Lords Sitting of 2 March 1971

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Norwich):
The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

CARAVAN PARKS ON RACECOURSES
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the unanimous opinion expressed in this House on January 26, and of the fact that the Devon and Exeter racecourse at Haldon has been refused permission for a touring caravan park, they will issue an appropriate directive or guidance to local planning authorities.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): No, my Lords. Her Majesty's Government welcome the idea of using racecourses for touring caravan parks, but to issue directives on the matter would be to interfere too much in the right of local authorities to run local affairs. Furthermore, the Countryside Commission and the British Tourist Authority have already invited local authorities to consider such proposals with favour.
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: While thanking the noble Lord for his Answer, my Lords, I cannot help wondering why, after three applications and a year's waiting, it was only at 11.30 o'clock yesterday morning that the racecourse received permission to go ahead, and for 30 sites only. Why, after support from the Countryside Commission, the B.T.A. and many other organisations, are 13 out of the 18 racecourse applications still
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outstanding? Is there any "anti-private enterprise" feeling behind it?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am certainly not aware of that; in fact I hope that rather the reverse is true. There are a number of important, detailed planning considerations to be taken into account in all these cases. The noble Lord will know that in the case of the racecourse referred to in his Question one of the problems which had to be overcome was the question of access to a trunk road. I am sure that this movement deserves encouragement, but I am equally sure that each particular case has to be judged and considered carefully on its merits.
THE EARL OF CROMARTIE: My Lords, in view of the fact, brought out in the last debate we had on this subject, that many parts of England, Wales and Scotland are being entirely ruined by the spread of caravan parks, would not the Minister agree that it would be valuable to give some encouragement—even if not in the form of a directive—that local authorities should look very carefully into the use of caravan parks on racecourses? Secondly, would the Minister be kind enough to let me know what has so far been done in the way of acquiring, or attempting to acquire, sites for caravan sites?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am satisfied that encouragement is being given, as I said, from the Countryside Commission, the British Tourist Board and our own Department. So far as I know, there is no question of acquisition in any of these cases; it is a matter of planning application in the first instance, and then site licences to run the caravan sites on certain selected racecourses. As most noble Lords will know from our debate of a few days ago, there are about 11 courses under active consideration at this moment.
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: While thanking the noble Lord for his Answer, my Lords, I cannot help wondering why, after three applications and a year's waiting, it was only at 11.30 o'clock yesterday morning that the racecourse received permission to go ahead, and for 30 sites only. Why, after support from the Countryside Commission, the B.T.A. and many other organisations, are 13 out of the 18 racecourse applications still
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord realises that what I am particularly worried about is that something should be done before the height of the coming summer season, so that we may avoid a repetition of the crisis that we had in South Devon in regard to this matter.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, yes, I recognise that.

MAGISTRATES' SUBSISTENCE ALLOWANCE
LORD JANNER: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are now prepared to make the long-delayed payment of subsistence allowance to magistrates who give their valuable service to the public in courts which are less than three miles from their places of residence; and what the cost would be to the State.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD WINDLESHAM): Yes, my Lords. The Government intend to do so early in the next financial year. Loss-of-earnings allowances for justices of the peace will be introduced at the same time. The estimated cost of these changes in England and Wales is £500,000 in a full year.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, may I offer my thanks, and also the thanks of the magistrates concerned, for at long last receiving the promise of payment of subsistence allowance? We are grateful to the Minister for having taken up the matter.

M.I.D.A.S. COST/BENEFIT STUDY
2.35 p.m.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what decision they have reached about further studies of the MIDAS proposal put forward by the National Ports Council in autumn, 1966.]
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, it has been decided not to proceed with the cost/benefit study of MIDAS which was to have been carried out by a team at Queen Mary College, London. Instead we will conduct a more limited investigation of the likely long-term needs of
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bulk-processing industries for coastal sites adjacent to deep water. This study will be carried out by officials who will be
consulting the industries concerned and such outside professional advice as may be necessary. The National Ports Council have agreed to assist.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Earl for that reply, which repeats a Press statement that was issued the other day. May I ask him, first, how long this study is to take, having regard to the fact that the matter has been under discussion now for more than four years; and secondly, what are the terms of reference? I should like to know also whether specific sites will be considered and examined, and what industries will be consulted.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, my noble friend has asked how long the study will take. It is difficult to say, but work upon it is to start immediately and the preliminary results, at least, should be available by the end of the year. This is an inter-departmental inquiry which will be supported by the National Ports Council, and they will take into account the views of many organisations. It is not specifically designed for any one specific area.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, does the noble Earl's first Answer indicate that Her Majesty's Government do not regard a cost/benefit analysis as utterly reliable?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, it is not intended to indicate that.
THE EARL, OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether the time has now come to publish the Halcrow Report, or at least to make it available to merchant banks and industrial and trade associations that may be interested, from the private enterprise point of view, in developing maritime industrial development areas?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the Halcrow Report was produced as a result of action by the National Ports Council and the Ministry of Transport. It has not been the practice to publish such reports, but I will certainly draw the attention of my right honourable friend to the noble Earl's suggestion.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, when the Government give the go-ahead for Foulness airport, will they bear in mind that the local planning authority is in favour of a minor seaport adjoining Foulness, but not in favour of a major seaport of the kind known as MIDAS?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the noble Lord's question is bound to be hypothetical, but should it be found to be practical, I am sure that the appropriate authorities will take account of the noble Lord's views.

FISHING VESSEL GRANTS
LORD HOY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a statement on the Fishing Vessels (Acquisition and Improvements) (Grants) (Amendment) Scheme approved by this House on February 12, and withdrawn by Her Majesty's Government in the House of Commons on February 25.]
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, my right honourable friends are currently considering the position of this Scheme in the light of the Report by the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments in another place. I am sure the House will agree that it would be wrong for me to anticipate at this stage the outcome of their deliberations, but I hope to be in a position to make a further statement as soon as possible.
LORD HOY: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for his Answer. This is a difficult matter. This House approved the Order on February 2 and apparently it is found to be ultra vires. I should like to ask the noble Earl what the position of the trawler owners is in this respect. Are they to be allowed to claim grant at the old rate of 40 per cent., or are they going to suffer the 25 per cent. cut which the Government have laid down'? The Order for the cuts has not been approved. May I put a second question to the Leader of the House? Inasmuch as the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments in another place have found an Order approved by the Special Orders Committee of this House to be ultra
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vires how does he propose to resolve that question'?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the situation is precisely the same as it was before the Order was placed in front of the House. The Order was passed by your
Lordships' House, and of course it has now gone to another place, where the Select Committee have requested that it should be looked at again. Of course the Government have had respect for the Select Committee, and are having another look at the Order. With regard to the question of what happens to the trawler owners, they are in the same position as they were before the Order was first introduced.
LORD HOY: My Lords, are they in the same position? Is not the noble Earl now saying that any owner who applies for a grant under the old Scheme will receive 40 per cent., and that this Order, which has proved to be ultra vires, and which grants only 30 per cent., will not be operative? Is he in fact now telling your Lordships' House that the old grant of 40 per cent. will be available to owners who make application?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the noble Lord is digging an elephant trap into which I have no intention of falling. I can assure the noble Lord that that was not what I intended to convey. In fact, the Order was designed to make alterations from a specific date, and because it was designed to make alterations from this date all applications for grant have been held up until this Order has been given Parliamentary approval. Until that time, these applications will continue to be held up.
LORD HOY: My Lords, is the noble Earl saying that no grants at all are being paid at the present time, and that from October 27 of last year until now no single grant has been available to the fishing industry of this country?
EARL FERRERS: No, my Lords, that is not correct. Anyone who has applied for a grant for a fishing vessel can continue to apply for it, and the White Fish Authority can continue to go through all the processes which are necessary before payment of grant is made. The actual payment of grant, however, has not yet been made.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this is a very important matter for the fishing industry. In view of the grave uncertainty that arises because of the views that are held in another place, will the noble Earl undertake that a statement will be made by the Government as soon as possible?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, that is what I said in my original Answer.
LORD HOY: My Lords, may I repeat my question to the noble Earl the Leader of the House? In fact, we are in dispute—
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, I do not think it is necessary for the noble Lord to repeat his question. I was going to intervene at this stage, and I should like to reaffirm what my noble friend Lord Ferrers has said, that naturally we will make a statement on this matter as soon as possible. I clearly recognise that, in the situation that has arisen, it is necessary to allay any natural anxieties which may be felt. But, I should like to ask the noble Earl the Chairman of Committees, as the Chairman of the Special Orders Committee, to say a word on this technical point.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, out of courtesy to the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, as he asks a question about the Report of the Special Orders Committee on this Order, I should explain what that Report was. The Report was merely a draft description of the Order, which I will not repeat to the House because I do not wish to weary it with this description. The Special Orders Committee made no comment on the vires of the Order. The reason why no comment was made was that the Committee took the view that this Order was not ultra vires, because it was within the power of the Minister retrospectively to reduce the amount of grant paid because it had not been approved. That was the view that was taken by the Special Orders Committee.
LORD HOY: My Lords, I do not want to continue this discussion any longer, but I must ask the noble Earl whether it is not a fact that, before the Special Orders Committee reported to this House,
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they had to study the Order and say whether or not it was in order?
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, the Order has been very carefully considered by the Special Orders Committee and I do not think the noble Lord has revealed any new facts. The decision in another place was of course different; but both Houses of Parliament are entitled to express a view on any Affirmative Order which comes before them for consideration, and the views taken by the two Houses may be different.

DEPUTY CHAIRMEN OF COMMITTEES
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Lord Alport and the Lord Hood be appointed to the panel of Lords to act as Deputy Chairmen of Committees for this Session.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

BOURNEMOUTH CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and committed to a Select Committee.
SCUNTHORPE CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and committed to a Select Committee.

PROCEDURE OF THE HOUSE
2.46 p.m.
THE EARL, OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now considered.
Moved, That the Report be now considered.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
The Committee's Report was as follows:
1. MOTIONS EN BLOC
The Committee have reviewed the present practice of the House in regard to the taking of Business en bloc, e.g. in grouping amendments which are connected, consequential, or purely drafting. They have considered whether,

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and if so under what conditions, the practice of moving, and putting the Question on, several Motions en bloc should be extended to—

(a) Special Orders

(b) Private Bills

(c) Provisional Order Confirmation Bills

Special Orders
The Committee have taken note of two recent occasions on which Special Orders were moved, and the Question on them put to the House en bloc—

(a) December 10. 1970: Leave was granted (on the specific Motion of the Leader of the House) to move the approval en bloc of nineteen Draft Consular Relations (Privileges and Immunities) Orders;

(b) December 15, 1970: Four Agricultural Grant Schemes were moved and approved together—

Farm Capital Grant Scheme

Farm Capital Grant (Scotland) Scheme

Plouching Grants (Variation) Scheme

Ploughing Grants (Scotland) (Variation) Scheme.

The Committee agree that these Special Orders had in each case sufficient affinity to justify their being en bloc. They see no objection to such groups of Special Orders being moved and approved by the House en bloc, subject to certain safeguards. They do not attempt to define the degree of affinity which a group of Special Orders ought to have in order to qualify for en bloc procedure. This is a matter for the Minister in charge in the first instance and thereafter for each individual member of the House to consider, on every occasion when an en bloc Motion is moved.
The Committee draw attention to the fact that Special Orders (which are Statutory Instruments requiring the Affirmative Resolution of the House) derive from a large variety of Acts, which prescribe the conditions for bringing those Instruments into effect or keeping them in force. These conditions can and do vary from Act to Act. It is the responsibility of the Minister who moves the approval of a Special Order to ensure that the terms of the parent Act have been complied with, and not least that the wording of the Motion before the House fulfils the requirements of the Act.
The Committee recommend that en bloc Motions relating to Special Orders may be moved provided that—

(1) Notice of such a Motion shall appear in the Order Paper on at least two consecutive sitting days before the day on which the Motion is due to be taken;

(2) such a Motion may be moved only with the unanimous leave of the House; and if any single Lord objects (whether before, or at the time when, the Motion is taken in the House) the constituent parts of the Motion shall be moved separately to the extent desired;

(3) on the occasion of each such Motion the House shall be reminded of the right of any Lord to object.

The Committee have considered whether to incorporate these conditions in a Standing Order. They conclude that until the recommended procedure has been tried out and acquired a settled and accepted form, it would be better not to ask the House to bind itself to the precise terms of a Standing Order.
Private Bills and Provisional Order Confirmation Bills
The Committee have also considered extending the en bloc procedure to these two categories of Bill. They have decided, however, not to recommend such an extension at the present time as they are of opinion that, until the new practice has been tested in relation to Special Orders, it would be premature to consider a further extension to these types of Bill. Meanwhile, however, they recommend that—

(a) the Lord Chairman be given discretionary power to set down Private Bills at the end of the day's Business, as well as before Public Business, with the understanding that he will not ordinarily set down more than two per day before Public Business;

(b) Provisional Order Confirmation Bills be removed from their present high place in the Order of Business and be treated in future as ordinary Public Bills. This would, in effect, give discretion to the Government to set them down in an appropriate place in each day's Business.

