Lords Sitting of 22 July 1971

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

YOUTH HOSTEL ACCOMMODATION IN LONDON
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the fact that youth hostels in London are few in number, difficult to locate, and frequently overcrowded they would encourage steps to alleviate this problem.]
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, there is no Ministerial responsibility for youth hostel accommodation as such, but both local authorities and voluntary organisations are well seized of the problem and are doing everything that they can to meet the demand.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, may I guardedly thank the noble Earl for that rather unsatisfactory reply? Is he aware that under the Development of Tourism Act 1969 the sum of £50 million was set aside for hotel construction and improvement? Can he tell the House whas has now become of that Act and what steps the Government propose to take to deal with this increasingly serious problem?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, it was under the Development of Tourism Act that the London Tourist Board and the tourist authorities were set up. It is their job to look after the problems of tourism. I think it is unlikely that there will ever be sufficient accommodation at peak periods to meet all the demands that are likely to come from people, particularly from the Continent, who are looking
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specifically for cheap accommodation.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that these youth hostels are fully booked up for months ahead and that young tourists crowd the pavements outside them clamouring for accommodation? Can the Government really do nothing at all to attempt to cater for this enormous demand by young people who may well be among the leaders of Europe during the next few years?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, we are very anxious to encourage young people to come to this country, but we advise that they try to come out of season and arrange their accommodation in advance and, if possible, stay outside central London.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that if some of these young people are likely to become leaders of Europe they should be a little more responsible about finding out where they are going and where they are going to stay?
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the sum of £50 million which was referred to arose from a Bill proposed by noble Lords opposite, when there was no limit to sums of money which might be spent, and that the larger part of that sum was spent on the larger hotel chains and not on the smaller hotels and family businesses or for the benefit of those who provide accommodation at cheaper rates?
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, would not the noble Earl agree that the charges made by these enormous modern hotels are far beyond the reach of the majority of visitors who come to this country, and is this not an important section of our tourist industry that ought to be catered for?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, it is for this very purpose that the Tourist Boards were set up, to ensure that such tourism as can be encouraged will be adequately catered for. But I can assure the noble Lord, reverting to his original Question, that youth hostel accommodation is not within the purview of Her Majesty's Government.

ACCOMMODATION OF FOREIGN VISITORS
3.9 p.m.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they would be prepared to encourage the compilation of a register of private families in London, who are willing to accommodate foreign visitors at reasonable charges.]
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the London Tourist Board already maintains a register of the kind the noble Lord has in mind. I understand that certain private agencies also help people to find accommodation in private families.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, would it be possible for the noble Earl to urge upon the new chairman of the London Tourist Board that some extension ought to be made of the existing lists of private homes that are now available and that a special effort should be made to enable foreign visitors to come into contact with private Engilsh families rather than being herded into hotels?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, as I said, a register has been set up for this purpose. There are also various private agencies which cater for this particular demand, and it would not be up to the Government to urge the chairman of the Tourist Board in this respect, because I am sure that he knows the best way of bringing these matters to the attention of the people concerned.
LORD PARGITER: My Lords, can the noble Lord say to what extent hotels in the various areas have access to lists of private families so that when hotels are full they may do what is very often done on the Continent and supply names of people to whom prospective customers can go?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, if my information is correct, I think the hotels can get these lists upon application to the Tourist Board.

E.E.C.: COST OF PUBLICATIONS AND ADVERTISING
3.9 p.m.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is expected to be the total cost to the Exchequer of publication and distribution of:

(i) the full-length version of the White Paper on E.E.C.;

(ii) the popular version of the same; and

(iii) the H.M.S.O. Factsheets on Britain and Europe;

and the cost of publicly advertising these documents.]
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, the cost to the Exchequer of publication and distribution of the White Paper (Cmnd. 4715), is nil, as costs incurred have already been more than covered by revenue from sales. Costs of publishing and distribution of the short version of the White Paper have to date amounted to £191,000 and similar costs for the Factsheets amount to £255,850. To date expenditure on advertising the Factsheets has amounted to £86,150. No separate advertising has been undertaken for the short version of the White Paper. A further £114,550 has been budgeted for future reprints of these publications and advertising for them, but much will depend on public demand for these documents.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, may I first thank the noble Earl, and then ask him whether he will accept my apology for not being here in my place when he made his Statement on Monday? Does he not feel that the expenditure of rather more than £1 million is a little excessive? Does not the situation simply call for the widespread publication of the entry terms, coupled perhaps with a balanced summary of the economic performance of the E.E.C., including its rather shaky performance on the balance of payments? Secondly, there could be a balanced account of the pros and cons in terms of foreign policy.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, perhaps it is my fault, but the noble Lord has his sums wrong. When he looks at my reply he will see that the amount involved is something over £500,000. On the substantive point, we have expended far greater sums on other matters—publicising decimalisation for example. This is a small price to pay in helping towards a better informed public opinion on the most momentous issue of our time.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, am I not right in thinking that in 1961 a similar pamphlet with a green cover was produced for everybody, so that people should know what was involved in the decision that was made? As the noble Earl has said, is this not the biggest decision that the people as a whole have to make in our lifetime? Is it not right that they should know the facts?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, it is true that a series of free broadsheets was produced in 1961 at the time of those negotiations. That precedent was followed by the last Administration at the time of their application in 1967.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, would the noble Earl assure the House that the publication of the popular version of the White Paper—and the House knows my position with regard to the Common Market—is in accordance with the strict rules that are applied within Government? Is he further aware that there were occasions in the previous Government when we were criticised for doing this very thing?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, that is certainly my understanding. There are very many precedents for this, too.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether, in view of the fact that the Government have pledged themselves to the policy and principles of private enterprise, they could not leave the advertising for entry into the Common Market to the miscellaneous collection who advertise frequently in The Times and provide sumptuous luncheons and banquets? Why should the Government spend money on something about which they are well aware that at least half the electorate of the country hold contrary views?
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Speech!
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, does the noble Lord regard that as taking an objective view?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I note with pleasure the noble Lord's support for private enterprise. I am glad to see that he is coming round to our way of thinking in these matters. It is right for the Government of the day, as it was right for the last Government of the day, and for the Government of the day before that, to lay the full facts before the people of this country. These facts are appreciated. The extraordinary demand for the full facts about the Common Market is worth noting. Some 5½ million copies of the short version of the White Paper have been produced. Only 1¾ million of these were initially distributed, but a further 1¼ million have already been distributed as a result of public demand, which is running at some 100,000 copies a day. This shows the appetite of the public for the facts on this subject, and those facts are clearly set out.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, one appreciates the appetite, but does not that make advertising rather superfluous?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, my noble friend has a further Question down on the Order Paper, and my Answer to that further Question will bear on the point he has just made.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, in the noble Earl's original Answer, if I heard him correctly, he referred to precedents for this type of advertising. If there are such precedents, would he make them known to the House? That would be very helpful in meeting criticism which is made on this matter. The noble Earl referred to decimalisation. Would he not agree that there is a fundamental difference between propaganda documents which are explaining something that has already happened, and documents which are putting forward policy on an issue which is not yet determined? Could he give us precedents particularly in regard to putting forward policy which is not yet determined?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I did not in my original reply say anything about precedents. I referred to this in

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answer to a supplementary question, and there are precedents in the time of both the last Administration and the previous Conservative Administration. In answer to what the noble Baroness has said about decimalisation, I thought that that was in anticipation of the event in many important respects. It is worth remembering that at the moment we spend something like £4 million a year on advertising in support of recruiting for the Armed Forces. There are many noble Lords on all sides of the House who do not support the policy of more and bigger Armed Forces.
LORD SLATER: My Lords, with regard to the distribution cost of this literature, what was the amount of money allocated to the Post Office, in the total sum that the noble Earl mentioned? Was any form of direction given to the Post Office Board that they should act as the agents on behalf of the Government for such distribution?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I should need notice with regard to the first part of that question. In answer to the second part of the question, I do not think that there was any direction, but there is a contract with the Post Office.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I ask a question in support of the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, particularly in view of the kind things that he said about me yesterday? While it is tremendously important that the facts should be known to the public, is not the criticism of this Governmental expenditure before Parliament has voted on the matter due to the fact that these documents are propagandist and are not just a factual statement on what we need to know?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I note the growing alliance between the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, and my noble friend Lord Lauderdale. It is always interesting to see these friendships consolidating in your Lordships' House. I do not accept the criticism which the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, has just made. So far as certainly the broadsheets or the Factsheets are concerned, this is entirely factual information, and, what is more, the disadvantages of entry
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are stated in those Factsheets quite plainly, as well as the advantages.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, since the noble Earl has stated, in extenuation of the Government's policy of advertising for entering the Common Market, that we spend vast sums of money for recruiting purposes, and in view of the fact, unfortunately in my view—it is a personal view—that the sum spent on recruiting has not met with a large measure of success, may I ask whether the noble Earl expects the same to happen with regard to advertising for the E.E.C.?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, that supplementary goes a little wide of the previous Question. All I should like to say is that I am not apologising for Her Majesty's Government's policy in this respect; I am defending a policy which is justified and justifiable on all counts.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, while agreeing with the noble Earl that my noble friend's question went rather wide, may I ask whether the noble Earl will now reply to the very close question which was put to him by my noble friend Lady Wootton of Abinger? Will he give the precedents where the Post Office and other services have been provided to put forward a point of view about which Parliament had not yet made up its mind?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I have already very clearly stated the precedents for this, but if the noble Lord wishes to put down a further Question on the matter, if in any way I have not adequately replied to the noble Baroness then of course I shall be glad to answer.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, all we are asking is that the noble Earl will put the precedents in the OFFICIAL REPORT or in reply to a later Question, so that we have them concretely.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I have already said to the noble Baroness that I should be glad to do so.
LORD BROWN: My Lords, would the noble Earl agree that one of the burdens of good democratic Government is the grave difficulty in a Government's finding means of untrammelled communication of facts to the public, and that in

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the light of this the expenditure occasionally of relatively small sums on conveying facts to the public is justified?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I note the noble Lord's remarks with a certain pleasure.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, would not the Minister consider that it would be better to have a General Election so that the people could decide this issue for themselves, instead of trying to brainwash them by this propaganda?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, that is another question. Perhaps it is the right point of departure for the next Question on the Order Paper.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I just ask whether the noble Earl is also aware that by coincidence we are debating the Common Market next week? Would he consider not only publishing precedents but, perhaps in reply to a Question, publishing the rules that govern this matter? I am not at all averse to publication in this sort of way, but there are fairly strict rules on which I think the House would like to be satisfied.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: 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 in what further advertising costs it is proposed to involve the Exchequer with a view to informing or influencing public opinion about E.E.C. in advance of Parliament's own judgment of the matter, still to be expressed in the Division Lobbies.]
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, at present there are no further plans for any more expenditure on advertising other than those stated in my reply to my noble friend's first Question.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, not wishing to start any further hares, may I ask the noble Earl whether he is aware that this second Answer will give great satisfaction?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am duly grateful to my noble friend for small mercies.

PRIVATE NOTICE QUESTIONS
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I put a Question to the noble Earl the Leader of the House? I asked whether I might be able to put a Private Notice Question, but I appreciate that I asked for it very late. The Question was, Whether the Government—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order!
LORD BROCKWAY: All right, my Lords; I accept that. Let me put it this way. In view of the fact that a Statement is being made in another place, may we have a repetition of that Statement in this House?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think it is not true to say that a Statement is being made in another place. An Answer is being given to a Private Notice Question. We have very clear Rules on these matters. They are contained in the Companion. Perhaps I should, for the sake of your Lordships, read the relevant extract from page 52 on Private Notice Questions:
" A Lord who wishes to give Her Majesty's Government private notice of his intention to ask a Question on a matter of urgency should submit his Question in writing to the Leader of the House by Twelve noon on the day on which he proposes to ask the Question. The decision as to whether the Question is of sufficient urgency to justify an immediate reply rests in the first place with the Leader of the House and ultimately with the general sense of the House. (Report of Procedure Committee, 13th April, 1960)."
In fact, I received notice from the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, only about an hour ago. I felt that my hands were tied by the 12 o'clock Rule here. This was really the only consideration which was governing me in this matter. We have rather more Rules than sometimes we give ourselves credit for, and it is important—and I think noble Lords generally feel it is important—that we should be guided reasonably by those Rules, although we have a reputation, a deserved one, for flexibility.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am bound to uphold the noble Earl in the view he has given. My noble friend Lord Brockway, who is a very skilled and effective raiser of matters, will know that on occasions I have had to refuse Private

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Notice Questions from him, not always because they were out of time. It is of course a fact that generally we apply a sort of test of urgency. But where a Private Notice Question is allowed in another place, it is quite often allowed here. It might well he (I am not sure what matter is in mind) that this could be dealt with by the device which we have invented, now sanctified by the Procedure Committee and approved by the House, of an Unstarred Question, which would mean that the matter would be before the House. I am not clear whether this has been allowed in another place. I am only trying to be helpful, but I am somewhat mystified.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I do not want to come between the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, and the House. The Question has been allowed in another place. I would say to Lord Brockway straight away that I recognise both the urgency and the importance of this particular matter. But I felt that I was bound by a quite clearly expressed note in the Companion. This was the only reason for the ruling which I felt perforce bound to give.
LORD SHACKLETON: I am sorry, my Lords; I referred just now to an Unstarred Question: I meant a Written Question.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I have no complaint about this matter. I appreciate that I gave notice very late. That was because the news came very late, and when I indicated that I desired to put it I recognised the implication of the time factor.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway. This is a matter to which we may conceivably come back in the next day or so. If at any time he, or any other Member of the House, feels that our 12 o'clock Rule is too stringent, then of course the Procedure Committee can always look at it. But I myself do not think it is an unsensible Rule.

BRITISH RAILWAYS (No. 2) BILL
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

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

LANARKSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Read 3a, and passed.
LERWICK HARBOUR ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Read 3a, and passed.

PENSIONS (INCREASE) BILL
3.33 p.m.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Jellicoe, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Earl St. Aldwyn.)
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, since the Question has been put and this Bill is the particular baby of the Lord Privy Seal I am rather sorry that he was not able to see it through to its final stage. No doubt he was engaged in looking up precedents on Private Notice Questions, but I am sure the House would not deny him the opportunity if he wished to say something, although I think the Bill is generally accepted; and as the begetter of it, if not the actual father, I certainly commend the Bill to your Lordships' House.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving me the opportunity to admit a certain paternity in this matter. I also gratefully acknowledge the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, is the grandfather—or

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perhaps the stepfather or the uncle. I am not quite certain what his legitimate relationship is.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am the begetter; the noble Earl is the stepfather.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, all I would say about this particular baby of mine is that I think he or she is not a bad baby. This Bill has been generally welcomed by your Lordships' House. Like all babies it is not perfect, and perhaps in future years there will be an even better Pensions (Increase) Bill; but I have been very proud to be able to play some part in the preparation and the carrying through of this Bill into legislation, and I am glad to acknowledge the fact that to a large extent this is a bi-partisan measure.
On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed.

SHERIFF COURTS (SCOTLAND) BILL
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I have it in Command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purpose of the Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Bill, has consented to place Her interest, so far as it is concerned on behalf of the Crown, at the disposal of Parliament far the purposes of the Bill.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Baroness Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie.)
On Question, Bill read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

POOL COMPETITIONS BILL
Read 3a, and passed.

IMMIGRATION BILL
3.36 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD WINDLESHAM): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do
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again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do again resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Windlesham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LIS TOWEL in the Chair.]
Clause 3 [General provisions for regulation and control]:
LORD GARDINER: I do not propose to move Amendment No. 44, but with the Permission of the Committee I will move Manuscript Amendment 44A. As this is a Manuscript Amendment may I first read it:
Page 4, leave out lines 3 to 11 and insert (" Rules referred to in this subsection shall be of no effect until a draft thereof has been laid before and approved by a Resolution of each House of Parliament, and amendments to such rules made by the Secretary of State shall be laid before Parliament and shall cease to have effect at the end of the period of 28 days beginning with the day on which such amendments were made, unless during that period the said amendments are approved by Resolution of each House of Parliament."
My primary purpose in moving this Amendment is not merely to persuade the Committee that it is an Amendment which ought to be made and which naturally I hope will find supporters throughout the Committee—
LORD WINDLESHAM: I am sorry to interrupt the noble and learned Lord, but before he launches on his exposition of the Amendment I wonder whether he could give us an explanation why this was tabled at about 12 o'clock to-day as a Manuscript Amendment.
LORD GARDINER: It was tabled because I felt that Amendment No. 44, while appropriate to the original rules, did not deal with amendments to the rules, whereas this Amendment does.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I appreciate that, my Lords, but the Second Reading of this Bill was four weeks ago. The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, had indicated that this was a matter in which he was interested, and two Amendments, Nos. 44 and 45, have been down on the Order Paper, I think for some two weeks or so. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, was kind enough to

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telephone my office at about 12 noon to-day to say that Amendment No. 44, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, had actually started to move last night before we adjourned our proceedings by agreement, was to be withdrawn, and this new, quite detailed, alternative was to be tabled to the Committee as a Manuscript Amendment. I am not sure that we have had a very full explanation so far.
LORD SHEPHERD: I rise, first because on behalf of Her Majesty's Opposition I am responsible for this Bill and because it was I who drafted this Amendment. As the noble Lord has said, I immediately informed the noble Lord of the intention to move this Manuscript Amendment, and of the content of it. It is perfectly true that this Amendment was put down at 12 o'clock, but that is well within the rules of your Lordships' House. There is nothing in the rules of the House which in any way governs the time at which a Manuscript Amendment can be moved. In fact, it can he moved in the course of a debate. I gave the noble Lord information as quickly as I possibly could. The explanation why the Amendment has been so drafted is that it was done in the light of the debate on the first and second days in Committee, and to meet some of the difficulties that the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, had in mind on a number of occasions when he spoke about Parliamentary control. It was, in fact, to amend our original Amendment No. 44 in the light of what the noble Lord has said. For that purpose the Manuscript Amendment is before the Committee. It is perfectly well within the rules of the House and I do not see any cause for complaint by the noble Lord.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I do not want to prolong this discussion. I shall be quite happy to advise the Committee that we should proceed on the basis of debating Manuscript Amendment 44A instead of Amendment No. 44, but I am sure noble Lords will feel that this is not a desirable practice and it is not something that we should let go by without any protest or any explanation whatsoever.
LORD SHEPHERD: The noble Lord may well say that, but he must recognise
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that we on this side and the Committee in general are under difficulties in this Bill. It comes very late in the Parliamentary Session and we have only a few more days before we come to the Summer Recess. We shall have to wait for Report stage. We thought it right to put this manuscript Amendment before the House and for the House to decide on the merits.
LORD WADE: May I raise a point requiring explanation? I am inclined to support the manuscript Amendment, but it is not quite clear whether it is intended to replace Amendment No. 44 or Amendments Nos. 44 and 45. I assume it is only No. 44, but I am not quite sure.
LORD SHEPHERD: Amendment No. 44.
3.41 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for what he finally said. I was saying that while I hope noble Lords in all parts of the Committee might support this, few Amendments drafted by the Opposition turn out to be absolutely right, and my primary purpose is to invite the Government and the whole Committee to consider whether the Bill as it is now drafted provides for a sufficient measure of Parliamentary control; and, if not, what provision should be made, bearing in mind that the Home Secretary has an administrative task to perform, and that while we want proper Parliamentary control of the rules we must not, of course, make things either impossible or impracticable for him. Any Parliamentary control, I concede, which left us without any rules for a day, either would let everybody in or let nobody in—I am not quite sure which; I suspect everybody—and obviously ought not to occur.
There are two reasons why many of us, perhaps most Members in both Houses, attach a great deal of importance to proper Parliamentary control of the rules. The first is that there are so many things which many of us would have wished to see in the Bill but which are in fact in the rules. As we have said before, as long as Mr. Maudling is Home Secretary in any Conservative Administration, and the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, occupies his present position, we shall feel less worried about that. It is

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because that might conceivably not happen that we are the more worried. Secondly, when we are considering the rules we have to bear in mind that this subject is one intimately concerned with human rights. Of course this country, like others, must have proper control of immigration. Of course it must be able to say to people,"You cannot come in here ", or to say to people who are here,"You have got to leave ", and be able to enforce it. But we must always bear in mind that this might involve human tragedies affecting individuals and families, often through no fault of their own.
The House may have seen in the papers the other day—I know nothing of it personally—a case in which a widow had lost her husband; she came from Cyprus, and her home in Cyprus had been blown up by members of the other race there. She had no family left in Cyprus, so with her children she came here. She was apparently not well educated; I doubt whether she would have passed the test of sufficient ability to read English. She had not done anything wrong, but she had misread a Home Office notice. Her children were here because they were being educated here. They spoke only English; they did not know a word of Greek or Turkish. It was, I think, the National Council for Civil Liberties who found her in Holloway prison, where she had been a considerable time, about to be deported with her children. That may have been perfectly right; I say nothing against it. But we must, of course, recognise that the lives of those children will now be entirely different, if they are deported, from what they would otherwise have been. The importance of the rules is that so many important things are in the rules and not in the Bill, and secondly, that we have very many human rights problems involved.
There is a small difference of opinion between the, noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, and myself which appeared the other day. I expect that he is right. It is a question of law. I expect that if all the Home Office lawyers are behind him he is likely to be right. The question was whether the rules confer any legal rights on anyone. I remember when Justice, the all-Party body of lawyers published a report advocating that we should have an Ombudsman. We
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brought over an Ombudsman to address meetings in London and Liverpool and elsewhere to explain about it. I took a particular illustration, I remember. If two disabled men are living in adjoining houses, one badly disabled and the other only slightly, and the slightly disabled man gets a disabled driver's car and the badly disabled man is refused, he is going to feel a grievance. There was no statutory right to have a disabled man's car, it was a pure question of discretion for the Minister. I said it might be that the explanation was that the two men had been dealt with by two different civil servants who had construed differently the Minister's instruction.
Of course, all Ministers have to give instruction to civil servants. They may not always be as clear as they should be. If that were the case, it would be an inadvertent piece of maladministration, but if the Ombudsman could walk into the office and look at the files and talk to the civil servants he might find out. If you ask a Parliamentary Question, the Answer is probably provided for the Minister by the civil servant who made the decision. These rules, as I understand them, are merely instruction by the Home Secretary to a body of civil servants in the Home Office, called immigration officers, of what their practice is to be:"You are to let in people in this category; you are not to let in people in that category ". If I am right about that, it still appears to me that such rules can give no legal rights to third parties.
It is said that there is sufficient Parliamentary control because the rules are to be subject to the Negative Resolution procedure, and, without taking up too much time, I would, if I may, remind your Lordships of the nature of that procedure. It is stated in Erskine May, Eighteenth Edition, page 568:
" As already mentioned, the commonest type of parliamentary control is a provision in the parent Act that the instruments made thereunder, though taking effect forthwith or on some named future date, shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament adopted within a named time limit. In pre-1948 Acts there was necessarily a specific provision that the instrument, when made, should be laid before Parliament; after 1947 this stage is universally required by the standardised procedure prescribed by the Statutory Instruments Act, 1946. If the parent Act stipulates that a statutory instrument made thereunder ' shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a

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resolution of either House of Parliament ', this formula attracts the requirement of laying and the conditions of annulment contained in section 5(1) of that Act."
Usually, once an Order has been laid at the proper time, any Member of either House can pray against it within forty days, and if the Prayer is successful the rules or regulations are annulled.
I turn to the present Bill to see what it actually provides. The first reference to the rules is in Clause 1(4), which says:
" The rules laid down by the Secretary of State as to the practice to be followed in the administration of this Act "—
to be followed, that is, by the immigration officers—shall be such-and-such. One would have expected, I think, that the first thing we should find was a provision that"The Home Secretary may make rules ". But this is the first mention of rules, that:
" The rules laid down by the Secretary of State…"
That is an unusual expression. I do not know whether there is a precedent for it. In regard to rules, one usually uses the word"make ". Elsewhere in the Bill the usual provisions occur. For instance, Clause 4(3) says:
" The Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument, which shall be subject to annulment "
and so on; and subsection (4) of the same clause states
" The Secretary of State may by order made by statutory instrument…make such provision…for records to be made and kept."
This is all we have. Clause 1(4) refers to"the rules laid down "—which I suppose is the opposite to"laying them out ". It is an expression I have not come across before. It is not until we get to Clause 3 that we know what is to happen. Clause 3(2) begins:
" The Secretary of State shall from time to time lay before Parliament "—
and perhaps the Minister can tell us what is the time element in"from time to time ". If I found that rules had been made and not reported to Parliament for a long time, what time would have to elapse before I could say that he has not done it"from time to time "? The wording seems to me to be completely open-ended, and to provide no proper time limit at all.
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As I was saying, Clause 3(2) says:
" The Secretary of State shall from time to time lay before Parliament "—
not the rules: the rules are not to be laid before Parliament at all—
" statements "—
I do not know of any precedent for legislation which provides a Minister from time to time to make"statements "—
" of the rules, or of any changes in the rules, laid down by him as to the practice to be followed ",
and so on. What exactly these statements are to say, I do not know; whether the Secretary of State can merely summarise rules, or whether he is going to make a statement of a change he intends to make, or a change which he has made. It does not say which. We do not get to the Negative Resolution procedure until we come to the end paragraph of that subsection which says:
" If a statement laid before either House of Parliament under this subsection is disapproved by a resolution of that House passed within the period of forty days beginning with the date of laying (and exclusive of any period during which Parliament is dissolved or prorogued or during which both Houses are adjourned for more than four days) "
certain things shall happen. But the rules are not annulled; as I understand it, no change at all is made in the rules. The subsection goes on:
" then the Secretary of State shall as soon as may be make such changes or further changes in the rules as appear to him to be required in the circumstances and lay a further statement before Parliament accordingly."
There is no provision that the further statement can be prayed against. There is no provision for what is to happen if the further statement is disapproved. This is nothing remotely like what we know well as the Negative Resolution procedure under which, if anybody prays successfully against regulations, rules, statutory instruments, and so on, they are annulled.
I invite the Committee to say that this is quite inadequate Parliamentary control. I draw a distinction between what I may call the first rules, and amendments. I can see no possible difficulty in providing that what are intended to be the original rules, which have been published, should be approved by Parliament. What difficulty can there be? There is plenty of time for it. I acknowledge that a different situation may arise when we come to amendments, but there again it seems

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there is no real difficulty so long as we say that any changes made in the rules are to take effect when the Home Secretary makes changes, but that they are then to be laid before Parliament and shall cease to have effect if, at the end of a given period, Parliament disapproves. The Government have recognised, of course, in the Bill as it is that there should be some sort of Parliamentary control. I submit that the control which is provided by the Bill in its present form is quite inadequate, and that the Amendment provides at least a solid basis for discussion as to the sort of form which proper control ought to take. I beg to move.
3.56 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: This is a somewhat complicated matter, and there are also practical implications which have not been brought out in what the noble and learned Lord said in his very interesting and thorough opening speech. It might be useful if I came in at this stage, and if any further points arise I can reply to them at the end. The first point I should like to make is that the immigration rules at present are not subject to any form of Parliamentary control at all. There are four White Papers, two of them containing the instructions to immigration officers; they were tabled by the previous Administration in February, 1970, and there is no Parliamentary control over them of any kind.
This matter was discussed at some length in another place. It was argued that Parliament should have an opportunity to discuss these rules, should be able to exercise a measure of control over them; and my right honourable friend accepted that argument. He thought it was right that there should be a measure of control. He then addressed himself to the question of what was the most appropriate form of Parliamentary control over the immigration rules, bearing in mind that the Immigration Service is a thousand people strong and that at the moment about 10 million passengers are coming into the ports every year. These are instructions to the Immigration Service, as the noble and learned Lord correctly said, and immigration officers are entitled to know under what instructions they should
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operate. Therefore an Amendment was tabled in another place to the Bill, and that has now been included in Clause 3 as subsection (2). The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, took us through it and asked me one or two questions. It says:
" The Secretary of State shall from time to time lay before Parliament statements of the rules, or of any changes in the rules, laid down by him as to the practice to be followed in the administration of this Act for regulating the entry into and stay in the United Kingdom of persons required by this Act to have leave to enter "—
and so on.
The noble and learned Lord asked two particular questions. The first was: what meaning do we attach to the words"from time to time "? The answer is: whenever the Secretary initially tables a set of rules (a set is before Parliament in draft form now), and thereafter whenever the Secretary of State believes that it is necessary to add to or alter the rules. Let us not overlook the question of adding a new rule, which was not there before, but which is introduced to meet a new situation. Secondly, I am advised that the word"statements"is chosen because the White Paper contains the rules themselves. The White Paper contains the whole set of rules, but they are preceded by a precise statement saying:
" This draft contains the rules which the Home Secretary proposes to lay down as to the practice to be followed in the administration of the Bill for regulating the stay in the United Kingdom of persons not having the right of abode."
Then follows the complete set of draft rules which, as I have explained, are to be altered in a number of respects as a result of the debates in this House and in another place.
There is very little, I think, between the Parties on this particular point. We should all like to see the most effective form of control by Parliament of the Executive, but I think there is a difference here between whichever Party is in Government and whichever Party is in Opposition. All Governments have to accept responsibilities, but Oppositions, quite understandably, see no need to share them when they are not themselves forming the Administration. The previous Home Secretary, Mr. Callaghan, when giving evidence to the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration on May

