further commitments. He mentioned one, but are there other commitments involved? We shall have an opportunity, perhaps in a week or two, to consider this question further. There was a reference to maintaining and perhaps improving advancement towards the 1 per cent. United Nations' target of overseas aid. Last year's figure, largely backed up by private flows, was practically 1 per cent. I think I am right in that. Is there also to be an increase in direct Government aid, or are they, as I understand it, going to rely primarily on private flows? Again, how much of the direct aid would be by grant? These are big subjects and we shall want in due course to test the validity of the argument put forward.
I should like to know about the undertaking on selective employment tax. This after all, as I understood it, was a major
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Election promise. It was something that was going to be jolly easy to do right away. He has money to deal with it, so why has the Chancellor not dealt with S.E.T.? Of course, he has removed certain offsets to S.E.T. which the previous Government introduced—help for hotels in certain areas and regional premiums. These are to go but S.E.T., apparently, is to stay. Or is there a prospect of its going in future? We have heard a lot about increased efficiency in local government in order to contain expenditure. Of course, the Government threw away the best method of achieving efficiency in local government when they dropped the proposals of the previous Government for major local government reform. That would be a far more important contribution to efficiency in this country than what the Chancellor is manfully trying to do in his Department, where incidentally we have done a good deal already. What kind of cuts are there going to be in the research councils? Will they be in the medical field or in the field of pollution, on which the Government seems to be publicly keen? On what level will this new £3 tapering to 4s. poverty family grant bear? What is regarded by the Government as the appropriate level of income for a poor family in order for them to qualify?
Finally, I should like to ask the noble Earl a question on depreciation allowances and investment grants. What is he going to do to help the small manufacturing business which is threatened? The great strength of the investment grant was that it was helpful particularly to the small and enterprising business. Withdrawal of grants and substitution of allowances will be helping those who are making very large profits already. But the new dynamic small business is going to lose through this change. What is the calculation with regard to that? The truth is that there is so much in the Statement that we shall have to look at. So much is involved that at present it is not possible to ask all the questions we should like to. Undoubtedly your Lordships' House, and perhaps my noble friend Lord Beswick, will want to know a great deal more about the proposals for agriculture. My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl on the way he delivered the Statement, but I cannot believe there

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has been a more unpleasant or unsatisfactory Statement that any Leader of your Lordships' House has had to make.
5.15 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord the Leader of the Liberal Opposition will excuse me for replying now, because the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition has asked me a question or two. I must congratulate the noble Lord on a good Party political answer. I should like to make just one or two points. For example, he said that what was being done by way of charges in the social services was designed merely to secure a reduction in income tax. May I remind the noble Lord that if he listened carefully, as I am sure he did, to the Chancellor's Statement which I repeated he would know that one of the great advantages of bringing our social services on to a more modern and more selective basis is that the general standard of those services can be improved. It is our intention to make substantial improvements and to allot substantially greater funds to the hospitals, for example. It is also our intention to allot a substantially greater expenditure to improving our primary schools. What is more, in order to ensure that the impact of the increased charges docs not bear on those who are least able to afford them, they will be protected from that impact not only by the raising of the ceilings of exemption but also by the new family income supplement, the Bill for which will, I think I am correct in saying, be laid in another place tomorrow. So far as the level of exemptions at which that Bill will operate is concerned, I hope the noble Lord will forgive me when I say that I think it would be sensible to await the terms of this Bill which will be available tomorrow.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl, but I do not think it is very sensible to give the details without giving the wider aspect and the actual meaning of the measure.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, the Bill will be available to the noble Lord tomorrow and he will find it all there. I am afraid I may not be able to answer all the points that have been raised—I may not have got all the points—but I should like to take up straight away those which I did jot down, although I must say that
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I very much agree with him that this Statement should be debated in your Lordships' House. It may well be considerably more than a day's debate. I would lend myself very readily to any mutually satisfactory arrangement made through the usual channels for the debate of this Statement.
On defence, the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition asked me about additional commitments. There was of course the collaborative defence arrangement for South-East Asia which was covered by that for the increased role of the volunteer forces and other steps. Here again—and I do not wish to shelter behind this—there will be a full Statement tomorrow by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence, and this will emerge perfectly clearly. I think the noble Lord will then recognise that the point about long-term costings—and we bandied long-term costings around rather ad nauseam in the last Parliament—is an absolutely fair one. It is not meant in any tendentious way at all, and I am making no accusations in that respect against the previous Government.
On overseas aid, we intend to stick firmly to the UNCTAD target and in our aid efforts official assistance will represent a substantial proportion of the total. On selective employment tax I would merely state that here, as elsewhere, what the Government said when we were in Opposition, and to what in Opposition we were committed, will be discharged now that we are in government. I would merely ask the noble Lord to wait and see in that respect.
My Lords, I am aware that there are a number of questions which I may not have covered in my reply. All I would say, in answer to the accusation made by the noble Lord, the Leader of the Opposition, that this Statement represented a "ragtag", is that I doubt whether that will be the feeling of the country as a whole. There may be many people in the country who may object to specific parts of this Statement, because in many respects it is a rigorous Statement; but I suggest that it is not a "ragtag"; it represents a coherent, considered and comprehensive programme of government.
5.21 p.m.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Earl for his

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marathon performance, which he discharged as brilliantly as ever. I do not think this Statement is a "ragtag", but I do not think it can be claimed that it is a fundamental reform of the science of government. It seemed to me more like an elementary exercise on the calculating machine, and we shall want time to study all the miscellaneous points that are contained in that particular Statement. Of course there will be a welcome for the reduction in tax, but I have very grave doubts about some of the economies in social services which have been proposed and which seem to me to be of very dubious morality indeed. And when we come to debate the Statement we shall want to know what are the likely long-term adverse effects, particularly on the children of this country, of some of the savings that have been proposed.
I want only to ask one or two questions. Has any calculation been made of the increase in the cost of living to the people of this country over a full year? Secondly, what is estimated to be the reduction in the staff employed in the Civil Service and the public sector as a result of these economies? Presumably there must be quite considerable reductions, and we ought to know what those are. On the subject of S.E.T., so far as I can understand from the Statement, if the expenditure cuts roughly balance the tax concession, as is claimed, there cannot be any intention to abolish S.E.T. without raising a similar amount in new taxation, and the House must be told this. We are entitled to this information.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Byers, for echoing the welcome of the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, for the way in which I read this marathon Statement. All I would say at the moment is that this is only a first instalment of a fundamental reform; and, what is more—and I am sure the noble Lord will agree with this—I think it should be read in conjunction with the fundamental and basic restructuring of Central Government which was foreshadowed in the recent White Paper and which we shall be discussing very shortly.
As for the reduction in the number of civil servants, that is a matter of great interest to both the noble Lord the
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Leader of the Opposition and myself, but at this stage I would not wish to be held to any specific figure. And I would also make the point that when one makes the application of services more selective this can on occasions lead to increases in manpower.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Earl?—because there is a specific statement in regard to releasing manpower, and particularly skilled manpower, to industry. He cannot have it both ways.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I shall be happy to debate this question of public service manpower both with the noble Lord, Lord Byers, and with the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, but perhaps not by way of quick question and answer across the Floor of the House.
The noble Lord, Lord Byers, asked about the total effect of this package on the retail price cost of living. I can give him the information, broadly speaking, with reference to the retail price index, and that is that the total effect of the social service charges, the interim levy scheme with present market prices continuing, and London rail fares would be of the order—and this is necessarily very approximate—of one half of one percentage point by 1973.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl two questions? One relates to the reduction in the agricultural support prices. He gave an estimated saving there of £150 million by 1971/72. But this of course means that the cost of food will go up by £150 million by 1971/72. Can he say which commodities will bear this increase, and by how much? Secondly, he speaks of a saving on the expenditure of nationalised industries of £42 million. Does this mean that their capital investment programme must be cut by that amount; and, if so, which of the nationalised industries are held to be non-essential and are to be cut?
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether the Government have taken into account the additional cost of entry into the Common Market?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, may I tell the noble Lord, Lord Shin well, that

