Lords Sitting of 15 March 1971

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Portsmouth.

LORD CROSS OF CHELSEA
The Right Honourable Sir Arthur Geoffrey Neale Cross, Knight, a Lord Justice of Appeal, having been appointed a Lord of Appeal in ordinary and thereby created a Baron for life, by the style and title of Baron Cross of Chelsea, of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Hodson and the Lord Wilberforce.

JUSTICES OF THE PEACE: APPOINTMENT
2.45 p.m.
LORD SHINWELL: 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 principles are considered by advisory committees in deciding the appointment of justices of the peace.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF ST. MARYLEBONE): My Lords, the first and basic consideration is suitability in point of intelligence, character and experience. The second, which is of almost equal importance, is that the Commission as a whole should be able to offer in every locality a bench covering as comprehensive as possible a range of justices, broadly representing all social classes and sections of opinion and an adequate balance between the sexes.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, presumably I may ask the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack a supplementary question, since he has overall jurisdiction in these matters. Is he aware that for several years now there have been criticisms, not only of the
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criteria adopted by advisory committees in the appointment of justices of the peace but also of the qualifications of the advisory committees? Is he further aware that the language he has used in reply to my Question is somewhat vague, ambiguous and generalised in character; and in the circumstances, as I prefer not to ask him any further questions, may I ask him whether he would look into the matter rather more thoroughly and advise me of the result at a later stage?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I do not think my Answer was anything like as ambiguous as the noble Lord's supplementary question; but if there is any other individual piece of information that I can give to the noble Lord, I will of course give it to him.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, my recollection is that the Royal Commission recommended that justices should be able to follow the proceedings in court. May I ask the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack whether it is proposed to make any advance on this requirement?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, again I am not sure what the noble Baroness has in mind. If by that she means that justices should have both the hearing and the intelligence to follow the proceedings, I wholeheartedly agree with her; but I do not see how we can advance on that.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord consider the possibility of making advisory committees statutory, like every other committee of magisterial benches? Would this not rather widen the selection and at the same time perhaps do away with suggestions that everything is hole-in-the-corner with regard to the appointment of magistrates?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I will certainly look seriously into any suggestion the noble Lord makes, but I cannot see what difference it would make whether the advisory committees were statutory or otherwise. There can be no suggestion which is justified either that the appointment of justices is hole-in-the-corner or that the advisory committees are not as well balanced and as wide as we can possibly make them in view of the availability of suitable candidates to fill them. I suppose the great

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majority of the justices serving at the present time were appointed by my predecessor, and I have heard no serious criticism of the way he was doing it or of the way that I have done it since, which is the same way.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, following the noble and learned Lord's answer to myself, may I ask him whether it is not the business of the justices to take part in, and indeed the business of their chairman to conduct, the proceedings in court; and if it is not their business to conduct the proceedings in court, whose business is it?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I should have thought the answer was "Yes" to both parts of the question.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, may I ask whether consideration of the qualifications of persons for appointment as magistrates ever takes into account at the present time their ability to understand or to appreciate conditions in various localities, so that at least they will have the opportunity, when they sit in the courts, of knowing the areas and the kind of people with whom they are dealing?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Yes, my Lords, in all cases; and they live there.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, may I ask the noble and learned Lord, since he seems to be satisfied with the present situation as regards the appointment of justices of the peace, whether his mind is completely closed to any consideration at all which might lead to an improvement?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I will consider every possible suggestion which is made to me—as indeed did my predecessors. The present criteria were laid down by two Royal Commissions. Both my predecessor and I have been prepared to consider improvements and we are constantly making them.
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord agree that the practice of the Inner London Advisory Committee in interviewing all applicants
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who are being considered for appointment to the Commission has been a beneficial one, both in avoiding the "hole-in-the-corner" accusations to which my noble friend Lord Royle referred and also in improving the quality of those persons who, as a result, are recommended to the Lord Chancellor?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am wholly in favour of interviewing those who have a chance, at any rate, of succeeding in their applications. What is inevitable is that of a large number of applicants, all good, there are some who are better than others. In view of the limited number of vacancies there are disappointments; and it is sometimes invidious to give reasons.
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Lord's answer. In the light of that, will he consider recommending that the various committees in different parts of the country should consider following the practice carried out in London?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I think the noble Baroness will find that this practice is followed in many parts of the country. But I will look into the matter.
LORD SLATER: My Lords, is the noble and learned Lord aware that apart from their judicial responsibilities magistrates have certain other duties attached to their office, one of which is that of signing particular documents; and that people in some areas are denied the opportunity of presenting such documents because of the many miles of travel involved? Can this be looked into?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, if the noble Lord will give me particulars of any place where this is true I will look into it.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, is it not a fact that there are practically no documents that are required to be signed only by a magistrate and that most can be signed by any barrister, any solicitor, any doctor, any police officer and, in some cases, any trade union official?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord is quite right, but it is convenient at times to have a magistrate living close to one. I will look into any evidence of hardship that is brought to me.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, however convenient it may be to have a magistrate living nearby, would not the noble and learned Lord regard it as unjustified to appoint anyone to the office of magistrate solely to sign documents?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Yes, my Lords, if it were solely to sign documents. At the same time, I think it would be discourteous of me not to examine any evidence which the noble Lord on my left brought to my attention.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, is the noble and learned Lord not aware that, in the opinion of some people who have served for twenty years on advisory committees, on the whole these committees work very well indeed? Is he not further aware, however, that in a few parts of the country what we might call the social representation on these committees is not as even as it might be?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, it is certainly my opinion that these committees work very well. I ought at some stage in this series of questions and answers not only to say that but also to express my gratitude to them. As regards social representation, I have more than once said, as indeed has my predecessor, that the widest possible selection of applicants is needed for what may well be onerous work.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, in view of the interest shown in my noble friend's Question and the fact that it is over twenty years since the Royal Commission reported, does not the noble and learned Lord consider that it is time now to appoint a Royal Commission to look into the whole organisation of magistrates' courts, as has been recently done in relation to the higher courts?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, that is a somewhat different question. The Question relates to the appointment of magistrates; what the noble Baroness has now raised is the future of magistrates' courts. It is clear that when we have digested the Courts Act, the next item for consideration will be the future of the magistrates' courts. Since this is not my Departmental responsibility but that of the Home Secretary, I shall have to take counsel with my right honourable friend before giving an answer
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as to the proper way to investigate this matter.
VISCOUNT MONCK: My Lords, is the noble and learned Lord aware that when, some two years ago, I asked for an additional member for the bench on which I sit, I was officially informed that the name submitted should be that of someone whose views of politics were Labour?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, obviously I am not aware of it because two years ago I was not Lord Chancellor; but to be fair to the noble and learned Lord who preceded me and who sits on the Opposition Benches, I do not think he ever proceeded on a Party basis as regards the appointment of magistrates. On the whole, all Lord Chancellors like to have the bench balanced as much as may be—with a good leavening of independents, too; because it is not satisfactory that people in a locality should see the composition of the bench overwhelmingly representative of one Party rather than another.

TRUSTEE SAVINGS BANKS AND LOANS
2.56 p.m.
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 now grant permission to the trustee savings banks to make personal loans.]
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, this proposal is under consideration, but I must inform the noble Lord that I am not in a position to announce a decision at the present time.
LORD HOY: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that, while I am grateful for that Answer, it is disappointing? Is the noble Earl also aware that the trustee savings banks of Britain, which are by far the best, have nearly 10,300,000 depositors and that the service to which I refer, while available in every part of the country, is denied to those who are depositors in the Trustee Savings Bank? Cannot the noble Earl

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tell us whether he will expedite a favourable reply? On every occasion the trustee savings banks are held up by the dilatoriness of the Treasury in making a decision.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am aware of the importance of the Trustee Savings Bank movement, but I am sure that the noble Lord will agree with me that the development which is implicit in his question would have considerable repercussions both for the banks and for the Government. Although I cannot be specific about when it will be possible for Her Majesty's Government to announce a decision on this important matter, I can assure the noble Lord that both the Treasury and the National Debt Office hope to be in touch with the Trustee Savings Bank Association in the fairly near future.

E.E.C. AND INSURANCE LEGISLATION
LORD SELSDON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, in view of the United Kingdom application for membership of the E.E.C., what steps they are taking to ensure that harmonisation of legislation affecting insurance will be fair and equitable to the British insurance industry.]
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government are taking the following action: first, they are keeping a close watch on the progress being made by the E.E.C. over the harmonisation of insurance legislation; and, secondly, they maintain regular contact with British insurers over developments within the E.E.C. which affect their interests.
LORD SELSDON: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that reply may I ask in particular what is being done to ensure that there will be no adverse restriction which may affect overseas earnings of United Kingdom insurers?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government are very much aware of the importance of the overseas earnings of British insurers. As a member of E.E.C., Britain would call the attention of the Community to the need in its relations with the outside world to give full regard to the position of British insurers in the interest of the Community as a whole as well as that of the United Kingdom.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the noble Lord suggested that once we are members of E.E.C. we should call the attention of the other members to this matter. But in view of its importance, is it not something which we should consider discussing with the E.E.C. prior to entrance?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, it is not thought appropriate that E.E.C. draft rules or legislation should be discussed while in draft form.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord how far the Government are consulting the industry on this matter? Insurance is a very complex business, and there are a number of representative organisations; and, obviously, behind the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, there is something which implies, perhaps, anxiety. If the noble Lord, Lord Denham does not know the answer now, could be look into it and satisfy us at a later date?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, the Department of Trade and Industry maintain regular contact with the British Insurers' European Committee which includes representatives both of the British insurance companies and of Lloyds.
LORD SHEPHERD: The noble Lord says that we are in continual contact with the organisation in Europe. Why cannot we discuss with them and make our points of view well known while there is the draft agreement?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, I am afraid that I may not have made myself clear in what I said. I said that we are in regular contact with the British Insurers European Committee. Of course everything the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has said will be considered by my right honourable friend.

STAMP DUTY ON FOREIGN CURRENCY TRANSACTIONS
LORD SELSDON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will give consideration to the abolition of all stamp duties relating to foreign currency transactions.]
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I will draw the attention of my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the noble Lord's suggestion.
LORD SELSDON: I am most grateful to my noble friend. May I first ask how much the Treasury receive from these stamp duties; and, secondly, whether he would not agree that their abolition might remove an irritation likely to cause problems and unnecessary expense in business. I raise this Question as I share with him the view that London is already becoming the financial centre of Europe.
EARL JELLICOE: In answer to the first supplementary, I am afraid that I am not able to give the noble Lord a figure solely related to foreign currency transactions. On his second supplementary, I take the point: I think he has a point. But in any event I will draw the attention of my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what the noble Lord has said, though he must recognise that any change in the law is a matter for the Budget, which is something I cannot possibly anticipate.

NEW BROKEN HILL LIMITED BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and referred to the Examiners.

MR. SPEAKER KING'S RETIREMENT BILL
3.4 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. It is, I think, a long-established custom of ours not to debate these Bills which make provision for the
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Speaker of another place on his retirement. The terms of this Bill are of course, very largely governed by precedent. May I, in introducing it, confine myself to drawing attention very briefly to two points in which this Bill differs from its predecessors?
In the first place, Mr. Speaker King is the first in the long and distinguished line of Speakers since 1832 to be granted a pension of £5,000 in place of the £4,000 which has been customary over that long period—though I should mention, in passing, that Lady Hylton Foster's annuity was calculated on the basis of one-third of £5,000. Secondly, the widow's pension has been calculated at the rate of one-half of Dr. King's pension instead of as previously, at the rate of one-third. I am sure that both these improvements will be welcomed by your Lordships. Indeed, the first might be considered a rather small one given the slight change in the value of the pound since the days of the Reform Bill.
My Lords in another place this Bill signifies a farewell. For us, happily, it provides an occasion to welcome, albeit slightly in advance of his formal Introduction later this month, a most distinguished new Member to your Lordships' House. I am sure that I speak for all your Lordships when I say how much we are looking forward to welcoming Lord Maybray-King here.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.— (Earl Jellicoe.)
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, we on this side welcome this Bill. It is certainly not customary to debate it in any controversial sense, but I should like to echo the prospective welcome given by the noble Earl the Leader of the House to Mr. Speaker King. As one who has known him for perhaps 26 or 27 years, and knowing what an active and energetic figure he was, both in local government and in Labour Party politics, I think it is a measure of the quality of the British Parliamentary institutions that he should be recognised as such a balanced and admirable Speaker. It is perhaps worth noting, since he is to come to us, that he is also a very great scholar, as well as a musician. His knowledge of French literature, I remember, was on one occasion rather embarrassing to a friend of mine who thought he was an

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expert on French literature. Mr. Speaker King has been a very distinguished occupant of that important post, and he will be a welcome addition to your Lord-ships' House.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, the Speaker's task is indeed a thankless and a lonely one, and it is only right that those who survive the strain should have appropriate provision made for their retirement and that they should be allowed the sanctuary of the Upper Chamber. We on these Benches look forward to the Introduction of Lord Maybray-King.
On Question, Bill read 2a: Committee negatived.