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13 last—this is a quite recent statement—was questioned on the need to take swift action as regards the imposition of immigration controls. Remember, he was questioned in a context where the immigration rules were not then subject to Parliamentary control at all. Question 3,004 was:
" Should major changes in Commonwealth immigration control be made by Ministerial Order and so become subject to Parliamentary debate and approval at the time they are made? "
That was the question put to the previous Home Secretary, and his answer was as follows:
" The fact that they are made to Parliament is, of course, a recognition that Parliament wishes to debate them. I am pleading for flexibility and not for having my hands tied by detailed laying down of orders. I want to keep Parliament fully informed. Parliament can express their views, and should express their views, on these matters, but I want to consult, and do consult, bodies like the Community Relations Commission and anybody else who has got a particular interest in this. But there is one final caveat I want to enter; that is, when we are dealing with closing up bolt holes or abuses—for example, in the case of the Pakistani boys or in the case of fiances or the other little groups we have had—the very discussion of the fact that you are going to close up bolt holes automatically increases by several hundred per cent. the number of people who are going to arrive before the bolt hole is closed."
A little later, Mr. Callaghan returned to this in answer to Question 3,006. He spoke on this question of bolt holes and loopholes in the system of immigration control. I will not read it all because it is very long, but this is a verbatim quotation from the published evidence:
" Therefore I insist, if I may, that if you want good administration here, that there must be occasions—and I hope they will be rare—when abuses have got to be dealt with when the Administration must be allowed to act, and then justify itself after it has acted, in the same way as the Chancellor does in relation to some of the measures he gets in his Budget."
These are the words of the previous Home Secretary, in office at the time, who had responsibility, as my right honourable friend has now, for the effective operation of the immigration control.
This new Amendment—we have not even had time to become familiar with its number, but I believe that members of the Committee have it in front of them—would do the following. After the original rules had come into force (those which are now before Parliament) the Home
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Secretary, under Lord Gardiner's scheme, could make changes to them at any time he believed it was necessary to do so, or he could add to them if he thought it necessary. But the changes or additions would lapse unless they were approved by Parliament by Affirmative Resolution within 28 sitting days. This, I understand, would mean that if Parliament were in Recess and an Order or a new regulation was introduced in the summer, the time limit would be the first 28 days after Parliament resumed.
What would be the practical consequences of this for the Immigration Service? First, under the Affirmative Resolution procedure, from a Parliamentary aspect, the Government would need to find time in both Houses within 28 days to debate and approve any change, however minor. This would apply to any change; it might be a small one, but it would apply to any change at all. Secondly, either Parliament would agree, in which case the rule, which would already be in force under the noble and learned Lord's Amendment, would so continue. If the rule had been laid in the summer it might not be approved until about three months later. It would then come into force, assuming that Parliament could find time for the debate. There may be difficulties over that, but I assume that they could be overcome; the Home Secretary would have stated his intention and Parliament would have approved.
But if the change were not approved—let us envisage the alternative—it would then lapse. What happens then? There would be no rule in existence at all at that point. I am advised, although we have not had time to study this, that there is room for doubt as to whether or not the whole set of rules might lapse. The rules would be a Statutory Instrument presented to Parliament and, if Parliament did not like the change contained in a particular paragraph, there is the possibility that the whole lot might lapse and that the Home Secretary would have to come back to the House with another proposed change. However, let us not pursue that point because I am not sure of it, not having had notice. The noble and learned Lord says that it would lapse if Parliament did not agree.
The figure of passengers entering the country, which I gave, was in fact the

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earlier figure. I said that there were 10 million passengers coming through the ports, but in fact there are currently 14 million passing through the immigration control. Many of them need to be questioned for one reason or another by immigration officers, who can do so only on the basis of the immigration rules. These are the instructions they are given as to how they are to carry out their duties. What are they supposed to do in this situation?
Then there is the appeals system. We must not forget that the appeals system to a large extent turns on the published rules. There is a very wide range of what are called appealable decisions. I think this is in part the answer to the noble and learned Lord's question about rights. Appealable decisions in the period of nine months from July 1, 1970, to May 1, 1971, amounted in total to 10,714. Against all of these an appeal would lie: 2,198 were actually brought; that is, over 2,000 in eleven months. Of these, 147 were allowed—those were people who succeeded against the Home Office—681 were dismissed, 48 were withdrawn and 1,322 were outstanding at the end of the period. The rate at which appeals are being brought is currently running at about 200 a month.
If a new rule were introduced in the Recess, immigration officers might be working on the basis of that rule for a period of up to three months, although in November Parliament might not approve it. Then there would be no rule, or perhaps the intention of the noble and learned Lord is that the previous rule should apply. We think that these are practical problems which would arise from the noble and learned Lord's suggestion. We are not quarreling with the aim of the Amendment. The Home Secretary agrees that it is appropriate that, for the first time in our history, these rules should be subject to Parliamentary control, but for the reason given he thinks that the Negative Resolution procedure is more appropriate than the Affirmative Resolution procedure.
LORD CONESFORD: May I—
4.10 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for his statement on this matter and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Conesford,
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will allow me to put one question to the Minister before he speaks. Would not the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, accept, because he made a very considerable case, that in the event of any of the rules made by the Home Secretary being challenged by Parliament, then, by the Negative Resolution procedure, clearly the immigration officers would be in difficulties? Therefore, whether it is the Affirmative Resolution procedure or the Negative Resolution procedure that is adopted, I do not think the position of the immigration officers is involved.
May I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, that we are concerned not only about the administration of the rules and the policy behind them in terms of immigrants entering this country. The rules will also cover fundamental issues affecting the rights of an immigrant once he has settled here. That is why we on this side are deeply concerned—and I have a feeling, after the previous two debates, that this feeling is shared throughout your Lordships' House—about the position of immigrants until after the five years when they become ordinary patrials if they have registered. Therefore, we must be absolutely clear in our minds. We are considering the rules under which a number of men and women from the Commonwealth will live and settle in this country, so we must ensure that the maximum amount of Parliamentary control is provided for.
I want to deal first with the Negative Resolution procedure. I have been in the House for a few years now, and I have found that we have no difficulty with the Negative Resolution procedure, because under the Rules of the House, and with the general understanding between the two Front Benches, matters of great issue can be raised. But in the House of Commons, which, in the end, has a greater responsibility than your Lordships' House, time is a great and increasing problem and I do not think there is any doubt at all that the Negative Resolution procedure raises considerable difficulties. I speak subject to correction, but I believe that the amount of time set aside in the House of Commons for dealing with matters that arise under the Negative Resolution procedure is very limited indeed. Certainly, one could not have a long and detailed debate if there were a big issue or a

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large document to consider. But the position is different if there is an Affirmative Resolution. It is then for the Government to come to the House to seek approval. The initiative comes from the Government and, clearly, the Government's managers in another place must provide adequate time for a matter to be considered. I do not suppose that we in this House are any different and, because of the good attitude between the Front Benches, adequate time will always be provided for the Affirmative Resolution.
I again remind the Committee of the importance that we attach to these rules, particularly the rules governing residence. This Amendment is a combination of Amendment No. 44 and an Amendment that was moved last night by the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery. One of the difficulties with Amendment No. 44 was that it dealt merely with the initial draft, so let us take the relevant part of the manuscript Amendment. The Government can have no difficulty in accepting this. This Bill will not become an Act of Parliament until the"spill-over"period. There will be ample time for Her Majesty's Government to produce the rules and to present them to Parliament for Affirmative Resolution. There will be no gap whatsoever. So there is no question of difficulty about getting it through Parliament, nor is there difficulty as regards immigration control.
So what about Amendments? We thought—and this is why we have put forward the manuscript Amendment—that it was right and proper, that if an amendment was made to the initial rules it should come into operation immediately. I fully support what my right honourable friend Mr. Callaghan said in another place, which the noble Lord quoted fully. Clearly, the Home Secretary must have flexibility. Therefore, our manuscript Amendment states that amendments to the rules should come into effect immediately they are made by the Home Secretary. What we are saying is that once those rules have been made and have come into operation, they should require the approval of the two Houses of Parliament within 28 days. In principle, I do not think there is anything between the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, and ourselves on this side.
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Right through the Committee stage, I think the case of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has been based on administrative difficulties. What he asked last night, and he asked it again to-day, was: what would be the position if a rule had been made by Statutory Instrument—because that is the method which the Government would need to adopt in placing a rule before this House for approval—and, shall we say, after 14 days of Parliamentary time this House or another place rejected it? I am advised, and I have no doubt at all about this, that if a 28-day Order, similar to the Rhodesia Order—and I shall come back to that in a moment—was rejected on, say, the fourteenth Parliamentary day, that Order would remain in being until the 28 days had expired. In other words, if either House failed to pass it, the Order would remain in existence. The instructions to the officers at our ports would remain the same and there would be no question of any vacuum. The noble Lord looks slightly worried, but I have taken House advice on this matter.
LORD WINDLESHAM: But what happens, for example, if the House is in Recess? These are 28 sitting days and there could be a period of Recess of up to three months.
LORD SHEPHERD: The 28 days are Parliamentary days. If the Home Secretary wished to make an Order on August 7, 1971, two days after we hope to rise, that Order would continue to run without any question and the 28 days would start on the first day when Parliament resumed. If the Government were unable to get the Order passed within 14 days after the resumption of Parliament, then it would still continue till the end of the 28 Parliamentary days. If the noble Lord has any doubt, I would remind him of the Rhodesia Order. That Order was defeated in your Lordships' House but it continue in force until the date when it expired, and Her Majesty's Government of the day then put a similar Order before Parliament. So that if such an Order tinder the Immigration Bill was defeated, and the Home Secretary was not able to carry the necessary Amendments in order to secure the position that he believed was vital in terms of immigration control, he could re-lay the same

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Statutory Instrument at the completion of the 28 days.
I have taken advice on this matter, and I speak with the utmost confidence in it. I am putting the point to the noble Lord that his whole case concerning Affirmative Resolutions (and I think the Committee as a whole would prefer it to be an Affirmative Resolution in a matter of such importance to civil liberties); his case that administrative difficulties which would arise if Parliament was not able to pass the Order, or if Parliament did not pass it, within a period of 28 days, in fact does not stand up. I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, if he fails to agree with me, whether he will tell me where I am wrong in terms of Statutory Instruments and the procedure of the House. I would certainly give way if he questions my advice.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I will; but my trouble is that the noble Lord has been immersing himself in procedural matters and taking advice while I have not had an opportunity to do so. I have reason to think that we would doubt some of the statements he has made, but I do not want to argue that now. What I am saying is that what he is suggesting is a hybrid procedure, and you cannot really have an Affirmative Resolution procedure which allows the Government to act first and seek Parliamentary approval afterwards.
LORD SHEPHERD: Of course you can.
LORD WINDLESHAM: You can do it only if no action is in fact taken.
LORD SHEPHERD: But—
LORD WINDLESHAM: Will the noble Lord follow me here? The difficulty is—and surely he can see this—that every hour, every day, every week passengers are coming through the ports. They are not going to stop coming. Therefore, suppose his Order was tabled in August, let us say, and Parliament was not sitting. I take it the noble Lord agrees that the rule can be changed. He agrees—am I not right?—that the rule can be changed. Suppose the Home Secretary decides to alter the rule on August 7 provided he gets approval from Parliament in the autumn, when Parliament resumes. If he gets that approval there is nothing
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between us—nothing at all. But the difficulty lies in circumstances where he does not get Parliamentary approval.
LORD SHEPHERD: But would not the noble Lord agree that if, using the Negative Resolution procedure, Parliament voted in the negative on the Order, the noble Lord would be in the same position?
LORD WINDLESHAM: No. This is the crucial point in the wording. I am glad we have arrived at this point, because the noble Lord put it to me earlier. That is not so. The wording (which appears on page 4 of the Bill) says that if the rule is not agreed it remains in force, and the Home Secretary then withdraws to consider an alternative rule and comes back at some appropriate time after consultation with the Immigration Service. The Parliamentary procedure that the noble Lord is suggesting falls the moment—
LORD SHEPHERD: No.
LORD WINDLESHAM: It does. The noble Lord has said that at that point you must revert to the previous rule. What I am saying is that you cannot do things like this when you have a service of this nature. You can do it where the Government may hold up action, or you may do it with routine business, but when you are talking of thousands of people streaming in and out of the country you cannot suddenly drop the chopper without any consultation or any information to the people involved.
LORD SHEPHERD: I do not want to stand between the noble Lord and the Committee in this matter, and this will be my last intervention on it. But the noble Lord will, I hope, accept that if a Statutory Instrument is laid under the Affirmative Resolution procedure for 28 days, if the Government were not able to get it through Parliament on the fourteenth day, or on any day up to the twenty-eighth day, the Order would continue to have complete legality and complete validity up to the end of the twenty-eighth day; and on that twenty-eighth day the Home Secretary would he entitled to re-lay an identical Order to carry all the procedures and everything else forward for that next month, and he would then need to come back to Parliament for it

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to be approved. I would ask the noble Lord to look into this matter, because I think it is of very considerable importance. I hope that the Committee will accept that we should find ways of achieving the Affirmative Resolution procedure, as opposed to the Negative Resolution procedure.
4.27 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: I intervene in the hope of clearing up a rather different point. I am not going to say anything about the comparative merits of the Negative or Affirmative Resolution procedure, but among the criticisms that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, made of the existing lines 3 to 11 was one of, I think, very great importance, if the noble and learned Lord was correct. In the ordinary way I accept automatically the correctness of everything he says on a point of law, but I felt some doubt about this one, and it was not mentioned at all by my noble friend Lord Windlesham. As the noble and learned Lord pointed out when moving his manuscript Amendment, the words that he proposes to leave out, lines 3 to 11 on page 4, provide (I omit the words unnecessary for my purpose):
" If a statement laid before either House of Parliament under this subsection is disapproved by a resolution of that House…then the Secretary of State shall as soon as may be make such chances or further changes in the rules as appear to him to be required in the circumstances and lay a further statement before Parliament accordingly."
The noble and learned Lord said that there was no provision for the challenging of that further statement. I feel some doubt about that, because I think it is arguable that it would still be a statement laid before Parliament under the subsection. But if the noble and learned Lord was right, then there is quite clearly a defect in the words as they now stand; and what I wish to ask my noble friend is whether he can say that it is certainly the Government's intention that the further statement mentioned in line 11 on page 4 should be challengeable in exactly the same way. In that case the point made by the noble and learned Lord would be answered to that extent. Otherwise some change must be made. I fully agree with the noble and learned Lord that that follows if he is right that the further statement
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is unchallengeable. But I should have thought that a possible reading of the subsection was that which I ventured to suggest, that it would be challengeable in exactly the same way.
LORD WADE: I am not very happy with the wording as it appears in the Bill. In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Conesford (though it is for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, and not for me to say), I should have thought that the further statement would be challengeable. That is my own view, but obviously there are more learned noble Lords who can answer that. So far as the manuscript Amendment is concerned, it puts forward two proposals. One is that the rules shall be of no effect unless approved by both Houses, and the other is that amendments to such rules shall be laid before Parliament and shall cease to have effect at the end of 28 Parliamentary days unless approved by both Houses. On the first point, we have already debated this question of Negative and Affirmative Resolution procedures, but I should prefer the proposal in the manuscript Amendment. I think it provides a better safeguard for Parliament and is reasonable.
On the second part of the manuscript Amendment I can see the balance of advantage and disadvantage. I appreciate the point about the Immigration Service and the request for flexible powers; but, on the other hand, one must consider the position of Members of both Houses. They must be given the opportunity of considering changes. One must also remember that various people are involved in advisory services on the working of these rules from whom Members of both Houses may require advice. It is not just a case of a Statutory Instrument being laid and then assuming that Members of Parliament will pick it up, look at it, know what it is about and decide whether it is right or not. This is just the kind of case where advice will be required. While I recognise that there are arguments both ways, I am saying that I personally prefer the manuscript Amendment to the present wording of the Bill.
4.31 p.m.
LORD JANNER: When dealing with this particular Amendment, I think that we ought to keep in mind the fact that we are dealing with an entirely new

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approach to the question of citizenship and that there are some extremely important matters which, instead of being contained in the Bill, are contained in the rules. An important question is at issue here when, for example, you are dealing with a matter such as political asylum which is embodied in the rules. I know that it will be said that in any circumstances this rule prevails by international law; nevertheless, Rule 53 (and, I think, one or two others) deals with the question of political asylum. Political asylum is of extreme importance to many who feel it to be an essential right which should not be interfered with. Suppose a rule was brought in which would affect that situation, or a rule which would affect the question which I and others have raised before of acts performed by immigration officers and others in the exercise of their duties which could be regarded as discriminatory of race, religion and so on?
I should like to see these matters of fundamental importance incorporated in the Bill. I and others have said this before. If we could take the really fundamental matters out of the rules and put them in the Bill it would be a different matter. At the moment they are in the rules and not in the Bill; so we must try to safeguard the position so far as matters of that sort are concerned. The Negative Resolution procedure, as everybody here knows is of little effect so far as Parliamentary control is concerned. Under that procedure a statement would be put before Parliament and if Parliament disagreed with it the Home Secretary would then be in a position to suggest an alteration, and an amended statement again could be put before Parliament. That is really not good enough. In matters of this sort there must be some measure of direct control by Parliament; there must be at least the Affirmative Resolution procedure.
It has already been said so far as the original rules are concerned that there is ample time; that there is no question there of something having to be done so rapidly that it is impossible to deal with it in an executive manner. Of course there is ample time. There is no reason why the Affirmative Resolution procedure should not be used to give Parliament adequate control. As has already been explained by my noble friend, it may be
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that an Amendment has to be brought in. I do not see why, with the wisdom and understanding of the Minister and his advisers, the original rule should not be of such a nature as to take into consideration any likely contingency. It might be that contingencies would arise which would have to be dealt with at once. Why should not Parliament have control over them as well?
LORD WINDLESHAM: Forgive me for interrupting. I take it that these arguments are the arguments of a Parliamentarian. How does the noble Lord square them with the remarks by the former Home Secretary who was speaking at that time as a member of the Government? He gave the reason why, in his view, swift action was needed.
LORD JANNER: I should have liked to argue that with the ex-Home Secretary. If the present rules are to be brought into force, would the noble Lord say that there is any real reason why Parliament should not have the right to say whether those rules are in order or not? If the noble Lord will go so far as to say,"Yes, I am prepared to examine the rules, to take out those which are questions of principle and which it would he dangerous to leave in the hands, not of the present Home Secretary nor of others whom we consider at the present time as being likely to be Home Secretary, but of someone in the future, when a danger may arise ", or give an undertaking at Report stage that he will allow these particular rules to be incorporated into the Bill itself and leave in the rules the others which are purely matters of routine or of administration, that is an entirely different matter. But at the moment we are, in the rules, dealing not only with methods of bringing into effect the procedure necessary to carry out the provision of the Bill, but with principles as well. If he were to say to us, now,"Yes, I agree, we will examine This position," then perhaps the position might be different. But as it stands at present there is this danger. If he were to look at the question whether the original rules should come under the procedure of an Affirmative Resolution and how the later rules might be brough under Parliamentary control after they had been produced, then the matter might be considered in a

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different light. But I hope he understands that it is not just a frivolous argument that is being used; it is really important because of the issues that confront the House.
May I give an example on the political issues? This Committee knows very well that my own community, the Jewish people, are faced with a tremendous problem in the treatment of the Jewish people in Russia. The question of political and religious asylum arises there. It is something that cannot be played about with. We know that a fairly large number of people want to escape from the conditions that prevail. Some may want to come here. If someone altered the rules without Parliament intervening, or having the possibility to intervene, it would create a situation in which political refugees of that sort—religious refugees, or those who were being subject to religious persecution, would not be able to obtain that asylum. That is one of the reasons why I think the Government ought to reconsider this matter. The position is now different from that which prevailed before. The Act changes the whole of the previous system to a very considerable extent, and in those circumstances Parliament ought to be consulted.
LORD ROBBINS: My Lords, this is not a matter of constitutional law which is at issue. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has put forward an extremely powerful case for administrative flexibility, and I do not believe that any of his critics have disputed the need for administrative flexibility. But the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, disputed the argument that flexibility would be denied by the Amendment. To me, the crucial issue is whether the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, was right or not. On that point I feel completely ignorant at this moment.
4.43 p.m.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: The noble Lord, Lord Janner, did extremely well to remind us that there is a relationship of a particular kind between the rules and the Bill, and that we might well reflect that this is in fact an immigration Bill. Immigration means coming into the country from somewhere else. The Bill has a short piece at the beginning about people who are not concerned
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with immigration control, and a very great deal about what can or cannot happen to people once they have got here. There is a page or two in between, in the middle of this rather exiguous sandwich, which is actually concerned with immigration. The chief piece of that middle part of the sandwich is simply a statement to say that the law about immigration will be laid down by the Secretary of State. In other words, the Immigration Bill contains little or no immigration law, which is a very curious kind of legislation.
What we have instead—and I use this term for the sake of argument—is delegated legislation. Almost the whole power to legislate for immigrants coming into the country is handed over to the Secretary of State. There are many ways in which this delegation of power can be given, according to how much control Parliament wishes to have, or what is laid down. There is the minimum delegation, which retains maximum power and authority in the hands of Parliament—such as, for example, a law requiring a Statutory Instrument to be laid subject to the Affirmative Resolution procedure. At the other end of the scale there is the Negative Resolution procedure, or even no resolution procedure at all, in which the Secretary of State can make laws and even may be allowed to get on with the job himself without intervention from either House of Parliament. That is at the far end of the scale, what I might call the bottom end. It is at that end of the scale that this particular piece of legislation falls. I think it is the wrong end. This matter is far too important.
I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I abandon the technicalities that have been discussed with great learning and persuasion, and talk simply on the broader issues I have already indicated, which amount simply to the fact that when it is a question of the lives, welfare, total future of people and a great many other matters affecting them, this is not something that can be handed over to someone else to let them get on with. It is likely that in answer it will be said,"We are doing no such thing; Parliament does retain its control over a procedure which is supported by the Government and which is opposed by others ". But the Government retain no control at all. If we refer to the subsection

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under dispute on this Amendment, we find towards the end of it—these words have been quoted by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, and the noble Lord, Lord Collison, not quite in the way in which I propose to take them—
" then the Secretary of State shall as soon as may be make such changes or further changes in the rules as appear to him to be required."
Supposing the changes that appear to the Secretary of State to be required should be nil? I feel that those of your Lordships who had required him to go away and think again would feel a certain sense of frustration stealing over your noble heads when you found that the Secretary of State was going to do no such thing, and you could not do anything about it; all you could do would be to go on asking him to go away and change his statement, not his rules, because they were not in front of you—
LORD WINDLESHAM: As I explained, the rules are in the statement.
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY: I was coming to that in a moment. It is true that the rules are in the statement, but it is still a statement, not a Statutory Instrument or something that Parliament can reject. All Parliament can do is to say that in its opinion changes should he made. I willingly concede to my noble friend that there may be changes to the rules, but all the House can do is to ask the Secretary of State to go away and to do what he thinks ought to be done. What is there to prevent the Secretary of State from saying that he does not think anything ought to be done? He will then lay exactly the same rules again and make exactly the same answer. He can go on doing that, operating precisely the same rule, until the next General Election, and even after that if he should get in again.
That takes me back to the point at which I said"for the sake of argument"I would refer to this as delegated legislation, because it is not delegated legislation, it is transferred legislation; it is handed over entirely to the Secretary of State. That is perfectly splendid if you have a perfectly splendid Secretary of State. At the moment I think that we have, and it is very likely that any other Home Secretary would be equally competent and honourable. But
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supposing he were not to lay his papers at all? I use the word"papers"in the sense of meaning nothing in particular—whatever it is he has to lay. Supposing he were not to do it, and that he incurred the displeasure of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, by not laying them from time to time or as soon as may be.
What happens then? The rules he has made go on running and can run for ever. This in fact happens. If anyone thinks it is inconceivable that this would ever happen, may I recall to him that only yesterday afternoon, when my noble friend Lord Denham said that it was inconceivable that a court of law should behave in a particular way, he was very smartly disabused by no less a luminary than a former Lord Chancellor. All these things are conceivable. There is a case history on this. There was a particularly startling case in 1944, when Parliament was suddenly informed that no fewer than 22 sets of regulations under Acts of Parliament had simply been forgotten, not produced to Parliament at all; and some of them were three years old. Those regulations would have run for ever—for all I know, they may be running now. The fact that they had not been brought before Parliament did not make the slightest difference. Parliament might have wished to throw them out, but it never had the chance. I understand there is a possibility that such a mis-procedure, such a failure to act, might be a misdemeanour at Common Law. It was supposed that the Secretary of State of that time was possibly at some risk. He did not in fact get clapped into a dungeon, but Parliament had to pass an Act of Indemnity to keep him safe.
Is it right to hand over everything to any Secretary of State without any control at all? It certainly is not. I am speaking at this moment partly because I moved an Amendment last night in order to substitute the Affirmative for the Negative Resolution procedure. I withdrew that Amendment because I believed that Amendment No. 44 from noble Lords opposite was to be preferred as it dealt with the procedure to be applied to the rules. But my feet have been cut smartly from under me. I found that after I had withdrawn my Amendment in favour of No. 44, No. 44 had been thrown out of the window before I got here this morning. Fortunately for my sanity, No. 44A

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has been substituted, and I am happy to tell, your Lordships that I approve of that one, too. I need not go into all the technicalities of these procedures. I wish to stick to the general point and make a general request. I prefer the reference of my noble friend Lord Windlesham to what Mr. Callaghan said about the need for speed when it is a question of blocking up boltholes. It seems to me that we can block up a bolthole much more quickly under the Affirmative Resolution procedure than under the Negative. However quickly we act under the Negative procedure, we still have to wait until, the end of the 28 days or 40 days, or whatever time it is, whether we like it or not. On the other hand, under the Affirmative procedure, we can get an affirmation, if we are going to get it straight away, as soon as we get the Order through both Houses of Parliament. If anyone is doubtful about that, I can only suppose that he took no part in that nightmare procedure three years ago, when we got the whole of the Commonwealth Immigration Bill of 1968 through both Houses of Parliament in one continuous Sitting. I simply do not believe that boltholes cannot be blocked up with reasonable dispatch.
All I hope is that the Government will give the attention, which I think they reasonably can, to the Affirmative procedure as against the Negative. If this is the way to do it, I am all for it. If there is another way which the Government consider better, I am for that, too. But as this is the one before the Committee at the moment, it is my earnest hope that my noble friend will undertake at least to consider, not necessarily the actual words of the Amendment, but the principle, which I most strongly support.
LORD HOY: I had not intended to intervene on this Amendment, but will do so for just a few moments because not long ago I was involved in a case of this kind in your Lordships' House. The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food made an Order under an Act of Parliament to make grants of subsidies to this industry. The Order had to be made subject to Affirmative Resolution, and in this House this means that the Order has to go to the Special Orders Committee,
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who examine it to see whether it conforms to the law. On this occasion the Special Orders Committee came to the conclusion that it was all right, but the corresponding Committee in another place came to the conclusion that the Order was wrong and that the Minister had acted ultra vires. So a new Order had to be made. By having the Affirmative Resolution procedure, Parliament was able to preserve the rights of the people and not hand over to a Minister a power which would allow him to do what he liked. I should have thought that since we took all that trouble on that occasion, when it comes to an issue like this, which from the point of view of many is much more important, we are not asking too much in asking the Government of the clay to bring the Order before both Houses for Affirmative Resolution.
LORD WINDLESHAM: Before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps he would help the Committee with a little more information on that case. Could he tell us whether the action the Minister proposed to take had already been taken—in other words was a new situation in existence—or was it proposed? My recollection is that a certain course of action was proposed, but the noble Lord was much closer to the matter than I.
LORD HOY: Yes, the Minister had taken action.
LORD WINDLESHAM: With what result?
LORD HOY: The result was that the people interested in having grants through this scheme were denied them. In addition, the Minister acted in a retrospective manner in regard to grants already made.
LORD WINDLESHAM: Had the Minister started to make grants, to hand out public funds, and had these grants then to be taken back?
LORD HOY: The action of the Minister put a stop to them.
LORD WINDLESHAM: This illustrates that immigration officers would actually have to act on the instructions given to them. I am interested in this case because I did not know the end of the story, and the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, was involved in it. What he seems to be telling us is that the Minister had

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to take back the grants made, and where public funds had actually been handed out, people had to return the money.
LORD HOY: The noble Lord is missing the point at issue here; that is, that in taking this action the Minister had acted in a manner which was proved to be ultra vires. That is the importance of it. Parliament found it to be so and the Minister had to take further action to put the position right.
5.0 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: This has been a most interesting debate. Let me start with one or two detailed points. The noble Lord, Lord Conesford, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, in opening, asked me about the words in line 11 with reference to laying a further statement. He asked whether, under the procedure envisaged in this subsection, if Parliament did not agree to the statement (and I think we now have it clear in our minds that the statement is the immigration rules themselves with the introductory paragraph at the top of them) the further statement would be open to challenge. All I can say to the noble Lord is that I have taken advice on this matter and that advice is that it would, because it would be regarded as a statement for the purposes of line 37 on the previous page, where it says that the Minister must make a statement. So his further statement, another statement, would be open to the same procedure; and if he again ran into difficulty and Parliament was not willing to approve the statement, the procedure would go on until such time as Parliament did approve a statement.
The noble Lords, Lord Shepherd and Lord Janner, made the absolutely valid point that the immigration rules concern not only the admission of people into this country but also to a considerable extent the conditions of stay of people already here. Indeed, this is the reason for the title of the two White Papers. One is headed"Control on Entry ", and deals specifically with the matters that have to be resolved at the point of entry; and the other is headed"Control after Entry ". I really must make the point, in passing, that one of the challenges made to this Bill is that it is unnecessary: that the numbers are under control; and that the 1962 and 1968 Acts may not be perfect
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but they are better than introducing a Bill of this sort. I should not like to quote the noble Lord directly, but I think he used an argument on those lines in his Second Reading speech. If we did not have the Bill, let there be no mistake that there would be no Parliamentary control of the immigration rules at all; there is none at present. The previous immigration rules were tabled by the Labour Administration in 1970, and they are not subject to any Parliamentary control. Therefore, if we had no Immigration Bill, we should have no Parliamentary control over the immigration rules. Let us bear that point in mind as we proceed with the debate.
The noble Lord, Lord Janner, really dismissed my intervention, when I asked him how he reconciled what he was saving with the statements made by Mr. Callaghan when giving evidence to the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration, by saying in effect that if he had been there at the Select Committee he would have grilled the Home Secretary of the day as hard as the Members of Parliament did. I am sure that he would, and these were critical questions, put to Mr. Callaghan in that spirit. But I merely make the point here—and I said this in opening—that there is not really a difference between the Parties. I think that all Parties want effective Parliamentary control over the Executive. It is when a political Party becomes the Government of the country, when it has an actual responsibility for the administration of different aspects of the law, that sometimes it sees matters another way: and Mr. Callaghan's views are on the record.
The suggestion was made by one or two noble Lords who spoke in the debate that if the subsequent changes, if the additions to the rules, cannot be made subject to the Affirmative Resolution procedure—because I think they accept, although they may not agree as to the extent of the implications, that there are likely to be substantial practical implications—would it not be possible, as indicated in the early words of the Amendment, to make the first two sets of rules subject to the Affirmative Resolution procedure and the subsequent changes to the Negative Resolution procedure? That is rather an attractive half-way house. It sounds a most reasonable proposition, and