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I am not altogether surprised by his question, and that my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Byers, was concerned entirely with the impact on the cost of living of what is contained in the package Statement which I have just read. I am not absolutely certain about the questions which the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, asked me, but on the capital investment programme (and here I am not speaking from the book) I can assure him that the investments of the British Steel Corporation will not be touched. The impact is elsewhere in the nationalised industry sector. I am afraid that I should need notice of the question of the actual agricultural commodities to which the levy will be applied, but I shall be glad to write to the noble Lord, either this evening or tomorrow, on that question.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, on the second point, can the noble Earl at any rate confirm that this saving to the Government of £150 million is £150 million extra on the budget of the housewife? Secondly, on the nationalised industries, I did not ask the noble Earl which of the nationalised industries are to retain their development programmes: I asked on which of them the £42 million economies will fall.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, the economies will fall on the gas and electricity industries: I have not the precise figures in my mind at the present time. They will not fall on the steel industry.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, as I believe that the school milk and school meals services are of supreme importance to the children of this country can the noble Earl develop this point? Am I to understand that no child over the age of seven will get free milk, irrespective of the income of the parents? And can the noble Earl say which age groups will get free meals?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I speak subject to correction here, as this is not an area about which I know as much as perhaps I should. But it is the children under seven who will continue to receive free milk, and under the new arrangements the income of an average family with two children will be able to rise by 30s. a week next April, and about £2 a a week when the price is raised again in
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1973, before they cease to qualify for free meals. The present qualification level will be raised in that way.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: And for free milk?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, free milk will still be provided for those children who are medically in need of it.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether he is aware that this is a most retrograde step? It is quite impossible, in a classroom of little children in Lancashire and the North, to decide which child needs free milk. All those children need it.
5.31 p.m.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl two questions which have a medical bearing, because it is the only kind of subject on which I have any right to speak in a discussion of this kind? In the first place, with regard to the Research Councils it seems to me that the proposals are simply for a sweeping reduction by—was it?—£2 million within the next year or two, and after that £5 million. I wonder whether Her Majesty's Government are aware of the fact that the cost of medical research, at any rate, is always rising. The result of this is that if the budget of a body like the Medical Research Council is suddenly even fixed at its present level all it can do is go on paying for a certain amount of the research in being: it can take on no new projects whatever without new money.
The other question I wanted to raise was this. I thought the noble Earl said that the cost of a prescription would be related to the cost of the drug. At first sight, this seems to me to be quite ridiculous, because the cheap drugs are the kind of things which people take when they have a little pain in the head and which, for the most part, they would be better off without; the really expensive drugs are the life-saving drugs. This is only a generalisation; I am sure coble Lords could point to exceptions. But in general this statement struck me as very extraordinary.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, may I follow that point and ask the noble Earl why especially those most seriously ill are now likely to be penalised? There

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is a case to be made for inscribing the actual cost of the prescription, simply to point out to the patient what benefits he is receiving from the National Health Service; and I am all in favour of that. But why use it as a means of simply adding to the cost of the prescription to the patient?
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, if the Government are very anxious, as I understand they are—and I have said it over and over again until it is called my ritual dance—and if they are appalled, as they should be, by the high cost of proprietary drugs, surely the right way to go about it is not to say to the patient, "We will make you pay for those", because the patient, sitting by the doctor, does not know what is a proprietary drug and what drugs are on the National Formulary and much cheaper. He just sits there and watches the doctor scribble the prescription. Now the Government are saying that when this expensive proprietary drug is taken from the chemist the patient will pay. Surely the right approach is to penalise the doctor who insists upon prescribing proprietary drugs instead of the available alternative which is in the National Formulary.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I wonder whether I may first go back to make the position clear with regard to free school milk—whether or not I carry the noble Baroness with me. The proposal is that it should be discontinued for pupils at the end of the summer term in which they become seven but should continue for younger children and for certain children with special needs. That is the proposal.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: Shame!
EARL JELLICOE: On the point which the noble Lord, Lord Platt, put to me about the Research Councils, I would merely remind the noble Lord, who of course is extremely experienced in this area, that even after the proposed cuts the Research Council expenditure will rise from £115 million in 1971–72 to £129 million in 1974–75. Therefore, even with the cuts, to which he referred quite correctly as being £2 million in the first period and £5 million in the second, there will still be a substantial increase in Research Council expenditure. So far as prescription charges are concerned,
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I should like to make it clear that the present exemptions and the arrangements for repayment certificates will continue unchanged. There is therefore no reason why the new charges should cause hardship.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Earl the Leader of the House could clarify one point on which some of us may not be quite clear. Did his reference to welfare milk indicate that the cheap milk now available to expectant and nursing mothers and their infants is to stop, and that they will in future have to pay the full market price of the milk. If that is so, what general benefit does he think will flow from such a decision?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, the short answer to the noble Lord is that where the mother concerned can afford it the answer is, Yes; but not otherwise.
LORD HOY: My Lords, may I ask about agriculture? If agricultural support is going to be cut by £150 million, quite obviously the cost will have to be paid by the consumer. Did I understand the noble Earl to say that in addition the Government propose to impose import levies on agriculture?—because I thought he did say that; and he said that of course the Treasury would benefit by those levies. But quite obviously the consumer will again have to pay the cost. So it is quite obvious there are going to be substantial rises in food prices.
May I ask one further question about milk? If the supply of free school milk is to be completely cut off to every child over seven, it is obvious that this is going to be another large increase in the cost of living for working-class families. Can he tell me just how much will be saved by making these children pay for their milk? Moreover, if this milk is not going to be used, there is a further factor—we had this from the Tory Party in the past: that it could make things all that much more difficult for the fanner. What is he going to do with the milk, I should like to know from the noble Earl, as a result of this cut in milk to the schoolchildren of our country? In fact it will mean a fall in the income of dairy farmers.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, heard me quite

