Lords Sitting of 1 April 1971

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Rochester.

SOCIAL SECURITY STATEMENT: PROCEDURE
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, yesterday afternoon I decided, after consultation through the usual channels, that it would be for the convenience of the House if a Statement on National Insurance uprating was not repeated here, because of its length and because of its detailed nature. It has been represented to me on more than one occasion, and indeed from all quarters of your Lordships' House, that we should wherever possible seek to avoid the interruption of debates. On this occasion, and in my then knowledge of the contents of the Statement, I agreed with this view and with the corollary that we should not come between the Welsh in their important preoccupations yesterday.
Since then, my Lords, some noble Lords have made representations to me that they would have wished the Statement to have been repeated here. I can only say to those noble Lords who are interested in this subject—and understandably so—that I am sorry they were disappointed. It is always very difficult to decide which Statements should be repeated in this House and which should not, and yesterday's new procedure, whereby the text of the Statement was circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT, was a genuine attempt to meet an admitted difficulty. I should like to say that I very much regret that the Statement, as finally made by my right honourable friend, contained details of which the usual channels were not aware when they agreed to its not being repeated here.
That said, I should like to apologise to noble Lords, wherever they are in your Lordships' House, if for that reason they were denied an opportunity which otherwise they would have wished to take of
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questioning my noble friend on this matter. I hope your Lordships will accept that there is always—and, I think, inevitably—a difficult balance of convenience to strike between the interests of those who are taking part in a debate, and the interests of those who—again, quite understandably—wish to have Statements repeated in your Lordships' House.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I understand that this is not a personal Statement on which one cannot comment, but that the noble Earl is explaining, in his capacity as Leader of the House, what happened in a very unfortunate way. I think the noble Earl has apologised to the House. It was not a very forthright apology, I am bound to say. This is a matter of great difficulty for any Leader, or indeed for the usual channels who have to make a judgment of this kind. But this Statement ultimately contained material of a highly contenious kind and the House as a whole is entitled to have these Statements. There is no doubt that, inadvertently—and I accept that the noble Earl did not know what was in the Statement—he was misled, and so were we. But of course this puts my noble friends who had to help in taking this decision in a very difficult position indeed, and we could be equally blamed for what, I am bound to say (although I realise that these things happen), was a piece of what can only be described as the most extraordinary incompetence on the Government's side. As I said, these things happen and I know that Statements are often prepared at the last moment. But the really crucial material was not available, and I can only wish that the noble Earl had given a rather more forthright apology.

BUSINESS: THE INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS BILL
EARL ST ALDWYN: My Lords, in view of the very large number of speakers who will be taking part in the debate on Monday on the Second Reading of the Industrial Relations Bill, dinner will be available.
BRITISH ALUMINIUM (SALTBURN PIER) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Read 3a, and passed.
INDUSTRY BILL
Read 3a, and passed.
LAND COMMISSION (DISSOLUTION) BILL
Read 3a, and passed.

INTEREST ON DAMAGES (SCOTLAND) BILL
3.13 p.m.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. For the Scot, it is a small but by no means an unimportant Bill. It has come to us from another place, where it was a Private Member's Bill. There it was well discussed and amended in Committee. It was supported by the complete political spectrum and opposed by nobody. As the law of Scotland stands at present, the court has power to award interest on damages from the date of the decree back to the date of the beginning of the court action. The prime purpose of this Bill is to empower the court to award interest back to the date of the accident or other event which caused the action in the first place. Secondly, where the damages consist of or include damages for personal injuries, the court is obliged to exercise this power unless there are special reasons why interest should not be awarded. My Lords, the justice and the common sense of both these points is so obvious that I do not propose to take up the time of your Lordships in arguing the case. Nor will I cite the representations from law societies that have been made in favour of this action, both from Scotland and from England, where the law has already been amended.
There are three minor points. In the first draft of this Bill it was proposed that interest should be awarded only when the sum of the damages was £200 or over. That is the case in England. However, a full debate on this point took place in Committee in another place. The matter was well argued and the conclusion approved by all, including the Lord Advocate: it was that there should be no limit so far as Scotland is concerned. The next point is that Clause 1(2), in the interests of clarity, says.
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"damages' includes solatium"—
that is, compensation for pain and suffering; and, likewise,
"personal injuries' includes any disease and any impairment of a person's physical or mental condition".
Clause 2(2) deals with the point of application at the moment the Act is passed. This is perhaps a little tricky. On the Committee stage there was considerable discussion again on this point, and again unanimous agreement was reached that the decisive point is the moment at which evidence is given. The Act therefore would not apply to any action in which the proof or trial has taken place at the time of its passing. Finally, my Lords, I draw your Lordships' attention to a probable "spin off" from the Bill in the acceleration of justice. Where one party to an action has a somewhat doubtful case, he will have to weigh carefully any advantage there may be in delay at any stage against the extra interest he will have to pay if he loses his case. To my untutored eye, this is a major reason for supporting the Bill.
My Lords, however it is conceived, a Private Member's Bill is born with a disadvantage: it is under-privileged. That this one has survived to reach your Lordships' House is evidence of how much it is wanted, of how good and how useful it is. With so much major legislation in hand in another place, the survival of this Bill is a token of the unanimous good will of all Parties. I beseech your Lordships to cherish it so that it may grow up into a useful and valuable Act. I beg to move.
Moved, that the Bill be now read 2a. —(Lord Balerno.)
3.18 p.m.
LORD HOY: My Lords, I can assure your Lordships immediately that I shall not detain the House for more than a couple of minutes. My job really is to signify the assent, and indeed the approval, of this side of the House to this particular Bill. We are greatly indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, for explaining what it does in such a concise way. As I understand it, persons awarded damages in Scotland are less favourably placed in the matter of interest payments than their counterparts in England, and as a result of differences

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between English and Scottish law a Scottish pursuer can claim interest for a shorter period than can an English person. I understand that that is what we are proposing to put right here. The only question I should like to ask is how the Scots ever allowed themselves to get into this position. Secondly, I noted with approval what took place in Committee in another place when the limit of £200 was dealt with. I then came to the conclusion that we were playing for safety; that we were ensuring that we should not be left behind in the race once more, and that that is why the change took place. With those words, I am delighted, on behalf of my noble friends and myself, to be able to say how much we approve this particular Bill.
3.20 p.m.
LORD WHEATLEY: My Lords, there is a feeling in certain quarters that the good intentions of Parliament are often frustrated by the narrow interpretation placed upon an Act of Parliament by the judges. It may be thought that my intervention at this stage was carrying the process into the legislative Chamber. So may I say, for the removal of doubt, that I entirely approve of the purpose of this Bill. The reason for this Bill is, I think, twofold. In the first place, as the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, pointed out, it brings the law of Scotland into conformity with the law of England. But, secondly, it is due to the fact that a narrow construction was placed by the judges in the Court of Session on the Act of 1958, a narrow construction which in the eyes of some people was deemed to run contrary to the intendment of that statute. It is in order to remove any doubts created as a result of that decision and to bring the law into conformity with what is conceived to be the justice and equity of the position that this Bill is produced.
I should not like it to be thought that the narrow interpretation placed upon the Act of 1958 was due to an over-rigorous application by the judges in the Court of Session, because the judges are under an obligation to construe what Parliament has enacted. The judges have to seek from the wording of the statute what must be deemed to have been the intention of Parliament. If their construction be a narrow one, the fault is not necessarily their's; the fault may be that of Parliament in so framing the legislation as to
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drive the Judiciary to that inevitable conclusion. Accordingly, while approving wholeheartedly of the purpose of this Bill, I want to raise a number of points in order to secure so far as possible that a similar fate does not befall this Bill, when it becomes an Act of Parliament, as befell its predecessor.
At the risk of wearying your Lordships may I. point out that the purpose of this small Bill is to deal with the matter of interest in actions for damages, and in so far as the different elements of damages may be constituted at different times it very properly makes provision for different rates of interest and, if need be, for different periods from the very date when the right of action arose until the decree has been granted in the courts. The proposed new subsection (1) makes that permissive; but in relation to actions for personal injuries the subsection, by way of a mandatory direction, requires the court to award interest at perhaps differential rates and for differential periods according to the constituent elements of the damages, subject to two reservations. It is particularly in relation to these reservations that I wish to raise a number of questions.
As your Lordships will observe, the proposed new subsection (1A) provides that the court will exercise its powers to award interest so as to include in the principal sum the "interest on those damages or on such part of them as the court considers appropriate". To what extent does that phrase, "as the court considers appropriate", qualify the otherwise mandatory power? In the decision which was thought to emasculate the provisions of the 1958 Act the court took the view that in deciding where and what interest should be awarded the court must have regard to certain legal principles. These legal principles were twofold: in the first place, that the award had to be selective in regard to the constituent elements of damages; and, secondly, that since interest is awarded not as compensation but to recoup the pursuer for the money he has been out of for a period after it fell due, any sum required to be liquidated—that is, properly assessed by the court—before it became a principal sum on which interest could run. It was on the basis of these principles that the very fine distinctions in the case to which I referred, of McRae v. Reed and Mallik

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Ltd. in 1961 were founded. It is to remove some of these difficulties that this Bill has been introduced.
I should like to ask whether, having regard to the phrase "as the court considers appropriate", the court would be entitled to regard as a relevant consideration and something which was appropriate observance of these self-same principles of law.
I now turn to the next phrase, because there is a further qualification:
"unless it is satisfied that there are special reasons why no interest should be given …".
Again I pose the same question. Under that phrase, would it be a special reason for not awarding interest on damages that the constituent element in respect of which interest is sought is something which, by the existing law of Scotland, should not attract interest because it has not been a liquidated sum? If that be the case, it means that to all intents and purposes we are back to square one and back to the 1958 Act. Therefore, I would urge that those who are sponsoring this Bill and guiding it to its final destiny pay particular regard to that fact to see whether or not the Bill requires strengthening to avoid the pitfall into which its predecessor fell.
There are no guidelines—and perhaps I am now speaking in rather a syndicalistic way on behalf of my colleagues and myself—to guide the court as to how it should differentiate on this question of variable elements on which interest may be awarded. The wording in the Bill follows exactly the wording of the English Act as amended by the Act of 1969. There the court had to devise some sort of formula to meet this situation when Parliament had given no guide as to how it ought to be operated. In the case of Jefford v. Gee in 1970, the Court of Appeal in England, exercising a broad axe with a blunt edge, decided to lay down a certain code of practice as a guidance and not as a rule. I will not weary your Lordships with how it was worked out in regard to the different elements; but obviously it operated on the basis of the broad axe with a blunt edge.
I wonder whether the sponsors of this Bill expect Scottish courts to follow the same lines; because it is one thing
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for a court reviewing judgment to say it is a bad judgment because it offends against certain well-established principles; it is another matter for a review court to say it is a bad judgment because it offends against a proposed recommended code of practice. I am rather afraid, as the Bill stands, that even if the narrow interpretation cannot be put on, as well it may, the court is still left in a grave difficulty. If the solution be to allow the court to make these rather broad rules based on no guidelines, I wonder whether it is not really the responsibility of Parliament to say "In the interest of equity and justice we will undertake the obligation of making these broad distinctions and laying down these broad guidelines and let us not in due course blame the court for frustrating the intention of Parliament by ruling that the Act meant something different from what Parliament intended."
If I may, I will draw attention to two other matters which I think are of importance. The first of these relates to what might well be an inconsistency in this Bill with the parent Act. In the parent Act provision is made in respect of appeals from an interlocutor of the sheriff court in a jury trial to the Court of Session in order to make provision under the 1958 Act for an appeal on this question of interest. Accordingly, in Section 2 of the 1958 Act an additional ground of appeal in jury trials held in the sheriff court is provided for; namely, that no interest has been awarded, or that the interest awarded is either inadequate or excessive. Then the section goes on to provide that the Appeal Court can make such order regarding interest as to it seems just.
On what basis has the Appeal Court to consider such an appeal "as to it seems just"? Is it to interpret that "as to it seems just" having regard to the principles now to be embodied in the parent Act by this amending Bill? Or is it a general discretion given to the Appeal Court to decide the matter on the broad general principles of justice and equity? Because in that situation if you have the narrow interpretation of what is proposed in the Bill you are going to have two standards of appeal procedure operated under the same Act, and that is manifestly undesirable.

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The last point I want to make is a very technical one, but I think it is a real one. It relates to what we call tenders. The proposed new subsection (1A) relates to an action for damages for personal injury. One way in which that action, having been brought into court, could be terminated is for the defender to lodge a judicial tender of a certain sum of money in satisfaction of the claim made against him, without prejudice to his denial of liability. If the pursuer accepts that, by a minute of acceptance, then the pursuer is entitled to move the court for decree in terms of the minute of tender as accepted, and decree would then pass; and that would be a decree for the damages in respect of personal injuries such as is envisaged in the proposed new subsection (1A).
But in such a tender the sum tendered is not broken up into constituent elements, and therefore the court is not in a position, as it would be after a proof or a jury trial, of having evidence on which the court might very well separate the constituent elements. This is merely a lump sum and under a tender of acceptance the court would have no means of knowing how to split up the constituent elements because no evidence has been laid. So in that situation it would seem that the court might be driven to the position where it could not award interest on damages where the action was settled by this procedure, and a manifest injustice might be done to people who settled by this means because they would be deprived of the benefit which the proposed new subsection intended to give them.
My Lords, I am very well aware of the fact that I have occupied too much of your Lordships' time, but may I finish on two points? I realise that those sponsoring this Bill are not lawyers and therefore they may not have the answers to the points that I have raised. I would not be disappointed; nay, I would not expect them to be able to answer these points at this notice. But having recorded the points I should like them to consider with the legal advisers, between now and a subsequent stage of the Bill, whether these points require to be considered.
Some of the points may not require anything; some might be met by minor
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amendment; others may be more radical, if it should be decided that it is Parliament who should undertake the responsibility of deciding how this formula should be worked out and it is not left to the courts, with all the elasticity that is envisaged in the Bill. And it may be thought that, having regard to the pressure of work in another place, and the large number of Private Members' Bills which may have to be referred back from here to another place, there would be danger of this Bill being lost if we were to amend it at all, since time could not be found for it in the other place.
May I urge your Lordships and those sponsoring this Bill not to accede to that argument because it would mean—and ex hypothesi of my argument it certainly would mean—that we would be passing an imperfect Bill which might give rise to a great deal of trouble and frustrate the whole purpose and the good intentions of those who brought the Bill before Parliament. I think it better not to have bad legislation than to seek half-baked legislation that might create as much damage as the good it undoubtedly proposes to do.
3.35 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE): My Lords, I am glad to be able to assure the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, that he certainly has the Government's support for this Bill; and indeed it appears that he has the support of the House and certainly of noble Lords on the Benches opposite as the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, has indicated. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wheatley, gave, I think, his general support, but he also raised some very difficult questions of law. He was good enough to advise my noble friend Lord Balerno that he would probably speak on these points. Having to speak from this Bench, I have of course taken legal advice and perhaps I may make some comments on these matters. I will certainly undertake, as the noble and learned Lord asked, to consider the questions further between this and the next stage in the progress of the Bill because I agree with him that it is important that, so far as possible, Bills should be made to work.
My Lords, I will not repeat the purpose of the Bill except just briefly to describe to the House why the Government are

