Lords Sitting of 20 December 1972

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

EMSWORTH RELIEF ROAD
LORD JACQUES: 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 reconsider their decision to construct the short relief road rather than the by-pass (M.27) at Ems-worth, Hants, since the former is so strongly opposed by the U.D.C. and the residents, and the latter will be required in any case.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has received a number of further representations on this case which he is still considering; but it would be wrong for me to raise any hope that he will in the event think it right to go back on the decisions already taken.
LORD JACQUES: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. Would he use his best influence to get his right honourable friend to take into account that this relief road, which would pass through the heart of the town and which involves, among other things, the siting of a roundabout in the grounds of the local hospital, is the kind of road which ought not to be built until it is proved to be essential; and that this cannot be done until the M.27 by-pass has been constructed and is in use?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I can give an assurance to the noble Lord that my right honourable friend will consider all the representations that have been made and are being made to him. I
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would point out that these two roads are designed to serve different purposes.
LORD JACQUES: My Lords, would the Minister also ask his right honourable friend to visit the town, see the route of the road for himself and discuss the matter with the local people?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am not sure that that will be necessary. I have been told that my right honourable friends have already visited the town in connection with the proposal and with the greatest care have studied the whole matter on the ground.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, would not my noble friend agree that in the interests of traffic planning it is not desirable or necessary to divide a town by a piece of road which has a limited use over a very short period of time?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, the fact of the matter is that the A.27 already divides Emsworth into two. These proposals are designed to mitigate that effect.
LORD JACQUES: My Lords, will the Minister bear in mind that when the M.27 at that point is constructed, then the A.27 will cease to divide the town in two? Why start to divide it again?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, because, as I have said, these two roads, the inner relief road and the M.27 bypass, are designed to serve two purposes. It is the view of my right honourable friend that one road will not serve the purpose of the two.
LORD MAYBRAY-KING: My Lords, will the noble Lord ask his right honourable friend to remember that it is not inconceivable in this case that the U.D.C. and the citizens of Emsworth know more than the planners?
LORD SANDFORD: Yes, my Lords; I have given an assurance that my right honourable friend is still considering representations that have been made. On the other hand, we have the fact that the county council, the planning authority, share the views of the Department.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, am I right in thinking that the decision of the inspector at the inquiry was the opposite of

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what Her Majesty's Government have now decided?
LORD SANDFORD: Yes, my Lords, that is correct.

G.L.C.'s NEW OFFICE BLOCK
2.38 p.m.
LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU: 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 (1) Whether the Ministry of Transport were originally consulted and if so what advice was given, before the Greater London Council were permitted to construct a new office building in the centre of the roundabout at the Southern end of Westminster Bridge;
(2) Whether in future the Department of the Environment will discourage such buildings which so clearly obstruct main arterial routes in and out of London.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, the consent of the Ministry of Transport was obtained to the appropriation of highways land for this development. Provision has been made for an East to West underpass if required in the future. Any proposals for other developments of this nature must be judged on their merits.
LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply; I am sure that it will be of considerable satisfaction to know that an underpass is being considered. In view of the fact that four important roads meet at this junction, is it not a pity that this was not considered earlier when the need was so obvious? Secondly, while the construction is in progress, perhaps the police could try to control the traffic a little more, morning and evening, since the "jam" at this place is getting to be impossible at the moment.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. Of course he will appreciate that the restrictions on the traffic are exceptional as a result of the building operations. They will be much eased when it is finished as there will be no access, for normal purposes, to the building from the road that goes
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round the roundabout. I will draw the second point that he raised to the attention of the appropriate authorities.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, which is the Southern end of Westminster Bridge?—which on my map appears to run due East and due West.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, will the Government keep a very careful watch on the safety factor around this particular circus? With this building, it seems to me that there is a real risk of loss of visibility and that accidents may occur as a consequence of that.
LORD SANDFORD: Yes, my Lords, these are the responsibilities of the Greater London Council; but I will see that attention is drawn to that point.

SAFETY BELTS IN MOTOR VEHICLES
LORD BURNTWOOD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in the light of recent accidents, inquiries can be made into the efficacy of return springs, fitted with inertia car safety straps.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, my information is that seat belts incorporating inertia reels work well in practice. My right honourable friend the Minister for Transport Industries keeps such matters under close review and will be glad to examine any evidence the noble Lord may care to send to him.
LORD BURNTWOOD: My Lards, may I ask whether there are any standards to provide for the minimum tension relevant to the nature and weight of the strapping used so as to ensure a proper and effective return wind? Secondly, may I ask whether the noble Lord will allow me to send him two opinions expressed by senior medical officials in two London hospitals who have experience of two cases where people have suffered as a result of this sort of defect?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, with regard to the noble Lord's first supplementary question, all

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safety belts, including inertia belts, have by law to conform to the British Standard which is based on a variety of performance criteria. This is a fact, my Lords; all safety belts have to conform to this standard. With regard to the noble Lord's second supplementary question, as I indicated in my original Answer my right honourable friend and I would be delighted to hear any evidence that he has.
LORD BURNTWOOD: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the ordinary old-fashioned type of safety belt does not involve a return wind factor; that the new inertia type does, and that therefore a standard for the return requirement is very important?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Yes, my Lords, I take the noble Lord's point. Inertia belts have much to recommend them, including the fact that they are always perfectly adjusted. The ordinary static belt is not necessarily always adjusted properly and we should be loath to condemn the inertia belt on the ground of occurrences of which we are not aware—and we are not aware of occurrences such as the noble Lord described.
LORD ST. JUST: My Lords, may I ask whether these belts have been tested by the Road Research Laboratory on foreign cars imported into this country?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I shall have to look into that question and let my noble friend know.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, what is inert—the car, the passenger or the strap?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, the noble Lord would be kept inert if he had an accident while wearing the safety belt.

B.B.C. PROGRAMMES AND EXPORT PROMOTION
2.45 p.m.
LORD BURNTWOOD: 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 an increase of existing radio programmes, such as that entitled "New Ideas", can be considered in order to assist in the promotion of exports.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE): My Lords, the B.B.C. have no plans for increasing these programmes at present. I am satisfied that, within the funds available, due emphasis is given by the B.B.C. to the importance of export promotion.
LORD BURNTWOOD: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware of the great tributes which have been paid by exporters in this country to the service as it is at present and that there would be a great welcome to an expansion of the service? Is it not a fact that certain markets in Europe—for instance, Holland—are not yet covered by the service? Would it not be possible to run in the Home Service, in parallel with this service, help to assist companies to inculcate a knowledge of languages where exports are involved, since this is rather an obvious defect in respect of so many exporting countries?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for saying that tributes have been paid to this programme. Perhaps he is aware that there are also six other programmes which take a rather longer time and are devoted exclusively to export promotion. His second point, about languages in the Home Service, is another question; but I will draw the attention of the B.B.C. to what he has said.

BUSINESS
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, with the leave of the House, my noble friend Lady Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie will be making a Statement on the Council of Ministers meeting on December 18 and 19 at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m.
If I may take up a few more moments of your Lordships' time, I would inform the House that the Government have decided not to proceed to-morrow with

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the Third Reading of the Protection of Aircraft Bill as they are considering the possibility of further amendment.

NORTHERN IRELAND: THE DlPLOCK REPORT
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, a Statement is being made to-day in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on the publication of the Diplock Report. With the leave of the House I will arrange for this to be circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
Following is the Statement referred to:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement. The Report of the Commission chaired by Lord Diplock to consider changes in the administration of justice to deal with terrorists is published to-day and is now available in the Vote Office.
"The Government wishes to express its gratitude to Lord Diplock and the members of the Commission for the speed with which they completed their task. The questions raised in their terms of reference were wide-ranging and controversial, but urgency was dictated by the situation in Northern Ireland. and the Commission has achieved it remarkably.
"The Commission find that, no matter what changes are made in the administration of justice, so long as there is the current level of intimidation of witnesses which prevents people from giving evidence in criminal trials for fear of the consequences, it will be impossible to bring to trial all those involved in terrorism, and particularly those who direct and plan terrorist activities; they conclude that some form of detention apart from the process of criminal trial will continue to be necessary until intimidation can be ended. The Commission points out that the new procedures for detention, made in the Detention of Terrorists (Northern Ireland) Order 1972, contain valuable safeguards against unfair detention.
"The Commission takes the view that the need for detention would be reduced if, during the present emergency, a number of changes were made in the administration of justice. These include the introduction of trial by a judge alone instead of by jury for terrorist offences; restrictions on the granting of bail for terrorist offences; alterations in the onus of proof in cases involving possession of firearms or explosives; new rules to govern the admissibility as evidence of confessions and written statements in trials of terrorist offences; and provision of secure accommodation for, and changes in the powers to sentence, juveniles involved in terrorist activities. The Commission also recommend that the Army should have a power of arrest which would be easier for them to operate than their existing powers.
"The Government welcomes these proposals which will, among other things, mean that it should be possible to bring more people before the criminal courts charged with criminal
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offences which arise out of alleged terrorist activities and therefore accepts the recommendations in principle and will bring forward for consideration legislation to give effect to them.
"The Government is also continuing its review of the Special Powers Act and Regulations and will bring forward proposals."

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE BILL [H.L.]
2.46 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to amend the law relating to justices of the peace and to make further provision with respect to the administration of justice and matters connected therewith. I beg to move that this Bill be read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a, (The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

REHABILITATION OF OFFENDERS BILL [H.L.]
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to facilitate the rehabilitation of offenders who have not been reconvicted of any serious offence for periods of years, to penalise the unauthorised disclosure of their previous convictions, to amend the law of defamation, and for purposes connected therewith. I beg to move that this Bill be read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Lord Gardiner.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION
2.49 p.m.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. As I informed your Lordships last month, the Joint Committee on Delegated Legislation, which was established last Session, following a recommendation by the Commons Select committee on Procedure, have asked to be reappointed this Session, and the

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Motion I am moving now serves to reappoint the Committee, at least so far as your Lordships are concerned. My Lords, the terms of reference and the membership of the Committee are the same as they were last Session.
Moved, That a Select Committee of seven Lords be appointed to join with a Committee of the Commons as a Joint Committee to inquire into the procedures and practice by which the control of each House over delegated legislation is exercised, and to report how they might be improved;
That the Lords following be named of the Committee:

L. Brooke of Cumnor,

L. Cawley,

L. Diamond,

L. Diplock,

L. Fletcher.

B. Sharp,

L. Wade;

That such Committee have power to agree with the Commons in the appointment of a Chairman;
That leave be given to the Joint Committee to hear parties interested by themselves their Counsel, agents and witnesses so far as the Committee think fit;
That the memoranda received by, and the Minutes of Evidence taken before, the Joint Committee on Delegated Legislation in the last session of Parliament be referred to the Committee;
That the evidence taken before the Joint Committee be printed but no copies be delivered out except to members of the Committee and to such other persons as the Committee shall think fit, until further order;
That the Committee have power to appoint persons with specialised knowledge for the purpose of particular inquiries, either to supply information which is not readily available or to elucidate matters of complexity within the Committee's Order of Reference;
That the Joint Committee have leave to report from time to time.—(Earl Jellicoe.)
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, I wish to speak not only on this Motion but also on the next one, and to make one speech do for both Motions. If your Lordships look at the Committee on Delegated
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Legislation you will find that every one mentioned is a Common Marketeer. That applies to noble Lords on both sides of the House. It is said that," God moves in a mysterious way …". So do the usual channels. There is not an anti-Common Marketeer to put the opposite point of view on the Delegated Legislation Committee. When we come to the next Motion, the Conservative Party can be forgiven, because at least they have put on the Committee one anti-Common Marketeer, namely, the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, but on our side there are only three Common Marketeers. I think our Front Bench ought to be at least as generous as the Tories.
LORD POPPLEWELL: My Lords, I must confess some ignorance in regard to the first Motion on the Order Paper, because the noble Earl says that it is in accord with the terms of previous Motions. But I see here,
" That the evidence taken before the Joint Committee be printed but no copies be delivered out except to members of the Committee and to such other persons as the Committee shall think fit, until further order".
May I ask why there is this kind of secret deliverance? This Motion is not dealing with security matters; it is just dealing with delegated legislation for both Houses. Is it not feasible that noble Lords should have the right to consider evidence submitted, as with many other inquiries that take place by Select Committees? There may be a good reason why this evidence should be kept like that of a secret service type of society, just confined to the members of the Committee unless they give special permission to other noble Lords who want to look at it. I hope that the noble Earl the Lord Privy Seal will have another look at this matter with a view to making it permissible for any noble Lord who wants to consider evidence that may have been submitted to do so without having to go, as it were, cap in hand.
LORD BURNTWOOD: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Earl whether he intends to publish immediately a list of the various categories of Instruments which are to be considered.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am not absolutely certain that I quite understand the purport of the last question put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Burntwood.

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Perhaps I can come back to that, if need be. I should like to deal with the other two questions put to me in the reverse order.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, before the noble Earl deals with those two questions, I think one of them refers indirectly to me, and it might be fairer if I said something. The usual channels come into this business of making nominations, and in this particular case I came into it very closely. I would assure my noble friend that there was absolutely no question of keeping out anti-Common Marketeers on the second Resolution; it was a question of getting someone who was prepared to do a job of work. I asked a number, and I had some difficulty. I was extremely grateful when those who now appear on the list from our side agreed to serve. I may say that had it been a question of looking after the point of view which my noble friend shares with me, I should have been on the Committee to look after that point of view. But I do not think it arises.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, my noble friend must remember that he is not being fair to those who have fought the Common Market. Everyone put on that Committee is a declared Common Marketeer. I will be quite honest about it: I think it is disgraceful.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think we are tending to get a little out of order. I hesitate to intervene in a dispute between two such well-known" proMarketeers" as the noble Lord, Lord Blyton, and the noble Lord, Lord Beswick. Perhaps I may now answer the questions that have been put to me. Luckily, the slight outbreak of gentle internecine warfare between the two noble Lords opposite has allowed me time to refresh my memory, and I think I can answer the point put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Burntwood. It is my understanding that the Joint Select Committee, the reappointment of which we are now, I hope, about to approve and which has done such distinguished work under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor, will be empowered to look at any subordinate legislation which they consider appropriate. There is no restriction placed on their modus operandi.
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In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Popplewell, what is proposed is perfectly normal form so far as Select Committees go. No dangerous Star Chamber innovation is being proposed here. At this very late date, I should be a little chary about suggesting that we should change it, because this is a Joint Select Committee. I think that all that is proposed is that it will be open to the Committee and the weight of the House to decide whether or not evidence should be delivered out. This is perhaps a point that we should consider later. But in order not in any way to delay the setting up of a Joint Select Committee, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Popplewell, will let this go, at least for the time being.
LORD POPPLEWELL: My Lords, I hope the noble Earl will seriously consider in the future what he has now said. I do not wish to delay it at this stage. It is rather an important point. It may have gone on for a long time; nevertheless, I think the House is entitled to know.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I should like to give the noble Earl the Leader of the House an opportunity to set the record right in the interests of history. In his last remarks he referred to my noble friends Lord Beswick and Lord Blyton as" pro-Common Marketeers". That hardly seems to accord with my recollection.
LORD BURNTWOOD: My Lords, as a pro-Common Marketeer, warts and all, may I ask the noble Earl—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order!
LORD BURNTWOOD: My Lords, if I may have the leave of the House, may I ask the noble Earl this question? In his reply he stated that the Committee would take on anything that came their way in the way of delegated Instruments. Is this not rather an untidy way of going about things? After all, in this country—they are not parallel cases, I know—we have a complete scheduled list of the sort of Instruments which any Committee are supposed to examine. Are we not to have an equivalent list submitted to us from the authorities in Europe?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think we are getting into rather deep water here. The Committee have already been

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at work for one Session. I believe that their Report, which doubtless noble Lords have read, was a very thorough one, and I do not think the Committee found themselves constricted or found their task made too hard by their terms of reference.
Perhaps I may now turn to the question put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Blyton, which covers both this Motion and the one to which I hope we shall shortly be turning on the mode of selection. Here of course I stand corrected by the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland. I am glad to see that he is so literal minded. I thought that my little witticism would have passed unnoticed, even by his eagle eye. Nevertheless, I would suggest just two points to the noble Lord. Lord Blyton. First, I do not think that the usual channels had any bias here. If it is the feeling that they do have bias, then very shortly we shall be introducing. if your Lordships agree to the recommendation which will be corning from our Procedure Committee, to an enlargement, as it were, of the usual channels—a Selection Committee whose writ should run over these matters, to reinforce the impartiality of the usual channels. Secondly, I would draw Lord Blyton's attention, since we are so literal minded this afternoon, to the fact that my noble friend Lord Lauderdale, if the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper is passed, is one of those to whom I think the noble Lord, Lord Blyton, was referring. He is suggested as a member of this Select Committee and, to my recollection—and I speak again subject to correction by the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland—he is not one of the most ardent supporters of the Common Market.
LORD SLATER: My Lords, the Leader of the House has some knowledge of Select Committees in another place, but as this happens to be a Joint Select Committee I should like to ask whether it will come within the terms of reference of this particular Committee for them to call upon Ministers to appear and be questioned on matters arising in the course of their deliberations, as happens in other Select Committees—for example, the Select Committee on the Nationalised Industries.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Slater,
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is, Yes. At least two Ministers have already appeared before the Joint Select Committee: one of them was the last President of the Council, and the Leader of the House of Lords has also been called before them. The answer, unequivocally, is Yes.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY INSTRUMENTS
3.2 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE EARL JELLICOE rose to move that a Select Committee be appointed to consider procedures for scrutiny of proposals for European Community instruments; and that the Lords following be named of the Committee:—

E. Dudley,

E. Lauderdale,

L. Airedale,

L. Bethell,

L. Brooke of Cumnor,

L. Dement,

L. Diamond,

B. Gaitskell,

L. Maybray-King (Chairman),

L. Robbins,

L. Shepherd,

That the Committee have power—

(a) to adjourn from place to place; and

(b) to report from time to time;

That the evidence taken before the Committee be printed but no copies be delivered out except to members of the Committee and to such other persons as the Committee shall think fit, until further order;
That the Committee have power to confer with any Committee appointed by the Commons to consider the same matter.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. Your Lordships will recall that in February last my right honourable friend the then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster suggested the setting up of an ad hoc committee to consider procedures for the scrutiny of draft Community legislation. I had hoped—and I have expressed this hope more than once to your Lordships' House—that this would be a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament

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since it seems to me right that the machinery evolved for this important function should be closely articulated between the two Houses. I am afraid that this exercise in" jointery" has not proved possible and, I am therefore proposing to your Lordships a Select Committee for your Lordships' House to do for this House the work which a similar Committee will be doing for another place.
As your Lordships will see from the terms of reference, the Commons Committee and the Lords Committee, if this Motion is approved, will have powers to confer if thought desirable. Again, I would only express the thought that this seems to me highly desirable. I think that we all realise that this is a very important area from the point of view of Parliament, and it is one certainly to which noble Lords in all quarters of your Lordships' House in our long discussions on the European Communities Act attached great importance, whether or not they happened to be in favour of that legislation. It is obviously most desirable that suitable and efficient procedures should be evolved as quickly as possible, so that your Lordships' House and, indeed Parliament as a whole, should be able to probe, examine and influence decisions or proposals emanating from the various European institutions. I hope very much that this Motion will be acceptable to the House and that the Select Committee, if established, will be able to get down to work quickly and will be able to complete its task at the earliest possible moment.
I should like to say, in hopeful anticipation that your Lordships will approve this Motion, how very grateful I am to those noble Lords who have agreed to serve on this Committee, and not least to the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, whom it is suggested should be its Chairman. He will bring to its work an intimate experience of the procedures of both Houses of Parliament. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That a Select Committee be appointed to consider procedures for scrutiny of proposals for European Community instruments: and that the Lords following be named of the Committee:—