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correctly. It is Her Majesty's Government's intention to introduce a system of import levies, and I am surprised that that struck him with such surprise; it has been made clear for the past three or four years that this was Conservative Party policy.
LORD HOY: Yes, my Lords, and I am asking what it is going to bring to the Treasury, because it will have to be paid for by the consumer.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, the effect depends on the level of market prices and also, of course, on the course which the international negotiations on which we are embarking in this respect take. As the noble Lord will see from a study of the White Paper, the substitution of the import levy system for deficiency payments will have an effect of something like £150 million a year. It is of that order. On school milk, I think the position is that the anticipated saving arising from the new proposed arrangements will be of the order of £9 million a year.
LORD HOY: My Lords, may I take this just a stage further, because it will have an effect on the farmer? Doubtless the noble Earl will not deny that. What I want to know is what it will represent in a fall in a dairy farmer's income. Because the difference between the price of milk consumed as a liquid and the price of milk that has to go for manufacture represents a tremendous sum of money which obviously must be reflected in the price that the farmer receives. I should like to know from the noble Earl what the Government estimate the fall in dairy farmers' income will be as the result of this announcement, because I think they must have taken that matter into consideration.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, doubtless they have, but I need notice of that particular question. All I can say is that the noble Lord is assuming that because some children will not be eligible to receive free milk in future, those children will not be drinking milk at school. That seems to me to be a very rash assumption.
LORD NUNBURNHOLME: My Lords, does the noble Earl think that a saving of £9 million on school milk for children over seven is worth while when he is talking about a possible reduction
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in expenditure of £1,000 million by 1974–75? Could we not have this milk restored to children over seven?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord, may I say that these are all matters for possible debate. I am quite prepared, to the limit and the best of my ability, to go on answering noble Lords' detailed questions, and I shall be glad to do so, but, generally speaking, I should have thought it more consonant with our usual procedure, and far better, if we were to debate these various aspects fully and examine them in that way.
LORD O'NEILL OF THE MAINE: My Lords, while fully accepting that suggestion, could we have just one small voice from this side of the House? I should like to ask the noble Earl the Leader of the House one quite general question, because I do not think it is suitable at this stage to go into detail. May we have a general assurance from the Leader of the House that the development areas will not suffer unduly from the changes which he has just announced? I think it is true to say that the two things which benefit the development areas most are incentives to new industry and assistance to the tourist trade. I think it was generally known R.E.P. was coming to an end in any case under the previous Government, and one can argue quite a lot about the difference between investment grants and depreciation allowances. All I am suggesting is that perhaps the Leader of the House could give me a general assurance that the Government have gone into this matter and that they can say that the development areas will not suffer unduly from these necessary changes. Finally, may I say that I do not entirely agree with the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, in that I think many people in this country will welcome a reduction of sixpence in income tax.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, without going into the details of investment grants and depreciation allowances I can, of course, give my noble friend the assurance for which he asks. Indeed, I would go further, because it is my conviction that the wellbeing of the development areas cannot be considered apart from the general health of the economy of the United Kingdom. It is our belief that these measures, taken as a whole, and

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the further measures of the Government's developing policies, will materially strengthen the economy of this country, and that quite apart from the impact one way or the other these changes will be for the good of the development areas.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I think that the noble Earl has struggled manfully with a very wide subject, but it does not make it any more acceptable to us. Indeed, I am more depressed than I was a little while ago. I think we shall have to consider carefully whether we ought not to put down a censure Motion.

DRUGS (PREVENTION OF MISUSE) ACT 1964 MODIFICATION ORDER 1970
5.44 p.m.
Debate on the Motion for approval resumed.
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for the careful and clear way in which he detailed to us the contents of a somewhat technical Order. He also reminded us of the comprehensive Bill introduced by the previous Administration which we shall be discussing when it comes before the House, and which no doubt will be debated over the wide area of drug misuse as a whole. Therefore I content myself to-night simply with welcoming this Order. I will certainly not go into the detail of the different drugs specified in it, but I should like to join with the noble Lord in welcoming the bringing under control of the drug mandrax, particularly because it has potent effects when mixed with alcohol. I agree with all he said about that and the other drugs concerned and will therefore, as I say, confine myself to welcoming the addition of these drugs to the Schedule and the removal of those others the reasons for which the noble Lord gave us in such great detail.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I had moved this Order but it was so long ago that perhaps I had better do it again. I beg to move that the Draft Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964 Modification Order 1970 be approved.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COPYRIGHT BILL [H.L.]
LORD CAWLEY: 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 Cawley.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

PROFESSIONAL BOXING AND INJURY RISK
5.47 p.m.
LORD BELHAVEN AND STENTON LORD BELHAVEN AND STENTON rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have given consideration to the report of the Royal College of Physicians on boxing, what action they intend to take on it to cut down or eliminate the risk of brain damage to professional boxers and whether they would consider either a statutory limitation on the number of rounds per contest to five or less, or alternatively the prohibition of professional boxing. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask Her Majesty's Government the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper. I think it is some 8½ years since your Lordships' House last discussed at any length the subject of professional boxing. At that time, in May, 1962, the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, introduced a Bill for the banning of professional boxing which was refused a Second Reading by 29 votes to 22 votes. I do not think that I can proceed any further with my Question without paying tribute to the persistent efforts of the noble Baroness in this and many other fields. There cannot be many of your Lordships who have not from time to time disagreed with the noble Baroness. I include myself among the majority, but I am going to stick my neck out rather further than I expected, especially after her intervention this afternoon: I will go so far as to say that I think that she is right far more often than she is wrong. In this matter of professional boxing I hope to be able to give her some support in what is pre-eminently