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very glad to support it, because it confers on the Scottish courts powers that are similar to those already vested in the English courts by the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1934. These were designed to ensure that, save in exceptional circumstances, a person who has suffered personal injury as the result of the negligence or wrongful act of another, shall be awarded interest on at least part of the damages awarded by the court from the date of the accident or other event which gave rise to the right of action.
My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wheatley, asked particularly whether this Bill was so framed that there would be no chance of there being a narrow interpretation of its provisions by judges in the future, particularly in the Court of Session. I am advised that he had particularly in mind one case, that of McCrae v. Reed and Mallik Limited of 1961. The 1958 Act provided for payment of interest from a date not earlier than the commencement of the action if the circumstances warranted such a course, and in the case in question the court interpreted this to mean that the award of interest could be made only if there were special circumstances in the particular case. But there remained a presumption against such interest awards in the ordinary case. My Lords, the present Bill has taken account of this. It has tried to ensure so far as possible that the court will exercise power to award interest on damages from the date on which the right of action arose and that there should not be scope for the restricted interpretation which was put upon the 1958 Act by the case in question. The more positive wording of the new subsection (1A), for instance, omits the word, "if the circumstances warrant such a course", and refers to "the whole or any part of the period" instead of "a date not earlier than". Moreover, the new subsection (1A) raises a clear presumption in favour of paying instance, omits the word, "if the circumdate of action, and the definition of damages to include solatium makes it clear that the new and extended power to award interest from the earlier date does cover this element in the award. Special reasons for not awarding interest would have to be special to the particular case. But I am advised that the court could still hold that interest was inappropriate
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in principle on, for example, future wage loss.
The noble Lord, Lord Wheatley, raised the question of what he called guidelines. He feels that the Bill as drafted leaves too great an element of uncertainty and too much discretion to the courts in determining how the amount of interest to be awarded should be calculated. And I got the impression that the noble Lord would like to see detailed rules written into the Bill. I am advised that the Winn Committee on personal injuries litigation set out certain detailed suggestions for the guidance of judges in the calculation of interest on damages; but that Committee did not propose that these detailed rules should be incorporated in the recommended legislation. In refraining from making such a recommendation, the Committee were, I suspect, persuaded by the same considerations as those which led to the non-inclusion of such detail in the present Bill. These are that the rules set out in the Winn Report are, in some respects, too detailed to take account of the specialties of individual cases, and in other respects appear somewhat arbitrary.
In the case to which the noble Lord referred, Jefford v. Gee, the court, on the basis of statutory provisions similar to the present Bill, laid down guidelines for calculation of interest, but left a discretion in their application. It is to be expected that the Scottish courts will similarly lay down guide-lines for the operation of the present Bill. It is for this reason that we feel the Bill should not attempt to impose rigid rules in the way suggested.
The noble Lord also raised a question about the power of the Court of Session on appeals from the sheriff. On the point raised on Section 2 of the 1958 Act, although the Court of Session appears to be given a very wide discretion, I am advised that this will probably be interpreted as a discretion within the framework of the existing rules about interest in damages, including the provisions of the present Bill.
The last and very technical question which the noble Lord asked me concerned tenders. I am advised that with regard to the position where the defender makes a tender of money in satisfaction of the pursuer's claim, it is considered that it would be impossible to deal in

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detail with the problems raised by tenders. My understanding is that a tender will not in Scotland include an element representing interest on damages, but that when the court pronounces an interlocutor in terms of minutes of tender and acceptance, the pursuers will be entitled to move for interest, since the interlocutor is one decerning for payment of money as damages. Admittedly it may be difficult for the judge to assess the element of damages on which interest should be awarded, since there will normally have been no proof, but he will get some help from the written pleadings. To demand further specification could lead to dispute and expense.
My Lords, I have tried to give the first reactions to the difficult questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Wheatley, and I should like to thank him for taking the trouble to ask them. If I may speak on behalf of the Government (I do not know what my noble friend Lord Balerno, who is in charge of this Bill will say) we will certainly see whether there is any way in which this Bill could be improved; but at first sight, on the advice I have been given, and for the reasons I have tried to explain to your Lordships, we feel that the Bill is best left as it is.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, I should like to take this opportunity of thanking all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I am particularly grateful to my old friend—if I may call him that—Lord Hoy, who spoke on behalf of the Opposition. I said in my opening speech that this Bill had no enemies in another place, and I trust that it finds no enemies in this House. Naturally anything legal is always liable to require some i's dotted and some strokes put on to its t's, and we are indeed grateful to the noble Lord. Lord Wheatley, for putting his magnifying glass upon it and telling us the results. He is anxious that the Bill should be made to work. I cannot express too strongly my gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Tweedstmuir of Belhelvie, for taking the ball and hitting it back into the noble Lord's court. She did it extremely skilfully and it saves my having to take up your Lordships' time unduly. I am only too conscious of the fact that I am not an expert in legal matters. No one expects a poor farmer
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to dispute with a Senator of the College of Justice. But I should like to assure the noble Lord that I will consult my friends—in other words, I will do what he does occasionally and take it ad avizandum.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

CARRIAGE OF GOODS BY SEA BILL
3.47 p.m.
LORD WILBERFORCE: My Lords, my noble and learned friend Lord Dip-lock is unfortunately detained elsewhere on judicial business and he has asked me to move on his behalf. 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 speak in Committee. Therefore, unless, any noble Lord objects, on behalf of my noble friend, I beg to move, pursuant to Standing Order No. 43(2), That the Order of Commitment be discharged.
Moved, That the Order of Commitment be discharged.—(Lord Wilberforce.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Then, Standing Order No. 42 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of March 30) Bill read 3a, and passed.

UNSOLICITED GOODS AND SERVICES BILL
3.49 p.m.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time. This is a Private Member's Bill which has been through another place. It first saw the light in another place in the last Parliament. It was introduced under the Title of the Inertia Selling Bill, but that rather unattractive, though descriptive, Title was changed when the Bill was again introduced in this Parliament in 1970 by the honourable Member for Beckenham, Mr. Philip Goodhart, and the Title to-day is "Unsolicited Goods and Services Bill".
The Bill deals with two problems. The first is that most tiresome custom of sending to people goods which they have not

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ordered, in the hope that they will buy them and of course pay for them—in fact, the sending of unsolicited goods. If the recipient does not want the goods, he can return them. But that involves expense and trouble; therefore often he does not return them. Then bills are sent in to him, first in ordinary terms and later on with threats of legal proceedings, court actions and all the rest of the disagreeable things which can happen to people and which of course much alarm the ordinary man and woman and cause them quite unnecessary anxiety. Under Clause I of the Bill, if the goods are unsolicited the recipient can send notice to the sender that he neither wants nor will pay for the goods. If the sender does not collect them within 30 days, the goods become the property of the recipient free, gratis and for nothing.
How widespread this tiresome habit of sending unsolicited goods is can be gathered from the fact that all the main consumer protection associations—the Consumers' Association, the Consumer Council, the Advertising Standards Authority, the National Chamber of Trade, the County Councils Association and the Confederation of British Industry, as well as all political Parties in Parliament—have condemned the practice. Eighteen months ago the Consumers' Association reported that 150 members had received goods unordered. When I was Chairman of the Consumer Council I was often asked about letters and communications offering goods on very favourable terms, which were a nuisance and in no case asked for by the public. Although in the past—and I stress the words "in the past"—some mail order firms have been guilty of using these selling methods, it has now been stopped by the Association of Mail Order Publishers who have condemned the practice of inertia selling. That has been a welcome gesture on their part. We shall hear more about it, I hope, from the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, when she comes to address your Lordships.
So Clause I of the Bill puts the whole matter in a nutshell. To recapitulate: if the recipient does not want the goods, all he has to do is to write to the sender saving that they are unsolicited, and require the sender to take them away. If the sender does not do so within 30 days of the sending of that letter, the goods
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then become the property of the recipient. The clause also deals with the position of the recipient who does nothing. In that case the goods become his property if they have not been collected within six months of the date on which he receives them. Clause 2 deals with demands and threats by the sender on the recipient asking for payment. Under this clause it will be an offence to put the recipients name on a defaulters' list for not paying for unsolicited goods, as well as for threatening to do so. The penalty in the Bill is not imprisonment, but a fine of up to £400.
It is accepted that the overwhelming majority of mail order firms condemn this business of unsolicited selling. They provide a service which the public enjoy and use frequently. We have no desire to interfere with this. There is, of course, the problem of the hoax order, a problem which has existed for a long time, but it is in the hands of the mail order firms to be vigilant to stop this practice, and I am sure that that is what they desire to do.
The second important matter with which the Bill deals is the bogus directory entry. There is a practice of sending to people notices inviting them to insert their name in a bogus business directory. This is quite a major racket, and Clause 3 of the Bill deals with it. The Advertising Standards Association reckon that possibly £500,000 a year is taken from business firms by the bogus directory people: the Incorporated Society of Advertisers puts the figure at about £1,500,000. What happens is that a letter is sent by one of the companies to a business, with a proof note of a directory entry—I have one here in my hand. The recipient company is asked to check the entry and return it. Some time after this has been done the business receives a demand for six or eight guineas for the entry, possibly with an offer of discount for prompt payment, the bogus directory people hoping thereby to get the money by return.
The names of several firms were mentioned in another place by the honourable Member for Beckenham, and your Lordships can read them in column 1649 of the House of Commons Hansard of December 4, 1970. Suffice it to say that in these bogus directory entries some 100,000 to 200,000 clients are involved.

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Men are employed full time and offices are established—all this to mislead the public. Seventy-two firms listed in the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers Vigilant Survey produced absolutely nothing. These bogus directory companies try to extort money for publications which do not exist. Some firms have titles which are meant to give the impression that they have something to do with the Post Office "Yellow Pages" book, and some names sound very realistic, but in fact none of them has any reality. This racket must be stopped, and it can all be stopped by Clause 3 of this Bill. Clause 3 sets out clearly the information which must be given by the directory-producing firm before any payment is claimed. If the information is not given, a substantial fine of up to £400 is payable; and if the information given is false, then fraud will have been committed and the company can be sued.
I now come to Clause 4. This clause was inserted into the Bill on the Report stage in another place. It is not easy to interpret the clause in the context of this Bill. I may say that the Bill is not about pornography or any subject which could be included in that category, but there is no doubt that many Members of Parliament and others have suffered much offence by receiving unsolicited pornographic literature. Members of the public have been offended by such advertising material and have written to their Members of Parliament, and no doubt to some of your Lordships, about this disagreeable and offensive practice. Although acknowledging that this matter is really outside the subject matter of the Bill, the Members in another place voted to include Clause 4 in the Bill. In so far as the advertisement of sexual books is done for profit, this method of unsolicited circulation of reading material in this form could be stopped under this Bill, and clearly the Members in another place, by their vote, wanted it stopped.
But in order that genuine publications on sex should be available, for instance, to people seeking information from marriage guidance councils or, in another field altogether, to farmers, in regard to such things as artificial insemination, I shall move an Amendment in Committee
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which will limit any prosecutions under this clause to those which have been approved by the Director of Public Prosecutions. That, I think, should effectively prevent any frivolous prosecutions, while the Bill will deter those who are seeking to exploit indecent literature for their own profit. Clause 5 refers to offences under the Bill committed by a corporation. It lays the blame for such action on the director, manager, secretary or any other person acting for the corporation, and holds them liable for any offence under the Bill. Clause 6 deals with interpretation and is a simple clause.
I ask with confidence for your Lordships' support of this Bill. It fills a gap in our legislation which has for too long been open to abuse. Many Members in another place, or their constituents, have had disagreeable and annoying experiences in being sent totally unsolicited goods, and have incurred trouble in being rid of such goods. It has happened not only to Members of Parliament but to many hundreds of thousands of members of the public. All Parties in the other House supported the Bill, and to-day I confidently ask for the support of your Lordships on all sides of the House for its Second Reading. I beg to move, that this Bill be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.— (Baroness Elliot of Harwood.)
4.1 p.m.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, who has taken on the responsibility of piloting the Bill through this House, for explaining it so clearly. As she will recall, the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, was about to introduce a similar Bill under the original title to which she has referred, before June, 1970. Therefore we can certainly take it that the Bill has all-Party support. As the noble Baroness has pointed out, this was certainly so in the other place. We are all the recipients of curious items of correspondence. I constantly receive invitations to buy valuable antiques, or to purchase jewellery. It is always pointed out that I am a person of discernment (and presumably of cash) on the assumption, I think, that those who occupy a place in your Lordships' House must, of necessity, be wealthy. We are also inundated with invitations to hear the case of certain

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countries who want to put their particular point of view. To those people who employ public relations firms for this purpose I must say that I consign such invitations at once to the wastepaper basket; so they may as well save the postage which they are paying at this time.
We are also invited to obtain a prize; we are told that we have been selected to have a prize. Again, being the kind of person who was told many years ago that the only things I may get in life I should have to work for, I do not bother to follow this up, either. But there is little doubt that we get one type of unsolicited goods, and I am sorry to say that this comes from charities. I refer to Christmas cards. They are usually painted by somebody and often there is a harrowing story attached to them. I do not support these particular people. I am hoping that this message may get through to these individuals, although it may not be particularly relevant to the Bill.
When we come to unsolicited goods within the definition of the Act which are sent without request having been made by the recipient, or on his or her behalf, then the noble Baroness is referring to cases which were submitted in some number, as she said, to the Consumer Council. This I recall from my own organisation. I am glad that she made the point that the numbers have decreased since the Mail Order Publishing Association took the matter in their own hands and prepared a code of practice. I am happy to commend them on this sensible action. I sought the help and advice of my friends in the Citizens Advice Bureaux, who told me that there was still a trickle of cases of unsolicited goods and there was, with the usual computer-style business that we have now, the procession of demands for payment. Those of your Lordships who have received this type of matter know exactly how to deal with it. But there are elderly people who are concerned and bothered about this problem, and do not know quite how to deal with it. These are probably the people that we have in mind when thinking of legislation of this kind.
In relation to Clause 4 I know of some of the members of my own organisation who have been concerned about these books, called sex instruction books, not
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only because they have been sent to their household (and it is a little difficult to explain to your husband that you have not sought to have these books sent!) but because when they are sent to your teenage children the situation becomes even more complicated. If there is a way of dealing with this problem I hope we can include it in the Bill. As I see it, the recipients of unsolicited goods are already in a very sound position in civil law. I hope that I have not given incorrect instructions to some of my members when I have told them that they do not need to do anything about the goods. So I have some reservations about the period of time referred to in Clause 2(2)(a). I have no doubt that during the passage of the Bill we shall be debating this question more fully. I am preserving an open mind on it until I have heard from those of your Lordships who have been more actively concerned with the other side of the issuing of mail order goods.
The other point I am a little confused about (perhaps the noble Baroness can explain it to me) is that there does not appear to be a duty of enforcement imposed upon anybody. In a Bill of this kind perhaps this is not considered absolutely essential. It may be well said that the cases which gave rise to this legislation are now disappearing. But I do not think that we test the quality of legislation on the number of cases that are brought to court. Surely we test the validity of our legislation on the number of crimes that are not committed. Although we are happy to see the tailing off of this kind of situation, this small Bill will be the means of preventing some other fears being imposed upon those people who are not easily able to deal with the matter. My Lords, I wish this Bill a speedy passage through your Lordships' House.
4.7 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF ROCHESTER: My Lords, I should like briefly to support and give a general welcome to this Bill. I do so with even more trepidation than usual, for who am I to interrupt so formidable and distinguished a trio of noble Baronesses? I believe that the Bill will go a long way towards reducing, or possibly removing, the undoubted sense of grievance felt by many ordinary people at this growing