HYDROCARBON OIL (CUSTOMS AND EXCISE) BILL [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move That the Commons Amendment be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Amendment be now considered.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[References are to Bill 93 as first printed for the Commons]
Clause 25, page 15, line 32, leave out ("1st March ") and insert ("12th April").
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move, That the Commons Amendment be agreed to. This is a purely formal Amendment. The existing date of the Bill has passed, so our commencement of the Bill has passed. It would be somewhat bizarre if a Bill were allowed to stop before it had received the Royal Assent. The Commons have substituted a later date. I beg to move, That the House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

CRIMINAL DAMAGE BILL [H.L.]
3.8 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I rise to move that this Bill be now read a second time. I must make it clear that in doing so I am speaking, at any rate this time, not formally as a Departmental Minister. Criminal law is the province of the Home Office and this is a Home Office Bill. It is, however, the product of the work of the Law Commission, and as such it takes its place with the Theft Act 1968, which resulted from the work of the Criminal Law Revision Committee, as part of the, general process of revising our criminal law with a view ultimately to codification. It was explained in one of the earlier Reports of the Law Commission that this process of gradual revision, however laborious it may seem, is a necessary preliminary to codification. As the contents of the Bill are largely technical, it was thought more for the convenience of the House that I should move the Second Reading rather than my noble friend Lord Windlesham, and I hope that this procedure meets with the convenience of the House.
The Bill as it is drafted at present differs only in small particulars from that recommended by the Law Commission—and may I pause here again to render my thanks to them in the work they have carried out. As the title of the Bill, implies, its purview is the law relating to criminal damage to property. The review of the law by the Law Commission reveals that it is in an extremely complicated and unsatisfactory state. The principal Statute involved is the Malicious Damage Act 1861 (though there are many others), and one of the principal objects of the Bill is to remove all but six sections of the Act of 1861 from the Statute Book and to substitute for its provisions a code and classification essentially different, and far simpler, in form.
The scheme of the Act of 1861 which it is proposed to abolish contains a very large number of different offences with differing penalties for each, depending on the type of property damaged, the method of damage employed, the status of the offender and the amount of damage done. From the Appendix to Archbold's Criminal Pleadings and Practice I culled

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a list of about thirty different statutory offences, under diverse Acts, relating to a wide variety of valuable objects; including tomb stones, hackney carriages, gas-lit street lamps and Westminster Bridge.
My Lords, the results of this "Hampton Court maze" were often tiresome and occasionally bizarre. For instance, the maximum penalty under Section 19 of the Act of 1861 for damaging hop-binds seems to be 14 years; and under other provisions the maximum penalty is life for damaging any article of silk. On the other hand, under Section 39, for damaging works of art or manuscripts in a museum the penalty is only six months. There is a considerable overlap of offences, both within the Act itself and also between offences created by the Act and offences created at common law or by other Acts of Parliament.
One of the main virtues of the Bill now before the House is that it simplifies the code and rationalises the penalties. This operation is all the more valuable because since 1861 the development of the law has meant that most of these offences will come up for final determination at petty sessional level. The Bill—and this is the nub of the matter—creates two main offences. The basic offence, as I may call it, appears in Clause 1(1), of intentionally or recklessly destroying or damaging another's property without lawful excuse; and under subsection (2) the aggravated offence, as I may call it, of damaging property with the intention of endangering life, or with reckless disregard of the possibility of endangering life. In each case the importance of the property, the degree of danger, the motivation, and so forth, are best differentiated—as in most other criminal cases—at the stage of sentence rather than conviction.
My Lords, by reading the accounts in some newspapers when the Bill was published one would not, I think, have gained the impression that this was a relatively modest measure of law reform. I think one would have thought that very new and draconian penalties were being introduced. The Bill was publicised as being a measure against hooligans and so on. This is absolutely not so. I would not expect sentences to differ—except perhaps marginally, but I think not at all—in either direction; either in the degree
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of greater severity, or less severity, than they are now.
Most of the charges under Clause 1(1) will be dealt with of course at petty sessions, as I have no doubt many are now, and by other legislation the jurisdiction of the magistrates' courts is limited to the imposition of a sentence of six months' imprisonment or a fine, in this case of £400. The maximum penalties on indictment sound extremely heavy; life for the aggravated offence, or damage by fire: ten years in other cases. But this is so simply because if you simplify the code and reduce about thirty different offences to two offences, each statutory offence would cover a wider spectrum of different criminal acts than if you had the thirty different offences. For instance, if you have damage to property under the basic offence, it may cover breaking a window pane, or it may cover blowing up an entire oil refinery. Between these two acts of crime, obviously, very different penalties could be contemplated.
Despite the somewhat dramatic newspaper headlines which I have read, I would not expect actual sentences to be increased or diminished when and if the Bill becomes law; except that, as I hope, additional use will be made of the power to award compensation, to which I will come in due course. Therefore the Bill is not the sensational or draconian measure which some newspapers led one to believe.
The expression, "without lawful excuse", occurring in Clause 1 and other clauses of the Bill, is defined or extended in Clause 5 as to the designated basic offence. This is designed to take the place of the confusing and imprecise expression in the traditional law which, as your Lordships will remember, employed the phrase. "unlawfully and maliciously". What the new definition really amounts to is either the existence of a lawful excuse as defined, or the honest belief in facts which would give rise to the existence of a lawful excuse and remove an action from the purview of the criminal law. I do not think I need elaborate on this. The language is new, but basically it follows established principles of criminal responsibility.
Clause 2 deals with threats, and it makes comprehensive provision to deal with all threats of damage to property. In order to take half-jocular threats out

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of the criminal law it is provided that, to be criminal under this clause, the threat must be intended to be taken seriously. The previous restriction, which was limited to written threats, is removed. I think your Lordships will agree with that a threat by telephone may be every bit as terrifying as a threat in a letter. So also is removed the curious limitation, contained in Section 50 of the principal Act, to certain types of property. The threat need not be to the property of the person receiving the threats; it can be to the property of a third party. Or where the threatened action could endanger another person's life, the threat can even be to the property of the utterer of the threat.
Clause 3 deals with the possession of any articles with the intention to use them for the purpose of the commission either of the basic or of the aggravated offence. While the possession of explosives remains an offence under Section 4 of the Explosive Substances Act 1883, there are, unfortunately, other articles which might be used, or adapted to be used, in committing acts of criminal damage. These will be covered by the present clause. Here, of course, the intention is the essential element in the offence. Clause 4 is the penalty clause which I have already explained. As I have said, or at any rate implied, it deals only with offences tried on indictment. The Summary Jurisdiction Acts limit the jurisdiction of magistrates to trying the offences summarily.
Clause 5 defines lawful excuse. Clause 6 permits search, but only on a warrant from a magistrate. Clause 7, which does not extend to the aggravated offence, gives summary jurisdiction to magistrates' courts for the basic offence. Clause 8 is of some importance, and I hope that it will be widely used. It marks a new departure in the law on compensation and it is in line with the pledge that we made in our Election Manifesto, that a criminal who damages property should be obliged to compensate his victim. With minor exceptions, existing powers to order compensation may be exercised only on application by the aggrieved party, and are subject to a maximum of £400. The present clause empowers all courts, of their own motion, to order compensation for acts of criminal damage to be paid by the
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offender. A higher court may order a sum limited only by what the court thinks right; on summary trial this will be limited by other legislation, as I have said, to £400.
This clause is in accordance with the recommendation of the Home Office Advisory Council on the Penal System as the result of a sub-committee under Lord Justice Widgery, as he then was—Lord Chief Justice Widgery as he will shortly become.
My Lords, Clause 9 deals with answers to interrogation made in civil proceedings. The objection to self-incrimination is abolished in the case both of the person interrogated and also of his or her spouse. Answers to such ink interrogation will not be capable of being refused; but, in compensation for that, the answers will not be capable of being subsequently used in evidence in criminal proceedings. Clause 10 is the main interpretation section. The definition of "property" does not include wild animals while still wild, or the flowers or foliage of plants growing wild. Subsection (2) defines the property interests protected.
Clause 11 deals with changes in the existing law consequential on the main purposes of the Bill. Subsection (1) abolishes arson as a substantive offence. This matter is now dealt with by the penalty clause, Clause 4. I recognise that the arguments for retaining the specific offence of arson are not negligible, as the Bar Council have pointed out; and while the Bill makes special provision for the punishment of offences where fire is used, it may be that some noble Lords will wish to give further consideration to the best way of dealing with the problem. I would, however, point out that fire is not by any means the most dangerous method of destroying things nowadays. We have had the recent example of my right honourable friend Mr. Robert Carr's house, where explosives were used. I cannot for the life of me see why fire as a particular method cannot be dealt with in the ordinary course under the sentencing provisions rather than under the substantive offence. However, as the Bar Council take another view, I must of course take the criticism seriously, and I will do so.
Your Lordships may be interested to note that subsection (2) of CIE use 11 abolishes the separate capital offence

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relating to dockyards, so that we have incidentally done away with one of the few remaining capital offences. But there has been no prosecution under this Act since 1777, and perhaps the practical difference to the law is not as great as might be supposed. I do not think that there is anything else in this clause calling for separate mention.
Clause 12 is technical. Your Lordships will see that the Bill in general does not extend to Scotland or Northern Ireland, and it is framed to come into force automatically three months after Royal Assent. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.22 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for his clear exposition of this rather complex Bill. I agree with his comments about the extent to which this Bill has been misrepresented in some of the newspapers. As your Lordships know, I have always encouraged the Press to give us more criticism of justice and its administration than we have had in the past. I have said before that I always recognised that some of the criticism would be misplaced—this is part of the penalty that we pay for having, so rightly, a free Press. But headlines like, "Life imprisonment for vandalism", gave people the impression that if somebody now damaged a telephone box he was liable to a life sentence. There never was anything in the Bill to justify a number of the headlines that I saw in the Press.
If I stress this point, it is because I rather think that some of my noble friends may have obtained the impression from the Press that this was part of the Conservative Government's law and order campaign, and was the usual process of a Conservative Government wanting to impose swingeing penalties for crimes against property rather than crimes against people. Therefore, in fairness to the Government, I must make it plain that, although this is, technically, a Government Bill, it is really a Law Commission Bill, which has been put forward for the greater simplification and clarity of the law. It is, I think, an answer to anyone who asks: now that we have had
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so much law reform in the last six or seven years, can there really be anything left to do? There is in fact a great deal still to do, and this Bill is a classic example.
As your Lordships may see, in paragraph 9 of the Law Commission's Report, they say:
"The principal Act exhibits a variety of methods of classification of offences of damage to property, for example, by the type of property damaged and by the means used. Other offences of criminal damage are to be found in a number of other specific statutes. There is, therefore, much overlapping of offences, both within the framework of the principal Act, and between those in the Act and other offences."
If one confines oneself entirely to the principal Act, one sees that there are 13 sections providing for offences and punishment for damage to buildings and their contents; 2 concerned with goods in process of manufacture, and machinery; 8 with corn and trees and vegetable products; 1 with fences; 3 with mines; 2 with damage to sea and river banks and works on rivers and canals; 32 with ponds; 2 with bridges, viaducts and toll bars; 3 with railway engines or carriages and telegraphs; 1 with works of art; 2 with cattle and other domestic animals; 3 with ships; and 2 with sea marks, wrecks and wrecked goods. Then there are provisions covering the amount of damage done, such as destroying or damaging trees, shrubs—to the extent of more than £1 in a garden, and so on. There is another of destroying or damaging trees, shrubs, et cetera to the extent of more than £5 outside a garden; or destroying or damaging trees et cetera to the extent of 1s. or more anywhere. It is high time that this law was rationalised.
The first question the Law Commission had to ask themselves was: do we really need more than one offence of unlawfully damaging somebody else's property? The Law Commission came to the conclusion, I think rightly, that some attempt ought to be made to separate the most serious cases. I agree with them that fire is a serious offence, whether one calls it arson or not. But the aggravated offence is that of damaging buildings with the intention of endangering life, or being reckless whether or not life is in danger. The House may feel that that provision is a sensible one.

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I agree with the Law Commission's definition of "property", and their proposals about threats of criminal damages. I welcome the fact that they have greatly simplified the present complex legislation as to the mental element involved in this offence. The provisions as to jurisdiction were unnecessarily complicated. Some of the different offences involving fines have for no apparent reason been triable only on indictment; some only in a magistrates' court, and some in the magistrates' court with the consent of the accused. All this is now simplified. I agree that the Commission were right to recommend that we should get rid of ouster, the general effect of which was that if a dispute of title was in a sense part of the offence the magistrates could try it, but a dispute of title which was peripheral to the offence put the matter outside their jurisdiction. That is now got rid of.
I greatly welcome the provisions for compensation. I have long thought that if somebody steals another person's property, or damages it, the most natural form of punishment is that he should be compelled to work a little harder and live at a slightly lower living standard until he has paid back the person who has suffered the injury. We do not, I believe, as a whole, think enough of the circumstances of the victims of the crime, and I very much welcome the provisions for compensation.
That leaves me only with the question of penalties. Here there are two maximum penalties. First, where the accused deliberately or recklessly endangers life, and where fire is used, the maximum is a sentence of life imprisonment. For all other cases there is a maximum sentence of ten years' imprisonment. I would respectfully agree with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor that, while fire has to be regarded separately in this respect, when it comes to sentencing, it does not really matter whether the word "arson" is retained or not. Some noble Lords are, I know, not happy about the necessity for having a sentence of life imprisonment. I naturally welcome the fact that in this Bill capital punishment is being abolished for what I think a number of people do not know is still a capital offence; namely, setting fire to ships in Her Majesty's dockyards, or damaging certain machinery, and so forth, in the
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possession of the Minister of Technology. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has intimated, I think, that the only reported else since the date of the Act was a case in 1777, and I am glad we are now getting rid of that.
The question whether a sentence of life imprisonment is really necessary is a Committee point, and any noble Lord will be entitled to move any Amendment he chooses when we come to the Committee stage of the Bill. The other cases are provided for by a limit of ten years imprisonment. I think this is wrong: ten years is too high; it ought not to be more than seven years. This also being a Committee point, I should in the ordinary way, having intimated that, have left it. But with your Lordships' permission I should like to say a few words about it, because I am hoping that there may be some response from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor at the conclusion of this debate.
The Law Commission, in the usual way, sent to those whom they thought ought to be consulted a working paper, and the working paper on this point suggested a maximum sentence of seven years. This period of seven years was not obtained by the Law Commission out of their heads, or out of the air. They did their usual careful examination, and found that out of the 1½ million convicted according to Criminal Statistics the number of offences of malicious damage amounted to about 18,500 a year, which one may contrast with about 200,000 for stealing and breaking and entering. The Law Commission examined all the maximum sentences which had been given for each of the last five years, the ages of the accused and so forth. In paragraph 7 of their Report they say:
"We appreciate that care is necessary in drawing conclusions from these statistics, but the following inferences seem to be clear: (i) Offences of malicious damage account for about 1·3 per cent. of the total offences, compared with stealing offences which account for about 12·5 per cent. (ii) The great majority of malicious damage offences are dealt with by magistrates' courts. (iii) There are few, and only a few, cases which call for heavy sentences of imprisonment. (iv) Malicious damage offences are very prevalent among juveniles, particularly among the younger age groups, and in the case of arson well over half of all persons convicted are under 2!."