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her own cause. I believe that she is right about this, and I very much look forward, as I am sure your Lordships do, to hearing what she has to say this evening.
In the debate which took place in your Lordships' House in 1962 the noble Lord, the late Lord Brain, informed the House that the Royal College of Physicians were prepared to set up a committee to go into the medical aspects of boxing. This investigation was proceeded with, and last year the Royal College produced their Report. One of the main difficulties in the 1962 debate was that while there was plenty of evidence from individual doctors there did not appear to be any statistical evidence which everybody was prepared to accept, and in particular there was none that Her Majesty's Government were prepared to accept. This lack of acceptable evidence has now to quite an extent been remedied, and I do not think that anyone can throw doubt on the findings of so eminent a body as the Royal College of Physicians. Whilst I do not pretend to be able to judge whether or not the evidence of the Royal College's Report would by itself justify restricting or banning professional boxing, I am quite sure that at the very least it shows that the subject ought to be further investigated.
The Report is, quite rightly, confined to the medical aspects of boxing and makes no comment on the wider social issues involved. There are, in spite of this, certain conclusions in the Report which I venture to say can easily be understood by any intelligent layman, and I think even by most unintelligent laymen. The principal conclusion is:
"This investigation has therefore established that the prevalence of the clinical signs of brain damage of the kind found in ex-boxers increases with increasing exposure to boxing."
The symptoms referred to are described in the Report, and again the description is not all that difficult to understand.
"Those boxers who were found to be most severely affected suffered from slurring of speech to the point of being almost unintelligible, defective memory and slow thought. In some the limbs were stiff, the face expressionless, their walk a slow shuffle, and their body and hands affected by a tremor at rest, the picture very like paralysis agitans. In others who walked with a stagger, purposeful movements brought on a marked tremor of the limbs and trunk which, together with other signs, produced a clinical picture
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superficially resembling disseminated sclerosis. The milder forms of these disabilities were evident only as a slight thickening of speech or some unsteadiness on walking of which the boxer was often, but not invariably, aware himself."
Apart from the references to brain damage which form the major part of the Report, there is reference to damage to boxers' eyes, detachment of the retina particularly, caused wholly by their activities as boxers.
In paragraph "D" of the Report the incidence of brain damage is set out statistically in relation to the length of time during which the boxers were active and their present age. If your Lordships will bear with me, I will read just one more quotation from the Report. For the benefit of those of your Lordships who have not read the Report, I may say that the Royal College examined, I think, 240 ex-boxers, and these are the conclusions drawn from this examination.
"Among ex-boxers aged 50 years and over almost half, 17 out of 36, or 47 per cent., of those who had boxed professionally, licensed or unlicensed, for more than 10 years showed evidence of brain damage. The proportion declined to 17 per cent., 5 out of 30, among boxers with a career lasting six to nine years, and to 13 per cent., three out of 23, among those who had boxed no longer than five years. Among younger boxers, 30 to 49 years old, the percentage of brain damage was lower, but the trend with career duration was even more marked, declining from 25 per cent., 5 out of 20, to 14 per cent. and to 1 per cent. respectively."
I apologise for all these quotations.
This would seem to show that the situation has improved over the last twenty years or so. How great that improvement is I do not pretend to be able to judge, but on the face of it one cannot look on the present situation as anything but serious, where we still have an incidence of brain damage in 25 per cent. of younger boxers who have boxed for ten years or more. The Report continues to say that it is not possible to draw conclusions about the risk of brain damage in professional boxing to-day. So there we are, in a sense back to square one, though I feel not quite. An investigation can only deal with past facts, and it is understandable that this one should be non-committal about the present and future. Therefore I think we must assess this Report on what it tells us of the past.
Let me for a moment draw your Lordships' attention to the figures for boxers

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aged 50 and over. This showed that nearly half of those who had boxed for ten years and over showed evidence of brain damage. Those of your Lordships who remember the furore caused by the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, when she originally drew attention to the dangers of professional boxing—and I think it was all of 20 years ago or more—might be excused if you asked yourselves what the outcome might have been had these statistics been available then. Figures in this form were, of course, not available then. The boxing business was concerned to defend itself strenuously against the noble Baroness. The noble Baroness knew a great deal. The business must have guessed, or known, that the greater part of what she said was true in substance. Whatever they may have done subsequently to put their house in order, or to try to do so, the noble Baroness was at that time subjected to a campaign of ridicule and abuse which would have deterred someone less determined and courageous. If it is true that things are better now than they were then, there must be quite a number of ex-boxers who owe their health and sanity to the noble Baroness. I think that this should be said.
From what I can judge of the Report, the one thing which it quite clearly does is to establish that the noble Baroness was right. There is also a general assumption in it that the situation has improved of late years. If this were not so I do not think there could be any further doubt about what ought to be done. As it is, there is room for doubt as to how much the situation has improved. In view of the past record of the boxing business I think such doubts are justified and will continue to exist until a great deal more light has been shed on this subject.
My Lords, there are people and noble Lords who are devoted to what has been called the noble art of self-defence, so I feel I must make it clear to your Lordships that I am not referring in my Question to amateur boxing. I only say this because I have noticed that arguments about this subject sometimes tend to confuse these two very different aspects of boxing, amateur and professional.
I do not intend to keep your Lordships for long, but there are certain points which, as the asker of the Question, I feel
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I must cover. In 1962, in the debate in your Lordships' House on boxing, one noble Lord who was very incensed by the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Summer-skill, said that she would be asking for a soft cricket ball next. If I may put it in this way, I think that the matter of the soft cricket ball is crucial to the whole discussion of boxing. It is said, quite correctly, that other sports carry with them the risk of injury and even death, and may in effect and in this sense be even more dangerous than boxing. It is quite true that one may be injured by a cricket ball or even by a rugger ball; but surely the whole point is that in these games such injury is accidental. It is no part of cricket or rugby football that one should hurl the ball at one's opponent's head. Such conduct would indeed result in one's being quite rightly sent off the field. In boxing, on the contrary, the whole point of the affair is to hit one's opponent as hard and as often as possible and, if feasible, to knock him out or, as I believe the medical term is, to concuss him. I can think of no other serious sport or activity which is permitted in this country to-day which has a comparable object.
The point I want to make is that where a sport or activity which is highly organised, popular and lucrative does have this kind of object it should be the duty of society to inform itself about what the effect may be on those taking part in it. All organised societies have in the past regulated the forms of individual physical combat which they permitted to take place in their midst. The only serious form of combat permitted in this country to-day is boxing, and it seems to me that it ought to be the duty of Her Majesty's Government to keep themselves very closely informed about what goes on both in front of and, if possible, behind the scenes.
My Lords, I would once more emphasise that I am speaking of professional boxing, because here we have a business which employs a large number of paid men to fight each other in order that a section of the public may be provided with an entertainment. The idea that this is a form of manly combat in which two men may honourably settle their differences has no relationship whatever to professional boxing. This is an activity which is performed in public, and paid

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for by the public; and it cannot conceivably be argued that the public have no rights in the matter—and here I mean not only those who follow and approve of it but those who express anxiety and disquiet about it. The argument that we are poking our noses into what should not concern us has, in my belief, and in view of the public nature of the sport, no validity at all.
In the matter of the disquiet which I still feel about professional boxing, I will try to be a little more specific. Those of your Lordships who have taken part in amateur boxing at school or in the Services will appreciate what I mean when I say that a fight of ten or fifteen three-minute rounds must take a lot of stamina. The only necessity which I can see for keeping two large men at it for such a long time is the necessity to give the public what they have paid for. This seems to me to be a severely limiting factor when it comes to improving the conditions and rules under which men must fight. There is the rule that a tight must be stopped when a man becomes "defenceless"—I believe that that is the word used in professional boxing. I think that in amateur boxing the word used is "distressed", which is something quite different. But what happens when a man becomes almost defenceless during the last two or three rounds of a long contest in which he is well ahead on points? I have recently seen—and I will show it to any of your Lordships who wish to see it—an instance of this in a newspaper report, where a man was battered senseless because he might have won had he managed to stay on his feet.
My Lords, these things do happen: they are openly reported, and are seen to happen nowadays. How can the boxing business expect thinking members of the public to have confidence in their professions of reform when they continue to allow such savagery to take place? It is so often when one sees what actually happens that one experiences serious misgivings about the picture which is painted of improved conditions in the fight game to-day.
Like Her Majesty's Government I have had a rather long time to think about my Question—it has been hanging over me for the whole Summer Recess—so if I ask my noble friend who is to reply one or two questions which are not on
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the Order Paper I hope that he will forgive me, because I am certainly not trying to catch him out. In the matter of what is on the Order Paper, I have been told more than once, by people who ought to know, that my idea of five rounds or less is just not "on". I suppose that this is partly because, as I have just said, the public must be entertained. I suggested it only because of the finding of the Royal College of Physicians. It seemed to me, probably erroneously, that shorter fights would reduce the exposure to boxing and thus the risk of brain damage.
I must confess that my own feeling is that professional boxing is a barbarous entertainment, and that the sooner we are without it the better. It is a spectator sport which uses human beings as its raw material, and it has certainly been guilty in the past of ruining the lives of fine men who, had they followed some other career, might have made a more useful contribution to society, to their families and to themselves. I certainly think, in view of its past record, that we are justified in asking that a very close watch be kept upon it if it is to be permitted to continue. We certainly owe it to those brave young men who may, now or in the future, take up careers as boxers, that we should fully inform ourselves of the risks they are being asked to run.
As a last point, I should like to comment briefly on the mystique which boxing has succeeded in attracting to itself. There is something to be said for a sport which teaches a man to fight in a disciplined way, but this is an argument in favour of amateur boxing. To learn to fight in a disciplined way is quite different from being hired to do nothing else but fight. It is quite different from being paid to fight other men for no other reason than that your promoter may make money and the public may be entertained. Amateur boxing may or may not be a useful discipline for boys or young men—I do not intend to argue one way or the other on this point—but I can see no possible connection between that and the hard calculating world of professional boxing where, to use the words of a boxing promoter who was recently quoted on television, "the name of the game is money'.
Finally, I would ask Her Majesty's Government this question. Do they

