Lords Sitting of 9 December 1971

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock: The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES On the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Leicester.

AIR FARES ON NORTH ATLANTIC ROUTES
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a Statement concerning the fares package for the North Atlantic route agreed at the IATA meeting in Geneva on December 2, 1971.]
TIIE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN): My Lords, the IATA Conference on North Atlantic fares began on December 2 and is still in progress. It is to be hoped that agreement will be reached on the broad lines laid down by airline chairmen and presidents in Honolulu on November 18, and that the new fares will take effect from April 1, 1972, except for the new winter group inclusive tour fares which might be brought in sooner.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, before asking a supplementary question, may I ask, for clarification, whether the noble Lord is giving me an Answer or is telling me that he cannot give me an Answer to the Question on the Order Paper?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am asked to make a Statement. I have made a Statement.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I am sorry, but I am still not clear. May I ask the noble Lord whether —as all these conferences are going on together—he might be able to amplify that statement if I amplify my Question which is put down for Answer next-
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week? Apart from that, could the noble Lord, either to-day or next week, answer two specific points in connection with North Atlantic fares? Will a person applying for a cheap fare to fly across the Atlantic be able to apply for a certain date and a certain flight and be able to pay beforehand? The second question is this. May I ask what advantage a person buying an economy fare across the Atlantic (at an estimated present cost of £165) will have over the person getting this cheap ticket at £83 apart from the fact that he will not have to remain for a stated period at his destination?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, if I may say so, I think the noble Baroness is asking questions which are really outside the original Question that she put to me. The point is really quite simple. Agreement has not yet been reached on fares and therefore I cannot answer her questions. They are at the moment utterly hypothetical.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, that is what I thought. I thought that the noble Lord's reply was hypothetical. May I ask, finally, whether perhaps we can have an Answer next week which can be "unhypothetical".
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, that will depend upon the nature of the Question that the noble Baroness puts.

RHODESIA: TEST OF ACCEPTABILITY AND PRESS REPRESENTATION
3.8 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so may I correct the phrase "Commission of Accessibility" which is printed on the Order Paper to "Commission of Acceptability"—no doubt a Freudian error on my behalf.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether representatives of the Press will be permitted to accompany the Commission of Accessibility in their investigation in Southern Rhodesia.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN): My Lords, I

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accept the noble Lord's correction, one which I had already made in my own mind.
The Government attach great importance to the Test of Acceptability being completely objective and thorough and being seen to be so. The Government naturally hope that wide access can be given to the Press during the Test of Acceptability. The question of how this can best be arranged is one which Lord Pearce and his colleagues have under consideration at the moment.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that Answer and for his assurance, may I ask him whether it is not of great importance to the African people in Southern Rhodesia, as well as to public opinion, that it appears that this Commission is seeking the opinion of all of the people? Furthermore, can Her Majesty's Government suggest to Lord Pearce—who perhaps may read these words—that the utmost efforts should he made to secure full Press co-operation in the efforts that he is making?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I entirely accept what the noble Lord has said. I think it was implicit in my original Answer.
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, will the Government bear in mind the very great importance of ensuring that the evidence given by Africans is confidential and, if necessary, secret? Will they also bear in mind the undesirability of Press reporters' appearing to constitute themselves judges of public opinion in competition with the Commissioners who have been chosen for that purpose?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, my noble friend has touched upon a very important point—one which I am quite certain will not be lost upon the noble and learned Lord, Lord Pearce, and his colleagues when they are considering how best to make arrangements with regard to the Press.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, as an old newspaperman, may I ask, while bearing in mind very much the question which preceded mine, whether the reports which these Pressmen send from that area will be subject to censorship?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I cannot answer that question without notice, but I should hope not.

RHODESIA: THE UNITED NATIONS AND SANCTIONS
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, in the event of agreement being reached with the Rhodesian régime, what steps will be taken to persuade the United Nations to reverse its mandatory decision on sanctions against Rhodesia: and if the United Nations should be unwilling to do this, whether Her Majesty's Government will accept the United Nations decision.]
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, in regard to sanctions the immediate concern is with what happens in consequence of the recent agreement as described in Proposals for a Settlement. On this our position is clear: sanctions are meantime to continue as they did before. There will be several further steps to be taken, including the completion of the vital Test of Acceptability. before any formal ending of sanctions comes into sight. It is therefore premature to speculate about the circumstances in which sanctions will come to an end. All I can say at this stage on the Question raised by the noble Lord is that in the light of the future developments envisaged, other countries will surely recognise, as we ourselves will, that a restoration of legality in Rhodesia would cause a fundamental alteration in the situation which originally occasioned the imposition of sanctions by the Security Council.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Marquess for that long Answer to my Question, but I am still in a quandary, as I think many other people are, over this. Am I right in assuming that Her Majesty's Government have in fact given a black-and-white undertaking to the Rhodesian Government, or the Rhodesian régime, that sanctions will be removed if satisfactory

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arrangements can be completed? Am I also right in thinking that under the United Nations procedure we are bound by mandatory sanctions, so that we have in fact given an undertaking which it is not in our power to fulfil unilaterally?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, on the first two points, I think that the noble Lord is perfectly correct. I have tried to answer his Question as fully as I can at this stage. At this moment of time it is very difficult for Her Majesty's Government to envisage what may happen in this matter in the future. So much is in the air at the moment and, if I may suggest it, I think it better that we should leave it for the time being.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, is the noble Marquess aware that, although he may think it is better, the fact is that the House was advised, presumably, when we voted, that the Government had foreseen likely events? Is he really suggesting that the Government are going on without having taken any view as to whether we are going to break a mandatory resolution in this way? We really shall have to press the Government harder on this matter.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: No, my Lords. Obviously Her Majesty's Government are considering various contingencies which may or may not arise in this regard. I am sorry that I cannot go further in this matter to-day. I hope that the noble Lord will accept the assurance that I can give him that we are considering these matters very deeply When I said I did not know what was going to happen, I was, of course, referring to the result of the Test of Acceptability. We do not yet know how this is going to turn out.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, as I raised this question during the debate without getting an answer, may I ask the Government whether when they included in their proposals the statement that sanctions would in a certain event be lifted they did not then apply their minds to how they proposed to overcome any resolution of the Security Council?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I think it is perfectly right for me to say that this is obviously a matter
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which will be discussed in the United Nations. But I cannot to-day, I am afraid, elaborate any further on it.
LORD FOOT: My Lords, when the noble Lord says that this Question and Answer are premature, does he mean that the Government have not considered what their position will be in the event of the United Nations refusing to remove the mandatory sanctions; or does he mean that it is not convenient to him to tell us?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, what I meant by "premature" was that we did not know how events were going to turn out in Rhodesia concerning the Test of Acceptability.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, is it not a fact that the imposition of sanctions by the United Nations upon a country which is not independent is utterly immoral and illegal under the Constitution of the United Nations, and that it must be admitted—which it is not, apparently—that Rhodesia is an independent country, in which case the United Nations can take action? Is is not a fact that everything that we are doing now implies that Rhodesia is not independent; that it is a country which is still in a major way dependent on this country?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, these are all matters which are very much in the mind of the Government at the moment. It is true that at the present time Rhodesia is not an independent country.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, can the noble Marquess answer at least one part of his noble friend's supplementary question, whether putting sanctions on was an immoral act? What is the view of the Government?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I think that this is getting a little wide of the mark, if I may say so.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, is the noble Marquess fully aware that it is far easier to impose sanctions than to succeed in lifting them.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: Yes, my Lords.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, may I, finally, ask the noble Marquess whether

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I and other noble Lords and people outside this House would be wrong in drawing one of two conclusions from his answer: either that Her Majesty's Government did not give sufficient thought to this matter when they gave the undertaking to Mr. Smith, or that they did give sufficient thought to it and are prepared to proceed regardless of what the United Nations may say?
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have given a lot of thought to this matter. What I have been trying to say to the House to-day is that we do not think at this stage, before we know how things are going to turn out in Rhodesia, that it would be proper for me to say any more.

SOUTH AFRICAN INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES
3.19 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what knowledge they have of the presence in Britain of an intelligence service operating on behalf of the Government of the Republic of South Africa.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD WINDLESHAM): My Lords, it is accepted practice not to answer Questions about intelligence matters unless illegal activities are being conducted by foreign representatives which make it in the public interest to do so. We have no evidence of any such activities on the part of South African officials.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I first ask the Minister whether there is any doubt at all that the South African Bureau of State Security is carrying out intelligence activities in this country? Is there not much evidence from individuals, Liberals from South Africa, and from organisations concerned with apartheid that that surveillance is now being conducted?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, it is very difficult to comment on general allegations. If any evidence is produced, and is made available to my right honourable friend, of illegal activities in the United Kingdom, whether by South African officials or anybody else, we shall certainly follow it up.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I proceed to give that evidence? May I ask Her Majesty's Government what they have done about recent occurrences? Is the Minister aware that last week the headquarters of the Society of Friends—the Quakers—in Euston Road was raided; that there was thieved from there all the documents referring to Church-sponsored exchanges between South Africans and Britons, and, further, that the files and card indexes of all subcribers to the Friends' Peace and International Relations Committee were taken? Is the Minister not aware that these were of no value at all except to the intelligence services of South Africa and that these actions have followed similar raids en and thefts from the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Movement for Colonial Freedom?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I am aware of the theft of documents from Friends' House. The police are making inquiries, but any action to be taken as a result of this incident will naturally depend on what, if anything, is discovered.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, referred specifically to South African officials: does this apply also to people who might be engaged in collecting intelligence on behalf of the South African Government who may not be South Africans?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I am sorry not to be more forthcoming on this question but, as the noble Lord knows very well, the convention is that intelligence matters are not discussed in public. It would not be right for me to disclose in your Lordships' House the extent to which the Government have knowledge of the activities of foreign Powers either in this country or elsewhere.
LORI) FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, is there any country in the world which does not obtain intelligence from its Ambassadors, High Commissioners

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and other officials who are properly accredited and authenticated in every country?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I do not want to comment any further on this question. I gave a full and considered reply to the original Question on the Order Paper and I do not want to amplify it.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Leader of the House, I beg to move the first Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That, until the House rises for the Christmas Recess, Standing Orders No. 36 (Arrangement of the Order Paper) and 42 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be suspended, and that Government business do have, except with the consent of the Government, precedence over other business during the same period.—(Earl St. Aldwyn.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

SPORT AND LEISURE
3.23 p.m.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE)THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE) rose to move, That a Committee of eleven Lords be appointed to consider the demand for facilities for participation in sport and in the enjoyment of leisure out-of-doors, and to examine what impediment may exist to the fuller use of existing facilities or the development of new ones, and how they might be removed:
That the Lords following be named of the Committee:

V. Cobham (Chairman),

L. Bp. Chester,

L. Astor of Hever,

L. Byers,

L Donaldson of Kingsbridge,

L. Dulverton,

L. Llewelyn-Davies,

L. Redcliffe-Maud,

B. Serota,

L. Strathcona and Mount Royal,

L. Tweedsmuir:

That the Committee have power to appoint Sub-Committees and to refer to such Sub-committees any of the matters referred to the Committee; and that such Sub-committees have power to appoint their own Chairman:
That the Committee and any such Subcommittee have power (a) to send for persons, papers and records; and (b) to adjourn from place to place; that the Committee have leave to report from time to time; and that any such Sub-committee have leave to report to the Committee from time to time:
That the Committee have power to appoint persons with specialised knowledge for the purposes of particular enquiries, either to supply information which is not readily available, or to elucidate matters of complexity within the Committee's order of reference:
That the evidence taken before the Committee and any such Sub-committee from time to time be printed, but that no copies be delivered out except to members of the Committee and to such other persons as the Committee think fit, until further order:
That the Committee do meet in Committee Room No. 4 on Wednesday next at Four o'clock.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. Those noble Lords who were present in the House on the day of the State Opening of Parliament will have heard me state during the course of my speech congratulating the Mover and Seconder of the humble Address, that in due course I would propose to the House a Select Committee on Sport and Leisure. This I am now doing. I am sure your Lordships will agree with me that it is essential to make a real success of the first of what I hope will be quite a long line of Select Committees of this House on various subjects.
I think that your Lordships will agree with me that the membership of this first Select Committee is strong. I am very grateful indeed to all those who have agreed to serve on it, and especially grateful to my noble friend Lord Cobham for agreeing to be the Chairman of this Committee. He has a formidable team to help him, but he has also a great task ahead of him. The subject matter with which this Committee will be concerned is a very wide one and a very important one.
Your Lordships will also note that the Committee are given power to appoint sub-committees, if they should deem this necessary. It may well be

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that the Committee will wish to split themselves up into sub-committees to examine different aspects of what is on any count a very wide subject. The Committee have also been given authority to appoint a research assistant to help them to evaluate matters of complexity and to give them specialist advice. I think that it would be wrong for me to try to predict how long it will take the Committee to complete their investigations, but they have been given leave to report to the House from time to time, if and when they reach conclusions which, in their judgment, it is worth while to report. I beg to move.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, before we pass on, may I ask my noble friend whether this Committee—
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I apologise for interrupting my noble friend but I noticed the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition rising and I think it would be in accordance with the normal practice if he were first man in after the opening wicket had fallen.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I hope that my wicket will fall very quickly. The situation is slightly difficult because we are debating a Motion, and instead of noble Lords' making speeches on Questions we now have noble Lords asking questions on a Motion, and speakers have the right to speak only once. But I would congratulate the noble Earl, because this is really a striking breakthrough, or breakback, to the days when Parliament appointed many more Select Committees. This is a formidable subject, and one that is likely to provide matters for consideration not merely through one Session but through many Sessions, because it is very much an area of the future. As I understand it, the decision was taken to set up a broad-based Committee which would not necessarily—indeed, I think it would be impossible—comprehend every single sport or leisure activity out of doors. It will be possible for the main Committee to appoint sub-committees and to invite people to co-operate as assessors —indeed, at a later stage it may be necessary to enlarge the Committee. But I think that the first job of the Committee will be to survey the whole field and decide how they are going to work
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in what is a very important area of human activity. I certainly support the Motion.
BARONESS BURTON or COVENTRY: My Lords, if I may be the third man in, several noble Lords have spoken to me about this Committee and, while not wishing to appear too self-important, I wonder whether I may say that the noble Earl the Lord Privy Seal was kind enough to raise this matter with me. I should very much have liked to serve on this Committee, if he had subsequently decided to invite me, but I am afraid that pressure of work made it quite impossible for me to accept any additional commitment at the present time. Indeed, this was the main reason for my resignation from the Sports Council in June last: the other one being that I had an excellent exit line provided for me by this Government, as those familiar with the subject will know. As somebody who has worked for 20 years in both Houses on this, may I wish the Committee every success and may I, in all humility, from the Back Benches congratulate the noble Earl on having formed such an excellent Committee.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I should like to echo what the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition has said. This is a vastly important field and I think it will become more important as we move towards the end of the century. I think it is a good thing that a powerful Committee of your Lordships' House should be now looking into this matter. I believe that the Committee as proposed to be constituted will be broadly based. I certainly agree with what the noble Lord has said: that we do not know how long it will take the Committee to conclude their studies. Maybe the Committee's composition will change from time to time, and if there should come a time when the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, whose contribution in this field we all acknowledge (I remember very well her constant questioning on the Sports Council), has time available, then I am sure that the members of the Committee would wish to avail themselves of her very considerable expertise on this subject.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, will the terms of reference of this excellent Committee enable them to consider the