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Why did they say seven years? If one takes a typical year, and 1967 seems to be a typical year, one finds that out of the 18,500 cases, 18,000 were dealt with in the magistrates' courts—they are not relevant for our purpose of considering a seven-year or ten-year sentence for the worst cases—and only about 500 on indictment. They looked to see how the 500 were dealt with. In this typical year it was found that the numbers were as follows: absolute discharge, 2; conditional discharge, 17; Mental Health Orders Act 1959 orders, 35; probation, 84; fined, 50; detention centre, 17; borstal training, 40; imprisonment, 170. The Commission then sought to ascertain how many out of the 170 sent to prison had been sentenced to more than seven years' imprisonment. The answer is that for the last five years they examined there was an average of only five, and those included all the danger to life cases and all the arson cases, for which the maximum sentence under the Bill would be imprisonment for life.
It looks very much as if during the last five years probably nobody, except in the case of arson or in the danger to life cases, received a sentence of more than seven years. And if so, why do we want it? In their final Report, the Law Commission, instead of, as in the working paper, recommending a maximm of seven years, have increased this to ten years. The only reason they give is that that is what most of their commentators recommended. I have often said that one of the most useful features of the work of the Law Commission is the extent of their consultation. To show how wide their consultations are, I have sometimes read to your Lordships lists of the people they consulted. I am sure that if law reform is to be done, it must be properly done, and that the extent of consultation by the Law Commission is one of the most valuable features. Usually they put into an Appendix or Schedule a list of the persons to whom their working paper was sent—the people consulted. Sometimes, instead of doing that, they put in only a list of those who replied—the commentators. In this case that is what they have done; all we know is who replied. It is an Appendix headed, "Those who have offered comments on the Working Paper".
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It begins with 13 individuals. I am quite sure that it is right that people like the Recorder of Manchester or Liverpool, prosecuting counsel at the Old Bailey, and so on, should be consulted, but I have two comments to make about this list of individuals: first, they are all lawyers; secondly, they are all men. Surely on a question of sentencing lay opinion also matters, and we are sometimes in danger of forgetting that when men are sent to prison they are not the only people who are punished, and in the case of a man sentenced to a long term of years of imprisonment the only reason why his wife and small children do not starve is because of the money provided by the State. This is a matter on which women also might have some views.
This makes it all the more important to see which are the organisations they consulted. The organisations are these: the Home Office (including consultations from time to time); the Parliamentary Draftsman, Northern Ireland; the British Insurance Association; the Justices' Clerks Society; the Law Council of Australia; the Law Reform Committee of South Australia; the Law Society; the Institute of Legal Executives; the Magistrates' Association; the Advisory Council on the Penal System (consulted); the Solicitor to the Metropolitan Police and the Association of Chief Police Officers of England and Wales. If I may say so, I am not clear that this is up to the Law Commission's usual form.
Of course it is proper to consult the police. The Magistrates' Association might in a sense be said to be a lay body, although it is a very well informed one. Obviously their comments ought to have been invited. It is not really so much use asking the Magistrates' Association about long sentences varying from seven years to ten years, because their field lies mainly in summary jurisdiction. With that exception, the only other lay body consulted at all was the British Insurance Association who may, rightly or wrongly, feel that they have a financial interest in seeing that penalties are kept high, rather than low. Whether it was necessary to consult the Law Reform Committee of South Australia I do not know. But where are what I might call the informed lay bodies, the Howard League for Penal Reform, the Institute

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for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency, the National Council for Civil Liberties? In the case of the Advisory Council on the Penal System, I do not understand the word "(consulted)" which is in brackets.
The Appendix is headed, "Those who have offered comments on the Working Paper". If we get to the Committee stage, there are certain questions which I hope the noble and learned Lord, if he cannot answer to-day, will be able to deal with then. The Commission sent out a list of the few cases in the last five years, including the more serious cases of danger to life and of arson, where a sentence of more than seven years' imprisonment has been imposed. Am I right in thinking that they were probably all arson or danger to life cases? Secondly, may we at some time have a full list of all the organisations which the Law Commission consulted? Because if you send to a number of people a document the effect of which is, "Do you disagree with our proposals, one of which is a maximum of seven years imprisonment for these offences? "it is inevitable that those who do not agree will write and say so, whereas the tendency for those who do agree is to let the matter go. Therefore, one would also like to know who were the people who thought that seven years' imprisonment was not enough, and their grounds. The Report itself gives no grounds at all. The Commission merely say that they altered their minds from seven to ten because that was what most of the commentators said.
I do not think I have had occasion before to criticise anything which the Law Commission have done. I am not in any way blaming Her Majesty's Government for not having gone into rather more detail on this point. But to-day, when all our prisons are crammed to bursting, and when so many thousands of prisoners are sleeping more than one to a cell, I doubt whether this is a sensible time to encourage the courts to impose longer and longer sentences, unless such sentences really are necessary. Of course, if one asks the lawyers, "Do you favour a higher figure or a lower figure?" then, human nature being what it is, there may be a disposition for them to prefer to have more power rather than less. My Lords, I will not say anything
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more on the point now. Subject to that exception, I warmly welcome the Bill.
3.42 p.m.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, I would begin by agreeing absolutely with the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack and with my noble and learned friend that the Press reception of this Bill was ridiculous, and I do not wish to speak from that angle at all. I have chiefly risen to my feet to support what I knew my noble and learned friend was going to say. He has said it so fully that there is practically nothing I need add over the question of seven rather than ten years for the first or simple offence. Everybody is in full admiration of the Law Commission's work, and the consolidation of these manifold offences is clearly to everybody's advantage.
I want to say only this about the question of seven or ten years. When the Law Commission took advice from the people they consulted, did they receive any reasons for ten years rather than seven? I do not believe there are any. My own belief is that seven years is a very long sentence indeed. I do not believe that any man, before he commits a crime, ever pauses to consider whether the maximum sentence is seven years or ten, so the deterrent effect to the criminal is nil. It may be that there is a kind of newspaper effect, but, if so, I should like evidence of it. If the Government accept the increase to ten years, when a certain number of very respected figures have proposed seven, they are missing an opportunity to put their weight on the side of reason as opposed to prejudice. This is not the place for an elaborate philosophical discussion on this pint and I shall say no more on it. My noble and learned friend made an exhaustive and, to me, unanswerable case and I hope very much that this question may be looked at again.
I want to raise one other point which I think is not a Committee point but a Second Reading point, which is why I feel I must bring it up now. The third type of sentence and defence that is described, which is for the aggravated offence, few people will quarrel with. It is in effect said that the offence is equivalent to the attempt to murder, and that "life" is clearly an appropriate sentence for that within our present

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understanding. The offering of a sentence of life imprisonment for damage to property through fire, as a maximum sentence, puts me in a very difficult position, because I believe with a good deal of keenness in indeterminate sentences. On the other hand, I do not think indeterminate sentences will do without certain other things being done with them. It seems to me that there is a tendency in modern legislation to slip in life sentences without at the same time slipping in the necessary background which makes sense of them. The Law Commission give some weight to the first argument, which is that damage by fire, particularly to buildings and stacks, is an offence which has always been regarded with abhorrence. I do not think that this is a very strong argument for sending a man to prison for life. But the second argument which they give is much more persuasive. It is that many people who do this are mentally unbalanced and in need of treatment; yet they frequently do not qualify as being unbalanced enough to come under Section 60 of the Mental Health Act and be put in Broadmoor or somewhere like that. This is a common dilemma for people dealing with offenders.
The correct answer, I have always thought, which I expressed in this House not long ago, is that the judge should conduct the trial, should find the man guilty, and should give him a minimum sentence to mark the punishment or guilt; but that after that minimum sentence is served it should be up to the authorities looking after the man to decide when he comes out. That is exactly what life imprisonment amounts to to-day, except that at the moment there is no minimum sentence, apart from cases of murder about which I believe there is a convention. If a man is going to be sentenced to imprisonment until he gets better, that is something quite different from sentencing a man to a fixed term, and involves sending him to a place where he can get better and where all the necessary arrangements are made to ensure that he does.
The only point of my intervening today—because this is not a debate on penal reform—is that here we have in a Law Commission Report embodied in legislation the specific recommendation that the life sentence should be used for
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somebody who is disturbed because he can then be kept in custody until he is fit to go out. I wish to state simply that there is a great tendency of Government to deal with the easy part of legislation without the difficult part. I trust my noble and learned friend will not mind my saying that I think my own Government did this over the implementation of the Payne Report. I am anxious that we should not slip into a system of indeterminate sentences without providing the proper safeguards to ensure that such sentences make sense. I believe that this is a Second Reading and not a Committee point and, having made it, I commend the Bill to your Lordships.
3.48 p.m.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: My Lords, it is with some diffidence that I intervene in a debate which hitherto has been confined almost entirely to noble and learned Lords who are learned in the law or penologists, to raise what I am afraid is fundamentally a Committee point. However, I should like to give the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor some time to think it over. If a layman may express an opinion, I welcome this Bill, particularly because it made me look at the principal Act of 1861, which, as the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack explained, gives us a remarkable list of the habits to which some of our ancestors appear to have been addicted, or at least habits which other of our ancestors thought their fellow countrymen were addicted to; and I found it very interesting reading. But, in marked contrast to that, this Bill does not specify in so many words that to slash railway carriage cushions, or to set fire to university accommodation rooms, is illegal. It is only when we come to the point which I want to raise that our descendants will have any idea of the kind of habits which some of us have, as we have been able to learn from the 1861 Act the habits of some of our ancestors.
Only in subsection (1) of Clause 10, which defines "property" as excluding the flowers, fruit and foliage of any plant, shrub or tree growing wild, is any question of property defined, and I think our descendants will see that we are apparently prepared to leave our countryside totally unprotected against vandals whereas we are prepared to protect our railway carriage cushions, although they

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are not actually specified in this Act; and I suspect that our descendants, who surely will have had to take some trouble to protect our countryside, will be amazed that we are prepared to let this go by default.
I should like to draw the attention of the noble and learned Lord to the fact that trees are excluded for the first time. They are specifically included in the 1861 Act. They are included in the Theft Act, whereas plants are excluded. In these times trees growing wild are of fundamental importance to foresters. They rely far more than did our ancestors in 1861 on the natural regeneration of our woodlands by trees which are naturally grown from seeds and are wild and are not to be protected in any way. I have no doubt that if, between now and the Committee stage of the Bill, the noble and learned Lord were to consult with the Forestry Commission he would find that they would regret this aspect of the Bill.
Those of us who are keen on the countryside and its beauties regret this exclusion for the same reason. One thing which we are missing more than anything else to-day is the hedgerow tree. Hedgerow trees have made up so much of the beauty of our countryside, and a few score trees in hedgerows do far more to enhance the beauty of our countryside than do hundreds, or even thousands, of acres of woodland. They are all naturally grown trees. The elm, oak, ash, thorn, growing up in hedgerows, have always contributed towards the beauty of the countryside. To-day they are totally unprotected, save in so far as many county councils have a by-law, usually protecting plants only against being dug up, but in some cases against damage. In a county which has a by-law of that nature one has the ridiculous position that a man walking along a right-of-way to which the public has access is forbidden by that by-law to do damage to a tree, but he has only to walk to the other side of the field, to which by law he has no access, and he can do with impunity all the damage he likes.
In the by-laws of the Nature Conservancy we have considerable experience of a total prohibition, such as I feel we ought to have, of damage to flowers, trees and shrubs growing in the countryside. There are many wide stretches of
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country to which people can go—where hikers can walk, where campers can camp, where ski-iers can ski and throw down sandwiches for the ptarmigan. The by-laws of the Conservancy forbid the plucking or collecting, not only of flowers but of "slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails", and anything one can find there. There is no difficulty about these by-laws. There would be no difficulty if Clause 10 were amended to allow similar protection throughout the whole of the countryside, and I hope that between now and the Committee stage of the Bill the noble and learned Lord will give that matter serious consideration.
3.55 p.m.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, I want to ask the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack two short questions, which to some extent are joined. I welcome, with him, the additional powers to grant compensation in cases of malicious damage, but I would ask first: will this power to grant compensation be joined to a power to order it? Often the court can say that damage to a certain amount has been done, but it does not order what payment shall be made, or it limits the amount of payment that can be made. If the amount of the payment is not actually ordered and it is left to the damaged person to collect in a civil court, then such amounts are, of course, generally speaking uncollectable.
There is another point that arises on this. We have already heard that the greatest amount of malicious damage is done by juveniles. Good as it is to have additional powers to order compensation, this can be done only if those concerned are brought to court. On the other hand, many of us are very keen that juveniles should not be brought to court unless it is absolutely necessary. Can the noble and learned Lord bend his mind to this dilemma, and try to think up some way in which compensation can be awarded without taking too many additional juveniles to court?
3.58 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I should like to thank the various noble Lords who have taken part in this debate for the gratifying amount of support for the measure as a whole. I will deal, so tar as I can, seriatim with the various points that have been made. I was grateful to the noble and learned