2. THE "ADDISON RULES"; MEMBERS OF PUBLIC BOARDS
The guidance given on pages 63–64 of the Companion to Lords who are Members of Public Boards (known as the "Addison Rules") was referred by the Committee to a Sub-Committee. After considering the Report of the Sub-Committee, the Committee conclude that no change of substance is required in the guidance but recommend that the introductory paragraph should be amended to read as follows:—
"A Lord who is a member of a public board, whether commercial or non-commercial in character, is not by reason of such membership debarred from exercising his right to speak in the House of Lords, even on matters affecting the board of which he is a member; and it is recognised that, in the last resort, only the Lord concerned can himself decide whether he can properly speak on a particular occasion.
The following guidance (based upon that given by the then Leader of the House, Viscount Addison, on March 21, 1951, after consultation and agreement between the Parties) may be helpful to Lords who are considering whether or not to take part in a particular debate—"
3. MANUSCRIPT AMENDMENTS
The Committee have considered the practice of the House in regard to the moving of manuscript amendments, both in Committee and on Report, and do not favour any change in the substance of the rules, but recommend that the guidance of the Companion be redrafted as follows—
(1) In Committee
"Manuscript amendments, that is to say, amendments of which Notice has not been given, may be moved in Committee. This practice has great disadvantages, in that other Members of the House will not have had an opportunity of considering the terms of such amendments and may be deprived of the opportunity of moving amendments to them.
Whenever possible, therefore, Notice should be given of any amendment. Occasionally a manuscript amendment is justified, as, for instance, in order to correct an amendment already tabled, or when an amendment under consideration is objected to, and it is clear that with slight alteration of language it would become acceptable to the Committee.
While any Lord may move a manuscript amendment, it is for the general convenience of the House that it should seldom he done."
(2) On Report
"Manuscript amendments, are not out of order on Report, but the disadvantages and inconvenience referred to in the note on the moving of manuscript amendments in Committee (see page above) are even greater on Report than at the Committee stage."
The Committee further recommend that when a manuscript amendment is moved, the text of the manuscript amendment should, unless the House otherwise directs, be read out to the House, not only by the Mover, but also by the Lord in the Chair (or on the Woolsack) in putting the Question to the House; and that this should be included in the revised Companion.
4. DIVISIONS
On January 13, 1971, the Chairman of Committees sought the Leave of the House to refer back section 6 (Divisions) of the First Report of the Procedure Committee for this Session, because he had received representations that not all members of the Committee were in full agreement with the wording of that section of the Report.
The Committee have further considered and amended section 6 of the First Report, and now make the following recommendation to the House:—
"DIVISIONS
The proceedings in the House on the Second Reading of the Shops (Sunday Trading) Bill on Thursday, December 10, revealed an ambiguity in the wording of Standing Order 48 which does not state in terms what the procedure should be in circumstances where Tellers are not appointed before the lapse of four minutes from the calling of a Division.
The Committee recommend that Standing Order 48 be amended to make clear that two Tellers each for the Contents and the Not-Contents must be appointed, and each Lord appointed a Teller must receive a Teller's Wand from the Clerk at the Table, by the time that four minutes have elapsed; and that if by that time either side has failed to appoint Tellers, a Division cannot
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take place and the Lord on the Woolsack or in the Chair shall, instead of again putting the Question, say the words recommended by the Second Report of the Procedure Committee on July 16, 1969, and agreed to by the House as follows—
"My Lords, Tellers for the Contents [Not-Contents] have not been appointed pursuant to Standing Order 48 and, therefore, a Division cannot take place and I declare that the Not-Contents [Contents] have it."
The Committee recommend that this should be recorded in the revised Companion."
5. DISCHARGE OF THE ORDER OF RE-COMMITMENT
The Committee have reviewed the procedure under which, subject to certain safeguards, the Order of Commitment may be discharged, if no amendment has been set down to a Bill and no Notice has been given by any Lord of his intention to move a manuscript amendment or to speak to a particular clause (First Report of the Procedure Committee, agreed to by the House on May 12, 1970).
They have considered whether the procedure should be extended to apply to Bills that are re-committed. They conclude that the procedure should be so extended, subject to the same safeguards. Accordingly, they recommend—
(i) that Standing Order 43 be amended as follows—
line 10, after ("commitment") insert ("(or re-commitment)"); and
(ii) that the Lord who is to move the discharge of the Order of Re-commitment should use the following words—
"My Lords,
This Bill has [not] been amended by the [Joint] Select Committee on
. I understand that no [further] amendments have been set down to the Bill, and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript amendment, or to speak in Committee (on Re-commitment). Unless, therefore, any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the Order of Re-commitment be discharged."
The Committee welcome the undertaking given by the Lord Chancellor that, whether or not he is moving the discharge of the Order of Re-commitment in relation to a Bill which has been referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills, he will indicate the category into which the Bill falls and will draw the attention of the House to the Report of the Joint Committee.
6. GROUP ON THE WORKING OF THE HOUSE
The Leader of the House informed the Committee that he proposed to set up a small informal Group, drawn from all Parties and the Cross Benches, to advise him upon the working of the House.
The Committee welcome the proposal of the Leader of the House to set up this informal Group to assist him and have agreed that it would be appropriate for such a Group to be serviced by the Clerks.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, before the House accepts this Report, may I ask the Lord Chairman of Committees, or perhaps the noble Earl the Leader of the House, to inform us a little more deeply on the final paragraph, No. 6, of the Report? I should like to know, and perhaps some other noble Lords would like to know, a little more about this informal Group, because obviously it is to be a Committee of some importance if it is to be serviced by the Clerks. One would ask the noble Earl the. Leader of the House, or the Lord Chairman of Committees, how the selection is to take place; what size of Committee is envisaged, and what scope of advice they would give to the Leader of the House? I understand that we have the usual channels; that we have certain procedural Committees; that we have negotiations going on in the usual way between Her Majesty's Government and the Opposition, and I am a little puzzled to know why there is a need for this Committee. I am still more puzzled to know how the selection is going to be made, who are to be the personnel, and what their duties will be, particularly as they are, as it were, semi-official if they are serviced by the Clerks.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for raising this point, as it gives me an opportunity to say what is in mind here. The position is in fact very simple: it is as stated in the Report before your Lordships, but perhaps I could add just this by way of explanation. I was asked by the Procedure Committee some months ago, just before Christmas, whether I could take a number of matters on board affecting the working of your Lordships' House. I think it is clear to everyone in your Lordships' House who has had some long knowledge of it—and many of your Lordships have had much longer knowledge than I have—that although our functions have not changed in any material respect, our numbers have increased. This has thrown up certain practical problems so far as the working of your Lordships' House is concerned. I was asked by the Procedure Committee whether I could advise on a number of these matters.
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that all these matters were part and parcel of a somewhat larger problem so far as concerns the working
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of your Lordships' House in the conditions of 1971. Therefore I thought it would be helpful to me, when I reported to the Procedure Committee, if I could have the benefit of advice from a very small informal group. It will be for me to accept or reject the advice which is given to me by that group, and they are perfectly free to give me any advice they can. I think they will be consulting Members of your Lordships' House, but I should like to make it clear that it is not their responsibility; it is my responsibility. I was asked by the Procedure Committee to let them have my ideas on certain matters in connection with the working of the House and I thought that this small group would be able to help me.
For your Lordships' information, those Members of your Lordships' House whom I have asked to form the group are in fact my noble friend Lord Aberdare, the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, the noble Lord, Lord Byers—who is, I think, away at the present time—and the noble Earl, Lord Perth. This was not meant to be particularly representative; I just wanted to ask a number of noble Lords who had experience of the working of the House to give me the benefit of their advice. But the responsibility for the advice which I shall give to the Procedure Committee will be mine, and it will of course be the responsibility of the Procedure Committee to do with my advice whatever they wish. I hope that explains the situation to my noble friend.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I beg to move, That this Report be now agreed to.
Moved, That the Report be agreed to.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I have one simple question to ask. Will the report of this Committee of four Peers be available to the Members of your Lordships' House?
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, the form that the report will take in the first place will be a report to the Procedure Committee from the noble Earl the Leader of the House, as he has explained. The Procedure Committee will then decide whether or not to approve that report. If they approve the report, then the report will come before the

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House in the same way as this and every other report of the Committee.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, may I raise one point of doubt? I just wonder whether the Committee have succeeded in saying what they meant to say. The paragraph to which I allude is paragraph 4, relating to Divisions. I believe it is the intention of this paragraph to give clear directions to the occupant of the Chair (whether it is the Woolsack or the Chair), as to what to do in certain cases of Divisions, but what it says is this:
"The Committee recommend that Standing Order 48 be amended to make clear that two Tellers each for the Contents and the Non-Contents must be appointed, and each Lord appointed a Teller must receive a Teller's Wand from the Clerk at the Table, by the time that four minutes have elapsed:"
Nothing is said about what happens if the Teller has not received such a Wand. But the paragraph goes on:
"and that if by that time either side has failed to appoint Tellers,"—
then it goes on with what should happen.
It seems to be assumed that a side will have failed to appoint a Teller if the Teller has not received a Wand, but it does not state that. The question of appointing a Teller and of the Teller's receiving a Wand are, in that paragraph, quite separate things, and, it seems to me, no certain guidance is given to the occupant of the Chair as to what he is to do in the case where a Teller has been appointed but where the Teller has not received a Wand. My Lords, I apologise for raising this matter, but the moment I read the document the point struck me. It may be that all this has been considered and the able lawyers who no doubt are advising the Committee have advised that the receiving of a Wand is part of the process of appointing a Teller. All I can say is that, simply construing the document as best I can, I do not think that that follows in the least.
THE EARL, OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I think the Committee will be in entire agreement with the noble Lord that a Teller is appointed only when he receives a Wand. The Committee did their best with the drafting of this Report, but their best may not haw been good enough. I can assure the noble Lord that I will look into the point very carefully and if the drafting is not satisfactory
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I will bring it before the Committee at their next meeting.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COAL INDUSTRY BILL
Brought from the Commons on Friday last and printed, pursuant to Standing Order No. 46; read 1a.
MR. SPEAKER KING'S RETIREMENT BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

MINERAL WORKINGS (OFFSHORE INSTALLATIONS) BILL [H.L.]
2.58 p.m.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Earl Ferrers.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Application of Act]:
On Question, whether Clause 1 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I hope your Lordships will not think that I am wandering a little wide of the main objective of the Bill, which I think everyone understands, if I ask for clarification about the role of suction dredgers in relation to this particular measure. It has a certain relevance in view of the various Amendments which are to be moved to later clauses of the Bill.
At the moment we are really only talking about the exploration and exploitation of mineral resources, thinking in terms of natural gas and crude oil, but I should like to ask the noble Lord who is speaking for the Government whether he could confirm my interpretation that this Bill as drafted might apply to suction dredgers. As your Lordships will be aware, very substantial quantities of sand and gravel are extracted by suction

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dredgers from the United Kingdom part of the Continental Shelf. Strangely enough, a great deal of this gravel does not come to this country but goes, for instance, to Rotterdam, where Europort is being built with what is in fact British gravel from the Continental Shelf. The royalties are paid upon its extraction to, I believe, the Duchy of Cornwall, although I am not absolutely certain of that.
As I see it, "exploitation" means, according to Clause 1(3):
"For purposes of this Act 'underwater exploitation' or 'underwater exploration' means exploitation or exploration from or by means of any floating or other installation which is maintained in the water"—
and so on. I should have thought that this would apply to a suction dredger, which is a floating installation occupied in the exploitation of a mineral resource on the Continental Shelf. I should be most grateful if the noble Earl who is answering for the Government could clarify this point.
LORD HAWKE: There is one other category which might conceivably come into this and that is treasure hunters. If treasure hunters are known to be after mineral treasure, would a ship, anchored, from which they can carry out their diving and so on, be a "floating or other installation which is maintained in the water", and would that said treasure, whether bullion or cannon and so on, be "mineral resources"?
EARL FERRERS: The noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, started off with an ingenious suggestion, only to be paralleled by one put forward by my noble friend Lord Hawke. I speak subject to correction, but the Bill of course refers to mineral workings which are carried on offshore, and, as Lord Winterbottom says, in Clause 1(3) "underwater exploitation" or "underwater exploration" means:
"…exploitation or exploration from or by means of any floating or other installation which is maintained in the water, or on the foreshore or other land … and is not connected with dry land by a permanent structure.…"
In so far as the dredger falls within that category whereby it is not connected to the land and is in fact dredging for
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minerals, then that dredger would come within the purview of this Bill.
I am not quite certain what my noble friend Lord Hawke had in mind. I think he had in mind somebody setting off on a boat and doing a little bit of treasure hunting. This would probably not be included if it was simply from the point of view of exploring for treasure as opposed to specific mineral exploitation.
LORD HAWKE: I am sure that my noble friend intends the Bill not to apply to treasure hunters. But I was thinking particularly of the Tobermory case, where I think dredgers and such things were employed. I remember a case in this House—I think it was under the Rag Flock and Other Filling Materials Act—which was intended to apply to factories tensing mattresses but by mistake took in all the parrot stuffers in the country. I think this may be a parallel case.
EARL FERRERS: I shall certainly look into the point that my noble friend has raised. I hope this Bill does not result in having any effect on parrot stuffers because they would find themselves stuffed with a most unusual material.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 [Registration of offshore installations]:
LORD WINTERBOTTOM LORD WINTERBOTTOM moved, Amendment No. 1:
Page 2, line 39, at end insert:
"( ) for specifying standards of competence to be attained (subject to any exceptions allowed by or under the regulations) by the master or other members of the crew of installations,".
The noble Lord said: I rise to move the Amendment standing in the name of my noble friend, Lord Brown. Perhaps it would be for the convenience of the Committee if we took the three Amendments together; they all deal with the same point, which is ensuring the competence of the individual who is appointed master at one of these rigs. Noble Lords who attended the Second Reading debate on this Bill or who have read Hansard subsequently will recollect the argument of my noble friend, Lord Brown. He pointed out, and in my view correctly, that when a man was appointed the master of a ship, or when he was

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appointed the manager of a mine, important standards of professional knowledge were expected of him, and those standards were in fact confirmed by a form of certification: that he was a certified master mariner or certified engineer. All this Bill does at the moment is to make the definition which comes in Clause 4 a very loose one, if I may put it that way.
If your Lordships will permit me, I will quote the first subsection of Clause 4, because we have agreed that these three Amendments should be taken together. That subsection reads:
"Every offshore installation, so long as it is in waters to which this Act applies, shall be under the charge of a person appointed to be or act as master of the installation, and the owner of the installation shall appoint to be master—

(a) a person who, to the best of the knowledge and belief of the owner, has the skills and competence suitable for the appointment, and

(b) another or others to act where necessary in place of the master,

and shall inform the Secretary of State of any appointment under this subsection by giving notice in the prescribed form…."
That is really pretty loose. We are leaving "to the best of the knowledge and belief of the owner" of the rig or suction dredger or diving launch that the master employed to manage and discipline the crew of these installations shall have "the skills and competence suitable for the appointment"; but how one produces evidence of that skill and competence is in fact not clear from the Bill. Yet oil drilling rigs and suction dredgers are very sophisticated pieces of equipment and should be managed by a man who has the professional and managerial qualifications to operate the rigs successfully and to control and discipline the crew. It is for this reason that my noble friend, Lord Brown, at Second Reading argued very strongly that a form of certification must be held by anyone appointed as master of one of these rigs.
In Amendment No. 2 he suggests that the master
"shall be the holder of the same certificates as are required by the first mate of a seagoing ship in accordance with regulations made under …"
That is why I argued the case of the suction dredger as applying to this particular Bill, because the master of a suction dredger would in fact hold the certificate required of a first mate of a
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sea-going ship. I should have thought that a device of a very unstable nature floating towards its drilling area must have on board a man with professional skills, proved by examination, at least as great as those of the master of a suction dredger. It is for this reason that my noble friend Lord Brown has put down these Amendments. I beg to move Amendment No. 1.
EARL FERRERS: I am grateful to the noble Lord for taking these Amendments together, because in fact they are inter-linked. The noble Lord, Lord Brown, has put down three Amendments and my noble friend, Lord Drumalbyn, has put down the fourth, and in putting down the fourth Amendment he has tried to cover the basis of Lord Brown's objection at Second Reading, which was that although we are having these provisions the Secretary of State has no power to enforce them. To understand the background of this matter it would be only fair to look a little at the industry with which the Bill deals. Basically we are at the moment considering oil drilling operations. This is, of course, a new industry. One thinks that oil drilling has been going on for a very long time, but in fact it has only been going on in the water for a matter of 15 years, and oil drilling in our particular areas of the North Sea has been going on for only six years. It is different not only because it is in the North Sea but also because it is deep water oil drilling.
Therefore we want to frame these provisions as widely as possible, and the Bill has been drafted with that in mind. This is only a matter of detail, but I would say in the first instance that Lord Brown's first Amendment would appear to be in the wrong place, because the clause to which it refers deals with the registration of oil rigs. We have tried to incorporate Lord Brown's desires by making it permissible for the Secretary of State to interfere and to make regulations; but we wish to keep the definitive aspects of the matter as loose as possible, for the simple reason that this is a growing industry and we are not quite certain of the way it is going to develop in the next five, six or ten years, and if one is too restrictive by putting various requirements into the Bill we may be hamstrung later on by the very things which at one moment we thought to be