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practice of sending things which people have not asked for, and which they do not wish to retain. I welcome the Bill because I believe that such practices are an invasion of the privacy of the ordinary citizen and, where they involve children and young people, often subject those who are immature to temptations and influences that can also be sometimes disruptive of a healthy family life.
I should like to support the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, in her important (even if irrelevant) remarks about the well-intentioned but over-zealous promoters of charitable bodies who send not only their well-wishers but also others, unsolicited Christmas greetings cards and Christmas stamps. Some of your Lordships may regard this as a fairly harmless form of blackmail. This it may be for those who have no hesitation in putting such packages straight into their wastepaper-basket. But as the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, has suggested already, there are some conscientious people, and many of them not very well off, who are embarrassed by such treatment and ought not to be subjected to it. I hope that the Bill will remove this aggravation.
The noble Baroness who introduced the Bill referred to Clause 4, which was added in another place, which undoubtedly deals with a matter that has recently caused grave offence to a number of people, including parents and teachers. Those of us who sit on these Benches are among those who have received protests about this matter. It is of interest that all the speakers in another place were clearly of the view that the precise wording of this clause as we have received it in this House could be improved upon. I therefore welcome the assurance we have been given that an Amendment will be moved at the Committee stage in your Lordships' House. Mr. Goodhart, the Member of Parliament for Beckenham, in my diocese, made what I thought were cogent criticisms of this present wording of a clause that was in fact passed by 39 votes to 7 shortly after midnight. My Lords, I am sure that if we can improve the wording of Clause 4, we shall make a good and useful Bill even better.
4.11 p.m.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble
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Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, as I am sure we all are, for bringing this Bill before us to-day. Before I proceed with my remarks on the Bill I want to take her to task for something, because I think the noble Baroness is fair. There is great danger, if I may say this to the House—and I hope to prove it later (I do not know how wise it is to make a statement and then seek to prove it, but she startled me into these remarks and the other two speakers have added to my being startled)—because people can get ideas into their heads, and these are constantly built on and enlarged when the whole basis from which they started is incorrect. This is what I am venturing to submit is happening in this particular case.
The noble Baroness, referring to the sending of unsolicited goods and the demanding of payment for them, said—and I took down her words—that this was a most tiresome habit. My Lords, it is not a most tiresome habit; it does not occur. And before your Lordships seek to shout me down (if noble Lords ever do shout down in your Lordships' House), may I say that I will prove it later? But I am stating it now because, the noble Baroness went on to say—and again I took this down—that many, many hundreds, and indeed thousands, of people have had this experience. My Lords, they have not. I am sorry to differ from her, but they just have not had the experience of unsolicited goods being sent and payment demanded; and I will prove this later.
We then moved on to my noble friend Lady Phillips—and I am afraid they are all to blame for this outburst now, before I get down to my considered remarks. Lady Phillips spoke about invitations, correspondence, "you have gained a prize", et cetera, and I know she would agree with me that these may or may not be tiresome. These are correspondence; they are not unsolicited goods: and we are discussing unsolicited goods. She referred, I think, to the Citizens' Advice Bureaux with a trickle of goods. Well, it must be a trickle because I have had a lot of consultations with the Citizens' Advice Bureaux and I have asked them to let me know of any cases they have, and they have not done so. And, with temerity, I must refer to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop, because the

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Bishop also spoke about "this growing practice"; and I hope that when I sit clown they will all think they were wrong.
With regard to Clause 4, the noble Baroness and I agreed before this debate that we were not well up on pornography. I know nothing about it, and presumably your Lordships do not, either. But what I thought was extraordinary in the Commons' debate was that everybody who spoke about this clause praised the good intentions behind it; said how nice it would be if they could devise a clause to enshrine it in a Bill. But they thought how difficult it would be; and anyway, if they could, it would be quite wrong to put it in this Bill. They then put it in by 39 votes to 7. So whatever the noble Baroness proposes to do on that clause will have my strong support. I thank your Lordships for putting up with me on all this, but I really was startled into it.
This Bill, as we know, is:
"to make provision for the greater protection of persons receiving unsolicited goods, and to amend the law with respect to charges for entries in directories."
To-day I hope to devote most of my remarks to the area of unsolicited goods, and so perhaps I may say straight away that I welcome any amendment of the law which will deal with the abuse in respect to charges for entries in bogus trade directories. Indeed, as I told the noble Baroness the other day prior to this debate, I support this Bill, but I still hope that it will be possible to make some changes in Committee, while appreciating her great anxiety that the Bill shall become law this Session—I quite understand that.
Before dealing with the area of unsolicited goods, I have a personal interest to declare. In October last the Association of Mail Order Publishers set up the Mail Order Publishers' Authority, of which I am Chairman. The Association comprises the leading firms in the field of selling books and gramophone records by post. The duty of the Authority is to enforce a code of practice which has been agreed by members of the Association. Difficult and tiresome though I may be at times, or perhaps because of it, I feel that perhaps it is not necessary for me to present my consumer credentials to this House. I hope, though
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tiresome, that these would be admitted. I say that because if I had not been convinced that the code of practice was both equitable and capable of enforcement, I should not have accepted the position of Chairman of the Authority.
The Inertia Selling Bill which lapsed because of the General Election, and which therefore did not reach your Lordships' House, produced the following comment in Which? in July, 1970:
"The Inertia Selling Bill aimed at providing that anyone who gets unsolicited goods should be able to dispose of them in any way he wants to, provided he gives reasonable notice. We were delighted."
I subscribe to that statement; so does the Authority on behalf of the Association of Mail Order Publishers. So, I am sure, does the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, herself, who is an Honorary Vice President of the Consumers' Association. I would ask her to note in particular the words:
"provided he gives reasonable notice"—
which is, of course, Clause 1(2)(b) of this present Bill.
My Lords, this House is a reasonable House and a fair one. The noble Baroness would never support a proposition which she believed to be unfair; and I hope the same applies to me. This Bill deals with unsolicited goods and services, and the code of practice to which I have referred specifically states:
"Suppliers shall under no circumstances send merchandise to any addressee without first having received a request for the supply of such merchandise."
My job is to see that this code is adhered to, and I intend to do so. But, in view of that remark, I think it is only fair to my members to say that it is being adhered to without any efforts on my part. In view of what the three previous speakers have said, I do not know if the House is aware that our experience in the Authority is that the sending of unsolicited goods is virtually unknown in the mail order world. It is certainly not carried on by those firms subscribing to this code.
In June, 1969 Which? published a survey on unsolicited goods which had been conducted by some members of the Consumers' Association. At the time I gave considerable attention to this, obviously, as being a consumer problem in which I

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was interested, but not in the more specialised category that I am in to-day. It seemed to me then—and I find my views substantiated since—that this survey, based on allegations which were never investigated, revealed no evidence of cases which involved the deliberate sending of unsolicited goods as a device for obtaining money. To do such a thing would bring great disrepute on a mail order firm, and it would also represent a futile commercial policy. The Consumers' Association drew then, and has drawn since, mistaken conclusions from this limited exercise.
During recent months I have noticed with great interest the commercial trend of Which? and on Sunday, March 7, last, I saw from their advertisement in the magazine Supplement of the Sunday Times that they had entered the mail order field; and again in the Guardian on March 16, and several times since. I am hoping that this venture or development will produce factual assessments and not emotive ones. Which? has a faithful and vocal following to whom the magazine is almost a Bible. This fact makes all the more responsible what is stated by a magazine which renders great service and to which I have subscribed from the beginning.
My Lords, I am saying all this because it was substantiated by the then Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade on March 19, 1969, when she said that her Department had received, in 1966, 1967 and 1968, seven, six and nine complaints respectively about unsolicited postal delivery of books. She did not think this provided sufficient evidence of abuse to justify legislation. I do not know whether with great trepidation. I dare say that I hope the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will be of the same opinion. But at least there is no harm in trying, and this was the opinion of the Parliamentary Secretary—
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, may I ask her, first, whether she is referring only to books? If she is not, I cannot think that we have both read the same article in Which? of June, 1970.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I have the article here and I will pass it along to the noble Viscount if he wants it.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: My Lords, I have it here.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, we both have it, so there is no necessity for me to pass it along. I have left the subject of Which?, but I will come back to it later if the noble Lord would like me to. I was referring to the statement from the Board of Trade. The Board of Trade made this statement, and I said that it referred to the unsolicited postal delivery of books. I am sorry if I did not speak loudly enough, but I was going on to say that the then Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade will be well known to my noble friend on the Front Bench.
Hoping that I am not tempting providence, I should like to inform the House that we have no complaints concerning unsolicited goods in the office of the Authority. I hope that it is not an invitation to many after this debate, but at the moment we have none. Not to rely on ourselves alone, we have made detailed inquiries of the Mirror Group, the News of the World and the Daily Express," Action Line "—and for the information of the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, I may say that these were for any form of unsolicited goods whatsoever. The Mirror Group, after searching their records, found one complaint concerning gramophone records. The News of the World found none, but said that hoaxes came to light. The Daily Express was still looking and commented that this obviously could not be a major scandal. I am most grateful to the newspapers concerned, both for their trouble and for permission to quote them. I submit to the House that their evidence, plus that of the Authority, plus that of the Board of Trade, must be regarded as conclusive. The sending of unsolicited goods is not a problem in this country. It was not in 1969, and it is not to-day.
My Lords, of course confusions in the general sense can arise. Obviously it is possible for goods to be despatched when in fact a cancellation order has been sent by the customer. I do not propose to weary the House with a step-by-step survey of the mail order business, but mechanical and electronic procedures, plus the normal vagaries of the postal service, may result in goods being despatched after the customer has written.

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I would only say that such confusion is not confined to the mail order industry.
The noble Baroness referred to hoaxes. There is no known method of detecting any but the most obvious hoax orders. Perhaps your Lordships, as individuals, would just consider this for a moment. How do you detect any but the most obvious? The coupon appears to be filled in correctly, and the merchandise is supplied in good faith; obviously and eventually the recipient receives the bill—any business would send the bill following despatch of goods. The recipient is not to blame; but neither, equally, is the firm. I submit to the House that complaints about bills for goods innocently supplied are irrelevant, since bills are bound to follow automatically unless the recipient informs the firm that something is wrong.
I have had wrong merchandise from department stores before now, and I have certainly had wrong bills. I should think everyone in this House must have had a similar experience. No doubt we have all dealt with the situation in the same way. We informed the sender, probably more than once when the same bill kept arriving, and eventually the matter was put right. I can go back two or three years, when there seemed to be a positive jinx on my orders and I experienced, from three West End stores of considerable repute to which I subscribe, two cases of wrong bills and one of wrong merchandise. As I am sure your Lordships would endorse, the fact that I had paid the bills and had the receipts made not the slightest difference: the bills kept arriving. It was extremely annoying and frustrating, but, my Lords, it was obviously incompetence; it was not a sin.
If we take gas, or electricity, or the telephone services, the onus of showing that there has been an overcharge or a wrong charge falls on the householder. If the bill is correct, we nay it; if we think there has been a mistake we inform the supplier. I am sorry to labour this point, but it seems to be necessary. Unless we do inform the supplier, he cannot know that there has been a mistake. It is a nuisance to have to do this, but it has fallen to my lot several times, and I am sure it must have fallen to the lot of many of your Lordships. But really and truly
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it is not looked upon as an imposition upon a harassed recipient, and it can hardly be described as an attack upon our liberty.
I think that this Bill has serious defects which must be looked at in Committee. I know that this is not the occasion for a Committee speech, so, speaking generally, I would suggest to the House that in the framing of this Bill insufficient attention has been paid to the true situation. I think that facts have been submerged by emotion. When I prepared these notes I did not know that we were to have the highest legal authority in the land to reply to this debate, and I hope he will not mind my layman's efforts, because I am going to leave in my speech what I would have said otherwise.
My Lords, if I had been asked to consider whether or not legislation was desirable in regard to unsolicited goods, I think I would have tried to satisfy myself on four criteria. One, has the essential evil accurately been identified? In this case the knowing and unscrupulous despatch of goods that have not been ordered, followed by demands for payment. Second, was the problem numerically significant? Third, did the problem present a serious abuse? Fourth, would such a Bill, on becoming law, open the door to abuses more serious than those it would be able to cure? I will come back later to No. 4. The answers to Nos. 1, 2 and 3 are in the negative.
I hope I have convinced the House that inertia selling, in the strict sense, is very little practised in the United Kingdom. What is worth pointing out, however, is that one of the very few cases that could accurately be described as inertia selling in the American sense is the supply of office stationery. There must be some very few people concerned with consumer affairs who have not also heard of the carbon paper racket. Perhaps I should just add here that knowledge that the goods were unsolicited by the recipient is an essential element in inertia selling as defined and practised in the United States of America.
However, to return to my office stationery and carbon paper rackets, I should like to stress to the House that it seems to me that these would be excluded from the scope of this Bill by the words in Clause 1(2), which read:
"… that the recipient has no reasonable cause to believe that they were sent with