E. Dudley,

E. Lauderdale,

L. Airedale,

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L. Bethell,

L. Brooke of Cumnor,

L. Derwent,

L. Diamond,

B. Gaitskell,

L. Maybray-King (Chairman),

L. Robbins,

L. Shepherd,

That the Committee have power—

(a) to adjourn from place to place; and

(b) to report from time to time;

That the evidence taken before the Committee be printed but no copies be delivered out except to members of the Committee and to such other persons as the Committee shall think fit, until further order;
That the Committee have power to confer with any Committee appointed by the Commons to consider the same matter.—(Earl Jellicoe.)
3.5 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I must apologise for not having been here at the beginning, but having only just emerged from hospital, where I have been for the last three days, I have not myself participated in this awkward business of selecting names for Committees. My last shot before retiring was to suggest to my noble friend Lord Beswick that he himself might care to serve on this Committee. However, it is a very onerous task they are undertaking and it is essentially concerned with procedures, not with what is to be done with the various Instruments.
My noble friend Lord Beswick, having precise regard to the purpose of this Committee, quite clearly invited certain of my noble colleagues who were very experienced in the procedures of the House. I take it that the reason for the names as they appear are that the individual Peers themselves are actively involved in the workings of procedure. I do stress to my noble friend, in view of his remarks, that my noble friend Lord Beswick—who, as has been pointed out, is not a noted pro-Marketeer—has had regard to the purposes of the Committee: this is the matter with which this House should be most concerned.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, I hope it is not assumed that those of us who are anti-Common Marketeers themselves do

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not understand the procedure of either the other place or this place. The fact is that none of the anti-Common Marketeers has even been asked if he would serve. I must be quite honest: it seems that there is a clique that wants to keep the anti-Common Marketeers out of things and deal with the whole situation without any opposition inside any committees that are set up. That is what I am resentful about.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, may I make one brief point? First of all, I am much honoured to be invited to serve on this Committee and I have reason to be grateful for the courtesy of the Leader of the House and my Leader in that respect. I am honoured not least to sit under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King. I have no special knowledge of procedures and no special qualifications. I submit myself to the judgment of the House. I saw the Committee's terms of reference only this morning and I should like to reserve comment on them for when I move my Amendment to the next Motion which stands on the Order Paper.
LORD ROBBINS: My Lords, as a matter of historical interest, would the noble Earl the Leader of the House reveal a little more of the reason why on this particular matter it seems not possible to constitute what seems a priori to be desirable—namely, a Joint Committee of both Houses?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I hope I am not revealing any indelicate truths by saying that it was the wish of the Government that this should have been a Joint Select Committee.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The Question is, that the said Motion be agreed to. As many as are of that opinion will say" Content".
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Content !
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: To the contrary," Not-Content".
LORD BLYTON: Not-content!
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I think the Contents have it.
NOBLE LORDS: Not Content!
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Clear the Bar!
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I have to acquaint the House that Tellers for the Not-Contents have not been appointed, pursuant to Standing Order No. 51. A Division, therefore, cannot take place. I declare that the Contents have it.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
3.14 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I hope that my noble friend Lord Lauderdale will not think it discourteous of me if I move the third Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper formally, in order to allow myself an opportunity to hear him develop his case and what he has to say on this Motion. Then, if your Lordships agree, I will reply to the points he has made. But, as I have no idea what he is going to say, I think it might be best if I were to listen to what he has to say first. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Earl of Bessborough, the Earl of Mansfield, the Lord Brecon, the Baroness Elles, the Lord Gladwyn, the Lord O'Hagan, the Lord Reay and the Lord St. Oswald, be designated members of the European Parliament.—(Earl Jellicoe.)
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE moved, as an Amendment to the Motion, at end to insert" for the remainder of this Session; and that those Lords designated members of the European Parliament thereafter shall only be so designated after a process of election". The noble Earl said: My Lords, may I begin by saying that I had taken care to warn both my noble friend the Leader of the House and the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, whom we are glad to see back and well, and also the noble Lord the Leader of the Liberal Peers, that I would be moving this Amendment and would be very happy to speak after they had done so if they preferred. In this season of good will your Lordships will expect me, no doubt, to be my usual brief, uncontroversial, unprovocative self; and I should like to begin by congratulating those whose names appeared

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last week in the Press and—surprise, surprise !—only on the Order Paper in their present form since yesterday. They deserve a double accolade for duty and for poverty combined. It is a burdensome, exacting task which I do not envy them. It is to be done on a pittance unworthy of their station. Those from this House even have to forfeit their Attendance Allowance here, I believe—I may stand corrected. One hears there is even a question about the origin and destination point regarding their travel expenses. One can picture them reduced to lodging in some dingy" Hotel Terminus". But other and wider questions deserve a serious answer.
Pending a system of direct election, which many people think could take a decade to devise, the Community treaties are identical whether it is the Treaty of Rome, Article 138, or Euratom, Article 108, or the Coal and Steel Community. Article 21, in that they require each national Parliament to name a delegation according to each State's own procedures. Therefore, we in the Parliament of Westminster need to work out a procedure which is proper to the European obligation we have undertaken and a procedure that is proper to our national tradition. We have to work it out certainly in this Parliament. I believe we must work it out desirably in this Session. And for the Lobby correspondents here and there to nick up the idea—goodness knows where from !—that the Government had no need to table such a Motion does of course make nonsense of Article 138; but I say that in passing.
It will be common ground that we want the strongest team possible; and may I say straightaway, we are very fortunate method of selection, we are very fortunate indeed in being invited to field a team of most remarkable and able people. We have to be thankful for that! But, no matter what the high qualities of those sent—and the names before us, as I say, are quite excellent—their strength as a delegation depends also on the strength of their mandate. What is it that enables the newest Member of another place, even in the trembling cocoon before he has made his maiden speech. to roll up his sleeves and tackle a Minister on behalf of constituents? It is his contested mandate, won from the electors voting by secret ballot. Those of your Lordships
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who have sat in another place will know very well what that mandate is, and how humbled and honoured one is to be saddled with it. And what is it perhaps that enables, or perhaps causes, noble Lords in this House to treat Ministers so gently? Surely, my Lords, it is that we lack that power of the popular mandate.
What, then, is the mandate of this team that is to be sent to Europe? Some of its members have no doubt been elected or else evolved by their minority group by a process at least equivalent to election. Others have been chosen by the Government Whips—and again I say they have made an excellent choice. But they have been chosen without any known electoral procedure whatsoever. The list has simply been laid before us after the fashion, alas! of some political Parties elsewhere whose record we would surely wish to eschew. The mandate of those team members whom we send is limited to the passage of this Motion.
My Lords, what happens elsewhere? In Holland they name their delegation from both Houses according to Party strengths. In Belguim they do the same. In Germany they do the same, but from the Bundestag alone. In Luxembourg they name them from the Parliamentary Foreign and Military Affairs Committee. But at some stage, I am informed, in most of these cases there is an actual process amounting to election. What then of Italy and France? Their teams are elected, in both cases, from both Chambers of Parliament by an open majority vote, and the question I put to your Lordships is whether we need in Britain, and whether we need in this Parliament, to be any less democratic than the others.
By Article 10 of the Treaty of Accession we owe the European Parliament some 36 representatives. In fact we are fielding 21: 18 Tories, 2 Liberals and one distinguished Independent chosen from among the Cross-Benches of this House. So we are 15 short. Should Parliament acquiesce in this? Had there been a system by which, for example, aspirants put their names forward openly and the House or Houses had been invited to pick so many on one Party or group ticket, so many on another, so many on a third, so many on a fourth—on such a quota basis, if it could have been agreed—I

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believe that aspirants would have been forthcoming for all tickets, even at the risk of losing their Party Whip in the process.
The strength and quality of our team's mandate is also in direct proportion to the measure of their accountability. To whom will these representatives be accountable? In what way will they be accountable? There is a rumour around in some quarters that in the Conservative Party it might be thought sufficient that the Conservative members of the team should report to private Party committees in another place (and maybe also here) behind closed doors. If that is thought to be sufficient, it simply is not good enough. I hope it is not thought so, and I hope that my noble friend, when he replies, will scotch that rumour straight away, for it would mean that a mandate lacking the fundament of free election would be matched by the harmless and painless sanction of accountability in secret. By our democratic and parliamentary tradition something much better is needed.
So too, it might seem, is the mood of the European Community if, despite the attitude of scepticism with which I am credited through recent events, I am at all correctly informed. But the mood was, for example, quite lately articulated by M. Etienne Dailly—and I apologise to the House in general and to my French-speaking friends here in particular for my pronunciation. He is the Vice-President of the French Senate and he said, in a recent lecture, that each national delegation to the European Parliament at least theoretically had the duty to make an annual report for their own Parliament about the work of the European Parliament. Perhaps I may (with apologies) quote his exact words. I shall take care to give them to Hansard so that if they cannot understand my pronunciation others will at least be able to read it. They are as follows:
"Signalons au passage, enfin, que chaque délégation nationale au sein de l'Assemblée Européenne a, théoriquement au moins, dans la systéme actuellement en vigaur, l'obligation d'élaborer un rapport d'information annuel portant sur l'activité de l'assemhlée et destiné au Parlement dont cette délégation émane."
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear!
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, if the noble Earl the Leader of
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the House can do no more to-day, at least let us have his assurance that noble Lords despatched to Europe will be fully, openly and publicly accountable to this House. Perhaps a Select Committee could be set up to examine their programme and their performance, and report. Indeed, that is the kind of thing I had hoped that this Select Committee which we have just appointed would have the power, among other things, to consider but the terms of reference of this Committee, only disclosed this morning, are indeed so narrow that, as I read them, it would be precluded from even considering this aspect. Would the noble Earl the Leader of the House consider widening the Committee's terms of reference once its first, strictly limited, job is done, to embrace this question of accountability?
Then there is the duration of the mandate. As this Motion stands, simpliciter, unamended, and unless it is countermanded by some later Motion, either in this Parliament or in another, I understand it does not automatically lapse (like a Select Committee) at the end of a Session or at the end of a Parliament. What it does is to designate someone from this Parliament now—and in our case from this House now—as a member of the European Parliament, indefinitely and without any term being specified.
I cannot imagine that the Government intended us to pass a life sentence on our distinguished colleagues but that is what this Motion does, unless it is amended to-day or at some other time. Once our team is there and accepted, whether they come from this House or whether they come from another place, they are members of the European Parliament and that Parliament has no official cognisance of any change in the composition of Parliament in this country or as a result of any general election that may take place. One recognises readily enough that in the team there is a need for continuity, especially at the start and one can appreciate the thought that the team should go perhaps for two Sessions in the first instance. This point has been met by the French procedure. for they elect their team for two years at a time and make plain from the word" go" that the mandate is renewable.
My last point relates to the power of the Executive. We all realise that for

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reasons over which they could not have much, if any, control, the Government considered themselves to be faced with the need to act in something of a hurry. Many of us have already deplored the Executive's handling of the E.E.C. Bill; some of us think that it need not have been handled so brusquely; but that is water under the bridge. What emerges from the present affair is a massive increase in patronage at Government disposal—eighteen more placemen in the Government's pocket. That some of them will in fact be out of pocket at the end of it—and probably all of them—has nothing whatever to do with the case. Noble Lords who accept ennoblement and come to this House as a result of patronage may well lose materially by it, but the exercise of the right to recommend their appointment is nevertheless patronage.
The harsh and unpalatable fact is that the power of the Executive has increased once again. I well remember the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, rising to his feet, as he put it," at twenty minutes to midnight on August 7 only from a sense of duty," to make the very point that the power of the Executive had increased, was increasing and should be diminished. I endorse that and I sum up my point by asking whether this is a worthy way for the Mother of Parliaments to approach the European democratic system; is this the dimension of greatness? I beg to move.
Moved, As an Amendment to the Motion, at end to insert" for the remainder of this Session; and that those Lords designated members of the European Parliament thereafter shall only he so designated after a process of election".—(The Earl of Lauderdale.)
3.30 p.m.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, may I ask the Leader of the House for his advice on a matter? There are two important Motions standing on the Order Paper at the present time. I and perhaps other noble Lords consider this to be an important point. I think that my noble friend Lord Lauderdale will agree that he cannot make much progress with his Amendment at this point. It is however something which should be considered in greater detail before the next appointment or before the next Session of this Parliament or the European Parliament. Would
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it be possible, in order to prevent a delay in the other Motions which appear on the Order Paper coming forward, for my noble friend to say that the matter raised in the Amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Lauderdale will be considered by this House in the near future, when we are enabled to have proper time to discuss what to me and others is an extremely important point?
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, are we so strictly bound to a timetable that we cannot adequately discuss all these matters? Although two further Motions stand on the Order Paper, judging from the time at which we rose earlier in the week I would have thought that there was ample time to-day to discuss fully the Amendment moved by my noble friend Earl Lauderdale without cutting short the necessary time afterwards for debating the two other motions.
3.33 p.m.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I hope that it will be in order for me now to make a few remarks about the Resolution and the Amendment moved by the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale. In one respect I agreed with the noble Earl: there will obviously have to be eventually direct elections to the European Parliament. The reasons for that have been given and they are well understood by anyone who knows anything about the Parliament in Strasbourg. It is difficult for the Parliament, if it is to have greater powers—Europeans hope that it will shortly have greater powers—to be manned by what are in fact very part-time politicians, since if they are also to discuss important matters elsewhere they will not be able to be in Strasbourg for the necessary period. Thus, I am certain that direct elections will come about, and sooner than the noble Earl and most people believe, if only because Ministers said at their Summit meeting in October that it was their intention to grant rather more powers to the European Parliament. There is every reason to suppose that in the near future they will give the European Parliament more powers, and when that happens it will become clearer than ever that direct elections of some kind are necessary.
Nobody knows better than I do how difficult it is to organise direct elections to a body like this. Various schemes have

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been put forward. We have Mr. Michael Stewart's plan, and my colleague, David Steel, has a plan, but eventually the Parliament itself will have to decide which scheme should be recommended. I have no doubt that within one or two years—I am willing to go out on a limb and say certainly within three years—this body will by one means or another be directly elected. However, for such time as it is not, the only possible means of manning it is for the various Parliaments to nominate members from their own countries and Parliaments, and our method of nomination seems to me at the moment to be reasonably good.
There is of course a great deal to be said, in principle, for the suggestion of the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, that eventually, and even before there are direct elections to the European Parliament, our members should somehow or other be elected by their own Parties in this House and in the other place. I do not think that would be very difficult to organise and I should regard it as a democratic way of proceeding. At the moment, however, that is not the case perhaps there has not been time to consider fully how it should be done. Also the Labour Party is not taking part in this operation, and no Party, certainly not the Tories or the Liberals, have actually proceeded to elections. Thus, the Members of this House who have been nominated have been, as it were, chosen by their own Whips in the last resort. It would in any case be rather unfortunate if the noble Earl's Amendment were accepted by the Government because we, the Members of this House who have been nominated, would in that case have no security of tenure, as I understand it, beyond eight months from now. Having tried to do our best and having learnt the rules of procedure. we might by that time find ourselves flung out by our Parties voting for somebody else.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, would the noble Lord care to move an Amendment to my Amendment, making it two Sessions?
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I will resist the temptation to do that. I believe that the sensible thing would he to nominate for the period of this Parliament the Members of this House who figure on the
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Order Paper, and if that is not clear from this proposal then perhaps the noble Earl, the Leader of the House, would agree either to say that it is the intention of the Government that they should be nominated for the period of this Parliament or even to move a small Amendment to make that abundantly clear.
The question of how the delegation, such as it is, should actually report to the House is important and it was rightly raised by the noble Earl. I imagine—I have not studied this matter at all—that it would be for the leader of the delegation as a whole (and he would be the leader of the delegation even if the Labour Party came in, as we hope it will do, within the next year) to put in an official report. It would be Mr. Peter Kirk in the present case. That report, as I see it, would be submitted to Parliament as a whole. If that is technically wrong I stand to be corrected. but I should have thought that it would be a sensible thing to do. and in the meantime, pending this official report. which would be a record of what happened. there should be no difficulty. and I suggest every advantage, in the leaders of the particular Party delegations in either House—the Liberal Party has only one in this House, myself, and my colleague Russell Johnston in the other place—making a statement from time to time about what had been achieved, the decisions that had been taken and what he thought had been or should have been done generally in the Session of the European Parliament. That would be one way of keeping everybody in both Houses informed as to the progress of events.
As regards patronage, of course in the present circumstances there is a certain amount of patronage owing to the fact that all members of this delegation are appointed by the Patronage Secretary—or the equivalent in this House—but as the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, said, it is not exactly a thing that everybody would covet for the reasons which he gave. He is shaking his head and no doubt the noble Earl himself would not covet the job at all. Therefore I cannot imagine that this would be considered to be in any way an abuse of patronage to nominate the people in the way in which it has been done.
One might say, in conclusion, that it is an anomaly that Members of an

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appointed, a non-elected House, should become members of this great democratic assembly which is after all democratic and which even now, is supposed to represent, in general, the will of the people. On the other hand, it is our Constitution; we are a part of Parliament; and therefore so long as there are no direct elections it is inevitable and right that certain Members of this House should be represented on the Parliament of Europe. The mere fact that we are non-elected and are, so to speak, nominated Members, increases the general desirability of proceeding to direct elections as soon as it is possible for them to be arranged. I repeat that I believe that this day of direct elections is going to come sooner than a great many of us now think. Personally I hope that it will arrive in the reasonably near future.
VISCOUNT BARRINGTON: My Lords, may I add one remark on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Alport, that this is too wide and important a subject to be discussed at this time of the day? May I ask whether the noble Earl the Leader of the House feels like answering that question?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I wonder whether I also could support what the noble Viscount, Lord Barrington, and the noble Lord, Lord Alport, have said, that it is wrong that we should have, almost as a procedural Motion, a matter of this kind. Although I know that in speaking for this side of the House we have certain inhibitions, nevertheless we do have a duty to look after the affairs of this House. I found the noble Earl's speech remarkably impressive except in one particular. He researches his speeches with immense care always and I am not sure from where he got the information, but had there been four lists there would have been nominations for the four, assuming he meant the fourth list applied to Her Majesty's loyal Opposition in this House.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, without wishing to disclose sources of information, perhaps it will content the noble Lord for a moment if I mention that there is the Bishops' Bar and there is also the place where we have tea downstairs.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am not quite sure where one goes in order to check information gathered in the Bishops' Bar but, as I say, my own researches, although they provided certain very interesting pieces of information in this regard, do not support what the noble Earl has said. However, I think that the noble Earl has said enough in his remarkable speech to indicate the wisdom of the Labour Party in not participating in this delegation. None of those questions which the noble Earl posed has been properly considered. We now have 10 or 20 minutes this afternoon in which to consider them. Considering the atmosphere generated by the Government's bulldozing of the E.E.C. Bill through the House, it was probably impossible to do anything better. We have a majority against entering the Community at all and we had a guillotine in operation in the other place when the Bill to legalise entry came before them. There has not been the right kind of atmosphere in which this sort of associated problem could be discussed. It needs a good deal of very careful and very constructive discussion. As I have said, I believe that there should be another opportunity for discussion because whatever we may do in the Labour Party at the end of 12 months, these points must be considered.
We had a remarkable example a few minutes ago about the difficulties that face the usual channels when lists of this kind are compiled. There were very bitter and wounding criticisms from behind me when it was a matter of selecting noble Lords to go on a committee dealing only with procedure. I can well imagine that my back would be absolutely riddled with darts if names were put forward for this Parliamentary delegation without some element of election. I cannot see that we could possibly satisfy the cross-section of opinion on the Benches behind me if it was left only to the usual channels. Therefore, as a matter, shall I say, of self-protection, something of the kind suggested by the noble Earl would seem to be desirable.
I would add one further comment. If we did have something of this sort it would be the only element of democracy in the entire set up of the Community. Nowhere throughout the whole of the E.E.C. machinery is there anything