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it is not one that I want to be at all dogmatic about. But I think that, in practice, there is not a great deal in this argument.
When the Bill was published in March of this year, about five months ago, my right honourable friend was determined that these two draft statements should be in front of each House when the Bill was being debated. So we have had them before us and we have debated them. They are not part of the Bill, but many references have been made to particular rules, and certainly the Government have not objected to that. I said yesterday that we intend to alter one of the rules on a particular point: and these changes will all be made. So if noble Lords wish to raise or challenge points in the immigration rules there will be opportunities as we go along. If at the end of the day they are still not satisfied with what is in the rules, they will have an opportunity, when the final regulations are tabled, to disapprove them by the Negative Resolution procedure. If at that stage we have not been able to meet the various points made, it will then be possible for noble Lords to have a final say.
On another point made by the noble Lord, Lord Janner (and this has been said before), one really must give him the reply that is due. He said that he would like to pick out a set of facts which to him are particularly important and put them in the Bill, because then, whatever happened in the future, they would be in the Bill and not in the rules, and only Parliament could subsequently alter them. But this conflicts with the argument used, for example, by the Community Relations Commission. They have said that they want this to be the last Immigration Bill for a long time. They think that any Immigration Bill does harm to community relations—this is their line of argument—and they would not like another. You cannot have it both ways. Unfortunately, the law is not a monument of stone which cannot be altered in the future. If too much were cast into law, the system of immigration control would become monolithic; and as patterns of migration changed, you would not be able to alter the law to match them.
LORD JANNER: Will the noble Lord forgive me for interrupting? I was not
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talking about matters of a trivial nature; I was talking about matters of principle, such as religious asylum, the right of a person to have his racial faith respected. These are things which nobody dealing with the Bill would deny at the present time. What I and my colleagues are worried about is the fact that somebody may come at some future time, and then it is essential for these principles to be embodied in the Act so that Parliament will have a say.
LORD WINDLESHAM: To have principles entrenched in the Bill sounds admirable. But let me give the noble Lord an example of this. In 1962, as the noble Lord may remember, the rights of dependants were entrenched in the Commonwealth Immigrants Act. What the Act said was that a child with either parent in the United Kingdom had a statutory right of entry. I think the noble Lord would feel that that was a point of principle. Would he feel that that was a point of principle?
LORD JANNER: Yes.
LORD WINDLESHAM: That is one of the points referred to by Mr. James Callaghan as a"bolt hole ". For example, what happened in the case of the Pakistani boys? Because there was a right to join one parent, the father of the family (I am speaking in the past tense about this) would settle here, and at the age of about 15 or 16, a working age in Pakistan, the boys of the family would come to join him. Noble Lords who were close to community relations at that time may remember the consequences of this. They were fought by international social services. It was found that in some parts of the country there were households sleeping about twenty boys to a room. These were all-male households. The boys were sent over, not as part of a family unit, as Parliament intended, but for the purposes of work; and they lived in a household composed entirely of men sleeping on a shift system. This was regarded as a social evil which had to be stopped it was referred to as a"bolt hole"by Mr. Callaghan.
Here was a principle that was altered by the previous Administration in the 1968 Act. They were introducing the Act for quite separate reasons, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, will

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recall; but since an Immigration Bill was before Parliament or at least in the offing, it was possible to table an Amendment bringing about the present position, that a dependant does not have the right to join one parent in this country but may do so only where there are two. I think the noble Lord will take my point, that matters of principle cannot altogether be distinguished from matters of practice, which do alter as patterns of migration alter.
I do not want to speak for too long in winding up because I spoke for some time in opening. I think the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, put his finger on this point: he asked whether the flexibility of the Immigration Service would be impaired and said that he was not sure of the answer. What I can say to him is that, unfortunately, we only had warning of this manuscript Amendment, as I said in opening, during the course of this morning. My advice is that it would; but that advice may be wrong and perhaps we should consider whether we need to qualify it. I am advised that the flexibility and the efficient working of the Immigration Service, and of the appeals system, would be impaired.
The particular Amendment which is before us is faulty in a number of ways. The noble Lord has made great play with"28 Parliamentary days ", but it says"28 days"and"Parliamentary days"are not mentioned. I do not think, from the advice that I have been given, that the wording will in fact serve to revive the old rules if the new ones are not approved. Therefore, if that is so—and I say it with qualification, but this is the advice that I have been given—there would he no rules, and that really must be an absurd situation.
What I should like to do, although I cannot advise the Committee to accept the Amendment, in the light of the comments that have been made, is to have a look at the wording of subsection (2). This was put in, as I have said, as an Amendment in another place; and it was the Home Secretary's view that there should be Parliamentary control for the first time over the Immigration Rules. Perhaps we could see whether there are any aspects in which this could be amended to meet points that have been made. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, in particular addressed
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himself to the wording of the Bill and made some points which we ought to look at. If during the course of our review we can incorporate any aspect of the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, and take account of any points that noble Lords have made in the course of this debate, I shall be very pleased to do so.
LORD SHEPHERD: Before the noble Lord sits down may I ask him this question: when the statement raised in the Bill is laid before Parliament presumably it will be laid in the form of a Statutory Instrument. Can the noble Lord confirm one way or the other?
LORD WINDLESHAM: I think not. We are in deep procedural waters here, but, technically speaking, I do not think it would be regarded as a Statutory Instrument—yes, I can confirm that it will not be a Statutory Instrument within the meaning of the Statutory Instruments Act.
LORD SHEPHERD: I think I shall advise my noble friends to respond to the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, that we should give the noble Lord an opportunity to consider the manuscript Amendment that we have laid to-day and the views that have been expressed upon it. I hope the noble Lord will bear in mind a number of factors. I shall he very brief. First of all, it seems to me that there will be two statements to go before Parliament. The one dealing with entry is perhaps the area where the greatest flexibility is needed, and the noble Lord himself drew attention to it in his winding-up speech. The second document deals basically with the conditions and the rights of immigrants once they have been legally accepted into our community. I can only say that from my experience of Constitutions which have been organised and negotiated with Commonwealth countries, this is one aspect which we have always ensured was deeply entrenched in the Constitution. In other words, we seek to maintain the greatest degree of stability and security for the citizens. In this country, of course, we have no written Constitution and therefore the safeguard can only lie with the British Parliament. I would therefore ask the noble Lord to consider whether it would be possible for the rules regarding entry to have perhaps this

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higher degree of flexibility, whereas the rules dealing with residence and conditions should have a greater degree of protection.
We accept that there must be a degree of flexibility, and none of us on this side of the Committee at any time has has ever suggested that that flexibility should not be there, but we wish to ensure that there is full Parliamentary control. In my earlier speech I mentioned the question of time in another place. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, will know that at the beginning of our Committee stage we on this side put down a number of Amendments probing the position in circumstances where an immigrant might fall sick or become unemployed, together with other matters. The noble Lord gave us satisfactory answers.
That debate took some three hours in your Lordships' House. Does the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, have any idea as to how long the other place will have to debate an important document under the Negative Resolution procedure? I think it must be 1½ hours, or perhaps less. I may be wrong, but that is my understanding of the current rules in another place. Under this procedure it would be very difficult indeed to examine the rules thoroughly. I think that in the interests of the new citizens who will come into this country after the passing of this Bill we should devise ways and means of securing the utmost conceivable Parliamentary control while maintaining flexibility.
In the light of the noble Lord's undertaking, which is similar to others given during the course of the Bill, I will certainly recommend to my noble friends that we should not press this Amendment but that we should withdraw it and come back to it at a later stage. I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
5.19 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY LORD BROCKWAY moved Amendment No. 45A:
Page 4, line 25, leave out subsection (4).
The noble Lord said: Lord Kilbracken is unavoidably absent, and he has asked me to move this Amendment on his behalf. I hope that the Committee will permit me to do so. I was able to discuss
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what was in the noble Lord's mind, and he indicated that his purpose was exploratory, that he did not understand from the clause what this subsection conveyed and that he would like some explanation of it.
I do not think there is any question that my noble friend Lord Kilbracken had some reason to be doubtful. In long experience I have rarely read a subsection whose purpose is so submerged by the language in which it is expressed. It says:
" A person's leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom shall lapse on his going to a country or territory outside the common travel area (whether or not he lands there), unless within the period for which he had leave he returns to the United Kingdom in circumstances in which he is not required to obtain leave to enter; but, if he does so return, his previous leave (and any limitation on it or conditions attached to it) shall continue to apply."
In the early hours of this morning, after I returned home from last night's debate, I tried to analyse the meaning of this subsection. I should be grateful if I could have an endorsement from the Government Benches of what I came to understand the subsection to mean. It appeared to me, after a first, second and third reading, to mean this: a Commonwealth immigrant, under this Bill, will require permission to visit a territory, other than the British Isles, the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands. If he overstays his leave, his right to remain in this country will lapse. I hope that that is a common-sense explanation of this extraordinarily abstruse wording in this particular subsection. As I looked into this, I had doubts not only about the wording of the subsection, but also as to its justification. The immigrants concerned are already tied down to an employer. I have described that as"indentured labour"because if they come into conflict with the employer, and are dismissed, they will be liable to deportation. This clause seems to suggest that they would not merely be indentured labourers, but territorial prisoners.
Let me describe what would occur: if an immigrant wished to pay a weekend visit to Paris or Brussels he would have to obtain a passport. That passport would be endorsed with the limitation of the leave which he was granted. If he failed to carry out the terms of that passport he would be open to all the penalties

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to which anyone else not observing the conditions of a passport would be subject. If he failed to return to his employer within the period, it would be the duty of the employer, under this Bill, to report that fact to the police. He would be an illegal resident in a foreign country, France or Belgium. In those circumstances, the police would act. They would act, as they do under such circumstances, under Interpol. The French or Belgian Administrations would be informed that the person was an illegal resident in their territory. That individual would come under the ordinary police procedure for evasion of passport regulations. An immigrant may remain in this country provided that he complies with the condition that he shall work for an employer, and he has an obligation to that employer. If he fails to work as required, if he overstays the leave which is granted in his passport, the employer will immediately know. The employer, if he has a grievance, will report the matter to the police and the ordinary police action will be taken.
In those circumstances, this subsection is not necessary in the Bill. The obligation under this Bill is for the man to fulfil his duties for one year with his employer. Why should the clauses of the Bill affect the right of that man to go on a weekend visit to France or Belgium, when the ordinary penalties which apply to a breach of passport would apply in any case? I beg to move.
5.28 p.m.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: The closer one looks at this clause the more peculiar it appears to be. I am very grateful to my noble friends Lord Brockway and Lord Kilbracken for bringing this matter up. By a"person"in this context we mean a man with a work permit which is valid for a year. It does not say that a person requires leave to go away, but that his leave to stay here—which is his work permit—will lapse if he goes away. Then, if you interpret the verbiage which follows, it means,"and does not come back again ". This is not surprising; if he goes away and does not come back, it seems that my noble friend is right in saying that this subsection need not have been included in the Bill. I have no point to make except that if that is what the subsection means, then clearly it is quite unnecessary.
LORD DENHAM: I wonder whether it would be a good idea to deal with the next Amendment as well, as it is on very much the same lines?
LORD WADE: In view of that suggestion, may I ask a question? First, I should like to read part of this subsection; namely,
" A person's leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom shall lapse on his going to a country or territory outside the common travel area (whether or not he lands there), unless within the period for which he had leave…"
Presumably that means"leave to enter or remain ". He returns to the United Kingdom in circumstances in which he is not required to obtain leave to enter. What are the circumstances in which he will require leave to enter if he comes back within the time for which he has already had leave to enter? Pursuing that point a little further, what in practice is going to happen if someone who has leave to enter for a period of time wishes to leave the country for a holiday or for some other good reason? Does he require approval to leave the country, and does he require leave to come back? Alternatively, in what circumstances does he require leave to re-enter? On the face of it, this is a rather complicated situation. It seems to me that a great deal of work is entailed for the immigration officers. There may be excellent answers to all these points, but, as I say, on the face of it it is an extremely complicated situation.
5.31 p.m.
LORD DENHAM: I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, and his noble friend for whom lie is speaking, found the wording of this subsection particularly complicated. In fact, inasmuch as any Bill is easy to read, I did not find this trouble myself. Subsection (4) provides that:
" A person's leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom shall lapse on his going to a country or territory outside the common travel area…unless within the period for which he had leave he returns to the United Kingdom in circumstances in which he is not required to obtain leave to enter…".
In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Wade, I would tell him that circumstances in which the person does not need leave to enter are given in Clause 8, subsections (2) and (4). The kind of case involved is

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that of a member of the staff of a diplomatic mission. The effect of the Amendment would be that a person who had once been given leave to enter the United States could re-enter as often as he wished during the period for which leave had originally been given without obtaining any further permission.
LORD LEATHERLAND: The noble Lord referred to the United States. Did he intend to refer to the United States or was he thinking of the United Kingdom? We have not yet been taken over.
LORD DENHAM: I am sorry. I was not aware that I referred to the United States. To enter the United Kingdom was what I meant.
Under subsection (1)(b) of Clause 3 leave to enter may be given either for a limited or for an indefinite period. Where leave has been given to a person for a limited period, and he goes abroad, say on holiday, and returns during that period, the normal practice is to readmit him for the remainder of the period. To the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, I would say that he does not ask for leave to go abroad but his coming back is subject to permission. But it would not be sensible to give him an automatic right of re-entry during the period because the circumstances may have changed completely in his absence abroad. Take the case of someone arriving from the United States (and I do mean the United States this time) with 10,000 dollars who is admitted as a visitor for six months. If a week later he moves on to Monte Carlo and another week later arrives back here penniless, having lost his 10,000 dollars, should he be entitled to readmission for the remainder of the six months?
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: He need not go to Monte Carlo to do that. The situation could arise in London on any day of the week. This is a most extraordinary argument.
LORD DENHAM: That is absolutely true, but the point is that he is granted entry to this country subject to certain conditions. If he goes away again and then comes back, and the same conditions do not apply as did on his original entry, then his entry should be subject to his obtaining further permission.
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Somebody may be admitted as a student for 12 months having ample funds to pay for his proposed course of study. If he devotes his funds to having a good time here and on the Continent and on his return tells the immigration officer he has come back to look for full-time employment, should he be entitled to readmission? Obviously the conditions under which he wished to come back would be completely different from the conditions on which he came in the first place. The only safe rule is that contained in paragraph 52 of the Draft Immigration Rules (Cmnd. 4606).
" His application to re-enter should he dealt with in the light of all the relevant circumstances. The same time limit and any conditions attached may be reimposed or it may he more appropriate to treat him as a new arrival."
As to persons who have once been given leave to enter for an indefinite period, the effect of the Amendment would be that they would for ever after have the same right of entry to the United Kingdom as if they were patrials. Admittedly it is right that, once an immigrant has been accepted for settlement, he should have some assurance of being able to resume residence here after absence overseas. The Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 provided that a Commonwealth citizen ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom without limit of time was to be readmitted after up to two years' absence; and paragraph 50 of the Draft Immigration Rules (Cmnd. 4606), similarly provides that any returning resident, Commonwealth or alien, is to be readmitted after up to two years' absence unless he has been repatriated at public expense or there are grounds for refusing leave to enter under paragraphs 59 to 61—that is, criminal record, deportation order, exclusion conducive to public good.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: I was looking at that provision. On the period of two years, supposing a Hindu or Pakistani goes abroad and there is terrible trouble among his family there. There would be no doubt at all about the re-entry of that person, would there, even if it took two years or just over two years for him to attend to his family troubles?
LORD DENHAM: If the circumstances were the same when he wanted to come back as they were when he got the original entry, I cannot imagine that he

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would not get in in exactly the same way. But the Amendment would allow any immigrant who had once been accepted for settlement to re-enter however long he had been out of this country, even after 10, 20 or 30 years, and whatever his conduct in the meantime or his intentions for the future. Such a concession cannot be justified.
If I may answer just one question of the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, I was asked about a man who goes abroad on holiday, perhaps overstays his leave and loses his job. He will not be automatically sent out of the country on his re-entry. The Department of Employment would help him to find other work if this was possible within the scope of the present scheme. But this subsection gives a chance to make sure that the conditions when a man re-enters the country are as favourable as the conditions when he originally entered.
LORD BROCKWAY: I am very interested in that reply, although I am a little bewildered by it. I am bewildered because I find it very difficult to believe that this subsection related to a visitor from the United States or from Europe, or a student, and that that was its purpose. It is in a Bill the purpose of which is to deal with Commonwealth immigrants. I do not think there can be any doubt at all that the introduction of this subsection was related primarily to Commonwealth immigrants who come to this country under the conditions of this Bill. Those immigrants are primarily the immigrants who come here on the condition that they work for a particular employer for one year.
The point I put when introducing this Amendment was this. Immigrants are allowed to enter. If they wish to go for a brief holiday to Europe they must obtain a passport. That passport will inevitably have on it the limitation of the period applicable where they are allowed to go. It will not be a universal passport. The passport will be endorsed in that way.
The point I was trying to put when I introduced this Amendment is that if the person overstayed the leave granted in that passport endorsement it would mean that he would not be fulfilling the conditions of his employment and in those circumstances the employer would have
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the obligation of reporting his absence to the police. In those circumstances the police would act, as in all cases of illegal residence in any country; the search would be made, and when that person was found the penalties would be imposed. I am grateful to the Minister for saying that if such persons overstayed their leave their right to enter and remain in the United Kingdom would not lapse; but this subsection says that it shall lapse. The Minister has now given me an undertaking that, if in those circumstances, someone overstayed his leave and was dismissed by his employer, the Department of Employment would seek to obtain for him other employment. That is a quite extraordinary statement and it goes very far indeed. I welcome it, but it does not seem to me to be consistent with the subsection that we are discussing.
LORD DENHAM: I think the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, is making too much of this. There will obviously be different occasions. It may well be that somebody is given a fortnight's leave and misses a train or a bus, and therefore comes back a day late, or even a week late. There may be other occasions when somebody is given a fortnight's leave and suddenly decides to go to live in a cave in Greece for six months. Obviously the position in each individual case will have to be taken into account, but I can assure the noble Lord that this is not aimed at any particular group of people. This subsection deals both with people who are here for a limited period and with people who are here for an unlimited or indefinite period—whichever is the word we eventually settle on for this Bill. The noble Lord should not assume that this subsection is aimed particularly at one set of people; it is simply a subsection that is necessary to the Bill.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: At first I thought this was an unnecessary clause, but I am now rather inclined to think that it is objectionable. If it means simply that if a man who has a work permit for a year goes away for three weeks, when he comes back his work permit continues, but that, if he goes away for a year and a day, when he comes hack his work permit does not continue, that is quite understandable. But it seems to me now that, apart from the second-class citizenship imposed on him by the right of deportation, and by

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the limitations of where he is allowed to work, all of which I think everybody agrees are regrettable, although they have been thought necessary, if we are now to add the fact that he may not exercise the ordinary rights of a citizen while he is on his permit (probably to go to Paris for the week-end) without being examined when he comes back to see whether he has lost any money, that seems to me to be objectionable. I am not at all happy that this is not introducing restrictions on the permit holder which were not seen or suspected anywhere else in the Bill.
LORD DENHAM: With great respect, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, is unreasonably worried over this. I hesitate, in front of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, to suggest that something like this could not happen, but it is certainly not the intention of the Bill that it should happen. The intention of the Bill and of this subsection is that when the conditions under which the original entry permit was granted have drastically changed they can be reconsidered.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: It does not say that.
LORD SHEPHERD: The noble Lord said"It is not the intention ". I accept that, but the point my noble friend has made is; could this happen? This is the real question. If it could happen I think we should see whether we can prevent it. It is not a question of intention.
LORD DENHAM: I will certainly look very closely at everything that has been said and will see whether there is anything in the fears that have been expressed and whether, if so, they can be put right.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: That is very fair, and I accept it happily. But the point I want to make is that if every time a permit holder goes away, for a short or a long period, he has to prove the same suitability to be received when he comes back after being out of this country, this is something new and extremely important.
LORD BROCKWAY: I am grateful for the promise which has been given by the Minister, and in those circumstances, retaining the right to raise the
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matter at Report stage, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
5.48 p.m.
LORD WADE LORD WADE moved Amendment No. 47:
Page 4, line 39, leave out (" conducive to the public good or ") and insert (" necessary in the interests of national security.").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 47, I should like to make something in the nature of a personal statement. When my noble friend Lord Foot and I tabled a large number of Amendments, we arranged that as from this point in time in our discussions he would move the Liberal Amendments. Unfortunately, for reasons that he had not anticipated, he is unable to be here to-day, and therefore it falls to me to continue—I was going to say to"bat ", but I suppose it would be more appropriate to say"continue to bowl ". However, leaving the metaphor on one side, I do not guarantee to move every one of the Liberal Amendments. Therefore, if any noble Lord is particularly anxious to speak on one of them I hope that he will send me a little note saying,"For goodness' sake! get up and move it because I want to speak ".
Subsection (5) at present reads:
" A person who is not patrial shall be liable to deportation from the United Kingdom "—
then paragraph (b) reads:
" if the Secretary of State deems his deportation to be conducive to the public good; ".
The proposal in this Amendment is that the words"conducive to the public good"should be replaced by the words,"necessary in the interests of national security ". I think it is clear that where the interests of national security are involved the Government must have powers to act, though even in that case there must be adequate safeguards for the person or persons involved. But it is right, as a matter of general principle, that the Government should have deportation powers where national security is involved.
However, it seems to me that we are going much too wide when we grant to the Executive power to deport in circumstances which are regarded as not conducive to the public good. It may be that the words"conducive to the public good"have been used in some

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other Statutes, but I do not think that is a sufficient answer. The point is whether the Executive should have such wide powers; namely, to deport on these rather vague grounds. I notice that Mr. Hugh Fraser, in the debate on the Report stage in another place, said that these words were very wide and he hoped that the matter would be reconsidered in your Lordships' House. I hope that I shall have the support of a number of noble Lords in raising this question this afternoon.
For example, I think it may have, probably will have, some bearing on the freedom of political asylum. Some Government might consider that it is not conducive to the public good to allow a person to remain in this country who is politically inconvenient to them. If one compares the climate of opinion with the last century, it is interesting to see how ideas have changed. The concept of freedom of political asylum, however inconvenient, has been upheld on a number of occasions. If I may be allowed a little diversion, I should like to refer to an important debate in the last century, because I think it has some bearing on this subject. In 1858 a Bill known as the Conspiracy to Murder Bill was introduced. It arose out of the well-known Orsini case. Certain refugees who were in this country plotted to overthrow Emperor of France and they did, in fact, make an attempt. They went to Paris, and the attempt failed, although some of them were killed. Emperor Napoleon III's Ministers took rather a dim view of this, which was perhaps understandable, and made representations to the British Government; and following that the Conspiracy to Murder Bill was introduced.
There was a very long and very interesting debate on that Bill, and the objections were twofold. First, Members did not like the idea of pressure from another Power, another Head of Government. But, most important, they felt that if anything was done in the nature of this Bill it might indirectly diminish the principle of freedom of political asylum and it might possibly lead to deportation. No one condoned this attempt to murder Napoleon III, and no one to-day would condone acts of that nature, but it is easy to see how strong the feelings were for preserving the
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freedom of political asylum—so much so that the Government were defeated, and I think it was the Earl of Derby who formed an Administration after that defeat. It is also worthy of notice that on this occasion—I think it was probably one of the rare occasions—Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli went into the same Division Lobby together against the Government. I give that illustration to show that there is a great strength of feeling—there has been, and I hope it will be preserved—about the freedom of political asylum and the freedom for refugees and for other immigrants who may be politically inconvenient or who may do or say things that a particular Government may think not conducive to the public good.
There is one other point I would make, and I hope this will be elaborated by other noble Lords. If a person has not committed a crime and is not a threat to national security, why should he be deported? Why should any Government be given these wide powers? It is to question that that I beg leave to move this Amendment.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: It is right that this question of public good should be ventilated in your Lordships' House by this Amendment. I wonder whether I may speak for a minute or two from personal experience. These words"conducive to the public good"are not novel; they have been in our legislation in relation to aliens for many years. The change which is being made by this Bill is that a power similar to that which exists in relation to aliens is to be extended to Commonwealth citizens. At present, a Commonwealth citizen can only be deported if he has been recommended for deportation by a court. I would ask your Lordships to cast your minds back for a moment to the case I ventured to mention on Second Reading, the case of an American Nazi named Rockwell, who slipped into this country in 1962. He was a declared admirer of Hitler. His presence, whether or not it was politically inconvenient, was politically detestable, as the Press and a great deal of correspondence made absolutely clear to me. I signed a deportation order to get rid of him after he had joined up with some of these little neo-Fascist bodies which were such a trouble at the time. He went, and I did not receive a single

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complaint of my action, but a great deal of appreciation of it.
The point which occurred to me at that time was that I was able to get rid of him with the full support of public opinion because he happened to be American. Had he been Canadian, it would have been impossible to do anything. Yet there is no doubt whatever that public opinion would have been just as strong against this man whatever his nationality, because it was detestable to the British public, at any rate after this short interval of time since the war, to have people coming into this country and declaring what a splendid man Hitler was.
I could quote other examples. I would put to your Lordships that this power in relation to aliens has been a valuable one for the Home Secretary to possess, though he should use it only with the greatest care. In general, when the Home Secretary has exercised his power, he has had strong support from public opinion in doing so, because he would not venture to act without being confident of that. I submit that it is anomalous, when there is somebody of that character whose presence in this country is generally detested, if that man can only be deported should he be an alien. I find it very difficult to understand why there should be a distinction in the law according to whether he comes from America or from Canada or from somewhere else within the Commonwealth.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: Is it not true to say that this case could not in fact happen with the people with whom we are concerned in this Bill, because they have to be admitted in the first place; and if they were people of the character of Mr. Rockwell, is it not unlikely that they would be admitted, and therefore they would not need to be kicked out?
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: If you take out the words"conducive to the public good ", does it mean that if you have a drug trafficker or an arch criminal or somebody extremely bad for the public good who is a citizen from the Commonwealth, he can never be deported?
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: No. A court of law can do that.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, has put his finger on the issue very clearly. I think we would all of us agree that an Englishman is entitled to live in this country and admire and say that he admires Hitler and, however much we may dislike it, we do not deport him. Equally, I think most of us feel that it is really quite unnecessary to import foreigners, in the literal sense, who hold views which are objectionable to us in this way, and we would most of us support the Home Secretary if he gets rid of them. Where do our fellow British subjects of the United Kingdom and Colonies and subjects of the Commonwealth stand in this matter? This is the point at issue. On the whole, my view is that they should stand with the Englishman rather than the foreigner. I do not think one needs to put forward any argument; I do not think there are any arguments except sentimental ones. That is the issue, and I support the noble Lord, Lord Wade, in bringing it to your Lordships' attention in the form of an Amendment.
6.0 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: Clause 3(5)(b) provides that a person who is not patrial shall be liable to deportation if the Secretary of State deems his deportation to be conducive to the public good. These are words, as the noble Lord, Lord Wade, indicated in his opening speech, which are well known. Home Secretaries have had this power for half a century, and the words have a fairly well defined meaning as a result of the occasions when the power has been used. This Amendment seeks to amend the subsection so that it would read,
" A person who is not patrial shall be liable to deportation from the United Kingdom—
(b) if the Secretary of State deems his deportation to be necessary in the interests of national security."
This is very much narrower ground than"conducive to the public good ".
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, has reminded us from his own experience that at present in the law there is power for the Secretary of State to deport foreign nationals on the ground that their presence here is not conducive to the public good; and he referred to the Rockwell case, which was an instance where he decided to use that power in

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relation to an alien. There is no such power to deport Commonwealth citizens, but Clause 3(5)(b) would extend to Commonwealth and also Irish citizens the power which has previously applied only to aliens.
I would, in passing, say to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, that the Bill does single out those Commonwealth citizens who have a close connection with the United Kingdom by birth or ancestry (who are described as"patrial ") going back two generations in the case of a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, or one generation in the case of other Commonwealth citizens. Therefore, this goes some way towards meeting his point of view—not perhaps as far as he would like—in that they would be exempt from deportation, whereas an alien would not. But in the framework of a unified control for people from overseas, the Government think it is right to extend to Commonwealth and Irish citizens the power to deport on conducive grounds.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, will remember from his own experience (and it is useful to bear in mind the scale of what we are talking about) that so far as aliens have been concerned in recent years, there have been only about a dozen cases a year in which Home Secretaries have found it necessary to use this particular power. Moreover, for the most part these are cases of convicted criminals, and in not more than three or four cases a year have aliens who have not got a criminal conviction been deported. It may be asked why the courts have not used their power to recommend deportation. This is a power that the courts have, and of course use very widely, but the answer is that in certain cases some courts decide that this is a decision they would prefer to leave to the Home Secretary. Although they have the power themselves there are these cases, and it is significant that out of only about a dozen cases a year about eight or nine have concerned people who have already a conviction in the courts.
I should also make it clear that later on in the Bill, at Clause 15(3), a full right of appeal is provided against a decision to make a deportation order on conducive grounds. There will be an appeal except only in the rare cases where
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the order has been made in the interests of national security, or of the relations between the United Kingdom and any other country, or for other reasons of a political nature. We believe that this right of appeal will provide an adequate safeguard against any potential abuse of the power although, as I say to the Committee, this particular power as regards aliens has not attracted very much criticism or representation in recent years.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I was looking particularly at Clause 15, and I do not interpret subsection (5) in that way. Perhaps the noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I said in subsection (3).
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: Clause 15(5)?
LORD WINDLESHAM: Clause 15(3).
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: But lower down, Clause 15(5) says:
" A person shall not be entitled to appeal under this section against a refusal to revoke a deportation order, if the Secretary of State certifies that the appellant's exclusion from the United Kingdom is conducive to the public good…".
I may be wrong, but I interpret, off the cuff, that the power is still there for the Secretary of State to exclude the person.
LORD WINDLESHAM: After a very quick look while the noble Lord was speaking, and subject to correction, subsection (5) deals with the revocation of a deportation order. What I was talking about, which is the case that really matters, is the making of a deportation order, and I think subsection (3) deals with that. When we get to Clause 15 perhaps we can pursue the matter.
One other point I ought to refer to, because it is of considerable significance, is that Clause 7 safeguards the position of Commonwealth citizens who are resident here at the end of July. 1971, since it provides that they are not liable to deportation on conducive grounds however short their period of ordinary residence. These are the people who are already resident here.