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a view to their being acquired for the purposes of a trade or business…."
Clearly, office stationery is intended to be acquired for the purposes of a trade or business. Perhaps the noble Baroness and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will be able to look at that point again.
I will now return to the main problem that I put before your Lordships. It was made evident by the three speakers who spoke first that inertia selling is an emotive issue. Some people would transfer this emotiveness to the mail order business. I hope they will not succeed. It would be most unfair. Truly, there is very little inertia selling in this country. In the Second Reading debate in another place on December 4 last, the Minister, referring to complaints against the sale of goods or gramophone records by mail order, said:
"I have never thought it likely that deliberate inertia selling techniques were being used although, as the honourable Member for Rugby hinted, there will be the odd occasion where a fraud or a hoaxer engages in those techniques. Investigation of the main body of complaints last year convinced officials, who talked freely to many of the firms concerned and inspected their operations, that there was no deliberate attempt to engage in inertia selling."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 4/12/70, col. 1681.]
The Minister went on to say that he thought the trouble had arisen from a combination of three factors: namely, hoax orders, confusion over reply cards, and an unexpectedly large increase in orders.
The noble Baroness mentioned the Advertising Standards Authority. I believe the Advertising Standards Authority—of which I think the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, was Chairman at the time—reached the same conclusion. I am submitting that in view of these findings by the Department it is obvious that these errors, tiresome though they may be, are due to human error rather than deliberate action. So far as I am concerned, and my Association is concerned, we hope to minimise these errors. Human error can never be eliminated, not even in the field of perfection required by manned space flight. The Minister then stated that complaints to the Department had virtually ceased and paid tribute to the mail order publishing firms for the efforts they had made.
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I have regarded my task to-day as being completely objective and factual, apart from my opening remarks to which I was provoked. I hope I have convinced the House that inertia selling in the strict sense is very little practised in this country. I hope I have convinced the House, citing in addition the findings and conclusions of two Ministers in another place, that human error rather than deliberate action caused such complaints as were made. I hope very much, personally, I have convinced the House that when a customer receives a wrong account or wrong merchandise he or she normally writes to say so. If this is accepted, and in equity it must be, because it is a statement of fact, then I ask your Lordships to agree, in the context of this Bill, that anyone receiving wrong accounts or wrong merchandise—merchandise they have not ordered—shall, similarly, be asked to write and say so. Otherwise, how is the innocent supplier—any more than the innocent retail firm—to be made aware of the error? Indeed, as Which? stated, the recipient of unsolicited goods should be able to dispose of them in any way he wants to, provided he gives reasonable notice. That is why I hope there will be agreement that Clause 1(2)(a) shall be deleted. As it stands, it opens the door to widespread fraud, and if the noble Baroness or the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, in view of what I have said, could have a look at this suggestion, it would be much appreciated, and benefit both the Bill anti the customer. Also it would be fair.
Quite honestly, I do not think it is putting a grievous burden on anyone to ask him to send a note when unordered goods have been delivered in error—as does Clause 1(2)(b), which I should be glad to support and which the noble Baroness mentioned at the beginning; although she did not say Clause 1(2)(b), she did speak about giving reasonable notice. Then, if the goods are not collected within the period named the matter is closed and the goods become the property of the recipient. That seems to me just. But you cannot permit people to keep goods which were sent in error and to which they have no right. I repeat, to do so would be to open wide the doors to fraud, at which I hinted

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earlier in my fourth criteria point, and on which, obviously, I would prefer not to elaborate.
To conclude, I should like to draw attention to some general trends on Report and Third Reading in another place. I realise, of course, that these can only be general, but I think they are too important to pass unnoticed. I hope that emotive phrases, to the effect that the purveyors of unsolicited goods will no longer feel that the advantages merit the risks attached, will be ignored, or rejected in this House; also a further statement that this has become an increasing nuisance over a large number of years. I can only repeat that to send unsolicited goods would put firms out of business, while the second statement is just not true. One form of reasoning was beyond me altogether. Apparently losses suffered by mail order firms through hoax orders, and aggravated by this Bill, must be accepted because supermarket and retail shop organisations have losses through theft. That strikes me as the most peculiar argument for Clause 1(2)(a) that I have yet come across.
The Minister stated at column 1927:
"In trying to discourage the sender of unsolicited goods, we may well be making things more difficult for the genuine mail order firm, and we want to make sure that does not happen. Hoaxing must not be exaggerated, but it is nevertheless a real problem. There are practical jokes hoax orders, and there are fraudulent hoax orders where someone orders goods for himself, using another address, or pretends that he has not made the order. Anything that encouraged that practice would be unfair on the mail order houses, and I do not believe that anything in the Bill encourages it."
With respect to the Minister, Clause 1(2)(a) does encourage hoax orders. I hope that the proof I have offered to-day will persuade the noble Baroness and this House, the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, the Minister and another place to delete that subsection. That done, I wish the Bill speedy progress and success.
4.38 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, will forgive me if I do not follow her, because I have neither the knowledge nor the facts either to refute her arguments or to support them. In general, may I say that I think I support
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this Bill. In fact, I support it all except Clause 4, and it is that clause I wish to speak about. I think it is a disastrous clause. My noble friend of course is in the great difficulty that if we were to do away with this clause and send the Bill back to the other place without it, she might lose the Bill. That, I believe, is her view. That would be a pity, because I think this Bill needs passing. But even the honourable Member in the other place who moved the insertion of the clause said that it was not at all what he would like; that it was not a satisfactory clause. He went on to hint that the best thing to do was to pass it and send it up to your Lordships, who undoubtedly would put the matter right.
I do not believe that it can be put right. My noble friend says that she will move an Amendment in Committee, which I shall be very interested to see, making it clear that there can be no frivolous prosecutions because no prosecution will be able to be brought without the permission of the Director of Public Prosecutions. I wonder whether that is good enough. It is an odd clause anyhow; as my noble friend said, it ought not to be in the Bill at all. The wording is so odd to start with. You must not send unsolicited—I am paraphrasing—any publication which describes or illustrates sexual techniques. I know what people want to stop, and I agree with them. But what on earth does it mean? What are, exactly, "sexual techniques"?
What is worrying me particularly is the position of perfectly reputable firms who make birth control goods—what in my young day were normally referred to as "rubber goods" but I think that phrase is not much used nowadays. It is a long time ago now, more than forty years, when my son was born. I then received from one of these most reputable firms of manufacturers a letter which said:
"We congratulate you on the birth of your son. Was it by design or accident? If by design, we apologise for writing. If by accident, we will send you our catalogue if you would like it."
And they explained what the catalogue was about. For all they knew, it might have been my fifteenth child. I might have been completely ignorant of anything, and in those circumstances their catalogue would have been very welcome.

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Is there anything frightful in writing a letter of that kind? I imagine that they were really talking about sexual techniques; I suppose that it could come under that heading. Are they to be prosecuted and fined because they are carrying on their business in a perfectly respectable way? Really, this is an extraordinary clause. Even with the proviso that a prosecution can be brought only on instructions from the Director of Public Prosecutions, and therefore no frivolous prosecutions will be brought, the law will still apparently say that if anything comes, frivolous or otherwise, describing sexual techniques—not pornography, or anything of that kind—then a prosecution can be brought. We ought to be careful about passing this clause unless it is properly amended. For that reason, I hope we shall hear a good deal about it from my noble and learned friend who sits on the Woolsack, because at the moment I think the clause means nothing; but if it does mean anything it is extremely dangerous for perfectly reputable traders.
4.43 p.m.
LORD JACQUES: My Lords, as one who has spent a lifetime in the consumer Co-operative Movement, I welcome any legislation designed to protect the consumer. Therefore I welcome this Bill, but, like my noble friend Lady Burton of Coventry, I have some doubts whether it is necessary. I would ask for one point to be considered between now and the Committee stage. So far as unsolicited goods are concerned, the core of the Bill is Clause 1(2)(a) and (b). Paragraph (b) says that the recipient can give 30 days' notice, and if, within this 30 days, the goods are not collected, then he can assume that the goods belong to him. If it involves giving notice I see no harm in that at all, but, as my noble friend Lady Burton pointed out, paragraph (a) is a different matter. The recipient has merely to sit upon the goods for six months and then assume that they belong to him.
I suggest that this provision requires further consideration, if you are going to give adequate protection to the innocent trader. I will give two examples. It is possible that a retailer could deliver goods to a customer in error. For example, instead of the goods being delivered to No. 87, they may be delivered to No. 78. The customer who
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should have received the goods may, like many ladies, reserve the right to change her mind—that often happens in some spheres of department store trading after customers have made a purchase. She finds that she does not get delivery and she does nothing about it; consequently the poor trader does not know that the mistake has been made. At one time the common period for credit outside of hire purchase was six months, but in the last decade it has been changed and it is now nine months. I suggest that it is dangerous to allow the recipient to sit upon the goods for six months and to assume ownership of them at the end of that period. There could be an error by an innocent retailer who did not have the opportunity of finding out that error until the six months had elapsed.
There is also the question of fraudulent practices. It is possible for two persons to arrange that one of them represents himself to be the other and persuades a retailer to deliver goods to the other on the basis of nine months' credit. The goods are duly delivered and kept. The recipient would argue that they were delivered to him unsolicited with a view to his keeping them. The trader would prove that they had been ordered by somebody, but he would not be able to prove dishonesty because of the difficulty of identification. I suggest, therefore, that this clause has dangers for innocent traders, and at the very least the period of six months ought to be extended, especially in view of the fact that the period of credit is now nine months. I would plead that between now and the Committee stage the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, would consider making this 12 months, so as to protect the innocent trader who may have delivered in error, or upon whom there may have been a fraud. By extending the period we can give him some protection.
4.47 p.m.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, although I agree with the intentions behind this Bill, I share with the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, a certain amount of doubt as to its necessity. Though it is somewhat boring to decribe personal experiences I should like to describe the only two occasions when I have certainly received unsolicited goods not by accident, because they have a bearing on

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some of the clauses in the Bill. Both instances were before the war, and probably in the 1930s. It may be, of course, that the practice has completely died out since then.
We in the medical profession are vulnerable to this kind of thing, and we receive every day enormous numbers of advertisements for drugs and medical appliances of various kinds; but those are not unsolicited goods under the meaning of this Bill. At one time I received a rather beautiful tongue depresser, an instrument to depress the tongue in order to look at the throat. It incorporated a very nice electric light. I began to use this and I found it useful. In due course I received a series of letters and bills, to none of which I paid the slightest attention until the senders finally asked me to return the goods. I then wrote to them, saying that I could not do so because they were in daily use, and I heard no more.
The other occasion was when I received a nice parcel of linen handkerchiefs from Northern Ireland. I mention this particularly because the last words in this Bill are that it does not extend to Northern Ireland. I did the same in this case, and after many letters and applications for payment the senders finally asked me to return the goods. Again I said I could not do so because they were in use, and they were very nice. I did not pay anything on either occasion.
I did not rise simply to bore the House with my personal experiences, but I wonder, if this Bill is to go forward at all, whether much would be lost if it stopped at the end of Clause 1(1). Omitting the first words,
"In the circumstances specified in the following subsection "—
the Bill could then read,
"A person who receives unsolicited goods may dispose of them as if they were an unconditional gift to him, and any right of the sender shall be extinguished."
What is wrong with ending the Bill with those words? Perhaps a small amendment could be put in covering cases which the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, has mentioned, where there may be a genuine mistake and the unsolicited goods were really meant for somebody else.
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When we read on the words almost spoil the effect of this clause. Subsection (2) of Clause 1 states—and this I do not understand and I should like clarification—
"… that the recipient has no reasonable cause to believe that they were sent with a view to their being acquired for the purposes of a trade or business…."
I do not know whether the profession of medicine is a trade or business, but I should have thought that in this case it comes under that heading. That is why I mentioned the first instance, which was clearly one of something being sent to a professional man for use in his profession. I do not see why that should be made an exception in any way. Then we come to paragraphs (a) and (b), which deal with storing the goods. There is nothing to prevent people from sending a television set or something like that, and the storage might be a considerable problem. Then there is the matter of writing to the firm, presumably at your own expense, which seems to me quite unnecessary. So I ask those responsible for this Bill to consider whether these other clauses are really necessary at all, and whether, practically speaking, Clause 1(1) is all we need.
Clause 2 deals with penalties, and I shall need some clarification as to how the transgressor is discovered and whether the recipient has to take legal proceedings—I presume not. I suppose that this would be a matter for the public prosecutor, if he were informed about the offence. I must, as President of the Family Planning Association, refer to Clause 4 because unquestionably the practice of contraception is a sexual technique. This clause seems to me—as others have said in different words—to prevent the legitimate sending of advice about contraception, which under certain circumstances might be quite legitimately sent. That is all I have to say, but I should like to have answers to the questions which I have raised.
4.53 p.m.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: My Lords, at the outset I think I should declare some sort of interest, though it is only a small one, in so far as I am now a part-time technical adviser to the Consumers' Association. But I knew about this problem long before, while I was working with the Consumer Council. Let me

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begin by saying that it is true that inertia selling may not be very prevalent at the present time, since as soon as the idea of a Bill to stop it was mooted it went into a severe decline. It is also true that the Consumer Council themselves did a very great deal in taking up one or two flagrant cases and in getting co-operation from some of the firms concerned, who changed their salesmen and techniques when they realised that they were making life a little too hot for themselves.
With all due respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, may I say that I found her speech quite extraordinary because, even assuming that this practice has declined, she used some extraordinary arguments to bolster up her case. First of all, she said that this subject is emotive. Why does she think it is emotive? It may be emotive, but this seems to me to be merely using various adjectives and techniques to try to squash the Bill, without any argument at all. She then said, or implied, that the Which? survey was a bad one. Why did she say that? It was an honestly made survey. The Consumer Council made many surveys, and this practice did exist. Does the noble Baroness really mean to imply that practically all of the cases were simply mistakes, with firms sending out goods and customers getting cross? That is simply not in line with the facts known by those who have had anything at all to do with this subject.
Then she sought to prove a negative. When you have accused somebody of failing to prove a positive and you then say, "I am setting out—and it is perfectly all right—to show you that it does not exist" it is an extraordinary thing to do. One of the most difficult things in the world to do is to prove a negative. You can always find cases to prove a positive, but to say that something does not exist because you have consulted one or two people or organisations seems to me quite extraordinary. Another remark which I feel shows some lack of knowledge of what goes on is that inertia selling is not effective. But it has been employed in lots of other countries with enormous success and flourished. I cannot see that that can be taken as an argument against the Bill. However, the question is whether there
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is now sufficiently serious abuse to justify the Bill, and my own feeling is that this is an opportunity. We have got the Bill so far, and if it does not go through almost certainly the frequency of inertia selling will increase again.
The Board of Trade dealt with nine cases in 1969. But, bearing in mind the sort of people to whom this inertia selling is applied, it is quite extraordinary that they had as many cases as that because the average person simply does not know how to write to the Board of Trade. They may occasionally take up something with their M.P., but I should have said that this was the tip of an enormous iceberg under the sea. Again, if we refer to the Which? article, it is rather hard to believe that somebody who could write like this is quite free from any blame at all and merely sent goods to the wrong person. The quotation is as follows:
"… authorise the next of our Collection Department procedures which I know are not pleasant. They are, however, effective and in the end you will pay".
That is part of a letter from the offices of Heron Books. That was a very common occurrence and one could go on quoting instances of that sort. To say that it was only a mistake seems to me indefensible.
There is the question of how much the recipients of these unwanted goods are inconvenienced. In the first place, one has to remember that houses are very small and that many people have large families. Whether the goods are bulky or not you have to protect them so that they are not damaged. You may have to go on doing that indefinitely unless you are prepared to pack them up and pay the postage to send them back. Even under the present Bill you still have to look after them for six months unless you give notice to the sender in writing. If after a month nothing has happened the goods belong to you. But many people who are exploited in this way do not understand how to write the correct sort of letter. In any case, they have to pay the postage. Therefore, I think that there is a difficulty for people who have this inertia selling practised on them, particularly when it is followed up by further correspondence.
I really cannot understand why the trade should be worried and should want a period of more than six months to