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that resembles a democratic procedure and that is a matter for careful reflection. However, my Lords, so far as we are concerned, we did not believe that the time was ripe to take a decision here. My Party have delayed that decision and I believe that they were right so to do. I believe that there are a number of very real problems that ought to be properly considered and I hope that after the Recess we shall have time to consider them.
3.48 p.m.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, before my noble friend replies to the debate, I should like to make one point in regard to the fascinating speech made by my noble friend Lord Lauderdale. He spins his dialectic web so skilfully that one does not always observe what are the weaknesses in it. In fact, exactly the same process will be gone through in the House of Commons, and I hope that in years to come the Opposition Party will be taking part in it also. The fact that Members of the House of Commons are democratically elected by the voters of this country will not make any difference to the way in which these delegations are elected at the end of the day. At the end of the day certain names will be put before the other place; they will be moved in a Motion by the Government of the day and I hope they will be approved of. Of course, consultation will have taken place behind the scenes. I do not know what sort of democratic processes go on in the Party of the noble Lord. Lord Beswick, but I know what go on in mine and I am very certain that if the usual channels neglected to see that these consultations followed a democratic course, there would be very serious trouble. But at the end of the day there is no alternative but to put a list of names in front of this noble Chamber or the other place and for that to be decided upon as the delegates who are to represent us.
The basic point made by my noble friend Lord Lauderdale in criticising the Motion is really wrong. I have no difficulty in agreeing, and in fact welcoming, his suggestion that there should be an annual report. I could almost bear it if it were to be made in French if it is as Anglicised as my noble friend's point because I can almost understand it—but
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an annual report would certainly be valuable. Of course there are all kinds of details that have to be worked out. I would hope for myself that noble Lords who are good enough to serve on this delegation will continue for several years so that they can get continuity and understand what is going on.
The major point I want to make, and briefly, because I do not want to hold up the other debates which are coming, is that my noble friend Lord Lauderdale's basic point is fallacious anyhow. We can never have the strength here of noble Lords being elected by an electoral process by the citizens of this country. I say" never", but we cannot visualise it at present—certainly as the House is now constituted. Therefore, all that we can have here is a vote of the Chamber, and I suspect that that is all that the other House will have, too. I hope that my noble friend the Leader of the House, when he replies, will not allow too much weight on the basis of my noble friend's argument.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, I speak but rarely, and briefly I hope, and therefore I will detain only for a few moments those noble Lords who, quite rightly, wish to get on with the other debates. I think we are touching on a most important and vital point raised by my noble friend, Lord Lauderdale. I personally dislike the Motion of Her Majesty's Government because it is giving more power and patronage to the Executive, and this at the expense of the Legislature. There can be no comparison between a European Parliament and the Council of Europe at Strasbourg—the Minister who replies may endeavour to use that comparison as an argument. The Council of Europe advises, recommends, expresses views. Here we have people nominated to a Legislature; here we have the Executive in this country encroaching upon our Legislature and saying who is to be a member of a European Legislature. I echo what my noble friend Lord Lauderdale said: that it is no personal criticism, but a great tribute to those who have said that they will serve. Nevertheless, it is, to put it bluntly, an Executive-packed team that both Houses of Parliament are sending to the E.E.C.
Our Constitution, as your Lordships know, many of you better than I do, is

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based upon the principle of separation of powers: the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. Mr. Montesquieu has put that very clearly. We are infringing the independence of the Legislature by allowing the Executive this power of nomination. There have been expressions as to the great difficulties of having some form of election. The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, said that an election will come in due course. We should never have gone forward without having first thought out some process of election. And it is not impossible. Many of your Lordships, like myself. are members of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. There, a number of names are given to us and we are asked to say whom we wish to be on the Executive. That is, in fact, an election in the C.P.A. of the Executive. Surely it would not be beyond the wit of your Lordships or those in another place to suggest that there should be nominations and then Members should say whom they wish to have in those particular nominations.
There is only one other point I want to make: that is, on the constitution of your Lordships' delegation, which, as I say, is excellent. But I do regret that there is no, what I might call, antiMarketeer on that delegation. The ground is pretty thin on this side, as your Lordships will see if you look at the Division List on Second Reading, which I have been reviewing; there was only my noble friend, Lord Lauderdale. My regret is that Lord Lauderdale must have been unable, for personal reasons, to accept the invitation which I am quite sure the Leader of the House gave him, in the same way as the Prime Minister gave it to Sir Derek Walker-Smith. It was no doubt personal reasons on Lord Lauderdale's part which prevented him from accepting such an invitation. Per haps the noble Earl, the Leader of the House, will also be able to express to us his regret that such an invitation was not accepted when made.
3.54 p.m.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend, Lady Brooke, will acquit me of not having tried, at any rate, to shorten this debate and give her an opportunity of moving her Motion.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt my noble friend, but
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if I was correct in hearing him making a speech not long ago on this Motion, I would point out that this is the second one. Was the first one not a speech?
Loan ALPORT: My Lords, I did not recognise it as a speech; it was a question to the Leader of the House which, unfortunately, received no answer at all, although I hoped that he would have enabled me to dispense with the necessity of making this speech on this occasion.
I want to support my noble friend, Lord Lauderdale, in the point he has put before your Lordships this afternoon. I am very sorry—I must say so straight away—that the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, when he was commenting on it, introduced what seemed to me to be an entirely false point with regard to the Party position of the Labour Party on this particular matter. I am sure that what he said would not be acceptable to a great many of those who sit on the Bench with him. We are not considering now, or we should not be, I submit to your Lordships, Party representatives going to the European Parliament. The relationships between the Parties in this country and the Parties on the Continent are always very tenuous indeed.
We are invited by the Treaty of Rome to send Members of Parliament. I can give the exact terms:
" The Assembly shall consist of delegates who shall be nominated by the respective Parliaments from among their members in accordance with procedures laid down by each member State."
We are not sending representatives of the Labour Party or of the Conservative Party or of the Liberal Party, or, in the case of this House, of the Cross-Benches. We are under an obligation to send representatives nominated by the respective Parliaments, our Parliament, both Houses of our Parliament, by the House of Lords and by the House of Commons, nominated by procedures laid clown by the member States. Who has laid down the procedure by which the members of the delegation which is going from this House, or from Parliament as a whole, have been nominated? I do not remember any Instrument or Act or Motion being passed through this House declaring how that nomination should take place. I do not remember its being part of the Bill which we took so much

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trouble in passing during the last Session. The decision as to how this nomination should take place has been made, apparently—by whom? By the Prime Minister? By the usual channels? By the two Front Benches acting together? Is this a constitutional procedure in a House of this sort and a Parliament of this sort? Should not Parliament have laid down the appropriate procedures by which these important representatives of this Parliament are selected to go to Strasbourg, to the European Parliament, in order to take an increasingly important part in the procedures of that body?
It seems to me that the habit has grown up—and this applies to the Executives of both Parties—of taking Parliament increasingly for granted. In this House we are not a representative body; we fully recognise that fact. But we are, for the time being at any rate, the body that composes the Upper Chamber of Parliament. I suggest to your Lordships that my noble friend is quite right in his submission, that it is we, not the Front Benches, not the usual channels, not the Prime Minister, not the Leader of the House nor anybody else, who should have selected the members to go from this House. It could be done. My noble friend, Lord Balfour, has suggested one way in which it could be done, but there are plenty of ways in which constitutional procedure and ingenuity could have ensured that the right people, or people willing to serve, could put their names forward, not simply, in this House at an rate, as members of the Conservative Party or the Labour Party or the Liberal Party or the Cross-Benches, but as Members of your Lordships' House willing to serve as representatives of this Parliament and this House of Parliament in the European Parliament.
It is quite wrong for the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, to say," Well, nobody else does this in a democratic way." I know, he knows, and we all know that those who are at the present moment serving in the European Parliament are looking to this House to produce processes, constitutional developments, which with the passage of time are going to help them become more democratic, more representative. Some of the great dangers—and I put this question to the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn—before the whole
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conception of the European Community are that so much power lies in the hands of non-representative groups in the Commission itself, the European Parliament has so little power, and that at the present moment it is not sufficiently representative.
I do not believe for one moment that Lord Gladwyn's prophecy that there will be direct election to the European Parliament will come in our lifetime or in this century. It is not a possibility, in my view at any rate, so far as this country is concerned; but the members of the delegations that go there should. I think and believe, be representative of the Houses of Parliament from which they are drawn and not simply the nominees of the Front Benches, or the Prime Minister, or whoever at the present moment is selecting. There should be a recognisable way by which they are selected—or perhaps elected, as my noble friend suggests—which we can perhaps evolve here in this House. If we can set a precedent in this, it is something which I believe will be an example and give leadership to the Parliaments of the other Members of the Community.
This is not a small matter. This is something which if the Community is going to be successful, if it is going to exercise the power and influence over our lives in the future which it may well do, is going to be of the greatest importance to our sort of constitutional traditions and point of view in this country, and to democratic Europe as a whole. I think it is right that my noble friend should have proposed his Amendment. I do not think that there is anything we can do at this particular stage. I pay tribute, as he did, to those noble Lords who have accepted the obligation of going to Strasbourg. I spent a very unhappy and miserable year as a Member of the Council of Europe and got to loathe that city, which I regard as the dreariest and most dismal city in Europe, with all the characteristics of French and German provincialism combined (and that is lethal), and something that cannot be remedied either by asparagus or pâté de foie gras. But they are going, and we wish them well; they go with our full support and confidence. But the next representatives to go from this House, I hope as a result of some machinery that we will evolve, will go as the representa-

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tives of Parliament and of this House, and not as the nominees of any Party, Front Bench, or of anyone else.
4.3 p.m.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, may I add a few sentences. This is the first occasion upon which we are sending Members to this Parliament, and we are the Parliament to which the other countries of Europe have looked to give them a lead in Parliamentary and democratic procedures. I think that it is a pity that we should, at this time, fall back on a process of nomination by a Government, which is something which seems out of step with our Parliamentary traditions. I hope that my noble friend will find some way of resolving this problem, even if he feels that he cannot accept the noble Earl's Amendment.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, while agreeing with my noble friend Lord Lauderdale that election would be the most satisfactory method, the question arises on the system that could be devised. The difficulty in this House is that you could not really have a system of election involving all the Members of the House, because many of them never come here. Therefore, you would have to devise some system where you have only the working Peers as the electorate. I suppose you would have to include Peers who have attended over a third of the appropriate time, or something like that. I think that point should be made. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alport, that this is such an important matter that we ought to have had a full-scale debate.
4.6 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, since there are two quite important debates to come perhaps I should intervene now. I should like to say straight away that I find myself in total agreement with four points which have been made in this discussion. I think that all of them were made, among others, by my noble friend Lord Lauderdale. In the first place I should like to take this opportunity, as he did, of welcoming the Leader of the Opposition, the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, back to your Lordships' House in, I hope, full health. He is passing me messages fairly frequently, so I assume that this is an indication that he is restored to full vitality.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Earl? The noble Earl has made a most dangerous allegation. All I said was," I think it is time for you to get out".
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I do not think that that is strictly accurate. I think that the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition also said that the noble Lord, Lord Alport, was totally in order, as I think he was. That is the first point on which I find myself in agreement. Secondly, I find myself in total agreement with those noble Lords on both sides of the House who have said that this is an important matter, and one that we should not underestimate. I find myself very much in agreement with what my noble friend Lord Alport was saying in that respect, and I do not grudge—although those who may be speaking in the next two mini-debates may—the time that we have taken on this question as a result of my noble friend's Amendment. I think that this is a very important matter. Thirdly, I should like to associate myself with what has been said—not least by my noble friend—in wishing those Members of your Lordships' House who are going to be Members of the European Parliament all possible good wishes in their task. This is an important task, and we are lucky that those Members of your Lordships' House whose names stand on the Order Paper have accepted this obligation. Fourthly, I agree that this is going to be an obligation, in my noble friend's words," both burdensome and exacting", and not one in which those Members of your Lordships' House who undertake it will enrich themselves unduly.
Having said that, I should like to turn to the substance of what has been said, especially by my noble friend Lord Lauderdale, and I think has been echoed by almost everyone who has spoken. He said that it was a pity that we had not yet worked out, and that we certainly needed to work out in the lifetime of this Parliament (preferably in this coming Session), our procedures by which we select, or elect, Members of this House who will be delegates to the European Parliament. I cordially agree with my noble friend. Indeed, I would go further and say that it is a great pity that we were not able to work out in the course of last Session precisely those procedures.

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I do not wish to go over old ground (especially Party political ground) on this occasion, but I must briefly remind my noble friend that it was the ardent desire of the Government that the joint ad hoc committee we proposed as long ago as last February would have dealt not only with the question of the involvement of Parliament in Community affairs and Community subordinate legislation, but also with this whole question of the selection of our delegates to the European Parliament. It was only a matter of a week or so ago that our suggestion that, first, this should be a joint committee, and, secondly, should cover this particular matter of the composition and selection of our delegates to the European Parliament, was finally turned down. However, I cordially agree with my noble friend that this is an important matter, and one on which I hope that we can still proceed—if not now, in the very near future—by agreement between the Parties, and one which deserves a great deal of attention.
Having said that, may I turn very briefly—because I am aware of the pressure of time—to some of the particular points which have been made. There is the question of the duration of this Order. All I would say is that this is debatable ground. It is certainly usual in this House for a Motion of this kind to have currency for the Session only. If the House wished to appoint the Members for the duration of the Parliament I am advised that this should be stated specifically in the Motion; and it is not so stated. So it is my understanding that this is a Sessional Order, although it is my hope that we shall have—and I think it would be a great pity if we did not have—a large degree of continuity in our delegation to the European Parliament, because we all have to feel our way.
On the question of accountability, I would remind my noble friend of the Answer that I gave to a Written Question by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, a week ago, on December 14, when I said that the effect of the relevant article of the E.E.C. Treaty was that
"… while it is the task of the Member States to lay down the procedure for the desienation of delegates to the European Parliament. it is for the national Parliaments to make the actual designations."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14/12/72, col. 808.]
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Following from that and deriving from that it is clear, to my mind at least, that those members who go from us are accountable to your Lordships' House.
Having said that, recognising the importance of this issue, I should like to say that I am very open-minded as to what would be the ideal solution for the composition of our delegation and for its selection. It could be by election or by selection or by some form of nomination. If it is by election we shall have to consider all the various possibilities. Should it be by the various Party groups in this House; should there be some regional clement for election imported into our procedures; should it be by the House as a whole; should it be by Parliament as a whole; or should it be on some other basis? There is a whole spectrum of possibilities.
My Lords, we have failed (and it has not been through want of trying) to get a procedure established by which by the agreement of the Parties we could have moved forward in this area. The moment this was blocked there was little alternative but to proceed through some such method as we have proceeded, imperfect though it may be. In the present circumstances, I suggest that it would be premature to prejudge these issues. Because of that, I hope that my noble friend, having ventilated this important subject, will not press his Amendment.
To summarise what I have said: this is an important subject; it is one which deserves our attention; it is one which I hope can be dealt with by broad agreement between the Parties; and it is one which I hope we shall come back to again in this House. Perhaps we may do so quite soon. I would welcome a debate on this matter, and a longer debate than we have been able to have at the present time. But I have some doubts whether it would be right to enlarge the terms of reference of the Committee dealing with Community affairs which we have just set up, because it is important that there should be the possibility of a bridge between that Committee and the equivalent Committee in another place. If we enlarge our own terms of reference we might be setting up some inhibition to co-operate with another place in that respect This, again, is open.

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My Lords, having said that, I should like to assure my noble friend that in asking him not to press this Amendment because I think it is a mistake to prejudge these matters now (and I think it would be misrepresented abroad if by any chance your Lordships were to approve this Amendment), I have taken full note of what has been said by your Lordships—and views have been expressed by Members of this House in this matter who have totally opposed views on the question of the Community. It is an important matter and one to which the Government certainly intend to continue to address themselves.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, before asking your Lordships' leave to withdraw my Amendment, may I thank those noble Lords who were good enough to join in this short debate and give me their support; and may I say to my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye that even if I had been asked to go to Strasbourg I could not conceivably have done so. To the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, I would say that I think he mistook my point. He is usually very quick indeed at getting other people's points but perhaps I was more obtuse than usual. I was talking about election by Members of this House of some of our number.
What comes out of this discussion is that we need to go in to the matter again when we have more time. This is common ground. The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, and the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, made the same point. I should like to thank my noble friend the Leader of the House for what he has been good enough to say. When one says that the obvious thing meantime is to do the thing through the Whips, may I remind him that the obvious choice is usually the quick regret. When it is said that these things are best left to the Government—although he did not say it—may I recall Macaulay's words:
"A Government which attempts more than it ought will perform loss than it ought."
My noble friend was good enough to take all the points that were made, and to take them sympathetically. So, whereas in our debates on the E.E.C. Bill I began to wonder whether if he was a cricketer he should not be likened to Stonewall Jackson, I now find that he is not neces-
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sarily a stonewaller after all, rather a man of great sport who has taken this Amendment in good part. I appreciate the way in which he responded to it. Having said that, I beg your Lordships' leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

E.E.C.: COUNCIL OF MINISTERS MEETING
4.18 p.m.
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, with the permission of the House I should like to repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster concerning the principal developments in a series of meetings of the Council of Ministers which have taken place in recent days. The Statement is as follows:
"These developments covered a wide range of issues, particularly in the fields of external commercial relations, agriculture and road transport.
"The three acceding countries participated in these meetings to all intents and purposes as full members.
"They were attended by several of my right honourable and honourable friends including the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Minister for the Transport Industries.
"The following were the main issues upon which the House would wish to be informed.
"First, in the field of external relations:
"Legal effect was given as from January 1 to the provisions of the Community's agreements with the non-candidate EFTA countries.
"Approval was given to the conclusion and signature of trade agreements with the Lebanon. Egypt, and I am very glad to say, with Cyprus, the last-named on terms which will safeguard Cyprus's major trading relationships with ourselves.
[Baroness Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie.]
"Agreement was reached to propose interim measures for countries of the Mediterranean with which the Community has agreements but where those agreements have not yet been adapted to take account of the enlargement of the Community.
"A negotiating mandate was approved for the Commission to institute negotiations for special trade agreements with India and Brazil.
"Second, in the field of agriculture:
"A regulation which provides very satisfactorily for the implementation of the special protocol dealing with New Zealand was agreed. This regulation makes clear provision to allow for the full quantities of butter and cheese provided for in the protocol to be sold into the British market. It also provides for an annual report by the Commission which will allow the Council to review annually the operation of these arrangements.
"Compensatory amounts for apples and pears were agreed which will replace our import quota arrangements on February 1.
"Transitional arrangements for beef were agreed. The initial United Kingdom guide price to apply from February 1 to the end of March will be about £14·20 per live cwt. for adult cattle, and about £17·60 for calves. The same price levels will also apply to the Irish Republic, thus avoiding any change in the trading arrangements between the two countries. Intervention arrangements for beef were agreed to be provided in the future on a permanent basis.
"Export restitutions for whisky are to be further discussed in the New Year with a view to adoption by August 1. These should be within the framework of an overall policy for the Community on alcohol, but if that policy were not finalised by the August 1 then the restitutions would become payable as from that date as soon as the policy had been agreed.
"It did not prove possible to reach agreement on the compensatory
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amounts for pig meat, poultry and eggs or upon the transitional arrangements for sugar. These questions will be taken up again in January.
"Third, in the field of transport:
"No decision was reached to adopt the common orientation previously agreed by the Six in relation to the weights and dimensions of lorries. As the House knows, my right honourable friend has always made it clear the United Kingdom found that agreed orientation unacceptable. He has undertaken to resume discussion in the New Year with a view to reaching a solution acceptable to all members of the enlarged Community.
"The Six decided to continue for a further two years their experimental system of bracket tariffs and multilateral quotas for the carriage of goods by road between Member States. We are not satisfied with the quota allocated to us for participation in these arrangements, and have made this known to the existing Members. A work group is further to examine this matter in the New Year and to report to the Council of Ministers in the spring.
"In addition to these matters, provision was made for the nomination of the President, Vice Presidents and Members of the new European Commission which will take office in January; for the appointment of new Judges and new Advocates General of the Courts of Justice and for the appointment of new Members of the Economic and Social Committee.
"The Council prepared the decisions necessary under Article 2 of the Accession Treaty to adapt the institutional provisions to take account of the fact that Norway will not join the Community on January 1."
My Lords, that ends the Statement.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, we are very grateful to the noble Baroness for making this Statement, but I am sure she will understand if I say that here again we have evidence that the way in which we are to participate in decisions taken in the Community machine are not going to be entirely satisfactory. Here