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preservation of the peace of the countryside for the benefit of those who wish to enjoy their leisure without noise?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am certain that that falls within the terms of reference of the Committee.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I interrupt on a matter of procedure, with the greatest respect to the noble Earl the Leader of the House? This is a Motion before the House, and I would suggest that he should allow noble Lords to make their remarks rather than, no doubt 'very helpfully, seek to answer each one—for which, incidentally, he requires the leave of the House.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, with the leave of the House, may I say that I was simply interrupting the debate before the noble Lord sat down, but I forgot to mention that or to ask for leave.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, is it not the case that both noble Lords have exhausted their right to speak?
3.31 p.m.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, I confess that when I looked at this Motion on the Order Paper I was somewhat mystified, because it refers to a "demand for facilities" for sport. I was not quite clear—perhaps the noble Earl can clarify the point for me and no doubt for other Members of your Lordships' House—whether the demand is by Members of your Lordships' House for sport in which they can engage. I ask that question advisedly, because I understand that in the other place they are considering the provision of 'additional amenities which are not available to your Lordships' House—and, indeed, some of them are not available to the other place. For example, they are asking for a swimming pool, presumably because now that the salaries are to be increased they can indulge in more leisure and gaze upon the further emoluments available to them. I should like to know whether, as a result of the deliberations and recommendations of this Committee, we are to be provided with amenities of that character. I heard the noble Earl only indistinctly when he spoke, and I was not clear on the point that I have now ventured to address myself to; namely, whether the provision
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of sport is intended for your Lordships' House or for the general public. I should like that point to be cleared up.
I ask that for another reason—and I hope this will not incur a rebuke from the noble Lord, Lord Byers, who acts as a kind of amateur Speaker in this House, as I observed yesterday afternoon in the course of a little altercation for which I was in no way responsible; I was quite an innocent victim. I am intensely interested in the qualifications of my colleagues. I say that quite honestly. I read the Parliamentary Companion frequently; I am a voracious reader of Who's Who, Debret and the rest of the publications which refer to the qualifications of my colleagues. It is difficult to gain the information that one requires.
I would venture to ask, since this proposal is before your Lordships, what are the qualifications of these colleagues of mine. Are there any boxers among them; any milers; any who have played soccer or rugby? I myself, for example, was at one time centre half for our village football club. What is more, I ventured to put on the gloves with no less a person than Frank Cox, who was the lightweight champion of Australia—but, of course, I took them off very soon afterwards. What are the qualifications of these people? What are their services to sport? I listened to my noble friend Lady Burton of Coventry, with whose qualifications I have been familiar over a long period of time; I am not sure whether she was in the Olympic Games, but I am certain that she deserved to be. What are the qualifications of the members of the Committee? What do they know about sport? What can they recommend to us? Are they going to ask for the advice of those engaged in sport? Are they even going to ask Members of your Lordships' House who engage in sport of various kinds to come before the Committee as witnesses? I think we are entitled to know. I recognise that I am on very dangerous ground here, because I am speaking at length, but I understand that this is a Motion and not Question Time. I see that I have the assent of the noble Lord, Lord Byers, and now I feel quite happy. But despite my happiness, I have come to my conclusion. Can I get the information for which I ask?
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, I rise only to mention one problem on this Motion and it is this. Apart from the contents of the Motion, in the seven years that I have been a Member of your Lordships' House, whenever I have seen the names of members of Committees I have always wondered how they were picked. As I say, I have been here seven years and I have never been on a Committee on any sort of subject. My only problem is this: have you to be a blue-eyed boy or a blue-eyed girl, or have you to kiss the feet of the Establishment, before you get on a Committee? I should like the Leader of the House to tell me —I am only an innocent abroad here—how it happens that Back Benchers who do service never get a chance to sit on any Select Committee.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, there is one question I should like to ask my noble friend, although I think I know the answer to it. Is it quite clear that this Committee can appoint subcommittees from the rest of the House? It is a most important task that this Committee is undertaking, for I believe that leisure in the future is going to become of much greater importance. When one goes through industrial towns in this country and sees grey-faced men standing about on the street corners with absolutely nothing to do, men who have probably been retired at the age of 60, one's heart goes out to them. Septuagenarians like myself have a golf course and a garden; these people have nothing until the pubs open. I think it is important that this Committee should have a strong golfing element in it, to try to provide miniature golf courses, putting greens and so on for the veterans of industry who are being thrown out at a lower and lower age these days, who have no gardens and who have nothing to do.
THE EARL OF ARRAN: My Lords, I have one question that I should like to ask. Is this a Select Committee of the House? If so, when are Her Majesty's, Government going to appoint a Select Committee to investigate the need for a Bill of Rights, to which Her Majesty's Government are beholden, bespoken and committed?
LORD ROBBINS: My Lords, may I seek an explanation of the thought behind the penultimate paragraph in the
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Motion? When I first read this Motion I thought that it was a purely formal matter which need raise no anxiety in the breast of any noble Lord. But having listened to the noble Earl on the probable duration of the deliberations of this Committee, it seemed to me that it was possible that evidence which would be of interest to many of your Lordships, besides the members of the Committee, might be unduly withheld.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I should like to welcome this Committee. It is a very important subject and, if I may say so with respect, an extremely well-chosen Committee has been selected to deal with it. There are two points which I should like to make. One is that there is at times, to some extent, a contradiction between sport and leisure. Admittedly, in cricket you can enjoy both, but there are some forms of sport which interfere with the leisure of other people. I think that increasingly people are looking for the leisure and peace and quiet that the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, touched on. In many cases that is, I think, a more important subject than the provision of golf courses, football grounds, tennis courts or anything of that kind. I hope that the Committee will pay a great deal of attention to that aspect of the matter.
Following on from that is the problem of access to the countryside and the manner in which that infringes upon agriculture. There is at least one member of the Committee who is an experienced agriculturist, and I am sure that even if his colleagues wish to ignore some of these matters, he will not allow them to be ignored. I would suggest that the Committee should give a great deal of attention to the manner in which access of the town dweller to the countryside for leisure purposes can be married in so that not only does it not interfere with agriculture but in fact can supplement the normal and proper activities of the town.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, in the context of this rather wide discussion, may I ask whether the noble Earl is able to give some hope that the Committee will give an indication of the difference between sport and recreation? Leisure is certainly a different thing where a great deal of people's time is consumed by recreation that is certainly not sport.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, my words will be very few. I just want to refer to one specific point in which I have some kind of general interest. I do not want to indulge in boxing reminiscences like my noble friend Lord Shinwell, who told us most amusingly about one of his sparring partners, but in 1917, when I was training for one of the boxing championships of the British Army in France, my sparring partner was none other than Bandsman Rice, the light heavyweight champion of the British Empire. My question is this. There are many local authorities in this country who have plans on their books for the building of large-scale swimming baths, those swimming baths to form the central point in a vast leisure complex embodying facilities for all kinds of sports. I merely want to ask whether the Secretary of State for the Environment, who normally has to give his sanction for the commencement of such works, will hold up that sanction until the Committee has considered that particular aspect and made its report.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, may I ask to what the word "they" refers in the terms of reference?
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, I am completely puzzled by this Motion. I cannot understand why sport, of all subjects, should be the special prerogative of your Lordships' House. There is the Sports Council and the Countryside Commission, both of whom I should have thought are very active in this field. Why do we now have to have a new Committee consisting entirely of members of the Peerage and drawn from a body who after all are mostly well on in years?
3.44 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, if I may with permission rise again—I think I have been up perhaps too often—I will take some of these points in reverse order. The noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, asked why there should be a Select Committee of your Lordships' House because this might be duplicating the work of the Sports Council and the Countryside Commission. I do not think that this Committee will duplicate the work; I think it is a very desirable thing that Parliament—and this
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House is an integral part of Parliament—should have a wide look at the whole field, which is of enormous importance for the future. May I say that both the Sports Council and the Countryside Commission have very much welcomed the proposed establishment of this Committee of your Lordships' House.
Coming back now to chronological order, referring to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, I am quite certain that the matter he raised falls within the terms of reference of this proposed Committee, if your Lordships decide to set it up. The facilities for sport and leisure in your Lordships' House should also be considered by them and doubtless they will pay close attention to what the noble Lord, Lord Shin-well, has said in this respect. So far as the qualifications of the Committee are concerned it would be invidious for me to go into that but I think the noble Lord himself would admit that from his intimate knowledge of his colleagues in your Lordships' House a good many Members of this proposed Committee have very eminent qualifications indeed. It is not only, as I see it, a question of having specialist qualifications, but of trying to look ahead at what the requirements are in sport and leisure for our country for the next decade or half century or so. One needs a wide view as well as a specialist view.
The noble Lord, Lord Blyton, asked how Committees of this sort are chosen. We discussed this question a short time ago when we were discussing procedure in your Lordships' House. All I would say is that the Committees are chosen by consultations between the Parties. The noble Lord suggested that this Committee had a kind of Front Bench element in it, but there is also a considerable Back Bench element in it.
I can assure my noble friend Lord Hawke that golf will certainly fall within the purview of this Committee. I can also assure the noble Lord, Lord Walston —and I am glad that he was inclined to welcome the establishment, if your Lordships so decide, of this Committee—that clearly the question of the right balance here between sport, recreation and also the enjoyment of the countryside is one which the Committee will wish to consider. I see nothing in the proposed

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terms of reference which will rule this out. This seems to me, if I may say so, to be central to our consideration of this matter over the next decade or so. There were some other points put to me, one of which was by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner. I am afraid that, rather feebly, I have written the name "Gardiner" firmly in my notes but have put nothing after his name. I was wondering whether he would remind me—
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, I was merely asking to what the word "they" in the terms of reference referred to.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords. I think that what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, pointed out arises clearly from a misprint. I think that if "impediment" were made "impediments", that would deal with it; but I must say that I completely agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, as always on a matter of grammar my noble friend is absolutely right and "impediment" is to blame. It should be "impediments", and I think "they" then falls into its proper place. It was nothing more nor less than a misprint. The noble Earl, Lord Arran, asked about the Bill of Rights, and I think that is rather a different matter. We have read his remarks on the subject not long ago in the Evening News. He seems to have vanished since he asked the Question, but he has apparently apologised to me without my knowing it. I apologise to him for raising the tone of my voice in that respect. I would say that I personally view this as something of an experiment. It is a long time since we have had a Select Committee of your Lordships' House looking at a particular aspect of our nation's affairs. I personally believe that in your Lordships' House there is a pool of experience and expertise which is not properly used for the nation's benefit. I also believe that the judicious employment of Select Committees is one of the ways by which that
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pool of experience and expertise can be more properly exploited for the benefit of the nation.
I also profoundly believe that if one looks at the trends in our society to-day, the question of how we are going to spend our leisure in our society to-day and of how we are going to provide better facilities for sport—not only for the young, which is very necessary, but also for those who have just retired, for example —are going to be very important questions and ones to which we, as responsible citizens, ought to be addressing ourselves. I also believe—and I say this with all deference to the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton—that it is quite possible for a responsible Select Committee of your Lordships' House to do these things without tripping over other people's toes. I commend this Motion to your Lordships' House, although I take due note of the various incidental criticisms which have been made along the way, as I am sure the Select Committee will do if your Lordships decide, in your wisdom, to appoint such a Committee.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, may I apologetically remind him that he did not answer my question about swimming baths with vast sport and recreation complexes built around them? Many local authorities have plans on their books and they are awaiting sanction from the Minister of the Environment. I asked whether the Minister would hold up approval of these schemes until after this Committee had reported.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am sure that if we establish such a Committee we shall have a sensible Committee which would not wish to put any unnecessary impediment in the way; and in my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment we have a sensible Minister who will act accordingly and sensibly. I can straightaway give the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, the assurance for which he asked.
On Question, Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly.

BANKING AND FINANCIAL DEALINGS BILL
3.52 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. It is remarkably fitting that we are considering to-day the Banking and Financial Dealings Bill which is concerned with, among other matters, bank holidays. For exactly a hundred years ago the then Sir John Lubbock, who was later to become the first Lord Avebury, was responsible in another place for seeing on to the Statute Book the first Bank Holidays Act. As noble Lords may know, this measure laid the basis for our modern bank holiday legislation. Like his successor, whom we have recently welcomed to this House (and I am sorry that he is not in his place at the moment), the first Lord Avebury had a career of great distinction in the other place. He was a man of great achievement. Not only was he a man active in public affairs, but he was also a scientist of note and a banker. Not the least of his achievements was the Act relating to bank holildays to which I referred a moment or so ago. This proved to have consequences not only for bank clerks but also for a great number of other people. Noble Lords may find it helpful to the understanding of the Bill now before the House if I briefly explain how this came about.
Before 1871, there were only two days in the year, apart from Sundays, which were recognised under English Common Law as days on which the banks did not do business. They were Good Friday and Christmas Day. Sir John Lubbock wanted to ensure that bank employees would have more opportunities for relaxation than these two days afforded. He did that by providing in his 1871 bank holidays legislation that certain days should be kept as close holidays in all banks. Although there was nothing in the Bank Holidays Act about this, the days prescribed in that Act gradually came to be fairly generally observed as public holidays in England and Wales, though not in Scotland. And thus there came to be established the institution of bank holidays, which for a great number of people in England and Wales denotes a day off from work. The 1871 Act was slightly amended and extended by subsequent
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legislation; but its main provisions have remained virtually unchanged. And it is, I think, a tribute to Sir John Lubbock that in the Bill now before this House we are proposing no change in the principles of his legislation. In essence all that the Banking and Financial Dealings Bill does is to bring up to date existing law. It does this in three main ways. First, it consolidates and makes some minor amendments to the enactments relating to bank holidays. Secondly, it provides for the closure of banks and other financial institutions in the national interest on days not bank holidays. And, thirdly, it makes certain amendments to the Bills of Exchange Act 1882 to bring that Act into line with present-day conditions.
May I now explain the Bill in a little more detail, as it is a somewhat technical one. Clause 1 and Schedule 1 restate the main essentials of the existing law relating to bank holidays and make just three changes in that law. The first is that the Bill makes permanent provision for the Spring and Summer Bank Holidays in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to be on the last Mondays in May and August. Your Lordships may recall that, following the publication in 1963 of the White Paper on Staggered Holidays, the last Conservative Administration decided, after full consultation with the interests concerned, that the August Bank Holiday in the years 1965 and 1966 should be changed, on an experimental basis, from the first Monday in August to the last. The previous Administration continued the experiment by changing the dates of both the May and the August Bank Holidays in the ensuing years with slight variations. The experiment has now continued for several years, and the change of the Spring and Summer Bank Holidays to the last Mondays in May and August has been found to be generally acceptable in England and Wales. It has already been announced that the holidays will be on those days in 1972, 1973 and 1974, and we consider that the time has come to fix the dates on a permanent basis. The Bill does this and removes uncertainty about the dates of these two holidays in future years.
Your Lordships will note that these changes do not apply to Scotland. I ought to explain that bank holidays are not generally observed as public holidays

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in Scotland, as they are in England and Wales. To meet the wishes of Scottish banking interests, the bank holidays in Scotland have now reverted to the existing statutory dates—the first Mondays in May and August. The second change made by Clause 1 and Schedule 1 of the Bill is the addition to the list of bank holidays in England and Wales of December 27 in years when December 25 is on a Sunday. This merely recognises a long-standing tradition. It has for many years been the practice, when Christmas Day has fallen on a Sunday, to use the powers in the Bank Holidays Act 1871 to proclaim Tuesday, December 27, a bank holiday by Royal Proclamation. The Bill removes the need for a Royal Proclamation by making statutory provision for a bank holiday in these circumstances. Your Lordships will be aware that there is already statutory provision—in the Holidays Extension Act 1875—for a bank holiday on December 27 when December 26 falls on a Sunday. This provision is retained in the present Bill.
The changes which I have so far mentioned relate only to bank holidays in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The third change relates only to Scotland. Your Lordships will see that the bank holidays listed in Schedule 1 of the Bill include an additional bank holiday in Scotland, to be held on January 2, or, when that day or January 1 falls on a Sunday, on January 3. Clause 1 provides that the first of these additional bank holidays in Scotland will be in 1973. This change will bring the number of Scottish bank holidays up to six, the same as the number of bank and Common Law holidays in England and Wales. This additional holiday in the Scottish banks should not affect holidays among the general public in Scotland since public holidays in Scotland are, for the most part, arranged on a local rather than a national basis and do not, on the whole, coincide with bank holidays.
As I have said, these are the only three changes which the Bill makes in the existing bank holiday arrangements. It has been suggested in another place that we should take the opportunity of the Bill to appoint additional bank holidays. Christmas Eve, New Year's Day, May 1, the Queen's Birthday, Europe Day and United Nations Day have all
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been suggested as suitable dates for additional bank holidays. To support the case for additional bank holidays, it has been argued that there are fewer so-called public holidays in this country (and I am glad to see that the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, is in her place) than there are in the member States of the European Community, and that therefore the number of bank holidays should be increased in this country. We have considered these requests for additional bank holidays very carefully but have come to the conclusion that additional public holidays are not a suitable subject for legislation. Additional public holidays are a matter for negotiation between the parties concerned, between employer and employee, as part of the normal bargaining processes. In this way those concerned can take account of the needs of individual undertakings, local custom, the preference of employees, and other local circumstances in a way that would not be possible if additional bank holidays were declared.
I turn now to Clause 2. This clause confers a power on the Treasury to close in the national interest, either wholly or in respect of particular types of transaction, banks and a number of other financial institutions such as authorised dealers in gold and foreign exchange. the commodity futures markets, the National Giro and stock exchanges. Your Lordships will recall that the previous Administration found it necessary to close the banks at the time of devaluation in 1967 and during the gold speculation in 1968 by means of the proclamation of a special bank holiday under the Bank Holidays Act 1871. Noble Lords will probably remember that this procedure had some inconvenient side effects. For example, was the special bank holiday to be kept as a bank holiday for the purposes of wage agreements or for the purposes of parking meter restrictions; or for the purposes of bus and Underground timetables or, for that matter, for the purposes of the collection of mail? These points were all eventually sorted out, but they demonstrated the inconveniences which could arise when there was recourse to the bank holiday legislation in such circumstances. The powers conferred by Clause 2 enable such inconveniences to be avoided and allow the Treasury to close the banks without having recourse

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to the bank holiday legislation. They also provide for the closure, in the national interest, of a number of other financial institutions.
The third main objective of the Bill is contained in Clause 3, which brings up to date certain of the rather technical provisions of the Bills of Exchange Act 1882. First, the clause takes account of the fact that the banks now close on Saturdays by defining Saturday as a "non-business day" for the purpose of Section 92 of the Act. This section provides that where the Act limits the time for doing any act or thing to less than three days, non-business days are to be excluded from the reckoning time. The second change which Clause 3 makes in the 1882 Act is to abolish the three "days of grace" which Section 14(1) of that Act allows in the case of all bills not payable on demand to be added to the time of payment as fixed by the bill. This brings practice in this country into line with general international practice.
The third and final change which Clause 3 makes is to tidy up the provisions about the payment of bills falling due on non-business clays. It does this by providing that all such bills shall be payable on the succeeding business day. Your Lordships may remember (and those who have passed legal or accountancy examinations will certainly do so) that Section 14(1) of the Bills of Exchange Act 1882 differentiates between bills falling due on Common Law holidays, which it makes payable on the preceding business day, and bills falling due on statutory bank holidays, which it makes payable on the succeeding business day. The reason for this distinction is far from clear, and Clause 3 of the Bill puts the law on a more consistent basis. My Lords, I have attempted to outline the main provisions and objectives of the Bill, and, as you will have observed, much of it is pretty technical. But I hope that your Lordships will agree that it is a useful measure and that you will give it your support. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª. —(Lord Drumalbyn.)
4.4 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, we are obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, for the careful way in which he has explained the purposes of this Bill.
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The changes in procedure for which the Bill provides are sensible, and so far as I am concerned I do not propose to delay unduly the time taken on this Bill, either at this stage or at later stages, for I know that there is some pressure on the legislative timetable. I do not propose, either, to put in a wholesale bid for more holidays. There is something in the case the noble Lord makes about local considerations and discussion between employers and employees, but it does not dispose of the argument for an additional public holiday in parts of the United Kingdom. I refer of course to New Year's Day. I believe there is a case for looking again at the possibility of having New Year's Day as a public holiday. I leave the general case of more holidays, as I say, although we have always maintained that the impact of automation should mean that we have greater leisure and more holidays as one way of spreading available work. I am speaking here about one particular day. In certain parts of the United Kingdom New Year's Day is a public holiday. The noble Lord has already told us of the provision that is being made so far as Scotland is concerned. Some companies already accept the inevitable and do not work on New Year's Day. Some individuals also declare to themselves that the day should be a holiday. I should have thought it would be just as well if we accepted this trend and made a national holiday of that day. After all, it is better, more efficient and more economic if on certain occasions, on certain days, there is a national decision rather than leaving it to local agreement or company agreement.
I understand that one of the arguments against this is the inconvenience that would follow if there were no banking facilities available for possibly two weekends consecutively. I cannot believe that in the modern world, with the facilities that now exist for transacting banking business, we shall find our commercial and industrial life dislocated if banks are closed for just one more day. The situation we shall find, if we are not careful, is that the banks are open and there is no other commercial or industrial work transacted on that day, and there is as a result no call at all for the banking facilities. Therefore, I suggest to the noble Lord that here is a special case, and he would do well to have it re-examined.
4.8 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for the way in which he has received this Bill and also for saying that he does not propose to delay unduly its passage. I would say only this in regard to his special plea for New Year's Day. Obviously, this suggestion was considered, with other proposals; but the main point here is, as I said in my speech, that there is nothing to prevent employers and employees from agreeing to New Year's Day being taken off from work. As the noble Lord says, apart from Scotland, this already happens in parts of the country. I understand that on Tyneside and Tees-side New Year's Day is customarily observed as a holiday. In parts of the country where New Year's Day is customarily recognised as a holiday it is, I am told, not necessarily an additional holiday; it may be substituted for some other more generally recognised holiday. But this simply demonstrates that the present arrangements are flexible, and we do not see any need to alter them.
With regard to the noble Lord's fear that only the banks and nothing else would be open on New Year's Day, I would point out that there is nothing to prevent banks from closing as well without its being a bank holiday—as they did, for example, on Saturday mornings; but in that case they must, of course, give due notice to their customers, because I understand that if they do not do so an element of breach of contract may be involved. But if everybody agreed that New Year's Day should be a holiday, and if this was agreed between employers and employees, I think the question would tend to resolve itself without the necessity for legislation. Our view is that, on the whole, because of the legal implications of bank holidays it is better to keep their number to a minimum.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I accept the nub of the point which the noble Lord has made, but he has not answered the particular case I made. I have myself said that there are company agreements and local practices providing for a holiday on New Year's Day, but it is inefficient for me to go into my office and telephone to factories on Tees-side when they are closed on that day. Would not
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the noble Lord therefore undertake to look again at this point?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I will certainly undertake to look at it again between this stage and the next. It would be extremely churlish of me to say that I would not; but I cannot give any assurances that we shall be able to change our mind. I appreciate the spirit in which the noble Lord has put forward this suggestion, and I hope that the House will now be prepared to give the Bill a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2ª, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