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elapse before they lose the goods. If they cannot be a little more careful with their goods, then I suggest that they should recover them in a month. I find the suggestion of nine months quite impossible. I cannot understand how the owners of any efficiently run business could possibly be worried. Hoaxing, of course, is another matter; but, my Lords, in the end the way in which a business is run is changed according to the circumstances. Many present practices would have been considered quite wrong a number of years ago, and firms change their method of business quite easily. My suggestion to them is that they change them, and that they hunt up their goods and accept the occasional loss of items through the carelessness of wrong delivery.
5.0 p.m.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hanworth has said very forcibly most of the things that I wanted to say, and I shall not repeat them. But I should like to refer to the development of this Bill. It started in my mind about 18 months ago, when I suggested to my Director of the Consumer Council that we should have a Bill exactly like the Bill which the noble Lord, Lord Platt, suggested. She said, "This really is too simple; there are difficulties about hoax; there are difficulties about mistake. I do not think you can do that." She also said, "I wonder whether it is worth doing at all, because the real problem is not unsolicited goods, but inertia selling. "At the same time, the Consumers' Association were preparing a draft to deal with unsolicited goods, and we got together and tacked on some clauses which attempted to deal with inertia selling. Your Lordships undoubtedly know the difference, but in case you do not I will illustrate it.
Unsolicited goods comprise the parcel which arrives and for which you have not asked. Something sold you by inertia selling is something which is, as it were, extrapolated (as the economists call it) from a previous order. For instance, if you sign a coupon in a newspaper saying that you would like the free gift of a certain kind of book, or a certain kind of gramophone record, the suppliers send it to you and say, "With this free gift
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we shall send you a book a month at 7s. 6d. a time unless you tell us not to." This is inertia selling, and there are many varieties of it. This is the real evil at the moment, and it is extremely difficult to deal with. The Board of Trade, who have blessed this Bill in relation to the extension of it, were so hostile to the feasibility of enforcing if that my honourable friend Mr. Arthur Davidson, 18 months ago, in January, 1970, dropped it out of his Bill, and Mr. Goodhart has not put it into his. But this is the history of the matter. This is really an attempt by consumer organisations who, supported by Member of Parliament after Member of Parliament, can quote case after case of fraudulent pressure put on people to buy things and of offensive letters then being sent to them to make them pay for things they never ordered.
My noble friend Lady Burton in a white sheet I find irresistible. I am used to her as an attacker, but as a defender she is very powerful, so I am not going to quarrel with her (that is more than my life would be worth) and pretend that I think the unsolicited goods practice is very common. I have never been sent any unsolicited goods in that form, although I have frequently been sent things which, with less skilled operators, would work into inertia selling. I always take the first sample and refuse anything else, and I have in my library several books which were meant to lead on to further purchases but which in my case did not; but, of course, some people have not the wisdom that we have. I am not going to attack the noble Baroness for her defence; I think it was a little wider than it need have been, but this is legitimate in defending counsel. It is interesting to note that since this agitation started, in January, 1970, practices, as my noble friend Lord Hanworth said, have very much improved. Certainly both the Consumers' Association and the Consumer Council were in touch with firms whose practices we very much objected to and who appear on the list of members of Lady Burton's group. But I am sure that those practices have ceased, so that we shall have not done nothing, even if we stop here.
My Lords, when we come to a consideration of the Bill, I cannot resist pointing out how relevant was the Unstarred Question of my noble and learned

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friend Lord Gardiner the other day, because Clause 1 here concerns the Board of Trade; Clause 2 concerns magistrates in their courts, which is the Lord Chancellor's Department; Clause 3 concerns prosecution for a criminal offence, which is the responsibility of the police and the Home Office; and Clause 4 concerns sex, which, within reason, is a matter for the Ministry of Health and, without reason, is a matter for the Home Office. So that, one way or another, we have them all included in this Bill.
The Bill has diminished, as I say, by the taking out of the inertia selling parts, and it has grown in a rather ugly bump by the addition of Clause 4, about which I shall say nothing. Nobody has ever sent me one of these testimonials which I must say I rather resent; but I do not think it is for me to criticise the Bill here. It is desirable to stop the unsolicited spread of pornography, and I think it is likely that the noble Baroness's attempt to get round her problem by referring it to the Director of Public Prosecutions may be satisfactory.
The issue, and the only important issue, my Lords, is Clause 1(2)(a). Is it necessary that a firm which is trying to make money by sending out samples in one form or another should be in a position to put any private individual under any liability whatever? This is the problem. I think it is agreed that by Common Law they are able to put a private individual under the liability of not damaging or keeping safe something which he receives, and at the moment there is no limit to the time he is supposed to do that. Thus this Bill, by imposing a limit of six months, takes nothing away from the sender, and slightly limits the receiver's liability. I personally feel that Clause 1(2)(b), as Lord Jacques says, is perfectly satisfactory. To me, Clause 1(2)(a) is about right. I agree with Lord Hanworth that six months is a ridiculous time. Originally we had it in the Bill as one month, but we were gradually broken down by the pathetic squeals of these computerised organisations which cannot get a bill out for certain under six months. Very well—this is the world we live in, and I accept six months. But the idea that this limit should be removed altogether, and that a liability should be placed on people to reply when they are
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sent things they do not want, is not acceptable to me.
So, my Lords, I think we must support the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, with this Bill. We must close our ears to the moving and dramatic appeals of my noble friend Lady Burton, and to the less dramatic but no less cogent appeals of my noble friend Lord Jacques. We must remember that there are not only innocent traders; there are also innocent customers—and in my opinion they are a good deal more innocent than the traders at the fringe. It is impossible to tell: there are, of course, crooks who will take advantage of this sort of thing, but there are crooked traders, too, and my view is that the one does more harm than the other. We shall all be intrigued to know what the noble and learned Lord will make of this extremely complicated legal problem, and I await his verdict with fascination.
5.9 p.m.
LORD REDESDALE: My Lords, I must first declare an interest in that I am connected with a mail order company. I should like to go on to say that I shall be brief, because, coming in as tenth man, at the end of batting, I am sure that everybody has heard so many good speeches that there is little else to be said. Therefore, I shall confine myself really to one part of the Bill. However, listening to Lord Derwent, I, as the father of seven, wondered what would happen by the time I had had seven letters. The senders would probably have given up by that time.
First, one must obviously congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, on bringing this Bill before the House. I should like to take up one or two points with the noble Baroness—not in the pitiful way that Lord Donaldson inferred, but I shall try to put over a logical and reasoned argument. Let me start by putting the problem into perspective. The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, and the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, were both talking about inertia selling. I shall not follow them in that matter because this Bill is concerned with unsolicited goods.
As the noble Baroness has said, there are very few complaints on this subject at the moment. "Action Line", in the

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Daily Express, and other complaints columns, are always flooded with complaints when something is seriously wrong; so if there is little of that at the moment one can say the situation is fairly dead. I am not denying what has happened in the past in fields other than that of bookselling. It is interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Platt, should mention two genuine cases of unsolicited goods. Of course, doctors have been subjected much more to this sort of thing than have other sectors of the public or the professions; but those were genuinely unsolicited goods.
When one is talking about unsolicited goods one must realise that it is obviously uneconomic for most companies to send out any goods which are of real value because experience tells them they may not get them back; they simply cannot afford to do so. However, the problem so far as reputable mail order companies is concerned lies in the provisions of Section 1(2)(a) which does not cover the question of hoaxes. I am afraid that there are a large number of these hoaxes. At a time of a General Election or some similar period of activity, large numbers of people write into mail order firms and fill in order forms with names like "H. Wilson" and so on, with an address. The noble Baroness said that it is up to the mail order companies to be sufficiently vigilant to spot these hoaxes: but in fact it is very difficult to discover whether an order form properly filled out is a hoax. So the goods are sent off in good faith. Obviously, this is extremely irritating to the persons who receive these hoax orders, but we should bear in mind that it is also very expensive for the company which sends them. Admittedly, they are in business to make money and this is a risk that they must take; but this matter of hoax orders must be examined very carefully, because the Bill gives no protection to the companies at all.
The Bill does not cover the more serious angle, the fraudulent order. Two people get together. One may say to the other, "I will fill in this order form with your name and your address. You will get the goods although you didn't really order them. After six months, you can keep them." Clause 1(2)(a) provides no protection on this matter.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE: My Lords, surely there is the protection that you send a bill three times, and after the third time you pay a visit? This is ordinary commercial practice.
LORD REDESDALE: My Lords, the period is one of only six months. The goods will have been sent out on an order which has been signed, and this order will have been accepted in good faith by a reputable company. I agree that the period is one of six months, but these days people wait a long time before they pay. This is one of the facts of life. I feel that there is no great onus on somebody receiving goods not genuinely ordered to write to the company—a reputable company would refund the postage—and say that they have not been ordered. Pre-paid cards could be supplied and also labels for the return of the goods.
My Lords, I am trying to be as logical and reasonable as possible, and I do not think that this is imposing an unreasonable burden on the persons who receive the goods. The serious aspect of the matter is that we know that fraud has increased. The more you talk about it, the more frauds are likely to be committed. The problem is similar to vandalism. The more publicity given to British Rail having had their trains vandalised, the more it occurs. Therefore, the more you talk about fraud, the more cases of fraud there will be. But we must recognise that there is an area for fraud, and that there is no protection at the moment within the Bill on this subject. I hope not to appear to be over-dramatising the situation, but I believe that this Bill could be a charter for fraud. It legalises a situation where two people can work together to take a company's goods. Therefore, I hope that when the Bill is debated in Committee, these matters may be examined very carefully and given full consideration.
5.16 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF ST. MARYLEBONE): My Lords, let me first assure the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, that, departmentally speaking, the Lord Chancellor's Department has no truck with this Bill or with any part of it. It is a Department of Trade and Industry-sponsored

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subject, and I am here largely because it was thought that I could help the House. I shall try to do so. Secondly, the status of this Bill is that of a Private Member's Bill. Your Lordships may suspect that a number of the Private Members' Bills which have come before this House in recent weeks have been Law Commission Bills; and it may be suspected that I have rather encouraged private Members to take them up—and if you harboured that suspicion your Lordships would not be wholly wrong.
But this Bill is genuine private enterprise—that is to say, the Government have not initiated it covertly. It was voted on in the House of Commons by a free vote and it will be voted on in this House by an entirely free vote. If this House likes to pass it, then the Government will do their best at all stages to enforce it, to treat it kindly and even to give advice about the wording of Amendments. But it is not a Government Bill and therefore an attitude of benvolent neutrality is that which I have been briefed to adopt. I shall try to be both benevolent and neutral.
My Lords, when you are considering legislation I think it is worth while asking some, at any rate, of the questions asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry. The first is: what is the extent, if any, of the mischiefs aimed at? Secondly, if the remedy proposed a reasonable one? Thirdly, is the whole exercise worth while? There is one other fact of life that I ought to mention, as delicately as I can; that is, that if this Bill does not get through the other place by May 7 (I believe that that is the date) I think that it will die this Session. This means that if your Lordships were to insert a great number of very controversial Amendments, it would probably kill the Bill—and I have an idea that the noble Baroness, Lady Burton, might not mind that. But at any rate those who want to keep the Bill should try to keep Amendments reasonably uncontroversial to avoid long debates in the other place.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, may I say that I have no desire to kill the Bill; merely to kill Clause 1(2)(a).
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, that would be a modest result for a splendid speech which managed to
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convey, at any rate to my mind, a slightly less enthusiastic impression.
My Lords, the Bill purports to deal with three quite separate mischiefs: the unsolicited goods mischief, the bogus directory mischief and the sexual technique mischief—if I may be forgiven by my noble friend Lord Derwent for employing the term about Clause 4. Are these real mischiefs? I think everyone is agreed, and my noble friend Lady Elliot—whom I should like to congratulate on her speech in introducing the Bill—quite clearly established a prima facie case, that the bogus directory mischief is really quite substantial; and, prima facie, there is a case for dealing with it. I listened all through the debate and no one seems to have challenged that. We have all come across it—or most of us have—and those of us who practise in the criminal courts have come across it quite often. The point is not that it is an objectionable practice to ask traders to put their names in a directory; the real point is that there never is going to be a directory at all.
Up to a point the practice can, of course, be dealt with by the existing law. There is no doubt that the people concerned can be prosecuted for fraud; and as there are nearly always more than one involved, you very often prosecute them for conspiracy to defraud; and that is the end of the matter—if you can catch them. But it is a typical criminal activity and, as my noble friend Lady Elliot said, it exists on a substantial scale. She gave figures that I have no means of confirming or challenging; but I think that everyone who practises in the criminal courts has at some time or other come across the bogus directory fraud. I think that, marginally at any rate, this Bill would make it easier to deal with the problem, because it ensures that the person is committing a summary offence at the time he sends out the circular, demanding money, if it does not contain certain particulars which may be checked. As I say, the fraud can be prosecuted anyhow, under the general law, because it is criminal: there is not a directory, and there is never going to be one, and therefore the thing is an ordinary fraud. But, marginally, I think that probably the provisions of the Bill deal with that.