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Lord, Lord Gardiner, for his welcome to the Bill and for underlining the general point that I was making, that this is a law reform Bill and not a Bill for the intensification of the war against crime. For that reason it should not be regarded as really altering (except in the sense that any simplification and rationalisation must be an improvement of the situation) the intensity of sentences, or sentencing policy, with the solitary exception of the compensation provisions, to which I have drawn attention.
I was not sure what the noble and learned Lord meant by the reference to a Conservative Government's imposing swingeing penalties for crimes against property. I was not sure whether he was clear himself. I have been in Parliament, in one House or the other, now for 31 years, and I think that for at least half of that time there has been a Conservative majority in the House of Commons, but I cannot recollect any particular statute to which that observation applies. It may be that the noble and learned Lord's research has been more extensive than mine, and I should be the last to advance any claim for superior legal knowledge. But I think I have played a part in Parliament during that time, and I am afraid that when he spoke in those terms it was part of the mythology of Party rather than part of the learning of the lawyer. At any rate, I reject any idea that Conservative Governments impose swingeing penalties for crimes against property, except in the sense that Labour Governments do, too.
The noble and learned Lord went on to make an interesting and argued case about the benefits of a seven-year maximum as against the ten-year maximum for the basic offence. I am not sure that a great deal turns on this, which is, as he candidly admitted, a Committee point; but I would ask him to consider two related matters to which I think he did not draw attention. The first is that, unless I am very much mistaken, he was himself responsible for the Theft Act 1968. Of course it was a Home Office Bill, as this one is, but I think he piloted it through the House of Lords at considerable length and with great dexterity. That Act, of course included a penalty for theft under Section 7; the penalty was ten years and not seven. You might think that a swingeing penalty for an
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offence against property, certainly more than the noble and learned Lord is now proposing for damage to property. I must say it would seem odd that a Labour Government should impose ten years for taking property and a Labour Opposition complains of a Conservative Government imposing a similar maximum for property destroyed altogether.
I would ask the noble and learned Lord to remember that one puts in these maxima in order to give the court a certain degree of discretion in these matters. What we are discussing is something which might amount to blowing up a nuclear power station, if that can be done without intention to endanger life, or destruction of an ordnance factory, or something considered to be a political demonstration against some of our national security property. I should have thought that ten years was not too much to put in as a maximum, although, like him, I should be surprised if in any measurable time the maximum were to be inflicted in such a case. I cannot get very excited about this subject. I would ask him to reflect again whether he was not perhaps yielding to political rather than jurisprudential considerations in that part of his speech.
The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, also spoke about the seven years case. He, for some reason, is an addict of the indeterminate sentence. I confess honestly to him that I am not. I personally—and I know I am speaking out of turn now; the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, will stop me after a while—do not like indeterminate sentences, particularly when the word "life" is used. I think all sentences ought to be determinate.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, would not the noble and learned Lord agree that the life sentence at present existing in this country is an indeterminate sentence?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Yes, my Lords, and that is why I do not like it. On the other hand, while we have it for a very large number of offences against the person and property and the State, I think we must look forward to the day of a more general penal measure before leaving it out of this Statute. I am going to explain to the noble Lord in a moment why he is probably right and I am probably wrong. I personally

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should not like a life sentence to be passed on a person who is mentally ill with the hope that the time would come when somebody would say, "Let him out, but let us still have a tab on him so that we can recall him and keep him in indefinitely". Either the case is a mental health case or it is not. If it is a mental health case, it ought to be dealt with under the Mental Health Act and not by a life sentence.
Having said that, I must admit to the noble Lord that he has authority on his side and I have not. In 1967 the Court of Appeal came to the same view as he did and contrary to my own opinion. That only shows how independent the Judiciary is of any Lord Chancellor, past, present or future, and on the whole that is a very good thing. At any rate, I express my own personal feeling. I think it would be perfectly open to argument that the sentence of life as a maximum for the basic offence when fire is used is an illogicality; that is, again, something we can argue on Committee. The Bill as prepared by the Law Commission and put forward by the Government contains the life sentence in that way. The Bar Council strongly think that arson should be a separate offence. That, too, can be argued on Committee. Probably there are powerful arguments both ways. We shall see how it turns out.
My noble friend, Lord Cranbrock, made a powerful speech for the countryside, and most of us were very much impressed by his love for the countryside, which I share; but I wonder whether he really reflected about what he was saying. This is a Bill to deal with serious criminal acts. As a matter of fact, he is mistaken in thinking that plants and trees, viewed as a whole, are not within the Bill; they are. Uprooting plants and trees would be an offence if it were on somebody else's property. I am bound to say that the great enemies of hedgerow trees are not stray vandals but the owners of the property themselves and the farmers who farm it on lease. I do not know how in a Statute of this kind one could differentiate between an ordinary hedge and the standard trees in the hedgerow for which the noble Earl has so much legitimate affection. If we start making the taking of daisy chains a crime punishable by a maximum of even seven
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years—if I accept the figure of the noble and learned Lord—I think we should be in danger of making ourselves ridiculous. If a lover takes a wild rose from a hedgerow, undoubtedly damage to property is being committed in any ordinary sense, but I do not see how we could bring it within this Bill without making ourselves ridiculous.
My noble friend knows a great deal more about conservation than I do, but possibly in dealing with it in the ordinary sense of the criminal courts I can enter a suggestion. If you want to do good to conservation, as most of us do, by protecting rare plants and so on outside nature reserves, where they are protected by by-laws up to a point, I do not think you can use the ordinary criminal law, which is not designed for that kind of purpose. The wiser course would be to get in touch with the Department of the Environment to see whether special Statutes to deal with that objective could not be devised between scientists and Government. To use this sort of law, which is designed against criminal activity, even if by juveniles, would be a mistake and would lead us into serious trouble. If we were to try to stop blackberry picking, mushrooming and flower picking, and all that sort of thing, I do not know where we could draw the line.
The noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, asked me two questions. Yes, the compensation would be dealt with under the ordinary Payne Committee proposals. I could not give a completely accurate compendium. It is only a court that can order compensation whether against a juvenile or an adult. It is possible for the aggrieved party to go to the county court—there is nothing in this Act to stop him doing so—but I share the view of the noble and learned Lord who spoke from the Opposition Front Bench: I have long wanted to see this rigid distinction between civil and criminal proceedings broken down in offences of this kind. One wants to keep juveniles out of court. Obviously you cannot do so if you want to have an enforceable order far compensation against them. But I personally think that one should put up with a certain amount if one is a property owner. One ought to consider that boys have

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stolen apples since the Garden of Eden—or at any rate since we were turned out of the Garden of Eden.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble and learned Lord, but he must surely be aware that if a boy steals one rotten apple it is an offence against this Bill.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, it is an offence against the Theft Act as well as this Bill. But I was saying to the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, that on the whole property owners in the country ought to put up with a certain amount of this sort of thing. I have certainly done so in my time, so I am not preaching where I am not prepared to practise. If you want compensation you have to go to court, county court or criminal court, but I would not recommend it for small matters, and I hope property owners will take the same view.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble and learned Lord. I am quite sure that for all minor damage he is dead right in this matter. But the fact is that it is becoming the practice—a practice of which I approve, incidentally—not to take juveniles to court, even for quite major offences, unless there is furthermore the intention of bringing care proceedings. That is where the difficulty lies here.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, if you start in the county court, that practice would not apply. However, I should have thought that your hopes of getting a substantial judgment out of most juveniles would be limited by the practicalities of the case, unless you were lucky enough to be damaged by a millionaire's son. At any rate, I think that is getting rather far from malicious damage. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate and also to those noble Lords who have borne with me on this issue. I hope that this Bill may, before long, find its way to the Statute Book.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

MINERAL WORKINGS BILL [H.L.]
4.11 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Although this is called a Mineral Workings Bill—because that is the title of the parent Act of 1951—it relates wholly to ironstone workings. Its purpose is to ensure the continued solvency of the Ironstone Restoration Fund so that standards of restoration in the ironstone workings in the Midlands can be maintained. The Fund was set up by the Mineral Workings Act 1951 with a twofold object: first, to finance the reclamation of some 2,500 acres of land in the Midlands which had been ravaged by earlier ironstone working; and, secondly, to facilitate the full restoration of future workings by contributing to the cost of levelling and topsoil spreading, and by providing grants to landowners and tenant farmers for measures to improve the fertility of land so levelled and treated. The Fund is controlled by the Secretary of State for the Environment.
To prevent further dereliction, all ironstone working since 1950 has been subject to conditions requiring worked land to be backfilled and levelled and, within certain limits, requiring topsoil to be separately stripped and respread. Operators are entitled, under the 1951 Act, to receive from the Fund payments for the cost of this mandatory work in so far as it exceeds a basic amount—called the "standard rate"—of £110 per acre. In other words, operators have to bear from their own resources the first £110 per acre of the obligatory restoration work, but the remaining cost falls on the Fund. These are the costs that exceed the standard rate. I hope noble Lords will bear with me if, in the rest of my speech, I use the expression "standard rate" in this sense, as a technical expression, without further explanation.
But such planning control as I have described could not deal with the pre-1950 dereliction. The 1951 Act therefore empowered local authorities to carry out works for levelling land or rendering

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it suitable for forestry or agriculture or any other purpose; and it entitled them to be paid from the Fund for approved expenditure. Operators could also be paid for similar work which they did but which they were not under any prior obligation to do. The Act also put Fund moneys at the disposal of the Minister of Agriculture, so that be could make payments to landowners and farmers in respect of special steps for the management or farming of the land in order to bring it to a good state of cultivation and fertility. These grants are available both for land worked before 1950 and for land which has been restored under planning conditions. Grants for afforestation may also be made from the Fund by the Forestry Commission.
The Fund has now been running successfully for 20 years. It has achieved its object in relation to the pre-1950 dereliction, since nearly all the 2,500 acres of land left unrestored before planning control have been reclaimed. There may still be one or two small pockets tucked away in odd corners, but they give little or no offence and virtually that job is done. The land described in 1950 as resembling the craters of the moon has been either afforested or returned to agriculture or some amenity use. And, of course, the combined effects of the Fund and planning control have ensured the restoration of land worked since 1950.
The Fund has been financed so far by a charge of 3d.—3 old pence—per ton of ironstone mined. To this charge of 3d. the operator contributed 1⅛d., the royalty owner 1⅛d., and the Exchequer ¾d. Since 1950, the operators have been required to bear the first £110 per acre of the restoration they have had to do. Anything more needed, over and above that amount, has been paid for out of the Ironstone Restoration Fund. The so-called "standard rate" of restoration of £110 per acre was fixed in the 'fifties and could not be altered under the Act of 1951. Since then, therefore, the proportion of the total cost of restoration borne directly by the operator has fallen as inflation has proceeded, and the proportion of the cost of restoration borne by the Restoration Fund has gone up and up.
In addition to that, home ore production is now in decline. The absolute
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level of the Fund's income therefore, as well as its purchasing power, is falling, since it is linked to the number of tons of ore mined. On the other hand, expenditure in terms of cost per acre due for restoration is increasing rapidly. As quarries are closed, more and more acres need to be restored, sooner, and at greater cost per acre. The balance at March 31, 1970, was £444,000, but some large claims are in tie pipeline and it might well be that the Fund would be exhausted in 1972–73 if steps were not now taken to increase its resources. The Bill is therefore designed to retrieve the situation, and to remedy the omissions of the 1951 Act, by giving the Secretary of State power to vary, by order, the operators' and owners' contributions to the Fund; and similar power to vary the standard rate to allow for rising costs of restoration. These more flexible arrangements will enable suitable revisions to be made as circumstances alter.
My Lords, I shall now turn to the actual clauses of the Bill. Clause 1 deals with the operators' contributions to the Fund for ironstone extraction horn April 1, 1971. They pay their contributions to the Secretary of State each April in respect or the previous year's production. Accordingly, in effect the clause will not bite until April, 1972, when the operators will pay for the first time at the new rate which the Secretary of State will prescribe by order under the clause. This new rate, in substitution for the present 2¼d. per ton, is described as a "full rate" contribution. The clause also provides for the Secretary of State to fix a "reduced rate" contribution. The purpose of that is to continue the present exemption from the owner's share of the 2¼d. for two kinds of ironstone: first, ironstone which, immediately before the Act of 1951 was introduced, was subject to a lull restoring lease without any option to pay compensation in, lieu of restoring; and, second, ironstone owned by a charity. In these cases the operator pays a reduced contribution (at present 1⅛d. per ton) and cannot pass any of it on to the owner.
Clause 2 is concerned with the owner's share of the contributions paid by the operator. It provides for the Secretary of State to fix, by order, the amount which the ironstone operator may deduct from his royalty payments (or otherwise recover

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from the owner) towards his contributions at the full rate. There are certain restrictions dealt with in subsections (2) and (5), which follow the present arrangement. But this apart, the Secretary of State may specify different rates of contribution for different leases, or classes of lease, if circumstances so warrant.
Clause 3 gives the Secretary of State power to vary the standard rate of restoration cost by order from time to time. This will enable him to ensure that that part of the restoration costs falling on the operator reflects the current cost (instead of the 1950 cost) of complying with the modest standard of restoration called for in leases before the 1951 Act was introduced. These three clauses, together with Schedule 1, complete the provisions designed to strengthen the Fund.
Clause 4 abolishes the Advisory Committee on Ironstone Restoration. This is a Statutory Committee set up under the 1951 Act. It was intended to advise the Minister controlling the Fund on any question arising in connection with the determination of payments to be made to operators, or in connection with the fixing of the standard rate, or any other question concerning ironstone restoration. The Committee gave useful advice on the fixing of the standard rate in 1955, but it has not been convened since 1957. It has never been needed for what was intended to be its main purpose; namely, as an arbitrator on questions about payments to operators; and now that the sole operator in the ironstone field is the British Steel Corporation there seems to be no point in retaining the obligation to keep the Committee in existence. The rest of the Bill consists of the usual machinery provisions.
The Secretary of State will, of course, be consulting those likely to be concerned by the orders he will make—the British Steel Corporation and representatives of the owners through the Ironstone Royalty Owners Association. His officials have already had meetings with them to discuss likely developments and these contacts will continue. Some restoration by companies other than the British Steel Corporation still remains to be done, but it appears likely to be substantially completed before an increase in the standard rate takes effect in April, 1972.
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The powers of local authorities under the main Act are not affected. The Fund will continue to be available for any approved works needed to bring any land back into use still remaining derelict as a result of ironstone working. The Bill, by rectifying the omission from the 1951 Act of power to keep contributions to the Fund and the standard rate, to which I have referred, in line with current costs, will ensure the Fund's ability to maintain the present standards of restoration. It will thus continue to enable the land to yield its mineral ore and then be restored and returned to agriculture or other productive use. My Lords, I beg to move,
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Sandford.)
4.22 p.m.
LORD GREENWOOD OF ROSSENDALE: My Lords, I know that we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, for the very clear exposition which he has given us of the provisions of this Bill. It is clearly a routine, run-of-the-mill Bill to which I do not think any of your Lordships will wish to offer any very strong opposition, but there are one or two points to which I should like to call your Lordships' attention. As the Minister said, this is really bringing up to date the Mineral Workings Act 1951, which was passed by a Labour Government, and I think that the principle which the noble Lord is perpetuating is a right principle. Indeed, I think it goes rather further than the 1951 Act, because it gives broad acceptance to what I think is now the generally accepted principle, that the man who despoils or damages the countryside must be made to pay for the spoliation or damage for which he is responsible.
I went on Friday to look at some of the areas of the Midlands which were badly ravaged by ironstone mining in the immediate post-war years. I remember the anxiety that all of us felt at that time about the damage that was being done to tracts of the countryside, and it is certainly encouraging, though not wholly reassuring, to find that techniques of dealing with what would otherwise have been derelict land have improved so enormously during the intervening years. I think that the Act and the Ironstone Restoration Fund have worked very well indeed.