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desirable. What my noble friend has in mind is to discuss with the various appropriate bodies the framing of the regulations, as indeed he is obliged to do. He would discuss with the appropriate bodies—the rig owners, the licensees, the T.U.C., and indeed Lloyd's shipping people, precisely the best way to frame the regulations so as to make them safe.
One important point here is contained in Clause 4(1)(a), which says that to be appointed a master the person concerned must be one
"who, to the best of the knowledge and belief of the owner, has the skills and competence suitable for the appointment."
It is a statutory obligation upon the owner that the person appointed must be such a person. Therefore an owner would be wholly in the wrong if, for want of a better illustration, he were to appoint an ordinary seaman to become the master of a ship and that seaman did not have the appropriate qualifications.
Here we come to another point: that the appropriate qualifications may differ in differing circumstances. For instance, the qualifications needed for a master of an oil rig when it is stationary and drilling are different from those required when the oil rig is in process of being towed. I think I am right in saying that at the moment when oil rigs are towed the insuring agents insist that a person holding a master's certificate is in charge of the rig, otherwise it will not be adequately insured. On the other hand, to write that into the Bill might prove to be a great mistake, because in the same way as all these technologies are advancing it is not impossible that in the course of the next few years the movement of these drilling rigs may take place underneath the water and that drilling for oil may be not a floating operation but a submarine operation, in which case the appropriate master would require to have some submarine qualifications as opposed to a master's qualifications.
I hope that the noble Lord understands the reason why the Government feel it undesirable to make this clause too specific. It is not a debating point or a desire to hedge. It is only fair to point out that, of all the countries in the world, which are carrying out offshore drilling we are the first to have specified any
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form of certification or legal requirements such as are contained in the Bill before your Lordships to-day. It is necessarily bound to be flexible, and we should prefer to move rather carefully. But the obligation is upon the Secretary of State before making the regulations to discuss with the various people concerned the best types of qualifications.
I would go further and say that different qualifications are needed for different purposes. This is most important. There is possibly a misapprehension on the part of the noble Lord, Lord Brown. It emerges in his second Amendment, in which he seeks to impose upon the person who takes over from the master the qualifications of a first mate. The sole purpose of the Bill is to allow the specific person to be master of a drilling rig. Therefore he does not have a deputy master or a hierarchy underneath him. If in fact that master leaves the rig, then he has to place somebody else in his position to take over the duties which he would have were he on the rig.
Therefore I think that the noble Lord, Lord Brown, is under a slight misapprehension in suggesting that a deputy to the master should have what might be described as a deputy's qualifications. Here we are concerned only with appointing a master to an installation, and, whatever the circumstances, he should have the most appropriate qualifications while the ship or rig is moving or while it is stationary. One can visualise that the requirements of a master of a rig drilling for oil where the rig is stuck on legs in the open sea would be different from those required for drilling from a rig which is floating on submersible pontoons.
For this reason I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, will accept my assurance that we have tried to meet the spirit of Lord Brown's Amendment by the fourth Amendment which is down in the name of my noble friend. It is only fair to point out here two slight differences. One is that the Secretary of State may, if he thinks fit, make regulations. He is not bound to make regulations, which is what I think the noble Lord, Lord Brown, would have preferred. For the reasons which I have tried to give, we prefer to put in words to make this less mandatory. Secondly, my noble friend's Amendment does not

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refer to what one might describe as deputy masters, as the noble Lord, Lord Brown, indicated, but solely to the masters of rigs. I hope that that explanation satisfies the noble Lord, Lord Brown. If it does, I hope that he will perhaps not push his Amendment, but accept the Amendment down in the name of my noble friend.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: In view of what the noble Lord has said, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clauses 2 and 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 [Masters of offshore installations]:
3.20 p.m.
EARL FERRERS EARL FERRERS: I beg to move Amendment No. 4.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 12, at end insert—
"( ) The Secretary of State may, if he thinks fit, make regulations prescribing requirements to be fulfilled as respects a master appointed under subsection (1)(a) above, including requirements as to qualifications, experience, health or age."—(Earl Ferrers.)
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: On behalf of my noble friend, may I say that he is most grateful that his views expressed on Second Reading have been taken into consideration, and that this particular Amendment has been tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers. It is, of course, rather less than my noble friend had hoped. He wanted a pretty firm definition of the qualifications required for a master of one of these new monsters. Nevertheless, I think that the arguments put forward by the noble Earl are valid. We do not quite know where we are going in this new art. I accept the argument that at this moment a precise definition is difficult because, as the noble Earl has said, if the rig is travelling towards a drilling station it is a ship; if it is standing on the bottom, it is something else. The skills required to get to point A and the skills required for operating at point A are different; so there may be one master on the way there, and another at the operating point.
However, I think the appointment of a deputy is of importance, and if the Secretary of State considers it necessary
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to make regulations prescribing requirements to be fulfilled, it would be wise also to prescribe requirements for the man who will be deputy to the master. And the Bill as drafted does in fact foresee the need to appoint a deputy to the master. It says that the owner shall appoint to be master a person as specified in the Bill, and,
(b) "another or others to act where necessary in place of the master,…"
So when a rig is going to point A, or when a rig is operating at point A, there must be a No. 2 to the master who takes over if the master dies or is taken ill, or for some other reason has to leave his ship or rig. While accepting this Amendment on behalf of my noble friend, I would suggest that the Secretary of State does not forget that the deputy who is required to be there in a remote situation, such as the area in which these drilling rigs operate, should also be properly qualified. If it is necessary for the master to be qualified, the man who takes over from him at a moment of crisis because of illness or other reasons should also have proper qualifications. Having expressed this view, I am very glad to accept the Amendment.
EARL FERIZERS: I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, for accepting this Amendment. We shall certainly consider what he has said about the deputy. I think there is only one thing to be considered here, and that is that, as the Bill foresees it, it is necessary to have a master, and a master has various functions which he must fulfil. He needs certain qualifications and has certain obligations. In the event of his not being there, that job is taken over by somebody else. It would not be appropriate—indeed I think it might become very much overweighted—if it were necessary to have a deputy, who would also have certain obligations, while the master was on the rig. I think this would be unwise.
The sole purpose of this clause is to provide that at any one time there is a person on the rig who is specifically responsible for tie rig. I take the noble Lord's point: that if that qualified person goes, there should, in the noble Lord's view, be another equally qualified person to take his place. But were the two on the rig together, the deputy would not have any functions under this Bill: I

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hope that I have made that plain to the noble Lord.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: May I just express a scenario, talking in military terms, of a situation that might arise? In his Second Reading speech the noble Lord speaking for the Government described how the first of the rigs installed experienced, within a week, 40-foot waves sweeping over it; and the whole rig had to be jacked up to protect the members of the crew and to raise them above the wave level. One can conceive of a situation like that in which the master was washed away—a moment of great danger at sea. One would naturally hope that at a critical moment like that the man who stepped into his place would be qualified to deal with the emergency. That is why I think it essential that the deputy should also be a qualified man.
EARL FERRERS: I certainly take the noble Lord's point, and I will look at it again, to see if there is any way in which we can meet it.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 5 to 11 agreed to.
Clause 12 [Interpretation.]:
On Question, Whether Clause 12 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD HAWKE: I think it obvious from what my noble friend says that this Bill is intended to apply to oil rigs, and oil rigs alone. If he wants to make it quite clear so that it does not catch treasure hunters and the like, I think he ought to include in the interpretation clause a definition of mineral resources that does not include treasure.
LORD HOY: May I ask a question? We are dealing with the Secretary of State throughout, but this interpretation clause does not have any definition of which Secretary of State. I wonder which Secretary of State is in fact referred to in this Bill.
EARL FERRERS: I think it is customary not to specify which Secretary of State is referred to in any Bill, simply because the designation of the various Secretaries of State may alter. In this case it is the Secretary of State for Trade
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and Industry. With regard to my noble friend Lord Hawke's point, I will certainly see how treasure and treasure hunters are affected. This is an ingenious thought that I do not believe has entered into anybody's head. I would assure him on one point in which I think he is mistaken: this Bill does not refer only to oil drilling. It so happens that oil drilling is the one particular form of mineral working that is at the moment operative. It may well he that in the future other forms of mineral working may be used, such as that for gravel (as the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom suggests), or potash, or all sorts of other minerals. It is in order that this Bill shall be sufficiently widely drawn to cover these other forms of mineral working that we have left it in the form in which it stands, so that regulations can be made to suit the appropriate form of mineral working at the time when the new form of mineral working starts.
Clause 12 agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
Schedule agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported, with the Amendment.

VEHICLE AND GENERAL INSURANCE COMPANY
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I should like to inform your Lordships that my noble friend the Leader of the House will be making a statement on the Vehicle and General Insurance Company later this afternoon. I must apologise to your Lordships for not announcing this at an earlier stage, but I was not in a position to make an announcement until a few moments ago.

THE BRITISH LIBRARY
3.30 p.m.
THE PAYMASTER GENERAL (VISCOUNT ECCLES)THE PAYMASTER GENERAL (VISCOUNT ECCLES) rose to move, That this House do take note of the White Paper The British Library (Cmnd. 4572). The noble Viscount said: My Lords, quite a number of your Lordships have been involved in the ancient and, at times, heart-rending history of the central proposal contained in the White Paper. I hope that we shall not dwell upon the

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past. It is a story best forgotten, and now that the decision has been taken to rehouse the British Museum Library on the Great Russell Street site, and to combine this development with setting up a National Library Service, we can turn with confidence to the future. No single project has ever meant so much to me, and I am indeed fortunate to see this child, so long in coming, with us now in the light of day.
The desire to speak briefly on a very large subject prevents me from saying much about the Dainton Report, for which we were all grateful. The Committee's main recommendations have been accepted and form the core of the policy proposed in the White Paper. Many of their minor points will be taken up and made good use of as the planning of the British Library proceeds. Should any noble Lord desire to ask why we have not adopted some particular recommendation of the National Libraries Committee I will, if I am given permission to reply, do my best to explain our reasoning.
The delay in rehousing the British Museum Library is serious for all who use the library departments in Bloomsbury, or the fragmented sections of the National Reference Library of Science and Invention. Working conditions in both are becoming progressively worse. More than one Government should extend contrite sympathy to the harassed staff and readers in those libraries. But at last they can be sure that new buildings will rise from the ground and put an end to their frustrations. In the interval, I am sure that the Trustees of the British Museum will do anything they can to alleviate the worst of the overcrowding.
Turning now to the brighter side, the delay has brought a number of important compensations. We can see better than we could twenty or even ten years ago how the national library service and its central library of reference and research should be planned. One change is of particular significance. Your Lordships may remember that not many years ago we were being told that science and technology differed so radically from the humanities that separate libraries were an obvious national requirement. The representatives of industry, tired of waiting for a decision on the Great Russell
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Street site, urged that a Science Reference Library should be built on the South Bank. Since then our thinking has changed. It is generally accepted now that it would be wrong in this symbolic fashion to divide knowledge into two unnatural halves.
On the contrary, the need has never been greater to direct all our educational and cultural endeavours towards seeing life as a whole. This has always been the unanimous view of the British Museum Trustees, whose members include distinguished scientists. I should like to pay a special tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Annan, who, more than anybody else, sustained the case of the Museum in front of the Dainton Committee. It is a great relief to all of us that this view has prevailed. The British Museum Library and the National Reference Library of Science and Invention will now be rehoused side by side in two buildings on the same site, but served by an enormous sump in which the book stacks for both will be located. Incidentally, the King's Library will be preserved in its splendid gallery and a tunnel will connect it with the British Museum Library across the road—or, as it may become, the open space—with the sump below.
The urgency of the needs of the patent community and of industry at large are very much in our minds and they will be recognised by building the Science Reference Library first and, it is hoped, opening its doors by 1978. Similarly, the national collections of books for lending between libraries, now roughly divided between the National Central Library, which is concerned with the humanities, and the National Lending Library for Science and Technology which is concerned with the sciences, will be united at Boston Spa. Your Lordships may think this reconciliation between the two branches of knowledge in respect of both reference and lending a victory for civilisation well worth waiting for.
The delay in making up our minds where to rehouse the British Museum Library has also enabled us to gauge more realistically the effect on the number and needs of readers of the spread of higher education, and the willingness of people nowadays to travel long distances for business or pleasure. For example, the newer universities cannot be expected to build up world-famous

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libraries such as the Bodleian and the University Library at Cambridge. The expense of books forces them to look to a national library both for reference and lending. Again the international obligations of the British Museum Library, which were always a concern of the Trustees, should now be obvious to all. My Lords, the world shrinks and knowledge accumulates. The British people, who already possess in the British Museum Library far more than their share of the manuscripts and the printed material of all ages and all countries, have an obligation not only to make these treasures available to anyone who wants to study them, but so to organise their foremost library that it is seen to be international in scope and function: seen, that is to be something more than the national library of England.
Perhaps I should say here that in the fullness of time I expect the British Library to offer to take under its wing the national archives of recorded sound, pictures and films, which historians and others will wish to consult alongside printed material. It is of increasing importance that we should preserve in one place one master copy of pictures and film from which prints can be taken and used for a variety of purposes. I wish I could be sure that the archive of the B.B.C. is as complete as it should be in the interests of future generations.
The sheer volume of new material is becoming embarrassingly indigestible. The problem for even the richest country is how to select, pay for, preserve and make accessible a flood of material so great that it must strain the resources of the largest library one can conceivably imagine. The board of the British Library will deal with this problem successfully only by continually reviewing the coverage at which they should aim and by developing the closest relations with both the specialist libraries in this country and the great national libraries of other countries. The Dainton Report had some interesting things to say on this point, and in paragraph 5 of the White Paper this vital question is referred to the Board of the British Library for consideration. In yet another respect we are better able to face these problems than we would have been ten years ago. The methods of storage, cataloguing, retrieval and reproduction have improved
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very rapidly—almost out of all knowledge in the few years I was at the British Museum.
I wish I had time to speculate upon the prospects for the use of computers in libraries. These are being very carefully evaluated. We are fortunate that we have in the British National Bibliography exceptional expertise in this field, and this experience will be even more valuable when it is integrated into the British Library system. I must, however, warn your Lordships that the cost of some of the techniques that are now being tried out is so great that we shall have to be quite sure that the return will be both worth the money and satisfactory to the research worker before we embark on their use.
My Lords, because more and more books and journals are being published and because their price rises from year to year, it is essential that the library service as a whole should be run as efficiently and economically as possible. In passing, I might mention the Copyright Act 1956. When that Act is amended in order to add the public lending of books to the actions restricted by copyright, justice will be done to the authors but the price of books to the libraries will rise, and this is just one more reason why it is absolutely essential that we should organise inter-library lending in the best possible manner. Further, now that the Government's proposals for local government reform are known, this is a good moment to take a look at the structure and working of the whole library service, and in doing so I have no doubt that we shall be able to emphasise the importance to our society of the profession of librarian and to point to wider opportunities for librarians to rise to posts of responsibility.
My Lords, I think the chief criticism of the White Paper which I have heard is that it does not go into sufficient detail about the constitution and organisation of the British Library. That was deliberate. We are dealing with a new and very complex problem. We are trying, by agreement, to integrate five institutions which have developed their own separate characters and functions under different legal arrangements. They are, if I may say so, very different animals, and we are not proposing to co-ordinate their activities in some kind of loose federation but