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Now there comes the more complex question of Clause 1, about which again I want to be benevolently neutral. Undoubtedly there is some evidence of some undesirable sales practices in this field. I personally, over a rather long life, have had one or two experiences. The Board of Trade have had more complaints than would be gathered from what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Burton, covering goods of all kinds, but not a very great number. One does not want to overstate this case: the extent of this mischief is not very great. I think the Board had 60 complaints in 1969, and apparently nearly all of them related to books or gramophone records. I should like to warn the noble Lord, Lord Platt, that he acted a little incautiously in the two cases of his own which he described. I have every sympathy with him; I think it a most objectionable sales practice. But I would venture to say a word about the law on this subject without the complete confidence that I am right.
I do not wholly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, that you can impose any liability on a person who receives these goods. The question depends, I think, speaking solely of English law, on whether you can create bailment by doing so. If you look up the law on bailment you will see that bailment is essentially a contract. In some cases it is an unusual type of contract in English law, because in the case of gratuitous bailment the consideration does not flow from the recipient. There is no consideration flowing from the recipient; therefore it is an unusual type of contract. It all flows from a very famous decision of Lord Holt, at the very beginning of the 18th century, called Coggs v. Bernard; but I think it must be the case that you cannot impose bailment on anybody without his consenting to it. In other words, it remains from start to finish a consensual arrangement.
If, for instance, to use an absurd example, you drop a packet of goods on my garden by parachute, I am under no obligation that I can see to take care of them in any kind of way at all. I can leave the rain to come down on them and rust them or rot them, and I do not think that anybody can complain of my
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conduct in leaving them severely alone. But, of course, in the actual circumstances of sending them by post into a little house, the temptation to use them is almost irresistible; and I am bound to say to the noble Lord, Lord Platt, that if in fact you put them down a patient's throat, that might be construed, if not as an acceptance of the bailment, at least as a conversion of the goods. So, if the noble Lord will take my advice, he will not do that again.
I appreciate, of course, that if this undesirable practice of salesmanship is indulged in, there is a need to clarify the legal position of the ownership of the goods; and I am quite sure that my noble friend Lady Elliot will be sufficiently flexible in Committee to discuss the actual terms of what is proposed.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE: My Lords, may I clear up one point with the noble and learned Lord? We have all been led to believe—all the people who have been examining this; I suppose on some good legal authority, but I cannot quote it—that if, for example, you receive a gramophone record into your house through the post; you look at it and find that it is something you have not ordered and leave it on your hall table, and your child breaks it, you are liable. If this is not true, I think it rather changes the whole picture.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, in the brief provided for me, the Board of Trade solemnly say that it is true. But I take leave to doubt it. I cannot see how that differs from the case that I tried to describe, of the man who drops the goods by parachute—I always give absurd legal examples, because they bring out the principle more clearly than the likely ones. I was very careful not to say it, because I think the Departmental view is probably nearer to the noble Lord's than mine; but I do not see how you can impose a bailment on someone unless he consents to it. Of course, it is very easy to consent if you have used the goods, but if your child sits on them, or throws them out of the window, I cannot see that you are necessarily liable. I think that on an occasion like that it is a case of caveat vendor. However, my Lords, I must not

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give this gratuitous legal advice, because it is almost certainly wrong. But that is my genuine opinion. I think this matter needs clarifying, and I am sure that the attitude of my noble friend will be sufficiently flexible during the Committee stage. I say again that if she wants to consult the various Departments involved in this matter, or any of my right honourable friends in another place, about what would be viable on Committee we will do our best to help, without breaking our neutrality.
The last of the three mischiefs which is aimed at was put in on Committee stage in another place, and relates to this sexual technique business. I must, I think, instruct my noble friend Lord Derwent more throughly on this subject. I will tell him first of all what it is about. I can describe what it is about because I probably know more about this particular mischief than any other man in the country; and I will tell your Lordships why. A year ago I was the Opposition spokesman in another place on home affairs, and at that time there was a firm called the Julian Press. I am told that they have since "gone bust", and I am very happy to hear it. They devised the idea of sending out fairly widespread a circular, and, if you fined it in, you were led to believe that you were going to receive a book which would tell you exactly "how to do it" (if I may put it delicately in that way)—as if you did not already know.
The pamphlet said: "Do you want to make your marriage more happy?" The book was said to be frank, highly descriptive and courageous—all of which are virtues which the right reverend Prelates would endorse. A great many of these leaflets were put out. I receive a great many leaflets—there is some advantage in being the son of a clergyman. The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kings-bridge, said that he never receives leaflets, but I have had a great many, some of which, I am happy to say, I received in my own right.
I was tempted to do something suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and send in a hoax order. I thought of various persons whose names I might fill in. Eventually, I said to myself, "No; I am a Queen's Counsel; I am a Privy Counsellor, a person of dignity and responsibility". So I did not put in an
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order. Unfortunately, other people who had received these leaflets thought at once of me. I must have been sent something like 500 of these circulars. Many of them were from people in the constituency for which I was then Member in another place, and they had every reason to send them, saying that they did not like the circulars. Many Conservative Members of another place also wrote to me, as their spokesman, on this question and asked if I could do something about it; and a large number of the public, without regard to their own Members of Parliament, wrote to me because they thought that, as a Christian, I would strongly object.
In the pamphlet itself there was nothing at all obscene; otherwise the people concerned would have been prosecuted for obscenity. It did describe, whether fraudulently or honourably I do not know, a book which if not actually obscene, would have been very enjoyable for those who enjoy obscene literature. But it was seat out in a widespread way. I had one which was sent to a nunnery. All the nuns had one. Another, for example, was sent to a woman who had just been widowed, and in the throes of grief, asking her, "Would you like your marriage to be a happy one?" Even children received it. It was sent without the smallest apparent knowledge of the kind of people who were recipients. I suppose that some label-addressing company had sent out these leaflets. But I can tell your Lordships that people were very angry indeed.
The clause in the Bill, as it has come to us from another place, is a reflection of the almost universal indignation which is felt in that place because of this nuisance. Apart from the Julian Press, two or three other firms were doing the same thing. I regard this as a very objectionable practice, not because it was obscene but because it was an invasion of privacy. It might not have been very highly criminal; it was simply exploiting sexual curiosity for profit. It had nothing whatever to do with selling contraceptive devices, which I do not think is a description of sexual techniques, but is a way of selling goods. It bore no relation at all to the Family Planning Association or any reputable body whatever.
The other place inserted this clause—which admittedly has defects, some of

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them known to my noble friend (and it may be slightly out of place)—because the Members objected to this unsolicited method of exploiting sexual curiosity for profit. On a free vote the other place sent us this clause for what seems to me to be a fairly good reason. It is not any attempt to try to suppress family planning in any way. All I can say to my noble friend is that if she consults with the Government to see whether she can improve the wording of this clause, perhaps by an Amendment in Committee, our services are at her disposal. We are benevolently neutral on this Bill.
I hope that I have managed to assist noble Lords in knowing a little more about the Bill and the arguments that ought to weigh their decision. If there are any points on which I can help your Lordships, I will do my best to do so.
5.35 p.m.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, we have had a very interesting debate on the Second Reading of this Bill and we are exceedingly grateful for the delightful, brilliant and altogether entertaining speech from our noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. The Bill has had a very different reception in your Lordships' House from the one it received in another place. I did not listen to the debate there, but I have read all the papers and it was surprising to find that one or two Members, whom I had not anticipated to be so critical, put forward criticisms of the Bill.
I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, for her support of the Bill. On her question about enforcement, I shall certainly consult my friends and I am sure that we can meet her on that point. I am also most grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester for his contribution.
I listened with enormous interest to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry. I thought that the mail order firms had really got busy behind the scenes and had organised their speakers in this House. For a moment I thought it was a pity that I had not organised a few myself. But I left it entirely to noble Lords who are interested in the Bill and I did not organise any support from any particular quarter for the Bill.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I must interrupt the noble Baroness. I had neither organised nor sought to inspire speeches on this Bill at all.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, it seems to be clear that the mail order firms have done a certain amount of work by way of support. All the opposition came from those who think that the Bill will interfere with mail order firms. So far as I know, it is not going to interfere with them at all, so long as the code of practice (which the noble Baroness instituted and which clearly has had a tremendous effect) is enforced. The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, and I know something of this and we are grateful to the noble Baroness and her organisation. I am not at all against mail order firms; nor is my honourable friend in another place who instituted the Bill nor, it seems to me in reading through the Reports of another place, is anybody else. We are against those practices against which the noble Baroness's code was directed; and the code has had the effect of improving the mail order business practice.
I am not sure that I entirely agree with what the noble Baroness said—I do not suppose that she expected me to do so. I understood her to imply that there were really few unsolicited goods sent to people, but in the course of my life I have found a great deal of evidence of tiresome and difficult cases of the sending of unsolicited goods which have been harmful to individual people. As noble Lords have said, the practice has decreased and I think that this Bill will certainly give us power to stop it.
I think my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor has answered the points put by my noble friend Lord Derwent, and I do not think I need say anything further about that. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, that six months is too short a time to track down bills or accounts or whatever it may be. It seems to me that any business should be able to deal with matters of that kind in six months. Another noble Lord said that it used to be one month; it is now suggested that it should be six months. I think that 12 months is too long.
My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor also answered some of the

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questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Platt. I was married to a doctor for some 25 years, and I remember that, although he left the profession quite early in his life, for the remainder of his life he received unsolicited goods from the pharmaceutical industry: in fact, this went on after he died and I used to receive them.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, if I may interrupt for one moment, I was not including the kind of things that one gets from the pharmaceutical firms because they do not expect any payment; they are sent as samples.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: I may have misunderstood the noble Lord. I do not think I distinguished between samples and pharmaceutical goods. But I know that they came to our house years and years after their use had become immaterial, so far as my husband was concerned, and I personally never had any use for them.
I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, for their support of the Bill. I think they have as much experience of this subject as anyone else, and I am glad that they think the Bill is worth while. The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, referred to mail order companies. I would only say that excellent mail order companies and the code of practice are much to be supported. Anything beyond that or less than that I should be opposed to.
I should like to thank my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor for his contribution, which is most helpful. I may say that I shall certainly ask for some advice from the legal department on Clause 4, and I shall he happy again to have my noble and learned friend's help. I think the debate has been most interesting, and I am grateful to all those who have taken part.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

MINERAL WORKINGS BILL [H.L.]
5.43 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, I beg to move
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that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Sandford.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD STRANG in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Contributions from ironstone operators towards Ironstone Restoration Fund]:
LORD GARNSWORTHY LORD GARNSWORTHY moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 14, after ("State") insert ("after consultation with the Advisory Committee on Ironstone Restoration").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 1 standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Greenwood of Rossendale and myself. At the outset, I should like to apologise for the absence of my noble friend. He would have been speaking at this time instead of me had he not been called away to an important engagement.
In moving this Amendment I would say that we on this side of the Committee welcome Lord Sandford's agreement that the Advisory Committee should be retained, but we are not wholly happy about the position. We are not happy about its membership, its terms of reference or the frequency with which its advice will be taken or even sought. It clearly has not been used effectively in the past, as is shown by the long period since it last met and the very sorry financial position which has developed. If it had been consulted more frequently perhaps the process of rehabilitation would have been expedited and the fund would have remained in balance.
It is our view that the Advisory Committee will be much more useful if it does not consist only of the vested interests involved: for example, the Iron and Steel Board, the landowners and the sub-contractors. We think that it ought also to include local authorities as planning authorities, and that there would be tremendous value in including representatives of amenities societies, such as the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, as representing the wider general public. We say this partly because it is in line with the last Government's planning reforms and the new emphasis being

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placed on public participation, and partly because the quality and pace of rehabilitation will affect the cost of the operation, which in its turn will determine the adequacy of the levy. The advice to the Secretary of State could be invaluable, especially when coming, as would be the case, from a much more representative body.
We shall listen carefully to what the Minister has to say, and if he can give assurances (as I hope he will) that consideration, and maybe acceptance, of these points is in the mind of the Government, then we shall gladly withdraw this and the other Amendments standing in our name, with the exception of that dealing with Clause 4. May I say on behalf of my noble friend and myself that we very much welcome the support of Lord Greenwood's name to the Amendment.
It seems to us that the Association of Municipal Corporations may be very much of the view that I have been expressing. They certainly would like to be consulted about any proposals for reshaping the Advisory Committee with new terms of reference should it be decided not to abolish it.
It may be for the convenience of your Lordships if I mention now that the Association regret very much that there is to be no increase, apparently—at least, so far as they are able to appreciate—in the Exchequer contribution, which it seems ought to be made if only to take account of increasing costs and changes in money values. They also regret—and, speaking personally, I share their regret—that the Bill is limited to ironstone workings and has not the wider measure of application that has been suggested to other mineral workings.
5.48 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: I am glad to hear from the noble Lord that he thinks that the moving of this Amendment would be the appropriate moment at which to speak to virtually all the other Amendments on the Marshalled List, except for Nos. 2 and 3 which are in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Henley. I think this would be very much for the convenience of the Committee. All the Amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, and the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale,
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presuppose that the Advisory Committee will not be abolished, as had been proposed in Clause 4 and is now proposed in subsection (2) of the Government's new clause. We have reconsidered the arguments in favour of retaining the Advisory Committee, but I must tell your Lordships that we are not persuaded at this stage that it is necessary to retain it.
Perhaps by way of a preliminary I could remind the Committee that we are now dealing with mineral workings in the context of well-established planning procedures, backed up with planning conditions, whereas in 1951, in the original Act which set up this Advisory Committee, Her Majesty's Government of that day were dealing with restoration which had been neglected in an era prior to any of the planning legislation which we now have.
Although the Advisory Committee helped in settling the standard rate originally, the circumstances are now different in a number of other ways. It is not now a question of quantifying the restoration obligations of operators under their leases in 1950, but of revising the original amount of £110 to allow for inflation. This involves merely the selection of a suitable new index. Consultations so far with the British Steel Corporation do not suggest that there will be any difficulty about this. If other questions arise they can now best and most conveniently be considered in direct consultation with the British Steel Corporation and representatives of the ironstone owners. If, exceptionally, any issue did arise which required independent advice, there would be nothing to prevent such advice from being obtained on an ad hoc basis. In the Government's view, there is no justification for maintaining a statutory body for that purpose.
It has been suggested that maintenance of the Committee would avoid any recurrence of the danger of insolvency. I do not think that suggestion is well conceived. The Committee was never a watchdog over the running of the Ironstone Restoration Fund and it would not be appropriate to re-constitute it as such. The solvency of the Fund depends essentially, on the one hand, on the level of ironstone production and the rate of contribution; and on the other hand, on the timing and extent of restoration work