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Given these safeguards we really have little hesitation in saying that it is right to retain this power in relation to aliens. The Committee must be in no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Wade, is proposing in his Amendment to remove the existing power as regards aliens and not only to maintain the present position. We are proposing to extend the power to Commonwealth citizens, but the Amendment would take aliens out as well.
LORD WADE: May I interrupt for one moment? If this Amendment were re-worded so that it referred to Commonwealth citizens, and we left for consideration at another time and not on this Bill, the position of aliens, would that satisfy the Government?
LORD WINDLESHAM: That is a rapid change of tactic, but I fear that it would not. As I said, the aim of this Bill is to assimilate people from the Commonwealth and from other countries, and this is a consequential provision. Moreover, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, said in giving an example of the use of the power, somebody who is really undesirable and whose presence here may be regarded as being against the public interest, may come from a Commonwealth country or an overseas country; he is the same man, with the same record, and of the same activities. My noble friend Lord Massereene and Ferrard raised the sort of case that is in our minds—I have no particular instance to refer to—and he is quite right: this is the sort of power required to deal with the international drug trafficker, let us say, who is clever enough to keep on the right side of the law himself and does not incur a conviction. If he was convicted, of course the courts could then recommend his deportation, as the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, correctly indicated. However, the organiser is very often the chap who is quite a clever fellow. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, will remember the international gambling racketeers, quite frequently with convictions in their own country. It is to deal with people of this sort (whether they come from Commonwealth countries or from overseas), that the Home Secretary should have this power, and there is no reason to think it will not continue to be used
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in the extremely sparing way in which it has been in recent years.
LORD AIREDALE: In all the cases that we have been considering, certainly in the case cited by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, the Home Secretary would have had no difficulty at all in deciding that the deportation of the person concerned was necessary. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, described the person in his example as one whose presence in this country was generally detested. Would it not be a reasonable compromise, now that we are correlating the position of Commonwealth citizens and aliens, to strengthen the phrase by substituting the word"necessary"for the word conducive ", so that any Home Secretary will not assume a power to deport just because he thinks it might be"conducive to the public good but must make up his mind that in the particular case deportation is necessary? This would be in the interest of Commonwealth citizens who are now being brought within the purview of this Bill. If aliens come within the same provision, good luck to them, but it hardly seems good enough for Parliament to permit a Home Secretary to deport a person unless the Home Secretary is satisfied that deportation is not only"conducive"but is"necessary"to the public good.
6.12 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: I waited to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham had to say before I intervened. There is a delicate balance here, but on balance I shall support the Amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wade. Many of us have for a very long time been unhappy about the phrase,"conducive to the public good ". There are large powers of deportation in this Bill for all sorts of things—breaches of conditions, committing criminal offences and so forth. Of course, anything which affects the security of the State must be treated differently—we accept that—but the phrase"conducive to the public good"is very wide. There is no more distinguished administrator in this House than the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. This is just the sort of point on which an administrator always wants as wide powers as possible, whereas others feel doubtful as to whether, if we have such a wide phrase as this, wrong decisions

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may be made because it is a personal judgment of what is"conducive to the public good ".
It must be remembered what a deportation order means. For about twenty years the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, and I tried to do something for an American against whom a deportation order had been made during the War. There was no question of his having committed any offence. He was a man of the highest character, a well-to-do man and in good standing in the United States. He tried to find from successive Home Secretaries what they had against him. Although he occupied higher and higher positions in the United States, he was never able to find what they had against him. This meant that he could not touch down in London when on the way to somewhere else in Europe and could not enter this country at all. Eventually, after we had tried to find out about this from successive Home Secretaries including Labour Home Secretaries, Mr. Jenkins, when he was Home Secretary, revoked the deportation order but the man still never knew why it had been made. I do not know whether he is still alive or is now dead, or what they had against him. He could not conceive what it could possibly be. This is a very wide discretion, and I think the phrase in the Statute with which we are all familiar in relation to aliens, merely that the Home Secretary himself does not think it"conducive to the public good ", is too wide to have here.
THE EARL OF BALFOUR: I have listened carefully to what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, said and I understand his point of view that it might he possible for a Home Secretary to take advantage of his position and keep someone whom possibly he might not like out of the country. The case which the noble and learned Lord mentioned is, I think, a very interesting one. But it is the first duty of persons coming to this country to obey the laws of the country. We cannot afford to have people who are not patrial being countenanced, if they would undermine the good order of our society. Even from the Commonwealth we could have the worst possible type of Communist agitator. I do not say that such a man would necessarily come from the Commonwealth or an alien country, but these things can happen. He could
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come from any other country, including a former British colony. It is possible for such a person to cause an enormous amount of damage to a person's character, or even property, without necessarily endangering our national security.
Therefore I feel that this Amendment would make the position far too limited. As has been mentioned, a trafficker in drugs could be involved. There was also a case not very long ago when some watches were imported with false names of manufacturers on them and they were sold as genuine good quality watches. I believe the persons concerned are at present locked up and when they come out they will be deported. They were not British citizens, but that sort of thing could happen in the case of British citizens.
There is a very big difference between giving political asylum—a person may be in a desperate position as a refugee from a country having the most terrible form of government—and a person taking part in political activity to undermine our Constitution, or way of life, as we have no written Constitution. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, mentioned a very important case. If noble Lords are in doubt about this matter, I ask what would have happened if, in the case he mentioned, the person had been a Canadian citizen. What elaborate provisions would the Home Secretary have to go through to deport that person? How could it be done under the Bill if this power were removed? The objectionable character who was mentioned might not necessarily even come within the meaning of this Amendment. The words proposed in the Amendment are,"necessary in the interests of national security ", but there could be a pretty ghastly type of Communist agitator coming in without necessarily affecting national security. I am interested in looking after our own nest and I want to be a little fussy about who comes into the country and I do not care where they come from. I want to preserve the very pleasant society that we have in this country.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: I cannot help feeling that with the right of appeal, to which I understand we shall come a little later, the person concerned would be bound to know why he was being deported. In future these cases must be governed by that.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: The noble Lord. Lord Windlesham mentioned the Rockwell case and so did the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, but one thing he failed to point out. I well remember the Rockwell case. Everyone knew that this objectionable character was going to visit this country and many people hoped that he would be stopped from arriving here. If I remember rightly, he entered the country illegally, and as a result we chased him round for a considerable period before we found him and chucked him out. If he had been a Canadian and entered the country illegally he could surely have been chucked out anyway. Under this Bill the great majority of Commonwealth citizens who enter this country will be entering with our permission. Surely a person of that character would not be allowed to enter in the first place, and if he entered illegally we should have a perfect right under this Bill, and under existing legislation, to throw him out. It will be only in the comparatively rare case of somebody who is in this country illegally, because he had been admitted illegally, that this power will have any purpose. But in this narrow case it is unnecessary.
THE EARL OF BALFOUR: Before the noble Viscount sits down, may I say that we may not know a person's activities before lie comes here. That is what worries me. He could become a very nasty character after he had arrived.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: Is the noble Earl aware that the Communist Party and the Fascist Party are legal in this country and that the test of any truly democratic society is the way it contains these extreme elements, not the way they are pushed down and persecuted? It is much better if they are not driven underground, for then they are much more dangerous.
6.22 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: It is worth keeping the scale of this problem in mind. I gave the figures. There are only about a dozen people a year who are deported on not conducive grounds, of whom about eight have court convictions We are not talking about large numbers of people with political ideals, or anything of that sort. The intervention made by the noble Earl, Lord Balfour, in reply to the noble
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Viscount, Lord St. Davids, that some people appear innocent when they come in, has a certain amount of force in it. Also, unfortunately, it is true, with the strain on the immigration service and the many millions of people passing through the ports, that there have been occasions when people who would never have been admitted if it had been known who they were have found their way in so that they are here in our midst.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: Will the noble Lord explain? If it was not known who they were when they were admitted, surely they must have entered under false pretences, and their permission to be here would be cancelled anyway.
LORD WINDLESHAM: It would depend. There is the case of Mr. Jerry Rubin—the case was published only recently, so there is no harm in repeating it—who came in under his own name and with his own passport. Later on, all sorts of difficulties ensued. Had it been known who he was, I think the immigration officers would have wanted to consider his admission. But he was not admitted as a result of any sort of deception.
The noble Lord, Lord Airedale, asked about the words not conducive ", and asked whether the Home Secretary should assure himself that somebody's extrusion from this country was necessary. The word necessary"is included in"not conducive to the public good ". If the Home Secretary signs a deportation order on this ground, he does so only after long personal consideration. I think the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, who has had this responsibility, would say that he had assured himself to the last degree of doubt that the deportation of any individual was in every respect necessary for the public good. But these words have a specialised meaning. A body of precedent has been built up and it seems desirable to adhere to it.
I was a little surprised to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, say that he was inclined to support the Amendment on the Marshalled List; because this Amendment would remove the power to deport an alien on grounds which have been used by successive Administrations for 50 years. I should be surprised if in another place—when in Standing Committee the Opposition were

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led by the noble and learned Lord's former colleague, Mr. Callaghan, the former Home Secretary—Mr. Callaghan would have felt able to support a proposal to remove this power, having recently used it himself for some years. He spoke for the Labour Party on this Bill in the House of Commons, and was the leading representative of the Party opposite. If the Labour Party in this House decided to go into the Lobby with the Liberals on this Amendment, they might well be at odds with their colleagues elsewhere. But that is entirely for them to decide.
The final point is the extremely useful one made by my noble friend Lord Stonehaven, that the question of the right of appeal is crucial here and is an answer to the noble Lord's reservation that somebody might have a deportation order signed against him on these grounds without ever knowing the reasons. Now he has the right of appeal, the appeal is heard in his presence, and he is entitled to be represented before the Immigration Appeal Tribunal. So that situation, since we have the Tribunal, is really covered. I think I have said enough to show why we feel that this power is necessary. I can assure Members of the Committee that it will be used sparingly in future, as it has been used in the past. But we feel that the Bill is right as it stands.
LORD WADE: I do not think the numbers argument is a very strong one. It is the old argument about the baby being a small one, and I do not think it is really decisive. A matter of principle is involved here. First of all, I should like to make it clear—and I think everyone in the Committee appreciates this—that we are not talking about those who commit criminal offences. That aspect is dealt with in another part of the Bill—
LORD WINDLESHAM: With all respect, in practice we are talking about people who, in three-quarters of the cases, have committed criminal offences, although the court have not recommended them for deportation. It may have sentenced them, but without adding a recommendation for deportation. About three-quarters of the cases involve people who have been convicted by the courts.
LORD WADE: That disturbs me all the more. That means that if a case has been before the court and the court decides that it is not one for recommending deportation, then under' this provision the Home Secretary still has power to deport.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I must not keep interrupting the noble Lord, but the Committee ought not to be left in any doubt here. I said in my opening speech that in a number of circumstances the courts say quite clearly that they wish to leave the decision on deportation to the Home Secretary, particularly in this type of case. They often say that, and in their judgment they express no view other than that they think the Home Secretary should decide. They deal with the question of the conviction and the penalty, but leave the question of deportation to the Home Secretary.
LORD WADE: There are other clauses dealing with the question of criminal offences and deportation, so I must leave it at that. But there are just two points that I wish to make. One is that there is always the danger that there will be pressure from another Government—that is why I mentioned the case in the last century—for political or other reasons, and it may be thought conducive to the public good to deport somebody for that reason. We need to be pretty careful about that aspect. Secondly, the noble Lord said that those who are settled here will not be affected—
LORD WINDLESHAM: Those who are already settled here, and who are ordinarily resident at the end of July, 1971, will not be liable for deportation on this ground in future.
LORD WADE: That is the point I wish to make. One of the points that worries us about this Bill is that we already have a number of persons who have come from the Commonwealth and settled here. But we shall be making it extremely difficult for newcomers from the Commonwealth to become settled, because we are going to say to them,"You are different. You are going to be tied to an employer. You are going to have to register. You are even liable to deportation if, for some reason, it is thought it is not conducive to the public good that you should be here." All these different factors make

1183
this great distinction between the newcomers and the present settlers. That reinforces my view. It may be that this Amendment would lead to other Amendments in the law with regard to aliens, but I think we have here a point of principle. It is because of this Bill that this matter has been brought to our attention, and for that reason I should like to press this Amendment.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: I am glad that this matter has been brought to light. I am still not satisfied, and I should be glad if some noble and learned Member of this Committee could interpret for me. I agree that Clause 15 states:
" Subject to the provisions of this Part of this Act, a person may appeal to an adjudicator a against—

(a) a decision of the Secretary of State to make a deportation order against him by virtue of section 3(5) above; or

(b) a refusal by the Secretary of State to revoke a deportation order made against him ".

I now go to subsection (5), at the bottom of page 16, which says:
" A person shall not be entitled to appeal under this section against a refusal to revoke a deportation order, if the Secretary of State certifies that the appellant's exclusion from
the United Kingdom is conducive to the public good or if revocation was refused on that ground by the Secretary of State (and not by a person acting under his authority) ".
I apologise to the Committee if I am entangled in legal language, but semantically and logically an appeal means nothing so far as I am concerned. I had better be a little more humble here. I may be wrong in my reading of this, but I hope somebody will put me straight on it.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I do not think I should detain the Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Wade, has wound up, and I think we want to reach a decision. I think that if the noble Lord reads the words again he will see that Clause 15(5) deals with the revocation of a deportation order—where once somebody is out of the country and he wants to come back but cannot because there is a deportation order, and he wants it revoked. There is no appeal on conducive grounds there, but that is not what we are talking about.
6.31 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 47) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 61; Not-Contents, 109.

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Gardiner, L.

Ritchie-Calder, L.

Archibald, L.

Garnsworthy, L.

Royle, L.

Ardwick, L.

George-Brown, L.

St. Davids, V.

Bacon, Bs.

Gladwyn, L.

Segal, L.

Barrington, V.

Greenwood of Rossendale, L.

Shackleton, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Henley, L. [Teller.]

Shepherd, L.

Bernstein, L.

Hoy, L.

Slater, L.

Beswick, L.

Jacques, L.

Sorensen, L.

Birk, Bs.

Janner, L.

Southwark, L.Bp.

Blyton, L.

Leatherland, L.

Stocks, Bs.

Brockway, L.

Lindgren, L.

Stonham, L.

Brown, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, Bs.

Strabolgi, L.

Buckinghamshire, E.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Summerskill, Bs.

Burntwood, L.

Noel-Buxton, L.

Tanlaw, L.

Byers, L.

Norwich, V.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Champion, L.

Nunburnholme, L.

Wade, L. [Teller.]

Collison, L.

Phillips, Bs.

White, Bs.

Davies of Leek, L.

Platt, L.

Williamson, L.

Diamond, L.

Popplewell, L.

Winterbottom, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Raglan, L.

Wootton of Abinger, Bs.

Gaitskell, Bs.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Balfour of Inchrye, L.

Brooke of Cumnor, L.

Abinger, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Brooke of Ystradfellte, Bs.

Airlie, E.

Belstead, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Albemarle, E.

Berkeley, Bs.

Buchan, E.

Alport, L.

Bessborough, E.

Clwyd, L.

Ashbourne, L.

Bourne, L.

Coleraine, L.

Auckland, L.

Bradford, E.

Colville of Culross, V.

Balfour, E.

Bridgeman, V.

Conesford, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Hanworth, V.

Oakshott, L.

Cornwallis, L.

Harris, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Craigavon, V.

Hawke, L.

Perth, E.

Crathorne, L.

Headfort, M.

Radnor, E.

Crawshaw, L.

Inchcape, E.

Rankeillour, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Jellicoe, E. (L. Privy Seal.)

Rochdale, V.

Daventry, V.

Kilmarnock, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Kinnoull, E.

St. Just, L.

Derwent, L.

Latymer, L.

St. Oswald, L.

Digby, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Sandford, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Lothian, M.

Sempill, Ly.

Dulverton, L.

Loudoun, C.

Somers, L.

Dundee, E.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Stamp, L.

Effingham, E.

MacAndrew, L.

Stonehaven, V.

Elliot of Harwood, Bs.

McFadzean, L.

Strang, L.

Exeter, M.

Macleod of Borve, Bs.

Strange, L.

Falkland, V.

Mancroft, L.

Strange of Knokin, Bs.

Ferrers, E.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Strathcarron, L.

Ferrier, L.

Merrivale, L.

Strathclyde, L.

Fraser of Lonsdale, L.

Milverton, L.

Teviot, L.

Garner, L.

Monck, V.

Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie, Bs.

Glendevon, L.

Monckton of Brenchley, V.

Vivian, L.

Goschen, V. [Teller.]

Monk Bretton, L.

Wakefield of Kendal, L.

Gowrie, E.

Monson, L.

Waldegrave, E.

Gray, L.

Mountevans, L.

Ward of Witley, V.

Grenfell, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Windlesham, L.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Moyne, L.

Wolverton, L.

Hacking, L.

Napier and Ettrick, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Northchurch, Bs.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

6.39 p.m.
BARONESS WHITE BARONESS WHITE moved Amendment No. 48:
Page 4, line 40, leave out paragraph (c).
The noble Baroness said: I beg to move the Amendment standing in the names of my noble friends and myself. This is a very important Amendment to a good many of us, because its effect would be to delete from this part of the Bill the provision,
" if another person to whose family he belongs is or has been ordered to be deported ".
This means that anyone who is not patrial will be liable to deportation if he or she belongs to a family another member of which has been ordered to be deported. I would direct your Lordships' attention to what is included in the definition of a family in this context. If one looks at Clause 5(4) of the Bill on page 7, one sees:
" For purposes of deportation the following shall be those who are regarded as belonging to another person's family—

(a) where that other person is a man, his wife and his or her children under the age of eighteen; and

(b) where that other person is a woman, her children under the age of eighteen; "—

but not, your Lordships will observe, her husband.
In the first place, if it were a man, the children concerned could be either their children or the children of the wife. We are very much disturbed about bringing this provision into legislation, because it means that if one person in a family is guilty of such a misdemeanour as to become liable to a deportation order then, according to this provision, any other person of the family, as defined in the succeeding clause, is thereby liable to deportation. This is entirely at the discretion of the Secretary of State—although at some later stage the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, will be moving an Amendment which will provide for some grounds of appeal, though I am not at all clear what the grounds of appeal in this case are to be. It will assist us if the noble Lord could indicate what grounds of appeal are envisaged. It is certainly not clear from the Amendment, except where the original deportation order was improper or invalid, or the person concerned did not belong to the family.
One can think of all kinds of complications which might arise. Your Lordships will see that this clause refers only to the non-patrials. Let us consider the possible family circumstances which might occur. Supposing it is a man against whom the deportation order is made. His wife may well be a patrial; she might have qualified independently,

1187
she might have qualified by birth or on registration after five years. There are various circumstances in which a wife might be a patrial where the husband is not. This is one of the awkwardnesses of this patriality conception.
Consider the children. The couple might have entered this country as immigrants with one or more children, and after arrival another child or more children might be born. The child who is born here would be patrial if the parents were Commonwealth citizens in the first place, and would therefore not be liable to deportation under this clause. A child who had been here for five years, if I am correct, might have qualified; I am open to correction. If other conditions are satisfied, that child also might be patrial. One might have a child who had not been here long enough to be a patrial; in other words, there might easily be within the same family a number of individuals whose status under this clause would be different. Against some of them the Home Secretary would be entitled to make an order for deportation on the grounds that they belonged to the family of someone else against whom an order had been granted; but against all of them he would not be in that position. This seems to us to be a fairly ludicrous situation. I would ask the Committee to consider this.
Then one must look at the difficulty of who should be included in the family: children up to the age of 18. Nothing is said about the possibility that the children could be in paid employment by that time. They might be. They might not be dependent in any way upon the person against whom the deportation order is made. They might, even, by the age of 17¾, not be living at home. They would still be members of the family within this definition, but they might not be connected with the family in the absolute sense that they were dependent and living in the same house.
Take the position of the wife. If the husband was being deported for a criminal offence it is conceivable that she had had a pretty rough time with him and would be happy not to see him again. But under this provision it may be that she will be forced to leave the country, in which she might have settled contentedly herself except for the
1188
difficulties with her husband. She will be told,"Your husband was very unsatisfactory, unless you divorce him and can prove you are not a member of his family, then if he gets himself in trouble and is sent out of the country you may have to go too, and you will have to take with you any of your children up to the age of 18 ". On the other hand, if it is the woman who is to be deported—and these cases are rare, it is mostly men who are deported—perhaps she has been living an immoral life, or is in breach of some provision made in her own case as an immigrant, the husband does not have to accompany her. He can stay behind and carry on as he thinks fit. The fact that she might then be left destitute, so long as she is outside our shores, does not seem to matter. From the point of view of family life I should have thought that this was a very undesirable and slightly irresponsible situation.
I believe that the basis of all this is the thought in the minds of the Government that we do not wish to have families without the breadwinner living in this country as a possible charge on public funds. One can see that there could be instances in which one felt that it was against public policy that people should be here as a charge on public funds when the breadwinner is deported; but, as the Home Secretary said in another place, these cases are likely to be very rare, there are not likely to be many deportation orders, and the number of persons who might be left here as a possible charge on public funds is, in any case, going to be very small.
But that difficulty, providing the family is willing, can be met under Clause 29, the repatriation clause. If a family wish to depart from this country, and they are not in a position to meet their expenses, they can apply under Clause 29 for help in returning to their country of origin. You may have a situation in which the breadwinner is liable to deportation and the wife and perhaps the children as a family say,"There is not much point in our trying to struggle on here if father, on whom we depend, is going to be sent away. Would it not be far better for us to go?"In those circumstances it would be in all our minds that they should go; and, if they have to be assisted, then they should be assisted; and provision is made

1189
for that in the Bill. That would be perfectly in order; nobody would take exception to that. But it is a very different thing that we should leave it to the Government to decide what is to happen to a family in such unfortunate circumstances. The family should not have a decision to take as to whether or not they should go out of the country as well.
The Home Secretary made it very clear in debates in another place that he appreciated that it would be very unfair to imply that, because one person in a family had been guilty of a misdemeanour serious enough to involve deportation, other members of the family should, as it were, be tarred with the brush of guilt by association. I should have thought that that would have been repugnant to everybody in your Lordships' House. After all, there may be black sheep in every family but it does not necessarily mean that everybody else in that family should be regarded as morally guilty in some way, if not legally so. In my view, that is a very serious thing. The Home Secretary said that in those circumstances there would be supervised departure: in other words, he did not want the family to have the stigma of a deportation order against them and he would give them a chance to decide"voluntarily"that they wished to go back to their place of origin; and provided he was satisfied that they had actually left, or were about to do so, he would not make an order against them. They would have gone voluntarily and would have no stain against their character, but if they did not go there would always be the sanction that he would then deport them.
Therefore it is not really a free choice, because it is made quite clear that in these circumstances, if the administration of the Home Office think that the family should go—largely because they are apprehensive that the people concerned might become a charge on public funds; I do not think there is any other real reason—then they say they will see to it that the family will not have the particular stigma; the family may say that it is going voluntarily, but the Home Office are determined to make certain that the family does go. That is the meaning of"supervised departure ". Assisted departure is quite another matter, and to that I do not think any of us can have
1190
the slightest objection. As I understand it, it is possible to provide that under Clause 29. It is only sensible; and if the family decided that it wanted to go it should have help. But that is a very different thing from saying that it must go, whether it wishes to or not; that even though the members of the family have had no part in the guilty action, nevertheless they must be constrained to leave this country, regardless of the circumstances.
Under the appeal provision it does not seem to me at all clear that any appeal could lie simply on the ground that it was not the desire of the family to go. If they said it did not suit them to go for certain reasons—for example, because the children had started their education; they might have reached a critical stage in their education, including matters such as apprenticeships and so on—they might still be economically dependent on the breadwinner. But after all, arrangements can be made. Very often the family are able to make some arrangement with a relative or a neighbour for an older chill with an apprenticeship. The wife herself' may say that she does not wish to leave with her husband; she is able to earn her own living if necessary. Many of these women who came over here were nurses or assistants in hospitals. The wife night say that when she was bringing up children she did not earn her own living, but in the circumstances she would rather stay and see her children have a really good chance in life with a future, so that they would be able to continue their education, and somehow or other they would manage. Is a woman to be deprived of the right of saying that she wishes to do the best for her children in the circumstances? Is it a matter to be decided by the Home Secretary or one of his officials? Surely, this is a matter which the family should work out for themselves.
There is another inconsistency. I draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that the definition of"family"for this purpose in Clause 5(4) does not include dependent parents or other relations. As we know, it is possible under the rules for someone who is in this country to ask leave to bring over dependent parents. I do not think anyone could do it as of right, unless he had been here for five years—I am not quite certain on that

1191
point; but I know that permission can be given in certain circumstances. A man might have come over here, married someone and her parents might be dependants. They are not included in the term"family ". But if it is economic consequences that we are thinking of, and a question of a possible charge upon public funds, I should have thought that dependant parents—by definition elderly people—would be much more likely to become a charge on public funds if the person who had been supporting them were deported but they were left out. There is an inconsistency and an illogicality about that. It is not only a matter of saying that we cannot risk having any charge on public funds if a person is deported because his family were dependent on him. It does not cover dependants as such. Persons other than the wife or children up to the age of 18 could be dependants.
It seems to me that this whole provision is riddled with illogicality. That is the difficulty in the first place, but to our minds the much more serious difficulty is the fact that in a situation where someone is guilty of some offence rendering him liable to a deportation order, the rest of the family should be involved. Surely this is not in our concept of family life. I appreciate that the Home Secretary has done his best to meet the charge of spreading guilt by association, which I think is a most repugnant thing. He says that he has found a way round that; but it is, in effect, guilt by association if it is said that a family must leave because someone else in the family, on whom the others not even necessarily dependent, has been told to leave. I sincerely hope that again this is something the Government will reconsider. I do not want to use emotive words, but all of us can think of circumstances some 30 years ago when family guilt by association and family connections had a very unpleasant meaning. Certainly I hope that we do not want to bring that concept into our public life in this country. I beg to move.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I beg to move that the House do now resume to enable discussion of the Housing Bill and Licensing (Abolition of State Management) Bill.
House resumed.

HOUSING BILL
7.0 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This Bill gives effect to joint proposals by the Secretaries of State for the Environment, Scotland and Wales, announced on June 22, to stimulate house improvement in development and intermediate areas. The Bill provides additional financial assistance over a limited period to house owners, local authorities and housing associations towards the improvement and conversion of houses within the development and intermediate areas of Great Britain. It also increases over the same limited period Government assistance towards local authority costs of improving the environment of general improvement areas—in Scotland, residential areas.
The outstanding merit of house improvement is that it enables our stock of well-built houses still capable of modernisation to be nut to continued good use in providing better homes for those who live there without being uprooted from familiar surroundings. Houses which are clearly unfit for human habitation must be cleared away. House and area improvement is not an alternative to slum clearance—though in certain circumstances these different treatments can be used to complement each other to the advantage of a single area as a whole. But it is sad and wasteful that structurally sound houses should be left to decline gradually into slums, when a sensible programme of modernisation now could at relatively small cost provide comfortable living conditions for many years to come. Lord Greenwood's 1969 Bill recognised the importance of action now to save the best of our older houses in the increased assistance that it provided for this work and in the new concept it introduced of general improvement areas—that is, predominantly residential areas in which the benefits of

1193
house improvement are enhanced by improvements to their surroundings.
As your Lordships know, the Government have built on this foundation. House improvement is one of the most important elements of national housing policy and one to which the Government gave priority on taking office. The success of the concentrated publicity campaign that has been running since the autumn of 1969 under both Governments and in particular of the local publicity campaigns already held in many local authority areas can be seen in the dramatic increase in the numbers of applications for house improvement grants that have been approved. These figures are published in Housing Statistics for anyone to read, but I summarise them. Total approvals were 44 per cent. higher for England and Wales as a whole in 1970 compared with the previous year, 1969, and 29 per cent. higher in the first five months of this year as compared with 1970.
Against that favourable background it has, however, become evident that within the development and intermediate areas of England and Wales as a group, advantage is not being taken of the generous grants at present available to anything like the extent of England and Wales as a whole. In these areas the average increase in 1970 in the total number of applications approved in the public and private sector was little more than half the average increase for England and Wales as a whole. There are a variety of reasons for this. The fact that money may be tighter in these areas is no doubt one, but uncertainty about the economic future of the area must also be present, leading people to accept less satisfactory living conditions than their houses, with some improvement, are capable of providing.
What the Government seek to do by this Bill is to launch a short, sharp attack on these less satisfactory living conditions and, in the process, on the depressing effect on the environment of numbers of visibly run-down houses in these areas. The intention is to do everything possible to publicise the increased grants provided in the Bill and to encourage local authorities and private
1194
owners to take full advantage of them quickly.
The Bill itself is simple enough. Higher grants and contributions can be paid towards the cost of works eligible for assistance under the existing improvement grants legislation, provided they are carried out in a local government area which is wholly or partly within a development area or an intermediate area on the relevant date—June 23, 1971. In order to qualify, a grant application has to be duly made on or after this date and the works have to be completed within two years from the relevant date. That is in Clause 1. Seventy-five per cent. of the cost of the works, instead of 50 per cent., will be payable to private owners for all three types of grant concerned in England and Wales—the discretionary grant for modernisation or conversion, the standard grant for installing basic amenities like bathrooms and indoor sanitation and the special grant for additional basic amenities in houses shared in multiple occupation. The Government contribution to local authority expenditure on these grants will be increased from 75 per cent. to 90 per cent. The rate of Government contribution towards the approved cost of a local authority's own conversions and improvements and those by housing associations working under arrangements with authorities are doubled—that is to say, they rise from three-eighths to three-quarters. The rate of Government contribution towards the costs of environmental improvement work in general improvement areas goes up from 50 per cent. to 75 per cent. That is in Clause 2. Corresponding changes are made in Clause 3 to the Scottish legislation. For all practical purposes the effect of the Bill will be the same in Scotland as in England and Wales.
Improvement of housing and the special problems of the development and intermediate areas are common cause to both sides of the House. The Bill is designed through this stimulation of housing improvement to make a special contribution to improving the environment and to reviving the self-confidence of those parts of the country which have suffered most and need assistance most. I commend the Bill to your Lordships.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a—(Lord Sandford.)
7.8 p.m.
LORD GREENWOOD OF ROSSENDALE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, for his very generous reference to my own efforts in the improvement field in the Housing Act of 1969, and I appreciate the kindly words that Mr. Julian Amery spoke in another place on the occasion of the Second Reading there. I am glad that the Government are seeking to build on the foundations that were laid in 1969. May I say how glad I am that in this Bill, though I think it has some imperfections, the Government are continuing and developing the policy which, for the reasons the noble Lord gave, can make such a tremendous difference to the lives of people who will be able to go on living in the familiar surroundings which mean so much to them, particularly in the later years of their lives, and will be able to do so with all the modern amenities that can now be provided. Therefore I very much welcome the increased provision that the Government are making.
The Bill was worked over extensively and intensively in another place and I do not propose to go over the same ground again or to make very heavy weather of the Second Reading in your Lordships' House. Nevertheless, there are four points which I should like to press upon the noble Lord, but I shall do so briefly. In doing so, I think that I should tell the House that I am a director of a building and engineering company, which has not been engaged, so far as I know, in the type of work covered by this Bill. I am sure that very many small builders will be helped by the Bill in what are rather bleak times for the industry. The noble Lord spoke of the distribution of improvement grants, and what has struck me over the last few weeks has been the apparently even spread of improvement grants throughout the various regions. Last year for, example, in the Northern Region there were over 14,000 grants; in the North-West over 17,000 and in the Yorkshire-Humberside Region just under 22,000. So already there has been a considerable impact in the development areas and intermediate areas. But I certainly do not begrudge those areas the additional help which the Bill provides.
Nevertheless, I think that all of us must have some sympathy with those parts of
1196
the country which, although they are not development areas or intermediate areas, are, from a housing point of view, priority areas. London and parts of the Black Country immediately spring to one's mind; and the latest figures of unemployment in Birmingham do not add to the cheerfulness of the situation. But I think I should tell your Lordships that the Housing Committee of the Association of Municipal Corporations has reacted very positively to this differentiation, and has asked that consideration may yet be given to widening the scope of the Bill. I can well understand that the financial implications may make it impossible to extend the scope of the Bill in the immediate future, but I wonder whether the Under-Secretary of State will perhaps consider amending Clause 1(2) so as to give the Secretary of State discretion to extend the scope of the Bill by order in a Statutory Instrument. I think that would be a great help to the Secretary of State. My noble friend Lord Jacques is to speak later in the debate. He has wide knowledge of Portsmouth, a city which greatly influenced my own thinking in the preparation of the 1969 Act, and I hope that perhaps he will be able to say something on the point that I have just raised.
Secondly, my Lords, both the A.M.C. and the Urban District Councils Association have questioned the wisdom of having so rigid a two-year limitation. I realise the reasons which led the Government to put on a time limit, but I hope that they will have a look at the matter again to see whether it would not be better to give themselves rather more flexibility than they are at present proposing.
A third point on which I should like the Under-Secretary to comment relates to the qualifying date. I am grateful to the Nantyglo and Blaina Urban District Council for bringing this to my notice through the Urban District Councils Association. The Bill provides in Clause 1(1)(a) that only applications made on or after the relevant date—which is June 23—rank for the new grants. The clerk of the Nantyglo and Blaina Urban District Council has pointed out that at the moment his authority has about 30 applicants who have received approval but have been unable to obtain a builder to proceed. In addition, there are some