SUNDAY CINEMA BILL [H.L.]
4.12 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Before explaining its provisions I should like to thank the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for his interest in it, and also to thank his Department. Both the Minister and his Department have given me much valuable help and advice, particularly legal advice over the drafting, while at the same time maintaining their strictly neutral position. I think the fact that the Bill is in a pretty good shape is in part due to them, and I am grateful to them. May I also thank the Parliamentary Clerks of this House for their unfailing help and advice in the drafting and the tabling of the Bill.
The Bill makes two main changes in the law concerning Sunday cinema performances; they are described in Clause 1. First, it seeks to bring to an end the existing system of local option, thereby enabling cinemas to be opened on Sunday throughout England and Wales, subject to conditions being imposed by the cinema licensing authority. Secondly, it brings to an end the compulsory deductions from Sunday profits payable to charity and to the Cinematograph Fund. I shall have a little more to say about these two points later.
As your Lordships are no doubt aware, Sunday cinema opening is at present governed by the Sunday Entertainments Act 1932. In any area to which the Act applies the cinema licensing authority is

913
given express power to authorise cinemas to open, subject to any conditions imposed, and provided two compulsory conditions are imposed, one dealing with employment on a Sunday and the other dealing with deductions from profits to be paid to charity and to a Cinematograph Fund administered by the Privy Council for the improvement of the film. The Act of 1932 enables the local authorities of county boroughs, non-county boroughs and urban and rural districts to submit draft Orders. Provision is made for local objections to be entered and for a poll or local inquiry to be held in certain circumstances. Once an Order has been submitted it must be laid before both Houses of Parliament and requires the operation of the Affirmative Resolution procedure of both Houses before it can come into operation. Sunday Cinematograph Orders have now been made for all but one of the county boroughs in England and Wales, and for probably the greater number of other districts having cinemas.
The Crathorne Committee, set up by the Home Secretary in 1961 to review the law relating to Sunday entertainments, sports, pastimes and trading in England and Wales, reported in 1964 and recommended that cinemas should be allowed to open anywhere on Sunday and that the charity tax should be abolished. Clause 1(1) of this Bill gives effect to the first of these two recommendations by abrogating the words—and I quote, "to which this section extends", in Section 1 of the Sunday Entertainments Act of 1932. The effect of this Amendment would be to give cinema licensing authorities power anywhere in England or Wales to allow cinemas in their area to open on a Sunday. They would retain power to attach conditions to such an opening, although the second Amendment made in the clause would of course bring to an end the compulsory charity tax condition. But the exercise of these powers would in future, by reason of Clause 2, be subject to a right of appeal.
Subsection (2) abrogates paragraph (b) of the proviso to Section 1(1) of the 1932 Act, which required the licensing authority to make it a condition of Sunday opening that contributions were made to charity and to the Cinematograph Fund from the profit of such an opening. The
914
Crathorne Committee recommended the abolition of the charity tax, about which it said—and with this I fully agree—
"We found it difficult to discover that the 'tax' had any moral justification even when it was introduced; if there were ever grounds of expediency, they no longer exist."
Clause 2 gives a right of appeal to any person aggrieved by, first, the refusal by an authority to allow a place to be opened for cinema entertainment on a Sunday or, secondly, any conditions which the authority may have imposed under Section 1(1) of the 1932 Act as amended by this Bill. The clause achieves this by applying the provisions of Section 6(1) and (2) of the 1952 Cinematograph Act to a refusal to allow Sunday opening, and to any conditions relating to Sunday opening imposed by the licensing authority. That section gave a right of appeal to quarter sessions and applied the procedure of the Summary Jurisdiction Act 1879. These provisions have now been amended by the Courts Act 1971, and as at present drafted I am sorry to say that the clause is defective in that it fails to take account of the changes made by the 1971 Act, and in particular the repeal of Section 6(2) of the 1952 Act. If your Lordships give the Bill a Second Reading I propose at the Committee stage to introduce an Amendment to delete from the Bill the reference to Section 6(2) of the Cinematograph Act 1952.
Clause 3 deals with the winding-up of the Cinematograph Fund. Under Section 1 of the 1932 Act cinemas are allowed to open on Sundays subject to licensing control by the local authority and to payment to the licensing authority of a sum, which could be related to the estimated profits of Sunday performances, to go partly to charity and partly to the Cinematograph Fund. The amount of this sum, the charity tax, is fixed by the licensing authority. The proportion which is to go to the Cinematograph Fund is prescribed in the Cinematograph Fund Regulations 1933, and it amounts to 5 per cent. In practice, this percentage has been used to support the British Film Institute. The amounts accruing to the Fund have been dwindling over the years. During the last decade many local authorities have collected a purely nominal amount and some have collected nothing at all. The figures for March, 1971, show a balance of £1,550 after receipts of

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£2,500, expenses of £450 and a grant of £500.
Subsection (1) empowers the Privy Council to wind up the Fund when it appears that no further sums will accrue to it. None can be earned after the date of operation of the Bill, but amounts falling due in respect of the period up to the date of operation of the Bill are likely to trickle in slowly. For this reason, the date of winding-up is left to the Privy Council. This subsection also provides for the disposal of the balance of monies in the Fund in accordance with the purposes for which the Fund was set up, less only appropriate administrative expenses of the Privy Council. Subsection (2) makes provision for the auditing of the final account.
Clause 4 deals with the consequential repeals of the 1932 Act. It provides for the provisions specified in the Schedule to be repealed. As drafted these are all repeals of the 1932 Act. There are, however, certain repeals in other Acts which should be included in the Schedule, and the Bill is defective without those. I propose moving the necessary Amendments at a later stage of the Bill. Clause 5 defines two expressions used in the Bill: "the Act of 1932" means the Sunday Entertainments Act 1932, and "cinematograph entertainment" has the same meaning as in the Act of 1932.
Clause 6 contains the formal provisions for the short title, extent and commencement date. The Act would not, of course, apply to Scotland or Northern Ireland, as the Sunday Entertainments Act 1932 extends only to England and Wales. In Scotland, Sunday observance is controlled by local legislation, and, of course, in Ireland this is a matter for the Northern Ireland Government. Since the purpose of the Bill is only to amend the system set up by the 1932 Act it is unnecessary, I am advised, for it to extend to Scotland. The Act would come into operation on April 1, 1972. For accounting purposes, the obligation to make contributions to the Cinematograph Fund needs to be brought to an end on a quarter day. I propose, therefore, if this Bill is given a Second Reading, to table an Amendment to alter the commencement date to July 1, 1972, the next quarter day, to ensure that the Bill is not lost if it cannot com
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plete all its stages in both Houses before April 1, 1972.
I apologise for the fact that the provisions which this Bill seeks to repeal are rather complicated. Basically, the principles in the Bill were passed by this House when the Bill of my noble friend Lord Willis was considered, and it is really the non-controversial parts of that Bill, and it seeks to bring the law up to date with current practice. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª. —(Lord Strabolgi.)
4.25 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, on the thorough and authoritative manner in which he has introduced this Bill to your Lordships' House this afternoon. As he has explained, the purpose of the Bill is to implement one of the recommendations of the Crathorne Committee on the Law on Sunday Observance. The first recommendation of that Committee, which reported in 1964, was that cinemas should be allowed to open anywhere on Sunday and that the "charity tax" should be abolished. The purpose of this Bill, as we have heard, is to bring the system of local option to an end, together with the charity tax which was associated with it in 1932.
Noble Lords who have followed this matter will be aware of the various unsuccessful attempts which have been made to implement the Crathorne recommendations concerning sport and entertainment. Several Private Members' Bills have been introduced in the recent past and have encountered strong opposition on a number of issues. The question of the observance of Sunday as a day of rest, the question of employment, and the question of possible noise and nuisance from professional sporting occasions were perhaps the most important of these. But these issues hardly arise, if at all, on the present Bill promoted by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, for the issue of principle was effectively decided in 1932 in an Act which, as he explained, contains provisions safeguarding the position of those who may be employed on Sundays. Since the Act was passed, under the procedure of local option, Sunday cinema opening

917
has been introduced in England and Wales in every county borough except one—which, interestingly enough, is in the North-East of England and not in Wales—and steps are in hand, I understand, to introduce it there. It also applies in well over 80 per cent. of the non-county boroughs and in about half of the other county districts. In the light of these figures, it would seem that Sunday cinema opening is acceptable to the great majority of the population, and that the absence of Orders in some, mainly rural, areas is probably more of an indication of the absence of a cinema there than of any opposition to the principle of opening cinemas on Sundays.
In these circumstances, the Government would not wish to raise any objection to the implementation of the principle behind this Bill. Noble Lords appreciate the convention with Private Members' legislation, which prevents me from going beyond a position of neutrality. But I can assure the House that on this occasion the neutrality is a benevolent one. I should like to acknowledge the gratitude which the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, expressed at the beginning of his speech to members of my Department for the advice that they have been able to offer him in drawing up the Bill which is now being introduced.
As regards the provisions of the Bill itself, these appear to be generally in satisfactory form. Clause 1 brings to an end the system of local option, and also the compulsory condition under which contributions to the charity tax are exacted. Although this condition is compulsory, local authorities have a discretion about the amount to be raised under it, and in recent years they have exercised this discretion in such a way as to reduce the contribution from this source to an almost nominal amount. As the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum of the Bill indicates, the Cinematograph Fund stood on March 31, 1971, at £1,550 and receipts in recent years have been of that order. The main change effected by the clause, therefore, is the ending of the system of local option.
I might add that if this Bill passes it will effect an administrative simplification which comes about at a particularly opportune time. Cinema licensing authorities are county and county borough councils, which have the power to dele
918
gate this responsibility to district councils or to the local justices. These powers have been exercised in some cases but not in others. The system of local option in the 1932 Act, however, confers the power of local decision on the councils of boroughs (whether county or non-county) and of county districts. Sunday cinema opening may, therefore, be authorised for an area which is not coterminous with that of the cinema licensing authority. I am advised that this has not caused any serious inconvenience up till now, but it is a matter which could possibly cause some difficulty under local government reorganisation in the future.
It might be thought that although the Bill brings to an end the formal system of local option, it leaves a degree of discretion with the local licensing authority in that under the 1932 Act, as it would be amended by the Bill, it remains a matter for the licensing authority to decide whether to allow a cinema to open on a Sunday. I am, however, advised that, Parliament having decided in principle that Sunday cinema opening should be lawful, it would not be open to an individual authority to refuse to allow a cinema to open solely on this ground. There might, of course, be some specific ground on which the licensing authority might justify a refusal to allow Sunday opening but it would have to be a reason which did not depend solely on the issue of principle of Sunday observance. To put the matter beyond doubt, Clause 2 of the Bill gives a right of appeal against refusal to allow a cinema to open on Sunday or against any of the conditions attached to the licence in respect of Sunday opening. This will ensure that the purpose of the Bill cannot be circumvented by the imposition of unreasonable conditions.
Clause 3 of the Bill makes provision for the winding up of the Cinematograph Fund, which is already almost moribund, as I have pointed out. Indeed, the Bill provides not only for the demise of the Fund but also for the decent burial of the remains and appropriate obituary notice in the form of a final audit. The remaining provisions in the Bill concern various repeals and formal matters.
In his opening speech, the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has already drawn your Lordships' attention to one or two small points in the Bill in which it is technically

919
defective. As he told your Lordships, since the Bill was first drafted last Session the Crown Court Act 1971 has been passed, and has made certain amendments to the appeal provisions in Section 6 of the Cinematograph Act 1952 which are applied by Clause 2 of the Bill. A minor amendment of the Bill is needed to take account of this. There is also the question of the date on which the Bill is to come into operation, and the noble Lord told us that he has in mind an Amendment concerning that as well.
Therefore, my Lords, the Government's advice to your Lordships is that this is a measure on which individual noble Lords will wish to make up their own minds. The position of the Government is that it is neutral in this matter but, given the circumstances, this is a neutrality which I have already described as benevolent. I must, however, make clear that no Government time can be made available for the Bill in another place, and if it is successful in your Lordships' House it will need to succeed elsewhere on its own merits. The Bill, as drafted, as I have mentioned' and as the promoter has acknowledged, has certain minor defects, but these can be put right and, if suitably amended and approved by Parliament, this Bill would constitute a useful simplification of the present law in this field.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I should like to thank the Minister for his remarks and for the general welcome that he has given to the Bill, while of course maintaining his benevolent neutrality.
On Question, Bill read 2ª, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

ROAD TRAFFIC (FOREIGN VEHICLES) BILL [H.L.]
4.35 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Sandford.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD MERTHYR in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Power in certain cases to prohibit driving of foreign vehicles]:
LORD CHAMPION LORD CHAMPION moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 14, at end insert—
("or (c) an authorised person exercises, in relation to the driver of the vehicle, any functions of that person under Part III of the Road Traffic Act 1971 (Licensing of Drivers of Vehicles)").
The noble Lord said: The first Amendment which appears in my name on the Marshalled List is a paving Amendment for Amendment No. 4, and does not make sense without reference to No. 4. Therefore, if I have the Committee's permission, I propose to discuss both together. What I am seeking to ensure by these Amendments is that the standard of driving of foreign vehicles operated on the roads of this country is at least as good as the driving we expect from our own lorry drivers. In the main, I am glad to say, we certainly do get excellent driving from most of our own lorry drivers; indeed, one feels reasonably safe when approaching them or passing them in most circumstances, where they can in fact help you.
When we were discussing the Second Reading of this Bill on Wednesday of last week both the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, and I raised the point about the knowledge, or otherwise, of our Highway Code for foreign drivers of goods and public service vehicles coming into our country. I must admit that I myself had a doubt about this, but I had no personal experience or knowledge. My doubt was removed by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, whom I am now glad to see in his place. I am rather hoping that he may be able to support this Amendment. I hope he will not mind if I remind the Committee of what he said. He told us of his conversation with a Belgian driver of a large lorry—or "juggernaut", as such vehicles are sometimes called—who appeared to be an admirable driver with an unblemished record, but who admitted that when he came here for the first time he had never heard of the Highway Code. We did not learn from the noble Lord—and perhaps he did not inquire—on which of his subsequent visits here the Belgian driver

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did learn of the Highway Code and get to know something about it, or indeed the extent of the knowledge which I suppose he now has.
To the questions on this matter put by the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, and myself, no reply was made by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford. I make no complaint about this, as clearly the Minister was in some difficulty in trying to fit his reply into a very tight and difficult schedule, occasioned by the nature of the debate that was to follow. It seems to me to be axiomatic that if a professional driver is to drive on the roads of a foreign country he ought to be aware of the rules governing his conduct on the roads of that country. That surely must apply whether it is a British driver on the roads of the Continent, or a foreign driver driving on our roads here.
The difficulties of this I readily admit. The difficulty of language is an immediate and obvious one. The difficulty of language comes in reading a document written in another language, no matter how simply it is expressed. I cannot imagine that many of our drivers would be able to read a code of conduct for the roads in Germany, which was written in German. I cannot imagine that many of our drivers would be able to read a similar code of conduct written in French. Perhaps I may add to that by saying that some of the drivers who travel in both directions have a few rather stumbling phrases which they have picked up, and which enable them to ask directions on the road, but that is about all. What I say here is that translations ought to be available to drivers, so that they may understand what is happening. For example, if I were a transport operator with vehicles operating in Germany, I should expect to provide my drivers with a translation of the main rules governing their conduct when driving in Germany; and the same would apply to anyone driving in France and so on.
The last thing I wish to do is to place anything in the nature of an insuperable bar in the way of the continuing expansion of our trade with countries with whom we stand in an excellent trade relationship to-day, and may very well stand in an even better trade relationship in the future. As far back as 1965, the value of our exports to Europe stood at a figure of 40 per cent. of all British
922
exports. It may be much higher to-day, but I do not have the latest figure. But, certainly, if the hope of the pro-Marketeers is realised, our trade will be greatly in excess of the present figure after our entry into Europe. But having said that, I am bound to say that we cannot agree to the expansion of this sort of traffic at any price; and, certainly, not at the price of road safety. This is the important point in this connection. Perhaps I ought to say, for the sake of accuracy, that not all of the trade is dependent on roll-on, roll-off goods vehicles; much is being carried by rail ferry ships and by the new container traffic, the use of which is increasing daily.
To use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, this Bill has been introduced to deal with
" … the heavy foreign vehicles that arrive here overweight, unsafe, without documents, and being driven by one driver for far longer than our laws permit. These offences, shortcomings and abuses are serious and widespread."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1/12/71; col. 272.]
This is a serious position and this Committee must clearly direct its attention to it. In connection with the road safety aspect, the only mention of the driver in the Bill is in the first column of Schedule 2, and the effect of the appropriate sections of the Transport Act 1968 is to limit the time and periods of duty of drivers of goods and public service vehicles, to require the installation of recording equipment in such vehicles and the keeping of records. There is nothing at all in the Bill about the standards to be obtained by the driver of the vehicle. But, certainly, we ought to demand from foreign drivers as high a standard of driving competence as we expect from our own drivers. That is why the first of the effective parts of this Amendment seeks to ensure that such drivers are conversant with the Highway Code. I must say that I should prefer to meet a substandard vehicle driven by a first-class driver, than a very good vehicle driven by a substandard driver. But, of course, we must aim at such a standard that neither is met on our roads.
The second part of Amendment No. 4 deals with a certificate of competence to drive lorries, especially heavy goods lorries, to be held by the driver. The

923
Amendment specifies that such a certificate should be in accordance with
" … regulations made under an international agreement in pursuance of section 100 of the Transport Act 1968."
That Act was passed just over three years ago, and Section 100 authorises the Minister to make by order
" … such provision as appears to him to be requisite for enabling the United Kingdom to become a party to any international agreement relating to the drivers or crews of vehicles used on international journeys".
When it fell to me to consider this Bill in readiness for the Committee stage, I sought information about any order or orders made under Section 100, and I was profoundly disturbed to learn that no order had been made and laid before Parliament.
As I understood what the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, said during the Second Reading debate, there are some bilateral road haulage agreements with certain other Continental countries. But I have not discovered whether such agreements cover the points that I have raised about competence to drive heavy goods vehicles, or about drivers needing a reasonable knowledge of the road codes obtaining in such countries. The question that I have to ask is: do such bilateral agreements cover the drivers and crews of these vehicles on international journeys? Clearly, there can be no substitute for the sort of agreement postulated in Section 100 of the Transport Act 1968. In my opinion, even the bilateral agreements would not satisfy the conditions required by that section. What I am asking for here is a statement on the present position, three years after the passing of the 1968 Act.
In conclusion, I make no pretence at all that these Amendments are in such a form that they would satisfy the Parliamentary draftsmen. But I think their purpose is clear and, if the Minister is prepared to accept the substance and will promise to bring in suitable Amendments at Report stage, I shall be happy to withdraw them immediately. I can round off what I have been trying to say by asserting that the public is entitled to demand the protection of its safety by the promotion of high standards of vehicle operation covering their size and maintenance, and perhaps, above all, the com
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petence of the men who drive these vehicles. I beg to move.
4.49 p.m.
LORD MANCROFT: Since the noble Lord opposite was good enough to refer to some remarks that I made during the Second Reading debate, perhaps I may say one or two words by way of comment on his Amendments. I had told your Lordships of an occasion when I interviewed a driver of one lorry in Belgrave Square. Although he was an extremely experienced man, he told me that he had never heard of the Highway Code, and he obviously spoke no English at all. Furthermore, he knew nothing about the restrictions upon his vehicle over certain roads and certain bridges, and did not know how he could find that information in order that he should cause the least inconvenience to other users of the road.
For fear lest your Lordships might consider the one example that I have given insufficient in a case such as this, I have now carried out certain other inquiries—another six, to be exact, all in Belgrave Square, which is within walking distance of my home. The six lorry drivers I have interrogated since I spoke on the Second Reading of this Bill all said exactly the same thing: that they had never heard of the Highway Code and knew nothing about restrictions on the use of their vehicles. What was much worse, none of them could understand a word of English. They were all also highly experienced, thoroughly responsible and thoroughly respectable men. I think it is going to be very difficult for my noble friend the Minister to incorporate into this Bill the points which the noble Lord opposite made in moving his Amendment. I can well see that it is not really germane to what the Government have in mind. All I would ask my noble friend Lord Sandford is whether he will look at this point to see if it is possible to deal with it by some administrative means, if the Bill cannot cover it, or indeed by mere persuasion. I believe that these people, these good drivers of these heavy lorries, are only too willing to comply with our law and to do everything they can to make themselves acceptable, because they want to come here in increasing numbers and do a decreasing amount of damage. I support the noble Lord's Amendment in spirit, but I must confess that I think