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I am not wholly reassured by what the Under-Secretary of State said about the Advisory Committee and I think that a number of your Lordships may wish to ponder over the Under-Secretary's argument, and perhaps at a later stage explore a little further, by putting down an Amendment calling for an Advisory Committee not with the limited terms of reference of the old Committee, but with rather broader terms of reference which might serve a more useful purpose.
The other point to which I should like to draw the attention of the House was brought to my attention only a few moments ago by my noble friend Lord Arwyn. One of the difficulties under which many of us have been labouring during the last few weeks is the fact that the ordinary channels of communication of a non-Parliamentary nature have not been working as well as we like them to work and on a number of occasions we have not had advice which would have been most acceptable. So that, although the information which I have received this afternoon arrived too late for me to apprise the Under-Secretary of State of it, I hope he will forgive me if I draw to the attention of the House the points which my noble friend Lord Arwyn has raised with me.
The main point is that the annual accounts of the Fund have been framed on the simple basis of receipts and payments, ignoring entirely outstanding claims. In the result, the accounts have always shown a credit balance for the simple reason that there is always a considerable time lag—about five years—between the receipt of the contributions and the payment of claims in respect of the land which has been affected. I am told that, on the best forecast of the position at the end of the current month, there will be about 3,000 acres of restoration still to be dealt with at a cost of approximately £1,500,000, against estimated current assets and outstanding contributions of some £300,000.
So there is clearly a heavy deficiency and it looks at first glance as though this deficiency is to be met, not out of contributions that have been paid in respect of the land in the past, but out of the contributions which the Secretary of State is going to have wholly arbitrary power to fix From now on. I should like to be assured that that interpretation of the
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Bill is not the right one, but if it is—and I think it probably is the right one—there is just an air of some lack of natural justice about this which the House will not wholly welcome. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will be able to comment upon this point, and perhaps at a later stage we might be able to have some discussions about it; it may well be that the fair and just thing would be for the Government themselves to accept responsibility for settling all the outstanding claims on the Fund at the end of this month.
Having made those points, I do not wish in any way to obstruct the passage of this Bill which I think is a useful Bill. It may be necessary to seek to improve it at a later stage, but certainly we have no antipathy to the principle which the Bill enshrines.
4.28 p.m.
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, both the mineral operators and the royalty owners are grateful to the Government for having listened to their representations on this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, may remember that it was the Government's original intention to wind up the Restoration Fund. Both the operators and the owners felt that that was not in the best interests of good restoration and are very glad that the Government have listened to their points. I think that the Bill has been presented to us in rather a hurry. We were told on March 2 that there would be a Bill, and then the Bill appeared on March 3. But, so far as I know, it was not available to Members of your Lordships' House until this weekend. I myself received a copy only this morning, so it is very difficult to form a proper opinion.
As the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, has said, it appears that a deficit was not apparent to the Advisory Committee—which had not met for 13 years—or to the Government until very recently. It appears, also, that the standard rate and the contributions should have been raised during the period of those 13 years when the Advisory Committee was not meeting. Then, again, there appears to be a very substantial difference between the estimate of the noble Lord who spoke for the Government, of how much still remains to be done and what the measure of the deficit is going to be, and the figures which the

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noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, has given. I wonder whether I may have the ear of the noble Lord, because there is a very great discrepancy between the figures given by him and what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood. If what the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, said is correct, then I think it is only just that the Government should write off this amount and not bring it forward to the new operators.
I am not quite clear whose fault it was that this deficit was not apparent to everybody concerned. It is extremely surprising that the Advisory Committee did not meet for 13 years. The noble Lord says that the Committee's main purpose was arbitration between the operators and the Government as to how much money the operators should receive. But, my Lords, this is not quite the case. As well as the clement of arbitration which it had, it also had the duty to determine the standard rates under the section, and it is just those standard rates—and, indeed, the contributions—which, on the advice of the advisory committee, should have been raised during these 13 years.
Furthermore, the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, suggested that the Committee's terms of reference should be broadened. But they are already very broad. Any other question connected with ironstone restoration was within its terms of reference, I believe. Somehow or other, someone has fallen down over this. I do not know whether the fall has been at the Whitehall end or whether it has been the operators' end, or whose duty it was to convene the Committee. I should like to draw the attention of the noble Lord to the fact that the mineral owners, the royalty owners, were not represented on this Committee, and I wondered whether, if they had been represented, they would perhaps have been a little more eagle-eyed with regard to the issue of the Restoration Fund. Because it is they, the owners of the minerals, who are in many cases also the owners of the land, who are most concerned with restoration.
As I say, it is difficult to see exactly whose fault it was, but it seems to me that there has been some considerable fault. If that fault is not to be repeated, then I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, that it is a mistake to
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wind up the Advisory Committee under Clause 4. Would it not be better to revitalise it instead? I suggest, as a means of revitalising it, that first of all you should look to the terms of reference to see whether they need broadening, as the noble Lord suggested, or whether in fact they are very broad but their broadness was ignored. Secondly, I think the representation ought to be a bit wider than merely the Government Department concerned and the operators, because as to practically the whole operation the operators are the British Steel Corporation, and I think it would be a good plan to bring in somebody else. The obvious first people, I should have said, are the landowners and the mineral owners, and if you brought those in you would get a better Advisory Committee.
My Lords, if the Government do not feel that an Advisory Committee is a good thing, then perhaps some other statutory means of consultation could be arrived at which also embodies some means of appeal, because, again, I think that it would be very useful for the owners of the land and the mineral owners to be able to appeal if they felt that those consultations were not in their interests or, indeed, in the interests of proper restoration, which is the object of this exercise. Having said that, I think that those two points should be put right; first, the question of the deficit—as to how much that deficit is, and whether or not it is fair that the Government should take it over—and, second, whether some better means of consultation could not be found to prevent a repetition of what happened before.
4.34 p.m.
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, I very much welcome this Bill. It is obviously necessary in order to maintain in solvency the Ironstone Restoration Fund. I take a personal interest in this subject, having served on the Committee in another place in 1951 when the Bill was introduced by the late Dr. Dalton. There is no doubt at all that the general scheme has worked extremely well. As the noble Lord, Lord Henley, has said, the fact that this Bill is now introduced indicates a change of heart on the part of the Ministry of the Environment which shows a broadmindedness upon which I congratulate them.

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The bodies for which I speak—the Council for the Preservation of Rural England and the Committee for Environmental Conservation—not only believe that this measure of 1951 has on the whole worked extremely well, but are inclined to think that if there is going to be legislation, such as the noble Lord. Lord Greenwood, indicated when he was in office, to facilitate the development of other mineral resources in this country, it may well be necessary, and certainly desirable, to have an analogous fund to this in order to ensure that when the mineral resources of this country are developed the land is restored afterwards. Therefore in principle I give a most cordial welcome to this Bill, and am very glad that the Government have introduced it.
I must say, however, that I share the doubts that have been expressed as to the exact way in which it is proposed to do it. It is of course necessary that there should be flexibility in imposing a charge in order to deal with the ever-increasing inflation of costs in this country. Nevertheless, I cannot help wondering whether we are not going rather too far in the direction of making the Secretary of State for the Environment into a benevolent despot when we give him apparently complete discretion as to the amount of the levies that are to be imposed. No doubt he will not impose deliberately any heavier levies than are necessary for the beneficial purpose that we all desire; but it is not in accordance with Parliamentary tradition to give what in fact is a power of taxation without any kind of appeal; nor, indeed, so far as I have read the Bill (and I am at the same disadvantage as other noble Lords in that it has come rather unexpectedly), without any real criteria being laid down as to exactly how he is to exercise this very wide and, indeed, arbitrary discretion.
My Lords, I also doubt very much whether it is right to abolish the Advisory Committee. The fact that the old Advisory Committee has not met since 1957 is surely not in itself a reason for proposing its abolition. One would like to know why it has not been convened during that time; and it may well be that what is needed—as the noble Lord, Lord Henley, and I think the noble
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Lord, Lord Greenwood, have indicated—is a strengthened and enlarged Advisory Committee, the more so because the effect of this Bill is to confer upon the executive Government far greater powers than were thought necessary in 1951. For the reasons I have given, it may be necessary to put down some Amendments for the Committee stage, and I feel confident that the Government will look at them in a reasons able and friendly spirit. Like the previous speakers, I entirely welcome this Bill. I congratulate the Government upon introducing it, but, as I say, it may be necessary to look at it carefully at the Committee stage.
4.39 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am grateful for that general welcome for this small measure. I am sorry noble Lords seem to have been in some difficulty about the printing of the Bill. I introduced it into your Lordships' House on March 3, and I am advised that it has been available in the Printed Paper Office since the 4th, but I should be happy to pursue the point with either of the noble Lords who appear to have been inconvenienced, as there does not seem to have been any slip in the usual Procedure in that respect. Noble Lord dwelt to some extent on the state of the deficit and where the blame lay for allowing the situation to develop to the point that it has before anybody did anything about it. On the whole, I should prefer not to go into that issue too far, but from what I have said I think one of the defects was the rigidity of the 1951 Act, which was actually introduced by noble Lords opposite; but I would not want to make too much of that point.. Until it has been altered by another Bill in this form, no amount of fresh life or new life or more life in the Advisory Committee would have enabled the Secretary of State or any of his predecessors to make the adjustments necessary. That is why the power is now being taken.
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, I am surprised that the noble Lord says that. In fact I am advised that the sort of thing the Advisory Committee was meant to do was to alter the rate—indeed its terms of reference meant that it could do very nearly anything it liked, or at least give any advice it liked.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, the difficulty was that the Minister was not in a position to act on it because of the rigidity of the Act. We can return to this point in more detail at the next stage. That is one of the defects in the present situation which has led to the build up of these adverse balances. Another is that—quite apart from the effect the details of which the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, described as having coming from the noble Lord, Lord Arwyn; namely that the balances failed to show the claims in the pipeline, which is now fully recognised and which is another of the reasons why action has been taken—the effect has been accentuated, not only because of inflation, but also because home ore production is falling. As a result of that—and it is not a defect of the Act that that has happened—not only is the income to the Fund falling but the cost of restoration of quarries which have fallen out of use is accelerating. It may be that somebody with a crystal ball could have seen that in 1970 this would have been the situation in ironstone workings in this Kingdom. Without that clairvoyance, even if there had been the flexibility in the Act, I do not think that it would have been possible to foresee and anticipate the situation that we now have to deal with.
Now, if your Lordships give approval to this Bill, we are introducing the flexibility needed to rectify the situation, and I sec no reason to suppose that it will not be possible to do so in time to prevent the Fund from going into insolvency. I take the point about the Advisory Committee, but I return to the charge, as it were, by saying that it was not any defect in the Committee but the inability of the Minister under the Act as at present worded to take action on the advice that the Committee gave. Whether, in view of that, your Lordships will feel convinced if we return to the point at Committee stage that the Advisory Committee is still needed, remains to be seen. I hope that I have dealt with all the points raised, and I look forward to returning to them if, in the light of what I have said, noble Lords feel disposed to put down Amendments at the next stage.
LORD HENLEY: My Lords, is the noble Lord going to say nothing about the discrepancy between his figures and
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those of the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I shall need to look more closely at what the noble Lord has said and to do my sums again. I suspect that I shall find that the noble Lord was talking about acreages which have been cleared, pre-1950 restoration acreages, and that what I am talking about are the large acreages which now have to be cleared as a result of large quarries closing. If the figures that we both use cannot be reconciled we can return to it at the next stage.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

QUEEN CHARLOTTE'S MATERNITY HOSPITAL
4.44 p.m.
LORD AMULREE LORD AMULREE rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have for the development and future of Queen Charlotte's Maternity Hospital. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have put down this Unstarred Question to Her Majesty's Government for the sole reason that at the present time certain rumours exist about what plans the Department of Health and Social Security have for Queen Charlotte's Maternity Hospital. Also, there have been statements in the Press which show that something is being talked about, and I hope the noble Lord will be able to tell us a little more than we know at the present time about what his Department are planning.
According to my information, the suggestion that Queen Charlotte's may be closed arises because there could be an excess of maternity beds in West London, particularly when they get their extra 95 beds at the postgraduate hospital at Hammersmith and 95 beds at the new Charing Cross Hospital which is being built at Fulham. Since Queen Charlotte's, as your Lordships may know, has 130 beds, this would make the number of beds in that part of London rather greater than the average, because Queen Charlotte's Hospital is in the Borough of Hammersmith, where it is estimated that in 1981 there will be 2,961 births. Kensington and Chelsea reckon that they are going to have 3,813 births, and Westminster 3,205. These boroughs each