1197
60 applicants whose applications have been registered but have not yet been considered. The clerk to the council says:
" All 90 will be precluded from obtaining the benefits of the new proposals, which my council feels is most unfair."
The Department of the Environment, in commenting on that letter in a reply sent to the Secretary of the Urban District Councils Association, says:
" As the Housing Bill is drafted, we are advised that there would be no objection to the withdrawal of a grant application made before 23rd June and the re-submission of substantially the same application, provided the original application had not been approved."
I think that we are getting into really rather an absurd situation. I hope that the Government will seriously consider amending the Bill to bring it into line with Section 24 of the 1969 Housing Act. I know that it is not an exact parallel, but I think it would be desirable to take as the criterion whether or not work had actually started on the qualifying date.
Finally, my Lords—and I do this with some reluctance—I complain in strong terms, as I did when the noble Lord made his statement about the infrastructure grants, that there appears to have been no proper consultation with the local authority associations before the proposals were announced. This really is not good enough. It is, if I may say so with all good will, an unwise policy for the Government to pursue. The local authority associations are the repositories of great wisdom and experience. Their spokesmen are men and women of distinction and responsibility. I can say with confidence, and from my own personal knowledge, that never once has a Ministerial confidence been breached by the associations, even at times of bitter political controversy when the temptation must have been very great. I hope that this will be the last occasion when any of us in any part of your Lordships' House will find ourselves constrained to complain of lack of consultation, which is discouraging to the local authority associations and also, I think, damaging to the policy of the Government.
7.16 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, I rise to make a few brief comments on certain aspects of this Bill in the hope that it may be possible to persuade the
1198
Government, even at this stage, to accept or consider some Amendments. I shall be quite brief, because what I have to say is largely in support of what the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, has so forcefully put before your Lordships. I would emphasise one or two of those points. In addition to authorities in the development areas or intermediate areas there are these other authorities with housing needs which would welcome the increased assistance now provided for the improvement of older, but still substantialy sound, housing stock. This would mean, as has already been mentioned, widening the scope of the Bill. Nevertheless, if because of limitations of available finance the Government cannot be persuaded to make the increased assistance more generally available, then perhaps it might be possible to do as the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, suggested; namely, amend Clause 1(2) of the Bill so that the Secretary of State is not limited to bringing in local government areas which are confined to development areas or intermediate areas, duly specified after the relevant date. If, by order in a Statutory Instrument the Secretary of State could have discretion to apply the provisions of the Bill to any local authority which may make application to him, even when they are not within a development area or an intermediate area, this would at least give individual local authorities a chance to make their case for additional assistance and enable such assistance to be given without the need for further amending legislation.
Even where the provisions of this Bill do apply, some concern, as the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, has already said, must be felt as to the two-year limitation. As this is defined in relation to the completion of the work, which in itself would seem likely to give rise to some complications, the time-table is likely to be a very tight one, especially if a greater number of applications increases the volume of administrative and procedural work. One has particularly in mind the desirability of associating an impetus in improvement work with the impetus in new general improvement areas. The latter, however, admittedly involve a lengthy procedure and in many cases are dependent on complicated property transactions. Applications for improvement grants cannot

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usually be made until the procedures are completed and therefore one may perhaps hope that with these considerations in mind the time limitation in the Bill could he extended. I have great pleasure in supporting and, I hope, reinforcing everything that the preceding speaker has said.
7.20 p.m.
LORD JACQUES: My Lords, this Bill gives the benefit of increased grants to some local authority areas and not to others. Inevitably it leads to some anomalies, but one must accept that any Government is in charge of scarce resources and must exercise some selectivity. Therefore, anomaly is part of the price we pay for selectivity. But there is a limit to the price which should be paid. I suggest that where, in the application of a Bill of this kind, the Minister finds that there is a gross anomaly—so gross that it results in intolerable injustice—he should have the power to put an end to that anomaly by way of a Statutory Instrument.
If I may give an example, in the North-West there is the Runcorn Rural District Council. The extreme West of that district forms part of the development area, and the rest of it is outside. For the purposes of the Bill the whole of that district will get the benefit of the additional grants. The Warrington Rural District is nearby and, similarly, the extreme West of that district lies within the development area. In consequence, by the terms of this Bill the whole of that district will also get the benefit of the increased grant. However, wedged between these two rural districts and entirely encircled by them is the County Borough of Warrington, and the interesting thing is that the countryside around Warrington will get the benefit of the additional grants but the county borough will not. For example, in the designated area for the new town there is an estimated population of 130,000: 70,000 live in the old county borough and the other 60,000 live in these two rural districts.
As it stands, the Bill will have three effects in these cases. First of all, the old county borough will get no benefit, yet one of the purposes of the scheme for the new town was to facilitate the redevelopment and improvement of the
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old county borough, and this county borough is acting in line with the Ministry's policy. It has a special team to cope with housing improvement, and that team estimates that there are 5,000 houses in the county borough which would benefit from improvement. But it will receive no benefit from this Bill, while the surrounding area will receive benefit. It is obvious that the need for improvement is far greater in the centre of the county borough than on the outskirts.
As to the second effect, in Warrington, as elsewhere, there are factories, shops and offices. The higher-paid people such as the managers and professional workers tend to live outside the county borough while the lower-paid people—the labourers and to some extent the artisans—tend to live within the county borough. The higher paid will receive the benefit of this grant and the lower paid will not. Some of the higher-paid people who are working in Warrington and living outside the county borough can buy an old country cottage and get the benefit of these improved grants for the purpose of improving that cottage, but the labourer in the town who wants to own his own house and at the same time to live within his income will almost certainly find that he can only afford one of the houses within the county borough, probably one of the 5,000 that I have mentioned. Yet he will not get the benefit of this grant. A third effect will be that there are managers and owners of properties both inside and outside the county borough. They will obviously tend to use any monies which are available for improvement outside the county borough rather than inside it, so as to get the additional grant. Therefore, there will be an undesirable distortion in expenditure as a result of the Bill.
I would plead with the Minister to consider two amendments between now and the Committee stage. The first is a very modest one and very restricted in its application. I suggest that where the designated area of a new town is partly within a local authority area which will receive benefit under this Bill, then the whole of the designated area should also get the benefit. That will have extremely limited application and I therefore ask, in the name of elementary justice, that

1201
the suggestion might receive sympathetic consideration.
The second suggestion I should like to put forward for consideration is a little more ambitious. I hope that the Secretary of State might be given power, where he finds that the exclusion of a district would result in a gross anomaly leading to intolerable injustice, so that he could, by way of a Statutory Instrument, direct that the particular district should be included within the scope of the Bill. I admit that that is a less modest amendment than the first, but I nevertheless hope that it will receive sympathetic consideration.
7.28 p.m.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: My Lords, I did not put my name down to speak in this debate, but I shall be only a moment. I should like to give an unqualified welcome to this Bill. Luckily, so far as I am concerned it is splendid; there are no boundary difficulties at all. However, it is a little late, because I am just converting my 29th house and although I shall get the benefit of the grant for this last house I did not obtain any benefit for the other 28.
May I raise one point for the consideration of the noble Lord? I do not know whether this is covered by the Bill. As I did not put my name down to speak my noble friend could not know that I would raise this point, so I cannot expect an answer. However, I hope that he may find it possible to consider what I am about to say concerning the administrative paperwork. A great deal of time is consumed with the necessary paraphernalia that one has to go through. The minor warrant procedure is very much quicker and simpler than the full procedure; but the minor warrant sum was fixed a very long time ago at £500 and it is now totally inadequate. For that sum you could probably have put on a new doorknob and letter box, and not much more. I suggest that if the sum were increased to £800 it would be possible to do away with an enormous amount of really useless administrative work and it would enable people to get on with the job much quicker than if they had to go through the full procedure for really quite small alterations which are done to the same standard. It is really a question of the paraphernalia that has to be gone through before a job
1202
can be started. If it is possible to increase the sum, it may be worth while.
7.30 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am grateful for the widespread welcome that the general intentions of this Bill have had from all sides of the House. It bears out what I was saying: that house improvement as such is something about which we all feel enthusiastic. I should stress that this is not a Bill to give further encouragement generally to house improvement. It is certainly not a Bill which attempts to deal in any wide-ranging or long-term way with areas of housing stress. Since the Bill was published and began its way in Parliament the Government White Paper on Housing Finance has been published (on July 13), and a number of the points which noble Lords and others have raised on matters that this Bill does not cover will be dealt with by the policy outlined in that White Paper. I will enlarge upon that in a moment. So far as general encouragement for house improvement goes, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State feels that he already has adequate powers to increase, as necessary, the various cash limits in the 1969 Act. He can do this generally throughout the country by means of a Statutory Instrument. He can do it selectively under his power to approve or determine higher limits for particular cases, or for particular classes of case.
The Bill does not attempt to deal selectively with individual authorities where progress is highly desirable with special regard to housing stress. The policies outlined in the White Paper are what is relevant in this respect and deal with a great number of the points that have been raised. The White Paper sets out proposals for a thorough reform of housing finance in the context of the Government's other housing policies, especially those concerned with the general encouragement of house improvement and home ownership. These proposals will give the greatest help in the longer term to the areas of greatest housing need. These are not the areas with which this Bill specifically deals. Under the policies in the White Paper, it will be possible for subsidies to be concentrated in those areas where they will not only encourage house improvement but stimulate the clearance of slums and the building of new homes,

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and generally deal with all the problems of overcrowding and stress.
House improvement is referred to specifically in paragraphs 8 to 13 of the White Paper. Among the changes are those designed to simplify the procedure which a landlord, improving a controlled dwelling, has to follow before obtaining the right to charge a fair rent. That is the place at which the point raised by my noble friend Lord Stonehaven will be met. Nor is the Bill specifically designed to provide additional employment in the development and intermediate areas. I agree that it can be welcomed, as the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, welcomed it, for the additional work it will create in a labour-intensive field and the additional work it will bring to people like small builders. I will not deny that there are benefits here; but that is not the main purpose of the Bill.
I will deal a little more specifically with the question of the time completion of the work, and also other points which noble Lords asked me to deal with. It has been suggested that the time limit laid down in the Bill could be extended. If this were a Bill designed to deal with housing in a broader way, and over a longer term, that would be a valid point, but it has the specific purpose of providing an immediate, quick, short-term stimulus in the development and intermediate areas. If it is to serve that purpose, noble Lords will agree that there must be a time limit in order to stimulate people to move, rapidly and briskly, to take the benefits that are in the Bill. Any extension of the time limit would defeat that particular object. I agree that that is not an object which needs to be followed in dealing with a number of our other housing problems, but it is the aim which the Government have set themselves in introducing this particular Bill.
There is the further proposal which the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, mentioned, and which received the support of other noble Lords, that we should think again about the point of eligibility for these grants. I will undertake to look at this again, but it is not a point which has escaped us, or one to which a good deal of attention has not already been given. The proposal from the Urban District Council's Association that where
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applications have already been approved, but the work not yet begun, they should be eligible for the higher grant, runs counter to the intention of the Bill of encouraging people to bring forward new improvement work that might have been postponed, if indeed ever undertaken.
Comparison with the transitional provision in the 1969 Act which the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, not unnaturally made, is a little misleading, since the circumstances of this Bill are different—particularly the circumstances of its introduction—from those in 1969. In that case it had been known for a considerable time that higher grants were to be provided by the Bill, and applications would have been dammed up without the provision in the Bill for them to be withdrawn and resubmitted so long as work had not been started. In this case, consideration of the present Bill is now already in its later stages within a matter of weeks of the announcement by the Secretary of State for the Environment of the intention to provide these higher grants. The noble Lord will recognise that quite different circumstances in timing are prevailing, and if we are to achieve the particular object of this Bill we have to draw the line at the right point, namely, of approval, in order to achieve our objective.
LORD GREENWOOD OF ROSSENDALE: Before the noble Lord sits down, would he deal with the point about consultation with the associations. There is a good deal of unhappiness about this matter, and perhaps he could help to dispel it to-night.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am not sure that I can do so, but I recognise that it is important to have full consultation. The noble Lord will recognise that so far as the White Paper goes, consultations have been most extensive and thorough. Perhaps we were not as thorough over this particular Bill, and if not I am sorry. I recognise that consultation with the local authority associations is important, and is very much valued.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, before the noble Lord finally sits down, I would ask: is it not a valid point to make, with regard to the applications having to be submitted before the relevant date, that the effect of not conceding the point of

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the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, and allowing the test to be the start of work rather than the submission of application, will mean that landlords, such as the noble Viscount, Lord Stonehaven, having a choice in the dwellings to be improved, will be able to say,"Just because I put in an application before the relevant date, if I am not going to get the increased grant in respect of that one, I am going to forget it for the time being and put in an application for another dwelling; then I shall get the higher grant." That is very wasteful. Is it not more sensible to say that the test date is not that of the submission of the application but of the beginning of the work?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, the noble Lord may have misheard me or misunderstood me, or I may not have made my point clearly enough. The dividing line in this particular case is drawn on the basis of whether or not the application has been approved. If that is borne in mind, I think that the validity of our point for this particular purpose is sound.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: My Lords, may I answer the noble Lord, who mentioned me? The point that arose in my case was that I posted my application and all the documents to the sanitary inspector, but when I heard about this I nipped round to the office and grabbed them back again before they were opened. The second point is that this is the last house I have anyway, so I have no option.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

LICENSING (ABOLITION OF STATE MANAGEMENT) BILL
7.41 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now received.
Moved, That this Report be now received.—(Lord Windlesham.)
LORD STONHAM LORD STONHAM moved as an Amendment:
After Clause 3, insert the following new clause
Safeguards for employment of resident tenants or managers of premises disposed of under sections 2 and 3.
".—(1) The Secretary of State shall, so far as is practicable, secure that the resident tenant or manager of hotels and other licensed premises disposed of by the Secretary of State under sections 2 and 3 of the Act, have the opportunity, if the business carried on on the premises is continued by the person to whom it is disposed, of being employed in carrying it on, on terms not less favourable than those appropriate to a manager so employed before disposal of the premises.
(2) In this section the expression resident tenant or manager' means a person who immediately before disposal by the Secretary of State was either the holder, or one of the joint holders, of the tenancy, or was employed as manager of the premises by the State Management Authority."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Amendment standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Hoy and myself. Your Lordships will readily perceive that this Amendment does not make any Party point. It is in fact an implication that I acknowledge that the Government are going to get their way. I hate the Bill; nevertheless, we have to bow to larger numbers. But I very much wished that we could do something to protect the interests of at least a number of members of the staff, because these are our own people. This Amendment seeks to give legislative form to what I believe is already Government policy.
The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has already told us that in the case of the forty smallest licensed houses they will, in the first instance, be offered to the present tenants. That is fine. But there is no undertaking at all regarding the remainder. He has told us that he cannot possibly say that the Government are going to do the same thing; it may not tie up with the professional advice which they are given. This Amendment seeks to give these other people—more than a hundred of them—some assurance. I say at once that I know there cannot be a guarantee of continuity of employment, and we do not seek a guarantee. The noble Lord may say that it is impossible, and if he does I shall have to agree with him. But if he says that the Amendment is therefore unworkable, I do not

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agree, because we have provided in the Amendment that the Secretary of State shall secure"so far as is practicable"what we are seeking; and if the expert advisers say that in a particular case it is not practicable, then the Amendment will not apply.
As the noble Lord knows, I expressed fears about the employees on Second Reading and asked that the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, would be good enough to write to me. I asked what would happen about their pensions, removal grants, and so on. He was kind enough to write to me on July 9. I will not weary your Lordships with the whole letter, but I shall quote from it, quite fairly. It says:
" The first thing to say is that we do not yet know whether it will be possible to find a buyer who would be prepared to keep the brewery in operation. In all, there are about seventy workers employed at the brewery in Carlisle. Should they become redundant, I accept that it is unlikely that we should he able to offer these particular workers alternative Government employment."
" Unlikely"is an understatement, I should think. Since the Government do not have other breweries they certainly could not offer them alternative Government employment. But the position is the same with the managers of the licensed houses. It is unlikely that they can be offered alternative Government employment. Lord Windlesham also says in his letter:
" In this situation, however, they will be eligible for compensation for premature retirement ",
and he refers me to the Answer given to a Written Question in Hansard on May 12 about the new and improved terms which it is hoped will be available and which are currently being considered with the staff side. These have not yet been settled, but the management staff will receive in due course the agreed rates. Then, he says:
" Turning to your other point about removal expenses, these would be met, together with other allowances, under normal transfer terms for any member of staff for whom alternative Government employment away from Carlisle could be found. I am afraid that there is no provision under current Civil Service rules for meeting the cost of removal of redundant staff who find it necessary to leave the area to secure alternative private employment."
I was most grateful for that letter, but how does it leave these people who are the tenants or managers of the 110 to 120
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licensed houses which are not to be treated in the same way as the forty? I think that for most of them it will mean premature retirement, with serious loss of their living standards: either that, or finding other employment outside the Civil Service, and paying the whole costs of their removal of their homes, and everything else. That certainly is not good enough. I submit—and the Amendment in fact implies—that the least the Home Secretary can do is to accept the responsibility of talking to prospective buyers about keeping on the present managers. Remember, my Lords, we are speaking about people who virtually, by definition, are the best, the most successful and the longest serving members of the staff. When a civil servant is seconded to the scheme, he is made the manager of one of the smallest houses. They are out of the way. Then, if he achieves good results, he is transferred to a larger establishment, and so over the years he reaches the top. This is what actually happens. Therefore, my Amendment is concerned with these people. They are the people whom, because they are good, I think the new owners might wish to employ—unless, of course, they want to manage their own house themselves. But there is a far higher likelihood that these managers will be continued in employment if the Home Secretary will agree to put in a word on their behalf.
It is not only the man's job that is at stake: it is his home, his house. It has been his home for twenty years or more. His wife is settled in; his children go to Carlisle schools, or they have jobs locally. But now, through absolutely no fault of his own, almost, as it were, as an act of God—
LORD LINDGREN: I do not know that I like that, my Lords.
LORD STONHAM: Well, that is how these people are looking at it. Absolutely through no fault of their own, they have to contemplate a major and complete disruption of their whole lives and that of their families, at very considerable loss. If this Amendment were accepted it would show them now that they are not alone, because I understand that no senior civil servant has been out to talk to them recently, and they must be in doubt about what is going to happen to them. Some of them may even be tempted, if they get

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an offer, to move into other employment and perhaps jettison their pension rights.
I want them to have this reassurance, and I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, to accept that the Amendment is no wild proposition. It is not something just thought up. It has been lifted direct from existing legislation, because Section 106 of the Licensing Act 1964 reads as follows—and I would be grateful if the noble Lord would compare what I am reading with the Amendment that is now before us
" The Secretary of State shall so far as is practicable "—
famous words!
" secure that a resident tenant or manager of licensed premises acquired by the Secretary of State under Section 104 of this Act shall have the opportunity, if the business previously carried on in the premises is continued by the Secretary of State, of being employed in carrying it on on terms not less favourable than those appropriate to a manager employed in a business such as was carried on in the premises before their acquisition."
That Act in 1964 was one for which noble Lords opposite voted, including, of course, the Clause I have just read out. The Government will probably say that the circumstances were then different. It dealt with the Home Secretary buying places which he is now selling, but the Government then insisted that the Home Secretary should protect the tenants as far as was practicable, and now we have come round full circle and I am using the same words to ask the Government to protect the tenants.
My Lords, if you had visited the scene and seen these people and talked with them you would have been impressed with their quality. They have done their job as civil servants. As civil servants they have to go where they are required, but this is different. They have become part of the place, and now they have the ground entirely cut from under their feet. That is insupportable. The Home Secretary, when he was the buyer of these premises, had to take care of the people then working there. The need is far greater now. This great arbitrary chopper has fallen and the people who deserve well of us will suffer great loss. They will be jobless and they will be homeless, and I call on the noble Lord to accept this Amendment and thus prove that the Home Secretary is willing to do what he can to help. I beg to move.
7.53 p.m.
BARONESS BACON: My Lords, because of commitments outside this House this is the first occasion on which I have been able to speak during the progress of this Bill. I regret this because, like my noble friend Lord Stonham, a few years ago I was concerned in the running of the Carlisle State management scheme. I then visited the area and went round a great many of these establishments. I know that some people might think that three days spent going from one public house to another in a sort of"pub crawl"is a pleasant way of working.
LORD LINDGREN: Hear, hear!
BARONESS BACON: My Lords, it might be for my noble friend, but perhaps not so much for me. However, I met a great many of the managers of these hotels and I was impressed by their keenness and energy and loyalty. As the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, knows, the salaries these people are paid are Civil Service salaries, and are probably not quite as high as they might have received had they been working in other establishments. Now, as my noble friend Lord Stonham has pointed out, not only will they lose their jobs but they will lose their homes as well.
My noble friend mentioned the situation of those who work in the brewery. I might add that it is an excellent brewery, and perhaps if it had been allowed to expand into the surrounding area we would not have had this Bill before us. The plight of the employees at the brewery is also bad, although the plight of those who are managers of the hotels is even worse. Not only will they lose their jobs but their homes as well. I think there should be some protection for these people who have served the Home Office so well in the work they have done in the Carlisle and the other State management schemes.
I do not know what reply the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, will make, but I feel our first duty should be the protection of these people rather than those who might purchase the public houses and the hotels concerned. We must necessarily be brief tonight, but I appeal to him to accept this Amendment. As my noble friend said, it is not absolute; it says"so far as is practicable ", and

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I ask him to accept this Amendment and so protect those who have served us so well in the past.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, if I may say so, I think this is exactly the right subject for the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, to have returned to at Report stage. We had a far-reaching general debate on Second Reading, and we discussed a wide range of matters in Committee, but he has singled out one subject for the Report stage. I think we can sympathise entirely with him, and indeed applaud his choice in concentrating on the position of the staff.
We are sympathetic to the sentiments underlying this proposed new clause. For reasons which I shall give I do not think it would be right to advise the House to accept it, but we are certainly sympathetic to what the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, have said. The affection of the noble Baroness for the State management scheme is known to and appreciated by those who work in the area. The continuation of employment of all State management staff is one of the Government's principal concerns; I can say that without qualification. The interests of the staff will be one of the factors to be taken into account by the Secretaries of State in determining what is in the public interest. They will have an obligation put upon them by Statute to take into account what is in the public interest, and they will take the staff into account in interpreting their responsibilities.
Specifically, the Government will do their best to arrange that those who wish to stay in their present jobs are offered re-employment by the new owners. In many cases, particularly with the supporting staff, we believe this will not present much difficulty, but the Government will have no powers to guarantee re-employment for any manager or any tenant, and I am afraid this is the main argument of substance against the new clause.
If the new clause were to bite in practice it would have to be enforceable, but as the noble Lord himself has pointed out this would not be so because of the qualifying words which he has included,"so far as is practicable ". The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, also mentioned the analogy of the Licensing Act 1964, the provisions by which Parliament placed an
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obligation on the Secretaries of State when acquiring premises by compulsory purchase. But the difference is one of substance, and I am afraid one cannot get over it. It is that, whereas a buyer can bind himself to take on existing staff—this can be a term of the contract—the seller cannot bind the buyer to do so. The new clause would therefore place on the Secretaries of State obligations which they are not in a position to discharge.
There are two further arguments against the new clause. The first is that if a clause of this sort were translated into a condition of the contract, if it were made an absolute condition of any offer by any agent acting on the Government's behalf, then this could not fail to depress the purchase price the public would receive for these assets. The second objection is that we would question the assumption made by the noble Baroness, and I think also to a certain extent by the noble Lord, that managers and tenants and hotel managers will be losing their jobs and their homes. I do not think we should expect this on any widespread scale. We are advised that brewery companies have great difficulty in getting trained, experienced, capable, reliable, trustworthy and keen staff for their licensed premises. I think the noble Baroness would use each of those adjectives about some of the staff she met. So the chances are that any new buyer will wish to retain experienced staff, particularly the hotel managers.
The same applies to any public house which a brewery company might wish to continue to run as a managed house. In the case of tenants, some of these will be given an opportunity, as I stated at Second Reading, of buying the premises. If they are unable or unwilling to do so, the premises will have to be put on the market. If the buyer is a free trader, he would in most cases only be interested in obtaining vacant possession. But if the buyer is a brewer there would he reason to suppose that in many cases he would wish to keep the tenant on, if he is a satisfactory tenant; the supposition is probably that he would wish to keep the tenant on as before. But the Government would not as a seller be in a position to insist that the terms of the new tenancy were no less favourable than those of the present tenancy, and certainly would not be in a position to insist that the

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terms were not less favourable than those appropriate to a manager.
I hope that what I have said shows that the staff interests are in our minds. I can tell the noble Lord opposite that two of the senior officials responsible for the scheme are in Carlisle to-day, as it happens, and that negotiations with staff representatives will begin in the course of next week. Having said that, having expressed agreement with the purpose behind the noble Lord's Amendment, but having pointed out some of the practical reasons why it would be difficult to accept it as it stands, I hope the noble Lord feels that the Amendment has achieved its purpose and that he will be willing to withdraw it.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, my Amendment has not achieved its purpose, because the purpose was to get it accepted. The noble Lord has said a number of things which I shall study with interest, but I think it can be summed up as"sympathetic, but ", and, of course, it is the various items of"but"which are unfortunate. I think his rejection of the Amendment on the grounds that it is unworkable is unfair, because if for some forty years we have gone on with a Home Secretary doing his duty so far as is practicable, and nobody has thought to question it, nobody says it will not work, I do not see why it will not work now. I agree that where he is a seller he can bind himself, but we are not asking for him to bind himself in this case, merely to use his best endeavours. That is all we are asking.
I am quite sure that if two senior civil servants from the Home Office (I am very delighted to hear it) are up there discussing these matters with the people to-day, they will agree that the thing of greatest value to them would be some reassuring words in the Bill. In a way, it is worse to have this Amendment rejected than it would have been if it had not been moved at all. All I would say to the noble Lord is this. If this Amendment is unacceptable and is technically wrong, will he take it back to see whether he can produce an Amendment which will produce the effect we want, give at least some backing to these people when it comes to being considered for jobs in the hotels they now run. If the noble Lord could say that it would be very helpful.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, we are on Report and I am not entitled to speak a second time except with the leave of the House.
LORD STONHAM: The noble Lord has it.
LORD WINDLESHAM: It is leave of the House that I need, not simply of the Benches opposite. I could not give the noble Lord that assurance, I am afraid, and I do not agree with him that his debate has been meaningless. I think what has been said has shown the concern of Ministers past and present, their concern about the future of the staff in this particular undertaking, and I would not agree with him that the debate has been without any purpose at all.
On Question, Amendment negatived.

