HL Deb 27 October 1970 vol 312 cc76-99

5.47 p.m.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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.