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have 150 maternity beds, which will mean that Hammersmith, supposing the number of births to be 2,961, would certainly have far too many; because the total number of discharges from Queen Charlotte's in the year 1969 was 4,492.
I am sorry to inflict all these rather dull figures on the House but I have not a great many more. The bulk of the discharges naturally came from the neighbouring boroughs of Hammersmith and Ealing, but a proportion of people came from the rest of the G.L.C. area and quite a number—some 200-odd—came from the rest of the country. I should like to say just a few words on that.
Prospective mothers wish to go to Queen Charlotte's for three reasons. The first is because it is their local maternity hospital, and therefore they wish to go there for convenience. Secondly, they know that it has a great international reputation, and if they are feeling rather frightened and nervous about the birth of their child they would rather be there than in some other place which they did not know. The third reason is that a doctor in the Provinces—an obstetrician or a general practitioner—may feel that his patient may be likely to have trouble in her confinement, and he may wish to send her to Queen Charlotte's because he knows that she will get particularly expert treatment there. The patients will get expert treatment, both diagnostic and therapeutic, and also have available to them one of the best laboratory services in the metropolis. Incidentally, my Lords, Queen Charlotte's happens to be the oldest lying-in hospital in the country; and, what is more important, it has comparatively new buildings. The building it occupies now in Goldhawk Road was opened just before the war, in 1939, which means that it is a great deal different from some other hospitals in the country which were opened some considerable time earlier.
It can be argued that there is in the diagnostic and therapeutic research field at Queen Charlottes' expert skill which is quite excellent, or even unique, and that if the department there is broken up and its members transferred to other hospitals, there is no reason to suppose
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they will not be able to continue in the same way and get as good results as in the past. I do not think so. One of the curious things about medicine, and medical research and diagnostic facilities, is that they seem to have some kind of mystique attached to the place where they come from—whether it is the feeling of tradition in the past, whether a feeling of esprit de corps or something of that sort. As a result, it is very difficult, if you have a good functioning department, to break it up and transfer the various members of it to other places end think they will be able to carry on in exactly the same good way as they have done hitherto.
Secondly, I think that, within limits, patients should go where they wish and to a hospital in which they have confidence. That, I think, has been a principle of the National Health Service from the start. It was one of the things Mr. Aneurin Bevan said: that the patient should have free choice of doctor. That means not only the general practitioner; it must mean also the surgeon, or the obstetrician. It must mean any medical people the patient wants to see. That is why I do not think it is really possible to divide London up into catchment areas which are too rigidly bounded. I agree that there is something to be said for a certain variety, trying to see that the services are scattered reasonably and equally over the county or the G.L.C. area. But if you begin to draw little boundaries, even though they are fairly soft ones, it seems to me that you are going against the principles of the National Health Service and will lose a great deal, because you are then making merely for administrative tidiness. One of the phrases which made those of us who have worked in a Government Department (and I worked in a Government Department for ten years) shudder was that something "administratively difficult", or would lead to "administrative neatness or tidiness". All it meant was that nobody was prepared to do something that was going to cause a little trouble. That is why I do not like this "tidy" arrangement for the pregnant women of London.
I would not say for a moment that there are not very great obvious advantages in having the particular, special hospitals next door to or embodied in

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the general hospitals. It makes cross-consultation far simpler; and exploratory services and all that sort of thing become easier. For that reason, supposing one were going to start a service from scratch, one would probably not build a maternity hospital that was not part of a general hospital at the present time. But, my Lords, there seems to be no reason at all why, if you have a first-class hospital that is doing excellent work, you should deliberately set out to destroy and suppress it. London is surely a big enough and important enough city to carry both the integrated and special departments in the general hospitals and the medical schools, as well as the highly concentrated ones which serve as a basis for post-graduate teaching. And Queen Charlotte's has certainly done a great deal of good work in that way, because I believe that to-day there are some 3,000 or 4,000 people working in the world in obstetrics who have been trained post-graduately at Queen Charlotte's. Some of your Lordships may have seen a letter in The Times in which obstetricians in Australia expressed their horror at the chance that Queen Charlotte's might be suppressed.
If that is to be done, supposing the rumours and the tales I have heard have some basis in truth, what is going to be the future of other hospitals which have a speciality? What is going to happen to the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street; the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, in Queen's Square; the Royal Marsden Hospital, the paraplegic hospital at Stoke Mandeville? Are they all to be broken up and bits of them joined on to existing hospitals purely for administrative tidiness? My Lords, I very much hope that the Minister, when he replies, will tell me that that is not the case.
There are just two more short points that I would like to make. One of the advantages of Queen Charlotte's is that it is very easy to reach. It has good communications with a great deal of London, so it is simple for patients to get there; and that must surely be a factor to be taken into consideration when dealing with hospitals and patients. I know that the Todd Report (and I am pleased to see that the noble Lord, Lord
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Platt who was a member of the Todd Commission on Medical Education is going to speak) was not entirely in favour of keeping these particular special hospitals, but I am not sure that I entirely agree with everything the Todd Committee said; and the fact that they do not approve of that does not upset me a great deal. All I want to say to your Lordships at the present time is that I think the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, will understand the Question I have down, and I trust that he will be able to give me a comforting reply.
4.58 p.m.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, first of all may I say that I agree with almost everything which the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, has said in asking this important Question about Queen Charlotte's Hospital. I strongly share his views on administrative tidiness, but I am not at all sure that it is simply that which has been influencing the Department in this case. However, I have no intention of giving any pronouncement on the special case of Queen Charlotte's Hospital. Obstetric medicine was never my branch of medicine, neither do I know the geographical and population details which must be a factor in considering the siting of any hospital. I say "a factor" advisedly because, as the noble Lord has already said, a hospital which has more than a local reputation and a staff which has a national if not international reputation must be allowed to draw its clientele not only from the neighbourhood but from the whole of London, the whole country and to a less extent the whole of the world, so anything I have to say is only on matters of general principles.
There are, I think, certain principles in relation to these specialist hospitals to which the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, has referred. They were mostly built in the 19th century. He has mentioned the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in Queen Square, the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street and, I would add, the Moorfields Eye Hospital—
LORD BOOTHBY: Hear, hear!
LORD PLATT: —and Queen Charlotte's. At that time progress was greatly favoured by a concentration of

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special skills in hospitals equipped to develop those skills and built for the treatment of special groups of patients. All these were, of course, voluntary hospitals in those days. Moreover, I suspect that in some cases it was easier to attract money for a special object rather than for the general, unspecified treatment of all and sundry.
To-day, my Lords, the emphasis has changed. We have to realise that in modern medicine advance is chiefly through the application of advances in basic sciences. For instance the next great advance in the treatment of the eyes could come, not from Moorfields Hospital, but from biochemists, physicists, immunologists and even engineers; and it is unlikely that the comparatively small special hospital could attract a sufficient number of scientists of the highest reputation who would apply themselves to their special interests. It is therefore in the interests of the specialities that sooner or later, gradually and on an evolutionary basis, we should work towards this. They should be linked as closely as possible to, and, as Lord Amulree has said, eventually become part of, a more general hospital area catering for general medicine and surgery and fully equipped with the necessary scientific departments.
These principles were already becoming clear long before the Royal Commission on Medical Education met; and there was, of course, the Joint Committee on the Future of the Postgraduate Institutes in London under the chairmanship of Sir George Pickering which had already pronounced on the subject. What we actually said in the Royal Commission which is of particular relevance to the present discussion was this:
"We have no intention of laying down a precise scheme of association for the special hospitals and institutes."
I should like noble Lords to remember those words. Royal Commissions, in laying down certain principles towards which they think we ought to be working, are in danger of being told in retrospect that they said that such and such a thing had to be done. The report goes on:
"Provided that a reasonable balance is maintained among the general teaching groups in the allocation of the special facilities, we think that specific associations should be determined in the light of natural affinities"—
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I am not quite sure what those are—
"accommodation requirements, and rebuilding opportunities. As examples of associations that might be suitable, but without prejudice to other proposals that might be put forward in the light of a fuller examination of needs and possibilities, we suggest the following.…"
There follows a long series of paragraphs dealing with various special cases. The eventual amalgamation of Queen Charlotte's in the postgraduate group at Hammersmith is one of the suggestions made.
Whether the time has now come for a change of this kind to be made, and whether this would threaten the individual reputation of Queen Charlotte's (the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, raised a very important point there) or deprive patients of the facilities which they have come to expect from hospitals with such a reputation I do not presume to say. All I do say, and the Royal Commission said it, is that when the building or regrouping of hospitals seems to be advisable, do not let it be haphazard. Do not let us leave out of consideration matters of reputation, and even matters of sentiment; but also let us try to see it as part of the general evolutionary plan for teaching and the investigation and treatment of special diseases for which these hospitals have catered so well in the past.
5.5 p.m.
LADY RUTHVEN OF FREELAND: My Lords, like the two noble Lords who have spoken, I also would ask what is to be the future of Queen Charlotte's Maternity Hospital. I understand that the Department of Health have not really got a plan but that it has been considered that 350 maternity beds are necessary for the West of London, and that all these beds should be put into the various teaching hospitals in the West of London: Charing Cross Hospital; Hammersmith Hospital; St. Mary's, Paddington; and the Middlesex Hospital. My Lords, Queen Charlotte's Hospital has been in existence for more than 200 years, as I think was said by the noble Lord, Lord Amulree. Patients come to the hospital from all over this country and from abroad. Each year 3,500 women choose to have their babies in Queen Charlotte's Hospital.
Is a woman no longer to be allowed to choose the hospital at which her baby shall be born? I think this is something

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very extraordinary. It was laid down in the original National Health Service Act that a patient was allowed to have a choice of hospital, specialist and so on; and I thought that principle was to be carried on. If a woman about to have a baby—perhaps the most important event of her life—is not to be able to choose the place where the baby shall be born, it represents, I think, a falling back in the Health Service—
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (LORD ABERDARE): My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lady, may I say that there is certainly no intention whatever of interfering with the right of a woman to have her baby wherever she wants?
LADY RUTHVEN OF FREELAND: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. But, of course, if a woman wished to go to Queen Charlotte's Hospital which has a national reputation—as I have said, women come there from all over the country—she would not be able to do so because there would be no Queen Charlotte's Hospital. She would have to go to a different hospital of which she had no knowledge.
There is another point, my Lords. Queen Charlotte's is world-famous for its training in midwifery. I have visited hospitals all over the world, and one of the things one is always told at a maternity hospital, whether by a black African nurse, an Indian or a Pakistani, or whatever the nationality may be, is: "I did my midwifery at Queen Charlotte's". It is always said with pride. Where is that training to be given in future? Is that also to be given in teaching hospitals? Is each teaching hospital to have a midwifery training unit? If that is so, it seems to me a waste of personnel.
There is also the sister hospital to Queen Charlotte's, the Chelsea Hospital for Women. This hospital, too, has a wide reputation. I wonder whether the Chelsea Hospital is to be closed down as well, or is to be merged with a teaching hospital. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that real consideration is to be given to whether Queen Charlotte's and its sister hospital should be closed. Having read the Todd Report, I understand why closure was
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suggested; and I also understood the remarks of the noble Lords, Lord Amulree and Lord Platt, that it is very much tidier to have all maternity beds in certain places. It may be easier for the specialist, but it is not so tidy for a woman who has decided that she wishes to have her baby at Queen Charlotte's Hospital, whether she lives near to the hospital or a long way from it, because she knows that there she will have good attention, and because many of her friends went there to have their babies.
My Lords, I think that a hospital stands on its reputation—by which I mean the sympathy and understanding of the medical and nursing staff and the atmosphere in the hospital. That is what appeals to a prospective mother who wishes to go to the hospital of her choice. It will be a sad day for the Health Service if anything is done to destroy the confidence which the prospective mother has at present and which results in her wishing to go to Queen Charlotte's Hospital, in preference to another hospital even though it be just as efficient and perhaps nearer to her home.
My Lords, I am a great believer in allowing people to choose for themselves on many things, and especially on matters concerning health. I always thought that one of the views of the Party we placed in power was to allow people to choose for themselves rather than have their future decided by the Government. Surely the choice of where a woman is to have her baby is something that should be left to her.
5.21 p.m.
LORD BROCK: My Lords, we owe thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, for raising this important question. We must first of all make sure that we know clearly and for certain what it is we are talking about. I will present my own impression, and if it is not correct I am sure the Minister will put me right in due course. It has already been stated that Queen Charlotte's Hospital was founded in 1752. It has therefore existed for well over 200 years, during which time it has attained a pre-eminent place in obstetrics, not only in Great Britain but in the world. At one time it was planned to build, with its sister hospital, the Chelsea Hospital for Women, a new combined hospital that would have immense importance and prestige as a great post-graduate