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he has little chance of getting it incorporated in the Bill in the way in which he has drafted it.
LORD HAWKE: I think the noble Lord, Lord Champion, has raised a matter of very considerable complexity. From the points he made in his speech I was not quite sure whether he was advocating that the owners of these Continental vehicles should see that their men are instructed in the main points required to drive on British roads or in the full Highway Code. But, whereas the main Points might not be utterly impracticable, I think it is probably wildly impracticable to expect all the Continental drivers who come here—and, conversely, all the British drivers who drive on the Continent—to be completely au fait with every Highway Code in every country through which they pass. And, of course, what is sauce for the lorries is also sauce for the private drivers. Many noble Lords and many people in this country set out from Calais and motor through Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland and Austria. Have they ever seen the Highway Codes of those countries? I very much doubt it. The obvious answer—and I do not know whether my noble friend can tell me about this—is that if we go into Europe there must be a universal Highway Code printed in various languages. One could then expect people to know something about it. But it seems to me that, as the noble Lord has approached the matter, he has got on to something pretty impracticable.
4.53 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving the Committee an opportunity to discuss this whole business of drivers' competence and for giving me an opportunity to expand quite a bit on what I had to say, in rather limited terms, for reasons which he recognised, during Second Reading. I think it is important to realise that what we are concerned with in the whole of this Bill is finding effective ways to enforce our legislation on visiting foreign goods vehicles and their drivers. When we have succeeded in doing that, as I am sure we shall through this legislation, the other things which, for the reasons that my noble friend Lord Mancroft gave, are really better handled by administrative
926
action will be better handled. At the moment, there is a general ineffectiveness which not only has its effect on matters which should be enforced by legislative and statutory means but which also has a harmful and damaging effect on matters which probably are possible of enforcement effectively only by administrative arrangements. But I will come to that in a moment.
Perhaps I could deal now with the Amendment as it stands, and accept the noble Lord's suggestion that we should consider Amendments Nos. 1 and 4 together. First of all, I would say that Part III of the Road Traffic Act 1971, which is mentioned in Amendment No. 1, deals with the granting of British drivers' licences by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. It does not relate, and could not relate, to the foreign drivers of visiting foreign commercial vehicles. Foreign drivers duly licensed in their own country do not have to obtain British driving licences. By international agreement, foreign domestic driving licences which have been issued after the foreign driver has given proof in his own country of his competence may be used in this country for a period of up to 12 months. The holding of this licence, issued in his own country, also exempts the foreign driver from the need to acquire a British heavy goods vehicle licence or a British public service vehicle licence.
As respects the Highway Code, which is mentioned in the noble Lord's Amendment No. 4, a British driving test examiner has power to question a native British driver on his knowledge of the Highway Code only during a driving test. To take power to examine visiting foreign drivers at any time, and to prohibit their driving if they were found not to be "reasonably conversant" with our Highway Code, would be discriminatory: it would be against our forthcoming obligations under the Treaty of Rome, and it would run counter to the liberal transport policy which is now internationally agreed. But, having said that, I shall be very glad to respond, and at some length, to the noble Lord's request for some indication as to how we impart our Highway Code to foreign visiting drivers. As my noble friend Lord Mancroft anticipated it would be, this is something that is much better done by administrative

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measures; and these are what they are. First, a simplified form of the Highway Code, in French and German, is available for foreign drivers. These have been sent to many foreign haulage concerns; and perhaps I could pass a copy across the Table for the noble Lord, Lord Champion, to see. They are available for issue to foreign drivers at the ports. A reprint of the summary of the Highway Code is shortly to be undertaken, and that reprint will be ready for distribution at all ferry ports next year. It will be available as these new arrangements come into force.
The noble Lord, also in Amendment No. 4, mentions Section 100 of the Transport Act 1968. This section occurs in Part VI of that Act, and was intended principally to cover drivers' hours and records. The "international agreement" referred to in this section could be, for example, the A.E.T.R. agreement, which is the European agreement concerning the work of crews of vehicles engaged in international road transport' promoted by the Economic Commission for Europe of the United Nations. This agreement requires drivers' record books to be carried but does not provide for certificates of competence to be held by drivers generally. It does, however, deal with certificates of competence as regards ability to drive vehicles in the case of persons aged from 18 to 21. The United Kingdom is a signatory to the A.E.T.R., but to ratify it requires an order under Section 100. When eight countries have ratified the agreement, it will come into force after 180 days. An order under Section 100 is at present being drafted. If and when A.E.T.R. is introduced into Great Britain under Section 100, then the prohibition procedure envisaged by the Bill will apply, since Section 100 of the Transport Act 1968 is mentioned in Schedule 2 to the Bill.
The noble Lord may be intending that police constables and examiners should be able to prohibit driving when a valid driving licence is not being carried. Powers of inspection of driving licences are contained in Part VII of the Road Traffic Act 1971, the consolidating Act. If I may, I will repeat what I said during the Second Reading, because it is relevant at this point. Drivers of foreign goods vehicles should carry appropriate driving licences and Section 225(4) of
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the Road Traffic Act 1960 allows the driver of a vehicle five days in which to produce that licence. In these circumstances it would be difficult to justify immediately imposing a prohibition notice on a foreign vehicle for apparent lack of a driving licence. That power does not exist in relation to a British driver.
I hope that that explanation will satisfy the Committee that there are international agreements adequate and appropriate to cover driving standards and that this is the right way in which to ensure that we have them. I hope that it will also satisfy the Committee that this Amendment, although absolutely right in intent, and although the Government have complete sympathy with it, would unbalance these international agreements. I hope also the Committee will agree with the point made by my noble friend Lord Mancroft, which I have been endorsing: that to secure the kind of things Lord Champion wants is better done by administrative arrangements within a tighter enforcement policy. I hope that, after that explanation, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his Amendment.
LORD HAWKE: May I ask whether the Minister will answer my question about whether there is to be a universal Highway Code if we go into Europe?
LORD SANDFORD: I apologise for not answering that question. I think not; but so far as can be foreseen there will be a series of national highway codes—because each country's code will differ—embraced within a code of international agreements which may become tighter, firmer and more detailed as we progress.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHESTER: I have a great deal of sympathy with the intention behind the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Champion; but having listened to the speech of Lord Sandford I appreciate the difficulties and I welcome his assurance that the point raised by Lord Champion will be dealt with by administrative action. However, I want to question what I think was implicit in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hawke: the suggestion that drivers could not be expected to know all the highway codes or their equivalent in all the countries through which they are

929
driving. Surely, if they are driving through a number of countries on the Continent then it should be expected of them that they should know what standards are expected in these other contries. Indeed, each section of the foreign guide issued by the Automobile Association begins with a passage setting out in simple terms what are the standards required in that particular country. If drivers of ordinary vehicles in this country can be examined on our own Highway Code, how essential it is that drivers of large and potentially-dangerous commercial vehicles should at least know the standards that we require in this country !
LORD HAWKE: May I make a point of explanation here. I was referring to the Highway Code as being a rather voluminous set of rules and regulations and not to the simple rules which the right reverend Prelate visualises in some guide. I very much doubt whether he himself when driving on the Continent has mastered in detail the highway codes of every country through which he has driven.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHESTER: I accept the noble Lords' point and I hope that he will also accept the point I am making, which is that it is essential that drivers of heavy commercial vehicles in this country should be expected to know what are the standards that we require in this country. In conclusion, may I say how much I welcome the assurances given by Lord Sandford that these matters will be dealt with administratively.
LORD NUNBURNHOLME: May I ask one simple question? I think Lord Sandford said that provided foreign drivers were qualified in their own country, they would be qualified to drive in this country for 12 months. What happens after that?
LORD SANDFORD: They have to get a British licence if they want to drive continuously in this country.
LORD CHAMPION: I am grateful for the support which this Amendment has received. Obviously, the Committee have recognised the importance of the points which lay behind the actual moving of the Amendment. I am a fairly old Parliamentary hand, old enough to
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realise that this Bill is not perhaps the right vehicle for what I sought to do; and here I would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, to whom I am particularly grateful for his illustrations further backing up the points I made when we last discussed this matter. His plea to his noble friend, as I understand it, has been completely accepted: that this is something which will be done (in so far as it still remains to be done) by administrative means. At least I have learned something from Lord Sandford that I did not know before: that this simple guide, in French and German, is sent out by his Department to many foreign haulage firms.
The noble Lord, Lord Hawke, said that this idea was impracticable. I am bound to say that I agree with the right reverend Prelate that it ought to be possible for people to know the highway codes of other countries when they take upon themselves the responsibility of driving in those countries. I recognise the difficulties here and I agree with Lord Sandford that the setting up of an international code will surely follow our entry into the enlarged E.E.C., and that that code will he applicable to all the countries which will then constitute that body. The last thing that I would wish—I think I made mention of this in my speech; and I agree too, with Lord Sandford—in a matter of this sort is to be discriminatory, for the obvious reason, to put it at its lowest, that other countries would retaliate. These things must be reciprocal. Having said that, and in view of the assurances which the Committee have secured as a result of the Amendment which I moved, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
5.9 p.m.
LORID CHAMPION LORID CHAMPION moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 1, line 14, at end insert—
or
(d) the licensing authority exercises any function in relation to a large goods vehicle as defined in section 71 of the Transport Act 1968.").
The noble Lord said: Like my first Amendment, this is a paving Amendment and in this case it leads to Amendment No. 5. If the Committee agree I propose to discuss Amendments Nos. 2 and 5 together. This is a simple Amendment

931
aimed at ensuring that so far as possible large goods vehicles leaving our ports follow routes prescribed by a competent person, and drawn up with regard to the use of roads believed suited to the type of vehicle. With the improvements which are taking place, many of our roads are suitable for the type of vehicles we have in mind, but thousands of miles of our roads are still totally unsuited to the long and wide vehicles which arrive from abroad. Also I must add that they are used daily by our own operators. Motorists who follow these large vehicles for miles along narrow roads find their impatience mounting and this leads them to "chance their arm" and attempt to pass. This is responsible for head-on killer collisions. We may have all suffered from that sort of frustration, and if seriously challenged I think that most of us would confess to taking a risk at times and afterwards admitting to ourselves that it was a very silly thing to do. It seems to me that there can be nothing objectionable about routing vehicles along roads best suited to their bulk, any more than there is about enforcing a route in a town by a system of one-way streets. Often it is the case that a greater distance by a better road proves to be a much quicker route, and time is of the essence in respect of economic road transport.
The Ministry of Transport White Paper told us that an improvement in road safety depended on safer roads, safer vehicles and safer drivers and pedestrians. To that I would add that until we get the safer roads we require we need to route vehicles along the, safer roads which we have already. The Economic Development Committee for the Movement of Exports, under the chairmanship of the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, reported in 1966. One of its recommendations was:
"The drawing up of recommended routes for heavy traffic should be expedited and more impetus given to the programme for strengthening certain bridges."
I do not know whether that recommendation has been implemented. If it has, I have never seen it. But if by any chance it has been implemented, have foreign vehicle operators been advised of the recommended routes? If recommended routes are available, are the Department of the Environment officers employed at the ports aware of them,
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and do they advise foreign drivers accordingly? I think this routeing is necessary in connection with the passage of traffic to and from our older ports; it is even more necessary in connection with the rapidly expanding ports such as Felixstowe. The roads in the Eastern Counties are not suited for the sort of traffic which now travels to and from the port of Felixstowe and other rapidly developing East Coast ports. Felixstowe is developing so as to deal with a large amount of heavy Continental traffic, mainly container traffic, and the roads to and from Felixstowe badly need widening. In the meantime, I believe it would be possible to improve the passage of traffic if it were routed over the best roads available. This simple Amendment does not require a great deal of explanation. The problem is one which needs airing and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. I beg to move.
LORD FERRIER: I take it that I shall be correct in speaking to Amendment No. 5 with Amendment No. 2. I wish to support what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Champion. As I walked from the House last Thursday, at a few minutes after nine o'clock at night on the corner of Bridge Street I saw an enormous vehicle, with Spanish registration numbers, which came from Madrid. It was articulated and must have been over 60 ft. in length. It turned into Parliament Square and as I walked across Whitehall it appeared again. In turning into Whitehall it went right across the road and almost touched the kerb of the island in the middle of Whitehall. I took a cab and followed the vehicle, which went round Trafalgar Square and, to my astonishment, down Northumberland Avenue. Presumably it then turned on to the Embankment because the driver had known he could not get on to the Embankment from Bridge Street. He also must have known that he could get on to the Embankment from the turn under the Charing Cross Bridge.
I mention this in support of my feelings about this Amendment. The vehicle I saw was an enormous one and appeared to be beautifully equipped. It was superbly driven, although it was a left-handed drive. If the driver was a foreigner who knew no English and did not know his way about London, it was

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a magnificent piece of driving; but I think that it must have been a British driver. He took this extraordinary route to reach the Embankment and was presumably on his way to the docks. I do not wish to say more, except to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Champion, that if the Government accept the Amendment we shall get close to what a number of noble Lords have said: that the time is coming—we mentioned this only last week in two different debates, one about by-passing important towns—when large vehicles will have to be routed and confined to certain specified roads.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: I heartily support this Amendment. I have seen these enormous Continental lorries in small country towns. It is difficult for the drivers to get them round corners and they cause the most appalling congestion. Although I do not know how it could be done, I think that long vehicles such as these, the majority of which come from the Continent, ought to be prevented from travelling too near one another. If two such vehicles are too close together it is almost impossible to pass them. Another aspect of this matter is that if these enormous vehicles are allowed to travel through small country towns where there is old property by the side of the roads, eventually, through the vibration which the vehicles cause, the houses will be shaken down. I hope that my noble friend can give your Lordships some encouragement that the Government will accept the Amendment.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHESTER: I support what is contained in the Amendment, but I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, will point out that there are considerable practical difficulties. At least the noble Lord, Lord Champion, is putting a very important principle before us, to which reference has also been made by the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier. We have not sufficient roads to carry these vast vehicles and we have to make the best possible use of the limited resources that we have. As is well known to your Lordships, one of the main difficulties is that often roads from motorways to areas where these very large vehicles have to go are most unsuitable to carry heavy weights, so it
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is all the more important that there should be careful directions about where these vehicles can go.
We in Cheshire are only too well aware of this problem. We have heavy vehicles coming from Liverpool and Manchester which have to get on to the M.6 and they have to travel on unsuitable roads. Therefore it is all the more important that they should be told exactly where they may go. There is a further point that the ring roads provided in some cities are not used by the drivers of these very heavy vehicles. They travel through the middle of the cities along streets which are incapable of accommodating such traffic. Therefore I hope that the principle contained in the noble Lord's Amendment will be seriously and sympathetically considered by Her Majesty's Government.
5.20 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: Perhaps I may remind the Committee of the purpose of the powers that we are taking under this limited Bill. It gives us powers of enforcement that are appropriate for use against foreign goods vehicles, because the current procedures appropriate for British-based vehicles and their drivers have proved ineffective against foreign goods vehicles and their drivers. In doing this, as I have said, we have to take care—and we are taking care—not to impose any rules, regulations, restrictions or requirements on foreign vehicles and their drivers that we do not impose on our own heavy vehicles and their drivers. To do this would be to discriminate on grounds of nationality; it would conflict with the existing liberal international agreements, and it would run counter to our forthcoming E.E.C. obligations.
But the desire of the noble Lord, Lord Champion, that heavy vehicles should be restricted to roads capable of accommodating them is certainly not only appreciated but widely shared—there is not a Member of this Committee who would not share it—and not least by my right honourable friend the Minister for Transport Industries and my right honourable friend the Secetary of State for the Environment. In his recent speech at the Conservative Party Conference the Minister stressed that the heavy lorries of the future should be confined to roads

935
properly able to accommodate them; and my right honourable friend is at present discussing with the industry the problems associated with the heavy lorry and the environment—the sort of issues raised by my noble friend Lord Massereene and Ferrard just now—and, in particular, the driving of heavy lorries in places unsuited for their presence; our historic towns, for example.
My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, in announcing the construction of a further 1,000 miles of motorway to be ready by the early 1980s, stressed that one of the aims was,
"to achieve environmental improvement by diverting long-distance traffic, and particularly heavy goods vehicles, from a large number of towns and villages so as to relieve them from the noise, dirt and danger that they suffer at present."
He went on to say:
"Priorities within the programme will reflect the Government's aim to provide adequate access to the major docks well within the time span for the whole programme."
The whole programme goes up to the early 'eighties. All this will apply to all heavy goods vehicles of all nationalities, British and foreign. It does not, I submit, call for mention in this Bill, which is solely concerned with enforcement procedures against foreign goods vehicles. But it does involve an expanded road programme (and I have given the Committee the relevant quotations from that) and then involves—but only then—proper routing of all lorries on to proper routes for them when such routes are available. The trunk network linked to the major ports will be complete by the early 'eighties.
I hope that the Committee, having heard that explanation, will accept that we are fully aware of this problem, and are tackling it, but that an Amendment to this Bill restricted to foreign goods vehicles would not be appropriate for securing it. Nevertheless, I am grateful to the noble Lord for having moved the Amendment, because it has given me the opportunity of making this explanation to the Committee and the Committee the opportunity of discussing it.
LORD CHAMPION: It is one of the advantages of this House that almost invariably if you start a discussion on
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something you will find somebody who has personal experience and is willing to give your Lordships the benefit of that personal experience. In the first Amendment that I moved, clearly it was the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft; and now the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, is able to support this Amendment by his personal experience which happened so recently. We have had also the right reverend Prelate with his experience of the roads in Cheshire. I happen to know something about the M.6 and some of the roads off it, and I know well the difficulties which can arise from trying to follow some of the vehicles that have been "batting" along at 60 and 70 m.p.h. on the M.6 and then find themselves cut down to the sort of speed at which they ought to be going on some of these roads that the right reverend Prelate and I happen to know.
I agree with the right reverend Prelate that quite often the ring roads are not used properly by vehicles, and I sometimes wonder whether the difficulty arises from bad routing signs, which occasionally are found in some of our towns. Perhaps to some extent the position has been improved recently, but I remember once trying to get down from Birmingham on the old A.38 and I was directed out towards the ring road. I followed the signs for some distance, and then suddenly lost them. My difficulty was that it took me longer to get back into the centre of the city and to start all over again down the middle of it than it would have done if I had gone slap through the middle in the first instance.
I think the Amendment has served a good purpose. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, told us what the Tory Party Conference were told. I am bound to say that it makes me feel that Tory Party Conferences may be of some use after all. Perhaps Parliament should have been told first, and not the Tory Party Conference. But having stirred the noble Lord up to the point where he has repeated the words used at the Conference, where they were sensibly used, I am bound to say that I am grateful for the fact that he has to-day told us of them. As I made clear in introducing the first Amendment, I put it down in order that I might extract information and to bring to the attention