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agree that professional boxing is an activity with which Her Majesty's Government have a duty to concern themselves? If they do so agree, will they take action by way of an inquiry, by way of more stringent regulations, or in either of the ways indicated in my Question? As I said earlier, I have had a little time for thought over the Summer Recess and have concluded that, short of banning professional boxing altogether, which is the course I would favour, there may be no one way of dealing with this subject. However, I think it ought to be the concern of Her Majesty's Government—more so than it has been in the past—to subject professional boxing to the closest possible scrutiny. The future of many splendid young men may well hang on the Answer which the Government give to your Lordships to-day.
6.4 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I first thank the noble Lord, Lord Belhaven and Stenton, for the gallant and gracious references which he has made to me? I only hope that I am fully deserving of all that he has said. In return, may I say that I have the greatest admiration for him, because he has displayed moral courage in putting the Question down on the Order Paper. He knows—because he has mentioned it—the abuse, the hostility and the ridicule to which one is subjected if one dares to denounce what has been called a sport, but what is of course nothing more than a lucrative business in which the only person who finally loses—because he loses his mental health—is the unfortunate boxer, the active participant.
The noble Lord is quite right in saying that seven years have elapsed since I moved the Second Reading of the Boxing Bill. On that occasion the noble Lord, Lord Brain, gave an undertaking that the Royal College of Physicians would undertake an investigation and would set up a boxing committee. There was an interim report which simply reminded me that things were going on, and they have now made their full Report for which I have waited patiently, but with complete confidence in the outcome. I believe that the result of their inquiries fully justified my claim, made time after time, that repeated blows to
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the head can and must cause injury to the brain.
I attempted on two previous occasions in another place to pilot a similar Bill and in view of that, and in view of the Report, I was hoping that a fresh voice of protest would be heard, preferably male, young and virile—a voice which could not be condemned as that of a misguided crank. The noble Lord who has just spoken not only fulfils those qualifications, but is also 6 ft. tall and was a welterweight champion of Kircudbright. What more impressive knight could a timorous maiden wish for?
However, I think that the noble Lord's first thoughts when he put a Question down on June 10 were best. He then put down a Question without qualification asking Her Majesty's Government to bring in a Bill to prohibit professional boxing. That is what I sought in my three Bills. I hope to convince the noble Lord to-night that prohibition is the only effective protection which can be given to our young men, the men about whom he has talked to-night, the men who have wasted their lives because, unknowingly, they have damaged the most sensitive part of the human body, the brain. The nerve cell can never recover and damage to it is irreversible. A man can suffer damage as a boxer and, far from improving after he retires—and the Report states this—his condition can deteriorate. Many of the people who gave evidence during the investigation said that they thought they began to deteriorate on retirement.
I would remind the House that apart from injury to the brain there is another aspect of prize fighting which calls for most serious consideration. It was portrayed in the United States of America last night. It has been argued, falsely I believe, that the diet of violent behaviour which is fed to impressionable youth on television can be dismissed as fictitious and therefore harmless. But what of the live fights of two men whose aim is to knock an opponent insensible, which by television are brought right into the living room of the people, to a captive family, where there are, let us say, unintelligent youths who are longing somehow to demonstrate to the world that they are important? They sit there, very often with father, somebody turns a switch, and it seems that such a show has official approval. It seems incongruous that the

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same medium can organise a University of the Air while catering to the least intelligent of our youth by glamorising violence.
A surgeon politician in Durban drafted a Bill to ban boxing, and he said in 1963:
"If you hit a man on the head with a club you are jailed, and if he dies you are hanged. But you can go into a small roped enclosure and in the presence of thousands, by skilfully using your fists, you can maim, mentally cripple or kill a less skilful person"—
and the crowd cheers and yells and urges the partcipants on. Supporters of boxing argue that rugby-football is equally dangerous. Of course, there is no comparison. The primary object in football is to score points or goals, not to knock your opponent insensible. Somebody on the field may be injured, and the crowd is sympathetic. The man is carried off and cared for. But the primary objective is not to knock him insensible.
My Lords, the first medical account of the syndrome known as "punch-drunk" was published in the United States of America in 1928 by a great doctor called Dr. H. S. Martland, and I feel that we owe a great debt to those doctors in different countries who showed their sympathy and compassion by investigating this condition. In this country, Dr. McDonald Critehley and Dr. Spillane, both neurologists and members of the Boxing Committee which was set up by the Royal College of Physicians, have made valuable contributions to the subject. In 1962 Dr. Spillane published a report on five former professional boxers. This revealed that there was definite evidence of a specific pathological change that was almost certainly due to boxing. In 1963 Dr. Maudsley made a study of 32 retired boxers, all of whom had clinical evidence of neurological lesions; and now, of course, we have the latest report. Here, I should particularly like to thank Lord Rosenheim, the President of the College. It is most unfortunate that Lord Rosenheim is not being introduced until next week. If only we had known, we might have postponed this debate for two or three weeks, when the President of the College would have been able to make his own contribution. But I should like to thank him for the time and energy which he has given to this investigation.
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I should also like to thank Dr. A. H. Roberts for his painstaking research, which is reported in detail in Brain Damage in Boxers. This, my Lords, is published by Pitman's, and can be obtained very easily. Dr. Roberts took a random sample of 250 ex-professional boxers—men who had been registered, of course, since the register came into force. Of these 250, 224 were clinically examined at the National Hospital in Queen's Square, when it was found that 37 of them—that is, one in six—had evidence of brain damage. This was an objective investigation at a hospital we all know—a hospital staffed by some of the finest neurologists in the whole world. Of those examined, one in six had brain damage; and the whole clinical picture, though varying slightly in degree, was remarkably consistent from one case to another, as the noble Lord quite rightly said. There was eye damage—and the eyes, of course, are a part of the nervous system—and there was definite evidence that damage had been caused by boxing. Impaired vision, retinal detachment and double vision were found in a number of those examined; and I remember, as I have quoted on a number of occasions, that Mr. Doggett, who operated on a number of boxers in his time and who also wrote a paper on this subject, has always held that much of this trouble could be attributed to boxing.
But a most important fact has been confirmed by this Report. It says:
"The prevalence of brain damage increased with increasing 'occupational exposure' measured by the length of the professional career."
The noble Lord gave the figures. Let me repeat them, because I hope noble Lords who are listening will become converts to this cause. Among ex-boxers aged 50 year or over almost half (17 out of 36) of those who had boxed professionally, licensed or unlicensed, for more than 10 years showed evidence of brain damage. I believe that the direct association between exposure to boxing and brain damage—and this is where I clash with my noble friend—surely makes nonsense of the argument that amateur boxing is harmless. The brain does not recognise the difference between the amateur and the professional fist. The noble Lord must have seen these amateur