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to amalgamate them into one dynamic whole. This is not going to be easy; but to do this by agreement would surely have been impossible if the White Paper had gone into too many details. Instead, we shall discuss every stage with the parties concerned, taking the best advice from professional librarians.
To return for a moment to paragraphs 8 and 9 of the White Paper, which contain a short description of the constitution of the British Library, here is a vital subject on which we differ very profoundly from the Dainton Report, whose sketch of the constitution might have been very apt for a large departmental store but not, I think, for a great academic institution. We have taken something from each of three types of institution whose work has some similarity with that of the British Library. There is, first, the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is controlled by the Department of Education and Science through a director assisted by an advisory body of trustees. Control by a Government Department has produced some excellent results, mainly because the directors have been well chosen and the Minister concerned, feeling his own reputation to be engaged, has usually given them enough money and then left them alone; or, if inclined to interfere, has time and again succumbed to the director's charms. Perhaps this system has worked well only because of two conditions, both, I think, disappearing: one, that the institution was compact and not too big; and, two, that for long it was the only one of its kind run by the Department, the apple of their eye.
In contrast, the British Museum is quite different. By Act of Parliament it is controlled and managed by the Trustees, through a director responsible not to a Minister but only to them. The lesson here is that where you have an institution of such immense wealth and range you can secure Trustees who possess experience of the highest order and are happy to work hard—Saturdays included—for no money precisely because there is a job of national importance to be done. Of course, there are disadvantages. We cannot expect Trustees of this kind to blow their own trumpet as skilfully as a publicity-minded director responsible to a politically-minded Minister. On the
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other hand, we want the British Library to be even more independent of Government than the British Museum is at present. Thirdly, therefore, we looked at the universities, which run their affairs in ways no mortal man could explain to your Lordships, but their freedom of manoeuvre and their system of finance have great advantages over both the Victoria and Albert and the British Museum.
In seeking to learn from these existing institutions I had to keep in mind that the British Library will not be only a fount of scholarship, a large post-graduate university, but a business concern handling millions of transactions a year and, one hopes, also a highly diplomatic coordinator of the whole library system of the United Kingdom. It will have to be sensitive to changes in techniques and in the nature and demands of its users; more so, I would think, than the British Museum Library and the older universities have had to be in the past. At the same time the user of the British Library most in need of protection will always be the scholar, and in filling out the constitution and choosing the members of the board I can assure your Lordships that the scholar's interests will be well and truly taken care of. For example, the British Library will be the custodian of the greatest collection of manuscripts, maps and music to be found together in any one place, and I can promise those now in charge of this unique store of learning, who are somewhat nervous now, that their treasures are not going to be treated like a shelf of paper-backs.
My Lords, it follows from all this that we must take the greatest trouble to find a chairman for the Board of the British Library who will both love scholarship—and I mean the scholarship of science just as much as the scholarship of the arts—and be a first-class administrator. We have left it open whether he shall be a whole-time or part-time, and therefore whether there shall be a chief executive in addition to the chairman. Whatever is the decision, we shall try to form the Board of full-time and part-time members around the chairman. We also wish to consider how to bring the directors of the constituent parts of the British Library into the policy-making functions of the Board. This is not a simple matter, and it will require a lot of thought.
Coming to the building operations required to turn the White Paper proposals into solid reality, I must first mention Boston Spa where the National Lending Library for Science and Technology is now enlarging its premises. It is a great tribute to the sense of responsibility of the National Central Library that it has agreed to go and join the National Lending Library for Science and Technology at Boston Spa. The National Lending Library has enjoyed a fine run of favour with the Department of Education and Science. When I was in my room in the Museum, thinking about these things, I often wondered whether the National Central Library was equally well treated. All that is in the past. They will now be supported together.
The transfer of the National Central Library from London to Yorkshire should please the people in Yorkshire who are at present losing no opportunity to tell me how deprived their county is in comparison with the delights of Clapham and South London. My right honourable friend the Minister for Housing and Construction has appointed Mr. Colin St. John Wilson as architect for the design of the buildings on the Great Russell Street site. I am very glad to tell the House that Sir Leslie Martin, who was responsible with Mr. Wilson for the original plan, has fully concurred in our choice. I have worked with Mr. Wilson for some years now and I have the greatest confidence in his ability to give us a design worthy of this great project and to provide for the very intricate requirements within the buildings.
The delay in coming to a decision to build has allowed us greatly to improve the schedule of requirements to the Great Russell Street site. We can now retain about the same number of flats and shops as was envisaged in the 1964 plan, preserving the listed buildings in Bloomsbury Square and accommodating both the British Museum Library and the National Research Library for Science and Invention on the same site. This last is, as I mentioned before, a huge advantage well worth the seven years' interval.
I must mention one particular problem which is described in paragraph 14 of the White Paper. In the ten years or more before the British Museum Library finally moves into its new home, there
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will be a large number of matters that concern both the Trustees of the British Museum, who are responsibile for what goes on in their building, and the organising committee, to be followed by the Board, who will be responsible for planning the future of the British Library. We all have our hearts set on creating the best possible library of reference and research. So far as it lies in my power, I shall see that neither before nor after the Act which transfers the Library to the new Board will there be any difficulty in working together with the Trustees of the British Museum. In particular, I should like to emphasise that the interests of the staffs who will be combined in the British Library will be very carefully looked after.
My Lords, in conclusion, I should like to say a word about the advantages to be gained by keeping the British Museum Library and the other museum departments on what is virtually one site. Take, for example, the Department of Prints and Drawings. Should it go with the books relating to the artists and to the conditions of society in which the artists worked? Or, being a collection of works of art in their own right, should prints and drawings stay with the Egyptian papyri, the Greek and Roman inscriptions and the medieval objects illustrating the age when printing began? The question would have been a very difficult one to answer if the British Museum Library had been removed to a considerable distance. But, as it will be next door, prints and drawings are best left where they are. Again, I would ask, what would the departments of antiquities have done without the main library to draw upon—since they have not had to build up comprehensive libraries of their own? They could not now do so, for the books are either completely unobtainable or vastly expensive. Is it not important to historians to be able to study coins and medals as well as manuscripts and books? All these acute anxieties are now removed. We shall have in Bloomsbury the richest complex of books and objects of art and of historical interest to be found in the world. We are indeed fortunate to be the only country which can combine in range and quality of man's highest one place twin demonstrations of this achievements. The White Paper shows

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how we can best take advantage of our unique fortune, and I commend it to the House.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: My Lords, before the noble Viscount sits down, would he indicate whether he has had time to consider not only the architect (of whom he has informed us) but also whether the building will be done by Government Department contractors or a combination?
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I sincerely hope not. I hope that when the architect has produced the design we shall go out to competitive tender.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: My Lords, I would ask the noble Viscount to keep in mind that the then Ministry of Public Building and Works did a splendid job in Burlington Gardens.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, please understand that a job of reconstruction costing £100,000 in Burlington Gardens is really rather different from a new building costing £21 million.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: My Lords, I would say that I fully understand that; but I do not like to hear the fine work done by a Government Department unnecessarily denigrated. I asked whether they would be partly involved in the building.
LORD ROBBINS: My Lords, before the noble Viscount sits down, would he say a few words about the organising committee which will have the most important functions of all during the transition period? If he will permit me to say so, I had the feeling that some of the criticism and complaints made—unworthily, in my judgment—of his magnificent achievements has arisen because of certain perplexities in regard to that period. I wonder whether he could say if provision will be made for representation on the organising committee of the Royal Society and the British Academy.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Robbins. The period between now and the passing of the legislation which will establish the Board is an awkward one. We cannot lose this period—it might be of 18 months; but I cannot be precise—and therefore we must get on with the planning. We thought that the best thing
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to do would be to set up an organising committee, of which I shall probably take the Chair, and on which will be represented the five constituent bodies who are to be drawn together into the British Library; plus—and I hope that they will accept—several of our most distinguished librarians. I would certainly consider representatives of the British Academy and, indeed, of one or two other societies.
I think that if we reach the number of, say, 20 persons on the organising committee, it will mean that the main committee will be able to meet only once every three months. We should then have to have underneath the organising committee an executive of officials. I have not yet made up my mind whether that will work but I can assure the noble Lord that I am very conscious that as we proceed toward the final stage of the design of the building, certain decisions will have to be taken about the shape and functions of the Library which would be better left to the Board when it is set up. We shall do our best on the organising committee not to pre-empt decisions which really are better left to the new institution when it comes into being. I do not think that this is going to be a very easy period; but with the good will of all those who wish to see the Library open its doors as soon as possible, I think that we shall make progress. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House do take note of the White Paper The British Library (Cmnd. 4572).—(Viscount Eccles.)

VEHICLE AND GENERAL INSURANCE COMPANY FAILURE
4.0 p.m.
EARL. JELLICOE: My Lords, with permission, I should like now to repeat a Statement which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has just made in another place concerning the affairs of the Vehicle and General Insurance Company, Ltd. These were my right honourable friend's words:
"As honourable Members are doubtless aware, the directors of the Vehicle and General Insurance Company Ltd. announced yesterday evening their intention to petition the Court for the compulsory winding-up

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of the company and of five of its subsidiary companies which carry on largely motor insurance business.
"The names of these companies are as follows:

Automobile and General Insurance Co. Ltd.

The General and Commercial Motor Insurance Co. Ltd.

Metropolitan General Insurance Co. Ltd.

Transport Indemnity Insurance Co. Ltd.

The World Auxiliary Insurance Corporation Ltd.

"In order to comply with the requirements of the Road Traffic Act 1960, motor insurance policies must be issued by authorised insurers who are carrying on motor vehicle insurance business in Great Britain. The policy-holders of the companies in question should, therefore, take out new policies with authorised insurers if they wish their cars to continue to be used on the roads. Both the directors and the British Insurance Association have already advised policy-holders to obtain cover from other insurers.
"I understand that the petitions for winding-up are being presented today but I cannot forecast the time required by the Court to deal with them.
"The financial affairs of the company and its subsidiaries has been under close consideration for some time by the Department who have been frequently in touch with the directors. The Department, in compliance with Section 68 of the Companies Act 1967, on February 24 duly served the requisite notice of 30 days on the companies concerned of the intention of the Department to issue directions restricting the companies from issuing new policies or renewing old policies."
My Lords, that is the conclusion of the Statement.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I must say that it is strange that the Prime Minister should have made that particular Statement in the other place, and I wonder whether there is any special significance in that. I thank the noble Earl for repeating it here. Certainly our sympathy must go out to the policy-
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holders who, clearly, are going to lose a great deal of money as a consequence of this collapse. Is the noble Earl not aware that there was considerable concern in the City and in insurance circles—I think it was in October—about the financial stability of this company? Can he say when the Department of Trade and Industry started to take an interest in, and to examine, the books of this organisation? Can he also say whether, as a consequence of this very serious collapse, the Government would now feel it right to review the 1967 Act to see whether it is strong enough, and whether there is anything to be learned; so that perhaps we can avoid some of the severe losses to policy-holders?
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, on behalf of noble Lords sitting on these Benches I deplore what has happened. Personally, I should like to associate myself with the inquiries and queries put by the noble Lord.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, like the two noble Lords who have just spoken I too deplore these events. In answer to the first question from the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, it is the fact that, because there were rumours about the solvency of these companies, the group's accounts for the calendar year 1968, which were received shortly after the end of June, 1969, were examined most carefully by what was then the Board of Trade. There was a further and, I think, even more searching examination in the summer of last year of the accounts for the calendar year 1969. So it is true to say, my Lords, that the company has been receiving the very close attention of the Board of Trade—now the Department of Trade and Industry—for a considerable number of months past.
I think it was at the end of last year that the Department learned that the company were finding it difficult to sell the trading investments which they had undertaken to do, and it was then that the Department pressed the directors for much further and more detailed information. It was as a result of that information that the decision to serve notices on the companies in accordance with Section 68 of the 1967 Act was taken.
My Lords, I think it is natural that the second question from the noble Lord,

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Lord Shepherd, should be put to me, about whether we ought to look at the 1967 Act to see whether it needs reinforcement. I can say straight away that this point is very much in the mind of Her Majesty's Government, but there are two considerations which I think need to be borne in mind. The first is that the existing powers will be quite materially strengthened as a result of the information which will become available through the summer of this year under the Insurance Companies (Accounts and Forms) Regulations 1968. There has been a delay as a result of decisions—I am not questioning them—taken by the previous Government.
The other consideration (I am not saying this in any way in a tendentious spirit) is that major changes in the United Kingdom insurance legislation might be required if this country were to join the European Economic Community; and there is at least a case to be made for seeing whether or not we are able to join the Community before embarking on any major changes. That said, my Lords, may I apologise straight away to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, who, quite rightly, queried whether the Prime Minister had made this Statement in another place. It was, in fact, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry; and I should like to take this opportunity to make that correction forthwith.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am glad that the noble Earl was not indicating that the Prime Minister had been demoted—although many of us would wish that he could be.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, bearing in mind the serious situation in which policy-holders now find themselves may I ask the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition whether they will in any way—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Oh!
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: I do apologise my Lords.
EARL JELLICOE: A somewhat similar mistake is made from time to time in another place, so that the noble Lord is in good company.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: It is obviously wishful thinking on my part. May
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I ask whether the British Association of Insurers will in fact be giving the present policy-holders any cover at all?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, these are technical waters into which I would not wish to be drawn too deeply. My understanding is that until winding-up orders are made in respect of the company or its subsidiaries—and that is a process which I gather may take anything up to at least a week or ten days—it is still lawful for policy-holders to rely on the company's certificate of insurance for the purposes of complying with the Road Traffic Act. Claims arising in general from the use of those policies could take a number of years to settle—except for claims arising from personal injury to third parties other than passengers. But under arrangements made with the Department of the Environment, the Motor Insurers' Bureau, which is financed partly by Lloyd's and partly by the insurance companies, will pay such claims—that is to say, claims for third party insurance other than claims in respect of passengers in the vehicle concerned—when the insurance company concerned is unable to comply with them.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords. I am obliged to the noble Earl.

THE BRITISH LIBRARY
4.10 p.m.
Debate resumed.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: My Lords, the discussion of proposals for a wonderful future British Library have been interrupted by a grave economic Statement. There may be those who feel that we are now returning to a relatively unimportant subject. I should like to say therefore, in passing, that a situation of economic crisis, or even of military crisis, is not an excuse for underrating either the world of scholarship or the world of the Arts. Looking back to the Second World War, it will be recalled that much was done in education for many men and women in the Forces, and many people had their first experience of great art and great theatre. Indeed, what could have been more wonderful than Myra Hess playing to an enchanted audience in the National Gallery even while the bombs were raining down on London? I say that, just in passing, because no one in

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your Lordships' House, I am sure, will underestimate the importance of the statement that the Paymaster General has just made. I congratulate him, and my congratulations are not untinged with envy. It is a marvellous thing to be able to promote a scheme such as this, which must command the support and encouragement of civilised people from every part of the House and from every part of the country.
I was not the Minister responsible for libraries during most of the last Parliament: another Minister of State was so engaged. But, as the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, knows, after the Dainton Committee was set up by the Secretary of State for Education and Science, my good friend and colleague in the other place, Mr. Edward Short, I became, in addition to my job as Minister for the Arts, Minister responsible for libraries. I was extremely fortunate, because when the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Radcliffe, and my noble friend Lord Annan were kicking up such a great hullabaloo in 1967 I was in no way directly involved. But during the last phase of the last Parliament, I was much concerned with the future of the British Museum and of this great Library project.
I am sure that the Paymaster General would wish to join with me in paying tribute to my right honourable friend Mr. Short, who as Secretary of State for Education and Science received the Report of the Dainton Committee. The Dainton Committee reported and, as the Paymaster General said, although we were enraged by delays, it was necessary to reconcile the interests of the British Museum with those of the other great libraries involved, and also with those of the Borough of Camden. Instead of having a state of war between the British Museum Trustees and Camden Council we shall now be able to have two great libraries, instead of one, on the Bloomsbury site, and with the good will and co-operation of Camden, they will still have their beautiful Square, their wonderful church, and the possibility of housing many of their people.
At the end of the last Parliament the state of play was that we had left behind bitter controversy. There was agreement
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among us that we were going forward with this great project of creating a National Library. There was some criticism over the delay between publication of the Dainton Report and the Cabinet's consent. But I assure your Lordships that the reason for the delay, after we had satisfied the Paymaster General, in his then capacity as Chairman of the British Museum, and his other Trustees, and when the Secretary of State also was entirely satisfied and anxious to get on with the job, was that it was not only the British Museum that had to be considered: three other great libraries were concerned.
I make that point, my Lords, to show that the delays were not the result of any doubts or hesitations about going forward with this project. Indeed, on December 13, 1967, the then Prime Minister, my right honourable friend Mr. Harold Wilson, took the rather unusual step of writing a letter to The Times. In that letter—written in response to an irate letter from the noble Viscount, Lord Radcliffe—my right honourable friend said that he was giving his assurance:
"that Government policy is to provide a fine new library building forming part of an efficient library system."
So the Paymaster General goes forward with the knowledge that plans made in the last Parliament and supported by the present Government will have the wholehearted support from all parts of the House.
There are of course one or two further questions that arise. In dealing with the White Paper, the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, said quite properly that although the delays had been irritating we derived certain advantages from them. We were getting two libraries instead of one; better relationships; and modern technology had carried us forward a great deal. I am sure he would not like to be tied to a figure of 13 years for completing the building. That is a guess. It may be longer, but let us hope that it will be sooner. All one can do is to make an informed guess as to how long great new buildings of this kind will take to complete.
In the White Paper reference is made not only to London but also to what the Dainton Committee would have liked to see happening simultaneously in other parts of the country. The vision of a