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of the Department what is the feeling of the Committee. I believe that the feeling of the Committee in this matter is that something ought to be done in respect of all the points that I have raised, and those that have been raised by other Members on the Amendments. Having regard to that, and to the reply that I received from the noble Lord, for which I thank him, I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
5.27 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD LORD SANDFORD moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 2, line 16, at end insert ("or will be exceeded if the vehicle is driven on a road").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 3, and with the agreement of the Committee I will take the opportunity to speak to Amendment No. 6, which is linked with it. This is a small and rather tiresome point which it is difficult to deal with except at some length, and I hope that the Committee will bear with me. The Government have given an assurance that the enforcement powers sought in the Bill will be exercised mainly at the ports of entry. Offending vehicles will be prohibited from proceeding on to our roads. To enforce existing road traffic laws in ports it is necessary to be sure that offending vehicles can legally be prohibited from proceeding and that the enforcement officers can legally exercise their enforcement powers in the port areas. The difficulty arises from the fact that ports do not have roads fully falling within the definition of "road" given in Clause 6(1) of the Bill. These Amendments seek to ensure that enforcement will be effective in the dock areas.
Amendment No. 3 merely brings sub-section (3)(b) of Clause 1 (powers of authorised persons in relation to the weighing of vehicles) into line with subsection (2)(b) (powers of examiners in relation to other potential contraventions of enactments). The phrase is necessary since no weight contravention has in fact occurred until a vehicle is actually used on a road. The legal requirements as to weights arc at present laid down in the Construction and Use Regulations 1969, made under Section 64 of the Road Traffic Act 1960. That section makes it an offence to use on a road a motor vehicle or
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trailer which does not comply with the regulations made under that section. However, as I mentioned, ports do not have roads in the full legal sense. This Amendment will enable an authorised person to prohibit the driving on a road of a vehicle which would commit a weight offence if it were to be driven on a road. The authorised person must have reason for thinking that the vehicle would be driven in an overweight condition on the road.
If I may now speak to Amendment No. 6, the need for this stems from our latest legal advice that the powers to require the weighing of vehicles contained in Section 224 of the Road Traffic Act 1960, which will become Section 160 of the Road Traffic Act 1971 when that is effective, could be held by the courts not to extend to areas such as ports, which do not all have roads within the definition in Clause 6 (1). There never has been a test case. Since the Government attach considerable importance to implementing the powers at the ports, there should be no doubt that vehicles can be required to be weighed when they are on harbour land. The opportunity has therefore been taken in this respect to clarify Section 224 of the Road Traffic Act 1960.
This new clause will therefore enable an authorised person to require a foreign goods vehicle, any trailer drawn by it and a foreign public service vehicle to proceed to a weighbridge and to be weighed when the vehicle is on "harbour land". "Authorised person" means one of the Department of the Environment's examiners, a certifying officer, an authorised police constable and a Weights and Measures inspector. "Harbour land" means for all practical purposes (a) land which is part of a harbour; and (b) land which is adjacent to a harbour and is occupied wholly or partly for the purposes of "harbour operations" defined in Section 57(1) of the Harbours Act 1964. "Harbour operations" includes inter alia(i) the warehousing, sorting, weighing or handling of goods on harbour land or at a wharf; and (ii) the movement of goods or passengers within the limits within which the person engaged in improving, maintaining or managing a harbour has jurisdiction or on harbour land. The Docks and Harbour

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Authorities Association have been consulted and are in agreement in principle with the Amendment. Naturally, permission will have to be granted by the individual port concerned before an authorised person conducts checks on their property.
This foreign vehicles Bill can only clarify the existing legislation in relation to foreign vehicles. To avoid any charge of discrimination it will be necessary to introduce a similar provision in relation to British vehicles. I want to take this opportunity to assure the Committee that legislation will be introduced at the earliest opportunity. I want to give that assurance not only to this Committee but to put it on record for the international haulage industry as a whole, so as to give an assurance that by taking measures in this Bill we do not intend to discriminate against foreign vehicles and to leave our own vehicles untouched by similar legislation. I hope that that explanation of this small point will satisfy the Committee. I beg to move.
LORD CHAMPION: I am sorry I cannot retort to the noble Lord that I fear this is not within the terms of the 1971 Bill. As a matter of fact it seems to me to be wholly so, if I have understood what the noble Lord has said. It is true that his speech was a little involved when he talked about roads, roads, roads and they seemed to come in such rapid succession that it was a job to tell which roads he was actually referring to. But I am bound to say that it seems to me sensible that these powers should be added, and from this side I would have no objection to that.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 1, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD FERRIER: I will not detain the Committee long but I think that the point I wish to raise can be dealt with more quickly under the Question, Whether the Clause shall stand part than under the Schedule. It is this: In Clause 1(1) mention is made of Schedule 1. In Clause 1(2) reference is made to the second Schedule. I told your Lordships the story of the massive foreign vehicle which I saw on Thursday. My recollection is that it did not have the requisite notice
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"Long vehicle" on the back. It occurs to me that under Schedule 2 (page 9 line 26) the requirements of Section 91(1)(c) of the Transport Act do not go far enough in requiring the authorised person to see that the vehicle has such a notice as "Long vehicle" on it. The requirements refer solely to registration marks. I put this forward simply as a matter of interest and to ask the noble Lord if he would be good enough to look into that. I think it should be covered in this Bill because it is so clearly said in this Bill that we are referring to foreign vehicles. I would only like to say one other word. I am sorry that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester has gone, but the noble Lord, Lord Champion, referred to ring roads and nobody mentioned by-passes. I think it is very important, now that ring routes specify a route on existing roads, that we should try to keep the distinction in the description between ring routes and "bypasses".
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 2, 3 and 4 agreed to.
LORD SANDFORD: I beg to move Amendment No. 6:
Amendment moved—
After Clause 4. insert the following new clause—
Application of Road Traffic Act 1971, s. 160, to vehicles on harbour land
".—(l)The powers conferred by subsection (1) of section 160 of the Road Traffic Act 1971 (whereby an authorised person is empowered to require the person in charge of a motor vehicle to allow the vehicle or any trailer drawn thereby to be weighed, and the weight transmitted to the road by any parts of the vehicle or trailer in contact with the road to be tested, and for that purpose to proceed to a weighbridge or other machine for weighing vehicles) shall be exercisable in relation to the person in charge of a motor vehicle which is a foreign goods vehicle or a foreign public service vehicle and is for the time being on land to which this section applies, whether that land is or is not a road, and whether apart from this section those powers would be so exercisable or not; and any reference in that section to those powers or to such a requirement shall be construed accordingly.
(2) This section applies to any land which forms part of a harbour or which is adjacent to a harbour and is occupied wholly or partly tor the purposes of harbour operations.
(3) In this section "harbour" and "harbour operations" have the meanings assigned to

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them by section 57(1) of the Harbours Act 1964."—Lord Sandford.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 5 agreed to.
Clause 6 [Interpretation and transitional provisions]:
LORD SANDFORD LORD SANDFORD moved Amendment No. 7:
Page 8, line 18, at end insert—
("( )In relation to any time before the coming into operation of section 160 of the Road Traffic Act 1971 (in this subsection referred to as "section 160")—

(a) in section (Application of Road Traffic Act 1971, s. 160, to vehicles on harbour land) of this Act the reference to subsection (1) of section 160 shall be construed as a reference to subsection (1) of section 224 of the Road Traffic Act 1960, and

(b) in section 1 of this Act, and in subsection (1) of this section, any reference to section 160 shall be construed as a reference to section 224 of that Act read together with section (Application of Road Traffic Act 1971, s. 160, to vehicles on harbour land) of this Act and with the preceding paragraph;

and in relation to any time after the coming into operation of section 160 any reference in section 1 of this Act, or in subsection (1) of this section, to section 160 shall be construed as a reference to section 160 read together with section (Application of Road Traffic Act 1971, s. 160, to vehicles on harbour land) of this Act.")
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment 7 and at the same time to speak to Amendment 8. We cannot know for certain at this precise moment whether this Bill will come into effect before or after the Road Traffic Act 1971. which is a consolidation Bill due to become effective on April 1, 1972. Subsection (7) of Clause 6 is required to cater for either contingency, and that subsection now needs further amendment to cater for Amendments Nos. 3 and 6, to which the Committee has just agreed. This further Amendment is provided for by Amendments 7 and 8. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SANDFORD: I beg to move Amendment No. 8:
Amendment moved:
Page 8, line 26, leave out from ("Schedule") to end of line 29.—(Lord Sandford.)
Clause 6, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clause and Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with the Amendments.

MAINTENANCE ORDERS (RECI PROCAL ENFORCEMENT) BILL [H.L.]
5.40 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILS' IAM OF ST. MARYLEBONE): My Lords, I rise to move the Second Reading of this Bill. This is a Home Office Bill, but it has been thought appropriate that the task of explaining its provisions to this House should fall to me, partly because it is, I suppose, in its essence a matter of law reform. I find some hesitation in putting the terms of this Bill before the House because it is both lengthy and somewhat complex, and is difficult to explain. It may take some length of time to explain it, if I approach my task conscientiously. The Bill provides a means whereby dependants (wives, mothers or children) in this country may obtain maintenance from a person over-seas whose duty it is to maintain them, and likewise whereby dependants overseas may obtain maintenance from someone in this country. With the increasingly free movement of people in the world, whether seeking work or a new home, the problem of ensuring the support of any dependants left behind is one which Parliament cannot ignore. The State can relieve the hardship of those who are destitute and who are without other means of support. But that is no reason why a husband or parent, by leaving the country should be able to shrug off his responsibilities whether to his family or any illegitimate child he may have left behind. This Bill seeks at the same time to relieve the financial hardship which can be suffered by abandoned families and to enforce the financial obligations and responsibilities of family life. As such. I hope it will be uncontroversial and hope that it will receive a general welcome.
The machinery embodied, at least by Part I of the Bill, is by no means entirely new, though the existing legislative provisions, so far as we suggest they should be preserved, are repeated in the text. The Maintenance Orders (Facilities for Enforcement) Act, 1920 has been used for the last fifty years for the purpose of

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enforcing maintenance orders throughout the Commonwealth. It has worked reasonably well, as is shown by the fact that between four and five hundred orders a year pass in and out of England, Wales and Northern Ireland for enforcement. But, it only covers part of the field. To begin with it does not apply to Scotland. Secondly, it does not provide for the enforcement overseas of affiliation orders. Thirdly, it cannot be extended to countries outside the Commonwealth. These limitations seriously reduce the overall scope of the present Act, because they mean that many dependants in the United Kingdom are completely without remedy if the person who supports them leaves this country. Wives and families in Scotland, mothers of illegitimate children throughout the country, and wives and families where the husband or father has gone to a country outside the Commonwealth, are liable to be thrown back upon their own resources or upon those of the State when the person who should maintain them goes overseas. This must also apply in reverse when dependants are left overseas by men who come to live or work here, and, for this reason we have, for some years now, been under pressure to modernise the 1920 Act, not only from our partners in the Commonwealth but also, and increasingly, from our neighbours in the Republic of Ire-land and the continental countries.
The purpose of the Bill is to remedy all the limitations of the 1920 Act which I have set forth. It will enable us to meet our obligations on a basis of reciprocity both within the Commonwealth and on a broader front. I should like to deal with each of the facets which I have outlined, and I am afraid that I have to explain why they are so complicated. First, Scotland. As I have said, the existing Act does not apply to Scotland. The result is that a woman in Scotland whose husband deserts her and goes abroad has no means either of enforcing a decree she may have obtained from the sheriff court before his departure, or instituting proceedings against him in Scotland once he has gone. Conversely, there is no reciprocal procedure by which a maintenance order granted in a Commonwealth court can be enforced in Scotland.
The exclusion of Scotland from the scope of the 1920 Act has been a matter
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of controversy. It was commented upon when it was passing through Parliament; and the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce recommended in 1956 that provision should be made to facilitate the reciprocal enforcement of maintenance orders between Scotland and other Commonwealth countries. A similar recommendation was made by the Law Reform Committee for Scotland in 1958. Why has it not been done before? The answer is that the stumbling block has always been the absence in Scotland of any machinery corresponding to the collecting officer system in the magistrates' courts in England and Wales. for enforcing orders, whether for maintenance or for the recovery of other forms of debt, which have been granted by the courts. Under Scots law, the responsibility for enforcing a court order rests with the person who has possession of it. The adequacy of the present arrangements in Scotland for enforcing court orders is at present under review by the Scottish Law Commission; but the Government thought it right in the meanwhile to bring Scotland within the system outlined in this Bill. The defect in the Scottish machinery is one of the reasons why in relation to the many Scottish provisions the Bill may seem rather more complicated than it otherwise would be.
The Bill will for the first time give the sheriff courts in Scotland jurisdiction in maintenance proceedings against persons domiciled and ordinarily resident outside the United Kingdom. This will allow a woman in Scotland to raise an action in the sheriff court against a person residing in a reciprocating country. If a provisional maintenance order is granted by the sheriff, it will be sent to the appropriate court in the reciprocating country for confirmation and enforcement. Similarly, a woman living in a reciprocating country who has obtained an order in that country against someone living in Scotland will be able to have that order registered in the appropriate sheriff court. The order may then be enforced as if it had been made by that court in the first place. The responsibility for enforcing it will, in the case of Scotland, still rest with the woman concerned but, if she requires the services of a solicitor for this purpose, she will of course be eligible for legal aid. The woman residing in a reciprocating country will thus be placed in exactly

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the same position as a Scotswoman living within the jurisdiction of the Scottish courts. The extension of these facilities for Scotland will afford a measure of protection to women in Scotland which has been sadly lacking for many years; and I am sure the House will welcome the fact that these facilities are now at last to be provided on a United Kingdom basis.
I come now to the enforcement of affiliation orders which of course relate to payments in respect of illegitimate children. These were expressly excluded from the operation of the 1920 Act, because it was then considered that the determination of paternity was a matter of such difficulty and had such serious consequences that it could only be done by a court before which both the mother and the putative father appeared. In these cases, where they are countries apart, this could not happen. But, even if we accept this—which the Bill does not do—it is not a reason for excluding affiliation orders which have been made before the putative father left this country —that is, absolute orders made when the father has had the opportunity to appear before the court which makes the order.
Some Commonwealth countries have already amended their legislation to make absolute affiliation orders enforceable and in this Bill we propose to follow their example. We are, however, proposing to go farther still and to enable courts to make provisional affiliation orders—that is, orders made in this country upon the basis of the mother's evidence which will have no effect until they have been confirmed by a court overseas which has had the opportunity to hear the alleged father's evidence.
I do not underestimate the difficulty of determining paternity when the issue is disputed; and ideally of course one will agree that this is best determined by a single court hearing both sides. However, experience shows that in a high proportion of cases either the putative father admits his paternity, in which case of course there is no issue, or the mother's evidence points overwhelmingly to his paternity. Furthermore, where paternity is genuinely disputed, the issues do not really seem more difficult to determine than some which arise in matrimonial cases (for instance, where there has been
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a disputed allegation of adultery), and these have been successfully dealt with by the courts under the existing Act for something like fifty years. In the end it is a matter for the court to weigh the issue upon the evidence and the court has full powers under the Bill to call for further evidence from overseas. Arguments that injustice may be done to innocent men do not on the whole seem very convincing, since the confirming court will have the man before it and it is likely to place greater weight upon the evidence of the witness that it hears. It may be rather that orders will not be made which might have been made if both parties had been before the same court. But at least the mothers of illegitimate children will now he given the chance to prove their case. if the possibility of making affiliation orders under the provisional procedure is excluded, all mothers who were unable to get an order before the putative father left the country would be deprived of any remedy. We think it would be wrong to deprive them in this way.
I must add that the extension of this Bill to affiliation orders, whether provisional or absolute, made in the United Kingdom will require the agreement of reciprocating countries and the making of arrangements for the reciprocal enforcement of their affiliation orders. At present the laws of only a few Commonwealth countries allow for the enforcement of provisional affiliation orders, but we hope that more countries will follow this initiative, and then they will have the opportunity to do so under the provisions of this Bill.
I now come to foreign countries, which again present rather different and peculiar complications. Part II of the Bill deals with reciprocal enforcement of maintenance obligations with countries outside the Commonwealth. The 1920 Act, the existing Act, could be applied only to Commonwealth countries. It was passed as a result of discussions at the Imperial Conference of 1911, and the need for a Commonwealth Act remains as strong now as it was then. But many people also move between the United Kingdom and Europe or between the United Kingdom and the United States and there is consequently also a need for machinery for reciprocal enforcement of orders with

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these countries. We may expect the movement between this country and foreign lands to increase rather than diminish.
Part I of the Bill will allow countries outside the Commonwealth as well as Commonwealth countries to be designated. But this is not enough. Part I, which follows the Act of 1920, which I have tried to explain, is based on the assumption that reciprocating countries have broadly similar maintenance law and the same kind of reciprocal enforcement. That is because under Part I a court in one country has to be able to confirm a maintenance order made provisionally by a court in another, and therefore has to have a procedural law which will enable it to do so, and it must be able to understand and apply the law of the overseas court. But I need hardly say that such a situation does not apply to a great many foreign countries. The problem therefore is, as regards these, to devise machinery for reciprocal enforcement which will not involve courts in interpreting a foreign law which is totally unfamiliar to them. At the same time, it is desirable to avoid having to negotiate detailed agreements on a bilateral basis with every country with whom we might think it desirable to make arrangements for reciprocal enforcement.
Therefore, we have had to choose a different machinery in the case of those foreign countries from that which the 1920 Act provides, and the machinery which we have chosen is the 1956 United Nations' Convention on the Recovery Abroad of Maintenance. This is designed to facilitate the transmission and settlement of maintenance claims between the countries which are parties to the Convention. It operates on the principle that the law of the country in which the respondent happens to be—that is to say, the law of the enforcing country—shall apply. Where under the United Nations' Convention an applicant makes a claim in one country against a respondent in another, the courts in the claimant's country do not have to adjudicate upon the claim. Instead, the claim is sent to the respondent's country through official channels and is dealt with in accordance with the law of the respon
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dent's country. A maintenance order may be made or the maintenance recovered through administrative channels according to the procedure in that country. The countries have only to apply the law of their own country. Nearly forty countries are parties to the United Nations' Convention, and the Bill will enable the United Kingdom in due course to become a party to the United Nations' Convention. It is relevant for me to point out in this connection that all the major European countries are parties to the United Nations' Convention. Now alas ! there is still a third complication and a third possibility—
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, before the noble and learned Lord continues, can he say, with particular reference to Ireland, whether Part II or Part I of the Bill will apply, bearing in mind that probably the largest number of putative fathers against whom orders will be made, of any foreign country in Great Britain, come from the Republic?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I think, without notice, Part I, because Irish law is almost wholly compatible with our own and their system of enforcement I think is broadly similar. If I turn out to be wrong about that I will write to the noble Lord.
That brings me to Clause 40 and Part III, which deals, alas ! with a still further complication. There are countries, and there are parts of countries, where there is a federal Constitution, and these countries may be, and in some cases are, unable or unwilling either to take part in what I may call the 1920 procedure, Part I, or to adhere to the United Nations' Convention, and may nevertheless be able to participate in bilateral arrangements. One obvious example is the United States, who have not adhered to the Convention, partly because the enforcement of maintenance is a State responsibility and not a Federal responsibility, and neither an American State nor the Federal Government of the United States could become a party to the Convention on this matter. It would clearly be most desirable if the United Kingdom could produce a legislative framework which will enable maintenance to be recovered from people who have gone to the United States; otherwise to