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we have a Statement which ranges over the fields of external relations; commercial treaties; agriculture, dealing with imports of butter and cheese, apples, pears and guide prices for beef; matters relating to the important product of whisky, and a number of other things—all made in one blanket Statement and without any real opportunity for discussion. I have a number of questions which I propose to put to the noble Baroness. I apologise in advance as I have had no chance of communicating to her what I propose to ask, and if she cannot answer I shall understand.
The first question I would ask relates to the treaties with the non-candidate EFTA countries. Are we to understand that these are the Orders which we approved last week, all of them dealing with the Iron and Steel Community? Have the trade agreements with Lebanon, Egypt and Cyprus been published at all? Have we been made aware of the contents of these treaties? It may be that I am just uninformed, but I should like to know whether it is possible to examine the contents of these treaties now. In the field of agriculture it is stated that:
" A regulation which provides very satisfactorily for the implementation of the special protocol dealing with New Zealand was agreed."
Do these very heavy words simply mean that the terms which have previously been agreed on accession have now been approved? And when the Statement refers to:
" clear provision to allow for the full quantities of butter and cheese provided for in the Protocol"
does that mean that they have agreed to the phasing down of the butter and cheese imports into this country? The way it is put here would suggest that we have made a very good bargain. In fact. as the noble Baroness will know, there are many noble Lords on this side of the House who think it a bad bargain from the point of view of New Zealand. Are we to understand that an improvement was made, or does it mean the full quantities of the reduced quotas?
In the matter of beef I wonder whether the noble Baroness can confirm that the guide price of £14·20 per cwt. for adult animals (I speak from memory) is just about 50 per cent. higher than the price was in the markets of this
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country one year ago. On the agreement on pig meat, poultry and eggs, I wonder whether the noble Baroness can say whether the difficulty here was simply a matter of amount, or whether there is a question of principle involved.
I should also like to ask her about this vexed question of lorries. I read in the Statement, and I heard the noble Baroness say, that agreed orientation was unacceptable. By that is meant, I assume, that we have not agreed to the increase in the size. But can the noble Baroness tell us about this matter of licences. It is suggested in the Press that the number of licences for United Kingdom lorries, the laissez passer, or the permit to travel between one country or another, is smaller in the case of the United Kingdom lorries than for other member countries? Are we to understand that this reduced figure is a sort of punishment for not agreeing to the increased size; and what are we to do about this reduced number of licences? As I said, my Lords, I realise that to fire off a number of questions like this is in one way most unfair; but so far as I can see, it is the only way in which we can deal with Statements of this kind.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I think that my colleagues on these Benches will find this account generally satisfactory—in some cases even more satisfactory than might have been expected. There are just two points that I should like to raise: one, the point about lorries, has been raised already, by the noble Lord, Lord Beswick. It has been represented, perhaps wrongly, that the recent French decision, announced this morning, to limit the number of our lorries is a punishment for our non-agreement to the Continental axle weights of lorries, which are considered much too large for this country. I suggest that this is not a punishment; this is the sort of bargaining which goes on within the Common Market. Perhaps the noble Baroness will agree with that. If the French cannot get their way about lorry sizes in this country, we have to accept something which is perhaps limiting the activities of our lorries on the Continent. That is some kind of bargain. and I hope that the noble Baroness will agree that there is nothing very sinister in that particular phenomenon.
The only other point I should like to raise is that I think it rather disturbing

1119
that it was not possible to reach agreement, as I read, on the transitional arrangements for sugar, with regard to which, as we all know, the Government gave important undertakings during the negotiations for our entry. I trust that this is not an indication that the interests of so many of our Commonwealth partners, whose economics depend almost entirely on sugar, will be in any way unfavourably affected.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, my noble friend told us that the parties failed to agree on the arrangements for pigs, poultry and eggs. This means, presumably, with regard to the compensatory payments. I wonder if, when my noble friend replies to the comprehensive list of questions presented by the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, she will tell us what happens with regard to the machinery for compensatory payments when these arangements are introduced on February 1.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, can the noble Baroness say what is meant by" regular supplies of butter and cheese"—and for how long? Have they not to be reviewed in 1974–75 and progressively reduced, as was stipulated in the terms that we accepted? Can the noble Baroness also tell us why Britain is getting only 99 licences? The Six are getting 2,060 among them, and Holland are getting 2½ times the licences that Britain is getting. If this is bargaining in the Common Market as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, then God help Britain!
LORD NUNBURNHOLME: My Lords, would the noble Baroness explain what she means by a guideline on beef of £14·20 a live cwt.? Beef to-day in our market is round about £18 to £19 a live cwt. Does this guideline mean a guaranteed price such as we used to have, or what does it mean?
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, the noble Baroness mentioned something like this: restitution payable in respect of whisky. May I ask whether this covers something which will be to the detriment of the Scotch whisky industry and its exports, or to its advantage? I ask that question as one who never drinks it.
4.32 p.m.
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, I will do my best to try to answer a long series of questions. May I say, first, to the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, that I agree with him that this is a" blanket Statement", as he called it; but the reason is that there were three Council meetings taking place over a period of two days, and as this House particularly is due to rise to-morrow it was felt that it would be for the convenience of the House to make a Statement at the earliest possible moment. Any formal agreement will be published in the Official Journal in English after January 1 when we accede as a full member.
The noble Lord asked me, first of all, about the agreements with the non-candidate EFTA countries. These were the free trade agreements, and the Council approved regulations which gave legal effect in the Community to the agreements between them in all these respects. He then asked me about the Lebanon and Cyprus and Egypt. In the case of Cyprus and Egypt, who have concluded adaptations, to take account of enlargement to the agreements with the present Community we have ourselves gradually applied the provisions of them, although in the case of Cyprus we shall continue the provisions of the Commonwealth preference scheme under the first stage of the agreement—that is, until 1976. In the case of the remaining countries with which the Community has agreements, we shall continue to treat them as we treat other third countries until adaptations of the existing agreements are agreed.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I asked about the terms. Are they published anywhere?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, they are not as yet published; but I think I said that any agreements will be published in the Official Journal in English after January 1. The noble Lord then asked me about New Zealand, as did the noble Lord, Lord Blyton. I think the best thing I can do is to quote what was said by the new Minister for Overseas Trade in New Zealand about this agreement. He publicly recognised that the regulation implements the provision of the protocol

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in Community law. I am glad to say that he has expressed the New Zealand Government's appreciation of the good will shown by the Commission and the representatives of the Nine. The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, asked me whether the price quoted in the Statement on beef was not 50 per cent. higher than it was a year ago. I cannot give him an answer in relation to a year ago, but I can say that with these new arrangements we do not expect the price to rise more than very little. He also asked me about pigmeat, poultry and eggs, and why no agreement was reached: was it because of the amounts, or was it a question of principle? I am afraid it was a question of time, because when the Council were considering agricultural questions they only finished in the early hours of this morning. Therefore this will be carried on in the New Year.
The noble Lord then asked me about the size of lorries and whether there was in some way a link between that and the amount of the quota of the licences granted to this country; this point was also raised by the noble Lords, Lord Gladwyn and Lord Blyton. The Community were not prepared to accept the figures which were proposed by the acceding countries. It is apparent that some member countries do see a link between the various aspects of the Community's common transport policy. However, these issues are for the moment in abeyance until we are full members in the New Year. We shall then return to the charge and hope to get a satisfactory arrangement. The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, asked me about sugar. This also was a question of time and the fact that the Council did not finish until the early hours. My noble friend Lord Nugent asked me about the compensatory payments—and I think he was referring to beef.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, I was referring to pigs, poultry and eggs.
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, I apologise to my noble friend. I have just written down" compensatory payments", and I thought he meant beef. On that, the reply is the same as I gave to the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, earlier. The Council have not yet discussed this question because
1122
of the shortage of time, although I understand that it is quite usual to go on late into the early hours, as indeed Parliament does. I think I have answered the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Nunburnholme, on the guidelines for beef. Lastly, my Lords, I return to a Scottish question about whisky restitution—or rather, alcohol. I am glad to say that the interest of the Scotch whisky industry is fully taken into account by this arrangement. I understand that there are to be discussions on what is described as a new alcohol régime for the enlarged Community which are to be opened early in the New Year.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I should just like to say that the apprehension I voiced about firing so many questions was clearly unfounded—I say that with deep admiration—and in future we shall be able to ask even more.
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, may I say how much I appreciate those comments.

CHILDREN'S SPEECH AND LANGUAGE DISORDERS
4.38 p.m.
BARONESS BROOKE OF YSTRADFELLTE BARONESS BROOKE OF YSTRADFELLTE rose to draw attention to the problems of children suffering from specific speech and language disorders and the difficulties faced by their parents; and to move for Papers. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, from the very important matters that we have been discussing this afternoon I should now like to draw your Lordships' attention back to the more human things that are happening at home. I am particularly glad that I drew a place in the ballot for one of our short debates—particularly glad because the debate is to-day, the last Wednesday before Christmas. This is a time when the minds of many of us are full of children—normal, happy, carefree children bursting with excitement that there are only four more days left before they can hang up their stockings. It is right that we should pause for a moment and think of those other children, and their parents, who are caught up in the difficulties and distresses of non-communication or only partial communication.
There are several factors which have culminated in my putting this Motion down for debate. This year has seen the publication of three remarkable contributions. The first is a paper published by the Invalid Children's Aid Association entitled Developmental Aphasia—an Introduction, written by Miss Pauline Griffiths, who has worked as a teacher at the John Horniman School at Worthing educating aphasic children. This is a fascinating study. It helps those who were wholly ignorant, like me, to grasp some of the technical problems and manifestations of this comparatively obscure disability. The second contribution is the report of a committee set up in 1969 under the chairmanship of Professor Quirk—and I quote:
" to consider the need for and the role of speech therapy in the field of education and medicine, the assessment and treatment of those suffering from speech and language disorders, and the training appropriate for those specially concerned in this work."
The third comes in the form of a book by Elizabeth Browning called, I Can't See What You Are Saying. This concerns the medical and educational history of her son—a story that reveals only too disconcertingly the present inadequacy of our authorities when called upon to deal with problems of the kind which this" intelligent and attractive" little boy presented, to quote what Professor Zangwill said in his foreword to the book.
By chance, I read these works in the right order: that is, the reverse of the order which I have just given. I read Elizabeth Browning's hook in proof last summer, and it absorbed my attention from the start so that I was caught up in her emotions as the mother of a severely handicapped boy whom she refused to have written off as hopeless, and in the white-hot determination which she and her husband maintained in the face of countless disappointments and endless irritating frustrations. The nub of their problem lay in their inability to obtain the intelligent assessment of their little boy that was required to place him in his own right niche. When you have had two perfectly normal little girls and then your longed-for little son arrives, premature and very small, your immediate hopes are fixed on him and you watch every step of his development. When at
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the age of three and a half this boy was neither talking nor understanding speech, his parents began their long and often fruitless search for a diagnosis of his trouble and for educational help for him. Because he was described as" highly intelligent and not deaf" by a famous professor at a research unit for deafness, and because they were told by another highly-thought-of pædiatrician that if he was not speaking by the time he was three and a half they must accept that it was most unlikely he ever would, his parents did not know whether they were coming or going. But they both agreed that they did not believe he would never speak, and they realised the fight was on for their son's future. Their G.P. helped them to elucidate things when he explained that their son's symptoms indicated mental deficiency, but that as he obviously was not defective everybody was completely" foxed".
He was next taken to another highly recommended pædiatrician who watched the child at play and said that he seemed bright enough to him and he could not see much wrong with him. They did, however, emerge from this interview with the address of a special school for children with speech difficulties. Here the first seemingly accurate assessment was made, when the school doctor at the interview said." This is a straightforward case of aphasia and he must come to us when he is five". The parents could not believe their ears. Someone knew what was wrong and had a place where it could be put right. They were told that aphasia was a condition still not recognised by a number of doctors—hence their dilemma up till now. The failure of children to develop speech may he due to deafness, mental subnormality, severe emotional or personality disturbance. very bad home or environmental conditions, or a combination of any of these. However, it may also be due to a specific language disorder caused by some defect in the central nervous system, resulting in an inability to express oneself and sometimes an inability to understand language symbols. This condition has been termed" developmental aphasia".
When this little boy was five he was taken to the special school that had been advised—the John Horniman School, administered by the Invalid Children's

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Aid Association and recognised by the Department of Education and Science as a boarding school for children suffering from speech and language disorders. Here he stayed and showed signs of increasing development until the age of nine. During this time things technically were good and bad. At six and a half his vocabulary was steadily increasing. However, it was suspected that to some degree he was deaf, and tests undertaken at a clinic ascertained a marked high-frequency hearing loss. It did not seem possible that a mistake had been made earlier when he had been described as" highly intelligent and not deaf"—but it turned out to have been a good mistake, because if the child had been diagnosed as deaf he would have been sent to a school for the deaf, where the teaching methods would not have been effective in view of his aphasic condition.
He was given a hearing aid, which it became a struggle to make him use. When friends asked his mother what was wrong with him she would reply that he was suffering from aphasia and that this seemed to be an appreciation of some situations but a non-comprehension of the meaning of words which, with the added complication of hearing loss, made communication difficult and complicated. Scattered fragments of information were accumulated, but although fine in themselves they seemed to exist in isolated irrelevance in his mind. Grammar and phrasing were unique and illogical. Numerous phrases were understood by the little boy's family, but made no sense to other people. One phrase took four years to straighten out. It was:" Have we went before here we been". This would he said on a journey—sometimes as a question, sometimes as an answer. It expressed recognition of a route previously taken.
At the age of nine the moment arrived for the assessment; and after all the cases had been gone through from every angle it had to be decided by the teachers, speech therapists and doctors whether the children should move on to another special school or take their chance in normal schools. In the case of the little boy it was decided that he needed further special school education, so he was to move the next term to a senior school run on somewhat similar lines.
Some time after his move, a Trust called the Sembal Trust asked Miss Pauline Griffiths (the speech therapist at the John Horniman School) to do a research project into the situation of those children who, after assessment at nine, had not been considered bad enough or" suitable" to move on to the special senior school. These children then had to take" pot luck" in ordinary state schools. As a result of visits all over the country to the children who had been at the John Horniman School and then gone on to ordinary education, it was revealed that in nearly every case the results had been disastrous. The large classes and the complete and inevitable ignorance of the teachers about aphasia had made" mincemeat" of the children; it was felt that all that had been done for them at their special school had been virtually lost. Many of the children had turned in on themselves in self-defence or from despair.
The special senior school the little boy went to was a non-maintained but Minitry-recognised special school for children suffering from speech and language disorders. He stayed at this school until he was 11, when his parents were informed by post that he was now fit for normal education and should leave at the end of the term. They visited the school without delay to find out what was intended and to ask how a child of 11, unable to read or write, could be ready for normal education, and why he could not stay where he was, since lessons were going so well. There was virtually no explanation or reply—only repetition of the phrase that he was now considered to be ready for normal education.
What was to happen next? The consultant psychiatrist at the child guidance clinic run by the local education authority suggested a special school for children suffering from various defects. It promised to be ideal and all arrangements were made—and the boy had actually been there for two days—when the news broke that he had no right to be at this school. The consultant's recommendation had not been accepted by the education authority. When the father called on the education officer and the medical officer of health and begged them to see the boy for themselves, they said there was no need for this as they had his

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case on paper, where it was clearly stated that he was now fit for normal education. The father pointed out that whatever was written on the paper the fact remained that at 11 the boy could neither read nor write and that this could not be regarded as normal. However, he he was up against a stone wall, and the only reply he got from the Education Officer was that there was a place for him at the local secondary school and that he should start there the next Monday. This was followed subsequently by a telephone message to the boy's mother that the head of the junior school was prepared to take the boy into his class of eight-year-olds as a favour.The parents were completely nonplussed, but felt that there was nothing they could do except to let the boy go. He sat in the front row of a class of 44 eight-year-olds and learnt nothing.
And so the story continues: effort after effort to achieve educational help, to be met with frustration and disappointment at the end of the day. And if I might be allowed to" plug a commercial" at this stage, if any of your Lordships have book tokens and do not know what to do with them, do put them into this book called I Can't See What You're Saying; it is fascinating. And yet, thanks to the determination of the parents, the boy won through to a remarkable degree. Their son, now nearly 20, is working today as an apprentice to a farrier and doing a real job with real pay.
" Aphasia still lurks"
said an expert teacher who had known him in his John Horniman days—
" but his disability is masked by social `know-how'. He can get the finer points of a film because it is visual and appeals to the emotions and is intuitive, but he cannot see patterns of words in his mind."
My Lords, I have sketched the problem as it affected one family where the parents were determined to help their child who was suffering from a specific speech difficulty, no matter what frustrations or difficulties they met on the way. But what of the thousands of other children suffering from disordered language ability and in need of special schools and speech therapy, whose parents have neither the intelligence nor the drive to help them to obtain what they so badly need? The Quirk Report suggests that some 180,000 children in
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ordinary schools need speech therapy. It estimates that for children alone some 3,400 speech therapists are needed. And what have we got'?—822 in terms of full-time equivalents. The number would need to be quadrupled to match up to current needs. Why is there this tremendous discrepancy in the numbers available and the numbers needed? The limitation of the speech therapy service in this country since the 1944 Education Act has not been due to failure on the part of the College of Speech Therapists. The College has repeatedly stressed the lack of financial resources required to provide an adequate career structure, to recognise special qualifications or special responsibilities, and to pay salaries which will permit the profession to develop to its full potential. At present, to the best of my knowledge, there are 11 training centres, and one degree course at Newcastle University. I understand that the Inner London Education Authority is opening in January a class for severely language-impaired children and a class for children with perceptual difficulties, and that a pre-school day unit also is projected.
Men have rarely entered the profession. At present, there are only nine male therapists in practice, and the number of women who train is seriously depleted through marriage. There is evidence that a larger number of qualified married women would return to work if employers were ready to help them to combine professional and domestic life, and if there were more opportunities to refresh their skills and to catch up with developments in the profession—and if there were more incentives in terms of working conditions, professional status and pay. To meet the essential needs of all children with delayed development or a disorder of speech, it should be possible to refer them to a speech therapist, who should see each child. The speech therapist is the only person trained to diagnose and assess disorders of speech, though recently a one-year course to study speech disorders has become available at London University for doctors, psychologists and others with suitable qualifications.
Could the Minister, when he comes to speak at the end of this debate, tell us whether money is likely to be made available to help provide financial assistance for teachers who wish to undertake in-