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National Library was that we should not only relieve the congestion in the British Museum and the other great central libraries, but, by using the new magic of modern technology—microfilms, computers, tape recorders and the rest—we should be able to provide reproductions of many documents, North, South and East or West.
So although the National Library remains the Library of last resort, it will not need to be used by scholars if they can find what they require in the local or regional libraries. It will be possible in the future to do something that was undreamt of in the past. Scholars no longer have to walk great distances—sometimes across whole continents—in order to reach centres of learning. We shall be able to send out to the periphery reproductions of many of the most precious documents that formerly could be studied only by people who were fortunate enough to be able to reach the British Museum and the other great libraries. I hope that when we are making estimates for future buildings we shall keep in mind what is to happen about libraries outside London that will be co-operating with the British Museum, the British Library in London and the Reference Library in Yorkshire.
Another consideration which is allied and must not be lost sight of was touched upon by the Paymaster General when he said that of course there would have to be more books in the future than in the past. We all share the vision of this great library service: there is no difference among us on that score. But libraries exist to house books; books do not exist for libraries. We must be quite certain that we do not fall into the same difficulty on a national scale that we find in West Sussex, for instance, where we have some wonderful new library buildings but the stock of books is getting dangerously low. There has been no upward adjustment for rising costs of living since 1968. We must look at the subject as a whole. We are not planning a London Library; we are planning a National Library, and with great international links of many kinds. We are planning a library for books; and not only books but films and pictures. I am not an ardent supporter of those who say that the book is a thing of the past, and that in future everything is going to be
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either oral or visual. Like many other Members of your Lordships' House, I belong to the generation who are, and remain, book lovers and bookworms. We have to think in terms of what is to go into those improved buildings. It is quite true, as the Paymaster General said, that at the moment we are embarrassed by numbers. As new books come on to the market it is a fantastic business to find places to store them, and those places will of course have to be far from the centre.
At the same time—and this may seem a contradiction, but it is not—in many of our universities, and still more so in our higher technical colleges, a problem arises about the supply of books. The noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, said that there would be a revision of the copyright law, and the purpose of this revision will be to enable authors and publishers to charge more for books that are used in libraries than for books sold over the counter to private people. Authors need to be given help, but what is worrying me, and quite a number of us, is: are we going to help the author at the expense of the supply of books? I admit that one of my failures in the last Parliament was in seeking to persuade my Treasury colleagues, in addition to the great generosity that they showed towards me—and they gave the Arts a higher priority than ever before—to give me £2 million that could be used to ensure that authors would receive a fairer remuneration for their work. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not going to give a sum of that magnitude, then where is the money going to come from to help the authors? The last thing we want to do is to cause antagonism between the authors and the librarians; we must ensure that the librarians, and the supply of books in our libraries, do not suffer. The only way that antagonism can be avoided is by the additional money which will be required to help the authors coming from central taxation. The details do not matter. That is the gist of the situation.
We come next to the problem of the cost of a great enterprise of this kind. The White Paper tells us, in paragraph 16:
"… the Government finance for the British Library will be provided by grant-in-aid from the Department of Education and Science."

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That is a change, in a way. Formerly we had a division of labour: the D.E.S. was responsible for content and policy; the Ministry of Public Building and Works was responsible for building and costs. I do not think it matters—it is all coming out of one public purse—but it is just as well for us to be clear about it. The Department of Education and Science is undertaking to find the money, and we are told that it will cost on an average something under £3 million for the next 13 years.
I was delighted that the Paymaster General did not enlarge on that particular part of the White Paper to-day. On former occasions he has always told us, when speaking in your Lordships' House, in the country or elsewhere, that the Library was going to be partially paid for by entrance charges to our museums and galleries. I hope that the Paymaster General, having listened to our trustees, to our directors, to our artists, young and old, and to our students, in not enlarging on the part of the White Paper dealing with costs, is having second thoughts on how this cost will be met. It would be a sad thing indeed if we were told that we could go ahead with this wonderful library project only if about a third of the cost was going to be paid for by that special public, old and young, that finds its pleasure, instruction and inspiration in going to our great art galleries.
I do not know whether or not the Paymaster General would like to say anything on that point. It would certainly be a comfort and reassurance to many of us if we could be quite certain that, having listened to the voices—and there are many of them—having listened to all they have to say, he now feels that the D.E.S., with its budget, which I see for 1971–72 is £2,499 million for education—and not a penny too much—can take care of this matter and that rapid progress with the National Library is not going to be dependent upon gallery charges or other financial contributions from any other source whatsoever.
We are concerned, on all sides of the House, with the quality of life. A flippant friend suggested that if we could not afford to pay for our libraries we might start taxing betting shops or tobacco shops—and he was a little bawdier
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than that. There are all sorts of activities going on that we are told are injurious to our health. I am not putting forward seriously that we should accept my friend's suggestion. I say that the Minister, who has what I have always said is the best job in the Government, who has the pleasure and responsibility of promoting the interests of the arts, and now also of furthering this great scheme, must be depended upon not to provide for one of his offspring at the expense of another. At the end of the last Parliament I was asked to assist the Secretary of State for Education in his schemes for the Library, and I received a very warm welcome from the librarians. I am sure the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, will get that same warm welcome if they recognise that he is deeply concerned not only with what must be long-term building projects but with the fact that in the meantime the scholars must live. Thirteen years is a long time. Technological developments may bring in many changes in the meantime.
Surely now, in a period of very considerable economic difficulty, we need to promote the highest levels of scholarship; we need to give every encouragement to our students in schools, colleges, universities and technical colleges. I welcome wholeheartedly the statement that the Paymaster General has made about going ahead without further delay with this scheme that we have all helped to promote and all agree upon, but I hope that we can trust him to ensure that he does not at the same time cause himself unnecessary difficulties with a whole world of artists and art lovers. And let us keep in mind that libraries, however wonderful, exist for books. We must look carefully at the priorities which are now being given towards maintaining or, better still, improving their very lifeblood, the very meaning of our libraries—that is a flow of the best up-to-date books for all who require them.
4.30 p.m.
VISCOUNT NORWICH: My Lords, the contents of this White Paper, and the words we have heard from the Paymaster General this afternoon, are balm to our ears. They are what a great many of us have been looking forward to hearing and hoping to hear for a quarter of a century or more. It would be churlish not to give them the enthusiastic welcome

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they deserve. I remember four years ago speaking about the British Museum Library and being horrified at the prospect which then seemed imminent of the splitting up of the Museum and the Library. At the same time, I remember hearing from the noble Viscount, Lord Radcliffe, one of the most blistering oratorical tours de force I have ever heard in my life. It seemed very unlikely four years ago that I should be standing up before your Lordships this afternoon saying how pleased and delighted I was with the news we now have about the plans for the future, and, in particular, to hear that the new Library as planned will be on a site adjacent to the British Museum. It will be, in fact, to all intents and purposes part of one single geographical complex, so that we shall continue to have one of the greatest, most remarkable and unique cultural advantages this country can boast; namely, to have its greatest Museum and its greatest Library together and interdependent.
Having said that, I have one or two small doubts about the White Paper. The noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, pointed out his reluctance
to speak at any length on what was a very big subject. In fact, the subject is so big, so important, and so vital to us all that I, for one, could have wished that the White Paper had spoken at rather greater length. It seems to me to be sadly short and sketchy for what it itself heralds in its first sentence as a plan,
"to create a national library service without rival in the world."
We could do with more than six pages of print in explanation and elaboration of the plans being drawn up.
One or two other small points worry me a little. I read in paragraph 3(a), under the main heading "Objective of the British Library", that:
"The aim will be to provide as comprehensive a reference service of last resort as possible. If a reader cannot get what he wants near at hand he will know he can find it in the British Library."
Admirable. Unexceptionable. I hope he will. But two paragraphs further on I read that:
"… relations with the other national libraries and specialist collections … will have to be continuously developed to ensure that material not collected by the British Library will be made available elsewhere."
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Completeness is of absolutely vital importance, and I do not consider that the present British Museum Library, magnificent as it is, is in fact anything like as complete as it should be. I shall have a few more words to say about that later on.
The other point I should like to raise this afternoon concerns paragraph 9 of the White Paper and the appointment of Trustees. Here again I quote:
"One part-time member will be appointed by the Queen with special responsibility to the Board for the Library of King George III which was presented to the British Museum."
I wonder whether that is really necessary. The Library is now a part of the British Museum. It was given by Royal gift to the British Museum. I cannot think it is necessary to have a member of the Trustees appointed by the Queen with specific responsibility for that Library. More important still is the following sentence, which reads:
"The other members of the Board will be appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Science from persons having experience in the management of libraries, in university affairs, and in finance, business and administration."
That is all right. The paragraph continues:
"Four of the part-time members will be appointed after consultation respectively with the Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry, for Scotland and for Wales, and the Trustees of the British Museum."
This means that one member of the Board, and one only, will represent the interests of the Trustees of the British Museum. If I may elaborate that a little further, I would quote to your Lordships just two sentences from a leading article of The Times Literary Supplement of January 15:
"It is perhaps permissible to inquire why the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales need to be consulted, seeing that the National Library of Scotland and the National Library of Wales are to remain outside the British Library system; and it is certainly pertinent to hint that, if they must be consulted, they could do no better for some little time to come than to put forward the names of any two Trustees of the British Museum who are respectively sufficiently Scots and sufficiently Welsh to qualify for their notice. The Trustees have, indeed, collectively more experience and accumulated wisdom in the kind of business with which the Board will be concerned than any other body in the world, and the proposal that they should have only one representative on the Board (they will not, after all, live for ever) will be an offence and an outrage to many."

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That last sentence is possibly putting the case a little too strongly, but I am nevertheless certain that the noble Viscount, the Paymaster General, who has done so much in recent years for the British Museum, will have sympathy with what I have just said.
The other point I should like to make, which was not raised in the White Paper and not raised in The Times Literary Supplement, is a little plea that perhaps it might be possible for one member of the Board of the British Library to be selected, not on the recommendation of any of the learned bodies or Government Departments, but as a representative of the readers of the British Museum. I should like to think that someone such as a distinguished historian, who may have spent the better part of his life working and researching in the British Museum Reading Room—who knows better than anybody else what the readers, for whom, after all, the Library principally must exist, need and want—would be able to have a say and give a first-hand opinion in the deliberations of the Board.
Finally, speaking for myself, without any expertise, as a fairly regular inhabitant of the British Museum Reading Room, I should like to say that there are three things which the average reader asks for from the Museum Library. We want first of all completeness; we want that above all. I have to say that at present, while the British Museum can clearly provide virtually any book in the English language which any of us can conceivably think of wanting, it seems to have a very surprising lacuna in foreign books. I do not refer particularly to recondite foreign books, but to perfectly ordinary foreign books in French, Italian or German, which one can hardly believe should not appear there. I worked quite a lot at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. I have never not found an English book which I have looked for there. Just for interest, last Friday I looked through the bibliography of the last book I happened to write, and at a quick count (I am not sure it was exhaustive) I found 11 titles, nine of which were French which I had not found in the British Museum but which I did find in the London Library. With all respect and gratitude to the
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British Museum, I do not think that that is good enough, and I should like to think that in the future in the Library which we are shortly going to be able to welcome a great effort will be made to collect more foreign titles.
Also, I should like to hope that in this new context it will be possible to include all the newspapers. It is sad and time-consuming, and frequently frustrating, to have to tool all the way out of Colindale every time one wants to find a copy of an old newspaper. Here is a marvellous opportunity, with a great new building rising in Central London, to deal with this need. Do, please, let us try to have newspaper files under the same roof as everything else.
I should also like to think that in the new catalogues which will have to be drawn up it will be possible to include not only all the books in the British Museum Library but all the books in the other principal libraries as well, in order that if by any chance we find ourselves wanting a title which the British Museum does not possess we shall nevertheless find that title in the catalogue, with a note against it of those libraries in this country where that book is to be found. I think that would be of enormous value to scholars and researchers, and I cannot think that it would be difficult to arrange.
I did not intend to make this point, but when the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, spoke about the sound archive it suddenly struck me that I might be excused for mounting momentarily my own hobbyhorse. I would suggest that here might be a wonderful opportunity for including in the new archives not just sound archives but also an archive of the theatre, in the form not just of a copy of the script of any play produced on the commercial stage in this country but also possibly a video tape or a direct film version of what went on, on the stage, on one particular night; because it seems to me that the theatre remains the only major art in this country which is entirely ephemeral and that once the curtain has come down on the last Act on the last night that production is gone and is lost for ever. I should like to think that this would no longer be so.
Completeness, therefore, is the first thing that we readers look for. The second thing we look for—less important,

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but nevertheless still of importance—is speed of service. It is getting worse in the British Museum. Two or three hours is no longer an exception. I know that it is not the fault of the staff—they are hideously overworked and on occasions life must be an absolute nightmare for them. I have all sympathy and pity for them, but I hope that in the new Library, which I trust will be fully automated, it will be possible for the directors of the board to arrange for quicker service in the future. In particular, I should like to think that the catalogues will be readable by machine, in order that the time taken in looking for a rather difficult title may be minimised.
Finally, what we readers want is space. It is almost impossible to find space in the British Museum Reading Room. Those of us who have had the misfortune to try to research in the Public Record Office find it a hundred times worse. Here at last is a wonderful opportunity for giving us all the space we need, and I should like to think that we shall have at least three times the space in the new building. It would be helpful if some of the more popular and the more frequently used material in the Public Record Office could be made available on semi-permanent loan to the new Library in order that more space would be available to people who wish to consult that material.
I am a little disturbed to read in paragraph 18 of the White Paper, the following sentence:
"In addition it should be possible to make space available for at least as much housing on the site, unconnected with the library, as under the earlier plans …"
My Lords, I somehow feel that that sentence was put in as a sop. If it was a sop, I think it was a misplaced sop because I cannot believe that seven acres of space are going to be too much. I think that if housing unconnected with the Library is built on the site all too soon we shall most bitterly regret the positioning of that housing. We are going to need all the space we can get for the new Library. We have the most tremendous opportunity at last promised us. Now that we have it, please let us make the fullest use of it and from the very outset—from this afternoon—let us think big.
4.45 p.m.
LORD TREVELYAN: My Lords, I should like first to say a word on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Annan. He had intended to speak this afternoon, but he has been called away to a statutory meeting and he may not be able to get back in time to speak. If he is unable to do so he would like me to make his apologies to your Lordships and to express thanks to the noble Viscount for his kind references to him.
I am taking part in this debate as Chairman of the Trustees of the British Museum in order to give the warmest possible welcome to the White Paper. At long last, after a sad delay, there is a firm decision, supported by all Parties, as has been made clear this afternoon, to build a new Library, in two parts, to house the British Museum Library and the Science Library on the site which the Trustees have all along considered to be the right one. I am glad to know that this decision is also warmly welcomed by the
Standing Conference of National and University Libraries. The Trustees are profoundly grateful to the Government for their decision. We are especially glad that the British Museum Library will retain its name and separate identity within the general framework of the scheme. We can now forget the disputes of the past and look forward to the creation of a great centre of intellectual endeavour in the centre of London. This has been expressed much more eloquently than I can express it by the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge. This is indeed a landmark in our national life.
The Trustees of the British Museum are also grateful to the Paymaster General for his promise to maintain close consultation with them through the intermediate period while the new Library is being built. They will give every possible co-operation to ensure that the transitional arrangements work smoothly. I do not think it necessary to work out in precise detail at this stage all the arrangements which will be required during the transitional period. I think the way in which the White Paper was written is perfectly correct in that regard. We do not agree with every detail of it, particularly in paragraph 14. Broadly speaking, the Trustees' position is as follows.