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some extent the Bill will be deprived of its full value. There were informal discussions during the meeting of the American Bar Association in London this summer, and these suggested that it might be possible to make arrangements —I use the word "arrangements", which is not a technical word—with individual States for the reciprocal enforcement of maintenance on the basis of the provisions of the Bill. But those will need to be slightly modified in matters of detail to produce an effective machinery. There may be other countries besides the United States in which special bilateral arrangements would be necessary or desirable. The powers for this are in Clause 40 of the Bill. Any adaptations or modifications to the general principles which would be made under such bilateral arrangements would be in matters of detail—for example, in relation to different terminology or channels of communication between countries. Accordingly, the provision for recovering maintenance from a person in a country with which an agreement under Clause 40 has been made would not necessarily be significantly different from the procedure in Part I or Part II.
Now, my Lords, I ought if I were a thoroughly conscientious Minister to go through the Parts and set out in some length the very complicated procedures for the three Parts. But I hope the House will bear with me if I just summarise what I have said, so as to get it clear in people's minds. The purpose of the Bill is to get rid of the defects in the 1920 Act—the limitations upon the 1920 Act; in other words, to apply the provisions to Scotland; to apply the provisions to affiliation orders, and also to apply the provisions to countries which the Act of 1920 cannot be made to apply to at the moment. It is the latter part which leads to the greater part of the complication, and what we have done is, by Part I, to extend the 1920 Act to countries where it can apply; by Part II, where effectively it cannot, to utilise the machinery of the United Nations' Convention—and Part II will enable us to become a party—and to utilise the quite different provisions available under that. Part III enables bilateral arrangements to be arrived at, either because they are thought more advantageous in a particular case or because Part I and Part II do not
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apply. My Lords, I am afraid that I have taken up a great deal of the time of the House but it is really an absurdly complicated matter and I do not think I could have done it more shortly. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill he now read 2ª. —(The Lord Chancellor.)
6.1 p.m.
LORD DIAMOND: My Lords, I do not know why the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, felt in an unusually modest frame of mind when introducing this Bill. If I may put it in one sentence, he has made me understand it, and therefore everyone else will have understood it even more easily. I am certainly no lawyer, as everybody knows, and I found his explanation easy to follow and completely adequate. It is of considerable pleasure to me to be able to take part in discussion of a Bill where I can be in such harmony and agreement with the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor. Alas!, it is not always my good fortune to be in that happy state. It is also a pleasure for me to be able to welcome, certainly so far as this side of the House is concerned, a Bill which, to use a time-worn phrase, is, if anything, overdue. It is a matter which has been under consideration obviously since 1920 and in respect of part of which there has been a United Nations Convention which I see was agreed to in New York between June and December of 1956. One knows from the speeches that have been made from time to time during the course of the debates on the Queen's Speech that this is a Bill which has been in the minds of Governments for a considerable period, and I dare say we should have had this kind of Bill, whichever Government had been in power. Therefore I welcome it so far as this side of the House is concerned. The noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, is, certainly right in saying that there is a good deal of "meat" in the Bill and a good deal of evidence of a determination to overcome obvious difficulties of the judicial systems of different countries in trying to put right a major grievance, and to that extent we congratulate the noble and learned Lord and the present Government and all those who have taken part in drafting the Bill.
There has obviously been a considerable body of misery, for aught I know

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real misery, suffered by a large number of people because of the difficulty of following through court orders from one country to another, and the fact that a Bill of some 40-odd clauses has bean needed to overcome it indicates the kind of problems to which those responsible for this matter have turned their minds, and I think we ought to be duly grateful for it. It is an indication that we are all realising that the world is getting smaller every day and that we have to accommodate ourselves to that situation. This Bill is a good example of the way in which that has been done. In general terms, my Lords, we can offer a welcome to a Bill which would obviously improve the lot of many people and which, on the face of it, so far as we on this side of the House are concerned, does not contain any major provision which is in any way controversial. The noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, will be happy to learn that.
There are, however, one or two points which I did not completely follow on quickly reading the Bill and on listening to the noble and learned Lord's speech. One matter is that of dealing with arrears. To take a preliminary point in regard to it, I imagine that there must be some limitation to the arrears which can be collected. In a case where arrears have accumulated over a long period of years and it has not been possible to collect them for reasons that have been explained to us, and those arrears become payable and as a result of this Bill arc capable of being collected, I imagine that there will be some kind of discretion resting with somebody or other so that they will be dealt with understandingly. I am not saying more than that. Obviously the arrears should not have accumulated, but, their having accumulated over a very long period, there is presumably some method of dealing with them.
I am more concerned with the other aspect of that matter as evidenced in Clause 20, which deals with the Scottish position. We are grateful for the explanation of the unusual circumstances in Scotland and the difficulties which stem from not having the same kind of collection machinery, but if one looks closely at Clause 20 one reads that:
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"on any application for leave to enforce the payment of any such arrears, the sheriff may refuse leave … as he thinks appropriate or may remit the payment of such arrears or of any part thereof."
In short, the sheriff will apparently have power to say that no arrears need be paid or that part of the arrears only shall be paid, or that they shall be payable only subject to certain conditions and restrictions. That seems to be a very wide discretion. There is nothing in this particular clause which indicates the way in which the sheriff would reach his conclusion to exercise his discretion, and I am wondering whether his determination is a final determination, or whether there is any form of appeal from a sheriff's decision in that respect.
It may be that in order to have a kind of uniformity of treatment between Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom, and Scotland and other parts of the Commonwealth, there ought to be some method of appeal from a sheriff's exercise of his discretion as described in that clause, although doubtless there is a perfectly satisfactory explanation which anybody other than a layman would already have understood. In this respect I should say that the only reason that your Lordships are being troubled with a speech by a layman of my own vast and indescribable ignorance on this topic is that my noble friend Lord Stow Hill is unfortunately indisposed and unable to assist your Lordships to-day. He had been very closely concerned with this subject and had set up one of the relevant committees.
Another point on which I should like to have a little assurance, rather than assistance, is the effect which this Bill will have when it becomes an Act on those who are still dependent during the course of proceedings under the Act. What I have in mind is the case of a woman who has been denied maintenance because her husband, the person who should be paying the maintenance, has departed elsewhere and there has been no possibility of collecting from him. She has been entitled to maintenance, has not had it and has therefore, we assume, been driven to applying for and receiving supplementary benefit. That will happen in a number of cases, as all of us who have been Members of Parliament and have had constituents to deal with know very well

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indeed. The payment of the supplementary benefit is a payment by the State, and the body which is going to benefit to that extent by being relieved of its responsibility is the State. That is all perfectly right and understandable, but I am anxious to be assured that during the period when the applicant is hopeful, because of proceedings under this Act, of getting payment, and probably a higher level of payment, from the person who should have made the payment the whole way through—let us say, the ex-husband —she will not be in any sense disadvantaged by what is a pure state of hope as opposed to a state of receipt of benefit, even though at the low level of assistance. I hope I have made the point clear.
It seems to me that during the course of giving effect to the provisions of this Bill it may well be that conscientious individuals will take the view that they ought at the earliest possible moment to stop the supplementary benefits which are being paid. That is a very proper point of view. One is anxious, however, that those payments should not stop prematurely at a point of time when the dependant, while harbouring the hope of getting benefit under this Bill, has nevertheless not yet received it. There will obviously be questions of accounting as between the person who has paid the arrears and the dependant who has received benefit under National Assistance, but I do not think we want at this stage of the Bill to go into those more detailed questions, although we may want to come back to them at a later stage. So, in short, we on this side must welcome the Bill and. give it an all the more warm welcome by virtue of the fact that it has been a long time geting here. We must nevertheless recognise that many difficulties have had to be overcome to make it possible for this load of misery to be reduced, if not extinguished. We hope the Bill will prove effective in practice when it reaches the Statute Book, as I hope it will at not too distant a time.
6.12 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, your Lordships may well feel, in view of the very clear way in which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has explained this rather complicated Bill, and the fact that it has been welcomed by my noble friend Lord Diamond, nothing
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more need be said. But I would ask the indulgence of the House for a few minutes to add a few remarks. I do so for three reasons, and I can assure the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor that I am not going to raise matters of detail. First, it seems perhaps an appropriate occasion on which to make what is practically my first speech as a Back-Bencher, having resigned from the Front Bench, not because of any disagreement with my colleagues but simply because I wanted to be free. So for the first time for nearly seven years, I can say what I think—because even when one is in Opposition one naturally has to exercise care in a field for which one of one's colleagues in the other place is a shadow Minister. I must say that I now have a glorious feeling of irresponsibility coming over me, and I hope perhaps to introduce my own Bills and generally have some fun. This Bill, however, is not a question of fun, and this is my second reason for speaking. I was myself indirectly concerned with this Bill.
The fact is that within a few years of the passing of the 1920 Act everybody recognised that it had three defects, the ones which the noble and learned Lord has mentioned: it did not apply to Scotland; we could make reciprocal agreements with Commonwealth countries but not with foreign countries, and it did not apply to affiliation orders. The Commonwealth point became more serious when Eire left the Commonwealth, because that meant that, however many Irishmen deserted their wives here, the wives could get no maintenance. So well was this defect recognised that not long after the Act was passed, I think I am right in saying a Bill—probably a simpler one than this—was ready for introduction in 1931 and got squeezed out of the Parliamentary timetable only at the very last moment. Forty years have now gone by, forty years during which a shocking injustice has been done to deserted wives, whose husbands have left this country and gone elsewhere, so that it was impossible for the wives to get paid any maintenance at all; and in any case, of course, the woman who got an affiliation order was in the same position.
How does it come about that where the law needs changing, and injustice is being done to a not inconsiderable section of the community, forty years can go by without the injustice being put right? I

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think the reason is that this may continue until the Lord Chancellor of the day is given an overall responsibility for our law. Without attaching blame to anybody in particular, what has obviously happened is that each Home Secretary, being able to obtain Parliamentary time for only a limited number of Bills, has always had Bills which he has thought more important or which would reflect greater political credit upon him. There is a very great contrast to-day—and I say to-day advisedly, because yesterday the sixth Annual Report of the Law Commission was published.
Some of your Lordships may remember that I did not have at all an easy ride over the Law Commission Bill. It was not voted against on a Party basis, because it had been in the Election programme, and to vote against it would not have been in accordance with our custom. But I was told that no Law Commission was necessary; I was accused of wanting to appoint a few long-haired Left-Wing professors who would not recognise a Bill if they saw one. I was told that it did not matter what they did, because if they did produce some good proposals for legislation I had not provided any means for enlarging the amount of Parliamentary time to be given to law reform; that the whole exercise was a great mistake, because, whatever they did, no more law reform would be done than had been done in the past. So I am interested to observe from the Annual Report published yesterday that in the 1970–71 Session 18 Bills for which the Law Commission were in whole or in part responsible reached the Statute Book, apart from the massive Courts Bill, with which they had not been concerned. I would congratulate the noble and learned Lord, who wanted really massive law reform performance, on bringing into play all the stops, including—I will not say pressure, but influence, on Members of this House and the other place, of all Parties, to help him with particular Bills.
One must contrast this with the Home Office. I do not seek to blame Home Secretaries in particular. This is a Bill which we should have introduced if we had been returned to power. The Home Office as a whole have quite a good record. The record of the Department of Trade and Industry is absolutely shock
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ing. It is in almost every field of law for which that Department insist on claiming responsibility that law reform most needs to be done. They have more lawyers than the Lord Chancellor and the Law Commission combined. We ought to do something to ensure that a situation never again arises in which it is obviously necessary to remedy an injustice which is being caused to a sufficient number of people and forty years go by without its being done. The only way, in the end, in which this can be achieved is by giving the Lord Chancellor an overall responsibility for law reform. Subject to those observations, my Lords, I welcome this Bill. It has arrived at last. As many of your Lordships know, I have been pressing for it for some time. I am very glad to see that it is here, and I hope that it will very soon reach the Statute Book.
6.20 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I did not include my name in the list of speakers in the first place because I was so overjoyed to see this Bill and to realise that, at long last, these principles were being embodied in a measure, and I felt that anything I might say would prove superfluous. On further reflection, and having listened to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, I realise that the chief beneficiaries are going to be women and children, and therefore all I need to do to-night is to thank him for promoting this measure which, although it is overdue, when at long last it comes gives those of us who are interested in this subject great satisfaction. I am quite sure that when the Bill is implemented it will relieve considerable misery which, in the past, has been endured by those in our community who are least capable of bearing it.
6.21 p.m.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, I hope your Lordships will excuse me for intervening at this stage. We have had, with all respect, an extremely careful and comprehensive explanation of the Bill itself and of its legal terminology and implications. I want to say that I entirely agree with the Bill, and underline what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, has said.
Those of us who have had some experience in the solicitors' branch of the profession know what terrible anguish has been caused by the inability of those who

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are now going to benefit by the Bill to obtain the necessary funds to enable them to live, although orders have been made by which they are entitled to receive those funds. I do not know whether your Lordships can appreciate how deep is the feeling about this matter. It can only be done, I think, in the office of a solicitor where a wife or person concerned opens her heart about the circumstances in which she is placed. It has been my experience, and I believe that of most of my colleagues, when confronted with these cases, to feel how terrible is the situation, that although an order has been made it cannot be enforced.
The whole tragedy of the situation becomes even more serious when one realises that this has been going on for so many years. I am not saying anything that is not known to the community at large. Everybody knew that these hardship cases existed; everybody felt that there was a possibility of the situation being put right. But for some unknown reason—as was implied and expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, to be the position in some other cases—we did not move quickly enough. The tragedy of a situation is not always sufficiently appreciated for action to be taken. Action could have been taken here. Since the 1920 Act we knew what the deficiencies were, we knew what the trouble was, and we knew that there was a possibility of putting that right, because other countries had to some extent, if not entirely, put it right. Yet here we sat watching a situation in which people had to receive supplementary benefits and so on, and were placed in a position in which they should never have been placed, because the offending party was not complying with the orders but was getting away with "murder", if I may so put it. In addition, in most instances the man was capable of making the payment to the wife or the person concerned, because the court itself had come to the conclusion that he was in a position to do it. This is the serious part of the matter. It is not as though an order was made which could not be complied with. The court takes into consideration the circumstances of the individual concerned, and makes an order accordingly. By introducing this Bill the Government have now taken a step which will provide remedies for this position.
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May I point out that in the Bill there is reference to a Convention. How serious becomes the position when these Conventions are made but we do not ratify them for so many years. The Convention was made in 1956. This is not the only case in which a Convention has been ignored for a long period. The Convention of 1956 dealt with certain aspects of the position; we are now accepting the terms of that Convention, and at long last we are going to ratify it. As I have said, it is not the only such Convention. There is the Convention on Human Rights.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL:Equal pay.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, there arc probably dozens in regard to which we should have moved and we have not moved; yet eventually we come to the conclusion that something has to be done about them, and we ratify them years after the time when we should have ratified them. I think that there should be some procedural method devised whereby we deal with similar situations to the one we are faced with to-day, without having to wait any length of time. I have had the experience of introducing quite a number of Private Member's Bills in the other place; but the trouble and the obstacles that are put in one's way before one can get through something which is obviously necessary could, I was going to say, break one's heart. It has not broken my heart, but I think that many people in Parliament refrain from attempting to introduce Private Member's Bills merely because obstacles are put in the way, and also the excuse, "There is not time". What time is needed for a Bill of this description, for example, to be accepted? I do not think for one moment that if everybody consents to its terms—of course there may be a few technical points to be dealt with from a legal standpoint—it should take more than a few hours to get a Bill of this sort through both Houses. I cannot see why there should be any delay.
Your Lordships will appreciate that this indicates that a procedure might be found whereby Back Benchers might, with the consent of the Government, have opportunities of bringing in more measures than at present. If the Government have not got time, there is no reason

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why the Government should not turn to some of the Back Benchers of either House who are interested in a particular subject and, knowing that there is not likely to be any contention at all about the matter itself, induce or persuade them to introduce legislation of this description.
I conclude by saying that we are all very grateful to the Government for having at long last introduced the Bill. I do not blame them for the delay; all Governments have been very lax from the time of the 1920 Act, and indeed before. May I say again, without appearing to be in any way impertinent to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, that I cannot imagine that anyone could have presented this Bill—those of us who are lawyers naturally have a little advantage in this respect—in a clearer and better form than he did, and we are very grateful to him.
6.30 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I should like to begin by thanking those noble Lords who have taken part in this debate for the welcome which they have given to the Bill, and for the observations which they have made about it. If I may take the speeches in the order in which they were delivered, the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, asked me three questions which I shall now handle as best I can. The first question related to arrears. Curiously enough, the second question, which related to the discretion of the sheriff and the sheriff court, bears, so I am informed—and the House will keep in mind that I am not an expert on Scottish law—a close relationship to the first, although not one which is apparent on the face of it.
First of all, may I explain that in England, Wales and Northern Ireland the general law is that a magistrates' court has discretion to remit a part or the whole of the arrears that are outstanding. That is part of our domestic law. It is not part of this Bill. This discretion is exercised by the court having regard to the defaulter's ability to pay, and from that discretion as part of the domestic law—to answer the second part of the question of the noble Lord, Lord Diamond—no appeal lies. This same provision—the whole of it, both the discre
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tion and the absence of appeal—applies automatically under the Bill, because what we are in fact doing under Part I of the Bill is to apply our domestic law to registered orders. It could, of course, be argued that there ought to be an appeal in these cases, although there are arguments the other way; for example, I should have thought that it would lead to a great deal of delay. But it certainly would not be right to introduce an appeal for the registered order which did not apply to the whole of our domestic law.
That brings me to the provisions of Clause 20 to which the noble Lord drew my attention. Whereas in England, Wales and Northern Ireland the magistrates' court has power to remit arrears, in Scotland the sheriff does not have this power. It therefore becomes necessary under Clause 20 to adapt the new law to Scotland. The sheriff has power to revoke an order. He also has to give leave to enforce the arrears which he does not have power to remit. Where he provisionally revokes a registered order under Clause 9(3) of the Bill, the payer would have to have shown at least a prima facie case for revocation. As your Lordships realise, where a revocation is sought, the procedure under the Bill is that you get a prima facie case for registration in the place where the payer resides, and not where the payee resides, but of course it cannot be complete until the payee has had her say.
Therefore, the revocation order in the enforcing court can only be provisional and has to be confirmed by the payee's court before the revocation is complete. That means that a considerable time may elapse between the provisional order and the complete order, and hardship can be suffered by the payer. It follows that arrears that have accrued in these circumstances can be enforced under Clause 20 only by leave of the sheriff. Equally, when an order has been made before the commencement of this Act (as it will be), considerable arrears may have developed because there was no means of enforcement. So hardship could be caused if arrears were enforced right away. Therefore, again, the sheriff's discretion is necessary in Scotland, although the law of England, Wales and Northern Ireland does not make it quite so necessary, because the general law is different.