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Provided that the basic facts and forecasts about production and restoration are available from the industry, and given that the contributions and standard rate can be varied—which has not hitherto been possible—it should not prove too difficult to secure that enough funds are available to meet commitments. But this, too, points to the need, not for the maintenance of a statutory committee, but for close co-operation with the industry and landowners.
But the Secretary of State readily agrees to the points made in the Second Reading debate that he should be open to advice from those directly concerned with the results of the orders he can make under the first three clauses, and he is willing to accept a statutory requirement that he should consult them before exercising these powers. That is what one of my Amendments gives effect to. And I can give an additional assurance that he will, in any case, consult not less frequently than annually, whether he needs to exercise these powers or not. As the Bill stands, he would have been obliged to consult the British Steel Corporation before fixing a new standard rate under Clause 3. Under the new clause which the Government have put down he would now be obliged also to consult before making an order under Clause 1 fixing a new rate of contributions payable by operators, and before making an order under Clause 2 specifying the owners' share of those contributions. And, further, the owners would be joined in the consultations on all three Order-making powers, and that would be in the Statute.
The new Government clause, as I have said, requires consultation before Orders are made under all the new powers. Although the Order-making powers provide for the much-needed degree of flexibility, new Orders may not be a frequent occurrence. It is for that reason I have given the assurance that the Secretary of State intends to arrange for both the British Steel Corporation and the Ironstone Royalty Owners and landowners' representatives to have an opportunity, not less frequently than once a year, of discussing the state of the Fund, the adequacy of the contributions and of the standard rate in force at the time, and so on. In this way information and advice will be exchanged and review of production and restoration trends should ensure
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good notice of the need for corrective measures.
Here may I make a point that relates to Amendment No. 8 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Henley. To extend the field of consultation required under the clause to cover persons who do not contribute, or whose rights to draw upon the Fund are not affected by the Orders—or bodies representing such persons—would not appear either desirable or appropriate. This is not to say, however, that the ironstone operators or royalty owners would be precluded from consulting, or including among their representatives persons having experience of the kinds described in the Amendment. That would certainly not be so. Nor, indeed, would the Secretary of State be in any way precluded from making a wider consultation if he were satisfied that such wider consultation were necessary. But it would not be right, in the context of the Orders concerning contributions and the standard rate, to require, by Statute, consultation with persons or bodies not directly concerned.
Nor is it proposed to require consultation in all this with the local authority associations, who are not directly concerned in this particular matter. They do not contribute, and the variation of the standard rate affects only the drawing upon the Fund by ironstone operators. However, if at any time it appeared necessary to consult them about general principles, the Secretary of State would certainly do so—I give that assurance—as he did last year when the possibility of winding up the Fund was under review. We have been in touch with the appropriate local authority associations about the changes we are now discussing.
I hope that that explanation of what we are importing into the Bill to take the place of the Advisory Committee will give the noble Lords who have had misgivings the reassurances for which they have been asking, and enable them to accept my two Amendments, Nos. 6 and 7, when we come to them, and to withdraw their own.
5.57 p.m.
LORD HENLEY: On Second Reading I welcomed the fact that the Government had listened to representations about the

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Restoration Fund, and I want to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, on being so willing to listen to the representations about consultations that we made from all sides of the House on Second Reading. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, that it was because of previous defective consultation that the Fund fell down. I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, that the Advisory Committee was not a watchdog. Nevertheless, if it had been consulted, even though the Minister saw no good reason for consulting it, it might have become apparent earlier that the Fund was getting into difficulties.
The noble Lord has come up with suggestions for consultation which seem to cover nearly all the points that I had in mind. First of all, it is fair that the rates should be settled in this way, with the advice and, I hope, the consent of the people concerned rather than by means of the arbitrary powers of the Secretary of State. I take the noble Lord's point that it is easier to do this on a non-statutory basis; that possibly a more flexible kind of consultation could take place if it is not laid down exactly how it shall take place. I note that the noble Lord does not wish to enlarge the body from which he draws advice by calling on those who are not directly concerned. I do not imagine that this will quite satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy; I think he would have liked to see the amenity bodies, county councils and other similar bodies, also consulted. I think I should, too. Nevertheless, the noble Lord has made quite a good case for saying that in this particular instance it is not necessary.
I do not go with him all the way in saying that the well-established planning procedures are good enough; they are not good enough in this context. It may well be that the whole business of planning permission with regard to this kind of mineral working has to be looked at again. I like the frequency with which this Advisory Committee is going to be called into being. I am sure that that is a good plan, even if, as the noble Lord says, there is nothing immediately for them to decide. Because it is not only the money rates and standard rates and contribution that are to be considered; it is the whole business of restoration. This
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is something which was dealt with in the 1951 Act; I think it is Section 34(3) which said that any other matter concerning restoration could be considered by the Committee. I hope that "any other matter" will be considered by the Minister's advisers.
When it conies to my Amendment to the noble Lord's Amendment, I think I shall have very little to say. I am not sure I need move it. The noble Lord gave me fair satisfaction on that point. I should like to turn it over in my mind. He uses the word "ironstone"; I use the word "mineral", and the reason why I changed the word was that I felt there might be difficulties so far as the British Steel Corporation is concerned, as the Corporation is responsible to the Minister, in making any points as forcibly as some independent party could do. Also, I felt that as grants can be made under Section 20 of the 1951 Act covering management and future farming of the land after restoration, consultation with owners of purely ironstone-bearing land would perhaps be too narrow. For that reason I changed the word from "ironstone" to "mineral". It makes it slightly wider than the noble Lord's.
The noble Lord says that he does not want to bring in people who are not directly concerned. I am not sure whether that is the right course. Perhaps between now and the time when Amendment No. 7 comes up the noble Lord can turn that point over in his mind. What the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, has said, with the possible exception of the question of county councils and so on, is very good indeed, and I congratulate him on the flexibility with which he has viewed this whole problem.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH AND QUEENSBERRY: In speaking on this Bill I should declare an interest, because I am concerned with iron ore minerals in the Midlands. While thanking the Government for giving timely attention to this problem, I would add a few words to what has been said already. I was hoping—I think most of us in the Midlands were hoping—that there would be an Advisory Committee of a statutory nature which could at any time ask for consultation on many problems which will arise. But I note that the Minister has made another offer, which I hope will go

1505
a long way, if not the whole way, to meet the requirement. I thank him for giving what I understand will be a statutory right to consultation for owners of minerals and others as well as the operators.
The treatment of land after mining involves a most difficult operation, or series of operations, as to the choice and degree of restoration for farming and forestry. A great deal has been achieved during the last twenty years or so through co-operation among people on all sides associated with iron ore mining and the land; also, and in particular perhaps, through the help of representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture on future use and improvement of the land. I am sure that there is agreement now as to the importance of continuing to restore the land for some form of production and for the preservation of the landscape and the countryside's appearance. I hope the Ministry visualise the extent of the physical problem and of the financial failures which would be greater and more difficult in future. There will be problems and difficult decisions, and a need for consultation closer and more frequent than before. I hope, therefore, that there will be an early consultation with all those who are concerned.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, must be reasonably pleased by the range of support he has received in the Committee for what he has indicated we may expect. Personally, I welcome very much the support of the noble Lord, Lord Henley, in regard to local authority representation and consultation with them; and the same with regard to the amenity societies. I very much hope that that point may be looked at further. In the meantime, I welcome such assurances as have been given. But may I say that I think it reasonable that we should have an opportunity to study carefully what has been said? If we should feel that we ought to come back to the point on Report stage, I hope that it will be understood why we are taking that action. Or it may well be that the matter could be left to be dealt with at the Second Reading of the Bill in another place. Meanwhile, on the basis of what has been said, and with the leave of the Committee, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.6 p.m.
LORD HENLEY LORD HENLEY moved Amendments Nos. 2 and 2A:
Page 1, line 15, after ("shall") insert ("also");
Page 1, line 15, leave out ("in addition to the full rate").
The noble Lord said: Going with Amendment No. 2 is a manuscript Amendment of which I think most of your Lordships now have copies. I apologise for this. It is a small drafting point and Amendments Nos. 2A and 2 are really all part of the same thing. When I put the Amendment down last night I am sorry to say I put down half of it and forgot to put down the other half and I noticed that only this afternoon. What it amounts to is that the clause will now read as follows, on page 1, line 15:
"An order under subsection (2) above shall also specify a lower rate of contributions …".
What I have done is to put the word "also" in after "shall" and left out, ", in addition to the full rate,". The reason why I have done that is that as the clause is drafted—and I am quite ready to be told by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, that the legal experts say I am wrong—it seemed to me that the provision could be interpreted to require the order to specify an additional rate. This is obviously not the intention. The reduced rate should be specified and applicable, not as an addition but in substitution for the full rate for pre-February 15, 1951—full restoring leases and ironstone land held on charitable trusts or for charitable purposes. It is a very small point and your Lordships may well say that as you read the original draft it is perfectly clear that it could not be interpreted to require the order to specify an additional rate. Nevertheless, it ought to be made clear and I beg to move.
LORD SANDFORD: I will not go so far as to say that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, is wrong, but I can assure him that his Amendment is not necessary and there is no danger of the subsection as drafted being interpreted in the sense that one rate can be added on top of another rate. It allows only for the specification of two different rates to apply to two different classes of land. I hope that with that assurance the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his Amendment.
LORD HENLEY: With that assurance, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendments.
Amendments, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 agreed to.
6.10 p.m.
LORD HENLEY LORD HENLEY moved Amendment No. 3:
After Clause 1, insert the following new clause:
Contributions in respect of Ironstone extracted before 1st April, 1971
" . In respect of ironstone extracted before 1st April 1971 by opencast operations from land within the ironstone district as defined in the Act of 1951 and on which contributions have or will be paid under section 3 of the said Act the Secretary of State shall pay into the Fund such sums as are required from time to time to meet the payments to operators under section 9 of the Act of 1951 such sums to be defrayed out of moneys provided by Parliament."
The noble Lord said: On Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, drew our attention to the fact that there were still some 3,000 acres of land worked for ironstone to be restored to agriculture or forestry, and that the cost of this operation would be something in the order of £1½ million. I think this figure is not challenged by the Government, but clearly it would leave a heavy deficiency in the restoration fund, which at the moment I believe, stands at considerably less than half a million pounds; and quite an amount of that sum represents outstanding claims in the pipeline against it. Obviously there will be a deficiency of something like £1 million. The noble Lord said that in his view it would not be altogether fair that this deficiency should be met out of future contributions to the fund, and that the fair and just thing would be for the Government to accept responsibility for settling all the outstanding claims on the fund as at the end of March this year.
It may well be that operators other than British Steel Corporation will be entering into new leases. While this is not very likely, it is possible; and if it is likely that there will be new mineral owners entering into new leases it does not seem fair that they should be asked to bear the burden of this deficiency when the contributions for it have already been received.
I think that the Government—or successive Governments—cannot alto-
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gether escape from the suggestion that in part they have been responsible for the building up of this deficiency. During the Second Reading debate we discussed at some length the fact that the old Advisory Committee had not been convened for 13 years. It was also pointed out that even if the Advisory Committee had been convened there were certain things with regard to the raising of prices that they could not do. Nevertheless, I feel it was rather curious to have an Advisory Committee which was never called upon for advice, and, had it been called on for advice, as I said before, it would have become apparent that something was going wrong with the fund. This Amendment is designed to enable the Secretary of State to deal with the current deficiency in the fund in respect of land from which contribution has already been paid, rather than that it should be met by increased contributions on future extraction. I beg to move.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH AND QUEENSBERRY: The 1951 Act made just enough financial provision to enable immense progress to be made. There is considerable anxiety that unless there is some further assurance of help for the fund it will be much more difficult in future to pay for attending to some land already worked, and it seems likely that in future a smaller percentage of the land could be fully restored to agriculture and that the greater amount will have to be levelled without top surface and put into forestry instead of into farming.
Without having any idea of what the Minister has it in mind to impose in future in the way of levies for the fund, I find it difficult to speak on this matter, but I think everyone hopes that in the consultations soon to follow provision will be made which will enable the existing backlog to be removed and the future work to be done as everyone wishes it to be done.
LORD SANDFORD: In responding to this Amendment I think perhaps I ought to start by saying that were we to carry it we should, I think, be infringing the privileges of another place. That does not mean to say that there would be any harm in discussing the matter; in fact I think it would be helpful to comment on the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Henley, because it clearly caused concern

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to a number of noble Lords at Second Reading. In that debate the broad suggestion was that the Exchequer should wipe the slate clean so that the provision of financial arrangements under the Bill would relate to future operations only. It was argued that it is inequitable that the results of some failure to take remedial action at an earlier date should be visited upon the present industry, vested in the British Steel Corporation. However, this new clause seeks to go still further and to require the Exchequer to meet not merely that part of the restoration costs not covered by the existing balance of the fund, but the whole cost of that work for which there is manifestly no justification.
As I said during the Second Reading debate, the present situation has resulted from a combination of three different circumstances. Initially, it stemmed from the fact that the Act of 1951 contained no provision for revision of the arrangements to allow for inflation and other changes in circumstances. But the effect of that adverse trend is now being accelerated by declining home ore production, and the decisions of the British Steel Corporation to close quarries, which have only recently emerged. Even if earlier action had been possible, however, and if amending legislation had been introduced by our predecessors a little earlier and the present circumstances had been foreseeable, I think it must be assumed that the action taken would have been on similar lines to what is now proposed; that is to say, the claims by operators on the fund would have been reduced by raising the standard rate to reflect the increased costs of restoration, and the contributions would have been raised.
It may be suggested that in that event the additional cost would have fallen upon the former operators or, to put it another way, it is the former operators and not the British Steel Corporation who have benefited from the fact that earlier revisions were not possible owing to the rigidity of the Act. This may be so, but the fact that our predecessors chose not to alter the incidence of the liability within the industry is no reason for seeking now to shift the liability away from the industry to somebody else; namely, the taxpayer. Some of the land for which restoration liability currently exists will be land which the Corporation have
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themselves worked and for which they are plainly responsible. It is true that some will be land which has been worked by other operators, but as the proper successor to the industry and heir to its liabilities as well as its assets, it is right that the responsibility should pass squarely on to the shoulders of the Corporation and not on to the shoulders of the taxpayer.
I recognise that it would be attractive to the industry to have the slate wiped clean, but this can only be done at the taxpayer's expense and there is no sufficient reason why the taxpayer should foot this particular Bill. During the Second Reading debate (15/3/71; col. 272) the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, referred to the generally accepted principle that we in the Department of the Environment certainly endorse; that is, that the man who despoils or damages the countryside must be made to pay for the damage for which he is responsible. I submit that it would be the negation of that principle for the taxpayer to assume the responsibility for meeting the outstanding liabilities beyond the extent already agreed; that is to say, from the continuation of Exchequer contributions at the existing rate per ton. It is for those reasons that I must advise the Committee not to accept the Amendment of the noble Lord, should he decide to press it, although I hope that, in the light of that explanation, he will not do so.
LORD HENLEY: I rather feared that in moving this Amendment I might be infringing the privileges of the Commons, but as I knew the noble Lord was very unlikely to accept the Amendment, and that even if I pressed it I should be defeated, I nevertheless decided to put the point before the Committee. In spite of what the noble Lord says, I am not convinced that what he is suggesting is altogether fair. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood: that those who make a mess should clear it up; but I am not sure that Governments have not contributed to this mess by their own negligence, so that they should help to clear it up. And they are not helping very much to clear it up, in that they are not making an increase in their own contribution. This seems to me unfair. The operators are going