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The noble Viscount has explained about the period until the Act comes into force, when planning of the new Library will be
undertaken by a special Committee established by him. We should wish to be represented on this body by some of our Trustees and by the Director and other senior officials of the Museum concerned with the administration of the existing libraries. This will be a very important point in the transitional period of organisation of the new Library, and many of the most important decisions, I feel
sure, will in fact be taken by this Committee. This co-operation has been foreshadowed by the Paymaster General to-day.
After the Act is passed, the new Libraries Board will be constituted and will have statutory responsibility for the whole complex of Libraries, including the British Museum Library. There should be no difficulty in transferring the complete administration of the Science Library, which is already housed in buildings outside the Museum and has its own separate administration. But it will be impossible, as the White Paper recognises, for the British Museum to divest itself completely of responsibility for the British Museum Library in the period until the new Library is built and the books are taken there. During this period there must clearly be joint executive responsibility between the new Board and the Museum. The White Paper implies a division of responsibility. What we contemplate is rather a sharing of responsibility, but our purpose will be to cooperate in this great enterprise and I feel sure that, with good will and common sense, we can make suitable arrangements which will ensure harmony during this period.
I have heard it suggested that the British Museum Library should be converted into a lending library. There are strong reasons against this. The Trustees have always held that the nation's reference and research library would lose half its value if a proportion of its books were liable to be away on loan. Lending, even on a small scale, would destroy the guarantee that any book known to be in its stock would always be available, and would, therefore, make the Library even less complete than the noble Viscount,
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Lord Norwich, has suggested it is at present. Lending would also add greatly to the administrative problems of managing a great Library, and it would greatly increase the loss of books.
But the reference library can give important help to the lending library by providing photo-copies of such items as articles and short reports, as the Trustees of the British Museum suggested in their evidence to the Dainton Committee, and this will often be cheaper for the researcher who does not live in or near London. Moreover, photo-copies of a volume can be supplied to the lending library for loan by them if there is no copy of it anywhere except in the reference library.
There is one point of organisation of the new Library that I should like to raise. It will take not only our Department of Printed Books but two other departments, of manuscripts and of Oriental printed books and manuscripts. These will be very important parts of the new Library. It is, in our belief, essential that they should have separate and equal status with the Department of Printed Books and that the keepers of these departments should be directly subordinate to the Director of the new British Museum Library.
The noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, has suggested that it will not be enough, when the books are in the other Library and it is fully constituted, for the Libraries Board to include only one representative of the Trustees of the British Museum. I am not sure that I entirely agree with him on this point. It is certainly very important that we should permanently be represented on the new Library, because of the continuing connection which must be closely maintained. Whether numbers make a difference I am not so certain. In any case, it may well be that a man who is Trustee of the British Museum may be appointed Trustee also of the new National Library in his own right.
We are fully aware, of course, of the defects and shortcomings that there may be in our existing Library, and we shall, as we always do, consider many of the points that have been raised to-day by the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich. I personally have very considerable sympathy with the point that he raised about

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foreign books. On the newspapers, I doubt whether it will ever be possible to have the newspapers in the main Library, but I think that this problem can be solved by extensive microfilming.
Meanwhile, I can assure your Lordships that during the intervening period, we shall continue our efforts, within the inevitable limitations imposed by our existing buildings, to meet all the demands of scholars. We are now taking steps to increase our staff. We hope very soon to have at least 70 more places for readers. We will make every effort to keep our cataloguing up to date and to keep the period of waiting for a book as short as possible. We are making special efforts to deal with the problem of books misplaced on the shelves, and we are taking measures to improve security. In return, we ask the readers in the Library to realise the problems with which we are faced, and to make allowances for the obstinate fact that library facilities which were adequate 50 years ago, and which cannot be greatly improved for reasons of space, become less and less adequate to the demand each year. That is why we want a new Library.
I have already spoken in your Lordships' House on the question of entrance charges, and I do not wish to repeat myself. All I would say again is that, so far as the Library is concerned, so long as a free library system is maintained in this country, readers in the British Museum Library must be allowed to use it without any charge for entry to the Museum. Finally, I may say, now that we are at last on the right road; let us build our new library quickly. Can we not have the new Library working, at any rate, by 1980?
4.55 p.m.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: My Lords, like the noble Baroness and all noble Lords who have spoken, I welcome the White Paper and I do not propose to detain your Lordships by gilding what I would look upon as an undoubted lily. But, speaking as a Trustee of the National Central Library, and as one who has had fairly considerable experience of being concerned with the library of a learned society, I think there are one or two points which arise out of the White Paper which ought to be considered before legislation is introduced.
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I welcome primarily the decision to rehouse both the British Museum Library and the National Reference Library for Science and Invention on one site in Bloomsbury, because I have always felt that when the history of the British library comes to be written, one of the major blots would be thought to be the decision taken in the 1950s to separate the British Museum Library from the Science Reference Library and to build the latter on the South Bank. But I can see that a hangover from that original decision—although the noble Viscount recognised that it was then mistaken—seems still to persist in the White Paper. It really is quite impossible to make a clear cut decision between the arts and the sciences so far as their literature is concerned, more particularly, of course, when you get to that sort of no-man's-land between the two which is now occupied by the social sciences, so called. This difficulty is much greater in the case of books than in the case of periodicals, because periodicals usually fall pretty distinctly to one side or the other; but it is exceedingly difficult to say whether the works of any one author ought to be housed in a library for the sciences or the arts.
I can give your Lordships one or two rather curious examples. I have no doubt that many of your Lordships will be fairly knowledgeable in the works of Rabelais, which you may well have consulted because of your interest in sociology. They are just as interesting to a botanist, and for purely—and I accentuate that adjective—purely botanical reasons. Rabelais was one of the first people to describe cannabis indica, commonly known to-day as "pot", which he calls pantagruelion; and in the same place he went into a long dissertation on the origin of plant names which is of the greatest interest to a botanist. Indeed, some of those Rabelaisian names have been carried forward to to-day and are now the modern generic names of a large number of plants.
Another person is Voltaire, who did such admirable work investigating the regeneration of decapitated slugs and snails. He was elected a Fellow of our own Royal Society, although he could not resist at the same time having a little dig at the Church by wondering what would have happened to some of the sanctified early fathers had they been capable, like

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slugs and snails, of regenerating the members which caused their beatification. Where do you put, for instance an incurable hortus sanitatus? Does it go to the arts or to the sciences? And Darwin's Voyage with the "Beagle" is as interesting to the historian as to the sociologist and scientist.
While, therefore, I welcome the functional division between the National Reference Library to be and the National Lending Library, and the setting up of two separate directorates for each, I must confess that I regret the proposed establishment of two separate reference libraries on one site, with two separate directorates and two separate advisory committees; and, with the greatest respect, I was a little disappointed in the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, when he expressed himself as gratified that the British Museum Library was going to continue as an entity in itself, quite forgetting, if he will not mind my reminding him of it, that he and his fellow trustees are as responsible to-day for the National Reference Library of Science and Invention as they are for the Library housed in Bloomsbury. They are one and the same thing. They should be one and the same thing, and indivisible. Of course there should be two reading rooms, because open access, particularly to periodicals, is of vital importance to the scientist and to people dealing with trade and industry and the like, though not so necessary where the Arts are concerned. There must therefore be a reading room like that at the Patents Office Library, ready access to all the shelves, and another one like an improved British Museum reading room to-day.
For the same reason I should regret the setting up of two separate lending libraries, which is suggested as a possibility at one place in the White Paper, one for the Sciences and one for the Humanities. There especially, if there is to be a division, it should surely be a division by function and not a division by disciplines. It would be perfectly sensible to set up one lending library for periodicals and one lending library for books, with a clear-cut functional division between them. That might well be the solution so far as the Bloomsbury site is concerned, if there must be a division—have one reading room for periodicals,
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another for books and, as I think the noble Viscount said, have a common and joint bookstall. So much for that division at the
Bloomsbury site. I hope that the noble Viscount will be able to have another look at that matter before legislation is introduced.
There are two other proposals in the White Paper which have rather wider implications than appear at first sight: first, the almost parenthetical suggestion, to which the noble Baroness opposite referred, of the setting up of an efficient photocopying service, but with no reference to the Copyright Act, although the noble Baroness referred to it. That Act allows for fair copying of single copies of articles or passages from books for individual study and research. There is no objection to that; it is generally recognised as being desirable. But to-day there is an increasing tendency to demand multiple copies, not for private study but to provide copies of articles, very largely in learned journals, for the members of classes and courses at colleges and universities. Indeed, the Parry Committee on University Libraries went so far as to call the Copyright Act a restriction on scholarship, just because it should prevent colleges and universities from trying to cheat authors and publishers of the fruits of their work.
I know that the noble Viscount is sympathetic to this new idea of having special copies of books for lending libraries at an enhanced price which will enable authors to draw their copyright fees. In the case of articles which are usually copies for study purposes—they usually come from scientific journals—the authors concerned are only too pleased that they should be copied extensively and given the widest possible circulation, because, after all, that is the reason for which they were written: to advance science and not for financial gain. But all too often these articles come from journals of learned societies which have got to pay their way; the members of those societies have to make up the loss if sales do not cover the cost of production. That situation cannot go on for ever. And where they
are published by commercial publishers, of course, the position is the same. I hope that when the noble Viscount is considering Amendments to the Copyright Act to deal with copyright for authors

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whose books are in lending libraries, he will also consider this very difficult but important question of copyright in reproduction from scientific journals.
The other suggestion concerns a review of inter-library lending, in regard to which I think the noble Viscount made some small reference about books which are found in other libraries and are not found in the lending library at all, and are available only for reference. Here again, the private libraries of learned societies are deeply involved, usually through the offices of the National Central Library, through the work of their librarians, and, what is more important, in the wear and tear on what are usually rather old, rather rare and rather fragile hooks and journals which some of the older societies have and which are obtainable nowhere else in this country. It is suggested in the White Paper that the Organising Committee should look into this matter and that some payment should be made to these special libraries. I welcome that suggestion, and hope that the Organising Committee will deal with it very soon.
The suggestion that all the lending services should be concentrated at Boston Spa is perhaps rather dangerous. Most of these special libraries are in London, and a close personal contact between the staff of the Central Library and the staff of the providing libraries is necessary. That may well be difficult to secure from Yorkshire, and difficult to maintain, even if it is once secured; and it may well be necessary that some part of the lending side of the Library will have to be in London.
Lastly, I should like to refer to the constitution of the Board, a matter to which other noble Lords have referred. I have spoken already of the tendency, which still exists to-day, to separate too far the Arts and Sciences. That is shown by the fact that there is to be no representative of the Royal Society on the Board. The noble Lord on the Cross-Benches suggested that there should be a member of the Royal Society on the Organising Committee. I think it is far more important that there should be a representative of the Royal Society representing the Sciences on the Board than the two or three representatives of the Trustees of the British Museum, a
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matter to which the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, referred.
LORD ROBBINS: My Lords, if the noble Earl will forgive me, my suggestion did not exclude the point that he is making.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: My Lords, I am quite certain that it did not exclude it, but the noble Lord did not, in fact, firmly mention it, as I wish to do. In his introductory speech the noble Viscount reassured me to some considerable extent on the way he saw the Board developing, because the suggestions made by the Dainton Committee were altogether syndicalist, and I could not believe myself that any man of parts would have been prepared to serve on the advisory committees or as one of the pseudo-Trustees of the British Museum Library which were proposed by Dainton. The noble Viscount, like me, has experience of the system of trustees which has grown up in this country, and which Dainton says—I am pleased to be able to quote him instead of blowing either the noble Viscount's trumpet or my own—
"has been of considerable practical benefit to the British Museum Library and to the nation."
That is based fundamentally on the same principle of any Parliamentary democracy, that the ultimate control is not handed over to the professional specialist.
The Government's proposals, as set out in the White Paper, could go either way. They could go as syndicalist as Dainton; they could go as far as almost repenting the existing set-up of the Trustees of the British Museum. I think that the noble Viscount had it in mind to go somewhere between the two. I felt reassured, but I should like more reassurance when he replies, because I attach considerable importance to the managing body of this Museum. I hope that the noble Viscount does not think that I have been critical of his White Paper. I welcome it, and I wish I was going to live long enough to see the Museum established on that site.
5.11 p.m.
LORD IRONSIDE: My Lords, I should like first to congratulate the Government on the way they have outlined the principles of this new institution in the White

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Paper. After so many years of deliberation, I think it is really surprising that such a short document has appeared, but nevertheless I welcome the contents wholeheartedly. As the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, knows, the proposals have wide acceptance in professional and academic circles.
Speaking as a member of the N.R.L.S.I.—that is, the National Reference Library for Science and Industry—Advisory Council, I can only say that the course of action now proposed is most satisfactory. As this Library has been virtually living in temporary lodgings ever since it started, the encouragement now given by the Government in stating that rehousing is the priority task is heartily welcome.
May I for one moment refer to some figures to show how this Library has been bursting at the seams? The total stock in 1965 was 450,000 volumes. In 1970 it was 640,000 volumes, and it will be growing at the rate of 40,000 volumes or so a year until 1980 when one million volumes, which is the final total, will have been reached. In passing, I might also mention that the photocopy service to which my noble friend Lord Cranbrook referred is in pretty good use at the moment. The extent to which it is used is shown by the fact that in 1965 113,000 photocopy items were produced, and in 1970 234,000 were produced. This number will go up considerably by 1980. If the Copyright Act is amended in such a way that it will mean charging more for this photocopy service, then of course industrial costs will go up, because the N.R.L.S.I.—or what will now be the S.R.L.—is a Library essentially for trade and commerce. Surely, there must be some way of building into the Amendments in the Copyright Act some clause which will cover the copying which comes from reference libraries as opposed to the lending libraries.
I am also very glad that my noble friend Lord Eccles has been able to bring forward the British Library proposal, as he has been very much linked with the developments in recent years, and having taken part myself in the dialogue that has been carried on between the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee and the previous Administration—and the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, knows
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all about that—may I say that the willingness of the right honourable lady the Secretary of State for Education and Science to continue this dialogue as the need arises is very much appreciated. The Parliamentary and Scientific Committee will, in fact, continue discussing these matters in the future.
If there are any omissions in the White Paper they are not so much matters of principle but matters of detail. I do not propose to cover old ground but to draw attention to matters which arise from the White Paper. The first point is to emphasise the need for good facilities to meet the requirements of industry and commerce. These matters are referred to in paragraphs 5 and 6 of the White Paper, and largely revolve around the Science Reference Library and the question of the efficiency of library services as a whole. The British Museum Library, which is described as a library of last resort (some will say only resort), is somewhat different from the N.R.L.S.I. which, at the moment, is not really a library of last resort in the same sense as the British Museum Library is. The coverage is not designed to be absolute, but is defined within certain limits, and within these limits it attempts to be comprehensive. One of the simple limitations is that it will hold approximately one million volumes of material, but its strength lies in its inter-disciplinary nature and its relationship with other technological libraries and specialist collections.
The handling of scientific and technological literature is characterised by needs which are somewhat different from the Arts
and Humanities, and because of its coverage and role the new Science Reference Library must ensure the availability of certain material at other places. This, to my mind, does not mean building up duplicate libraries regionally but improving communications (and in due course such things as data transmission facilities) so that regional users can make the best use of the system as a whole. One of the biggest problems that the Organising Committee will face will be determining to what extent the existing public libraries and universities can be used to strengthen the national organisation and whether, in fact, the universities themselves are willing to help in doing this, because primarily they are there for students and teaching purposes only.