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service training at one of the existing special schools for speech and language disordered children? The speech therapists can arrange for any medical, surgical or other hospital consultant to assess any underlying conditions. Those likely to be involved are the paediatricians, neurologists, audiologists, psychologists and, in cases of cleft palate, the plastic surgeon. The Quirk Report also recommends that in the future development of the speech therapy services one of the first priorities should be the provision of facilities for the early detection and assessment of delayed or abnormal speech and language. Though at present such facilities in the form of assessment centres or panels do exist, they are far too few in number. My Lords, it is this lack of assessment facilities which causes so much distress to parents of speech and language disordered children.
Some parts of the country are relatively well served, for instance London and some of the larger cities. But there are vast areas—Wales, for example—where assessment facilities are sparse or nonexistent. In these areas children in need of assessment have to travel long distances and often spend days and nights in strange surroundings with people unknown to them. In such circumstances a true picture of their difficulties is unlikely to emerge, particularly in the case of younger, more handicapped children. Not only does the number of assessment centres need to be increased, but the expertise, at present confined to a comparatively few centres, is in need of dissemination. It is by no means uncommon for the parents of a language disordered child to be given a different diagnosis at each of several assessment centres, particularly where assessment is complicated by the question of a possible hearing loss.
Children whose condition dates from birth may not be correctly diagnosed until they reach secondary school age. Think what it must be like, my Lords, to have a child thus afflicted, especially during those vitally formative years from three to eight when emerging from the nursery into the world. It involves a colossal strain for the parents, the family, and the child. Patience and imagination are desperately and constantly needed. The child cannot ask questions. He will wish to tell his family what he wants and, be
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cause he cannot express himself, he will suffer unbelievable extremes of frustration, and this may express itself in fits of crying and in trying to draw attention to himself by lashing out at his family or by hitting himself on whatever is nearest at hand. Early misdiagnosis leads to unsuitable educational placing and under-achievement on the part of the child, and consequential frustration for the parents. The best years for language learning are missed, and the child never reaches his potential. Facilities for early and accurate assessment are an urgent necessity—not as a long-term project, but now.
A generous estimate of the number of assessment centres and panels operating in the British Isles at this time would appear to be 20. For the many children desperately in need of the services they offer this is a totally inadequate number. Knowledge of the whereabouts and the availability of centres and panels should be easily available to parents of speech and language disordered children, but at present this is not so. Would the Minister tell us how many specialist diagnostic centres are known by the Department of Health and Social Security to exist for the assessment of children whose language development is retarded? And what percentage of the Department's budget on the health side is allocated for specialist diagnostic centres for speech and language disordered children? Would the Minister be good enough to give us the number of places provided in schools for children suffering from specific speech and language disorders? Could he tell us what happens to children who qualify for entry to Moor House School but who are turned away for lack of places there? To me, it would seem that there are altogether about 390 places currently available in special schools, of which three are in existence; and as there are 6,400 children of school age with specific developmental language disorder this would seem to leave a deficit of roughly 6,000 places. The Department of Education and Science has co-operated most admirably with the Manchester Education Authority to provide a special school for speech and language disordered children there. Is it likely to extend similar encouragement and support to local' education authorities in other parts of the country?
My Lords, because speech therapists and caring members of the medical profession came across so many of these children who had been sent from one expert to another non-expert, losing so much valuable time which could have been used in starting treatment, the Association for All Speech Impaired Children, known as AFASIC, came into being. This Association wants a more positive attitude towards the problem, and better trained personnel. If medical students, midwives, health visitors, social workers and teachers, as well as speech therapists, received adequate training in normal speech and language development in infants, the speech and language impaired child would be recognised earlier and the difficulties of many children could be prevented or alleviated. The Association would like all children who fail to speak at the age of two years to be examined by a competent team. They would like every parent of a speech impaired child to be given positive support, by explanation of the problem and advice about how to help the child—and how I agree with them!
My Lords, one may say that this is a relatively narrow subject which I have been given the opportunity to raise, but to the parents of these children it means all the world, and it occupies their minds ceaselessly. I am grateful to your Lordships for listening, and my best hope is that this debate will bring advances which may lift a load off the parents who have this problem on their hands, day in day out, and cannot escape from it. I beg to move for Papers.
5.1 p.m.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I am very glad to have the opportunity of taking part in this debate, which has been opened so splendidly by the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke. One of the great advantages of having such an efficient speech to introduce a debate is that one does not need to repeat many of the arguments that she has put forward so splendidly. I congratulate her. Also it is delightful to see such a star-studded list of speakers wishing to take part in the debate. I am sure the noble Baroness is delighted about it, and particularly about the two maiden speakers, whom we all await with great interest. Both are very distinguished. As we always try to work
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to time in these debates I will not attempt to cover some of the areas which have already been outlined, but I would remind your Lordships that we are to-day using the opportunity not only to speak of the problem of the children but of the findings of this splendid Report of Professor Quirk—the inquiry into speech therapy services.
Human beings must communicate with one another. Language can be either a bridge or a barrier. I once heard the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, eloquently describe this barrier beyond which, he said, was a stranger, who could be either a friend or an enemy. Although we recognise that language is not the only means of communication, we live in a linguistic community, and a child who is unable to communicate is in a peculiarly difficult, and indeed in many cases a hopeless, position. He is at a disadvantage from the word" Go". With each report that we have had on the educational institutions, whether they be related to the younger child or to the secondary child, emphasis has been laid on the importance of communication and of language. In the Plowden Report we read again:" The development of language is essential to the educational process."
Our educational system is basically geared to the acquisition of academic skills. For the normal child this is a hard process; for the child who does not hear or comprehend with the same speed as his fellows it is a cruel and often useless operation, as the noble Baroness has indicated.
Like the noble Baroness, I had the pleasure of studying The Story of Freddy, written so brilliantly by his mother, and I was delighted that she used the opportunity to mention a way in which book tokens would be utilised. I believe that if the powers-that-be would sit down and read that story they would be much more quickly moved to action than possibly any words of mine could make them do. It describes the battle with authority but it is written by people who did not, and were not prepared to, recognise that their child could be" written off". Authority did not appear to understand, nor in many ways even assist the child to receive education. The fact that this boy has emerged as an adult, able to earn his own living and to enjoy life, has been achieved

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only because he had loving, dedicated and educated parents who persisted in their demands. One puts down the book and asks," How many children are there like this who have just been left because their parents, while being loving and dedicated, were not sufficiently persistent, or sufficiently understanding, or sufficiently educated to pursue the way through the jungle of officialdom?"
The Association to which the noble Baroness has referred has received many letters which highlight the fact that this is not an isolated case. Indeed, any of us who have been in the field of education know only too well that this is merely the tip of the iceberg. We read in one letter from a desperate parent;
"It has been a constant struggle with doctors, clinics, institutions, who have all said there is nothing wrong and that he would grow out of it. It has been a struggle with education authorities to get him properly educated."
I could read many of these very moving letters, written by the parents who have been able themselves to put down their case. But what of the other parents who are unable, though they try, to understand what this is all about?
As the noble Baroness has emphasised, the first need is for diagnosis. The Quirk Report outlines the various causes of speech disorder—the voicing, rhythm, articulation, mixed disorders. There are some very telling comments on the medical profession. One doctor, giving evidence to the Committee, said—and I quote:
"Medicine, with certain notable exceptions, has neglected disorders of speech and language during the last half century. No medical student is taught the elements of language development or linguistic theory. In the fullest development of mutual understanding and liaison between the speech therapist and medicine the knowledge of the doctor must be increased."
The G.P. is the first one that a child of this kind will meet. The role of the speech therapist is underlined very clearly, both in the story which we have heard referred to and in many papers that I have read on the subject, and in the Report itself.
I have the highest admiration for speech therapists. This goes back 12 years, when my own husband, after a stroke, was, at a blow, unable to speak or write. Can your Lordships imagine yourselves suddenly denied all communi
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cation with the outside world? Then began the search for the speech therapist. This was in the Metropolis. On paper there were speech therapists, but in fact they did not exist. When we were able to find two, I well remember the harrowing experience of going from hospital to hospital where no room was ever available for the speech therapist. I remember once we were in the optical clinic; once we were in an old chapel; but never was there any feeling that this vital service was really accepted as being part of the whole set-up. That was twelve years ago and I hoped that situation had changed. When we read in the Report that,
" Providing treatment virtually unknown in Great Britain 60 years ago, speech therapy is now acknowledged as vitally important in a large range of conditions"
it might be expected that a specialisation of this kind would by now have obtained a strong professional position, but this is not so- Again the Report says:
" We are in no doubt of the inadequacy of the services."
So it seems that little has changed in the last 12 years.
Here is a description which indeed underlines my own experience. This was a speech therapist reporting on her field of action:
" My accommodation at the health centre was in one room just large enough for a desk, two chairs and a cupboard. The floor space was just enough for one adult and one child to use for seated accommodation. Group work was out of the question. There was no soundproofing and in this one room one had to interview parents who were often accompanied by other children, assess children, treat children up to 18 years old, talk to head teachers, psychologists, doctors, etc., and do all one's paper work".
That is obviously still by no means uncommon. What a comment in this day and age that even in the Metropolis we are unable to produce a vital service of this kind! As to the numbers needing treatment, so far as present figures can be assessed—and these are the children and adults who are known—we have in the school population 212,000 children needing some sort of speech assistance, and when we add the number of preschool children needing speech assistance the figure is about 275,000. If we take a case load of 100 for a 31-hour week, we still have far fewer than half the number of speech therapists needed for the

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immediate number of patients who are in need of this great care.
The recommendations in this Report are many and it is not my intention to go over them all. There is great need to re-structure the service in relation to education, training and, of course, research. There is great need for the speech therapist to be regarded as an integral member of an assessment team for any patient with a disorder of speech or language. There is need for provision and facilities for early detection and assessment, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give the noble Baroness the reply to the question she asked in this context.
In the Foreword to the Report by two Secretaries of State we read:
"We are in no doubt that the Report, with its far-ranging proposals for the future organisation and development of the speech therapy services, will provide a stimulus and focus for thought and discussion which will be of lasting benefit to the speech therapy services."
It seems to me that one word is missing. Thought and discussion, yes; but"action" is the word I want included. If to-day, as a result of this debate initiated by the noble Baroness and as a result of the eloquent words of those who are to follow me we can jerk some action into this matter, this discussion will have been well worth while. If we do not get action then we shall have to return to the subject.
5.13 p.m.
LORD SEEBOHM: My Lords, I am most fortunate to-day that my first speech in this House should be on a subject about which I feel very deeply indeed. The noble Baroness, Lady Brooke of Ystradfellte, covered the subject extremely widely but there is one aspect of it which I should like to stress. I refer to certain facts that are clearly displayed in the Quirk Report. It is not for me to discuss the merits or demerits of the recommendations but there are certain facts which should be cried from the housetops.
There is one reference to the first inquiry since the war made into speech therapy. It was in 1945, when the Senior Medical Officer of the then Ministry of Education looked into the need for speech therapists. He calculated that the necessity was at least one for every 10,000 children in the education system. This meant a number of approximately 920. I
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remind the House that the population has increased considerably since 1945. I also remind your Lordships that a great number of handicapped children now survive who previously would have died. Thus, that figure of 920 must be looked upon not as a minimum but as being way below probably what is required to-day. We should therefore be ashamed that at the time of this Report the total number of speech therapists employed in the education system was still only 613.
I have heard it said that there are no such things as children—that there are some people who just have not been around very long. When I go to schools nowadays I sometimes think, considering our bright youngsters, that there is some truth in that. However, it is absolutely inapplicable to the under-fives and it is this particular age group which worries me more than any other. We are all aware of the vulnerability of this age group. The damage done for the under-fives cannot necessarily be healed throughout the whole life of the individual. But we also know that it is a period which is highly responsive, not only to love and care but also to teaching, and this is the point I want to make to-day as strongly as I can.
We welcome wholeheartedly the new initiatives that have been announced for nursery schools, the steps that are being taken to increase the number of play groups throughout the country and, I hope, for the greater care and attention which is being paid by local authorities to such things as day nurseries and child minders. However, what use are any of these things to the children who cannot communicate or to whom one cannot communicate, whether through physical, social or psychological reasons or just through reasons of language?
I wish to make one very strong recommendation. It is that as a start there should be formed or appointed a central council for training and development in speech therapy. I do not wish to infer that the College of Speech Therapists or the other training institutions are not doing a good job. They are, but the whole thing wants pulling together. There wants to be conformity. Standards must be set and as a start I should have thought that such a body, probably under the Department of

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Health and Social Security, should be formed as a matter of great urgency. Whether it could be done under existing legislation I do not know.
It is only fair that one should say that the shortage of speech therapists applies not only in education but in hospitals. The latest figures shown in this Report are that only 70 per cent. of hospital establishments are filled. This again seems to be a disgrace. But we are concerned in this debate with children, so I make my special plea to-day for improved services for children.
5.18 p.m.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, I am sure that I am voicing the view of all your Lordships in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, on his maiden speech. I have known the noble Lord for many years and it is fair to say that the whole nation is indebted to him, certainly for the activities for which I know him best—namely, the Seebohm Report, which has completely revolutionised the social work of local authorities, and the Institute of Social Work Training, of which since its inception he has been chairman. I understand that he has only just retired from that position. That body has done more for the training of social workers than anything that has occurred in this field for a long time. The suggestion which the noble Lord made about a central advisory council for speech therapists follows what he has done by starting the Institute for the Training of Social Workers, and I hope very much that the Department of Education will consider his proposition as one which I am sure would be exceedingly valuable in the work which we all hope will come as a result of this debate. I hope that on other occasions the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, will give us the benefit of his advice and long experience in a very wide range of work.
I do not intend to delay your Lordships because already we have had two first-class speeches, one from the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke of Ystradfellte, and the other from the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips. Both have covered the ground very well indeed and I simply want to back up in every way I can what they have said.
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I should like to add my congratulations to the Government on the Quirk Report, which is excellent and I was delighted to see in the introduction that no fewer than four important Ministers all set their names to it: Mrs. Thatcher, Sir Keith Joseph, Mr. Gordon Campbell (Secretary of State for Scotland), and Mr. Peter Thomas (Secretary of State for Wales). So it is a Report covering the whole country, and that is definitely what we want to-day. What the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, has said about children under five is of absolutely vital importance. My association, the National Association of Autistic Children, has found that to discover any deficiency in speech or understanding at that early age is absolutely vital. I hope very much that the policy of Her Majesty's Government, which we know is to concentrate in some degree on the under fives, will bear that in mind as well.
In reading the Quirk Report, I was astonished at how very late, in a way, the development of speech therapy has come into the social services. The treatment of the deaf and blind and the mentally deficient all date from a much earlier period. Speech therapy work dates from post-First World War, from 1918 onwards. Now—and here I should like to say that I stand in a white sheet although it is not that exactly; it is not, so to speak, my fault—when people referred in their speeches to the shortage of speech therapists and the lack of facilities given by education authorities, I well remembered my own experience, for six or seven years, as chairman of an educational authority, of the difficulty we had to get any speech therapist or enough speech therapists to deal with the small number of children within our area. We were only a small area, and a rural area at that. I felt at the time—some years ago now—what a great lack there was in our social work services or education services—however you like to put it—in the fact that we could not do what was asked of us for speech therapy. I have not read the book that has been referred to, but I can say from my own experience that often one used to feel terribly hampered, knowing that certain children needed a particular type of treatment which simply was not available. One then tried to make do with the next best; but on occasions like that the next best

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is not good enough, because a very particular and very difficult type of training is required to help children suffering from speech defects of any kind at all.
What arises out of the Report more than anything, I believe, is the fact that there are not a sufficient number of people undertaking this training. In my opinion, therefore, it cannot be sufficiently well-paid. The conditions under which people train are not sufficiently good and the facilities which are given to people to practise their skills, as Lady Phillips has just said, even now in the centre of London, leave a great deal to be desired. I hope very much, as she has said, that out of our deliberations to-day will come a great urge for action on the part of Her Majesty's Government.
I hope also that in the finding and in the training of speech therapists there will be consideration for the families of the children who suffer from these defects: because although one may go to the speech therapist perhaps once, twice or three times a week (I do not know how often this should be arranged but certainly in the ordinary education in schools it was nothing like so often as that that one was able to make that provision, but supposing one could make that provision), help is still needed for the parents at home, there are still the dedicated and wonderful people who carry on in their homes with the training of the children. I should like to see those parents also helped by the therapists. I should like to sec not only encouragement but actual technical skill being passed on to the parents in order to keep the children up to the standard which the therapist reaches when he or she—and it is"she" in most cases—is dealing with the children. It is a very exacting profession, there is no doubt about that at all. Dissatisfaction has been expressed in the report, in Chapter 5, paragraph 4, I will not quote it because it takes too long, but there are given some of the reasons for the dissatisfaction of the profession.
We on local authorities—and I speak as someone who is an active member of a local authority—should give a greater priority to this than we do at the present time. I have no feeling that we shall not get from the noble Lord. Lord
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Belstead, and from the present Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, a very sympathetic approach to this matter. I had reason a little while ago to take a deputation to see Mrs. Thatcher about autistic children and we had the most sympathetic reception. Immediately after that a circular was sent to all local authorities drawing their attention to the problems of autistic children (many speech problems, as well as other problems) and action was taken at once. I feel confident that out of this debate we shall have action from the Minister. I am quite sure that he will find a response, certainly in your Lordships' House but also far and wide, because this is something which a great many people know about, are deeply concerned about, and only bitterly regret that they cannot do all they should for these children.
5.26 p.m.
LORD ANNALY: My Lords, I would ask for the courtesy of the House. We have heard the problems of aphasia described by my noble friend Lady Brooke of Ystradfellte and by the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips. My approach to this problem is from a different direction—I am the father of an aphasic child. Not long ago, a child labelled as deaf and dumb"was all too often an embarrassment to the family and, without hope of treatment or cure, sentenced to live a life in a silent world of loneliness and frustration. Although to-day this situation has changed, and the problem is openly discussed and accepted by a more enlightened world, what has changed very little is the possibility of finding a system whereby such children can be assessed as suffering from aphasia in the early and formative years of their lives. Nor are the known techniques for dealing with the condition sufficiently available.
I suggest, my Lords, that action in dealing with this problem is long overdue. Lack of communication is not immediately recognisable in the newborn child: it may be many months before it is observed that reflexes and reactions to speech and sound are distorted, or even totally absent. Once this disability has been discovered, the problem of diagnosis arises. At this stage, the parents will almost certainly be faced with a mass of well-intentioned advice on where next to turn. My experiences with my own daughter completely con