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contests on television, showing boys knocked out or knocked to the ground. The fist that delivers such a blow to the head—and the brain weighs only three pounds, and is soft material wobbling inside a hard skull—is just as forceful whether it is the blow of the amateur or the blow of the professional. Therefore—and the report bears this out of course—even minor head blows over a number of years constitute a danger.
The clinical evidence in these cases was very similar to the findings of Dr. Maudsley in his investigation—and the noble Lord has mentioned them. So one has a picture of these men—and I have seen a number of them—with very severely affected speech (a slurring of the speech to the point of being almost unintelligible) and expressionless faces. As a doctor one knows that they can never recover. To tell a boxer, "If you have a long rest after this fight, old boy, you will get better" is nonsense. The promoters know it, the managers know it, the doctors know it. Once you see the dragging of the feet, and so on, you know that he is finished: out he goes, and no longer do you see his name in the headlines.
Now in its conclusions—and this is the important part—the Committee says that it is satisfied that there is a danger of chronic brain damage occurring in boxers as a result of their careers. And despite medical supervision, the report says,
"the hazards inherent in the sport will, however, remain and it is probable that prolonged exposure to them will continue to carry with it the likelihood of some degree of permanent injury to the brain".
My Lords, "some degree of permanent injury to the brain"—that sensitive part of the body which directs our lives! That means, of course, that the outlook is very serious.
Dr. Roberts, in his book, refers to the damage, even though of a minor character, which can occur in any fight. He says on page 102:
"The relationship that has been shown to exist in the present study between the occurrence of traumatic encephalopathy and the degree of occupational exposure might be explicable on the assumption that a minor degree of permanent cerebral damage occurs in every fight."
I am pleased to see that the World Health Organisation has taken up the matter and
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that the Medical Director of Norway, who did so much for the World Health Organisation, has denounced boxing and has tried to have it removed from the Olympic Games. An article from the W.H.O. on August 30, 1968, stated:
"In an average 10-round fight something like a thousand blows are exchanged. They are aimed at very delicate parts of the body: the stomach, the kidneys and most of all, worst of all, the head. … A hard blow to the chin not only knocks out the opponent but may cause permanent damage to the brain particularly as the head hits the floor of the ring."
I would say to the noble Lord that reducing the number of rounds, as he suggests, would not guarantee that the blows in each round will be reduced in number or force, or that the number of fights will be reduced. On the contrary, more fights could be arranged, because it may be assumed that the fighter is not in need of prolonged rests between contests. I would say that the investigations of the Royal College have made it clear that it is the cumulative effect of blows over the years that causes the damage and not the number of rounds.
It is significant that the attitude towards boxing is changing. There are schools to-day where the headmasters remove boxing from the curriculum. No doubt they were impressed when, in 1966, Mr. P. C. Mcintosh, Chief Inspector of Education, in a letter to the London Schools Amateur Boxing Association said that he could no longer advise or encourage boxing as a part of physical education. My Lords, the Chief Inspector of Education in London has given that direction: he says that he can no longer encourage boxing as a part of physical education. This is simply because he has read so many of these medical reports made during this year, and, like a wise man, he believes that he should protect the brains of our boys.
I would just say here that we are told that, rightly, Prince Charles has been brought up in a tough way. We are told of some of the things he does, and we are glad that he is a tough young man. But he was never allowed to be taught boxing. Prince Charles when at Gordonstoun, a tough school, had his brain protected because boxing is not taught there. The best doctors advised the Gordonstoun headmaster, and he knew that the doctors were giving good

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advice. They protected the brain of our future Monarch. All I ask is that every working boy in this country should, equally, have his brain protected. There should be no class distinction in this matter. From such brain injuries there is no recovery.
So I would ask the noble Lord, in view of the findings of this very important Committee, not to compromise but to ensure that the brains of our boys are protected by banning this business of boxing. I am quite sure that if professional boxing is banned then the amateurs will follow.
LORD BELHAVEN AND STENTON: My Lords, I did not wish to interrupt the noble Baroness while she was talking; but I think that she got something out of the Daily Express about me, something to the effect that I was a welter-weight champion. This is not so. I boxed in a very undistinguished way at school.
6.24 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, before I start may I just correct the noble Baroness on one other point? As an ex-Gordonstoun boy and the father of a Gordonstoun boy, I can assure her that Gordonstoun is not a tough school. It is a very humane school, probably one of the most humane and least tough in Great Britain; and one of the proofs of this is exactly the point she made about boxing.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I like tough men; but I like the right kind of tough men, not the ones who use their fists.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, I did not say that Gordonstoun did not produce tough men but that it is not a tough school.
I have ventured to intervene in this debate not because I have the medical qualifications of the noble Baroness or those of the noble Lord, Lord Platt, to whose speech we look forward, but because it seems to me to instance a very interesting and difficult point of legislative ethics which quite often comes before this House. In fact it has happened twice today, once on the question of fireworks and now on the question of boxing. It is a question with which the last two speakers have not entirely dealt: the
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question of whether one is entitled to legislate to restrict people from damaging themselves and each other.
Before one can come to study that question in any particular case, whether fireworks or boxing, one must have two forms of information. The first is purely statistical information, the kind given by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, when he talked about the number of fireworks sold compared with the number of injuries that resulted—and this is a perfectly fair and necessary piece of information. In the case of boxing we now have this kind of information from the Report of the Royal College. But to balance that one must have another piece of information. It is a piece of information which comes from understanding and knowing the damage and harm that can be done in these matters. This knowledge sometimes comes to one by accident, because it is thrust on one. For instance I had a friend, until recently a parish priest, who came to feel that there should be a real ban on fireworks because he soon realised that his job as parish priest meant that at the beginning of the afternoon of November 5 he had to go to the casualty ward of the local hospital and stay there for the rest of the afternoon, evening and night to deal with people who came in in pain, and with their parents and friends and relations.
I have another friend who is a great admirer of the noble Baroness but who had not hitherto accepted what she said about boxing. He has recently been in a neurological hospital and in the same ward as himself has seen a number of patients, elderly patients, suffering obviously from deteriorating brains and nervous systems. He has learned how many of them wore boxers, not only professional but amateurs, and particularly from the Services. The horror of the harm done in this way was borne upon him. Without being forced to witness these things in hospitals, those who consider these matters ethically, and who have to decide whether or not there should be legislation, should I think make it their business to feel sympathetically, to think themselves into the position' of these people and their relation to the situation.
When you have those two pieces of information you can balance the pure