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One other question which the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, asked was about the position of dependants. Dependants who have been on supplementary benefits will not be disentitled to supplementary benefits while proceedings are pending under the Bill. If the dependant is entitled to benefit in her own right, she will continue to be entitled to benefit while these proceedings are pending. It will of course be for her to claim entitlement under the general law, and no doubt she will be guided—and I hope that she will—by her local supplementary benefit office in claiming it. The claim against the husband may be for a good deal more than the supplementary benefit; he may be very well off. Therefore the issues are separate. But the short answer to the question which the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, posed, is that the entitlement to supplementary benefit remains until the money is in the payee's pocket.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, told us, all engagingly, that he can now, for the first time for many years, say what he thinks. That is going to be very exciting. He told us that he is going to be free to propose a great number of Bills of his own. That also will be very exciting. I can tell him that if he is short of any Titles, it is quite possible that my Office may give him some law reform Bills which he may like to undertake, because we are always on the look-out for likely sponsors of Bills who can possibly explain what they are about. and he will be very high on my list. I must warn him that if he reads Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors, he will see that when Lord Brougham ceased to be Lord Chancellor some time ago he produced, I think 362 Bills in a single Session, all of them for law reform. I hope that he does not show quite so much zeal as his predecessor on the Woolsack. I do not think I am so free as he was to express my opinion about the potential responsibility of the Lord Chancellor for law reform. I have on a previous occasion told him of some of the difficulties that I see.
I think it is fair to the Home Office to point out, both to the noble and learned Lord and to the noble Lord, Lord Janner, that. so far as concerns Part II of the Bill, the Convention which we have made use of in this Bill—and this is partly an
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answer to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner—was not available to the Home Office in 1931. It came into operation as available machinery only in 1956. Although there may be a good deal in the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Janner, that that, too, was 15 years ago, I would point out to him in mitigation that it is not simply a question of ratifying a Convention by one of those nice, short little Bills which schedule a Convention and have one clause in them. As your Lordships will see from Part II of the Bill, it has taken 15 clauses of legislation to put us in a position to adhere to the Convention.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord excuse my interrupting? If we can do it now, why on earth could we not do it 15 years ago?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, there is a great deal of truth in that. At the same time, it is a more complicated operation than some Convention ratification exercises involve. I can say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, that I think he got rather churlish treatment over his Law Commission Bill. I can say this without any sense of shame, because I took it upon myself in the other place, when I was still a Member there, to get up from the Back Benches, rather exceptionally, and say that I thought it had been rather ungenerously received. I quite accept from him that the Law Commission has proved its usefulness in a variety of different ways. Certainly in the short time during which I have been on the Woolsack 1 have used it as much as I could for a variety of different purposes, and I hope that when Mr. Justice Scarman, its Chairman, is ultimately free from his Northern Irish responsibilities it will be even more useful in the coming months than it has been in the past. But that is another question.
With that, I think I have dealt with the points raised in debate, but I have this in general to say about law reform. I think we have developed our techniques in Parliament a little better than our predecessors did. If I may say so without committing a breach of privilege. I think the Second Reading Committee in the House of Commons has made a great difference to Lord Chancellors and to those who are keen on law reform, as

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well as the Law Commission. One of the by-products of the Law Commission has been that Private Members have ready-made Bills which they can present. It is not just a question of sitting down and trying to be your own Parliamentary draftsman any longer. If you are interested in law reform, there are usually one or two Bills which are ready-made for you by the Law Commission, and that is a great assistance. Further, more people are beginning to realise the use which can be made of this House in law reform. A Bill which is introduced in this House, either by the Government or by a Back-Bencher, and which is processed through our Committee and given a Third Reading here, has a much better chance of survival in the House of Commons than a Bill produced rather late in the ballot in the House of Commons, which has to depend upon Government good will even to get airborne at all, and which you probably cannot get a Parliamentary draftsman to process at all. So I think we are learning the techniques of law reform.
We are going very shortly to debate the Report of the Procedure Committee. I personally have a certain amount of interest in that because there is a proposal in that Report which relates to Joint Committees of the two Houses. When the burden of law reform becomes heavier than it is now—and I think it will become heavier than it is now for a reason which I shall give in a moment—we shall have to look at fresh Parliamentary devices to secure time for it. The reason why I say that the burden of law reform will become heavier than it is now is this. The Law Commission's programme, if one has watched the sequence of Reports which they have delivered, was always an ambitious one, and it will culminate in producing really long codifications of our law. This will involve on the part of those who are interested in law reform a re-thinking of some of our Parliamentary methods of dealing with long and complicated Bills. I doubt whether in the future Governments will be able to find time for long Bills of that kind—say, producing a whole penal code, or something like that—unless we adopt new devices and new thinking about procedure. However, Mat is in the future. In the meantime, I
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thank the House for the reception which it has given to this Bill, and if I may now revert to my central position. I will put the Question.
On Question, Bill read 2ª, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

TEXTILE COUNCIL (DISSOLUTION) ORDER 1971
6.44 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN rose to move, That the Draft Textile Council (Disssolution) Order 1971, laid before the House on November 16 last, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move that the Draft Textile Council (Dissolution) Order 1971, laid before the House on November 16 last, be approved. I suggest that, with the leave of the House, at the same time as we deal with this Order we should discuss the next one, the Textile Council Committee (Discharge) Order 1971. Both these Orders will come into operation on January 1, 1972, if approved by your Lordships and by another place.
The purpose of the first Order is to dissolve the Textile Council. In 1967 the name of the Cotton Board was changed to that of the Textile Council. The Cotton Board, as the noble Lord, Lord Brown, will remember very well, which operated during the war, was re-constructed as a development council under the provisions of the Industrial Organisation and Development Act 1947. The change of name in 1967 marked the enlargement of the scope of the Cotton Board to cover man-made fibre production and other materials outside those of the traditional Lancashire cotton industry. The Government are required under the 1947 Act to review development councils at five-yearly intervals in consultation with industry, to see whether they should continue and, if so, whether changes should be made in their constitutions. The Government have made a review of the Textile Council over the past 17 months. Out of the review has emerged a consensus that the Council is no longer suited either to the present needs of the industry or to those likely to develop in the future. The industry as a whole thought that those needs could best be met by a new non-statutory, voluntary,

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policy-making body representing a wider range of textile interests. The Textile Council itself recommended its own dissolution provided that adequate arrangements were made to maintain those of its activities which it was in the industry's interest to continue. Accordingly, last February the Minister announced his decision that the Council should be wound up.
My Lords, the activities of the Council which are to be continued are these. First of all, a new non-profit-making company is to be formed to carry on the Council's Productivity Centre, and is to take over the buildings and equipment, plus a grant from the Council's surplus funds towards the provision of working capital. The centre should become self-supporting quite quickly. A large part of its income is at present derived from its own earnings. Secondly, the Council's statistical services will be carried on by the British Textile Employers' Association, aided also by an initial grant from the Council's surplus in the first place. Thirdly, small initial grants will be made from the same source to launch the new representative bodies, the British Textiles Confederation and the Cotton and Allied Trades Joint Committee, which will take over many of the policy-making and representational functions of the Council. Fourthly, the Shirley Institute will receive the full year's grant which it has been receiving through the levy to help it on its way, although the Council is not imposing any levy for the last six months of its life; that is to say, the Council is at present collecting the levy which was due in September. The Institute will also get a further payment of £50,000 out of the Council's surplus, subject to the availability of funds. Thereafter, the Institute will have to rely for revenue on charges made for its services together with voluntary subscriptions and the Government grant payable on these.
The Draft Order, my Lords, is quite straightforward. Article 2 provides for the dissolution of the Council on March 31, 1972, or such later date as the Secretary of State may direct, and for the vesting of property, rights and liabilities of the Council in the Secretary of State on that date. Article 3 provides that the last accounting year of the Council will end on February 29, 1972, so as to allow the Council a month to prepare
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its report and accounts for the year. Article 4 provides that the Council's activities, other than those necessary to wind up its accounts, will terminate on February 29, 1972. Transactions during March will be taken into final dissolution accounts prepared by the Department of Trade and Industry. Article 5 gives the Council power, with the approval of the Secretary of State, to impose a last levy on persons carrying on business in the industry consisting of activities specified in Schedule 1 to the Cotton Industry Development Council Order. This is to cover any liabilities which cannot be covered by its remaining balances.
My Lords, the Special Orders Committee has drawn attention to the power conferred on the Council in this Article of the Order to impose a charge for this purpose. The power is exercisable only if the assets of the Council are insufficient to meet their liabilities and the expenses of winding up, and only with the approval of the Secretary of State. Your Lordships will recognise that vires are ultimately a matter for the courts, but the Committee expressed doubts whether Article 5 is intra vires because no maximum is specified to the amount of the levy so to be made. The Committee refers to Section 4(2) of the Act of 1947 which requires that
"An order providing for such charges shall contain provision for limiting the amount of the charges that may be imposed, either by providing for their being computed so as not to yield more than a specified maximum amount during a specified period or by providing for their not being levied at more than specified maximum rates."
The Government are grateful to the Committee for having brought attention to the point, but the advice which the Government have received is that on a proper construction of the Act the doubt is not well founded. Perhaps noble Lords will allow me to explain why.
The Draft Order before your Lordships is made under Section 8(1) of the Act which allows the Secretary of State or Minister concerned to make an order for the dissolution of a Development Council, after consulting it and subject to the approval of both Houses. And Section 8(4) requires, inter alia, that the order shall make provision
"for the imposition and recovery of charges as under Section 4 for the purpose of raising any amount by which the assets of the Council

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may be insufficient to meet their liabilities and the expenses of winding up".
These are the very words used in Article 5 of the Order before your Lordships. It would seem that the Order would not comply with the Act unless such provision were made.
At first sight your Lordships' Committee has discovered what I may call a most ingenious paradox. Parliament has provided for the dissolution and winding up of a Development Council, but has made it impossible for it to be dissolved and wound up because it has attached an impossible condition; namely, that the dissolution order should prescribe a maximum amount to he raised by a winding-up levy before it is known what amount is required. However, Parliament, according to the advice I have received, did not err in 1947. I am advised that the words "as under" do not have the effect of requiring that the order should prescribe a maximum amount. They merely mean that there should be a power to raise a levy in the same way as under Section 4; that is, in the words of Section 4(1),
"in such manner and through such channels, if any, as may be specified in the Order".
It may reassure your Lordships to know two things. First, that this is not the first dissolution order to be made under the Act; two earlier ones, which provided for a final levy in the same terms, were not challenged either in Parliament or in the courts; and, second, that there is in any case little likelihood of there being any need for such a levy, as the assets of the Textile Council are likely to exceed their liabilities on winding-up by a very considerable sum, as I have indicated. Nevertheless, I should again like to thank the Committee very sincerely for its vigilance and for the care with which it has examined the order.
My Lords, I turn now briefly to the second Order. The reason why the discharge of the Textile Council Committee needs a separate Order is that it was set up under a different Act of Parliament, the Cotton Industry Act 1959, introduced in another place by my noble friend Lord Eccles. The Committee, composed of the three independent members of the Cotton Board and two additional independents, was set up to prepare and administer schemes for the reorganisation
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of the industry. Noble Lords will remember that the schemes provided for the scrapping of surplus machinery and for compensating both firms who did the scrapping and also workers who lost their jobs. The compensation was financed as to two-thirds by the Government and one-third out of levies imposed by the Cotton Board. Manufacturers were given two months in which to decide whether and what to scrap and five years to complete re-equipment projects qualifying for grant. All this gave the Committee a lot of work up to the middle 1960s, but recently it has had rather less to do. It has continued in being because the trusts established to look after the funds paid in by the industry were set up for ten years. The last trust deed lapsed this year, and the Committee, having disposed of its residual surplus, has now completed its task. This Order, if approved, will give it an honourable discharge.
I should like to express on behalf of Her Majesty's Government our very warm appreciation of the services of my noble friend Lord Rochdale, who was Chairman of the Cotton Board and of the Committee at the time, and of Sir Anthony Burney, who was the prime mover in devising the administrative and financial arrangements. Our thanks arc due to all who served on the Committee. I cannot speak too highly of the service rendered by the Cotton Board and the Textile Council over nearly 25 years. Their members included employers, trade union leaders and independents. How well and truly they laid the foundations and built up the edifice is shown by the anxiety shown by the industry that much of what they began and developed should continue—especially the Productivity Centre and the Statistical Service. By no means the least of the Council's achievements, perhaps the most important at this time, was the detailed study of the productivity and efficiency of the cotton and allied sector, carried out in response to a request made by the Board of Trade in 1966—no doubt made by the noble Lord himself.
The study took two and a half years to complete, and was published in March, 1969. It represents probably the most searching analysis of the position and prospects of the industry that has ever been produced. I should like, in particular, to pay tribute to Sir Frank Rostron, Chairman of the Board when

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the study was undertaken; to Sir James Steel, the present chairman who carried it through; to Mr. T. D. F. Powell, the Director-General; and to Mrs. Caroline Miles, one of the independent members, who was responsible for much of the basic economic analysis. In inviting your Lordships to approve this Order, I hope that I am speaking for you all when I express our sincere gratitude to all the members of the Cotton Board, the Textile Council and the Committee, past and present. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Draft Textile Council (Dissolution) Order 1971, laid before the House on November 16 last, be approved.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
6.57 p.m.
LORD BROWN: My Lords, when I sat for five years on the Benches opposite it was my good fortune to be faced from these Benches by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. I continuously find him helpful, co-operative and, if critical, courteous. It is distressing to me to find on my occasional appearances on the Front Bench of my Party that I seem always to be dealing with something on which it is necessary for me to be critical. These two Orders are no exception. This is a destructive Government; but their destruction of the sort of things that I am particularly concerned with comes in a series of small doses. If we had been faced with one Bill which sought to abolish the Prices and Incomes Board, the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, N.E.D.C., the Consumers' Association, investment grants, industrial liaison officers, regional employment premiums and the selective employment tax there would have been a great deal of opposition in your Lordships' House. People would have realised that a tremendous attack was being made on something which had been built up, with great effort, over the preceding years. But these things come in dribs and drabs.
Here we are faced with the dissolution of the Textile Council and the disintegration of its activities, some of them, to lesser bodies at a time when I think co-ordination of these activities should be the lesson of the day. This is extremely distressing. I am not over-impressed with the argument that the consensus of opinion in the industry was in favour of this dissolution. For some fifteen years I
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was an independent member of the Furniture Development Council—probably now the only remaining Council of this kind. On two occasions, as one of a body of three representing the Council, I remember having to call upon the noble Lord, Lord Erroll of Hale (who was in the House earlier), to persuade him to take the necessary action to see that this Furniture Council continued. On those occasions, too, I believe that the consensus of opinion in the industry was against its continuance. Had it not continued we should not to-day have a furniture industry, for it benefited greatly from these activities. We have to-day, in the Furniture Industrial Research Association, quite the best research association of its kind in the world; and we have a country which is relatively free from the disgraceful furniture that used to be put on the market by manufacturers before the war.
I do not know too much about the operations of the Textile Council. I have heard some good things; I have not heard any criticisms. I took the trouble to look up the Order, and I read through it before getting on to my feet to-day. There are 18 parts to it, and if it had not been so late I should have read them all to your Lordships; for I think you would have agreed that there is not a single one of them which has not an objective that we all heartily endorse. Yet some of these are to be allocated to lesser bodies; some will be forgotten, and we well know that once these things become voluntary the keen members of the industry tend to pay while others do not pay, and the thing gradually runs down. This has happened repeatedly.
The reason for the original Act, the Industrial Organisation and Development Act 1947, was to rectify a situation which had grown up in this country and in which a zealous few struggled along to provide funds from which the lazy majority benefited. In the long run this resulted in co-operative endeavours to up-grade the standards of the industry and all the rest of it dwindling and disappearing. To-day, my Lords, we are in greater need of co-operative endeavour to make sure that our industries really get together and face the requirements of the situation; particularly because we are to enter the Common Market and we shall face much greater competition. This

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seems to me a moment in history when to agree to the dissolution of the Textile Council is a very sad decision.
I am going to end what I have to say in criticism of this Order by quoting from a contribution made to The Times in January, 1968, by a man who knows a great deal about administration and organisation, Robert MacNamara, one-time boss of General Motors, I think, and then United States Defence Secretary, and now, I think, in charge of World Aid. In the article he said:
"Some critics to-day worry that our democratic societies are becoming over-managed. I would argue that the opposite is true. Paradoxical as it may sound, the real threat to democracy comes not from over-management but from under-management. To under-manage reality is not to keep it free, it is simply to let some force other than reason shape reality. That force may be unbridled emotion, it may be greed, it may be aggressiveness, it may be hatred, it may be ignorance, it may be inertia, it may be anything other than reason. But whatever it is, if it is not reason that rules man, then man falls short of his potential."
He goes on at a later stage to make the statement that:
"The observable fact is that most forms of social organisation are growing more complex, but complexity itself is not necessarily inferior to simplicity, and simple arrangements, by the mere fact of their simplicity are not invariably more democratic."
My Lords, I think that this is a Government drive for simplicity; a drive to save a puny amount of money. The abolition of the Textile Council will save the industry, at an absolute maximum, £625,000—indeed it will not save that amount because, presumably, they will go on paying some proportion of that for voluntary endeavours. To banish a Council, whose reputation has stood enormously high for many years—the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, was good enough to acknowledge that—in relation to an industry which needs help to a greater extent than possibly ever before, seems to me to be an act of the greatest folly. I wish it were customary that I should move to divide the House against this Order, but it is not and I shall not do so. But I hope that I have made my protest quite clear.
7.3 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Brown, has not
972
asked me to answer a case, but I would say that I quite understand his point of view when he says that he is not over-impressed with the argument that the Council was in favour of its own dissolution. But the fact is that it was, and it is taking steps to adapt its own voluntary arrangements in a way that it thinks should be done. As I said, the British Textile Confederation is to be a company limited by guarantee. The new company is in the process of being formed, and I hope that the noble Lord will reserve judgment until it has been formed and to see how it does. The Cotton and Allied Trades Joint Committee will be operating in the Lancashire sector alone, and the British Textile Confederation will, I understand, cover the whole sphere. If I remember rightly, I can recall the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes, regretting that the existing Textile Council, or rather, the Cotton Board, did not cover a wider area of the textile field. This, as I understand it, is what is going to happen now, and I hope that the noble Lord, even though he has not a right to speak again, will wish the new Confederation well, as I certainly do on this occasion.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