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Perhaps I may give an example here. Because of local government administration, one finds now that a council or corporation may be spending a lot of money maintaining a public library, whereas industry in that same area may be inclined to go to the technical college library, or even the university library, by special arrangement. Every user has his pet librarian, whom he thinks is the "bee's knees", and frequently he never knows to what extent his librarian has made use of other libraries or information services. I feel that there is a case for rationalising the scope of regional libraries to obtain better value for money.
There is much to be studied before reaching conclusions, but I hope that the organising committee will tackle this work at an early stage. In any case, I think that the Government's proposals for the reorganisation of local government in England will help to solve many of the problems of administering regional libraries. This point was referred to by the noble Viscount, and I note that in the White Paper on that subject the responsibility for libraries will come at the top tier of the county councils, with the exception of the metropolitan areas. I should like to say here that all the difficulties of the use of industrial libraries, or libraries by industry, are likely to appear in the metropolitan areas, and that is where the problem is going to lie.
It appears that the organising committee, on the whole, are expected to achieve a great deal in a very short time, and will have to commit their successors to courses of action which they have not been able to determine for themselves. It is, therefore, most important, to my mind, that the organising committee should have from the start a number of members on it who will ultmiately be expected to be members of the Libraries Board itself, in order to ensure continuity of operations. The White Paper provides for this contingency up to a point, but I note that the Science Reference Library representation is not specifically mentioned, in spite of the separate directorate which is mentioned in paragraph 11(c) of the White Paper. This is possibly an omission. I should like to hear the view of the noble Viscount on this point. It may well be that he believes that the National Reference Library of Science
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and Invention, as constituted at the moment, has its affairs looked after by the British Museum, so that during the interim phase no special representation will be required, other than that provided by the British Museum Directorate itself. I suggest that there is a case for the Library being represented as an entity at a very early stage.
I now come to the question of buildings, particularly the part which will be the Science Reference Library. I see that the Government have appointed a chief architect for the project—the noble Viscount mentioned the name of Colin. St. John Wilson. I sincerely hope that, before the project is completed, in 13 years' time, thorough consideration will be given to laying out the building in such a way that it will meet the requirements of the modern trained user, who may be expected to employ techniques of data transmission and mechanised information retrieval as routine procedure. For example, the provision of conference and study rooms on a short-term rental basis should be studied. I think this would help the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich. I am not here trying to advocate entry charges, but I am considering the broader aspects of the British Library as an institution. Adequate facilities will have to be allowed for data transmission terminals, for example.
I was going to say that I do not believe that an architect can be found at the present time to design this Library, but assurances
have been given by the noble Viscount about the architect who has been appointed. However, I still hope that the Organising Committee will be able to draw on Government assistance, to enable them to commission the necessary feasibility studies which will then lead to final designs. One of the new considerations for the building will be the inclusion of facilities for the disabled, and the outcome of the National Libraries' A.D.P. study must have a substantial effect on the means to be adopted of meeting growing demands.
I should like to ask my noble friend at this stage whether he will examine the desirability of reopening the old Museum Underground station, thereby providing the British Library with a direct outside link. I believe that the tunnel must pass very close to the planned new building, so that at relatively low cost good access

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could be established. The station could even be renamed, "Library". Further, I should like to ask the noble Viscount whether he anticipates that the Libraries Board will be the responsibility of any one Minister. So far as I can see, the White Paper seems to imply that it will be the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Education and Science.
In passing, I should like to refer to one point which was mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich; that is, the Queen's appointed representative. Like him, I wonder whether this appointment would be better held at the British Museum Library Directorate level, rather than at the Board level. I should be interested to hear the noble Viscount's reasoning for the decision in the White Paper. Finally in welcoming the White Paper I would say that I hope the necessary legislation will proceed without further delay, and that users will be able to pass through the entrance without charge. To my mind, the framework for future planning depends on the deliberations of the Libraries Board's precursor, the Organising Committee, which must be as strongly based as possible.
5.25 p.m.
LORD SANDYS: My Lords, I also should like to give a welcome to the White Paper, which is a very notable contribution. More especially, I would congratulate my noble friend Lord Eccles on his speech this afternoon, and on his very memorable speech of December 11, 1967. This afternoon my noble friend, Lord Cranbrook said that he was not going to gild this undoubted lily, and I suppose that it is very impertinent of me to say that it is my intention to do that. However, I hope he will forgive me.
My reason for intervening is largely a historical one. One of my forebears was one of the very early Trustees of the British Museum, and I suppose that this will be the last occasion when I shall have the opportunity of mentioning the British Museum in its present context, before the new Library is formed. I should like to mention this connection because a most important document links this new Library, whose birth pangs we are witnessing to-day, and one of the greatest libraries of the ancient world; that is, the Library of Alexandria. I refer
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to the famous Codex Alexandria and that highly important manuscript was brought to the British Museum in a curious way. Perhaps your Lordships will forgive this historical diversion, but I think it is interesting.
This document survived the Saracen destruction of the Library of Alexandria in 642 A.D., and it eventually reached Constantinople where it became the property of the Patriarch. In the year 1628 it was brought as a personal gift from the Patriarch of Constantinople by the hand of Sir Thomas Rowe, our British Ambassador in those days, to King Charles I; and it remained in the royal possession until the foundation of the British Museum Library in the reign of King George II. So important and so highly valued was this document in the very early days of the British Museum that in the year 1786 a special edition was printed under the Royal patronage not only of King George III but also of King Stanislas of Poland, the Elector of Bavaria and 350 notable scholars at libraries and universities, ranging from Rome to Lithuania. This very important document links the past with the present, and I feel sure that it will give great satisfaction to my noble friend Lord Eccles that, in a very real sense in this modern day, he is playing the part played by Ptolemy Soter, and his son, Ptolemy Philadelphus, in creating and founding this wonderful new Library.
There are two special points which I should like to make with regard to the composition of the Board. I regret that I differ from both the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, and my noble friend Lord Ironside in regard to the trusteeship and membership of the Board. It seems to me highly appropriate that the representative appointed by Her Majesty the Queen should be retained. Undoubtedly the position will be vested in the person most suitable to hold that office; and in a sense it would seem a little ungrateful if this link with the original foundation of the collection in the reign of King George II was not continued as a proper link.
I was delighted when my noble friend Lord Ironside referred to the special needs of the disabled in this Library. I venture to make the very tentative suggestion that it might be desirable to include a section of works in Braille. All of us who study and use the Museum's

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facilities are so fortunate in possessing our sight, and it would be an acknowledgement of that gift if one section of the Library were devoted to works in Braille. Another matter to which close attention should be given is the access to this new building complex. In this respect, disabled people are very important, and I hope that the architect will take due note of the advice which he will no doubt call upon from the societies for the disabled.
My Lords, I am not in any way further qualified to speak about the internal design of the building or about the communications system, but I should like to make one small point in regard to decoration. I hope that the internal embellishment of some of the important rooms will form the subject of a competition—possibly an international competition. This is an opportunity to draw together the graphic skills of many people who would undoubtedly be delighted to contribute. I feel that this is a very suitable opportunity to suggest to the architect that perhaps this might be possible.
5.31 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I think we have had a very good debate. It has been a fairly short debate and, I think, a calm one, particularly when compared with the last occasion on which we debated this subject, in December, 1967, which was a long and extremely impassionate debate. Like other noble Lords before me, I should like to congratulate the noble Viscount the Paymaster General on his White Paper, and particularly its brevity. What it contains is extremely good and sound.
What I think is clear from this debate is that the appointment of the Dainton Committee by the previous Government at the end of 1967 has been fully justified. The question of the structure of our national library service is just as important as the site for the main National Reference Library. I always felt, if I may say so with all deference, that the previous debate in your Lordships' House tended to concentrate on the question of the site, to the exclusion of the structure. Like the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, I do not want to revive this old controversy, and I am glad that it has now been resolved. Like him, too, I hope that we shall not dwell on the east.
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My Lords, not all the Dainton recommendations, of course, can be agreed, and some are controversial, to which I shall refer later; but the White Paper accepts the main recommendations, and much the most important of them. These recommendations had of course been accepted by the previous Government, and were announced to both Houses on April 7, 1970, just before the General Election; and I should like to join with my noble friend Lady Lee of Asheridge, to whose speech we listened with such interest, in paying a tribute to my right honourable friend Mr. Edward Short for accepting the recommendations. I think it is true to say that except perhaps for one or two details, if the Election had taken another course this would have been the Labour Government's White Paper. I think, therefore, that the Labour Government can take much credit, although one would not think so from some of the comments that were made during the previous debate.
The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Radcliffe, who I am sorry to see is not in his place to-day, but who told me that he very much regretted that, he could not be present, said during the course of the speech to which the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, alluded with such enthusiasm: "Why a committee?" He then went on to say:
"I think this alleged desire to have a committee to tell you what you ought to know or find out yourself is another of those ideas that have been cooked up".—[0FFICIAL REPORT, 13/12/67, col. 1138.]
The Times of October 27, 1967, said:
"Mr. Gordon Walker's 'small independent Committee' to plough the field of a national library all over again is a piece of Whitehall flannel'."
My Lords, flannel or not, it is warming to have these recommendations accepted by the present Government.
I must emphasise also, my Lords, as I think the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, accepted, that the delaying of this decision until the Dainton Committee had reported had very considerable advantages. As the Paymaster General has said, all the main listed buildings as well as those on the west side of Bloomsbury Square will be preserved. Furthermore—and I think this is even more important—the National Reference Library of Science and Invention will be included on the

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main site. The original plan did not include this. I know this was probably not the fault of the trustees, but it is a fact that the last plan did not include it. I think the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, is perfectly right when he says that it is wrong to divide knowledge into two halves, and I very warmly welcome the fact that now the Science Library and the Humanities Library will be on the same site. I also welcome the fact that there will be as much housing as in the original plan in spite of the fact that the Science Reference Library will now be included. I am afraid that I cannot agree with what the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, said about the housing. I think we ought to have some housing on that site. I think it would be a pity for the whole of that part of London to become dead and institutional. I therefore welcome the White Paper proposals, and the fact that this operation will be centred on two complexes: the reference, research and bibliographical reference in London, and the lending services at Boston Spa.
I should like to ask the noble Viscount the Paymaster General a few questions—and I have given him private notice of most of these. First of all, I wonder whether it is wise to retain, mainly for sentimental reasons, the name "British Museum Library" alongside the renamed Science Reference Library. Would it not be better to give what is the main library for the Humanities in the reference division a name more in keeping with the new structure? Also, several noble Lords have asked why it is necessary to have a part-time member appointed by the Queen responsible only for the Royal Library of King George III. I agree entirely with the points which the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, raised, and I do not understand why it is necessary for this Crown appointment to be made to look after a library which is by royal gift the property of the Museum anyway. I am sure there must be good reasons, and I should be glad if the Government could tell us why this appointment is considered necessary.
I was also surprised that there is no place in the White Paper for the British Library of Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I should like to ask the Government: what is to be the future of this library? The Dainton Report drew
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attention to the dangers of possible duplication between the British Library of Art and the British Museum Library, and suggested that the B.L.A. (which contains, I believe, over 400,000 volumes, many of which are not available elsewhere) could possibly be integrated within the national organisation. It recommended further examination by the Department of Education and Science in association with the national libraries organisation. I should therefore like to ask what the Government propose to do.
I also see from paragraph 7 of the White Paper that it is not intended that the Science Museum Library should be absorbed into the Lyon Playfair Library of the Imperial College of Science and Technology, as recommended by Dainton. I am sure, my Lords, that this is right. But the White Paper proposes that the Lyon Playfair Library should take over a major part of the Science Museum Library. Certain bodies, including the staff association representing all the staff in the libraries which will form the British Library Organisation, believe that this would be a mistake. May I therefore ask the Minister whether this transfer relates to only a few books or to a large part of the Science Museum Library? If it is to be the latter, this could be damaging to a library which is in effect the national library of the history of science and technology, and, moreover, the library which provides specialist services to the staffs of the museums and colleges in South Kensington. Furthermore, the Science Museum Library is open to the public; the Lyon Playfair Library is not. I should therefore like to ask the Government whether they would consider allowing the Science Museum Library to remain intact.
I should like to say that the Standing Conference of National and University Librarians welcomed the main provisions of the White Paper and they have told me that the Conference attached great importance to ensuring that practical librarians should be brought into the deliberations of the statutory bodies from the beginning. I therefore welcome very much what the noble Viscount the Paymaster-General said in this respect. I was also particularly glad to see from paragraph 12, under the heading "Advisory Councils", that special councils will be appointed to give advice on