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statistics against the ethical arguments and use that as a basis to tackle the question of whether legislation is or is not justified. I have come to the conclusion that we do not have the right as legislators to ban amateur boxing. I have come to the conclusion that if two people want to box, purely for what they consider the fun of it, then, however misguided, they should be allowed to damage themselves and each other. I think this is part of being an adult; it is part of being a citizen. I believe that the Government should not interfere, although I should like to see an age of consent for this. It appears to me that an age of consent is more important for this than it is for some other matters.
But when we come to professional boxing that seems to me to be a different matter. One must ask: "Is society justified in allowing people to be bribed to damage themselves and each other in this kind of way?" Because, as has been pointed out already this evening, the "employer", so to speak—boxing business—is rich and powerful. On the whole, the people who keep it going are rich and powerful, and the people who box professionally are poor and undistinguished. They are the poor and the powerless. In an unequal society such as we have, the bribe held out, the inducement held out, of fame and riches is a very big one indeed. It seems to me that we ought not to allow this to happen; it is beyond the bounds of permissible freedom. We should allow it on an amateur basis, but I believe it is perfectly right that our legislators should be able to say that these people should not be allowed to be bribed to behave in a way which we know is against their physical and mental well-being.
My Lords, it is for this reason that I join in supporting this Question. And I ask the noble Lord who is to reply on behalf of the Government whether he will—as I think is covered by the terms of the Question—not only give some indication about what the Government think (which I rather suspect may be a rather "dusty answer") but also tell us whether the Government will at least help if the noble Baroness, or someone else, wishes again to produce a Private Member's Bill in this House or in another place. I
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hope that the reply to that question will at least be encouraging.
6.32 p.m.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, I shall try to be as brief as possible and not to repeat too much of what has already been so well said by others, but some points which you have already heard I feel bound to emphasise. I have, of course, studied the reports of the Royal College of Physicians and the inquiry by Dr. A. H. Roberts. They both leave us in no doubt whatever about the seriousness of what is called the punch-drunk syndrome.
I wonder how many of your Lordships have actually seen these people. Coming on towards the end of their boxing careers and while they are still young there is gradually progressing disability; slurred speech; slow and clumsy movements; tremor; unsteady gait accompanied by varying degrees of dementia; mental stupidity; inertia and loss of memory even to the extent of not knowing what the date is. Some of them suffer from fits or are subject to uncontrollable bursts of temper. Some of them have paranoic delusions. Often their eyes have been damaged in addition; there is damage to the eye muscles, or to the retina itself, or to the optic nerve. From a microscopical examination, or indeed to the naked eye, there is evidence of the damage to the brain which may be seen in a postmortem examination. All this I have seen for myself.
A neurologist friend of mine, who was, as a matter of fact, a member of the College committee, wrote, in reply to a letter from me:
"Yes, the traumatic encephalopathy which is known as the punch-drunk syndrome does go on progressing after fighting ceases and the patient in the end becomes dependent on himself and upon society. It is a beastly condition. Furthermore it begins much sooner than people realise."
He goes on to say later:
"I think I am speaking for all neurologists when I say that we think that no alterations in rules about professional boxing can mask the problem, and that the sensible step would be to ban boxing."
In the light of all this I must say that I find the recommendations in the College report somewhat inadequate.
My Lords, I know it may be said on the other side that the public wants boxing. Large numbers of people seem

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to enjoy the spectacle. I am not a very early riser, but I sometimes hear the 8 o'clock news; and in spite of all that is going on in the Middle East, in Canada and elsewhere, the really interesting news was that somebody called Quarry had had eleven stitches in his forehead. I hope it gave a lot of pleasure to a lot of people; it gave none to me. The public wants it. If there were still public executions, the public would still want them. It is an exhibition of skill: this we must admit. But there are, of course, plenty of other spectacles which we could witness and which are exhibitions of skill. As for teaching defence, even the noble Viscount, Lord Scarsdale, who spoke so much in favour of boxing in the debate in 1962, did not hold that to be a very serious reason for continuing boxing. The question of its danger as compared with other games and sports is irrelevant, as so many people have said, because the object of the other games and sport is not to do injury to the other person. Of course, all the figures are useless unless we know the population from which they are obtained. I have no doubt that far more people die as a result of road accidents than of boxing; but there are not millions of professional boxers whereas there are millions of people who drive motor cars.
What I feel is the danger to-day, when public opinion has so obviously changed since 1962, is that those who wish to continue professional boxing, because of the pleasure they get out of it or because of the money involved in it, will try to make it respectable by putting in so-called safeguards. An article in The Times of October 9 this year was headed:
"The popularity of ringside T.V. in Australia has put an undue strain on boxers."
In big letters was:
"Lack of health checks by promoters."
This arose out of the death of Roko Spanja, the Yugoslav boxer, at the age of twenty-one a few days before. The point made was the lack of health checks by promoters. What these people want is for a medical man to be present at every boxing match to examine everybody beforehand. If you are knocked out, my Lords, if you are brain-damaged to the extent of unconsciousness, what use is it to you or your relatives, or to anyone else, that five minutes before
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somebody pronounced you as being normal? We must be aware of this danger. I think it crept in again a little in what the noble Lord, Lord Belhaven and Stenton, said about reducing the number of rounds. Though I should like to congratulate him on raising this subject, I must say that in my opinion there is a danger that by instituting these controls the thing will go on, whereas I believe that our real duty is to see that professional boxing is banned.
At this stage I would not include amateur boxing; not because I am in favour of amateur boxing, not because I think that it is a safe pastime whereas professional boxing is not, but because I think there might be a much bigger public outcry if there were a move to ban amateur boxing altogether, and the whole argument would become mixed up. If there were a ban on public professional boxing, and boxing on television, I believe that amateur boxing would soon die out in the natural process of events.
6.40 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, we have had a most interesting Question and debate on it, and I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. Although there has been a fair amount of unanimity in favour of the Question put by my noble friend Lord Belhaven and Stenton, one thing he certainly did was to give the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, a chance to enter the ring again for round No. 10 (is it?) in the fight she has been waging in this cause. She has suffered many defeats but I think that she has never suffered from chronic concussion. She found a new ally this evening, but even their honeymoon seemed to break up rather rapidly on the subject of amateur boxing.
My noble friend clearly does not like professional boxing, and expressed the view that surely the public have some rights in this matter. I think that the public have rights in this matter; but the public are made up of a great many different people. Some of them (although we have not had this view expressed tonight) actually approve of the sport of boxing. So, I would suggest to the noble Baroness, do television viewers. Many of them take a real interest in boxing as a sport. I would hope that her crusading zeal, for which she has such a