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teaching and training hospital for obstetrics and gynaecology. That possibility has become a dream and apparently is now dead.
The Post-Graduate Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology is formed by the Chelsea Hospital, Queen Charlotte's Hospital and the relevant department at the Hammersmith Hospital. It is now planned—I use the word carefully and exactly—to destroy Queen Charlotte's Hospital, and inevitably to disrupt the Institute. The planning on which this is based is administrative convenience. It is computed that in ten years' time the three boroughs of Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea, and Westminster will need only 350 beds, which will be set out as has been described: St. Mary's Hospital and Middlesex Hospital, two undergraduate teaching hospitals, will have 142; Charing Cross Hospital, another undergraduate teaching hospital, 90; and Hammersmith, 118. Queen Charlotte's is not included in the distribution.
By the chance of geographical location, Queen Charlotte's is just within the area of the three boroughs, but 60 per cent. of its patients come from outside the three boroughs towards the West, from Ealing, Hounslow and Richmond. It has already been emphasised that many of their patients come from all parts of Great Britain.
LORD BOOTHBY: And the world.
LORD BROCK: A recent communication from the Vice-Chancellor of the London University to the University Grants Committee indicates that for postgraduate teaching a further 125 maternity beds and 100 gynæcological beds will be needed outside the three boroughs. Of these, some will be at the new Charing Cross Hospital and some at Hammersmith, and a new unit will be formed at the West Middlesex Hospital, a non-teaching hospital. If Queen Charlotte's no longer exists, the West Middlesex Hospital will house a large and important unit; and it is stated that the Bernhard Baron Laboratories, now at Queen Charlotte's, could move to the new unit at West Middlesex Hospital.
This reveals the advanced state of planning that has gone on, and so far without consultation with the authorities of Queen Charlotte's Hospital. They are only aware of what is in store for them;
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they have not been invited to the feast. They are rather like Lewis Carroll's oysters. Unless I have been misinformed about this matter, or have got it wrong, in which case I stand to be corrected, this would appear to me to be not only discourteous and unco-operative, but authoritarian. The simile to the oysters in Alice in Wonderland becomes increasingly clear: indeed, the similarity becomes sinister, because it means that the intention is to destroy, to eat up, Queen Charlotte's Hospital.
One's first reaction to the news that it is proposed to eliminate Queen Charlotte's Hospital is one of disbelief that anyone could be so obtuse as to suggest it. Then one realises that it is a serious suggestion and has to be taken seriously, even though it would appear to be so unreasonable. It is, however, a serious threat and demands serious counter-attack. We first have to ask how it is that this threat arises. It seems to have originated from the Todd Report on Medical Education, one of rte recommendations of which was that the great post-graduate hospitals of London serve no useful purpose and that they should be replaced by departments in the London undergraduate hospitals.
I feel it is unconvincing that great scientific advances are likely to come from this process of forcing affiliation to an undergraduate hospital or to district hospital which is not even a teaching hospital.
This concept of the unworthiness of the great post-graduate special hospitals, such as Queen Charlotte's, supports the argument that greater administrative tidiness can be achieved if the special work that they do can be replaced by reorganisation of the other hospital services within their particular area: that an area needs, say, 200 beds for maternity cases, and these can be more conveniently, more economically and more tidily provided within an adjacent hospital or hospitals which are either already built or will be built. It may well be that the hospital or hospitals selected for the purpose are old ones, perhaps built originally as Poor Law hospitals, now upgraded to more modern standards but having no tradition, distinction or special appeal. In this way the lowest form of doctrinaire development or organisation is satisfied.

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We had an example of this when St. Teresa's Maternity Hospital was severed from the National Health Service affiliation and was deprived of practical support, an action that would have led to its closure had it not received alternative support. The closure of St. Teresa's to achieve greater administrative economy and efficiency could be supported, even though it led to the threat of destruction of a worthy institution, but it is not possible to compare the worth of Queen Charlotte's with that of St. Teresa's. St. Teresa's Hospital holds a considerable place as a local hospital which has engendered much local affection and trust because of its great local achievements, but in the case of Queen Charlotte's Hospital we are not dealing with a small local institution whose functions can be taken over by a redistribution of beds in other hospitals. We have a centre of excellence which has a national and international reputation founded on its achievements of the last two centuries. Its obstetric staff is highly skilled and experienced and is able to advance still further standards of obstetrics, not only within its walls but elsewhere.
Post-graduate students come from all over Britain and from many other countries to attend and profit from its work and practice. This achievement would all go if the hospital were replaced by an equivalent number of obstetric beds in one or more other hospitals. The body might be there, but the soul would have gone. The same applies to the nursing standards of training and teaching. Many nurses come here to train and learn from Queen Charlotte's methods, and, as the noble Lady, Lady Ruthven of Freeland, has already mentioned, they disperse to train and teach many others in many districts and countries. The post-graduate students who flock here from all parts of the word and act as catalysts in distributing the knowledge, skill and experience they are able to gain here would not be attracted by a similar block of beds, however administratively convenient, in an adjacent innominate hospital.
So far as the proposed new large unit at the West Middlesex Hospital is concerned, it will be much further from Hammersmith Hospital than Queen Charlotte's is, and will be that much more inconvenient for the post-graduate
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students who attend the practice and teaching of the two hospitals. The standard of excellence achieved by our great post-graduate hospitals is irreplaceable, and it can soon be destroyed at the hands of reorganisation based on a soulless administrative convenience.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, may I intervene for a moment to say that considerations of administrative convenience were not the guiding principle on the Royal Commission on Medical Education: it was considering education—post-graduate and undergraduate education.
LORD BROCK: I am indicating that the recommendation of the Royal Commission in regard to education and the suppression of the post-graduate hospitals which would result from it has been taken as, I will not say an excuse, but a stimulus for the administrative convenience to be accordingly adjusted.
The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, mentioned a letter in The Times of Tuesday, March 9, about the closure of Queen Charlotte's Hospital from Sir Lance Townsend, Professor of Obstetrics at Melbourne University, in which he writes:
"Firstly, and as important as any of the other duties which the hospital carries out is the creation of a community of leading obstetricians and gynaecologists who can stimulate each other by day to day contact and so continue and even improve the standards already set in this the greatest obstetric hospital in Great Britain."
On an earlier occasion I pointed out in your Lordships' House that there is no evidence that any member of the Post-Graduate Commission on Medical Education had first-hand knowledge of the London post-graduate hospitals and institutes, nor that any study in depth of their work and achievements was made. The Commission did not seem aware of any difference between teaching basic education to undergraduates and training post-graduates in a specialised and technical discipline. The two are entirely different.
And yet this incomplete knowledge and experience of the members of the Commission on Medical Education, and their unawareness of the great part played by the London special post-graduate hospitals such as Queen Charlotte's, has inspired and directed thought towards the administrative readjustments and alterations that are going to lead, unless stopped, to the destruction of Queen

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Charlotte's Hospital. In its place, a great post-graduate unit will be split up between various undergraduate teaching hospitals and a large unit will be formed at a non-teaching hospital, the West Middlesex. In this way a great postgraduate teaching centre will be deliberately obliterated.
My Lords, when one has such a successful, such an important organisation it seems folly to destroy it and replace it by something else, untried and having no pretensions to the degrees of excellence which are undoubtedly possessed by Queen Charlotte's. And what of its sister hospital, the Chelsea Hospital for Women, which has already been referred to? Is this to go the same way? The Romans had a maxim—divide and conquer—and this seems to be the method of destruction that threatens these two great hospitals that make such important contributions. If they are not completely destroyed they will become so much smaller, so much weaker, that from first-class institutions they will drift into second-rate mediocrity. This is the threat they face. It is all too familiar in the international scene to-day when a small country or Slate with great traditions, achievements and worth is raped. This is an important matter, and I greatly fear that the Minister's reply will be polite, of course, but will be essentially equivocal in that it will state that the matter is still under consideration by his Department and that he will be influenced by the views of the University.
I hope that sufficient disquiet will have been expressed in your Lordships' House to-day to ensure that we shall not have passively to accept the unilateral decision already formulated if not actually made, but that a complete re-appraisal of the situation will be made in the light of today's debate and after close discussion and co-operation with the boards 'of governors of Queen Charlotte's Hospital and the Chelsea Hospital for Women, both of which bodies have been so far precluded from giving their opinions and thoughts in this matter that affects them so closely and also affects much else in the organisation of post-graduate training and teaching in London.
5.24 p.m.
LORD STAMP: My Lords, in intervening very briefly in this discussion, I must confess that I do so with somewhat
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mixed feelings. I have been most impressed by the arguments put forward against the closing of Queen Charlotte's Hospital by the Association of Friends of Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospitals, and also in leading articles and letters in the national Press to which reference has already been made. I know that many senior obstetricians and gynaecologists, both in this country and abroad, who have been associated with the hospital deplore the idea. Yet I wonder whether they ate right, as some of them have maintained, as in the letter to which reference was made, in asserting that obstetrics and gynaecology at the highest level should be divorced from the activities of a general teaching hospital As the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, has said, I personally can see great advantages in the interchange of medical knowledge, expertise, teaching and research facilities from their incorporation in a general hospital, provided that this were of the same high standing.
The tragedy is when this involves a break with a great tradition, as must be the case it the present proposals are implemented. These have come as a great shock, not only to doctors who have trained at Queen Charlotte's but also to the very many patients who have benefited from the incomparable skill, warmth and understanding of its medical and nursing staff. The question arises, in this day and age: is tradition enough? If a decision is arrived at that Queen Charlotte's outstanding services to obstetrics and gynaecology are to be transferred to another location, the important thing to ensure is that this should be done as speedily and with as little inconvenience as possible, both to the staff of Queen Charlotte's itself and that of the hospital, or hospitals, with which it is to be incorporated. The last thing one would want would be to see a protracted and unavailing last ditch stand.
It has, I believe, been suggested that Queen Charlotte's might join up with Hammersmith Hospital, with which I have been associated for very many years. While I am sure that this hospital and the Associated Royal Post-Graduate Medical School would not wish to take sides in the matter, if a decision were ratified along these lines they would do everything in their power to ease the transition and to help develop still further

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Queen Charlotte's tradition in its new setting. The one proviso, though, that I cannot underline too strongly would be that the change of plans must in no circumstances interfere with the timing of the building plans for Hammersmith. Like many other medical schools and hospitals in the country during the last decade, it has experienced the deepest sense of frustration at having its developmental plans, on which an enormous amount of time, energy and money have been spent, turned down on the score of expense, with instructions to do it all over again. Only those who have gone through this experience can know what it means in terms of lowering of morale. Everyone is counting the days until the new urgently needed buildings go up, and any further delay would be too much.
The other point I should like to make has already been made by other noble Lords; namely, to express concern lest too great an emphasis should be placed on district responsibilities of the great undergraduate and post-graduate general and specialist teaching hospitals, as they exist at present or as they may exist if the Todd Report is implemented. Important as these responsibilities may be, these schools, particularly those in London, have a responsibility—as has already been emphasised—far beyond that of providing an efficient health service in their locality. They have to teach doctors from overseas as well as from this country, and they are the centres of specialised research. For this reason they cannot be restricted to drawing their patients from the locality in which they are situated. There must be considerable latitude in this respect, whatever the tidy-minded administrators may think. I must confess that this is one of the greatest dangers I envisage in the present trend of thinking, so far as the development of the Health Service is concerned. It would indeed be a great tragedy if, in trying to improve administration of the Health Service, the teaching and research on which it depends were to suffer.
5.29 p.m.
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, I have not had the good fortune to be a patient in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, but I have many relations who have been, and I rise for a minute or two to express my anxiety about the suggestion, which I
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hope is not true, that Queen Charlotte's is to be destroyed. I know something of its reputation, not only in this country but throughout the world, as one of the finest post-graduate hospitals in the world, and its tradition in research which is almost without parallel. And tradition does count for something. We now have a Tory Government in power. They must pay some regard to tradition and to the pride which all who work at Queen Charlotte's take in their work and in that tradition. And they must have regard to the fact that, wherever one travels—in Hong Kong, Australia, or anywhere else—people ask, "What is Queen Charlotte's doing now?" It is a tremendous tradition, and I beg the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, not to get up and say, when he does get up, "We are going to abolish this Hospital for the sake of administrative convenience." I do not think he is going to say that. I am hoping very much that he is going to say he is not going to abolish it.
My Lords, I had to rise to make these few remarks, but I am a little embarrassed because it so happens that I had quite a good speech to make, quite a long speech, but point by point was taken by previous speakers, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, and the noble Lady, Lady Ruthven of Freeland. Finally I came to the position where I had to put my notes away because every single point I had intended to make had, without exception, been made. That is an experience I have never hitherto had in a long Parliamentary career. However, I beg the noble Lord to give a little encouragement to this great Hospital, and not to destroy something which has taken over 200 years to build up and which is the admiration of the whole civilised world to-day.
5.32 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I must apologise to the House for not being in my place at the appropriate time, but I think this near medical committee will forgive me when I tell them that the reason why I was not here was that the time for me to speak here came a little early and I was at the Ministry of Agriculture discussing brucellosis, with, I hope, fruitful results. I have to admit that this is the first time in my life that I have had to take Whitehall at the double. I am sorry that I have not heard all the speeches,

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but, having discussed this matter with many people, including doctors, I recognise full well how the House will be divided. Nobody in this House could charge me with not having the work—the wonderful work—of Queen Charlotte's Hospital at heart. It has made a contribution to obstetrics almost second to none in the world. The noble Lord, Lord Boothby, referred to 200 years. He admits, of course, if I may put it baldly, that he has never been pregnant. But obstetrics 200 years ago was quite different from obstetrics to-day in so far as the approach of the expectant mother was different.
Many years ago few women would go into maternity hospitals because of public opinion about such hospitals—and, incidentally, it was their husbands' wish that they should remain at home for a confinement. Those who were persuaded to go into hospital were generally suffering from a condition which their doctor anticipated might require specialist help when the time for confinement came; the general practitioner often felt that he himself was not fully qualified to give such attention. That is the background of so many hospitals which to-day take maternity cases. During this century, particularly, things have changed considerably. Women are only too happy to go into hospital, not only because they know they will get the best obstetrical treatment but because many realise, and their families realise, that the mother in the home deserves a rest at this time. All these factors combine.
There was a campaign in the 'thirties when we took as our slogan that it was more dangerous to be a mother than a miner, because the maternal mortality rate was so high, the infant mortality rate was so high, and particularly the neo-infant mortality rate was so high—the death rate among babies shortly after confinement. The propaganda was so effective that women recognised that they could get the best possible treatment in hospitals. Queen Charlotte's Hospital, which was the queen of our obstetric hospitals, had a tremendous reputation and was recognised by women all over London and all over the country as being extremely good. But women knew that in their own areas hospitals were built
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which were staffed by excellent obstetricians and nurses and were, so far as ordinary confinements were concerned, equal to Queen Charlotte's Hospital. Now we must recognise this change in approach. We must not be simply mesmerised by the words "Queen Charlotte's", rather as one might be mesmerised by the words "Rolls-Royce".
Queen Charlotte's Hospital has done a magnificent job. Now all these years have passed. The population of London has increased. There are special concentrations in different parts of London which only those who have carefully examined the problem know about; and it has been decided that the maternity cases should be redistributed. We have heard a great deal about tradition. I was a student at Charing Cross Hospital. Think how many of the students and staff of Charing Cross Hospital felt when they were told that Charing Cross Hospital was going to be moved to Fulham. The area I am speaking about I know well, because I was for 18 years Member of Parliament for West Fulham. The new site of Charing Cross Hospital was within my constituency. With my association with Charing Cross Hospital and with Fulham I examined the arguments for and against that great move and I recognised that, with the change in the attitude towards obstetrics and the change in the allocation of hospitals, it was quite right to move Charing Cross Hospital to Fulham.
The other hospitals we have heard about I know very well—St. Stephen's in East Fulham, the Chelsea Hospital for Women, the Hammersmith Hospital. They are all excellent places. Do not let us think that because a man or a woman qualified in one London Hospital he or she is far superior to members of staff who qualified in another. The standing of medical education in London is second to none in the world. The men and women who staff these hospitals where more beds will be available—and no doctor at Queen Charlotte's would deny it—are equal in professional standing to those at Queen Charlotte's Hospital. What we feel, quite understandably, is that this magnificent institution must modernise itself in so far as it must recognise that this change has to take place.