IMMIGRATION BILL
8.10 p.m.
House again in Committee.
Debate on Amendment No. 48 resumed.
LORD JANNER: I think that the provision as it stands in the Bill in respect of children being deported with a parent is a pernicious and terrible thing. I hope that the Government will take cognisance of the fact that any human being is bound to regard a compulsory act of that description as a violation of his feelings. Justice, which is an all-Party group of lawyers, said this:
" It is contrary to the rules of natural justice that a person should be subject to the penalties of deportation solely on the grounds that he is a member of a deportee's family. The clause is an encouragement to the breakdown of family life, as a deportation order ceases to have effect in these cases if the person concerned ceases to be a member of the deportee's family."
I do not know whether the Government have considered the position which could arise when a deportation order is made if the person concerned ceases to be a member of the deportee's family by separation, by divorce, or something of that sort, in order to avoid the deportee's having to drag his family into the terrible position in which it could find itself.
To talk about the individuals left falling on the funds of the State is sidestepping the issue. What happens if a

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person dies or is injured? There is no reason why his family, if it needs support, should not be given that support. To visit the sins of the father on the children—limited to the age of 18, it is true—is something which is quite beyond understanding to a person who looks at the position from an objective point of view. I do not know of any other instance where a child is held to be an accessory (because that is what it amounts to) to a crime simply because he, or she, happens to be a member of the family. Some families will have settled down here; the young people may have acclimatised themselves and become part and parcel of the society in which they are living. The parent, having committed a crime or having behaved in such a way as to merit deportation, may certainly be the black sheep of a family, as my noble friend Lady White has already indicated, but to imagine that members of the family themselves should be saddled with the responsibility which lies on the shoulders of the individual who committed the offence is in my view unreasonable, and I think it is unreasonable in the view of most Members of this House—at least I hope so—and certainly of most people in the country. It is placing a guilt on the shoulders of innocent people.
It seems to me that the Government might well—and I hope they will—reconsider their decision on this matter. I do not think the situation I am trying to present needs a tremendous amount of argument; it speaks for itself. If those who will be affected want to go with their families, or the families with the person who is deported, by all means let them go; but I think it is a matter for them to decide entirely of their own accord, and they should not be forced to do something which they may consider is quite contrary to their best interests. I know the noble Lord is a man not only of head but also of heart. I wonder whether he realises what it could mean to a family if they were forced out of the environment to which they have been accustomed for years? Does he know what the friendships and the connections of the family might mean to the persons concerned? What about other relatives who may be in the country and who will not be affected by the deportation order? It may well be that their general family
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in this country is a large one and they are going to be deprived of the opportunity of remaining with that family in consequence of the action of a parent. It might be said that a parent would want his children near him. There is no reason why, if the family so decides, they should not accompany him, or make arrangements to see him from time to time wherever he may be. But to place the guilt on their shoulders is an outrage, and I hope that the Government will reconsider the whole matter in the light of a sympathetic understanding of what can happen to human beings.
8.18 p.m.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: On the face of it, this clause appears to be very harsh. It must produce all kinds of tragic anomalies, and I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, whether the words in the opening of the clause,"shall be liable to deportation"allow for some really practical discretion by the Home Secretary.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I can say to the noble Baroness"Yes, it does ". When I intervene in the debate, I will give some of the instances.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: Surely some modification of this particular paragraph is necessary to overcome the many hardships that would arise from it and that have been pointed out in this debate by my noble friend Lady White. It seems to me that in every case the circumstances involved have to be taken into account and considered. Deportation has such a final ring about it in this Bill. Deportation will cast a very dark shadow over the lives of immigrants when this Bill comes into force, and it seems to me that it would he much better if this paragraph were taken out of the Bill altogether.
8.20 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: This may be a convenient moment for me to intervene. I thought the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, an extremely important one. The words are"shall be liable ", and these govern the three categories in subsection (5). I can say from personal experience that these deportation cases are individually considered with very great care. Someone implied a little earlier—it may have been the noble Baroness, Lady White; or another speaker in discussion on an earlier

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Amendment—that the Home Secretary or some official might decide to take action. Where a deportation order is required it must be made by the Home Secretary personally, or in his absence by a Secretary of State; it cannot be made even by one of his Departmental Ministers.
If I had the figures with me, which unfortunately I have not, I could show the numbers of people, for example, recommended for deportation by the courts and the numbers of cases in which the Home Secretary felt, for some reason or other, that it would not be right, because of the circumstances of the person, for him to make a deportation order. So there is a discretion, and we ought to have that in mind as we are debating this matter. The power to make a deportation order is modelled on a similar power in the Canadian laws. It has been introduced to prevent families being split where a Secretary of State orders the deportation of the head of a family and the wife, perhaps with children, declines to leave with him. The numbers of these cases are rather modest, but they do occur from time to time in relation to Irish and Commonwealth citizens, and also in relation to aliens. I must tell the Committee that there have been cases in the past in which, in these circumstances, the wife and children have been deported on non-conducive grounds, grounds which hitherto applied only to aliens but which under the Bill are extended to Irish and Commonwealth citizens. There have been cases, not many, under previous Administrations where the Home Secretary has felt that he should use the non-conducive power against the wife and children of someone sentenced to deportation—probably following conviction in the courts. As I have said, there are not many cases of this sort, but the Government think it more straightforward to have this specific power in future.
There is a problem here; and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, made this point earlier—I think on Second Reading. Those with Home Office experience know it. The question is: if this is not the right solution, what alternative solution is there? I shall go on to show that the Home Secretary, as I think has been recognised in earlier speeches, has gone a long way to try to meet the disquiet that has been expressed on this point. In the great majority of
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cases the wife and children will have been admitted to the United Kingdom not on any claim of their own but as dependants of the man to be deported. They have no previous claim, but there may in certain cases be compassionate circumstances, possibly depending on the strength of their attachment to the United Kingdom—
BARONESS WHITE: Or to each other.
LORD WINDLESHAM:—or the weakness of their ties with the man ordered to be deported, or on some other ground referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady White, when she moved the Amendment.
I think noble Lords who have spoken will recognise that this is a matter that has given my right honourable friend cause for thought as the Bill has progressed. When the Bill was originally introduced there was no provision for appeals to be made by members of a family against deportation, other than on the narrow ground set out in Clause 15(4). The line of approach and drafting of the Bill was that if the only ground for not deporting the members of the family were compassionate circumstances it would be best to leave it to the Secretary of State to assess this, rather than leave it to individual adjudicators whose decisions would he likely to be inconsistent because there will be so few cases. However, in view of opinions expressed in another place, and outside Parliament, the Home Secretary decided that it would be right to introduce full rights of appeal on merits, and in order to prevent any inconsistency the appeal will lie direct to the Appeal Tribunal and not to individual adjudicators. We consider that the number of cases will not be too numerous for the Tribunal to handle.
Accordingly, as I forecast on Second Reading, on behalf of the Government I shall be tabling Amendments later in our proceedings, Amendment No. 80 and a number of consequent ones, to provide that where a head of a family is to be deported following the recommendation by a court of law, there will be an independent right of appeal to the Appeal Tribunal if it is proposed to deport members of his family. A further concession, to which the noble Baroness

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referred when she moved the Amendment, is that the Home Secretary has also undertaken that any member of a family will be given an opportunity to avoid the stigma of deportation by leaving under arrangements for supervised departure.
There are a number of qualifications to this general principle which I want to explain to your Lordships. These are the considerations which will be included in the draft Immigration Rules. The noble Baroness asked for some information about how an appeal on merits would work for members of families whom it was proposed to deport. The answer is that the appeal will turn On the application of the rules by the Home Office or other officials concerned. Adjudicators will see whether or not the Immigration Rules have been adhered to. This is a general outline of the type of consideration to be taken into account in drafting the rules. A wife who was admitted to the United Kingdom for settlement in her own right—for example, as the holder of an employment voucher—would then have a claim to remain notwithstanding the deportation of her husband, and her deportation would not normally be contemplated. If a wife had been living apart from the principal deportee for a substantial period before deportation came in question we think it would not normally be right to include her, or any children living with her, in the deportation order.
LORD SHEPHERD: Could the noble Lord help us? What does he mean in this particular case by"substantial "? Would it be a month, or a year?
LORD WINDLESHAM: I am trying to help the Committee in advance of anything prepared for submission in the Immigration Rules, and to give an indication of the sort of considerations we have in mind. If the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, or other noble Lords are to speak later in the debate, we should like to have the benefit of their comments in this respect. The suggestion has been put to us, I do not know whether it has arisen in the debate so far, that it would be very iniquitous to include the estranged wife living apart from the principal deportee, although legally she was his wife. We are inclined to agree with that point of view, but there would
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be a difference, I suppose, between the case of someone who had smartly left her husband the day before and said,"I am no longer living with him but with mother up the road ", and that of someone who had been separated from her husband for a period. I should not like to be more precise than that. I should like to hear from noble Lords and noble Baronesses on this point. We want to hear from those who have something to say on this subject. I used without great consideration the word"substantial ". I should like to know what noble Lords taking, part in the debate think this should be. Perhaps they can help us in this.
Children will cease to be members of the family, as defined, at the age of 18, and their deportation would not normally be contemplated if they had spent some years in the United Kingdom and were near that age. Deportation might not be appropriate if it transpired that the child had left the family home on taking employment and had established himself on an independent basis. Then again, in the case of younger children, those who are still at school, we intend to make it clear that we think it would be right to take into account both the disruptive effect on their education of removal and the likely effectiveness of plans for their continued care and support in this country if one or both parents were deported.
In some cases it may also be relevant to take account of the possibility of the eventual return of members of the family to the United Kingdom after deportation. When a child reaches 18 he will cease to be subject to the deportation order and it will be open to him to qualify for readmission under the immigration rules—for example, by obtaining a work permit. The wife would cease to be subject to the order if the marriage came to an end, but her return would otherwise be dependent on revocation of the order.
As I said, these points give an indication of our current thinking on some of the matters that have been raised in this connection. But this is in no sense a final list, and I hope very much that noble Lords will not read too much into the words, and in particular the adjectives with which I have prefaced them: because, as I have said, we want to hear from people on this subject before drafting the provision of the Immigration

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Rules, which will be available for the guidance of the Appeal Tribunal.
BARONESS WHITE: I do not want to keep interrupting, but it may be simpler to clear up this point now. I fully take the position that on reaching the age of 18 the children are"in the clear ", and that they can come back under their own rights as adults. But the noble Lord said that the possible return of the wife depended upon the revocation of the deportation order. Does that mean the order of her husband or of herself? Is she to be treated as a person or merely as a wife?
LORD WINDLESHAM: I think I ought to check on that and give the noble Baroness an informed answer. But I had finished what I was going to say.
BARONESS BIRK: I have been at a meeting and I apologise for not hearing all of the debate, but perhaps I may take up one or two points with the Minister. It seems an extraordinary doctrine that the wife who is estranged should have an advantage over the wife who is not. I think the noble Lord talked of the child who has left home. I take it that he means a child under 18.
LORD WINDLESHAM: Yes.
BARONESS BIRK: That means that there could be a situation where the child who was living away from the family home for some reason, such as work or schooling, had an advantage, from the point of view of escaping deportation, over the child living with the family. We are going into tremendously deep and unfortunate waters here. It seems to me that by leaving out the paragraph, as the Amendment seeks to do, the subject could be completely dealt with, because—and I apologise for what I am sure has already been said by my noble friends—the deportation must be confined to one person. I do not see any reason for deportation by association. If a wife decides to go with her husband when he is deported, then that is her decision. But for any member of the family to be forced to go because another member is being deported, seems basically so wrong. And by making some of these quite extraordinary exceptions—though I am sure they are meant to be helpful—the whole matter gets far more complicated
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and, in the end, the position will be equally unjust.
LORD TANLAW: Can the noble Lord help me over a word? He has frequently used the word"family"and it is also in paragraph (c). It is fairly clear to most of us in this country what the word"family"means, but to immigrants coming in a"family"is a much wider unit than we are used to here. The noble Lord has talked about only one wife, but quite often a man believes that he is legally married to two or three women. Also, there is the Hindu undivided family, which is quite a possibility in the situation we have been discussing. I should like to know how the word"family"would be interpreted in the two cases I have mentioned. Immigrants could be alarmed in the sense that the word"family"means much more to them.
8.35 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: The Minister has made a helpful statement. He said that there will be a right of appeal, that there will not be many cases, and that, anyhow, we can always rely on the administrators to do the right thing.
LORD WINDLESHAM: The Home Secretary.
LORD GARDINER: That is a point on which I am afraid we do not all agree. Home Secretaries are Home Secretaries. Naturally, anybody who is an administrator always wants, with the best of motives, the widest possible powers, but in a case such as deportation, when so much is at stake for the individual, ought we to make him run the risk of a wrong administrative decision? Here is a young man who has left school at 16, has obtained a job in a motor-car factory, earning good money, and when he is 17—advisedly or ill-advisedly—he marries a 17-year-old girl and they have a child. At this point his father, whom he may not have seen for some time, gets into trouble for having broken some condition of his permit. Because his father has got into trouble he is liable to be deported to a country that he may never have seen. His wife and child are not covered, simply him, because he is a child under 18 of somebody who has done something wrong. Can that be right?
Or take this case. A couple may have had a divorce and the woman may have

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been given the custody of the children because it is the father who was at fault, and the court thinks that the mother ought to have custody. The children may not have seen their father for some time. The father does something wrong, and although the mother cannot be deported because she is no longer his wife, the children can be. Can that possibly be right? There may be an estranged couple who have been separated and have not seen one another for years. I should have thought that this guilt from association could not possibly be right. Let us suppose that a South African comes here and marries a coloured girl. If he gets into trouble, I suppose he can be deported to South Africa and his wife can be deported with him, although if they have intercourse when they get there that will be a criminal offence under South African law.
It is all very well to say that the administrator will always be right. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, dealt with the case of the young man under 18 who is independently working, but if I heard him rightly, what he said was that in the exercise of the discretion he might not be deported. The whole question really is: are we justified, having regard to the consequences in human terms, in putting these people at the risk of being deported, and for what? What is the object of the whole power? The object is simply so that, in what the Minister said is a small number of cases, the British taxpayer should be protected from having to support a dependent wife after her husband has been deported. Is it really worth while putting all these people at risk, simply and solely to save the British taxpayer from what, on any view, will obviously be a very minimal sum of money? I am bound to say that at the moment, having given the most careful attention to what the Minister has said, I think not.
8.40 p.m.
BARONESS WHITE: As the mover of this Amendment on which my noble and learned friend has made such an effective and, I entirely agree, devastating speech, there are still one or two things which worry me and which I should like to put to the Minister in the hope that we may get some more satisfactory reply. I will put a proposition to him in a moment in
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order that we may further clear our minds about this very difficult matter. The Minister himself said that these provisions would be effective only in circumstances where the wife declined to leave. Surely she, as a person, should be allowed to take a decision of that kind and should not be at the mercy of any Secretary of State. If she herself has committed no wrong, that decision should surely be her personal decision. It is her right as a human being that she should be allowed to decide. How can the Secretary of State, with the best will in the world—and I am sure that in all these cases the Secretary of State is conscientious to a degree—not just look at the person who has committed the offence (that he can very properly do, and that is his duty) but know what are the real relations between husband and wife?
The Minister said that if a wife had been living apart from her husband for a substantial period of time (I will not quibble over the word"substantial ") that would be a mitigating factor. But one can live estranged under one roof. Anyone who knows anything about human nature knows that. I am sure that even within our own acquaintance we know of situations where husband and wife have been estranged but where, for the sake of the husband's position, possibly for the sake of the children, or for other reasons, possibly financial, they have kept together and have maintained an outward semblance of a marriage, As I understand it, if they became physically separated in the sense of living in two separate establishments—which, incidentally, they might not be able to afford—simply when the husband was threatened with deportation, that would be regarded as trying to evade deportation and probably would not be an effective ground for action not to be taken by the Secretary of State.
I must say that I find the whole attitude, particularly in regard to the wife, entirely repugnant to me. I am trying to think what I should feel, as a wife, if I had the ill-fortune to be married to a thoroughly unsatisfactory husband but, for some reason or another—and often in such cases, as I said, it is for the sake of the children—we had kept together somehow, and then one came to the breaking point where one's husband had committed something or other and was liable to

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deportation. I could not prove, unless I went into the most intimate details of my family life—and one would hardly expect the Secretary of State to be interested in all that—what our real relationship was. It seems to me that we are getting into an impossible state of affairs. There are all the other anomalies which my noble and learned friend and other noble Lords have brought to the attention of the Committee. There is every kind of difficulty where members of the family are of different patrial status. Then, on the economic side, there is the wife who had not earned but who nevertheless made up her mind that she would in the future. She could not prove it to the satisfaction of the Secretary of State. He would have to take her word for it.
Is there not an easier way out of all this? The Minister himself said that action can be taken at the present time in certain cases on non-conducive grounds. I do not much like the term"non-conducive ", but nevertheless it is there; it has been in our practice for a number of years. If one took out all this reference to family just as family, and if there are really non-conducive grounds, should not those grounds be given? Then there could be reasonable grounds of appeal against them. I am still worried on what sort of grounds an appeal, in the proper sense of the word"appeal ", can be made on the present provisions. We are glad that the Secretary of State has moved towards public opinion in so far as lie has agreed that there should be some grounds of appeal. We are told that the grounds of appeal will be governed largely by draft rules. These rules have not yet been formulated in this particular respect. The Minister very fairly said that he would like to have some suggestions from us. That is in itself a very reasonable attitude which we appreciate very much; but are we not embarking on an exercise which is fraught with illogicality and difficulties of human relationships which we ought not to undertake?
I put it seriously to the Minister: would it not be better not to include in the Statute this reference to family deportation? If there were grounds on which the Secretary of State could fairly say that the continued presence in this country of the wife and children of a being deported. I am suggesting to the
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woman to be deported—we must remember that her husband is not involved in this case; she is treated quite differently—was not conducive to public interest and that they should not stay here, they should be put forward by the Secretary of State as a reason for saying,"Your husband has been told to leave this country; we believe you should go too on the grounds that your continuing presence here will not be conducive to the public good ". Then it appears to me one could have a reasonable basis for appeal on grounds of public policy or social policy, without having to go into personal relationships, which I do not think is proper in a case where the persons concerned, the woman and the children, are not in themselves in any sense guilty. If they were in any sense guilty, then that would provide grounds for being not conducive to the public good. I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that this is one way of dealing with something which I believe all Members of your Lordships' Committee must find, in its present form, distasteful.
LORD SHEPHERD: The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, said he welcomed this debate and that he would look carefully at the points of view expressed, particularly when he was drafting the rules. I think an overwhelming case has been made this evening about the evils of this particular subsection, and I wonder whether the noble Lord would be willing to look not only at what has been said in terms of the rules but at whether this subsection should remain in the Bill. We have listened to the debate on the assumption that the only people who will be at risk for deportation—the man himself and his family—are those who have just come into the country—let us say, for the first five years, the probation period. But many more men may be at risk, and many women at even more considerable risk, in the sense that they may marry somebody who was an immigrant but who has failed for various reasons to register; because unless he registers as a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, then he will be subject to deportation throughout his life while he remains in this country. So there could well be a situation where a Commonwealth immigrant has been in this country for perhaps some 10 or 15 years and has married, and where the wife has no idea

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at all that this man has not registered and is therefore subject to deportation. That is an intolerable position in which to place any woman in the so-called civilised society of this country. I will not go any further, but I wonder whether the noble Lord feels sufficiently confident in this matter to undertake to look at this particular subsection.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: I should like to add just one word. I do not want to go over the arguments on this subsection which have been extremely well put forward, but I must tell my noble friend that I am in sympathy with the idea that this subsection should be taken out. I am certain that it will offend a great many women in the country; and guilt by association is to me very repugnant.
LORD ALPORT: I should like to say that I agree with the point of view expressed by my noble friend Lady Emmet. I hope that the Minister will be able to find some means of assuring us that he will look again very carefully and constructively at the inclusion of this subsection in the Bill.
THE EARL OF BALFOUR: Does this legislation extend to aliens at present under the Aliens Restriction Act 1914?
LORD WINDLESHAM: No.
THE EARL OF BALFOUR: Is one of the purposes of this subsection, as was mentioned last night, to prevent a family being split up? That is the second point. I have tried to understand Clause 5(4) which appears to be counteracted by Clause 5(3) by a matter of eight weeks. I could be wrong, but the words,"eight weeks"seem to destroy the following clause. I cannot understand it.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: I should like to support this Amendment. I think that we all feel that when immigrants cone here the important thing is the long-term future in which they can settle happily into the community. Having listened to the Committee stage and some of the Second Reading I feel that a great deal of this Bill contains provisions which any administrator might find convenient in an emergency but which are simply not justified when taken against the context of the future of these people who,
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over five years, are reporting—never mind to whom, to the police or anybody else; but they are reporting. This thing will not be forgotten.
What we are saying today and what has been stirred up over this will probably be forgotten; but the terms of the Bill, the fears these people have over the five years' period, will bite deeply into them and will affect their long term settlement—I do not want to use the word"integration "—into the community. This Amendment would remove one more of those convenient provisions which are simply not justified by the circumstances.
LORD WINDLESHAM: Perhaps this would be an appropriate moment at which to wind up the discussion. I spoke at some length and gave the reasons why the Government believed this new power to be necessary. I went on to explain the sort of grounds, which we thought would be accepted in his discretion by the Home Secretary and upheld by the Immigration Appeal Tribunal, for the wife and children not to be included in the deportation order. We will want to study any practical suggestion. I think I am right in saying that the only person with such a suggestion is the noble Baroness, Lady White. She said that she would prefer the"non-conducive"power to be used. The noble Baroness also asked me earlier when a wife could return if she was included in the deportation order made against her husband. I understand that the wife can return, if eligible under the rules, when the order against her or her husband is revoked. She can apply for revocation of the order and appeal against refusal to revoke.
The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, asked about the meaning of the word"wife ". It is defined in the Bill on page 7, line 26, as including"each of two or more wives ". I think that is the answer to the question he put.
LORD TANLAW: I asked for a definition of the word"family ". I mentioned having more than one wife and, as an example, I gave a Hindu undivided family.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I dealt with that in my opening. I said it was the wife and children under 18. Children under 18 are self-defined. The power is concerned only with children under 18.

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Because the noble Lord referred to a situation where there might be more than one wife, I took the doubt to relate to the word"wife ". The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, really struck at the root of this. He hinted that the reasons were mainly of administrative convenience, and he asked what was the object of the power. Perhaps it may help to bring life to the debate, which we have had in general terms if I relate the subject to actual circumstances, not giving the names of those involved.
There was a well-publicised case which occurred during the previous Administration when Mr. Callaghan was Home Secretary. An Italian had come to this country with a work permit, and was joined by his wife with four or five young children. The husband got into trouble and was convicted of more than one offence. He was deported. But the wife refused to go with him. Offers were made but she refused to take them up. She was living in Lancashire and was reasonably well off; she was living on public funds and had received something over £1,000, but she did not wish to leave the country. Social workers, I am informed—my information is second-hand but I have checked it—felt that it would be in her own interests to return to Italy, but she would not agree. The Italian Consul became involved, again without success. In the end, the Home Secretary decided to deport her and the family on non-conducive grounds. He took the course of action which the noble Baroness recommended.
But, apart from this one, there have been from time to time cases of Commonwealth citizens in similar circumstances. There is also a special problem with regard to the Irish. In many cases they marry women born in the United Kingdom and therefore no question of deportation arises because the woman has been born in the United Kingdom, is patrial under the Bill, and is therefore exempt from deportation proceedings. But there have been a number of cases of Irishmen who have arrived with their wives or have married Irish women who have been in this country for only a short period. Here again, there have been a number of cases where the wife has refused to leave, and continues to live on public funds after her husband
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has been deported. The continuing presence of the wife in this country sometimes serves to draw the husband back here again in breach of his deportation order, for Ireland is not very far away. It is only if we take power to remove the wife as well that the husband is likely to settle down again.
People talk about family unity and about divided families, and I hope that they will consider the merits of this particular proposition. The Irishman who comes over here may be living here doing casual work on a building site for a year. His wife may come with him, or he may marry an Irish girl here. Then he may be sentenced to deportation. I think there is force in the argument that the man—
BARONESS WHITE: May I—
LORD WINDLESHAM: If I may just finish this sentence I will willingly give way to the noble Baroness. I think there is force in the proposition that the man is likely to be drawn back; I am advised that this has actually happened with Irish citizens.
BARONESS WHITE: I am not in the least surprised. If the noble Lord has ever travelled from Ireland into this country he will know why. I came from Dublin the other day and it is the easiest thing in the world to get back there is no passport check, you simply show your Aer Lingus ticket. With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, to bring the Irish into this question seems to be entirely beside the point. If we really wanted to keep the Irish out we should have to take far more drastic steps and have proper control; as we do not, we should accept the consequences.
LORD WINDLESHAM: That seems to be an argument on my side.
BARONESS WHITE: It is pointless having a deportation order in those circumstances.
LORD WINDLESHAM: If the noble Baroness is saying that it is not difficult for an Irish citizen to return here and rejoin his wife, surely, then, it makes sense to try to make it less attractive to him to come here in breach of a deportation order.
BARONESS WHITE: They can all come back.
LORD WINDLESHAM: The only alternative proposal that has been put in this debate has been that of the noble Baroness, who is on record as saying that she thinks it would be more appropriate for the Home Secretary to use his power to deport a person on the ground that his or her presence is not conducive to the public good. We part company on this, my Lords, and this is what I say in reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet. When we talk of the stigma of deportation, does the noble Baroness really think that the stigma would be decreased by a woman herself being deported because her presence was not conducive to the public good? We had an Amendment on this earlier this afternoon and the significance of what is meant by"not conducive to the public good"was debated at some length; there were connotations
of undesirable aliens and so on. I should have thought that the stigma would be far greater if that method were used rather than what is proposed in the Bill.
I said that I would pay careful attention—and the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd picked that up—as indeed I will, to anything on the interpretation of this which we can usefully put in the draft provision eventually appearing in the Immigration Rules. But it seems to us—and I cannot pretend that anything said in this debate has added to those considerations which the Home Secretary has already considered—that what is in the Bill is on balance better than the alternative proposals.
9.3 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 48) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 48; Not-Contents, 67.

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Gaitskell, Bs.

Seear, Bs.

Alport, L.

Gardiner, L.

Segal, L.

Bacon, Bs.

Garnsworthy, L. [Teller.]

Sempill, Ly.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Hanworth, V.

Shackleton, L.

Beswick, L.

Hoy, L.

Shepherd, L.

Birdwood, L.

Janner, L.

Slater, L.

Birk, Bs.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, Bs.

Somers, L.

Brockway, L.

Maelor, L.

Strabolgi, L. [Teller.]

Buckinghamshire, E.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Tanlaw, L.

Byers, L.

Morris of Kenwood, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Champion, L.

Nunburnholme, L.

Teviot, L.

Craigmyle, L.

Phillips, Bs.

Wade, L.

Davies of Leek, L.

Platt, L.

White, Bs.

Diamond, L.

Popplewell, L.

Winterbottom, L.

Emmet of Amberley, Bs.

Raglan, L.

Wootton of Abinger, Bs.

Energlyn, L.

St. Davids, V.

Wynne-Jones, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Ferrers, E.

Monk Bretton, L.

Abinger, L.

Ferrier, L.

Mountevans, L.

Auckland, L.

Goschen, V. [Teller.]

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Balfour, E.

Gray, L.

Napier and Ettrick, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Greenway, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Belstead, L.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Oakshott, L.

Berkeley, Bs.

Hailes, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Bessborough, E.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Radnor, E.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Buchan, E.

Harris, L.

Rochdale, V.

Conesford, L.

Harvey of Tasburgh, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Hood, V.

St. Just, L.

Cornwallis, L.

Inglewood, L.

St. Oswald, L.

Craigavon, V.

Jellicoe, E. (L. Privy Seal.)

Sandford, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Killearn, L.

Strathclyde, L.

Daventry, V.

Latymer, L.

Terrington, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Lothian, M.

Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie, Bs.

Digby, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Vivian, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Macleod of Borve, Bs.

Waldegrave, E.

Dundee, E.

Mancroft, L.

Ward of Witley, V.

Ellenborough, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Windlesham, L.

Elliot of Harwood, Bs.

Merrivale, L.

Wolverton, L.

Falkland, V.

Monckton of Brenchley, V.

Resolved in the negative, and Amendment disagreed to accordingly.

9.11 p.m.
LORD GARDINER LORD GARDINER moved Amendment No. 50:
Page 5, line 1, leave out (" seventeen ") and insert (" eighteen ").
The noble and learned Lord said: I put this down as a probing Amendment and can deal with it in a couple of sentences. We like our law to be reasonably consistent and we have now taken the view that there is a dividing line at 18. A person at 18 is responsible for himself or herself and is responsible for any wrongdoing. Of course, a person under 18 can also do wrong and be punished, but he or she is regarded as a child. The question I want to ask is this. If there is to be an age at which, if a person does something wrong, it can lead to deportation, is it to be 18? Why is it 17 in the Bill? I beg to move.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I think I can give the noble and learned Lord an answer to his question fairly succinctly. The present situation is that the age of 17 is now the minimum age for liability to deportation on the recommendation of a court under Section 7 of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962. It was then, and still is under more recent legislation, the age at which a person ceases to be a"young person"within the meaning of the Children and Young Persons Act, and so ceases to be subject to the jurisdiction of the law of the juvenile court and to have the benefit of other provisions of the law, which put children and young persons in a special and protected position. The Government still consider 17 to be the most appropriate age to fix as the minimum one for deportation on the recommendation by a court (I stress this last word) and think it right to take the opportunity presented by the Bill to introduce the same age for aliens. I should say that the fact that an offender has reached the age of 17 will in no way oblige the court to recommend him for deportation. In these, as in other respects, the courts will take account of all the relevant facts, including the comparative youth of the offender, as well as the nature of his offence and of his previous record. Likewise the Secretary of State will not be bound to act on the court's recommendation, and before making a deportation Order he will have full regard to the age of the offender and any family ties that he has.
LORD GARDINER: I am much obliged to the Minister for the attention that he has kindly given to the point and for what he has said, which I should like to think about. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
9.21 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY moved Amendment No. 51:
Page 5, line 1, leave out (" he is punishable with imprisonment ") and insert (" the maximum penalty of imprisonment is not less than 12 months ").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 51. This is a simple Amendment which I think will be fairly easily accepted by the Government. It is, I think, common ground that we do not want deportation to happen in cases of criminal offences for any minor reason. We do not want to leave any enormous amount of discretion on this matter, not because we think the discretion will be abused, but because it is most important—and this lies behind many of the Amendments that we are putting forward on this Bill—that people living in this country who come under the terms of this Bill should feel that they are safe and that they are not subject to discrimination.
The purpose of the Amendment is to make certain that people do not become liable to deportation for minor offences. Therefore the Amendment provides that no one should be liable for deportation unless the offence for which he has been convicted is punishable with a penalty of a maximum term of imprisonment of not less than 12 months. In my view, we could have put it a great deal higher, because no offence for which the maximum penalty is 12 months is a very serious one. But at the moment this is probably the right Amendment to put forward to probe what the Government think about this point. The other purpose of the Amendment, another facet of the same point, is that it should not be an offence that is liable to conviction by a magistrates' court. In our view, no one should feel that he is in peril of deportation because he has committed a small offence of the sort that is punished by a maximum penalty of less than 12 months and is tried in a magistrates' court.
LORD WINDLESHAM: Clause 3(6) proposes to continue the provisions of the existing law under which both aliens

1235
and Commonwealth and Irish citizens may be recommended for deportation on conviction by a court of an offence punishable by imprisonment. This Amendment, as the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, has explained, seeks to provide that a court shall have power to recommend deportation only on conviction of an offence punishable by imprisonment for not less than 12 months. The main reason why this Amendment would not be feasible—and I think the noble Lord may feel able to accept this—is that no person could, in consequence, be recommended for deportation in all the cases where conviction is for evasion of the immigration controls, since the maximum penalty for illegal entry into this country, overstaying or other breach of conditions, is six months' imprisonment. This is set out in Clause 24 of the Bill, which says:
"…a fine of not more than £200 or with imprisonment for not more than six months "—
and then goes on to list the immigration offences to which that penalty applies. Clearly it would be unacceptable to provide that deportation could not be recommended for breach of conditions or evasion of the immigration controls, for which it is generally the most appropriate course. This now is, and should surely remain, the most proper sanction provided for by the law controlling immigration.
But there are other offences as well for which the maximum sentence is less than twelve months and which are serious enough to serve as a proper basis for a recommendation for deportation, especially in the case of the persistent offender. But I think the noble Lord would agree that if somebody comes into this country illegally and is convicted by the courts under Clause 24 (and the maximum period of imprisonment is six months) it would be curious if he could not be deported, even though lie had evaded the immigration controls. That would be the effect of the Amendment.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: Of course, I agree with the noble Lord about that; but that is a separate point. Under this clause anyone is liable to be deported merely by reason of being drunk and disorderly. I entirely agree on the point of the evasion of immigration
1236
controls. I should have thought that that, above all things, would have been a case for a separate clause in the Bill. If the noble Lord does not see fit to put down a separate Amendment on those particular cases in order to meet this point, we should be delighted to do it for him; because I do not think that by stating this particular case which could, and in my view should (since this is a Bill about immigration) be dealt with by a particular clause of the Bill, he can get away with the problem of the minor offender. I should have thought, in terms of community relationships, with which we are all concerned—and I know that the Minister in charge of these matters is most concerned about this—that this particular clause, which makes one liable to deportation for offences which may be extremely minor, must be one which exercises the minds and fears of Commonwealth citizens living in this country.
We all know that there is a great fear on the part of many coloured people living in this country that the police discriminate against them. We all know that in the vast majority of instances it is untrue. There may be a few minor cases where this unfortunately happens, because we are all human and the police are human, too. But there is no doubt that this is a suspicion in the mind not only of the ordinary coloured person but also of the community leaders in various parts of the country. If we can get away from the idea that there is a danger of being deported, that one can get shot off for something not very important, we should be moving a considerable way towards establishing a greater degree of confidence in the working of this Bill among the coloured communities. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, put forward this major point, which can and should be dealt with elsewhere in the Bill. He said that there were other offences which would not be covered by this clause, offences which would be grounds for deportation. That may be; but before I venture to withdraw this Amendment—if I do so—I should like to ask him to say what he thought they were.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I willingly respond to that suggestion. I hope that the noble Lord and others taking part in