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firm those of Elizabeth Browning, the authoress of the book that has been referred to, who describes the endless visits and fruitless attempts to obtain the right information from specialists and so on. There must be very many other bewildered parents in the same situation. A child specialist who had seen my daughter on two previous occasions, when she was very small, considered that she was perfectly normal but he told me on the third visit, when she was just three, that he had come to a different conclusion."There is something very wrong with your daughter", he said," and in my view there is no hope. You are wasting your time trying to get anything clone for her and she should go to a home. She will never be more than a cabbage."
A short time ago, I took my daughter out from her special school and was intrigued by her description of the part which she was taking in the Christmas play. This was made possible only by gestures she had evolved herself, as no word she utters is recognisable. I understood practically all of her story. My Lords, my daughter is now nine and it is estimated that her IQ is in the 90/95 range. I am sure that I speak for many parents who, like myself, have followed numerous false trails and long for guidance. The first seven years in a child's life are vitally important in mind development, and every moment lost in the early stages, in assessment and remedial training is irretrievable.
There are thousands of children in this country who, due to aphasia, or lack of communication, cannot share their world with their parents or enjoy normal family life and all that goes with it, though many of them have average, or even high, intelligence. The facilities for help are appallingly few and far between. The strain on parents trying to find guidance for a speech-disordered child can be intolerable, as Mrs. Browning so clearly shows in her book. In addition to the difficulties of adapting family life to the handicapped child, there is the need to consider the education of someone who is not, technically,"disabled". The State requires that every child over the age of five must be educated, but the parents of an aphasic can be placed in an impossible situation when no suitable establishment is available, and the local
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authority may, through lack of appreciation of this specific problem, recommend totally unsuitable schooling.
Last week I visited the John Horniman School, which my noble friend Lady Brooke has mentioned; it has only 25 places for children between the ages of five and nine. I was taken to a classroom where a young teacher was training six children. They were all suffering from multiple handicaps, including partial deafness and dyslexia, but overall the handicaps were in the aphasic field. The teacher had been trained in a relatively new form of sign language known as the Paget-Gorman system. She was communicating freely with each of the children. Considering the problem involved, I was astonished at the high degree of mutual understanding. Two of the children could speak; it was not well enough to be easily followed, but each one had sufficient knowledge of the sign language to ensure that almost full comprehension was possible between teacher and child. I was able to see exactly what can be achieved if the means are available. The young teacher told me that when she had completed her course there were, to the best of her knowledge, only 40 teachers of this particular sign language in the country, but that the numbers were now, fortunately, increasing rapidly. Through the different media, I believe, people are now being made aware of the fact that problems of speech and language disorders in otherwise normal children do exist, and, hopefully, this will encourage more students and potential teachers to take up this branch of therapy.
In spite of the improved facilities and general awareness of this problem, it is still possible for a parent to be met with the response like that of the consultant psychiatrist I visited last month about my child. Having produced an encouraging report, which happened to be quite different from the previous one, he ended by saying that he knew of nowhere suitable to send a child in her predicament, and that as she is happy where she is perhaps she should stay there, even though the staff (for whom I have the highest regard for their kindness and attention) are not trained in her type of problem.
My Lords, it is exactly this type of frustrating situation which parents are

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facing at the present time. As a parent who has now lived with this problem for eight or more years, I sincerely believe that action must be taken as soon as possible; and the action required, as stated by previous speakers, is surely to set up a system of centres manned by teams of experts to diagnose and assess children in whom speech and language disorders are suspected. I have discovered by pure chance that two such centres do exist, and there may well be more; but their whereabouts were not known to me when I was searching for a school some years ago, and no information was forthcoming from any source. Once a diagnosis has confirmed the suspicion, the relief to the parent of some certain knowledge cannot be overestimated. But unless the provision of the right type of education, so exclusive to these specific needs, is available, then the parent is thrown back into a further state of anxiety and bewilderment. I believe there lies with us all the responsibility and duty to assist these aphasic children as much as is humanly possible.
My Lords, in the words that I have spoken I have on several occasions introduced a personal note concerning my daughter. I ask for your indulgence since, while the problem is a national one, my experience is derived from my own particular case. I thank your Lordships for your courtesy.
5.35 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF BRISTOL: My Lords, I am grateful that it falls to me not only, by the courteous custom of this House, to express our congratulations to Lord Annaly, but even more to be able to thank him for having brought this discussion so immediately into the reality, the humanity, of the topic which we are discussing. We have been deeply moved to hear his personal testimony, and everything else that will be said in this debate will be said with an extra dimension of caring in consequence of what we have heard, and for which we thank him. We should like also, I am certain, to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke, for having introduced this human topic, in a speech which was not only comprehensive but compassionate.
I must confess that I knew little enough about aphasia until I noticed that this was to be the topic of to-day's debate,
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which sent me to the report of Professor Quirk to which references have been made. But as soon as I saw the reference to parents in the topic of this debate there immediately came to my mind the experience which I shall once more undergo in a few day's time, as President of the Bristol branch of the Society of Mentally Handicapped Children. We shall be having our Christmas party, and year by year I always find that a most moving occasion, not only because of the children—though, as many of your Lordships will yourselves have experienced, there is a quality of unaffected affection about the mentally handicapped children which is very heart warming—but also because it is an occasion when I see an association of parents who are deriving regular comfort from their association with each other. It is that aspect of this topic introduced by Lady Brooke that I should like to emphasise.
I came across a short article in a report of our association, by a doctor writing on present and future trends in the education of children with severe learning difficulties, which struck me as highly relevant to what we are discussing. He writes that
"Public opinion about any handicap progresses through three distinct stages. First, the handicap is either ignored or there is poor provision made. The second stage is protective and sentimental, with too low an expectation of achievement in relation to actual capability, and the third stage (which we are just entering)"
with regard to most children's disabilities,
"is developed through professional study of the precise nature of the handicap, leading to action designed to minimise its effect."
It seems to me that it is at this third stage, where medical expertise and research and the careful work of such experts as the speech therapists of whom we have been hearing has reached a degree 'of complexity at which the ordinary layman finds it difficult to grasp what is going on, that this kind of association between the parents of those who are afflicted has its greatest benefit. It is of enormous comfort to the parents of afflicted children to realise that their children are not unique, that they are not peculiar, that they are part of a fellowship of suffering into which the parents can enter to their mutual support, not only with sympathy but with the hope that they may grow in knowledge.

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My right reverend friend the Bishop of London has drawn my attention to the fact that there was recently published for the Board of Education of the Church of England a small book by E. H. Denny, published by the Church of England Information Office, which is intended to assist the parents of children suffering from disability to learn from each other and to carry less'heavily the burden which rests on them. The point that I am chiefly trying to emphasise is the great benefit that comes when hope dawns on such parents that, through this association with each other, they may have access, of which they would otherwise be unaware, to various kinds of specialised help.
We have heard reference made to the difficulties that are often encountered in discovering where, in a complex field, or, as in this case, in a seriously understaffed field, one can begin to look. One of the great values of the parents' associations is the way in which they pool resources of knowledge and enable those with less education, less initiative, less resources, to discover things which, left to their own devices, they might never have learned.
The doctor, in a final paragraph in the article from which I have just quoted, lays emphasis on the point which the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, made, and which I should like to re-emphasise. He writes of the way in which research is progressing, and that knowledge in various forms of child disability is steadily growing. He says:
"All this provides real hope for the future, but still there remains a gap which must be filled. The years from birth to five years are crucial in the development of any child, and the family into which a handicapped child is born has a special need for all the expert advice, guidance and help that is available, …"
Then he goes on to point out how extremely rare it is to find, under the auspices of local authorities, persons to whom one can turn, and—
"a suitably trained person to be responsible for real parent education and the active involvement of parents in the education and training of their handicapped children during the preschool period. This is a matter of vital importance"—
as the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, has emphasised.
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I would only conclude by saying that if this debate does anything to enable diagnosis and recognition of the condition, and the support of parents in finding the means to deal with it as early as possible, it will indeed have been a very worthwhile debate.
5.43 p.m.
LORD GRENFELL: My Lords, when looking into the problem of children without speech or with speech difficulties, there is one real truism; that is, that in years gone by they were all lumped together as backward, sat at the back of the class, said nothing and did nothing. In our present age medical science has advanced to such a degree that we are able to put these children into categories and help them according to their different disabilities, but as we progress in this way we run into difficulties in the fact that the different categories need different treatment, and hence we cannot lump them all together. For instance, we are not talking specifically to-night about those children with mental handicaps as that comes under a different form of teaching, but we are talking, with the initiative of my noble friend, about those children lacking in speech who are perfectly normal in other ways, but for many reasons need expert tuition in the language of their birth.
In discussing these children, I have come to some definite conclusions: First, that these children will not in any way benefit from ordinary schooling; secondly, that with special education they will, in many cases, be able to lead normal and happy lives. If we accept these conclusions—and I think we must—we must also accept the fact that the schooling of these children is difficult in the fact that they are spread over a wide area, which in rural areas makes it imperative that the schools should be residential. Owing to the difficulty of boundaries, I am convinced that these schools, together with schools for the autistic, dyslexic, and other types, dealing with disabilities other than mental handicap, should be on a national basis, strategically placed with very large catchment areas. The local authorities would then pay a fee for children from their area. This must make sense if these children are going to be properly catered for.
My main knowledge of this particular disability stems from long association

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with the Invalid Children's Aid Association who have a primary school called the John Horniman School at Worthing. Here may I say how deeply we were moved to hear the speech of my noble friend Lord Annaly. I hope that if I can help in any way at any time he will call on me. This school accommodates 24 intelligent children between the ages of five to nine with varying degrees of speech difficulties upwards from nil. As I have already said, the aphasic child cannot respond to normal educational methods, but with very specialised treatment, by both speech therapists and teachers, of which we have heard so much to-day, teachers can develop enough of his potential to enable him to take his place in society and lead an independent and happy life.
The teaching can take place only in small groups with qualified and experienced personnel working in the right environment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, stated, it must be the right environment, and not just one small room at the back of a very poor building. Within the next two years the Association which I have mentioned will open a new school near Nottingham, made possible by a grant from the Dawn Trust, to bring secondary education to the children of the John Horniman School and also care for the local requirements in the area.
This brings me to my next point, that although there are small classes in many schools for this form of disability, it is estimated that there is a deficiency in the region of 6,000 places, and the places which are available are almost entirely for primary education. My Lords, it is vital that there should be a follow up of secondary education for those who have not reached a high enough standard in the primary field. If this is not provided, the child will slip back and all the teaching will be lost.
In summing up, may I say this: first, that these children must be diagnosed early, not only for the benefit of themselves, but also of their parents—and I think we all understand that; secondly, that they can, in very many cases, be helped with really good teaching, as so much of their trouble is psychological; thirdly, there is the old factor in life which my Nanny used to teach me," If at first you don't succeed, try, try and
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try again". Therefore, secondary education must be catered for. Fourthly, in rural areas residential schools must be strategically situated with wide catchment areas; and fifthly, and lastly: that we can succeed, that we must succeed, in giving these children a useful and a happy life.
5.50 p.m.
BARONESS NORTHCHURCH: My Lords, may I first be allowed to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, and the noble Lord, Lord Annaly, on their maiden speeches and to thank them, first, for the expert speech from Lord Seebohm and, secondly, for the personal speech that Lord Annaly made which we all appreciated very much.
My Lords, I do not often speak in your Lordships' House, but this debate initiated by my noble friend Lady Brooke is one of enormous importance and I want to congratulate her and thank her. She covered so much of the subject and gave us so much information that will be helpful. I have no intention of offering any expert experience or advice, but I am intervening from the angle of a grandmother. I am fortunate enough to have had four children, all normal—I was going to say"fairly normal". They, in turn, have produced 13 grandchildren—so far, also all normal. One of them has produced one great-grandchild. She has just arrived in a foreign country so that I cannot tell your Lordships very much about her, but I am told that she is all right.
When my children were born, we knew very much less about the various disabilities, physical and mental, of which we hear so constantly to-day: the spastic children, the autistic children and the aphasic children, to quote a few that were not widely recognised. The tendency was to relegate any abnormal child under an umbrella labelled"mentally deficient" or"crippled"—with no details. If a child belonging to some friend or acquaintance"wasn't quite right", the fact was not discussed except behind closed doors or in carefully controlled whispers. If a little mongol boy or girl was seen walking beside their mother in the street, one tended to look the other way. If a child could not speak or articulate properly he would be lucky if he received any help at all to assist him attain even a small degree of normality.

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My Lords, two world wars, with their consequent legacies of shock to so many nervous systems, have awakened in us a determination to do something to help alleviate the distress caused by an inability to find expression in coherent words. But we have not yet advanced very far in either the knowledge of what exactly is wrong or how to set about righting it. This afternoon we have been given a great deal more information; and from the books referred to (which I have also been privileged to see) I know that I have learned a great deal myself.
My Lords, I can so easily put myself in the place of any one of those deeply-distressed parents who know that their child is lacking in something and yet meet with so much frustration and disappointment. As we have heard to-day, when they seek help from someone they deem to be an expert, they are often sent away with false encouragement which leads to bitter disappointment. They find that contrary to what they had so often been led to believe would be the case,"it is not going to be alright". It seems to me that far more trained re-assessment of pre-school age children who fail to develop speech and language is absolutely necessary and we are much encouraged by what we have heard from the Minister of Education.
If a child is found to be deaf while failing to develop speech and language, immediate and adequate provision can be made for treatment; but if a pre-school age child fails to develop speech and language and is found to have a language disorder, then, as we have heard to-day, no such provision is made. I want to put the question that has already been put to the Minister. Does he intend to provide treatment for language disordered pre-school age children in the same way as for deaf children? Furthermore, in the most welcome extension of nursery school education recently announced by the Minister, how many places are being made available for speech and language-disordered children?
As one of the lucky ones who has not had to suffer in the knowledge that"all is not right with the child", I would urge the Minister, who is well known for his sympathy and understanding approach to these problems, to continue ceaselessly to bring pressure to bear on those who have responsibility in this field. Every
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day, every week, every month, every year, parents are suffering anguish and acute anxiety because they feel that so often (as we have heard to-day and as I repeat) they look in vain for help. The few who are fortunate in discovering the right school or therapeutic assistance for their deprived child are in a minority. We have this afternoon heard some of the figures. There is so much to be done and the reward in terms of relief and hope and actual achievement is immeasurable.
5.55 p.m.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, time is getting on and I shall be brief. I should like to add my thanks to the noble Baroness who opened this debate because I believe that it has been valuable, and I am quite sure it will have some benefits in the future. I should like also to say how much I enjoyed the contributions of the two maiden speakers.
Like most medical men, I am extraordinarily ignorant on this subject. I would only say, as a sort of mitigation of how ignorant the doctors are, that a great deal of this knowledge, the grasping of the importance of the proper examination of children who are seen to be backward in their learning in one way or the other, is comparatively new. I would also say that you cannot teach everything to every doctor and that if you tried to spread the knowledge so thin they would become even more dangerous than if they had no knowledge at all. What we must do is to see that there are ready means of informing doctors who are likely to come into contact with these children—the general practitioners, the paediatricians and so on—where centres of special knowledge are to be found and how to go about it when they are presented with the problem.
It is easy to say that more money must be devoted to this; and I should be the first to agree that money is essential for the setting up of centres for further training of special remedial teaching of various kinds (not only speech therapists), and for better salaries, and conditions, and career prospects. But one thing I think has been insufficiently mentioned—and perhaps this is the only excuse for me to talk at all on this subject. I believe that research has been insufficiently stressed. It seems to me that there is a great deal

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of ignorance even among those who have studied these subjects very closely, and I think they will be the first to admit that there are still very big areas of ignorance which really do need first-class research. It seems to me that if more really first-class research centres were to be established, we should then have centres of knowledge which would help in the training of these people and we should gradually bring up a generation (shall I say?) of people who saw in this a worthwhile career whatever their background may originally have been, whether medical or in education or psychology or sociology.
My Lords, that, I think, is the only contribution I should like to make, except that I would carry it a little further and say that I am afraid I am speaking without having done the homework that I should have done to see how much is going on. I hope that the Minister, in his reply, will say,"A great deal of what you advocate is already being done." I suggest that, if it is not being done sufficiently, there should be first of all a conference of experts to define the fields in which further research is necessary and the way that centres of experts could be developed. And then, if it is not already being done, it would be an ideal subject for the kind of practical, directional research which was an important feature of Lord Rothchild's controversial Report: not only ideal from the point of view of being a very well worthwhile research project of that kind, but also ideal in being one in which two Departments could corroborate, Health and Social Security, on the one hand, and Education and Science, on the other. Even if a a great deal of this is being done, I imagine that a bit more effort could probably be put into it.
6.2 p.m.
LORD GAINFORD: My Lords, it gives me great pleasure, in fact double pleasure, to add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, and to my noble friend Lord Annaly on their splendid maiden speeches. Their contributions to this debate and their first-hand information were of particular value. This is an important day for each of them and I hope that both noble Lords will have many opportunities to address your Lord
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ships' House in the future. This is also the first opportunity I have ever had to congratulate any Member of your Lordships' House on his maiden speech. Not long ago I made my own maiden speech, and I am very grateful for all the encouragement I received on that occasion and for the encouraging reception given to the few speeches that I have made since. I am even more grateful for the fact that I am able to speak.
The reason why I am speaking in this debate to express my support for the Motion is because once I was afflicted with a speech defect. Mine was not nearly as bad as some, but I could well have done without it, and I am more than glad that eventually it was overcome. Occasionally, sometimes in quite simple little situations, my mouth and tongue seem to get tied up with each other and I wonder what has upset me enough to bring it on. So any scheme put forward to help other people who are suffering, particularly children, arouses my interest and my desire to do something to show support.
The recent report by Pauline Griffiths on the development of aphasia, quoted by my noble friend, has an important sentence at the very end, which was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips; that speech defects could be likened to the tip of an iceberg; in each case there are other symptoms and there is hardly any case of a speech impairment which is completely identical with another. But in the treatment of a defect, just as with anyone who suffers from a serious injury in any other part of their body, the morale of that person is vital. He or she may know that they may be different from other people for the rest of their lives. The concentration must be made on what that person can do well. In making use of my own experience I well recall the inferiority complex at my boarding schools until, as a new boy at the last one I went to, I found there a boy (I will refer to him as"Billy") who had been able to turn his speech trouble to his complete advantage. Billy could get away with almost anything—outrageous"cheek" to anyone in authority—and he could get himself out of awkward situations. Each time he opened his mouth and spoke there came roars of laughter from the people who heard him; but the laughter

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was with him, it was never against him. Unfortunately people with defects often do not have such spirit as Billy had; but where they do show any sign of it, it must be channelled in the right direction.
In the speech therapy that I underwent music was often used. It seems to me—and I wonder whether anyone in your Lordships' House can support this—that Nature rewards many people who have vocal hitches with a talent for singing and music. In my case there was a definite talent. My first boarding school encouraged music and acting, and by the time I left I could sing well, sight read and had ability with both piano and violin. People were kind enough to say that it was above average for someone of my age. Perhaps I could have made a career in music but I wrecked my chances—whether it was the result of another defect that accompanied my stammer or just a childish trait in me at the time I do not know—by suffering from such a degree of shyness that it made me terrified at any prospect of being watched, listened to or performing in front of other people. With acting I had the same fear with regard to my voice. I was scared that it might cause me to make a fool of myself. Later, an actor friend said the best therapy would have been to give me a good part in a play and force me into doing it. I have heard of persons in show business who have had speech defects in private life and yet never gave any indication of it when performing, simply because of the completely different action required in projecting the voice.
The matter of education for such children as we are discussing to-day is of vital importance. Only this afternoon I have been given a piece of information that was new to me, and I should like to hear whether there is any truth in it. We have heard stressed the need for more speech centres, but I was told that there are still a great number of qualified speech therapists who are unable to find a place in a school or college. If there is any truth in that statement it shows that there are available an ample number of persons who could fill the extra centres for which the need has been stressed.
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With a child that has such a defect, education usually has to continue after the normal age when he would be considered old enough to earn a living. The problem of aphasia is relatively new, because those who may have been sufferers were classed with other children who were hard of hearing or had difficulty in speaking. A new problem is often upsetting regardless of how many advances have been made in the educational system, but it is a matter of fact: it is there and it cannot be ignored. I have no doubt that a solution to this problem will be found. Whether it is found by doctors or by teachers, or both, it will be a great triumph and honour to those finally responsible for the discovery. The essential thing for us to ensure is that all hindrances to reaching this solution are quickly removed.
6.10 p.m.
THE COUNTESS OF LOUDON: My Lords, mental handicap is very common. We recognise it best in developed countries where education and techniques are at high levels. It seems likely that with appropriate measures, especially those designed to remedy poverty, malnutrition and a poor environment, fewer mentally handicapped children will be born. But what of the problems and difficulties faced to-day by the parents of children suffering from speech and language disorders? Speech is built up very gradually, beginning at a very early age. Most mothers start to talk to their babies almost as soon as they are born, and words become linked to feelings and expressions and acquire an emotional content. A minority of retarded children, those labelled profoundly retarded, may never learn any speech. The moderately and severely retarded will be slow, but should develop a useful vocabulary given sufficient help and encouragement. The secret of success in the development of young retarded children is patience, and this most mothers have a great deal of (although of course there are exceptions), which is why most children do better at home than in institutions.
But what of the isolation and loneliness of the parents? They desperately need help and advice as to treatment and help in overcoming specific behavioural difficulties such as temper, tantrums, disturbed behaviour destructiveness and