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to have to increase their contributions; the standard rate will have to be doubled, or even more. The contribution from the royalty owners is going to be increased. I cannot help feeling that the least the Government could do, if they are not going to wipe the slate clean, is to increase their own contribution very substantially.
Nevertheless, I still think that, because our predecessors here did not seek to shift the burden, did not seek to alter the rate, did not seek to inquire who should pay for it, future operators and owners should have to foot the bill. The noble Lord, spoke only of the operators, but there are the owners as well. They are in a different case from the operators. Whereas it is unlikely that there will be any new operators, other than the British Steel Corporation—unless the Government are going to hive this off; and I do not think so—the owners will be entering into new leases; there will be new owners who were not there before, and they are going to have to pay for the mistakes previously made. I feel, with the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, that it would be only fair and just if some measure of this cost was met by the Government. I cannot say that I am in any way satisfied or reassured by the noble Lord. However, I know that I am unlikely to get enough support to be able to defeat the noble Lord's Government in this matter, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clause 3 [Variation of the standard rate]:
6.25 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD LORD SANDFORD moved Amendment No. 6:
Page 3, line 42, leave out subsection (3).
The noble Lord said: I do not think there is there is anything more of substance which I wish to add before moving this Amendment, except perhaps to agree with those noble Lords who indicated by what they said that our planning legislation, planning procedures and planning conditions do have a considerable bearing on this matter, but they are not strictly relevant to this rather narrow
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Bill. It may be that they are not in all respects perfect, but I am convinced that this Bill is not the right vehicle in which to set them to rights. That is one point I wanted to make. Apart from that, I think I have said everything I want to say on these next two Amendments. I beg to move Amendment No. 6.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 3, as amended, agreed to.
LORD SANDFORD: I beg to move Amendment No. 7.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 3, insert the following new clause:
Consultation with ironstone operators and owners and abolition of existing Advisory Committee
" .—(1) Before making an order under any of the preceding provisions of this Act, the Secretary of State shall consult such persons or bodies of persons as appear to him to be representative of ironstone operators and of owners of interests in land from which ironstone is extracted as mentioned in section 1 above.
(2) The Advisory Committee on Ironstone Restoration established under section 34 of the Act of 1951, is hereby abolished."—(Lord Sandford.)
LORD HENLEY LORD HENLEY moved, as an Amendment to Amendment No. 7, Amendment No. 8:
Line 3, leave out from ("be") to end of line 5 and insert ("expedient including persons or bodies of persons having experience of ownership and management of rural land, of ownership and management of mineral bearing land and of mineral workings.")
The noble Lord said: Before I ask leave to withdraw this Amendment I should like a word from the noble Lord as to whether he feels there is any substance in what I had to say about the possible difficulties for the British Steel Corporation in arguing their own case to their own Minister. That is why I used the concept of "mineral" rather than "ironstone". The other point is really in line with that; it is about the grants that can be made under Section 20 of the 1951 Act. Here again I think one should use "mineral" rather than "ironstone". I know this is a fairly narrow Bill; the noble Lord has pointed out that that is one of the reasons why he does not want it regarded as pro forma for other mineral operations, because it deals with only one aspect, ironstone. He

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argued that for that reason he did not want to bring in anybody not directly concerned. But has he anything to say on this point? I beg to move.
LORD SANDFORD: The noble Lord asked me to expand on two points. First of all, we have, of course, had extensive consultations already with the British Steel Corporation and there is no indication that there are any difficulties arising from the reason the noble Lord indicated. As to the next point, about the interests of those bodies not directly concerned with the operation of the Fund, perhaps I should say that the purpose of the original 1951 Act was to deal with 2,500 acres of past dereliction which had arisen in an era before there was any planning legislation or possibility of imposing planning conditions. That situation no longer exists. That past dereliction has been cleared up, thanks to the operation of the original Act, and planning legislation and planning conditions are available to deal with the matters that were neglected at that time. The amenity interests, local authorities et cetera, now have their say in the matter at the stage of a planning application and perhaps a local planning inquiry, all of which goes on in connection with mineral workings, as it does with a planning application to build a house or a highway. The Mineral Workings Bill does not replace that in any way, but it exists side by side and in parallel with it. I hope that satisfies the noble Lord.
LORD HENLEY: It does not quite satisfy me. What I felt about this question of grant under the 1951 Act was that in so far as grant can be paid for restoration of land worked, both for agriculture and forestry, under the 1951 Act, it would be reasonable to discuss the question of restoration with people who were not necessarily immediately concerned with ironstone only. There are new techniques. All sorts of things are being done in restoration; and as grants are to be given, is the noble Lord not keeping the Committee too narrow by not allowing himself to consult people not immediately concerned with ironstone. That is why I raised the question of the 1951 Act, and he has not quite answered that. Nevertheless, I do not think the
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point is important enough to press it. I would say once again that the noble Lord must not attribute too much to the planning conditions, because they are not adequate with regard to a great deal of mineral working and they need to be looked at. Nevertheless, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment to the Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 4 [Abolition of Advisory Committee on Ironstone Restoration]:
On Question, Whether Clause 4 shall stand part of the Bill?
Resolved in the negative, and Clause 4 disagreed to accordingly.
Remaining clauses and Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with the Amendments.

ADMINISTRATION OF ESTATES BILL
6.32 p.m.
LORD SIMON OF GLAISDALE: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Simon of Glaisdale.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 to 9 agreed to.
Clause 10 [Retainer, preference and the payment of debts by personal representatives]:
LORD SIMON OF GLAISDALE LORD SIMON OF GLAISDALE moved, as an Amendment to Clause 10:
Page 7, line 11, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
"(2) Nevertheless a personal representative—

(a) other than one mentioned in paragraph (b) below, who, in good faith and at a time when he has no reason to believe that the deceased's estate is insolvent, pays the debt of any person (including himself) who is a creditor of the estate; or

(b) to whom letters of administration had been granted solely by reason of his being a creditor and who, in good faith and at

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such a time, pays the debt of another person who is a creditor of the estate;

shall not, if it subsequently appears that the estate is insolvent, be liable to account to a creditor of the same degree as the paid creditor for the sum so paid."
The noble and learned Lord said: I beg to move the Amendment standing in my name on the Order Paper. I hope it will not be inappropriate if I say a little more about this Amendment than I should otherwise have done, in the hope that it may save time if the clause itself comes to be discussed, because this was the only clause of the Bill about which any concern was shown. On the contrary, I think that the Bill as a whole, which is based on two very valuable Papers, that of the Working Party of Mr. Registrar Kenworthy, relating to Resealing of Grants, and that of the Law Commission, on Administration Bonds, was widely welcomed.
The Bill itself was widely welcomed on its publication, and indeed on its Second Reading. The only misgiving expressed was on this clause, Clause 10, when some representations were made at a late stage—after the Law Commission had made its publication and recommendations, and after all stages had been taken on the Bill in another place. Concern was expressed by the Chancery Bar Association and by the Law Reform Committee of the Law Society, and it was expressed with great vigour here on Second Reading by the noble Lord, Lord Janner, and perhaps more moderately by the noble Lord, Lord Milner of Leeds. If it was thought appropriate, therefore, by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, I proposed to consult with those who had made representations before this stage. I wanted to see how much there was in the objections and how far they could and should be met; and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor approved of that course. I have had an opportunity of meeting the bodies to whom I have referred, and I should like to express my great gratitude for all their help.
There are certain matters on which I felt that their representations could and should be met, and the Amendment endeavours to do this. There were other matters on which I felt that their views could not, or should not, be met. First
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of all, they really wanted a general inquiry into administration on insolvency. That was not, of course, a matter on which I could satisfy them, since it does not rest with the sponsor of a Bill like this to recommend a Royal Commission or a departmental inquiry. I did, however, undertake to draw their concern to the notice of the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack; and I have in fact done so.
Alternatively, they proposed that the clause itself should be dropped, in the hope of an inquiry, and so that nothing should be done which might prejudice what they hoped would be the outcome of such inquiry. It seemed to me that the conclusive answer to that was given by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor on Second Reading, when he said that you could not simply abolish administration bonds and say nothing about rights of retainer and preference. In other words, my Lords, the dropping of the clause would involve the omission of a great part of the Bill which has been widely and enthusiastically welcomed.
There was one point of principle on which I found, after listening to the arguments as carefully as I could, that I did not feel I could recommend that the views of the bodies whom I consulted should be met, and that was that the rights of preference and retainer should remain as part of our law. I was left completely satisfied that the objections by the Law Commission to such rights were well founded.
Where I felt that it would be right to try to meet the objections was on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Janner, on Second Reading. That was really that if the rights of retainer and preference were abolished it might (I think he was inclined to put it higher) result in a personal representative having to postpone his own debt and its payment to that of all other creditors. The Amendment is primarily, though not exclusively, designed to meet that point. I placed it before the meeting that I held, as the draftsman had very kindly attended, and I undertook to consider any drafting improvements that might be suggested before a later stage of the Bill.
May I explain what the Amendment is intended to do? As your Lordships

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know, the Bill is concerned with the administration of the estates of deceased persons. However, the problem to which this Amendment is addressed arises only in insolvency estates, where there is not enough to pay all the debts; and it applies only between creditors of the same degree. As your Lordships know, there are various classes of creditors. There are the ordinary creditors, but there are also the preferred and the deferred creditors. We are concerned only with creditors of the same degree. The very ancient law gave two rights to the personal representative of the deceased, called preference and retainer. I emphasise that it was very ancient law, because I think the noble Lord, Lord Janner, was inclined to suggest that this was something that had suddenly been invented by the Law Commission. He quoted a case of 1932, although in fact the citation was in turn a quotation of a case of the 16th century. It is really to that time and not to to-day that these rights relate.
The ancient law gave to a person administering a deceased's estate a right, in certain circumstances, to pay certain debts of the same degree in priority to others. If the debt paid in priority was that of a third person it was called a preference. If it was the personal representative's own debt it was called a retainer. I tried to ascertain what are the origins of these ancient rights and they seem very obscure. I think preference probably related to the fact that in ancient times there was no clear right to pay the wages of servants in preference to other debts, and it was obviously reasonable that they should be promptly paid; hence, the right of preference, as I understand it. But wages of servants are now a preferred claim under the Bankruptcy Act and under the Administration of Estates Act. Then, as for retainer, so far as I can gather—and the books are clearer here—it was established because of the inability of a personal representative to sue himself. As that was so, any creditor could sue him and obtain a judgment debt. Up to 1925 a judgment debt had priority; it no longer has to-day, and therefore the whole basis of the right of retainer, like that of the right of preference, has, I submit to your Lordships, disappeared.
But in the meantime since these ancient rights were established, the great predecessors of the noble and learned Lord
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who sits on the Woolsack were developing the system of Equity, which has done so much to enlighten English law, and that has at least two principles which are quite inconsistent with retainer and preference. First, there is the principle, which is quite fundamental to Equity, that no one should be entitled to take advantage of a position of trust to benefit himself at the expense of another. Now retainer obviously involves precisely such a claim—a right to use your position of trust as personal representative to pay yourself first, when there may not be enough to pay everybody. The second principle was the great maxim: equality is equity. That is quite counter to the right of preference, because that embodies the very essence of inequality. One debt is preferred to the other, instead of their being abated equally if there is not enough money to pay both in full.
It was in view of the inequity and anomaly of the old rights of retainer and preference, that the Court of Probate, as long ago as 1877, established a practice requiring any creditor who took a grant to promise in his administration bond that he would not exercise these rights which the law otherwise gave him. I emphasise that that was as long ago as 1877. This is not a sudden seizure of ancient rights, as the noble Lord, Lord Janner, seemed to be suggesting on Second Reading. But the way that it was dealt with, which was the only way it could be dealt with by administrative or judicial action, left the retainer and the preference anomalously available when the grant was to some personal representative taking other than as creditor; for example, to an executor or to an ordinary administrator.
The Bill implements the recommendation of the Law Commission, which was made at the instance of the Law Society, and abolishes administration bonds. If the matter had stayed there, one would have introduced the inequity of the rights of retainer and preference where they had previously been abolished by administrative action. The Law Commission therefore recommended the general abolition of these rights. They would thereby remove an anomaly and extend equity. As I said, I personally had the opportunity of going further into

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the matter, and I am completely convinced that that recommendation was correct. I made inquiries as to where rights of retainer are now mainly used, and I was told that the following is a typical situation. A bank is appointed as executor and uses its right of retainer to pay off an overdraft of the deceased, in priority to, say, a debt of a small tradesman. That seems to me quite outrageous and, I think, shows that the Law Commission were entirely right in their recommendation.
But as the Bill stands at the moment it was felt in some quarters that it would prevent the personal representative from paying his own debt until all other debts of the same class had been paid. I hope your Lordships will not think that I am dealing with the matter too cursorily if I merely say that I felt that there was something in that objection. At any rate, it seemed to me to be a matter on which apprehension should be met, and that is the main purpose of this Amendment.
As subsection (2) of Clause 10 stands at the moment, it gives additional protection to the personal representative of an insolvent deceased. It ought therefore to enable administration to be dealt with more expeditiously; for example, by allowing prompt payment of small debts without waiting for all the claims to be sifted. It provides protection for the personal representative provided that he has no reason to believe the estate to be insolvent; provided he acts in good faith, and provided he acts reasonably.
Representations were made that that last requirement, of proving that he acted reasonably, might be too onerous on the personal representative. The Amendment therefore does two things: it removes the necessity of showing, in addition to other matters, that the personal representative has acted reasonably, and it makes it clear that he can in such circumstances as the clause deals with pay his own debt. I trust that those who had misgivings about this clause can now be reassured. I beg to move.
LORD MILNER OF LEEDS: As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, has said, the only objection raised against this Bill on Second Read-
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ing was in respect of Clause 10. The Amendment proposed by the noble and learned Lord meets the points raised about retainer and preference. The noble and learned Lord has agreed to consider before the Report stage minor modifications to the wording of the subsection. My noble friend Lord Janner, who spoke during the Second Reading debate with reference to Clause 10, has asked me to apologise to your Lordships' Committee for his absence. My noble friend has informed me that he approves of this Amendment, and I am sure that he would wish me to welcome on his behalf the proposed consideration of a further Amendment to subsection (2). I therefore express my thanks to the noble and learned Lord. We on this side of your Lordships' Committee support this Amendment.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I do not want to add much to what has been said. I am sure that the Committee is deeply indebted to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, who has taken such an immensity of trouble in discussing this question with the Law Society and with the Chancery Bar Association, and in producing an Amendment which is agreeable to them. The Law Commission do not dissent from it. I should merely like to thank the noble and learned Lord for a great deal of very useful knowledge which I have acquired during the course of his speech, which I very much enjoyed. I have always gone boldly on the principle that a man in a fiduciary position should not take advantage of that to profit himself. That seems to me strictly in accordance with natural morality, and it is certainly in accordance with the doctrines of my predecessors when they used to sit at first instance in equity. But I am happy to think that this compromise solution, without breaching that principle, has been arrived at; and I am very deeply grateful to the noble and learned Lord who has taken so much trouble.
Clause 10, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clauses and Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with the Amendment.

LAND REGISTRATION AND LAND CHARGES BILL [H.L.]
6.56 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now received.
Moved, That the Report be now received.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Then, Standing Order No. 42 having been suspended (pursuant to Resolution).
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, the Standing Order having been suspended, I now have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Land Registration and Land Charges Bill, has consented to place Her interest, so far as it is concerned on behalf of the Crown, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.
I beg to move that the Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 3a: an Amendment (privilege) made; Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

GREAT SOUTHERN CEMETERY AND CREMATORIUM COMPANY BILL [H.L.]
Examiners' Certificate that the further Standing Orders applicable have been complied with, received, and Bill committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.