1237
the Committee stage who are concerned with Amendments of this kind will not try to use the community relations argument too frequently on matters which are really extremely straightforward. I am aware, of course, of the importance of what the noble Lord said about the confidence of the immigrant communities and how they view the police and the courts, and so on, but I do not think that whether or not we say"an offence punishable with imprisonment ", or"an offence punishable with imprisonment for not more than 12 months"should be a consideration to enter into the debate. Let me give a little more detail. I have a case in front of me where a man was deported from this country. He had nine minor convictions against him in the particular period of residence. He had been here before, and had seven previous convictions. These were all in a magistrates' court. The maximum period of imprisonment that, generally speaking, anybody can be sentenced to by a magistrates' court is six months. Therefore the matter of the persistent offender, the man who is constantly in trouble in the courts, is something which has to be taken into account.
LORD SHEPHERD: Is it not a point that the magistrates' court, if they felt that here was a persistent offender and six months' imprisonment was inadequate, could send the case to quarter sessions for a higher sentence? I suggest that the noble Lord's point does not really meet our case.
LORD WINDLESHAM: We must be more reasonable about this. This is not so. I gave an example of a man who had nine convictions in a magistrates' court. He had been here before, and had seven previous convictions. He was deported then—but not until then. So he could not say that he had not had a pretty good run.
LORD SHEPHERD: For what offences?
LORD WINDLESHAM: A list of them. Several were motoring offences, handling of stolen goods and so on. One can quarrel about whether this is right or wrong, but let us not forget that this paragraph refers to convictions in a magistrates' court. We are talking about somebody who has been convicted, who
1238
has been through the process of justice, and who, if it is felt that there is any reason why he should not be convicted of an offence punishable with imprisonment, will not be so convicted. We are making slightly heavy weather of this. There is the unanswerable reason, as the noble Lord has accepted, that first of all one would remove straight away people who had evaded the control in all the ways itemised in Clause 24. The noble Lord says he accepts that, but it should be put in another clause stating"Not more than 12 months ". This would exclude from the operation of the clause all offences tried in magistrates' courts, and I cannot believe that that would be desirable.
BARONESS BIRK: May I raise a point on that in support of my noble friend Lord Shepherd? I sit as a magistrate, and on so many occasions we have to tell the defendant that if his record is such that the offence merits a greater sentence than we can give we can send the case to Quarter Sessions. This, therefore, copes with that point.
I am not sure that I can entirely support the Amendment as it stands, but there is some confusion in the clause at the moment. If offences which merit deportation are those which evade the immigration laws, and are covered by the clause, then that ought to be spelt out differently. I have a certain amount of concern about this, not so much from the police angle but from 'the court angle. The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, is right that if this is left as it is it means that many minor offences, for which there are alternatives of imprisonment or fines, could be interpreted in a certain way by the courts. There is a great variety of interpretation by the courts, and the matter should be made as precise and succinct as possible.
LORD WINDLESHAM: In what way? All we are debating is the phrase, an offence"punishable with imprisonment ". I believe the noble Baroness will find that these words have a precise meaning.
BARONESS BIRK: That means that even if the offence merits imprisonment of one month or two weeks this can still apply.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: The Minister is treating this a little cavalierly. The point of the Amendment is not with regard to the offender who receives 12 months' imprisonment, but that a man should not be deported because of a petty offence. The noble Lord has said nothing to reassure us on this,. One can be sent to prison for a petty offence very easily. The noble Lord quoted the case of somebody who had been sent 16 times. I can beat that with our nationals very easily. But the point is that if this chap had committed one, two or three petty offences, which he easily might, and then had got into the right hands he might very well be led towards a new life—and that is the moment you choose to deport him. I believe there is a point of substance here. We may not insist on 12 months, but could we not have some kind of a minimum? I should like to feel that something on those lines could be given us.
9.31 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I think I must clarify this matter, because perhaps I did not make myself clear. Subsection (6) deals with liability to deportation. Before a man over the age of 17 is actually deported, or before the Home Secretary makes a deportation order against him, one of two things must happen. Either he must be recommended for deportation by the courts—and in the circumstances which the noble Lord has referred to, that of a petty offender, the court would not recommend him for deportation—
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: I hope not.
LORD WINDLESHAM:—or the Home Secretary himself will decide that the man's record is such, with the fact that he has been convicted of an offence punishable with imprisonment, that it is necessary that the man should be deported. Therefore, this provision does not say that if a man has committed a petty offence he must be deported; it says that he is merely liable to be. On one of the earlier Amendments we discussed the process of deportation in a little detail. I explained that these are cases which are reviewed personally by the Home Secretary. Nobody may sign a deportation order except the Secretary
1240
of State. In quite a number of cases where a court recommends deportation, the Home Secretary, for one reason or another—compassionate circumstances may have been advanced; representations made, he may feel, were too harsh—may decide, and in a number of cases does decide, not to implement the recommendation of the court.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: I do not want to go on with this discussion for too long, but it is the same old argument. If we have a decent Home Secretary this is all right. None of us worries about this under the present Home Secretary or maybe the next. But if we have a change of opinion and a vicious attitude towards immigrants, which is not outside the realms of possibility, under these terms it is possible to whip people away for very small offences. This is what I find difficult. I should like to see a minimum—but I see that I am not going to get it.
LORD GARDINER: I think what troubles us is the way the scales seem to be weighted against the Commonwealth immigrant. Some of us do not feel that one ought to be deported for something like a number of parking offences.
LORD WINDLESHAM: One would not be.
LORD GARDINER: Well, the noble Lord says one would not be, but you conceivably could be. In the cases we asked him about, we wanted to know what sort of crimes would be committed and we were told parking—or, rather, motor-car offences. We have laws, do we not, which we think are sense, about not paying much attention to first offence? And, of course, where there is an absolute discharge that it is not a conviction at all. Also, a conditional discharge is a conviction only if one breaks the condition. When it comes to Commonwealth immigrants we break all this, and in Clause 6 we say:
" For the purposes of section 3(6) above—"—
that is the one we have been talking about concerning deportation—
" the question whether an offence is one for which a person is punishable with imprisonment shall be determined without regard to any enactment restricting the imprisonment of young offenders or first offenders ".

1241
Then the clause continues:
" and for purposes of deportation a person who on being charged with an offence is found to have committed it shall, notwithstanding any enactment to the contrary and notwithstanding that the court does not proceed to conviction, be regarded as a person convicted of the offence ".
The whole thing seems to be so weighted against the Commonwealth immigrant that one hopes that the Government will reconsider this.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I speak from memory and therefore subject to correction, but I think the noble and learned Lord will find that this is the position now. At the present time, Commonwealth immigrants can be deported if they are convicted by a court of an offence punishable by imprisonment and recommended for deportation. That is the position under the existing legislation. It may be that there are some small details to be considered, but when the Commonwealth citizens get into trouble they are already liable to be deported so that I do not think the argument of loading the scales against them can be applied here.
What is more, if it is said that the Bill is unnecessary, we run into these absurd arguments, as we did on the first Amendment, whereby if we were to revert to the previous legislation, immigration rules, let alone not being subject to Affirmative Resolution, would not be subject to any form of Parliamentary control at all. I think the protection lies in the attitude of the courts. The courts are not going to recommend a man for deportation for a parking offence, nor is the Home Secretary going to regard a single offence as a crime for which a man should be deported. He will use his discretion. To try to exclude all those offences known to the law—and I say this in the presence of a former Lord Chancellor—covering, generally speaking, everything in a magistrates' court with a maximum sentence of six months (which would be the effect of this Amendment) would not be in the best interests of the country.
LORD SOMERS: I wonder whether my noble friend could clear up one point? The Bill contains the words"punishable by imprisonment ". There are many minor crimes which are punishable by either a fine or a short term of imprisonment. If the offender agrees to pay the
1242
fine it is still a crime which is punishable by imprisonment. Would it not make it clearer if we were to substitute the word"punished"for the word"punishable "?
LORD WINDLESHAM: I do not think it would, although the former occupant of the Woolsack is far better versed to answer questions of that sort than I am. I should like to let the noble Lord have a more detailed reply, but the crucial concept is whether or not the offence is punishable by imprisonment. The law recognises that some offences are so severe that they are punishable by imprisonment, but what the court does then with regard to conviction is the crucial thing, and I think that was the point raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, is fully entitled to raise the argument about what would happen if we did not pass this Bill, and to say that we would be no better off in regard to the things we are objecting to. He is entitled to say that to those of us (among whom I and my noble friends are proud to number ourselves) who voted against the Second Reading of this Bill. But I do not think he is really entitled to put it forward as an argument in favour of this Bill. In fact what we are all trying to do, now that the Bill has had its Second Reading, is to produce the best Bill possible to deal with immigration, and I still think that the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has not really seized himself of the point that I am making.
He semi-rebuked me for bringing in the community relationship side and I entirely accept, particularly from him, because I know that he has immense care for anything of this nature, that this can be abused and certainly should not be used too often. I do not think that he actually realises yet how important this particular point and this particular clause is to this argument, but he might realise it a bit more because of the exchange that has gone on between the two sides of the House. All noble Lords agree that no likely court or Home Secretary in the near future is likely to abuse the situation. The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, said that it was not unforeseeable that some Home Secretary in the future might want to abuse the situation, and I do not

1243
deny it, but I do not rest my case on that. I rest my case on the fact that to make people liable for deportation for very minor offences indeed is something which can seriously disturb community relations. I do not use these words lightly. I am not trying to stir up trouble. I think this is an extremly important point indeed.
I take Lord Windlesham's point that there are serious offences which come before magistrates' courts and which might produce the situation where one would, however reluctantly, want to deport, and I am not asking for any assurance from the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, on this particular point. I am merely saying that I hope he will agree to meet myself, or one of my noble friends, and possibly one or two of our advisers, to talk about this matter, because it seems to me from this debate that it is an issue that he has not seriously got to the bottom of and which has taken him slightly by surprise in this particular context. Having said that, and having not asked for any assurance because I know the noble Lord's goodwill, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My noble friend, Lord Foot, had given notice of an Amendment, No. 52, to leave out subsection (7). In view of the fact that, as your Lordships have already been informed, my noble friend is unfortunately unable to be here, and that the Labour Party has tabled an Amendment on virtually the same point, I will not move this Amendment.
9.43 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved Amendment No. 53:
Page 5, line 4, leave out subsection (7) and insert—
(" (7) Where any immigration officer, constable or other person authorised by the Secretary of State reasonably believes it to be necessary so to do for the purposes of ensuring the safety of any ship or aircraft or the passengers therein or crew thereof he may prohibit any person from embarking thereon and may further prohibit him from embarking upon any other ship or aircraft of any specified class and the Secretary of State may at any time cancel such prohibition or give such person leave to embark either at a specified place and time or otherwise subject to conditions.")
The noble Lord said: With permission, in moving Amendment No. 53 I would also speak to No. 57. The purpose of this Amendment is to delete subsection (7) and substitute the words on the Marshalled List. Subsection (7) appears to me to consist of two points. First, it appears that the Government are seeking powers, through an Order in Council, to deal with a situation which I think was described in another place, when Her Majesty's Government wish to take some form of retaliatory action against nationals of a country who have taken certain actions against ours. I think the reference made in another place was to the restrictions that were placed upon the Chinese nationals in this country during our difficulties in 1967–68. I believe the Government are entitled to take these powers. In fact, I am wondering how the previous Administration were able to take action if the Government now see the need to put this provision into this Bill. But whether the Government need the powers or not, I question whether it is right and proper to put such a provision in an Immigration Bill.
The second part of subsection (7) looks to me like a provision, through an Order in Council, to deal with hijacking; in other words, to take certain steps to prevent individuals from joining an aircraft or a ship if their presence is likely to endanger the aircraft or the ship. In our Amendment No. 53 we make this provision available, but we give the power to the Secretary of State to prohibit"any person ". It seems to me very strange that if the Government are taking these powers in regard to hijacking they should take powers to deal only with those who are not patrials. In other words, it seems to me, from this Bill, that the Government think that only the non-partials need to be dealt with, and anyone who is a patrial—and who may be of foreign descent and perhaps a security risk—is not dealt with by this subsection. In deleting subsection (7) we are putting back in its place a power to the Secretary of State enabling him to prohibit any person from embarking on a ship or an aircraft if he feels that there is a risk to the safety of the aircraft or ship.
Amendment No. 57 is to provide appeals where a person has been prohibited from embarking on a ship or

1245
aircraft by virtue of subsection (7), in which case such a person would have a right to make an appeal to a judge in Chambers in the High Court' of England or the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland, and that judge may make such an order subject to such conditions as he may consider just. With those very quick remarks, I beg leave to move Amendment No. 53 and speak to Amendment No. 57.
THE EARL OF BALFOUR: May I ask just one question here? On page 5, line 16, at the end is mentioned"in the interests of safety ". I wonder whether this means the safety of the person embarking on the ship, or that the ship may possibly be sailing under one of those flags of convenience and not in any way conforming to our regulations of safety at sea. If that is the case, why does it extend only to those who are not patrial?
9.48 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, for the brief manner in which he introduced these two Amendments, which are certainly linked together. As he says, the Amendments that he is moving to Clause 3 would substitute a new version of subsection (7), giving power to restrict embarkation only in the interests of safety. I understand that these Amendments were moved in another place, and were negatived, I think without a Division.
I should like briefly to explain why we think that the clause should remain as it is. Under the present law—that is the Aliens Order 1953—every alien leaving the United Kingdom for a destination outside the common travel area needs to obtain the leave of an immigration officer to embark. The Order does not limit in any way the grounds on which leave to embark may be refused, save that immigration officers are required, in the exercise of their function, to comply with the instructions of the Secretary of State. The power to refuse leave has, in practice, been very seldom exercised, and I understand its existence has not given rise to any general volume of complaint.
In preparing this Bill, the Government have reviewed the need for powers to restrict embarkation and have concluded that they are needed only to the extent
1246
that Clause 3(7) in its present form provides, that is, powers to impose restrictions on the embarkation of nationals of countries whose Governments are restricting the departure from their territory of citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies; and, secondly, to enable passengers to be prohibited in the interests of safety from embarking on a particular ship or aircraft. We feel that there is no reason to distinguish between Commonwealth citizens and aliens in the exercise of these powers.
As the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, knows perfectly well, the case for having the power to prevent the embarkation of nationals of a country whose Government was restricting the departure of citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies was put in another place in Standing Committee by my honourable friend Mr. Kershaw, and a similar Amendment was negatived. This power is being sought in order to enable the Government to protect the interests of citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies who are overseas. We believe that it is desirable that the Government should have the ability to respond in kind to such action by another Government, because otherwise this country would have to choose between taking no measures to counter another State's action and taking measures of a different kind which could not so easily be justified on grounds of reciprocity. The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has himself mentioned the case of the China incident in 1967 and the action taken in those circumstances under an Order in Council, under the Aliens Order 1967, which enabled the Secretary of State to extend the requirement of leave to embark to any specified class of aliens embarking for places outside the common travel area.
The Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, to this clause would retain, with some alterations, the power to prohibit embarkation in the interests of safety. This power is being retained in relation to aliens and extended to other persons subject to immigration control simply by way of precaution. The power which now exists under Article 1 of the Aliens Order 1953 to refuse leave to embark could be used to prevent a suspected hijacker from boarding an aircraft. This power, I understand, has not been used, but while the whole question

1247
of hijacking is with us and the menace remains, it seems advisable not to surrender the use of the power in such cases or to miss the opportunity of extending it to all those subject to control.
The main alteration from the present law which would be made by the Amendment would be that the power to prohibit embarkation would be exercisable against anyone, whether patrial or not. While it is perfectly true, and one cannot deny it, that a person who was patrial would not necessarily be any less successful as a hijacker than someone who was not patrial, we feel that it is not really appropriate within the confines of the Immigration Bill to seek powers to control for this purpose the movement of anyone not subject to immigration control. Clause 3(7) in its present form is intended, as I have tried to explain, to preserve to a limited extent the power now available in regard to aliens and in line with general policy of unifying control to extend the sane power to Commonwealth citizens. I think that is logical.
The application of such a power to people who are exempt from immigration control and, in the words of Clause 1(1), are to
" be free…to come and go into and from the United Kingdom without let or hindrance "
would be an unprecedented curtailment of personal liberty which the Government do not at present believe to be justified. The Hijacking Bill, to which the House gave a Second Reading yesterday, gives effect to the Convention on the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft signed at the Hague on December 16, 1970. For the sake of speedy passage through Parliament, the Bill is confined to the minimum provisions necessary for this purpose.
We feel that further legislation will probably be needed in due course to provide protection against acts of violence on aircraft other than hijacking, and this will give an opportunity for a more comprehensive review of what powers are needed. At present, the Government are advised that it is not necessary or desirable to go beyond what is provided in Clause 3(7), and we do not feel that the fact that we are not proposing to take power to restrain the departure of patrials is a reason for suspending the present power to restrict the embarkation of aliens (as
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narrowed by the clause) or for failing to take this opportunity of extending it to other non-patrials.
My noble friend Lord Balfour mentioned the phrase in the interests of safety ". This matter was raised in another place, and I think it was suggested that the phrase was wider than was necessary to achieve the purpose which the Government had indicated. We believe it is wise to use words of a fairly wide scope in this instance, so as not to fetter unduly the power of making Orders in Council to deal with future threats to the safety of ships or aircraft which may take forms not now envisaged. I think the noble Lord can take it from that that the word"safety"can apply equally to the passengers and to the ship or aircraft concerned. The phrase has been deliberately kept wide.
Amendment No. 57 is concerned with appeals, and the question is really: given that some power to prohibit or restrict embarkation is to be retained, but only in relation to people who are not patrial, should there be any form of appeal against its exercise? Although the whole question of appeals against decisions in the field of immigration control was considered by the previous Government and by Parliament in 1969, no provision was then made for a right of appeal against the unlimited power to refuse leave to embark to an alien which has been available for many years under the present law. My understanding is that this omission has given rise to no complaint and there does not seem to be any evidence that the power has been abused, or has been felt to be abused. Our feeling is that there is really no case for making the much more limited powers proposed in Clause 3(7) subject to a right of appeal.
I hope I have explained to the noble Lord why we want the clause to stand as it is, and why we prefer not to accept his Amendment. I have gone to some lengths to explain the position as we see it, because it is an important, if not a very large, point and I hope that he will be satisfied with that explanation.
THE EARL OF BALFOUR: I should like to say how very grateful I am that the question which I asked has been very well answered, and I entirely support the Government.
LORD SHEPHERD: In view of that remark, it is rather difficult to know what to say. I am grateful for the rather lengthy reply of the noble Marquess, which I shall study with great care when I see Hansard tomorrow. We never questioned why it should be in this Bill. However, the noble Marquess has given an explanation.
In regard to hijacking, if the noble Marquess does not wish to take power to deal with"any person ", as we suggest, and wants to deal only with non-patrials, so be it. I think the Government are wrong, and I think that eventually they will have to produce legislation to cover all persons. But that is for the Government to decide. With regard to the appeal procedure, I will carefully note what the noble Marquess has said, and might well come back to it on Report. But we will leave it like that. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
10.1 p.m.
LORD WADE LORD WADE moved Amendment No. 54:
Page 5, line 2, leave out subsection (8).
The noble Lord said: I am moving this Amendment in order to raise just one or two points about burden of proof. It relates to Clause 3(8). It seems reasonable that someone entering the country should be expected to prove whether or not he is a patrial, and under normal circumstances anyone entering the country would have the necessary documents before he began his journey. But I am not quite happy about those who are already in the country, and I should like to know the mind of the Government on this.
For example, if one goes to stay at an hotel—I do not want to embark on the subject of the hotel register, which we come to a little later on; I simply take that by way of illustration—does this mean that, in effect, everyone will have to carry some document about with him to show whether he is a patrial or a non-partial? If that is not so, then what exactly is to happen? Anyone can be questioned at any time, and the mere statement,"I am a patrial ", or an entry in a register calling oneself a patrial or otherwise, will riot suffice. I can see the possibilities of a very embarrassing situation arising if the burden of proof is
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always on the person who claims to be a patrial or a non-patrial. I beg to move.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: May I add a general question? If one is a British subject, is there any burden of proof on one to show that one is a British subject? I simply do not know. If I am taken into custody because of a brawl in a pub and I am taken to a police station, if I say I am a British subject do I have to prove it? I do not know.
LORD WINDLESHAM: No, the noble Lord does not; and the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Wade, does not, I think, really arise. A certificate of patriality is needed as an entry document, because the essence of the patrial clause is that those who have a particularly close connection by birth or ancestry with the United Kingdom are exempt from immigration control. It is there—and I think the noble Lord accepts the need for this—that the man must convince the immigration officer that he is patrial. Otherwise, anyone could come along and say,"It is quite all right officer; I am patrial. Just stand aside and let me in ". There has to be some arrangement to deal with that. What is proposed is that there should be this certificate which will be issued by the High Commission posts abroad before the man leaves, when he will produce birth certificate, marriage certificate and the rest. But these are entry documents. I cannot envisage that the person already in this country will be required on any occasion to show this.
LORD WADE: I hope I am not being very obtuse, but the subsection reads:
" When any question arises under this Act whether or not a person is patrial, or is entitled to any exemption under this Act, it shall lie on the person asserting it to prove that he is."
Do I understand that this is really limited only to questions of entry?
LORD WINDLESHAM: I would say that in the main that is so. The only exception I can think of offhand is on the question of deportation, because the man who is patrial is not liable to deportation and there might be circumstances in which he would be asked to prove that. So that would be a case after he has been admitted. Generally speaking, it

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is at the point of entry that the man would need to show that he is exempt from our immigration controls.
LORD WADE: I am glad to have that assurance. I should like to give it a little further thought, but in view of what has been said by the noble Lord I beg leave to withdraw this Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
10.5 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY moved Amendment No. 55:
Page 5, line 25, at end insert (" which certificate shall take the form of an endorsement in his passport.")
The noble Lord said: I beg leave to move the Amendment standing in the name of my noble friends. In view of the rather reassuring answer to the last Amendment (as my noble friend Lord Wade has said, we shall want to study it, but it appeared to be much more satisfactory than we had feared) there is very little that I want to say on this Amendment. I want slightly acidly to point out in the terms of what my noble friends and myself have said about this whole Bill, that whereas this indeed purports to be a Bill which simplifies the whole business about immigration, in effect, it multiplies the categories intensely. Not content with creating this new class of patrials—and I would remind the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, of what the late Lady Asquith said about the concept of"belongers"on a previous Bill—we now move into an area of first-class and second-class patrials: those under Clause 2(1)(a) and (b) of the Bill who do not require this certificate, and those who qualify under the remaining subsections who do.
What I am really asking is whether this Amendment is not really a rather good, satisfactory and practical way of dealing with something which people fear would be rather a bogey about the whole burden of proof. The certificate of patriality, although Lord Windlesham tells us it will only be needed on entry, has raised a large number of bogeys. I am sorry if the noble Lord again thinks that I am playing too much on people's fears: but people do talk about pass laws. I accept from what he said on the last
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Amendment that there is no truth in this; nevertheless, it would be desirable to find some simple way of dealing with the certificate of patriality and not allow it to become just another piece of paper which anyone can lose, and particularly those who are not well-educated and are rather awed by pieces of paper.
Everyone who comes into the country presumably has to have a passport. Why cannot the certificate be endorsed on the passport together with such matters as the regulations for the replacement of loss. These are all perfectly well understood. It seems to me that this is actually a rather practical way of dealing with the problem, and we await with interest what the Government have to say. I beg to move.
10.9 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I think I can accept every word the noble Lord has said. That is exactly how we have aproached the subject. I do not think him wrong to introduce the community relations aspect into what he said. I think the word"patrial"has overtones and the idea of a certificate of patriality can touch off certain feelings. Under present practice, an entry certificate for Commonwealth citizens or a visa required by aliens takes the form of an entry made in the passport of the person to whom it is issued. The advantage of this practice is that the visa or entry certificate then forms part of a document containing a photograph and other identifying particulars of the holder, and so is not open to the risk of use by someone else as would be a separate document. We have it in mind that a certificate of patriality will likewise consist of an entry in the passport. The precise form of entry to be used for the purpose of an entry certificate or a visa is still under consideration, particularly with a view to increasing security against forgery and falsification. We do not think it would be right, although we accept the spirit of what the noble Lord has said, to lay down narrowly that the certificate of patriality must be an endorsement. The word"endorsement"is a fairly technical one and we think it should be open to the Government from time to time to vary the nature of the certificate in the light of experience. But our present intention

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is to do exactly what he has urged upon us to do.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: I am extremely happy to hear the explanation of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, and in view of it I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 [Administration of control]:
On Question, Whether Clause 4 shall stand part of the Bill?
10.8 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: I think we are concerned with almost every sentence in Clause 4. I propose to deal with it in a Committee way, and I shall be asking a number of questions for information, to which I hope the noble Lord may be able to reply. I begin with the first sentence:
" The power under this Act to give or refuse leave to enter the United Kingdom shall be exercised by immigration officers."
The details regarding the functions of immigration officers are stated in subsection (2), and I shall immediately proceed to that subsection, returning to other points in subsection (1) later on.
The immigration officers have an almost impossible task and they are frequently blamed. They are instruments of decisions made by the Government for the exclusion of immigrants for the practice of discrimination. As the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, knows—and I have perhaps troubled him too often in this respect—I have considerable experience in this field, and therefore wish to say at once that I do not take the view that there should be criticism of immigration officers as a class for their administration. I doubt whether there are any public servants who have such an extraordinarily difficult task. They are met by immigrants from other countries who are quite new to the situation in this country, who feel nervous and strange. They may speak English, but they speak English with other pronunciations, which again makes communication difficult.
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They have different backgrounds, and any association between immigration officers and the incoming immigrants is extraordinarily difficult. Someone has asked the immigrant's age. On occasions they come from countries where there is no registration of age. They give a number of years and the immigration officer is doubtful because of the appearance of the person. A woman claims to be a married wife of an immigrant already here. Again there is the difficulty that in some of these territories more than one wife is legitimate. It is extraordinarily difficult for the immigration officer to come to a conclusion on that matter. Some claim they are coming to relatives in this country. This is immediately appropriate to both the noble Lord and myself, because only yesterday I was asking him a question about a case of this kind. Is that really right? Proof is extraordinarily difficult.
I take the view that we are asking immigration officers to fulfil a task which ought not to be demanded of any public servant. It requires an appreciation, a sensitivity, a human association, of which very few people are capable. From my experience I would make this suggestion to the noble Lord for his consideration. When an immigration officer making inquiries of this kind is troubled, when he cannot find an answer, there should be a small group of very carefully selected specialised persons to whom such cases should be referred; and when that investigation is made representatives of organisations who act for the welfare of immigrants should be allowed to be present. If very carefully selected appointments could be made to that group to whom difficulties could be referred, I believe some of the almost impossible problems of the immigration officer might be met.
I conclude what I am saying about that by emphasising that I think these immigration officers are attempting to carry out a task imposed upon them by Parliament; they have to suffer the blame for mistakes which are made; and inevitably, under the conditions of their inquiries, they may become impatient and perhaps intolerant, even the most tolerant of them. The blame should not be attached to them, but to those who require that they should fufil those services.

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I want to ask a series of questions on subsection (2) of this clause. How are these immigration officers selected? Schedule 2 states that the selection is by the Secretary of State for Home Affairs. I think we must all appreciate that he cannot have that personal responsibility for selection. If what I have said about the task of immigration officers is true, how they are recruited and selected becomes tremendously important. Their task is somewhat similar to that of social workers. Before social workers can undertake their task they have to pass through a period of education in polytechnics or other colleges, which includes some psychology. I should like to ask how these immigration officers, who have a task just as difficult as any social worker, are selected, and from whom they are recruited. I should like to know the actual methods of selection.
I have been dealing with subsection (2)(a), and I now want to ask the Minister to look at subsection (2)(b). This is a paragraph which refers to those who come to this country as crews of ships or aircraft, landing at our ports or our aerodromes, and asking to be here for a period until the ships are unloaded or until the aircraft fly. On this, I only want to ask what are the special powers exercisable in these cases. There is a reference to those special powers, and I think we have a right to know what they are.
I turn now to paragraph (c), where we find that these immigration officers have not only the task of interrogation, to which I have referred, but also the task of removal. I want to ask the Minister whether he will reconsider this fact, of the same officers having the task of inquiry and of carrying out deportation. Again I speak with some knowledge. The day before yesterday a man was on a plane to be deported and a Member of Parliament wished to make inquiries about him. The Ministry, with their usual sympathetic response, took him off the plane and detained him while the representations of the Member of Parliament could be made. The second day he was to be deported again and I made representations, and again he was held back from being deported. I am suggesting to the
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Minister that the persons who are responsible for the inquiries should be separated from the persons who are responsible for the removals: otherwise the persons who are responsible for the inquiries will become prejudiced, because they are also responsible for the removals. This becomes particularly true in cases such as the British citizens of East Africa who have come here, been sent back, come here again and been sent hack; so that the personnel responsible for those double tasks are inevitably prejudiced in their minds.
I turn now to paragraph (d), which is concerned with the detention of persons pending examination. I recognise at once that an improvement has been made in this matter, although very belatedly. However, the practice of sending these persons to a prison while inquiries are made has now been modified. There are three places of detention to which they may go. There is a detention centre at Building No. 2, Heathrow, where persons may be detained for a day or two if it is intended to prevent them from entering and if there is a possibility of deportation. I should be interested to hear whether the Minister could give particulars of the circumstances in which this broader detention in Building No. 2 may occur. Secondly, there is the Harmondsworth Centre, which has been established in order to prevent people from being sent to prisons, as they were formerly. I should be interested to know the particular function and purpose of this detention centre and on what grounds the decisions are reached to send people there rather than to prison. I should like also to put these broader questions to the Minister. How long can a Commonwealth citizen be detained, either at Harmondsworth or in prison? There have been cases where people have been committed for three months in prison and then released with considerable freedom. I think that in connection with this clause one has the right to know how long a person can be detained. The second point I want to raise is also indicated in subsection (1). It is in this sentence:
"…the power to give leave to remain in the United Kingdom, or to vary any leave under section 3(3)(a) (whether as regards duration or conditions), shall be exercised by the Secretary of State…".