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reputation, might be turned on to trying to prevent the far more odious forms of violence shown on the television, which children so often see, rather than what is often a clean fight in the boxing ring.
The Royal College of Physicians inquiry originated from a small-scale survey initiated by the College in 1963, which led to a further more detailed inquiry, carried out between 1967 and 1969 with the aid of grants of £7,000 from the Wellcome Foundation and £3,000 from the Government. The British Boxing Board of Control, the Amateur Boxing Association and the Armed Forces made records available, but the Royal College of Physicians Committee on boxing considered that only the records of professional boxers were adequate in providing an unselected population of boxers over a long enough period from which a suitable sample could be drawn. The investigation was therefore confined to the population of professional boxers registered with the Board of Control between 1929 and 1955.
Out of the 250 boxers who were selected at random, 224 were eventually investigated by the Committee. The inquiry took the form of investigation of records, careers and Press reports, followed by detailed interrogation and physical examination by an experienced neurologist and, in the majority of cases, electro-encephalography. The Committee concluded that severe acute injury to the brain is an uncommon occurrence in both amateur and professional boxing, though a high mortality in young boxers has been associated with the rare accidents which have caused bleeding into the membranes covering the brain. The Committee were satisfied that there is a danger of chronic brain damage occurring in boxers as a result of their career. The Government are grateful to the Committee for their careful study of the problem, and in particular to the doctors mentioned by the noble Baroness, Dr. Roberts and Dr. Cobb, for the clinical investigation and the electro-encephalographic study respectively.
My noble friend Lord Belhaven and Stenton quoted, somewhat selectively, some figures and statements from the Report, and I should like to quote just
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two more. One, from page 8 of the Report, reads:
"Because the number of boxers sampled for the study has been proportional to the numbers registering each year, the majority of those examined had done their boxing before the Second World War when the sport was at the height of its popularity, and there was a far larger number of professional boxers."
The second quotation, from page 10 reads:
"The Committee has had discussions with members, including medical officers, of the British Boxing Board of Control and appreciates that professional boxing under their auspices is, to-day, closely and carefully controlled. It is, therefore, not possible to draw conclusions about the risk of brain damage in professional boxing to-day."
LORD BELHAVEN AND STENTON: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend, but I did not try to disguise the parts of the Report which were more favourable to boxing.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I am sorry if I misrepresented anything that my noble friend said. I thought he was taking the rather gloomy aspects of the Report and not these particular parts. It is true that the Report would imply that, even given careful professional and medical supervision, the hazards inherent in the sport would remain. The Report acknowledges, however, that professional boxing nowadays is closely and carefully controlled. It is perhaps significant that the Report also notes that the prevalence of brain damage is greater among older boxers who, by and large, were exposed to danger for longer periods and fought more often without the benefits of close supervision.
The sample on which the Committee's study was based was of boxers registered and licensed with the British Boxing Board of Control between 1929 and 1955. The majority, therefore, had done their boxing before the Second World War. The greater prevalence of brain damage among older boxers emerges very clearly. Nearly 50 per cent., aged 50 or over who boxed for more than ten years showed evidence of brain damage. The proportion dropped to 17 per cent. for those in this group who boxed from 6 to 9 years, and to 13 per cent. among those who boxed for no longer than five years. Among the younger boxers, the equivalent figures are 25 per cent., 14 per

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cent. and 1 per cent. So the general findings that 17 per cent. of the whole sample showed evidence of damage, and that one-third of these were so severely affected as to be "punch drunk" does not take account of the difference between age groups and throws no light on recent trends.
I would suggest that conditions are very different in professional boxing under the control of the British Boxing Board of Control to-day. Every professional boxer now undergoes a life assurance type full medical examination on applying for a licence, followed by annual medical examinations on renewal of his licence. A boxer is examined before and after each contest, and if a fight is slopped, or he is knocked out he is obliged to have 21 days' rest followed by a further medical examination. A doctor is present at every contest and a central record is kept. Referees are lectured every year by the Board's medical officers on spotting the danger of injuries, and it is their job to watch for and prevent chronic concussion. The Board of Control know of no cases of chronic concussion in the last ten years.
I will not go into the question of amateur boxing, for I think that most of the speakers this evening have agreed that the same conditions do not apply to amateur boxing. It is not such a dangerous sport. I know that the noble Baroness disagrees with this, but in general other noble Lords who have spoken have not sought to put any ban on amateur boxing; indeed, my noble friend, in introducing this Question, did not refer to amateur boxing. It is sufficient to say that we are quite confident that the Amateur Boxing Association is playing a very constructive and sound part in controlling the sport, and is doing all it can to do such things as standardising equipment, with, for example, the Sorbo glove which reduces the number of cases of loss of consciousness. It is also worthy of note that until recently full records of amateur boxers were kept only in the London area, but following discussions between officials, members of the Sports Council and the Amateur Boxing Association, a further Government grant has been provided to enable a national record system to be introduced.
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My Lords, the recommendations of the Committee were that all forms of competitive boxing should be supervised by organisations able to undertake responsibility for the medical welfare of boxers, and that continuing personal records of all boxers engaged in competitive boxing should be maintained. We consider that in the present circumstances these recommendations are being fulfilled; that the British Boxing Board of Control are supervising the medical welfare of the boxer. They have, as your Lordships' probably know, a permanent medical committee of distinguished doctors; they have a medical officer in each area; they have stringent rules and regulations, of which I have a number of copies here, which I should have thought arc fully adequate to achieve as great a degree of safety as is consistent with a physical activity and a dangerous activity such as boxing.
Certainly boxing, whether amateur or professional, is not alone in being a risk sport. There are many other sports carrying danger of injuries, or death, and participants must he assumed to know of and accept the hazards. As a general principle, statutory restrictions on any sport should be imposed only when there is serious abuse which the appropriate controlling authority is not capable of rectifying itself. The Government consider that boxing is adequately controlled by the authorities, both amateur and professional, and we do not, therefore, intend to introduce statutory limitations nor measures to prohibit professional boxing.
My noble friend Lord Belhaven put one specific question on the subject of whether Her Majesty's Government will accept a duty to inform themselves on professional boxing, and whether they will consider an inquiry. I think I have answered that question in the course of my remarks, but to spell out the answer to my noble friend, we accept an obligation to keep ourselves informed, but we do not consider that a Government inquiry is required at the moment so soon after the study by the Royal College of Physicians, which was completed only last year, and the recommendations of which we consider we have put into effect.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord a question before he sits down? Having listened very carefully, may I ask how

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he can sustain an argument against banning boxing, when the support of his observations simply comes from an organisation which has a vested interest in professional boxing?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, the noble Baroness is aware that many members of her own and Lord Piatt's profession, the medical profession, are working with the British Boxing Board of Control. I referred to their medical advisers.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, does the noble Lord think that if you are a medical adviser to an organisation of that kind you are independent?
LORD ABERDARE: Yes, my Lords, I most certainly do.

BRIDGE STREET BAPTIST CHURCH, BANBURY HILL [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments.
FALMOUTH CONTAINER TERMINAL BILL [H.L.]
The Prince of Wales's consent signified, and Bill reported with Amendments.
PORT OF TYNE BILL
Reported, with an Amendment.
MONMOUTHSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL
The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES informed the House that the opposition to the Bill was withdrawn: the Order made on July 22 last discharged, and Bill committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.