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so on. Much psychiatric and social worker help may be necessary with the family, as well as material assistance, to enable it to hold together under the stress imposed by the handicapped child. Sometimes the stress is physical, such as loss of income because the mother is unable to go out to work, reduced standard of living and greater expenditure if the child is destructive. Some times the stress is social and psychological—reduced contact with friends and relations, even a hidden sense of guilt. But parents do need advice, and especially advice on management. Some may expect too much of their child, while others are over-indulgent, giving way to every whim and allowing quite unacceptable patterns of behaviour to develop.
Most backward children are more behind in speech than in other ways; but most do learn to speak, even if late. Many children who are quite markedly retarded none the less have a good memory. But to achieve this, the child must have stimulation and plenty of experience. One way is by playing games with the child—acting out situations which occur within his experience, such as the postman coming to the door, a tea party, or buying a new pair of shoes. This play is imitative of adult behaviour and is normal in children. Also, it helps a mentally handicapped child to relate a sequence of events in his mind and helps to stimulate his imagination. There are many games which can be used, such as simple wooden jigsaws, glove puppets or toy telephones, to mention just a few. But to reap the full benefit from these games it is essential that the child is talked to while being played with.
Television advertisements are another useful source of language stimulus. Although programmes in general do not necessarily make children more verbally proficient, in that there is no demand on the child to reply, nevertheless the advertisements have been found to encourage mentally retarded children to learn new words because of the constant repetition of a phrase or a jingle. Thus the child is given both auditory and visual stimulus, which is probably reinforced a number of times over a period of weeks. Added to this, he needs plenty of experience: perhaps to be taken to the park, the rail
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way station, the bus station, the zoo or the seaside. New experiences linked to new words help to expand his understanding of his environment in verbal terms.
All the family can help the speech of their retarded member, but inevitably most of the responsibility will fall upon the mother. If she is tied 24 hours a day she may become disheartened and give up trying. She must have help from relatives, friends, social workers or even a day nursery. This will permit her to relax and perhaps see her friends or relations, and she may then be ready to try again with renewed enthusiasm.
The years teach much which the days do not show."
6.15 p.m.
LADY RUTHVEN OF FREELAND: My Lords, may I intervene for a few moments before the Minister answers this interesting debate. I have some experience of autistic children because I am a friend of Dr. John Corby, who runs the Hilda Lewis Institute at the Bethlehem Hospital where quite a number of retarded children are sent, particularly those who can neither speak nor hear—in other words, they are autistic. I have seen two or three cases and he has very kindly allowed me to sit in on his conferences. I am not so worried about the children, because I think a lot is being done for them and a great deal of research is going on, but I am worried about a particular case within my knowledge—a boy who went to a Rudolf Steiner School until, I think, the age of 18, when he had to leave. His family naturally took him home and looked after him, but being very strong and tall, he got beyond them, and he is now in a psychiatric hospital. Those are the sort of people of whom we have to think as well.
We need a great deal more research into both retarded children and all children who cannot speak or hear. but we must think of what will happen later. Their fathers and mothers may die and they may be left. In the particular case of this boy of 22 or 23, his father and mother are there, but they simply cannot do anything. They cannot look after him because he is too strong for them, and, as I say, he has had to go into a psychiatric hospital. I hope that the Minister will have this situation in mind.
6.18 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE (LORD BELSTEAD): My Lords, it is perhaps salutary that Lady Brooke's Motion directs the attention of those of us who have spent a good deal of our time making use of the gift of speech to the vitality of language and the tragedy of its loss. I think it is fair to say that a child's first words obviously bring joy to parents, but speech defects cause utter dismay, and subsequently they will strike at the very roots of education and development.
It is for this very human reason that Lady Brooke's debate has attracted this full list of speakers this afternoon. I am sure that it would be the wish of your Lordships if I repeated the appreciation, which has I think comes from all sides of your Lordships' House, of the two maiden speeches that have been made in this debate. Together with other noble Lords I listened with interest to the views of my noble friend Lord Annaly on this subject. I think we all listened with particular care, as the right reverend Prelate said, to what my noble friend was saying because he was talking at first hand. I have particularly taken note of what he said about assessment and the need for more strategic regional assessment provision. What some of your Lordships may not be aware of is that my noble friend Lord Annaly has been, and probably still is, a very fine cricketer, and, as such, I am sure he will know how satisfying it is to get successfully off the mark. I hope it is clear to him that this is precisely what he has done this afternoon, and we all hope that he will return and speak to us again when the House reassembles.
To the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, I hope it is clear that Members interested in the work of the social services departments of local authorities offer to him the warmest welcome to this House. The noble Lord's interests, as I realise, go a great deal wider than that. But again and again the fact of the matter is that we refer in our business in this House to the work of those committees which are the product of the noble Lord's really remarkable Report. Again and again in this afternoon's debate we have referred, either directly or by implica
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tion, to the social services committees of local authorities. We are all very glad that instead of constantly having to refer to the work of the noble Lord's"offspring", in future it may be that we shall be able to refer to the noble Lord himself. I hope that he, like the noble Lord, Lord Annaly, will find the work of this House of interest and will perhaps find time to return and take part in further debates.
Diagnosis and assessment have been referred to by many of your Lordships, and not least by the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke, herself and the noble Lord, Lord Annaly. May I just say a word or two on these, Obviously parents should be the first link in the chain which leads a child who is not developing normally to the doctor; but it is obvious from this debate today that it is parents themselves who want and call for—just as did the author of the book to which my noble friend has referred—an effective diagnostic and assessment process. It is true to say that clinical experience supports this wish. It is true that during the past ten to twenty years there has been some improvement in techniques, and to-day the great majority of local health authorities make arrangements to screen the hearing of babies between 6 and 12 months old. I should like to add that because of the increasing awareness of the importance of this kind of service, careful testing of hearing is now an important part of the examination of children when first they go to school.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brooke, referred to Mrs. Browning's remarkable book, I Can't See What You're Saying. It is perfectly true that because there are so many causes of speech delay it can sometimes seem to the anxious parents that help is really agonisingly slow in either coming or being able to be obtained, but as your Lordships will know and as several noble Lords have said, a number of different disciplines are often involved in assessment. In addition, there may be the need for help from a social worker—someone who may in the middle of a case have to be called in or someone who has possibly been involved in a case from the outset. The need for a multi-disciplinary approach is now generally accepted, and not least because of people like Mrs. Browning, who have brought facts to the notice of

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the general public. Steps are being taken to see that there should be a sufficient stock of suitable premises to serve as the base for diagnostic and assessment work. The noble Baroness, Lady Brooke, asked about this and she will know that there was in fact no capital programme before the special capital allocation of £1 million (which is now running at £1½ million) initiated in 1971 and designed to help in the establishment of some forty new centres in England, of which I think 14 have so far been completed. The aim eventually is to have as assessment centre in every district general hospital, and every new district hospital will have assessment facilities built in.
As the causes of speech delay are multiple, so are the methods of management and treatment. As the noble Baroness's Motion recognises, at the centre of any course of treatment must inevitably stand the parents. I think we are all agreed that it is difficult to over-emphasise the strain imposed upon a mother and father by a child who is unable to communicate. Samuel Johnson said that"language is the dress of thought", and of course speech and language are crucial, not only for intellectual but also for social and emotional growth. Parents need the earliest possible help in coming to terms with their child's disability and with obtaining practical advice on how to bring up their son or daughter.
Health visitors are given training to help them to identify these children. Social workers can be a vital link in the chain of diagnosis, assessment and treatment. Day nurseries and playgroups provide a means whereby a mother can meet and learn from others as well as from the staff—although I realise that one would not be talking about the majority of the children under discussion here this afternoon. Perhaps your Lordships might like to know, in passing, that the capital building programme for day nurseries will have risen from £737,000 in 1970–71 to £1,300,000 this year, and I hope that your Lordships may have approved the paragraphs in my right honourable friend's recent White Paper, Education: A Framework for Expansion, which refers to the role of voluntary playgroups which have involved thousands of mothers as well as children. In this
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general connection, may I just pay a tribute to the work of the voluntary organisations of all kinds? I listened carefully to what the noble Countess, Lady Loudoun, was saying—and here I am also referring to the National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children with which the Lord Bishop of Bristol is associated.
Early educational provision alongside speech therapy is, of course, crucial for children with communication difficulties. Some local education authorities have visiting advisory teachers and I think it is fair to say that this work is very valuable. But where there may now be entirely new opportunities is within the extra programme for nursery education which my right honourable friend has just announced in her White Paper. I think it is fair to claim that nursery education enables immediate measures to be taken to offset the disadvantages of any handicapping condition—and of course it is a valuable source of support and advice for parents.
I have listened carefully to what my noble friends Lady Brooke and Lord Grenfell have said—and they were quite definite about this—about aphasic children not being removed to ordinary schools. What I am submitting to your Lordships—and I am not dogmatic about this, because I always listen carefully to advice which is given in this House, and not least to that which is given by my noble friend, Lord Grenfell—is that provided a suitable balance is maintained and provided that staffing and other arrangements are appropriate, less severely handicapped children can sometimes be educated with others in nursery schools and classes.
I was grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Northchurch, and to the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, for drawing attention to the importance of the early years for these children. The noble Baroness asked me a specific question about the percentage of handicapped children who would now receive nursery education in the future. We shall look carefully at the need for nursery education in the light of what she has said to this House. Perhaps my noble friend would like to know that we have hived off for the replacement or improvement of old special schools in this year, next year and the year after, some of the money from the

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primary improvement programme. We have done this quite deliberately. I say this because I hope that it shows where our heart lies. We shall look carefully at the programme. But I think I should also say to the noble Baroness that if she cares to turn to my right honourable friend's White Paper she will see that the special school building programme is to be increased from £11 million this year to £19 million in 1976–77.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, before the Minister leaves the question of the pre-school group, I am not quite sure what he meant when he said that playgroups will assist in this, because in many playgroups there are not even professional teachers; so how they would be able to recognise the aphasic child, or indeed any child suffering from a speech I disorder, I am not quite clear.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, if the noble Baroness will look at the White Paper, she will find paragraphs where we try to spell out carefully how we at the Department of Education and Science see play groups may be closely allied with education or how, if it is the wish of those voluntary bodies or local education departments, they may even become part of the education service.
My Lords, may I now turn to speech therapy. In 1971 of the 90,000 pupils in England and 4,000 in Wales who received speech therapy, the vast majority attended an ordinary school. When a pupil has speech therapy away from school I think it is fair to say that the mother usually goes along too; and your Lordships will know that a mother is generally invited to be present during the first few sessions to see how the therapist works, and at the end of each session the therapist will tell the mother what to practise with the child during the following weeks. Of course if one has this process there is an opportunity for a discussion to arise. But what the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, said is perfectly true: there is a grave shortage of speech therapists. In October the Quirk Report was published and I am interested to find out how your Lordships have so obviously all read it with care. I cannot comment on the outcome of the current consultations which are going on at the moment about this Report, but it recommends the unification of services under
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the new Area Health Authorities; it recommends a trebling of the number of speech therapists to a total of 2,500, and that they should be supported by a new class of people who are called"aides"; and it recommends broad-base courses at degree level as the future pattern of training. I will certainly draw my right honourable friend's attention to the support of the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, for the recommendation for a central council for speech therapy. I will also pass on the views of my noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood on the need for therapy links with children's homes; and I will also have the apprehensions of my noble friend Lord Gainford, about the employment prospects of some therapists, looked into.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brooke of Ystradfellte, before this debate kindly gave me notice that she would certainly be touching on the matter of buildings. She has asked this afternoon whether accommodation for children will be extended by an extension of special schools. I had the good fortune to visit the Ewing School at Manchester, which my noble friend has referred to, before this debate; and I hope I profited from the time I spent there. In addition to the Ewing School there is Moor House in Surrey; and there is John Horniman, run by the Invalid Children's Aid Association, of whose finance committee my noble friend Lord Grenfell is chairman. That is in Sussex. Moor House is currently being rebuilt and a new department of the John Horniman School, as my noble friend told us, Dawn House, in Nottinghamshire, is due to start building next year. This year, out of the total of 457 children suffering from speech defects who were in special schools in England and Wales, 103 were in these three English schools, and the new buildings to which I have referred will add a further 80 places.
I should like to see that my right honourable friend's Department, in conjunction with local education authorities, assesses the need again in the light of the extra places coming into use. I think it is fair to say that we shall have to consider with the authorities and with the voluntary bodies whether we need a school or schools for children from several regions, which would obviously

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mean boarding; or whether it would be better to have more small special units on a day attendance basis. I must apologise to your Lordships that I have not got for to-day's debate the number of these children who are in day special units. In doing all this, we will certainly bear in mind the view of my noble friend Lord Grenfell that we need boarding provision on a regional basis; and I also noted his views about secondary education. What I can undertake this evening is that decisions will be taken only after consultations with authorities and the voluntary bodies. If a need is established for additional schools for this or other categories of handicap—and your Lordships have made pretty clear this afternoon what your view is—the rapid acceleration of the special school building programme which we have announced in the White Paper will make it at least more possible to find room quickly for the provision which would be required.
The noble Baroness asked about provision for people who are over statutory school age. This, I know, is something about which some of your Lordships feel strongly. I think my noble friend Lord Grenfell, although he did not mention it in his speech, feels deeply about it. I thought your Lordships might like to know that a recent follow-up of a small group of 10 very severely handicapped young people who had been diagnosed as having receptive aphasia showed that, so long as employers and fellow workers were aware of the problem, these young people had no great difficulty in obtaining employment, though the report stressed the importance of suitable work and an understanding employer. Their social lives were of course severely restricted, and they remained a source of considerable anxiety to their parents, not least because of the continuing help which they would need when their parents would no longer be able to provide it.
Although the lion's share of the new special school building programme must go to the most prevalent handicaps, I very much hope that a programme which nearly doubles itself in a period of five to six years will offer a better chance for more provision where it is most needed. But I admit that this will not deal directly with the very real problems
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of the young man or young woman who has left school. I assure the noble Baroness that we have this matter very much in mind. We dealt with it specifically in paragraph 20 of Circular No. 671 on Autism. And, as I think some of your Lordships may know, we now have co-operation on a single committee among the Department of Education and Science, the Department of Health and Social Security and the Department of Employment—which the noble Lord, Lord Platt, may approve of. None the less, I know that there are no grounds for complacency over what we do now to help these children. Difficulty of communication—auditory, visual, emotional or social—is the thread which runs through all types of handicap, and nowhere is it seen more poignantly than in children who cannot understand what is said to them or cannot express what they wish to say.
My Lords, I should like, if I may, to write to the noble Lord, Lord Platt, about research in this field. Time is beginning to overtake me. I should have liked to say a word or two about this aspect because people who are interested in this field, and people who have been personally affected in this field, have every right to know about research; and if any other noble Lord cares to write to me of course I will furnish him with details. I hope your Lordships may feel that the noble Baroness has given us an opportunity to hear of some ways in which provision is being made rather better, perhaps, than it has been before, but also, I know, to identify the gaps. For the Government, it has been an opportunity to listen and to learn; and through experiment, research and greater concentration of resources I promise your Lordships that we will do our best to improve the prospects for the children who have been the subject of this debate to-day.
6.38 p.m.
BARONESS BROOKE OF YSTRADFELLTE: My Lords, I should like to take this opportunity of thanking not only those noble Lords who have taken part in this debate but those who have been present. I must confess that when I put down the Motion for one of these mini-debates I wondered very much whether I should have any names to support me at all. I have been

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delighted by the response which has come; and, as so often happens in your Lordships' House whenever a really human problem is being discussed, your Lordships' contribution reaches heights which sometimes on other occasions it does not. I should like to thank all noble Lords who have taken part. Particularly I should like to congratulate and to thank our two maiden speakers. They made completely different contributions. They both quite clearly had the ear of the House for their contributions, and it was transparently clear that all of us who had the privilege of hearing them want to hear them again.
Finally, my Lords, I want to thank the Minister. We all know that the Minister takes immense care and trouble and has a heart; and that cannot always be said of those in high places. We immensely appreciate the trouble he has given and the sympathetic hearing we have had from him to-night. I promise him one thing, and that is that his undertakings will be watched with the greatest of care, and an occasional penetrating Question may find its way on to the Order Paper in future in order to see that what he has from his heart undertaken to see will be done is in fact being done. I thank all your Lordships, and beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