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That is an extraordinary power. I find it difficult to know of any other Minister who is given such absolute power as is indicated in that sentence. We have already had a discussion in this Committee about the degree of Parliamentary approval. At the moment—although I am glad to know that the Minister is reviewing it—that extraordinary power of the Secretary of State would be subject only to the Negative Resolution procedure. I ask the Minister to look at the three last lines of the first subsection. Under this subsection other United Kingdom citizens could be treated as some East Africans, who were British citizens, were treated, by Statutory Instruments and without an Act of Parliament. Those words, as they exist in this subsection, would give the Secretary of State the power even to limit the arrival in this country of United Kingdom citizens who hold British passports.
The third point I want to raise is contained in subsection (3) of this clause. It deals with registration by the police and, again, regulations made by Statutory Instruments. We have had a debate on this, and I do not want to develop the point. The Minister has indicated that he is looking at this whole matter again. If that means that he is going to put down Amendments on Report stage, then a revision of this subsection will be necessary.
I pass to the final subsection, subsection (4). Anyone who has a belief in democracy and reads this will be made uneasy. At present it says that records will be made and kept:
"…of persons staying at hotels and other premises where lodging or sleeping accommodation is provided, and for parsons (whether patrial or not) who stay at any such premises to supply the necessary information ".
Have we become a police State? Is it really suggested that there is to be this power to secure records of persons staying at hotels and other premises? Again, the regulations applying to that would be by Statutory Instrument and the Negative Resolution procedure.
I have said enough to show that this clause places extraordinary powers on officials and on the Secretary of State; and those of us who believe in democracy and want to check the advance towards bureaucracy in our State affairs
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ask the Minister whether he will look at the points which I have tried to raise and at least require Parliamentary approval in a positive way, so that this is given before these powers are brought in.
10.35 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I will do my best to answer a number of these questions but I do not think the noble Lord, without giving notice, can expect a complete and detailed answer to all of them. I do not quite know how many questions there were in his speech, but it must have run well up into double figures. I can answer some of them straight off and I will do so, but as regards the ones I miss I hope the Committee will bear with me. I will study in Hansard what the noble Lord has said and will make sure that they are covered in writing. The first thing I should like to say is that I know that Her Majesty's Chief inspector of the Immigration Service and his staff will welcome the tribute the noble Lord paid, particularly as coming from him, because they know the interest he takes in immigration matters. I will make sure that that is drawn to the Chief Inspector's attention. The noble Lord asked about inquiries made by immigration officers at the ports of entry—the fact that they have to inquire as to the age of some people coming in, and about the relationship between husband and wife—and pointed out that the customs of other countries, the languages and laws, are different from ours and this makes it difficult for an immigration officer to be able to arrive at the truth. This line of criticism was keenly pursued in the late 1960s because it applies in the main—not entirely, but in the main—to dependants, and I think the noble Lord will agree with me if I say that the introduction of entry certificates for dependants of Commonwealth citizens has brought about a great improvement. It means that the entry certificate officers in the British High Commission posts abroad—and there are quite a number of them; many of them, incidentally, members of the Immigration Service seconded to serve in the High Commissions—are able to get much closer to the local community than would be possible if they were carrying out their inquiries at the point of entry in this country. It also means

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that if there are protracted inquiries to be made because of distance, bad communications and so on, these can be made before the dependant starts on his long journey half way across the world to Britain, where he might otherwise run into difficulty and be turned back. If these inquiries can be pursued in his own country of origin it is a very desirable innovation.
The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, asked a number of questions about the administration of immigration control at London airport, which is far and away the biggest port of entry as regards Commonwealth citizens. The Channel ports handle a vast volume of incoming passengers, but the overwhelming pressure of entry, as the noble Lord will agree, is at London Airport. Many of the immigration officers there—it is very impressive to visit—speak Asian languages and officers are available who speak virtually every language likely to be encountered. So if a problem comes up and the officer on duty cannot handle it another officer can be brought in who can help and will be able to interpret.
The noble Lord asked (and perhaps this would be a good point at which to deal with one of his detailed questions) about how immigration officers are selected. They are recruited mainly from within the Civil Service, from officers of the rank of executive officer, or people eligible for promotion to that rank, who show aptitude for the work of the Immigration Service, including proficiency in one or more languages and the right personal qualities for dealing with people, sometimes in a difficult situation. Candidates are selected after interview in the Home Office. They receive training for the work, and they are tried out for up to a year in the work of immigration control before their appointments are confirmed as members of the Service. The Immigration Service is now about a thousand people strong. Thy are civil servants, but they have their own professional structure and their own head of the Service in the person of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector, who is an immigration officer of many years' standing and great experience.
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The noble Lord is interested in the detention arrangements at London Airport and, as he correctly said, there is a detention suite in the Queen's Building—Building 2. This is used mainly for overnight detention of people who are due to be removed the next day. These are people who are not admitted by the immigration officer. They are held for the purposes of immigration control, and will be going out again, very often on an aircraft belonging to the same airline, which is served with a notice to remove the passenger, again, if possible, the next day. The suite is not suitable for people to be held in for long periods, and therefore the Harmondsworth detention centre is available for people held for longer periods when protracted inquiries are necessary.
As the noble Lord knows, sometimes these inquiries take longer than we would like, and there have been occasions when people have been detained in the Harmondsworth detention centre—and sometimes in prison—while inquiries are made. There was a bad case recently where inquiries took quite some time. Inquiries were pursued in Africa to obtain some information. But in the main inquiries are kept as short as possible. Harmondsworth is used in lieu of prison for those passengers arriving in the South-East of England, and we have used it from time to time as an alternative to prison where it seems appropriate to do so.
The special powers referred to by the noble Lord refer quite specifically to the numbers of crews of aircraft and ships which are the subject of Clause 8 of the Bill. They are set out in paragraphs 12 to 15 of Schedule 2.
The noble Lord asked whether or not there should be some special unit at London Airport to which the immigration officer could refer when there are cases of difficulty—when he is in doubt whether to admit a passenger or not. There are two things to be said about that. The first is that of course, when the immigration officer is proposing not to admit somebody, he will invariably refer the case to a more senior officer; and there is an assistant chief inspector—one of the assistant chief inspectors for the whole country—who is resident at

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London Airport. He is a very senior officer indeed. The volume of work is so great that his office is actually in the airport buildings.
But as the noble Lord will know, the United Kingdom Immigrants' Advisory Service, of which the noble Lord, Lord Foot, is chairman, has representatives at the airport, whose task is to help the arriving passenger to know what his rights are, particularly in relation to the appeal system, but they have a somewhat wider welfare function as well. This body is representative of all the voluntary groups concerned with immigrant welfare with the exception of one, and it happens to be one with which the noble Lord is closely acquainted, which decided for reasons of its own not to join with the others in the U.K.I.A.S. I think between us we could debate this for some time, but we must not trespass on the patience of the Committee. There are other points, but I think I ought to follow those up directly with the noble Lord.
LORD WADE: Before we leave Clause 4, I did not move Amendment No. 61 because I thought our concern had been met by the replies of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, to my noble friend Lord Beaumont and myself. But, as a matter of interest, I would like to know what the position is going to be with regard to registers at hotels. Will it be necessary for every hotel to have some new kind of register, or can they make use of the register already in use?
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (LORD ABERDARE): I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway and the noble Lord, Lord Wade. I have been sitting here waiting to say something, and at last they have given me an opportunity. I can reassure the noble Lord that we are not going to become a police State in this respect. The reason why we have registration at hotels at present is that the Aliens Order 1953, as substituted by the Aliens Order 1957, requires every person over 16, including those exempt from immigration control, who stays at a hotel to give his name and nationality on arrival. In addition an alien has to give on arrival particulars
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of his registration certificate, passport or other document establishing his identity and nationality, and, secondly, on or before departure, give his next destination and his address if known. Commonwealth citizens have only an obligation to give name and nationality on arrival.
This Order has to be replaced because all our aliens legislation is repealed, and that is the reason for this subsection. The Home Office will be discussing detailed proposals with chief officers of police. But subject to this, I can tell your Lordships the provisional view of the Government, which will make very little change from the present situation. Patrials over 16 will be required to give their name and nationality on arrival, as at present. Foreign nationals over 16 would have the same obligation to give certain additional information, as at present. Commonwealth citizens over 16 generally will have to give their name and nationality, as at present. The only slight change that is proposed is for the small number of Commonwealth citizens who may be subject to police registration to be required to give the same additional information as foreign nationals. So for the great mass of Commonwealth citizens there will be no change from the present. These regulations will be subject to Negative Resolution procedure if the noble Lord wishes to pray against them.
LORD BROCKWAY: I appreciate the very full statement made by the Minister. I just want to say this to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham. I am just amazed how he can carry on through all these proceedings and all these problems with the dedication which he is showing to this Bill.
On Question, Clause 4 agreed to.
Clause 5 [Procedure for, and farther provisions as to, deportation]:
LORD SHEPHERD: Before the next Amendment is moved, I wonder if the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, could give us any indication of what the Government have in mind this evening. I know what their original target was. I would have thought that that was unattainable unless we sit till an intolerable hour.

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My understanding is that the Government Chief Whip could set aside three further days—two certainly, and possibly one more. We have made very considerable progress. We have dealt with what I would have thought are the more contentious clauses of the Bill. I wonder, in view of the hour, whether this might not be a moment when we could adjourn the Committee. There is also an important Unstarred Question to be considered. If the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, cannot give me an immediate answer perhaps we can proceed with the next Amendment and he will consult meanwhile with his colleagues. I hope the noble Lord will realise that we have made considerable progress, and I think we are within striking distance of achieving, the date that I know the noble Earl, the Chief Whip, has in mind.
LORD ABERDARE: I am grateful to the noble Lord for putting it in that way. We have not made the progress we hoped, but I think that we have made good progress, and your Lordships have been very helpful. Can we at least begin on Clause 5, and I will see what I can find out.
LORD SHEPHERD: May I say to the noble Lord, from my own experience, that no Government Chief Whip ever makes the progress he has in mind?
LORD BROCKWAY LORD BROCKWAY had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 61A:
Page 7, line 7, leave out subsection (3).
The noble Lord said: I shall be helpful in this respect, because I do not propose to press this Amendment, the subject of deportation of families having already been very fully discussed. There has been a Division on it, and therefore I will not move this Amendment.
10.53 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY LORD BROCKWAY moved Amendment No. 63A:
Page 7, line 15, leave out subsection (4).
The noble Lord said: I want very briefly to press this point. It is a proposal for potential deportees that 28 days should be allowed instead of seven days. Seven days is absolutely inadequate for them to obtain the necessary legal advice.
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They are probably in custody; for those in custody there are always difficulties in getting adequate legal consultation, and solicitors must make journeys to see them. It is normal that courts of quarter session or assize grant 28 days for appeal. I should hope that the Government would be prepared to accept this Amendment, which would give these potential deportees 28 days instead of the seven. I beg to move.
LORD WINDLESHAM: I am a little lost—and I think the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner is—in speaking to the Amendment on the Marshalled List.
LORD BROCKWAY: I apologise. Amendment No. 63A is to leave out subsection (4) entirely. I had previously spoken to the deletion of subsection (3), and had withdrawn that Amendment because it dealt entirely with deportation cases. In a sense this Amendment is consequential on the previous one, and therefore I do not press it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
BARONESS WHITE BARONESS WHITE moved Amendment No. 64:
Page 7, line 15, leave out from (" deportation ") to end of line 20, and insert (" a person's family shall be deemed to consist of his or her children under the age of sixteen and, where his or her wife or husband so elects, either wife or husband ").
The noble Baroness said: This Amendment is connected with the earlier discussion we had about family deportation. Here we are seeking to alter the definition of"family"which is at present contained in the Bill. In the first place, we suggest that the appropriate age for children if they are to be included at all in this provision, would be 16 rather than 18. I do not want to labour this point, but I indicated to your Lordships when discussing an earlier Amendment that a young person of 17, almost 18, who would be caught in the provisions at the moment might be relatively independent and living away from home. It seems to us that for this provision 18 is not the right age, and we ask the Government to look at the age of 16 as an alternative.
The other point we make is one which I tried to stress in an earlier discussion, that it should be for the wife, or the husband, as the case might be, to make up their minds whether or not they wish

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to be included with the delinquent spouse, and that therefore they should be included within the definition of"family"only if they so elect. This would get over the difficulty of the estranged wife who is not divorced or legally separated, but who does not wish follow her husband. I hope for the reasons we advanced fairly fully on an earlier Amendment that the Government will be prepared to accept this series of Amendments. If they did so, that would deal with the next four Amendments which, in effect, follow the proposals made in this first one.
LORD WINDLESHAM: Perhaps I could open my reply to the noble Baroness, Lady White, by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, for his very kind personal remarks. He does keep up a record, if I may say so, of persistence and dedication, in putting forward the interests of those he feels have rights which have not been properly considered, which many of us can admire and try to emulate, and he has kept doing it for many more years, I think, than almost anyone else in this Chamber. I think that is something which we would all wish to recognise at a moment of this sort in the course of our Committee proceedings.
The noble Baroness, Lady White, moved this Amendment quite briefly and, as she said, the Amendment goes with Amendments Nos. 65, 66, 67 and 68. They are all concerned with lowering from 18 to 16 the age below which a child is liable to deportation as a member of a family of a person ordered to be deported; secondly, to provide that a husband may be deported as a member of his wife's family, and thirdly, to provide that a person shall be liable to deportation as a member of a family only where the principal deportee and his spouse (if any) so elect. That, in effect, means that there should be no power to deport members of families.
As regards the maximum age of deportation as a member of a family (other than a wife) the Government came to the conclusion that this should be 18 because 18 is the age of majority, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, reminded us in debate on an earlier Amendment, and secondly, that it is up to the age of 18 that children are admitted
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to join their parents. Therefore, when someone comes in and the dependant child is up to the age of 18, it seems consistent that this age of 18 should remain should it be unfortunate enough that a deportation order is signed and someone goes out.
That a child is liable to deportation up to 18 does not invariably mean that the child will be deported. The Home Secretary made it clear in another place that all cases will continue to be carefully reviewed on their merits, as they are now, but it would not be right not to have power to deport up to 18 where the Secretary of State thought this correct and the tribunal, where there was an appeal—if the Committee agrees we will amend the Bill to provide a right of appeal—came to the same conclusion.
As for husbands, Clause 5(4)(b) provides that where the principal deportee is a women it is only her children under 18 who may be deported as members of the family, whereas these Amendments seek to provide that her husband shall also be liable to deportation as belonging to her family. Wives and children enter the United Kingdom as dependants of their husband and father. Rightly or wrongly, that is how they enter the United Kingdom and that is how they have entered for many years. Since they enter in his right they have, as we argued earlier, correspondingly no similar claim to remain if he is then deported. But men cannot enter the United Kingdom in right of their wives, because under immigration policy the United Kingdom does not accept that husbands have a claim to enter in right of their wives.
We have debated this. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, pressed this matter quite hard on, I think, Monday, and I explained—I do not know that I satisfied him—why this is so. Therefore, the position is that a wife has a claim to be in the country of her husband, but not the reverse. In exceptional circumstances—these are set out in paragraph 46 of Cmnd. 4606 (the White Paper on Draft Immigration Rules for control on entry)—a husband may be admitted to join his wife, but the cases are few and would not warrant the taking of a power of the kind proposed in the Amendment. Further, the

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Amendment would make the husband liable to deportation not only in the rare case in which he had entered in right of his wife, but in the much more common case where he had entered in his own right. We do not think this would be equitable.
The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, reminded us of the community relations impact of some of these Amendments—even those concerned very much with punishable offences and legal concepts of that sort in the law—if this House were really to extend the concept, as it would be, of family deportation which noble Lords have already voted against, simply in the interests of consistency. I see the logicality to a certain extent, but, our practice being what it is, I think it would not be appropriate to make this extension, and I wonder what the impact on community relations would then be if it were suggested that the husbands too, should be included.
BARONESS WHITE: At this late hour, I do not think I want to press this Amendment or to argue the point further. But our debate illustrates the difficulties into which one gets on the social side when one enters the field of family deportation. I can understand the logic of the noble Lord's argument on his premises, but we do not accept the premises. For the moment, I leave it at that. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 5 agreed to.
LORD WINDLESHAM: This might be an appropriate moment for me to move that the House do now resume.
House resumed.

ACCOMMODATION OF LONDON"OVERSPILL "
11.5 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY LORD GARNSWORTHY rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what policy they have to secure continued and balanced growth of towns which have agreed development plans to accommodate"overspill"from the Greater London area. The noble Lord said:
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My Lords, I greatly appreciate that any noble Lord should remain to this late hour while I put the Question which stands on the Order Paper in my name. I should not dare to presume on your Lordships but for the fact that I have already postponed this Question once, and I am very conscious that there are a great many people in various parts of the country who are anxious that it should be put, not because the Question itself is important but because they are extremely interested in the reply that Her Majesty's Government give.
The policy of transferring some of London's"overspill"population to towns where new growth was desirable was started by the London County Council, on which the noble Lord, Lord Fiske, served with such distinction; and I have to say that the noble Lord greatly regrets that another very important engagement prevents his being present tonight, because he had hoped that he might be able to take part in the discussion. It was an imaginative policy, and the achievement that has followed its adoption has been impressive. The co-operation between local authorities and the L.C.C. (now, of course, the Greater London Council) has provided for the transfer of families to new homes with jobs—jobs which have also been transferred to these areas of new expansion. It has meant new growth in these districts and new life for the people; and a more purposeful future for the people and for the districts. The receiving areas have needed to provide not only sites for houses and factories, but also essential services: schools, clinics and, if the community is to be happy, amenity services as well, recreational and cultural.
I think I am right in saying that over 30 schemes have been undertaken, extending to places as far apart as Andover, Basingstoke, Bodmin, Luton, Swindon, Wellingborough and Witham; and they have varied in size from a few hundred families to 10,000 or 11,000 families. Several of these areas of new expansion catering for overspill have been located in East Anglia, and I shall mention just a few of them a little later. In particular, I should like to mention Haverhill, which I know fairly well and about which I have asked a number of Questions on previous occasions. Haverhill may not be typical in all respects, but it certainly

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highlights problems which exist elsewhere, varying somewhat according to the size of the expansion scheme. There has been pretty steady expansion in Haverhill since development started, as indeed is the case at most of the other places, and I think it began with the Town Development Act 1952.
Take Haverhill. There, London, the West Suffolk County Council and the Haverhill Urban District Council have carried through expansion from a point of some 4,000 population to a population which, at the present time, is about 12,000 and, it is hoped, will ultimately reach something like 30,000. Services such as clinics, schools, sewerage, playing fields, sports centres and others have been planned on the basis of a population of approximately that size. But growth is not now proceeding in a steady and balanced way. There are in Haverhill at least 500 newly-built houses, built to Parker Morris standards, standing empty; and some of them—far too many of them—have been empty for at least 18 months. The fact of these empty houses in the face of the national housing shortage is, I venture to suggest, nothing short of a tragedy. Some people are saying that it is beginning to approach something of a scandal.
There are, moreover, additional houses in the pipeline. It is true that fairly recently, I think in March, it was decided that new tenders will not be invited for further house construction unless the situation improves, unless more factories, more industries, more businesses, are transferred. But if all expectations, as I understand them, so far as the transfer of industries and business are concerned, are reached, the prospect is that without any additional new building being started there will still be 117 houses standing empty at the end of 1972. In the light of this situation, it would seem to me, and probably to most noble Lords, sensible to call a halt to house building there. But I can see grave danger that if this is done the local building force will be broken up and dispersed, and if and when new factories are wanted, there will be in the locality no efficient construction force existing and it will have to be re-created.
As at December 31, 1970, there were over 2,500 empty houses in these"overspill "
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areas—that is to say, in all of them. In East Anglia, Thetford had 450; Sudbury had 120; King's Lynn 230, and at that time Haverhill had over 400. These houses were built in expectation of continued and balanced growth. I think, therefore, that it is proper and timely that one should ask what has gone wrong. The most obvious answer is to blame the economic climate which has discouraged industrial growth and expansion. One wonders where there has been any lessening of pressure on the part of the Greater London Council, pressure to secure the transfer of businesses. If that question is asked, I ask it tonight only because there are people in the area who are now, and have been for some time past, questioning what is happening. Because in 1968 the Greater London Council, to deal with the situation, provided an estimate figure of £2,850,000, and they actually spent £1,427,000. In 1969, the estimate went up to £2,980,000, and actual expenditure was £2,694,000. In 1970, the figure of expenditure fell to £569,000. In 1971, whereas provision has been made for £1,100,000, I think the actual expenditure is likely to be in the region of £750,000. One rather anticipates that the estimate for 1972 may be lower.
But, my Lords, the situation that I have described is not peculiar to Haverhill. On June 8, in the"Nationwide"series, there was a television broadcast dealing with Sudbury. May I quote from a transcript of the broadcast what was said by Mr. Brian Ash:
" A brand-new housing estate in the town of Sudbury, in Suffolk. Two hundred and fifty-six homes with central heating, garages and all modern conveniences. Delightfully situated in this London overspill town in the heart of the Suffolk countryside.
It's exactly the sort of place that badly-housed, or homeless families in London would dream of living in. In fact, the Greater London Council had these houses built specially, at a cost of more than £2 million to ease the pressure on jobs and homes in London.
But somewhere along the line these plans have gone terribly wrong, because nine months after the first of these houses became available 193 of them are still standing empty."
My Lords, I would quote at greater length but for the lateness of the hour; and what was said about Sudbury could be repeated about a number of other places in East Suffolk.
There are those who are saying that the time has come to look anew at the situation, to take stock; and they are suggesting that these schemes of expansion ought perhaps to be checked. I believe that these schemes for expansion must go on. To allow them to grind to a halt is to run the risk that the places concerned will return to diminishing populations and a position of slow decline. Instead of having well-planned centres of lively and healthy communities, we shall have unrealised ambitions, unfulfilled hopes. My Lords, too much has been invested to allow that to happen.
I want to ask: are the Government doing all they can to ensure steady and continuous development? Is everything possible being done to persuade firms who come forward, for instance, in the South East, interested in moving, but unwilling to go to the assisted areas? Is everything being done that could be done to persuade them to consider moving to expansion areas? Could more be done to encourage more offers of development there? One wonders why the Government decided recently to transfer a Government office to a place like Southend. Would not the office have been better transferred to East Anglia? Could industry be transferred, say, from Essex; and could workers be transferred from London to fill the positions in the factories? Are the Government satisfied that there is full liaison between the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department responsible for housing, the Department of the Environment? I should have liked to dwell on that, but I put the point quite simply: ought there in East Anglia to be some real centre of growth, some really large centre of growth, some real new town development? Where it could be located is a matter for consideration, but I know that my noble friend Lord Greenwood of Rossendale was once of the opinion that Ipswich could very well have such a centre. I know that there are those who feel that perhaps Bury St. Edmunds could be built up to advantage.
Then, my Lords, there is the need to consider the future. When I go to Haverhill I see young people going to and coming from school, and having in mind the range of their abilities and their career expectation, I would ask that every
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effort be made to ensure, what I think is not happening at the present time, that there should be provided for them where they live a range of opportunities which match their talents and abilities. I doubt whether at the present time they exist in Haverhill; I doubt whether they exist in any of these places, expanded towns, as we call them, to-day. If we do not make provision for the young people, who will all too soon be leaving school, to obtain employment in the areas where they are now growing up, and if they have to leave those areas, then the future of those new expanding towns will as surely be threatened as was Haverhill in the days when it was a declining small town.
In these areas are homes, empty houses, attractive houses, capable of being attractive homes in healthy and pleasing surroundings. I asked earlier what has gone wrong. May I conclude by asking what the Government are doing to put matters right in these areas, where steady and balanced development is desirable and essential. I hope that we shall not be told:"Wait until the proposals that were outlined by the Chancellor of the Exchequer this week begin to take effect." Something more than that is needed, my Lords. The people responsible for government in these areas at local level are entitled to some indication that the Central Government are not only aware of the situation which confronts them but are in fact going to give them a great deal more support than many of them feel they have had in the past. May I end by repeating my sense of obligation to those who have been indulgent to listen at this late hour?
11.23 p.m.
LORD O'HAGAN: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, may be wondering why I am speaking and at this hour—and so am I. The reason is that I have been recently to Haverhill, in Suffolk, one of these"overspill"towns. I had wanted to see one for some time, and when my noble friend Lord Garnsworthy offered me the bait of a conducted tour, I went. My qualifications for speaking are that visit and that visit alone. I was most impressed by the amenities offered, and by the housing, especially with the market. For example, I saw some council houses, with rents of £5·06, with four bedrooms and central heating,

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in extremely attractive surroundings. But there are not enough jobs available in the area, and so literally hundreds of these houses are standing empty. I am not competent to judge the planning and economic factors involved in the total strategy, but in Haverhill there are these lovely houses empty, at a time of national housing shortage, and it seems to me an awful waste. Somehow, employment must be attracted there; otherwise, these houses will have been built for nothing, and otherwise, in the long run, the children of those who are already there will drift away to search for jobs which ought to be in Haverhill. How ridiculous it would be if this brave attempt to help to deal with London's overcrowding should end up by being a ghost town!
11.25 p.m.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, I should like to ask for your Lordships' indulgence for a brief moment. The Question that my noble friend has put before the House is one that is surely of great importance to the future of this country. We are concerned with the whole problem of development throughout the country, and here we have an area which has already been recognised as one in which development can take place and where money has already been spent. I would draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that this case is not unique, although it is important, and that there are areas throughout the whole country where, if we do not carry out development, we shall continue to build up in one congested area an excess population, and we shall fail to develop the full resources of the country. I come from another part of the country which also has great problems, and without Government help it will be impossible to get this development. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, who is to reply, will be able to give us some assurance that it is the policy of the Government to see that there is not an excessive congestion in one part of the country at the expense of us all.
11.27 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, the subject that the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, has raised is an important one. It relates to the overall planning problems of South-East England and to London's housing problem in particular,
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but the hour is late for an extensive debate upon it, and therefore I shall be fairly brief. A total of over 100,000 houses have been built in New Towns linked with London, and about 42,000 in expanding towns. For the future, we can look to substantial benefits to be gained from the development of Milton Keynes, Northampton and Peterborough (where over 90,000 houses are to be built), and there remain some 20,000 houses to be completed in other New Towns and some 45,000 in town development schemes in progress or approved. The Greater London Council are also considering the possibility of certain additional town development schemes by way of implementing the intention, which they have stated in the Greater London Development Plan, of exporting some 20,000 people a year to their expanding towns.
The situation which we now face in relation to London's"overspill"has in fact altered in one significant respect in recent years. Contrary to the earlier expectations of planners, we are witnessing a continued fall in London's population, a fall which owes more to spontaneous movements of people than to planned"overspill ". It is perhaps understandable that many who have noted this phenomenon have asked whether there is any longer a case for planned"overspill"from London.
My right honourable friend, the Secretary of State for the Environment, will before long announce the Government's conclusions on a long-term strategy for the South-East in the light of the regional study published last year. He is nevertheless convinced—as indeed are the G.L.C. themselves—that, quite apart from longer-term needs, a continuing and effective overspill"programme is necessary for London throughout the remainder of this decade. The fact is that, although London's population is falling, there remain conditions of serious housing need in the Inner London Boroughs, and the need for new dwellings will be continually added to year by year as more and more houses come to the end of their useful life. Even allowing for high rates of house building within London itself, there is no hope of meeting London's housing needs in the '70s without a continuing"overspill"programme.

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It is against this background that I now turn to the particular problems facing us on individual town development schemes. It is essential that in the furtherance of this dynamic process of redistributing people and jobs we must establish viable and balanced communities. Where an existing town is being substantially expanded, the task of grafting the new on to the old is a highly skilled one, and the whole process of maintaining a balanced inflow of people and jobs is complex and difficult. At the present time, as has been pointed out, several town development schemes, mainly in East Anglia, are facing problems of empty houses: and, as the noble Lord, Lord Gainsworthy, has said, there is a particular problem at Haverhill, where at the last count there were over 442 empty houses. In any period of rapid expansion, towns taking"overspill"need a balance of empty houses as an attraction for industrialists, and there is nothing unusual in having a balance of up to 100 empty houses at any one time in any one place. However, in Haverhill and certain other towns the number of empty houses is currently very much larger than this, partly because of general investment trends and partly because of individual firms cutting their demands for houses.
The noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, has rightly laid some stress on the part which can be played by the Government in diverting new employment to expanding towns, and subject to the prior requirements of assisted areas—and nobody has disagreed with that side of the policy—it is the Government's policy to encourage the movement of industry to new and expanding towns when administering I.D.C. policies. But I must emphasise that we have to reckon with a general shortage of industry ready to move in relation to all the demands presented by regional economic policies, and we must continue to give general priority to those areas with substantial unemployment problems. The Government are accordingly prepared to consider the problems of Haverhill sympathetically in this respect, but it is not thought right to single the town out for the same priority treatment as an assisted area. We must therefore look to the general improvement of the economy as the basis for renewed
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growth and prosperity in expanding towns. The foundations for this improvement were laid earlier this year in the Budget, and more recently my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced further measures.
However, the need remains to take direct action on the current situation. The G.L.C. are already re-phasing their building programmes in towns with a surplus of empties and some of the surplus is being disposed of to meet local needs. Moreover, as my honourable friend the Minister for Housing and Construction, announced in a debate in another place on Thursday of last week, agreement has been reached with the G.L.C. on a number of measures designed to produce an early impact on the situation by relaxing the rules governing the occupation of empty houses which are surplus. First, it is proposed to allow occupation by any eligible Londoner (that is, any London local authority tenant, waiting list or I.S.S. registrant) who has obtained a job in an expanding town, regardless of whether he has obtained his job through the I.S.S. or his degree of housing need or skill. Secondly, it is proposed to allow occupation by any skilled Londoner who has found a job in a shortage trade. Thirdly, it is proposed, subject to the agreement of the local authorities, to grant tenancies to any retired person and any Londoner (with or without a job in the town in question) who already occupies a local authority dwelling in London. Fourthly, in addition, it is the intention to encourage more sales and to investigate the possibility of inviting housing associations to nominate a quota of people in housing need to particular expanding towns.
My Lords, we are confident that all these measures will help to redress the present situation and, in so doing, make a further contribution to relieving London's housing needs. So far as Haverhill is concerned, there is in any event a significant prospect of improvement. The G.L.C. expect that Sainsbury's will take up to 100 houses later this year, and that in the following year they will provide jobs for a further 170 workers. I appreciate that it may be necessary for some of these jobs to go to workers made

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redundant by Holpak, but there is a prospect that a firm will be found to take over Holpak's premises and that some, at least, of the workers will be re-employed there. I should prefer not to comment further on this at the present stage.
My Lords, from all that I have said, it is, I trust, clear that the Government's long-term policies are directed to securing a continuing balanced growth in towns taking"overspill"from London. While any programme of this comprehensive long-term kind is bound to throw up problems from time to time, we are confident that for the most part they can be overcome, and we are satisfied that in the long term new and expanding towns have an important part to play in implementing regional strategies.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, could he enlighten the House about the activities of the Location of Industries Bureau? Has it extended its activities, or is it contracting them? Has it been in receipt of an
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increased number of applications or a reduced number of applications, or is it in the process of putting up its shutters?
LORD SANDFORD: No, my Lords; it is not in the process of putting up its shutters. That is a rather different subject, and I would rather not answer the noble Lord's question without notice. If he puts down a Question I will certainly answer it.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, is it not the Location of Offices Bureau, and not the Location of Industries Bureau?

GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL
D. & J. FOWLER LIMITED AND ASSOCIATED COMPANY BILL
Reported, without amendment.
House adjourned at twenty-three minutes before midnight.