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the acquisition of rare books, maps and manuscripts. If I may say so, I detect here the personal hand of the Paymaster-General. I know how interested he is in this field. I hope that this policy will lead to some exhibitions in the new building devoted to authors and related subjects, following the splendid example of the Victoria and Albert Museum who have recently, as your Lordships know, put on the most memorable exhibitions to celebrate the centenaries of Berlioz and Charles Dickens. I therefore should like to ask the Paymaster-General whether the new building will contain a special exhibition hall so that London will be able to enjoy this kind of exhibition which is also so well done by the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
My Lords, some of the Dainton recommendations were quite unacceptable. The White Paper does not mention these; and I should like to ask the Paymaster General for an assurance that it is not intended in these consultations to implement them in any way. The first recommendation to which I take exception is that dealing with outhousing. Dainton recommended, in view of the high cost of storing library material in central London, that lightly used material in the British Museum Library and in the Science Reference Library should be out housed in stores on lower cost land. I admit that the costs in Central London for book storage are very high. I believe that they are about £5 per square foot per year compared with just over £1 per square foot per year in low cost sites, for example, Boston Spa, outside London. But I think that this consideration should be overruled by the necessity to keep reference libraries intact and the inconvenience to users which results when books are sent away, an inconvenience of which I have personal experience.
I should like to support what the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, said about the newspaper library at Colindale. I referred to this in my own speech in 1967. I am glad that he is still taking this up. I suppose the reason is the high cost of storage, but here again I should like to ask the Paymaster General whether there is any chance of having the newspaper library in the main complex in Central London. There have been very
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many complaints from people who are required to go all the way to Colindale to consult what is an extremely important reference library.
The other Dainton recommendation which I hope will not be accepted is that relating to lending. Dainton recommended that in certain circumstances the National Reference Library should allow some books to be borrowed from its stock. It recommended these should be what it calls "lightly used foreign books". It think that if these are borrowed there will be even fewer foreign books in the British Museum Library than were found by the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich. As someone who goes to that Library mainly to consult foreign material, I have great sympathy with what he said. As Gertrude Stein might have put it: "A reference library is a reference library is a reference library". It is not a lending library. I support what Lord Trevelyan, the chairman of the trustees, said in this respect.
I welcome the fact that in paragraph 8 of the White Paper we see that the British Library will be able to retain the income from its own services, and I was glad to hear from the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, that the Science Library is expected to be open by 1978. I should like to ask the Government whether, in order to attain this objective, we shall be seeing some legislation during this Session. As the White Paper says in paragraph 4, the British Museum Library and the Science Reference Library are "bursting at the seams".
I was glad to see that the noble Viscount has appointed Mr. Colin St. John Wilson as architect, and I hope that the whole Bloomsbury Square scheme will be modified very considerably. I never cared very much for the previous design; I hope that the new one will be well in keeping with its surroundings. On sentimental grounds, I am sorry that so much of the old Museum Street quarter is to disappear. It was a charming and useful adjunct to its great neighbour. But I feel sure that the new complex will be well designed to harmonise with its surroundings and that this whole structure will be something which, in the words of one of our greatest librarians, Sir Anthony Panizzi, "will enrich the civilisation of all nations".
5.48 p.m.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, with the permission of the House, I should like briefly to reply to a debate which has been a real satisfaction to me and to all those in the Department who are set upon making this great project worthy of the assets entrusted to us. It is a very different debate from that we had four years ago, and I think there is not a single noble Lord who spoke who has not done something to help bring about the sweetness and light which is now taking the place of what I am bound to say was an emotional occasion. I am also very grateful for the many points of advice, which we shall certainly take up very carefully. I do not know whether it is inexperience on my part or what; but in facing this project I saw that there was an enormous number of questions to be examined and settled before one would really know what should be the structure of the central reference libraries and the lending libraries and, furthermore, their relations with the whole of the library system in this country.
The library service in this country costs almost exactly £100 million a year. It is something of very great importance in our cultural and educational life; and, given the rise in costs which we all know about, it is of the utmost importance not only to secure—if we can—some more money, but also to see that all the money we have now, and the money we get in future, is well laid out. This will very largely depend on the way in which we are able to organise the British Library, and therefore I think it must be right to spend a very considerable time consulting everyone who can lend us experience in this matter before we finalise the shape of the new institution.
My Lords, I can at once tell the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, that the £36 million, which is our estimate for the acquisition of the remaining parts of the site and the building costs, has nothing whatever to do with any money raised from museum charges. It is an undertaking by the Government in exactly the same way that we shall, I hope, be able to provide the money for some of the very large extensions to the Museum, and to other museums who are asking for such extensions. There will be no direct connection between charging
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for entrance and finding these very large capital sums, and the consequential recurrent grants.
The noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, made a very interesting speech. Thinking back on his past support, I thank him for that support, and also for his support to-day. I think he felt that the White Paper was a little sketchy. I hope that I have given the House the reasons for that. It gives the main outline of what we want to do, but I fully realise that it would have been a very attractive thing if we could have produced an organisational plan such as the Dainton Committee produced in their Report. But, frankly, my Lords, I believe that if we had done that we should have been wrong. One has to remember that it may be 13 years before this institution actually opens its doors, and by that time, no doubt, the techniques of managing libraries—especially those of retrieval and copying—may well have changed very much. We shall have to solve these problems as we go along.
The noble Viscount, like the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, and my noble friend Lord Sandys, raised the question of a part-time Trustee who is to be appointed by Her Majesty. I must say, my Lords, that this is not something that is necessary, but surely it is wholly appropriate. When King George III gave his great library—which I think contained something like one-third of all the books now in the British Museum Library published before 1750—it was at once recognised that it would be right and proper that the Sovereign should appoint a Trustee to the Board of the British Museum. When, therefore, this Library moves from the British Museum, as it is now, and becomes a separate institution, surely it is, as Lord Sandys said, right and proper that the appointment by the Sovereign should be continued. May I hasten to add that, in my experience, the Trustee of the British Museum appointed by the Sovereign does not confine himself to looking after the King's Library. Very distinguished people have been appointed in this way, and they have carried out very important functions in other directions; and I would suppose that this will happen again in the future.
Then I was asked by the noble Viscount, why consult the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Secretary of State

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for Wales to get, as it were, a special trustee representing their interests. Well, of course, the relationship between the British Library and the National Libraries of Scotland and of Wales has to be very close. The Welsh and Scottish Libraries are both deposit libraries; they both have specialist collections relating to the history of Scotland and of Wales. It is already a convention (I think that the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, will agree with me) that when anything of real interest to the history of either Wales or Scotland appears on the market, it is secured and goes either to Scotland or to Wales. At the same time, there are historians who wish to have available to them documents relating to the two great parts of the United Kingdom; and I think it reasonable that the British Library should have representatives from those two areas so that there may be co-ordination. This is one of the instances of how a considerable saving in money might well be found to be possible. So I welcome the idea that we should have people on the Board with a special interest in Wales and in Scotland.
The noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, was right in saying that we have some very big gaps in the collection of foreign books. A particular gap of which I am aware relates to Latin America. It is the fact that at different periods in the 19th century the Trustees of the British Museum either did not have the money to buy all the foreign books which one would wish they had bought; or, if they had the money, they preferred to spend it on something else. I really do not know what is the truth of the matter. But there are gaps. There are gaps in every great library, but I think that the librarians are well aware of it. The acquisition grants are larger now than they used to be, and I hope that perhaps some of the gaps may be filled.
I thank particularly my noble friend Lord Trevelyan for his warm welcome, and I would assure him that the cooperation from our side will match that from the Trustees. I agree with him that we have to share responsibility in a period in which the staff are still in the building of the present British Museum and the wardens who are going to look after the security of the Library are employed by the Trustees of the British
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Museum, although after the Act is passed the books will have passed in legal ownership to the new Board. But I am perfectly certain that, by putting our heads together, we can make that work very well. I can assure him that there will be no entrance charges to the British Museum Library, any more than there are going to be in the public library service. It looks to me as if someone who has a reader's ticket will get a free walk round the galleries of the antiquities. But still, my Lords, there will not be all that number, and we shall have to look the the other way.
My noble friend Lord Cranbrook made a most interesting speech; and because of his knowledge of the National Central Library it was particularly important that we should listen to the advice which he gave. I agree with him that the old idea about there being a division between the Humanities and the Sciences should be allowed to die. I think that is well on the way to happening. To-day there is a general feeling that the idea of there being two separate cultures is a mistake. That we are still reflecting it to some extent, by having two separate buildings on the site, is, I think, not serious but rather necessary from several points of view.
First, so far as I understand the design, which is not yet complete, it would be a great advantage to have St. George's Church in the middle, standing isolated in a kind of piazza; and on the one side the building containing the Science Reference Library, and on the other side the larger building (since the site would also be much wider at one end than the other) containing the British Museum Library. I think that, architecturally, there would be a great deal to be said for having two buildings. So far, I do not think the architect has considered whether there would be an underground connection, or even a bridge, between the two. But then there is no doubt that reference books relating to the Sciences are different from reference books relating to the Arts. In the first place, the researcher wants to have open access. As a matter of fact, it seems that one can conveniently organise a library with open access, on perhaps several floors, with about one million books, but: not with much more

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Then there comes the question of the obsolescence rate of the scientific material. It is altogether different from the obsolescence rate of literature and the Arts. Therefore we need to organise the Science Reference Library in such a way that the new stock—journals and all the rest—comes in at one end, and the older stock goes to the other end, is weeded out and goes down into the sump; so that we keep in the middle something like one million books on open access. The experts in this field tell me that this is better organised in what one might call a specialist science reference library. I think that is worth remembering. It will not mean that there is a frontier between the two. The social scientist might work in one building or the other, and as there is only one sump in which the book stocks are located, he can call for a book from either side of the stock.
I was interested in what the noble Lord said about the photo-copying service and the multiple copies. I think there is a problem there which I should like to consider with those who are experts in copyright; and perhaps the noble Lord will allow me again to take his advice on this topic. We shall have to do something about it at some time.
The noble Earl said, quite rightly, that the management body of the whole is the really important thing. Are we going to get the right kind and the best kind of people to take on this job? A fact that is borne in on anyone in Government to-day is the scarcity of really first-class people of an age at which one could put them on to bodies of this kind and think that they had ten or fifteen years life in front of them. I am not quite sure what has happened, but I think that there was a generation of people who were tested by the war and, having had difficult jobs to do, came very quickly to the front and were singled out and promoted very fast. Those people are roughly of my age, and we are at the end of the line. There must be equally good people between the ages of, let us say, 40 and 55. We have to find these people. We shall need some here because of the length of time before the Library opens its doors. I do not think it possible that we can take too much trouble to try to find the right people for what will be a fascinating job of great importance.
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The noble Lord, Lord Ironside, who of course knows so much more than I do about the requirements of industry and commerce, and engineering in particular, was naturally anxious whether this system that we are setting up is going to meet the needs. Of course the Dainton Committee thought that it would be better almost to turn the National Reference Library for Science and Invention into the Regional Library for London and the South-East, and then to build up a series of regional science reference libraries throughout the country. We looked at that idea as carefully as we could in the time, and we came to the conclusion that the duplication of stocks involved would be too expensive to take on at this time.
We felt that the first thing to do was to reunite in one building the fragmented National Reference Library for Science and Invention; to make sure that it held as comprehensive a stock as possible, and then to make the copying service and the lending service as good as we could. Then, when we had done that, we should be able to look round to see whether there ought to be duplicate large stocks of, say, scientific journals in half a dozen other places in the country. I am sure that with the money available—and inevitably it has to be a great deal of money—the right thing to do at present is to make the Science Reference Library something of which we can all be proud. But in the end we may have to come to regional libraries.
The noble Lord asked whether the National Reference Library for Science and Invention could be represented on the Organising Committee. I will certainly look at that. But, as he rightly said, this Library is a subsidiary of the British Museum; the Trustees of the British Museum know very well what is going on in it, and I should have thought could adequately represent it. The noble Lord made a fascinating suggestion that we should open the old Museum Underground station. I do not know about that. I will speak to my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport about it but my guess would be that that would put up the bill very considerably.
The noble Lord also asked whether the Board of the British Library will be responsible only to the Secretary of State for Education and Science. I think the answer to that must be, Yes. Your

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Lordships will notice that we are trying to create a structure
which is much more like a university. It will be much closer to a university status than, say, the Victoria and Albert, which is run by the Department, and for which all the building work is done by the Department of the Environment. This, as I say, will be much more like a university. In taking that parallel, I think it is a good thing to have only one Department to deal with it; and, as I say, that will be the Department of Education and Science.
The noble Lord, Lord Sandys, compared me to one of the Ptolemies. I am not quite sure about that. But I think he is right in saying that the Ptolemies were interested in decoration; and so far as one can react about it, the library and the other Palace complexes in Alexandria were most beautifully decorated. Perhaps that is why he wants me to try to pay attention to the embellishment of the new building. There is nothing I should like to do more, and if the noble Lord will help us to get the additional funds for the architect we will certainly do that with both hands.
Coming finally to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, I was grateful for the tone of his speech. He asked me one or two questions. Why, he asked, do we retain the name the "British Museum Library"? I am afraid that this is great sentiment. Long before the noble Lord and I were born there were people all over the world who had the greatest affection for the British Museum Library. I do not believe it would be right—it is only a little thing, after all—to depart from a name which has won for our scholarship such a sure place in every academic circle throughout the world. I am glad to keep the name, "British Museum Library". And, of course, it distinguishes it from the British Library, which is the whole complex including all the other parts of the Institution.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: My Lords, may I remind the noble Viscount, before he sits down, that the British Museum Library has always been responsible for the Sciences as well as for the Arts?
VISCOUNT ECCLES: Yes, my Lords. I thank the noble Earl for his observation. That brings us back, of course, to the problem of the two directorates.
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Questions of whether there should be a separate directorate for manuscripts, whether there should be a separate directorate for the Humanities and another for the Sciences, are surely things that we must work out as we go along and in terms of the personalities that we are able to persuade to come and join us.
The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, said that there was no mention of the Victoria and Albert Museum Arts Library. No: that will remain exactly as it is. And a very fine library it is. It is true that the Dainton Committee suggested that some of the material might be removed and would be better housed in the British Museum. I would only suggest to the noble Lord that he would get a warm reception from Sir John Pope-Hennessey if he decided to go down there and remove some of the books to Bloomsbury. In fact, this library on art at the Victoria and Albert Museum is precisely the type of library that we ought to build up, because the foundations are so good. People who work there know so much about art, and can help the reader so much.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt. I never suggested that the books from the Victoria and Albert Museum Library, for which I have a great affection—just as much as he has—should be removed to the British Museum Library. All I was attempting to suggest was that consideration should be given to bringing the Library into the structure to avoid overlapping of purchases, and so on.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I am sorry; it was the Dainton Report and not the noble Lord who suggested that there should be a rationalisation between the two. It is quite clear that in the purchasing—especially of foreign books—there will have to be arrangements between the British Library and other specialist libraries, who also want foreign material. This is best dealt with by agreement, and this is the kind of agreement which the Board will have to enter into.
As the noble Lord will know, there has always been the greatest difficulty over Oriental books and books relating to Africa, and I am hopeful that in the future these matters will be solved. We cannot afford to buy more than so many

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copies of all the material published in the rest of the world—we can only buy a "largish" proportion of them. In Japanese books alone there are 25,000 titles a year and I think we buy 10,000. I do not see how we can afford to buy the whole lot. Therefore the selection is of the utmost importance, and then the accessibility of the copies, wherever they happen to be, must be guaranteed if the money is provided from central funds.
With regard to the Science Museum Library, one has to take account of the institutions concerned, their own past and their feelings on the matter. It is quite right that the specialist library for the history of science should be there. On the other hand, the Science Library, aided in the ordinary course of its work by the staff of the Science Museum and by Imperial College, is better and more economically and efficiently run if there is a combination, and that is what we intend to have. Otherwise, if we left the whole of the Science Museum Library where it is, and built up the Lyon Playfair Library, there would be duplication in very close proximity. I think our decision there is right. The noble Lord asked whether there would be exhibition space in the new building. Yes, there certainly will. It is interesting that ten years ago the limiting factor as to what could be done with the site was book storage below ground. Now techniques are so improved that storage is no longer a limiting factor; the limiting factor is what can be done above ground. There, I can assure the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, we shall have three times the readers' places we have now.
Finally, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, did not approve of the Dainton recommendations on either out-housing or
lending from the British Museum Library, which was dealt with by my noble friend, Lord Trevelyan. He asked when legislation would come. I hope it will be next year but, naturally, I am not in a position to give any definite date. He asked whether we are going to have an entirely new design for the masses of the building, the heights, and so forth, and the answer is certainly "Yes". It is there that I have the greatest confidence in the architect, whom I believe to be someone of quite outstanding ability.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: My Lords, I do not want to prolong this debate. We are grateful to the noble Viscount for the long and interesting reply to our questions, but in the course of his first statement he said that changes in the copyright law would increase the cost of books to libraries. I was perplexed as to whether this increase in cost would be met my a lump sum from the central Government.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, the noble Baroness perhaps did not see the statement which I put out about that matter, in which I said that there were a number of difficult questions and I was setting up a Working Party consisting of authors, publishers, local authorities, librarians and so on. The people concerned have now been invited to form the Working Party, and we are going to work out exactly how this problem is to be handled. It is not easy, but it is a good deal better than a "slush" fund provided from the Treasury. This is a real public lending right, and will be in proportion to the value put upon a book by the library. This is a true public lending right which I think has been owed to the authors for a long time.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments agreed to.