TEXTILE COUNCIL COMMITTEE (DISCHARGE) ORDER 1971
LORD DRUMALBYN: I beg to move the second Order in my name.
Moved, That the Draft Textile Council Committee (Discharge) Order 1971, laid before the House on November 16 last, be approved.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

WATER SERVICES REORGANISATION AND WATERWAYS BOARD
7.6 p.m.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS rose to ask Her Majesty's Government:
What advantage is to be gained from breaking up the British Waterways Board and handing its unified system to seven different water-supply authorities?
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I am asking this Question to-night because

973
I believe this to be a classic case of something which is basically a good idea, and undoubtedly the right thing to do, being spoilt by over-haste and lack of consultation. Why this should be so I cannot conceive, because there is no lack of advisers in this matter. The lack of consultation seems to have spread to the point where on the list of speakers I seem to have been marked down as having to answer myself. No doubt, provided that I asked a sensible question, I should get a sensible answer from myself. And I think that I might even get a more satisfactory answer than I shall get from noble Lords opposite. But I will see what we get.
In order to explain what I think has been done wrong here, I must first explain what I think has been done right. The question in hand is the reorganisation of water and sewerage services throughout the country. It is undoubtedly right that the British Waterways Board should be involved in this, because if you are dealing with all the water services in the country, from source to tap, and indeed back through the sewage works recovery, from tap to source and tap again, you must include the British Waterways Board. I have many times explained to your Lordships that the greatest service done to the country, and the activity that produces most of the revenue of the British Waterways Board, is the sale of water. This is the most paying part of the Board's enterprise. To leave the Board out of the reorganisation of the water services of this country would be quite impossible; to put it in is undoubtedly right. What is wrong is to do this in the way in which it is being done. The Board is not being put in in one unit but is being broken up into what amounts to seven different pieces.
If noble Lords opposite had taken the advice which was undoubtedly available to them, they would have discovered that, to begin with, this decision is entirely contrary to the facts of geography. A regional waterway such as it is proposed to set up must inevitably be based on a catchment area. In other words, its boundaries are logically and geographically along the top of a watershed. The British Waterways Board is in exactly the opposite geographical state. The canal system was set up in order to link the rivers. Therefore the canals, not only
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historically but by geographical fact, start in one river, go up the hill, over the top of a watershed and down into a river in the other valley. So the natural form of a canal is a reservoir near the top of a high summit, feeding water into the canal at a high level on top of a hill, down both sides of a hill to the river on each side. The logical unit of a canal is just that: the reservoir and the area of canal which that reservoir feeds, terminating in the river, or whatever it is the canal ends up in.
It therefore follows that if you are going to start dividing up the canals of this country between regional water authorities, in many cases you are going to cut the canal on its summit level—where, incidentally, it is usually in tunnel. I do not know who is to pay for the cost of the tunnel. Some unfortunate authority is going to get a tunnel from which it will get no financial benefit. Apart from that, every time a canal is so cut, one authority gets half the canal with a reservoir, and another authority gets half the canal without a reservoir. What is more, canals are supplied with repair depots, which have dredgers, lock-gate-making equipment and all the equipment that is needed to keep a canal in good order. If a canal is cut in half—and that is what is to be done in many cases—one authority will get the repair depot. I do not know what the other authority does. Operating the system, too, will be made extraordinarily difficult and far more expensive than it has been hitherto.
Moreover, a great many absurdities arise. So far in this country, because the canals have been unified, it has been possible to take out a licence which allows the boat to travel all over the country, just as a car licence enables a driver to go where he may please. But under this new system, it appears, we shall have to take out seven licences for a boat in order to go where we wish in the country.
It may be even worse than that. According to a Government announcement, navigation is to be paid for by tolls. I think this must be a mistake; I do not think that even this Government could have fallen into this error. Tolls have been abolished in this country as being a hopelessly inefficient method

975
of collecting money. If the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, were here he would tell your Lordships that the Thames abolished tolls a long time ago. Having toll offices, with men handing out tickets and taking money for every boat, is a wholly inefficient method of collecting revenue; in fact, their employment eats up the larger part of the revenue. I am sure this is not what is intended. But I am equally sure that if we are to have seven licences instead of one licence, it will be the most hopelessly inefficient method of collecting the money, and certainly far less efficient than what is done now. There are disadvantages involved in obtaining a licence. It means that you have to write to an office, and in due course, the Post Office permitting, your licence comes back to you. But think what one would have to do if one had to have seven licences. This is unbelievably bad organisation.
There are many other questions, with which I do not intend to burden your Lordships this evening, but I would point out that the river authorities are, to some extent, navigation authorities, and it is true to say that the regional water authorities will be taking over a number of navigations. They will be taking over the Thames, the Nene and a number of others. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, when he replies, will be able to tell us whether it will be possible to combine these licences and make one licence for the whole country, including all the rivers. That would be a definite argument in favour of this proposal. I should not even object if he said that the River Severn, where the navigation authority is the British Waterways Board but the river authority is a separate authority, and one or two other similar waterways, are to be taken over by these new regional water authorities.
The idea that it is cheaper to run the cross-country inland navigations in this country in seven different parts instead of in one piece is absurd. I am sure that this has not been properly thought out. I should not have been inflicting this speech on your Lordships at this late hour if the position had not been that this matter has to be dealt with before early spring, because legislation is soon
976
to be brought in. This also applies to a number of Questions (I apologise for them in advance) which I have on the Paper for next Tuesday and Wednesday. Nevertheless, there are a large number of questions arising on this subject which have not so far been properly dealt with.
There is one further point I should like to bring out this evening. As a sort of drive to accept this proposal, it has been mooted to those of us who are interested in this matter that under the new arrangements much larger sums will be made available for navigation and amenity than are now available. That is something which normally I should be prepared to cheer loudly. But then I discovered that two other things are also true. The first is that navigation and the other separate purposes of these regional water boards are all to be taken into separate account, and each account is to be treated on its merits, so that presumably if a larger sum had been given for navigation and other amenities at some point, the navigation and other amenity users, including presumably fishermen, will have to find the money. What is more, we find a further nasty little paragraph which says that at some point, if the money is not found, the regional water authorities will have the power to wind up the navigation. In other words, having been given a larger sum of money, we are expected to hand it back; and if we fail to do so our waterways will be abolished. This is not nearly good enough, and on those terms it would be much better if we did not have the gift.
I am not going to put the entire range of the points I wanted to talk about to your Lordships; it would take too long and the patience of your Lordships would be far too sorely tried. I wish merely to point out that things could be done differently. There is no reason why the British Waterways Board should not be inserted into the new system in one piece. The British Waterways Board is unique in the sense that, whereas other water-ways and streams are each a matter for one particular catchment area, the British Waterways Board works, inevitably by their mere geographical fact, join the catchment areas together. Therefore it would be logical in this particular case to insert the British Waterways Board into the new set-up in one piece. It is

977
the only organisation for which this would have to be done, because logically it is the only organisation which needs to be entered into the scheme in one piece. If this were to happen I feel sure there could be no complaint at all about what was being done. Indeed, if the other navigations and the British Waterways Board could be combined into common licensing and certain other common administrative arrangements, a great improvement would be made. If only the Government had thought of this in the first place, I feel sure 1 should not have needed to weary your Lordships to-night by asking the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
7.22 p.m.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, before I support the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, I must declare an interest in this matter because I am President of the Surrey and Hampshire Canals Society. The British Waterways Board have been good keepers of our canals and other waterways; so much so that last year the revenue from selling water increased, as has that from property rents, by considerably more than the increase in the gross national product of the rest of the country.
The canals and waterways provide an irreplaceable amenity value; so much so that last year 1¾ million people actually took holidays on the canals. I do not know how many of your Lordships have been on the canals: I have, once or twice. I have even fallen into them several times, but that seems merely to add to the pleasure of it. It is so important to maintain this amenity value that I felt obliged to get up and support the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids. Not only have 1¾ million people gone on the waterways—and I include here the Norfolk Broads—but 15 million tons of freight was carried on the waterways. The British Waterways Board have reached agreement with approximately 25 local authorities for restoration schemes for the canals, which provide not only employment but also a form of remedial training for prisoners, and training for youth camps, Army cadets and such people, all of whom can go and enjoy it and gain valuable experience from this digging of holes in the ground and the removal of big stones from the bottoms of canals. However, most of these res
978
toration schemes have been frowned upon by the Treasury on the grounds of expense.
I should have thought that it would be difficult for several different regional water authorities to have the same sort of pull with the local authorities. If the British Waterways Board was going to be handed over to the National Trust or some similar body, I do not think the same concern would he felt among the waterways community, because the National Trust have a long record of looking after waterways. They keep quite large sections of the Wey, and they are good and careful conservators of that waterway. But it is suggested that the British Waterways Board should be handed over to seven untried water authorities. Even if the Government will not agree to a total reprieve for British Waterways, albeit in its reconstituted form, perhaps they will allow the British Waterways Board five years to go on as it is while the seven regional water authorities get into practice, learn their job and thoroughly settle down. After all, the British Waterways Board are experienced enough for them to be able to continue very efficiently, but the regional water authorities still have to find their feet. I hope that the Government will bear this point in mind when they consider the matter in greater detail.
7.27 p.m.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, like others here I welcome the unification of water conservation, distribution and usage, along with the unification of control of pollution, sewerage and sewage. This, as we know, is in line with the Wilson Committee on the Future Management of Water in England and Wales. But that, I believe, is an insufficient base for decisions on some 2,000 miles of inland water transport which has a 12 million tons volume of goods carried per year and which has not shrunk so greatly as is commonly supposed, in that it was only 16 million in 1924. The Wilson Committee was not charged with consideration of the transport aspect, and this explains why it devoted only six paragraphs out of more than 300 to the subject. Nor do the Government appear to have given that much attention. Paragraphs 31 and 32 of the circular do not show the Government as looking with interest, imagination

979
and vision to the future of inland water transport. Indeed, we read that
" … except for a few short lengths, the network of rivers and canals administered by the British Waterways Board no longer fulfils a major transport function".
Then it went on:
"Canals to-day are mainly of local and regional significance."
I should like to ask whether the British Waterways Board was consulted before these decisions were taken; was the Inland Waterways Association consulted before these decisions were taken; and was the Inland Waterways Amenity Advisory Council consulted before the circular was published?
I am interested in this question from the point of view of natural resources. We should not throw away natural assets just because their use has of late been declining. Mineral exploration declined in Britain during the heyday of the Colonial Empire, amid worldwide falls in base metal prices. Yet to-day in different circumstances the Government are offering strong fiscal incentives for mineral exploration.
This is a matter of vision or blindness. The trend towards still bigger ocean-going ships in the deep-sea trades, to which so many were blind five and even two years ago, is now common talk. Then, why not recognise the big ships' counterpart—the increasing demand for smaller ships to cover the transhipment of raw materials likely to be landed, and already to a degree being landed, at the great deep water sites on our West, North and East coasts for movement to inland destinations? Europe is busy studying how to move these materials. Much capital is being invested in the French and German waterway systems. There are the improvements of the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal. There is also much investment in inland waterways in Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Roumania. The Danube countries have even gone so far as to devise and put to use dual purpose barges that can ply both the inland waterways and the open sea.
For Britain, the development of waterborne transport for inland and open sea use is just as critical as it is for Europe. We should not be thinking simply of water transport in these islands as something that is internal and of no interest
980
to our external trade. Just now, when there are significant developments in transport technology in this very matter, is hardly the time to write off our transport waterways as too old, too small, and too poor to deserve thought of further development. All this time a Danish company, in alliance with a well-known British firm—Sutclitfe's of Grimsby—have devised and are now building a BACAT ship. "Barge Abroad Catamaran" is the way that that name is devised. It is designed to be able to ferry as many as 18 barges of 140 tons each—that is more than 2,500 tons in all—across the North Sea at a single time. The current thinking is to pioneer a route from the Humber—that means from Leeds and Nottingham—to Antwerp and, maybe, Scandinavia. This is a new development in ship design which is of great importance to our inland waterways and matches other developments such as the LASH ship, which is to be described as in the same family but on a larger scale.
This is the circumstance that calls for preserving the navigational canals and watching, studying, imagining an altogether new future for them. The day could well come when we want more, not fewer, transport canals to handle the processed, semi-processed and non-processed raw material which will come in bulk to these islands in the coming years.
I quote Mr. J. F. Pownell, a noted student of canals, who, in a book in 1942, pointed out that through the heart of England there runs a natural canal line produced by uniform erosion many ages ago offering long reaches of route on a single level without requiring the delay, cost and obstruction of locks. He wrote:
"The contour of 300 feet runs nearly continuously right through the country … and creates the remarkable possibility of having a canal … without any variation from one level …At 310 feet above sea level"
he continues—
" … it could serve London, Bristol, Southampton, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle."
The concept of Britain's deep water facilities attracting the mammoth ships of to-morrow and intercepting their Europe-bound trade is at last beginning to be grasped. So do not let us ignore one of the immediate implications; namely, that easeful water-borne transport from the heart of Britain into the

981
heart of Europe is complementary and would be a rewarding opportunity for private and public enterprise alike, or in partnership, provided we enter upon it.
That means having a special care for inland water transport. It means having national as well as regional care. It means being ready to treat these waterways as the major assets that they still can be. It may mean getting the Waterways Board as we now know it, or have recently known it, or in the shape we can still recognise, somehow into the new set-up in one piece. However it is done, we need to secure a national care for these matters instead of relegating these waterways to a kind of museum of industrial archaeology, fit to be no more than the plaything of men at leisure. I plead for a new look at this transport aspect with a view, maybe, to a tremendous development to-morrow that we must not prejudice. The great James Brindley likened uncontrolled, under-used water to a furious giant. He said:
"But if you lay the giant flat upon his back he loses all his force and becomes completely passive whatever his size may be".
LORD NUNBURNHOLME: My Lords, I do not want to keep you, but I want to mention one subject. It is essential to give all the support we can to keeping the Inland Waterways Board in one piece. We do not want to see it sold off simply because one part is not making any money whereas another is. Nobody has mentioned the good that the waterways do to the farming community in this country. We are getting more and more land pipe-drained throughout the country, and we are increasing our food production year by year. The waterways are a means of getting rid of water off the farms. That point has not been mentioned by any speaker in the House this evening, and I commend it to the Government.
7.38 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I cannot think what the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, had in mind when he challenged us with having dealt with this matter with undue haste. The Central Advisory Water Committee have been sitting and considering the future organisation of water services in this country for l8 months. We have been giving it the most serious, detailed and profound consideration since they reported in
982
April, 1971. If there has been any criticism as to timing so far, it has almost all been that we were taking too long about it. Even now we are only just embarking on consultations, and it is premature to accuse us of a failure to consult. The document we are discussing is a consultation document. It was published a week ago; already the Chairman of the British Waterways Board has been to see us twice. We are embarking on consultations; there is no question of a failure to consult. The object of publishing the paper is in order to get consultations going.
Perhaps I may remind the House of the phrase in the Statement (which we did not have in this House) relating to the British Waterways Board. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, presenting the Statement in another place, said:
"As suggested in the Committee's report, the responsibilities of the British Waterways Board for canals and certain rivers will be transferred to the regional water authorities. I am convinced that, in conjunction with the local authorities, they can build upon the valuable work the board has done, in particular by adapting the present canal system to one more directly designed for amenity and recreation."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 2/12/71; col. 678.]
Those were his words, my Lords.
The country's canals were built in the 18th and early 19th century for the carriage of freight. Nowadays, except for a few short lengths, the 2,000 miles network of canals and river navigations now administered by the British Waterways Board is no longer of significance for transport: only a few fragments out of the 340 miles of the commercial waterways are useful for transport purposes. I must correct the noble Lord who said that in 1970 the British Waterways Board network carried 15 million tons. It carried 6½ million tons. Sadly but surely, first rail and then road competition has left our inland waterways with less than one-half of 1 per cent. of the total inland movement of freight in this country. That is a fact we have to face, much as we may regret it.
However, this is by no means the end of the canals. Far from it. They and their associated reservoirs, as the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, said, are becoming increasingly important. In two ways, their new roles are quite different from their original roles. First, they have

983
become, as my noble friend Lord Onslow has reminded the House, an important part of the water supply industry. The British Waterways Board's water sales (their customers include statutory water undertakers, local authorities and a wide range of industries) are now at a level of 450 million gallons a day. And as the noble Lord, Lord Nunburnholme, reminded us, the canals are also inextricably involved in land drainage and the disposal of effluents. And, as a further and increasingly important benefit, the canals are to-day of growing value for recreation and amenity—for such pleasures as fishing, canoeing, cruising, and simply for walking along the towpath. These last matters are ones which the Government wish, and indeed intend, very much to encourage.
Thus, while of limited significance for transport, the inland waterways' role now is in water conservation and supply, land drainage and sewerage, and, last but not least, in providing recreation and amenity. All these are matters of local concern, and it is no longer appropriate that the canals should continue to be administered as a nationalised transport industry. It is much more sensible that the system as a whole should be related rather to the system of water conservation, river management, water supply and water-borne recreation. Nevertheless, I am glad to be able to say to my noble friend Lord Lauderdale that Her Majesty's Government have started consultations with the major operators of freight services about the future maintenance and development of the commercial waterways, in so far as they still provide a useful transport service.
It is the intention of the Government in discussions on Circular 92/71, published a week ago, on the reorganisation of water and sewage services, to adhere to the principle that the water system in England should be controlled by nine regional water authorities. The Government intend that within this organisation a viable commercial canal system should continue to be operated for transportation and that the quality of canals for amenity should be improved. In the discussions, which are only just beginning, on the circular with interested bodies, including the British
984
Waterways Board, the Government are anxious to devise the best management structure and other administrative machinery in order to achieve these objectives, and in those discussions of course the matter of boundaries, licensing, and the timing of the changeover can all be taken into account. On the outcome of these discussions the eventual legislation will be based. My Lords, the amenity and recreational aspects of the canals are now among their most important aspects, and, as my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has said, so far from these being threatened or diminished we are convinced that these aspects will be substantially improved as a result of the implementation of these proposals. If we did not think that we would not have been putting them forward.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down may I ask him whether he would be so kind as to come back to his figures on freight? Is it not the case that The National Association of Inland Waterway Carriers published quite recently the following statement:
"The tonnages of Coal, Petroleum products and general merchandise carried on British Waterways owned navigations in 1969 by the independent Carriers and British Waterways are as indicated below: Independent Carriers: 6,133.000 tons; British Waterways: 6,701,000 tons",
making a total of 12 million-odd tons? Perhaps the noble Lord would be so kind as to check those figures, because I have shot them at him at rather short notice. One appreciates his kindness, interest and courtesy in all these matters.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I do not in the least mind being shot at by the noble Earl, but 1 think he will find that the figures I was giving were referring to the system managed by the British Waterways Board, and 6½ million tons are right for that. I think he may have been quoting other figures covering all the inland waterways which go wider.

WELLINGTON ESTATE BILL [H.L.]
Bill (as approved by the Personal Bills Committee) presented, and read 1ª.
PROCEDURE OF THE HOUSE
Second Report from the Select Committee, made, and to be printed.