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When the National Health Service was set up it was decided to have Regional Hospital Boards. Why was that? It was a very wise decision because, as those of us here who are in the Hospital Service know, in certain parts of the country people were absolutely denied specialist help. For instance, if someone in North Wales suffered from a condition which required the services of an orthopædic surgeon one found that there was not one along the coast and so one had to go to Liverpool. In so many of our small provincial towns, if someone had to have a serious operation there were medical people who felt, "I cannot tackle this. You must go to London." This was bad for the patient and bad for organisation, and it was not in the interests of the doctors who, after all, preferred to have a well-equipped team in the area. So the Regional Hospital Boards were set up in order that in each region there would be a group of people who could view the medical, surgical and obstetrical needs of the region as a whole.
I have given this matter considerable thought, and I am guided by principle—not solely by emotion but also by principle. I am guided by the Royal Commission on Medical Education, which recommended for London and the rest of the country that teaching hospitals should merge with the Regional Hospital Boards to provide single authorities based on the university hospital. Surely, this is the common-sense approach. All of us, I hope, are agreed on one point; namely, that the most important individual in this discussion is the patient—not the surgeon, the obstetrician, the physician, the nurse or any of the rest of the staff. The person whose welfare we must have in mind is the patient. Therefore I say the only person who can see the needs of the whole area must be the Regional Hospital Board. My Lords, I hope you will not say "Charlotte's, right or wrong", but recognise that times have changed. The Regional Hospital Boards are very well organised. They are composed of people of integrity, people of conscience who have the welfare of the whole area at heart. Therefore I would ask the Minister, in deciding this difficult issue, simply to be guided by the decision of the Regional Hospital Board.
5.41 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, may I say to the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, how very much I welcome the opportunity given to me by his Question to put before your Lordships the factors affecting the decisions which are facing us about the future of Queen Charlotte's Maternity Hospital, and may I thank him for introducing the Question in a very well balanced speech.
I should also like to assure your Lordships at the outset of the great importance which I attach, in common I am sure with the majority of people, and certainly in common with all your Lordships who have spoken this evening, to the first-class reputation and the long tradition of this well-known and deservedly well-loved hospital. I would give that assurance right away to the noble Lord, Lord Boothby. The question which is exercising my mind and that of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Services is how best to secure a worthy future for the hospital within the framework of developing health services and the changing social environment.
May I say at this point how appalled I was to hear so many of your Lordships speaking of "administrative convenience", and how very far this is from the thoughts of anybody I have ever come across who has discussed this question, though not of some of your Lordships who have spoken to-day. I have studied a great many papers on this subject during the short time that I have been at the Ministry, and the words "administrative convenience" have never entered into any of them, nor have they been in the minds of those who have discussed the question. There are far more difficult and deserving problems to face than anything of that sort.
There are two relevant senses in which the provision of maternity services, whether in hospital or elsewhere, must occupy a unique position. One is that in contrast with the generality of clinical conditions which require skilled professional advice and treatment, pregnancy is a normal condition and not a disease. Unlike, for instance, tuberculosis and poliomyelitis, the incidence and severity of which have been dramatically reduced by medical advances, the incidence of

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child bearing is relatively predictable. The other, a corollary of this, is that given the appropriate basic information about local populations, the upper limit of need for maternity services can be fairly closely defined. In my view, it is too early to estimate with confidence the long-term effects on the birth rate of changes which have taken place in the law relating to abortion or of the development of family planning services and contraceptive techniques. The most one can say is that because of these the birth rate seems unlikely to increase.
Assessment of the need for hospital maternity services is made by the appropriate hospital authorities on the basis of advice issued from time to time by my Department; it takes account of such factors as the estimated size of population and birth rate, the length of pre-natal and post-natal stay in hospital, and the needs and wishes of the local community. A sub-committee of the Standing Maternity and Midwifery Advisory Committee under the chairmanship of Sir John Peel recently reported on domiciliary midwives and maternity bed needs, and recommended that sufficient facilities be provided for 100 per cent. hospital delivery. That report is still being considered, and I cannot yet say whether this recommendation will be accepted. But in view of the trend toward shorter stay in hospital, in many areas it may not be necessary to make a great increase in beds in order to achieve this 100 per cent. hospital confinement. And, of course, some women wish to have their babies at home, and their wishes must be respected.
When one looks at the condition in London, one is immediately forced to take account of the forecast, particularly of the Greater London Council, that its population is falling, more especially in Inner London, and to realise that, in looking forward to what is likely to be the case at the end of the current decade, it is probable that this downward trend will continue. So far as Inner West London is concerned—that is, the London boroughs of Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster—there are already too many maternity beds for the existing population and on service grounds alone we see a need to reduce the total of these beds by half, from 600 to 300 by 1981. This number would still provide enough beds for 100 per cent.
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hospital confinement on the formula recommended in the Peel Report.
Looking more widely at the area from which Queen Charlotte's currently draws most of its patients, the changing need follows a similar though less dramatic pattern. At the same time, in maternity as in other medical and surgical specialities, the quality of local hospital provision is constantly improving, and the disinclination of the general public to travel farther than they need for hospital and specialist services, already discernible in hospitals in Inner London, may be expected to grow rather than to diminish. This point was very well made, if I may say so, by the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, and is surely the answer to my noble friend Lady Ruthven of Freeland, that people should have a free choice of where to have their babies. Many of them want to have their babies near their homes outside London. The old attractions of coming into the specialist hospitals are far less vivid now.
In planning hospital services in West London, there is the additional consideration that most of the hospitals are teaching hospitals. Questions of reconciling the needs of the communities they serve and of the clinical teaching in these hospitals have therefore been the subject of further discussion, not only with the Regional Hospital Boards, which are the statutory planning authorities for hospital services, but with the University Grants Committee and the University of London. The three Inner West London boroughs between them contain no fewer than four undergraduate teaching hospitals and two post-graduate teaching hospitals providing maternity services, together with one non-teaching hospital group. Although the three boroughs lie in an area administered by two Regional Hospital Boards, it has been sensible to consider them as a whole. The conclusion we have reached is that even allowing for the continuing attraction to patients and their family doctors of the special skills of the teaching hospitals, the projected need cannot be seen as greater than a total of 350 maternity beds. Even this may prove to be an over-estimate.
The appreciation by the University of London of the requirements for clinical teaching in obstetrics has taken due account of the service constraints which

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I have described, and is based, I understand, upon two main considerations. One is:
"That in future the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology should be sited in association with a general hospital which will provide the necessary collateral, clinical, investigative and research facilities, including the relevant basic medical sciences."
The other is:
"That in allocating the scarce clinical facilities for the teaching of obstetrics within the three boroughs, priority should be given to the needs of the General Medical Schools."
In other words, the undergraduate teaching hospitals should have maternity beds, if necessary at the expense of postgraduate teaching hospitals. As a result of this appreciation it is now proposed by the university authorities that the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology should be rebuilt at the Hammersmith Hospital.
The more closely one looks at the combination of these factors, my Lords, the more one is drawn to the realisation that since Queen Charlotte's would in any case cease to be a postgraduate teaching hospital when the postgraduate Institute with which it is associated is transferred elsewhere, its own future development as a centre of excellence, both in clinical practice and research, might well lie in closer association with undergraduate teaching. As your Lordships may know, and as the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, mentioned, Charing Cross Hospital is being completely rebuilt on the site of what used to be the Fulham Hospital, and the disposition of maternity beds between this and the other hospitals in West London is the subject of discussions which are still going on between my Department and the various hospital authorities; I think I should lay stress on the fact that a decision about the best means of securing the future of the teaching function at Queen Charlotte's Hospital has not yet been taken and that is one of the reasons why this short debate is useful.
Given the total of 350 maternity beds as the long-term need for this area; the need to give priority for these beds to undergraduate hospitals; the need to keep a large maternity unit for the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Hammersmith and the need to secure a properly balanced distribution of the 350 beds over the three boroughs, one
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is left with the choice between building a new maternity unit in the new Charing Cross Hospital and using the existing maternity beds at Queen Charlotte's Hospital for the medical training in obstetrics of Charing Cross undergraduates for the immediate future. In either case we feel compelled to respect the principle that obstetric teaching facilities for undergraduates should be provided so far as possible at the main teaching hospital, as well as the view that maternity services should be provided in general hospitals and supported by the full range of other hospital services rather than in isolation. Pædiatrics is an obvious and important example. On the face of it, it may seem wasteful to build new maternity beds in Fulham, when there are relatively modern beds a short distance away from Queen Charlotte's, and we must take this factor into account as well as the alternative uses to which these beds might be put. We must also decide how much weight to give to the consideration, of which I have been reminded this evening, that Queen Charlotte's is readily accessible by public transport for patients and visitors, and to its well-merited international reputation. There are a great many pros and cons. I will not weary your Lordships with all of them, but these are the choices between which, I am satisfied, a decision must be made.
May I say to the noble Lord, Lord Brock, who spoke, I thought, rather intemperately and not altogether accurately, that I personally have twice met the Governors of Queen Charlotte's Hospital and I have every intention of meeting them again. So it is not correct to say there have been no consultations. I really could not recognise my Department in some of the strictures with which he belaboured us. The question is much more complicated and goes much deeper, I think, than the noble Lord made out. May I say to the noble Lord, Lord Stamp, how interested I was in his well balanced views, and the possibilities he put forward of some association between Queen Charlotte's and Hammersmith Hospital. In the end, I would repeat that no decision has yet been made. But this is one of the valuable reasons for this debate.
May I finally say some words about the other London postgraduate hospitals? This matter was referred to by the noble

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Lord, Lord Amulree; and I listened with great interest to what the noble Lord. Lord Platt, had to say with his usual wisdom on this subject. Unlike undergraduate teaching hospitals which provide, or are being developed to provide, a total hospital service for their local communities, jointly with their teaching responsibilities, the postgraduate hospitals exist primarily to provide clinical facilities for highly specialised aspects of medicine and for the post-graduate medical and research needs of their associated Institutes and serve only a limited local function. Your Lordships will recall that when the noble Lord, Lord Todd, presented the Report he recommended that post-graduate Institutes of the University of London should be linked with undergraduate medical schools, and that while their identity and reputation as centres of excellence in their special fields should be preserved, they should become an integral part of the medical school for all academic, financial and administrative purposes. The Todd recommendations and their implications have been studied by the University and the University Grants Committee and by my Department, and I understand that some time later this year, these two bodies hope to make a statement about the future of post-graduate medical education corresponding with that which was issued in relation to undergraduate medical education in August 1969.
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, would the noble Lord forgive me? Could he say whether there is any threat to Moorfields, which is a parallel case?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I should not like to commit myself on one particular hospital, but I have visited Moorfields twice and I have just as great a respect for Moorfields as I have for Queen Charlotte's. Certainly its future will be given the most careful consideration. I understand the noble Lord must have been in Moorfields, though not in Queen Charlotte's.
LORD BOOTHBY: True.
LORD ABERDARE: When the University issue their plans for the post-
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graduate Institutes I anticipate that my Department will issue a matching statement on the hospital side, and that will include the future plans for Moorfields. The Institutes and their associated hospitals are highly individual organisations, and the academic clinical requirements and their service implications vary greatly between the different specialties. I can, however, assure your Lordships that it would be inappropriate to regard the resolution of the problems of maternity services as they affect Queen Charlotte's as establishing any precedent whatsoever for the post-graduate Institutes and their associated hospitals generally, any more than do the already agreed joint redevelopment of the National Heart and Chest Hospitals with their two Institutes on the Fulham Road site or the rebuilding of the Eastman Dental Hospital and the Institute of Dental Surgery as part of the St. Mary's Hospital complex. All these problems will arise and we shall be discussing them on a future occasion. But may I say, with gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, that I have very mach welcomed this opportunity to outline the problems which exist in respect of Queen Charlotte's and to assure him that we are conscious of the world-wide reputation of the hospital and are only considering what we can do in the best interests, not only of Queen Charlotte's itself but also of the future provision of maternity beds in London.
BARONESS SEROTA: My Lords, before the noble Lord finishes, as I understood it he has given the House the assurance that no decision about the future of Queen Charlotte's has been taken. What I am not clear about is whether his right honourable friend is holding that decision until we have a general statement following the Todd recommendations on the post-graduate hospitals and institutions, or whether the decision will be made and announced before that.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I hope that the decision will be announced before that. A good many people are anxious to know what the position is, and I hope that it will come first.

CARRIAGE OF GOODS BY SEA BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

SOUTHAMPTON CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to.
House adjourned at six o'clock.