PROBLEMS OF DISABLED EX-SERVICEMEN
6.40 p.m.
LORD MAYBRAY-KING LORD MAYBRAY-KING rose to call attention to the problems of disabled ex-Servicemen; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, may I first thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke of Ystradfellte, not only for initiating a wonderful debate—and I speak as one who loves children—but for the marvellous speech with which she introduced her Motion. May I say, too, in my introductory remarks, that I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for being here to-night, after a very busy week, to reply to a debate in which I believe he has really at heart the cause of which I wish to speak.
My Lords, I count it as a privilege, as a former Speaker of the freest House of
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Commons in the world and now as a Member of your Lordships' House, to pay tribute to our disabled ex-Servicemen. But for them, and those who did not come back, we should not be here tonight. I was distressed to learn that the Cambridge University students have decided to exclude the Royal British Legion for the charities which they help by their Annual Rag. But for the men who are helped by the Legion there would be no free Cambridge University—indeed, there would be no free university in Europe to-day. Freedom does not happen: it has to be won. It had to be preserved by bitter sacrifices in two world wars.
I would begin this debate by paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Fraser of Lonsdale, for all he has done during his long life for the cause of the disabled ex-Servicemen. But I would also pay tribute to the great ex-Servicemen's associations themselves—the Royal British Legion; BLESMA—the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association: FEPOWA—the Far Eastern Prisoners of War Association; AJEx—the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen. I wish to pay tribute to them—chief among the organisations—for their great work. Through their splendid welfare organisations, and helped by the free gifts of British citizens, not only on Poppy Day but throughout the year, in every corner of the land these associations have assisted thousands and thousands of un-fortunate ex-Servicemen. They have preserved the comradeship of the war years; they have carried it out in practice at St. Dunstan's, for instance; at the BLESMA homes for the disabled and by the patient, detailed work of many hundreds of voluntary welfare officers up and down this country who have helped many a wounded man to secure the fullest benefits to which he is entitled. I think, of the limbless ex-Servicemen, for example, who co-operated with Roehampton in the great work of limb fitting and in research into the bitter problem of the phantom limb—the limb which hurts although it is no longer there. May I say, incidentally, that BLESMA—the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen'sAssociation—welcomes the proposal of the Government to integrate Roehampton into the National Health Service general scheme.
But, above all, these associations have been able throughout the years to press the claims of Servicemen, Service pensioners, on successive Governments. In this they have been sympathetically received by Minister of Pensions after Minister of Pensions. We have been fortunate in the calibre and the kindness of Ministers of Pensions since the end of the war. We are specially fortunate in the present Secretary of State, Sir Keith Joseph; in his colleague in the House of Commons, Mr. Paul Dean and, in our own House, in the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and we are grateful for the way in which from time to time they have received deputations of disabled ex-Servicemen. But part of the struggle to achieve what we have achieved has come from these ex-Servicemen's associations. I would say on their behalf to-night that they are grateful for all that has been done, year by year, to step up the various allowances made to disabled ex-Servicemen; for all that the present Government have done to improve the lot of the disabled ex-Servicemen. I would say, as an old man, that all this is in sharp contrast to the way in which we treated our ex-Servicemen in the years after the First World War and before the Second World War. But, my Lords, there is more to be done.
First, I want to say a word about the FEPOW's—the Far Eastern Prisoners of War. Just after the Second World War there was a campaign, led by my friend, Brigadier Sir Jackie Smyth, V.C., to win from the Japanese compensation for our FEPOWs for the shocking treatment they endured during the war. We won. This was an historic achievement. Those of us who know the FEPOWS know just how much that compensation meant to them, first in immediate grants and now in a Trust Fund administered by some Members of Parliament, looking after the FEPOW when he comes on hard times. It is impossible adequately to describe all that the FEPOWS went through, those who survived and those who did not, in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. Only the Far Eastern prisoner-of-war knows the hell he went through. I am glad that in to-night's debate the noble Lord, Lord Gridley, who was himself a Far Eastern prisoner of war, is to speak. The House will be interested to know that his father,
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then Sir Arnold Gridley, was chairman of the first All-Party Committee in the other place, fighting the battle for the disabled ex-Servicemen after the Second World War.
When the war was over, it was natural that our FEPOWs should get home as quickly as possible. Other Commonwealth countries provided longer hospitalisation for their Far Eastern prisoners-of-war. Britain was late in realising that malnutrition, starvation, tropical diseases, the high degree of mental and physical stress could all have effects which might last a long time; which might even be late in emerging. Those of us who know the FEPOWS know how remarkable has been their resilience; how so many of them have now apparently completely recovered. But not all: some even died before we had established expert examination into the special problems of the FEPOWS. Some of them have left widows. For others, the ill-effects of their captivity are only now appearing, very late. There were no medical records in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. When the ex-Serviceman becomes seriously ill after his war service we in this country have what is called the seven-year rule. We say that it is reasonable to assume that if the ex-Serviceman has a disability, in the normal course of events that disability will emerge within seven years after his war service. So under the seven-year rule we say that if any ex-Serviceman claims that his disability is due to his war service, if it manifests itself after seven years the onus of proving that the disability was due to what happened to him during the war rests on him. On the other hand, if the disability appeared before the seven years, it is for the Government to prove that it did not happen because of his war service. The FEPOW Association has pressed for some years for the abolition of the seven-year rule for FEPOWs and their widows, and in this they now have the full support of the Royal British Legion, who go further and say that we should abolish the seven-year rule for all ex-prisoners of war.
The Government have shown great sympathy to the claims of FEPOWS. They have now provided at Blackpool a special unit to handle the special claims of FEPOW claimants for some disability benefits. Moreover, any FEPOW with a

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claim is entitled to appear at one of the three centres which the Government have set up at Liverpool, Edinburgh and London so that his claim may be examined by an expert in tropical medicine. I wish to say on behalf of FEPOWS that they appreciate what the Government have done so far. Indeed, the number of new claims already admitted by the new machinery which the Government have set up justifies the claim that the FEPOWs have made year after year that theirs is indeed a special problem. But for FEPOWs and the Royal British Legion the goal must be the abolition of the seven-year rule. They believe that many widows who are now debarred from benefit would be able to claim if the rule were waived. Incidentally, anyone who has attended the annual conference of the great ex-Servicemen's associations, as I have done—I am thinking, for example, of the FEPOWS, the British Legion, AJEX and BLESMA—will know that the first concern of all and especially of the ex-Serviceman is for the widow of his late comrade or his unfortunate comrade who died after the war.
I turn to some other problems of other disabled, and first the totally disabled, Steadily since the war Governments have improved the pensions and allowances of the 100 per cent. disabled and even more of the 100 per cent. disabled who are unemployable. For these latter people there are now comforts allowances of 85p a week, unemployability allowances of £7·35 a week and a basic pension of £11·20 a week. But all this adds up to just £1·25 above the normal National Insurance benefits. The Legion and BLESMA argue, justifiably I think, that such a totally disabled man should at least have as much as the average income of the average worker in this country. Such a man has given everything except his life, and that gift has included his ability to earn a wage or salary.
The second problem of the disabled ex-Serviceman is what we call"disregards"—that is, the problem of a disabled ex-Serviceman's income which is not taken into account when considering any supplementary benefit to which he is entitled. Up to this year some local authorities, when assessing the income of a disabled ex-Serviceman to work out what his rent rebate should be, completely
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disregarded his war pension. Under the Government's Act of this year, the Housing Finance Act, the Government have sent out a model scheme in which they recommend local authorities to disregard £2 of a disabled ex-Serviceman's pension. It is true that the local authority may still if it chooses disregard the total amount of a disabled ex-Serviceman's pension and some authorities are doing that, my own City of Southampton being one of them. But some authorities are regarding this £2 as a maximum and not a minimum of the disregard of the disabled ex-Serviceman's pension. Way back in 1932 a Commission on Unemployment recommended that in calculating unemployment benefit half of the disabled man's pension should be reckoned as being disregarded when working out his unemployment benefit. The Royal British Legion considers to-day that still at least half of the disabled man's pension should be disregarded when calculating his entitlement to rent rebate.
Again, the Government, I am glad to say, have improved the position of the civilian disabled man who wants a car. They provide him with an annual allowance towards his car. Ex-Servicemen are glad about what is done for the disabled civilian. Indeed, one of their boasts is that what the ex-Servicemen have done in focusing attention on the needs of ex-Servicemen's disabilities has done much to create a social conscience and to improve the lot of the civilian disabled man. However, on car allowances the ex-Serviceman feels to-day that the improvement in the lot of civilians has been at least partly at the expense of the ex-Serviceman. For example, the grant for annual maintenance which the limbless ex-Serviceman receives has now been reduced by £25 if he has a Government-provided car. If he runs his own car he used to get £95 a year plus freedom from road tax. He now receives £100 plus freedom from road tax, £5 more, but the Government have taken away what he used to get, which was an additional grant of up to £90 for fitting hand controls and so on which the disabled ex-Serviceman needs. This conversion grant has been destroyed.
War pensioners who are slightly less severely disabled than those entitled to a car, whether or not they could work, could receive a car from the Department

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and could go on using it after they retired from work. Under the new regulations the ex-Serviceman slightly less disabled than the totally disabled man, has to give up his car the moment he gives up work. War pensioners with a three-wheeled vehicle used to get £5 a year petrol allowance. That £5 a year has been taken away. And so, my Lords, the disabled ex-Serviceman feels that his benefits are being eroded: that his special claim for recognition is being lost; and this at a time when benefits should be increasing rather than diminishing.
Ever since the Second World War, and indeed very faintly in the inter-war years, the nation has agreed that there is something special about the disabilities of the ex-Serviceman; disabilities which he acquired in the defence of his country. As I speak tonight and as your Lordships listen to me, each of us has in his mind some totally disabled ex-Serviceman—a legless man, an armless man, a man whose mind was shattered by his war experiences. Nobody can give them back what they lost, what they gave. Nobody can ever adequately recompense them. But we honour them. In this debate tonight we seek not only to express our pride in them and our gratitude for all that they did, but also the need to improve the lot, wherever it is possible, for those who endure special hardships, some of which I have tried to mention.
My Lords, freedom was bought at a great price but freedom is not enough. We have to be worthy of it and at least one of the ways in which we can be worthy of it is by recognising adequately the claims of the men who gave so much to preserve the freedom which we now enjoy. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
7.3 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, there is a great temptation this evening for everyone to get off home and take part in Christmas preparations, but I am sure that those who have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, are especially indebted to him for the fact that he has insisted, although we are later possibly than we anticipated, on raising this issue to-night. My noble friend has a long, close and sustained interest in the well-
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being of those ex-Servicemen who were not so lucky as others and who suffered disability in the service of others, and the speech to which we have listened reflects that interest. I fear, however, together with him, that the interest of others is not quite so sustained. I am afraid that my noble friend Lord Maybray-King is not entirely typical of many others in our community. The fact is that as the great wars recede into history the special claims of disabled ex-Servicemen which society hitherto has readily recognised have become and are becoming less special.
The example which the noble Lord gave us of Cambridge University indicates what I am saying. What they have done is a sad fact, but I am afraid it is part of a trend. Of course, one can understand those who say that a disability is a disability, whether sustained in Service uniform or in civilian clothes, but society would be wrong to take that argument too far. If some among us are prepared to accept special risks, then surely society, for its part, should accept special responsibility. If we allow special considerations to be eroded then we cannot complain if young men say that they would prefer the rewards and the lack of risk of a Georgie Best to the role of a peacekeeper in the streets of Ulster. If too many of us take up that attitude I cannot believe that society would be the better.
My noble friend has given examples of economies which have been made, now that interest is less keen. He mentioned the matter of disregards, and I do not propose to go over all that ground again because my noble friend made the case so well, but we might well reflect again on this steady trend which has taken place without any of us at any point being conscious of what was happening. In 1932, 50 per cent. of the 100 per cent. disability pension was disregarded in the assessment of supplementary benefits. By 1959 that percentage was down to 35 per cent. In 1966 it came down to 30 per cent. and the £2 which the noble Lord mentioned now represents 18 per cent. As the value of money deteriorates and the total pension is increased to keep pace with it, if that £2 figure is maintained then the percentage is still further whittled away. Do we really want this to happen? I wonder whether this is part of a planned policy of successive Governments? Of course, there is no Party matter in this,

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because I am sure that what has been done has been done by successive Governments.
My noble friend mentioned regulations about vehicles. Some of the economies here surely are mean. Why was the grant to convert to hand controls stopped? Was it an economy? Was it because it was thought not to be necessary? What was the process of reasoning which led to that decision to cancel that grant for the conversion to hand controls? Then there was the case of the cessation of the grant to those who no longer work. In most cases when a man retires he has the opportunity of greater mobility in leisure, but here we have the position that when a man retires his mobility is restricted. I cannot think that retirement for a disabled ex-Serviceman who knows that once he retires he loses the opportunity of getting around in a car is going to be a very attractive proposition. He is going to see himself being increasingly house-bound. I should have thought that there was a special case there for ensuring that disabled ex-Servicemen should be allowed to get this extra enjoyment in retirement which the use of a car would provide.
There is then this £5 given to those who use a three-wheeler, towards the cost of duty. A £5 grant as an offset to the amount of money which they pay in duty! That is to be stopped if anyone takes up a car after April 1 of this year. Again, I cannot remember this matter being raised. I cannot think that it is part of a deliberate policy. It seems to be one of a number of little economies that have taken place without some of us really understanding what is involved. I have no doubt that those who are to follow me will be able to give more examples or to confirm those which I have given.
I want to say only one further word and that is about Remploy. I know that the excellent work which this organisation has done and is doing is for the disabled generally and that the number of ex-Servicemen employed there is comparatively small; nevertheless this organisation does help the ex-Serviceman to make a constructive contribution towards his own keep. It enables him to do something useful. Psychologically as well as materially, the value of the work done by Remploy cannot be over-emphasised. As
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we all know, it cannot compete commercially; it is dependent upon some Treasury subvention, and the fact is that in so far as it expands its excellent work it increases its reliance upon the Treasury. I should like to think—and I am not sure that the noble Lord is able to give this assurance to-night—that if, as would seem to be likely, Remploy will be able to go ahead and expand, an increasing commitment would be recognised by the Treasury and the work of that excellent organisation would not be restricted by the Treasury. I repeat again what I said at the beginning: that we are deeply indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, for raising this matter. I am sure that those in the Chamber to-night will join with me in thanking him sincerely.
7.11 p.m.
VISCOUNT LONG: My Lords, first may I say, on behalf of the Royal British Legion, how deeply grateful we are to the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, for raising this debate to-night. The national executive have asked me to express their sincere thanks for the work the noble Lord has done in the past for the disabled ex-Servicemen, as well as for what he has said to-night—which I have heard but they have not yet heard. The noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, has really given us all in the Legion very great heart in what we do. Invariably we find ourselves doing our work and nobody recognising us, and we try so earnestly to help the ex-Serviceman. We feel very lost at times. We find our publicity is wrong, and we find it very difficult sometimes to get through to Governments, if I may put it in the plural. I know how grateful we all are to the noble Lord for raising this subject to-night.
As your Lordships now know, I am a strong member of the Royal British Legion. I like to consider myself a working member in the county of Wiltshire, as a vice-president and indeed, up to 18 months ago, the vice-chairman in the county. So I have experienced in my own sphere what is going on in the minds of those in the Royal British Legion: what is in one way or another required, whether in regard to vehicles, transportation, the tragedy of a family in difficulty when the husband dies, and pensions. We have always had immense problems

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and battles. We have tried to express ourselves to the Government of the day, and on the whole we should like to thank the present Government for what they have done and for giving us such a good hearing for the disabled pensioners.
I turn to the more technical side. It is rather staggering to think that at the end of last year, according to a report of the Department of Health and Social Security published in July, there was a total of 502,000 war pensions in payment for disablement due to war service; even to-day, 54 years after the ending of the First World War, we have something like 117,000 of these pensions related to service between 1914 and 1918. The remainder relate to the 1939–1945 war. It follows that our responsibility towards the war disabled and the war widow must continue. When I say"our", I think it is the responsibility of everyone, not only in this House but outside, even those who do not belong to the Association. We are thankful for what they have done. When I say that I am not the eldest son, it explains the feeling that I owe something to someone, as I am sure many of us do. The whole country does. But, of course, this is a modern generation, and it is difficult to express these things to-day. It follows that our responsibility to the war disabled and the war widow must continue well into the next century, when the Ministry estimates that there will be still 97,000 war pensioners. That is a long way off.
We must think not only in terms of those who were maimed or bereaved in the two world wars. We have the problem on our doorstep to-day in the shape of Northern Ireland. I must plead ignorance here. I do not know—and I wonder how many do know—how many are coming out of Ireland now who are severely wounded and maimed. There are quite a few. Then we have had the campaigns in Cyprus, Malaya and Borneo, apart from the two World Wars with all these other men and women disabled—because in the Second World War many women were parachuted into France and elsewhere; they were in the Services in one way and another. We have a vast number of disabled, and that situation will continue right into the next century. It is good to
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make these facts known to-night so that the younger generation can begin to understand what the Associations are doing and why they are talking about Poppy Day.
As the two world wars recede into history, so the memories of those two wars diminish, and so it is very difficult to put across to the younger generation to-day the facts about war and the disabled. They have no reason to know. If may give an example, I knew nothing about the First World War, so who am I to say that the younger generation are wrong? But what I say to your Lordships is that we must, through the Government, let the students, the younger generation, know that for the things they are enjoying to-day they must be grateful in some way or another to those young men who were killed, and those who were badly injured and who are in wheelchairs. They must appreciate a small part of that world that they are lucky to live in to-day. I would say that perhaps we in the Royal British Legion and other Associations are wrong in that we do not get into the universities and explain our position. That is how I feel about the new generation. I see Lord Beswick's point; it is not a vicious one, but it is one that we must try to be patient with—we must be. We ask the Government always to give us the best hearing, through the Legion or whatever Association comes to them to talk about disabled ex-Servicemen. If we can get that support, then we feel strong enough in ourselves to go forward into our branches to tell them exactly what is happening.
My problem to-night is that the noble Lords, Lord Maybray-King and Lord Beswick, have run right across my notes on the disregards of a pension. In the Isle of Man this year a resolution was put forward that Her Majesty's Government increase the disregard of war disability pensions to not less than one half the current basic rate—which the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, mentioned, £11·20—as the first step towards a complete disregard of the full war pension when assessing income for the purposes of supplementary benefit. That went forward as a resolution, and the emphasis on the disregard was for the purposes of supplementary benefits, because Government policy outlined in the debate

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this summer on the Housing Finance Act—which again has been mentioned—provides, for rent rebate purposes, a mandatory disregard of the first £2 of war disablement pension, the first £2 of any excess of war widow's pension over National Insurance widow's pension, and any attendance or constant attendance allowance. I think that that is what the noble Lord was driving at.
Recently some Members of Parliament in the other place sought to introduce an Amendment to the Act providing for a total disregard of the war disability pension. The Amendment was defeated, but Mr. Paul Channon, the Government spokesman, stated that the £2 disregard for rent rebate schemes was chosen simply because it was the amount disregarded when assessing income for supplementary benefit. He gave an absolute guarantee at that moment, as I am given to understand through the National Executive of the British Legion, that if the supplementary benefit disregard was improved the Government would immediately increase other disregards. In reply to a similar resolution in 1971, the Under-Secretary of State commented that the Government recognise that disregards as a whole play an important part in the supplementary benefits scheme and have indicated that they intend to increase them at the appropriate time. However, we are beginning to see a slight, as I detect it, wavering here.
We feel, at the Royal British Legion, that to ask that at least one half the 100 per cent. rate should be disregarded when assessing means would be in accordance with the principle accepted between the two World Wars. So we have now gone back to what the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, mentioned. Thus we get this disregard of 20 shillings, being half of the then rate of 40 shillings. I think that is what the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, was also mentioning. I do not think that I can go much further on the matter of disregards, because all three of us have mentioned this part of the pension. If we can ask the Government to make quite certain that this will be guaranteed, that everything will be safe, then this debate to-night, so far as I can see and talking technically only on pensions, has served a very useful and genuine purpose.
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I feel that enough has been said on pensions. I end by saying that we are discussing this matter to-night in your Lordships' House, where many Generals and officers, both junior and senior, are Members. In Wiltshire we are experiencing at the moment an extraordinary situation. We have an enormous number of military officers, and yet when we, on our own Executive, attend dinners and branch functions, we find officers who are members of the Royal British Legion but who do not know anything about what is going on. We are finding it very difficult to penetrate the minds of these officers. If they were serving officers they would have the responsibility for ordering men into battle or into campaigns. Surely when they come into retirement in civilian life they are just as responsible for and should help those disabled ex-Servicemen. We are finding it very difficult to convince them when they are in civilian clothes that their responsibility is just the same as when they were in uniform. If there is any message that goes out to-night, I should like it to be, on behalf of my own Executive and members of the Royal British Legion in Wiltshire, to invite them to come into the fold. After all, the Royal British Legion is a very fine union, if you like, or association; it works hard at its task. We are asking that those who served in the Services, senior and junior officers, who have retired, should come back into the fold and learn about the great work that all the volunteers are already doing. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, and I thank him on behalf of the Royal British Legion. There must be many here to-night who do the same.
7.26 p.m.
LORD GRIDLEY: My Lords, I have been much moved this evening by the speeches that I have heard dealing with the conditions of disabled ex-Servicemen. The noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, out of his great kindness and consideration, made mention of my late father. My late father never mentioned anything to me about the work he was doing in connection with prisoners-of-war; but, of course, he did not hear from me for four years, as the Japanese, among whom I was incarcerated in Malaya, did not recognise the International Red Cross. He was probably so pleased to see me, not

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having known whether I was coming home or not, that he forgot to mention something in which he had been associated with the noble Lord. I have been touched by the remarks about the activities mentioned in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King. The great work that he has done for Far East Prisoners of War is known to all of us who were involved in armed activity in that region.
It is particularly appropriate at this season of Christmas that we should be considering some of the problems which exist to-day. We have had various suggestions made, particularly in the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, and the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, for dealing with some of the anomalies, discrepancies, and hardships which affect men who gave very valuable service possibly 25, 27, or even 30 years ago, which takes one back to 1941 to 1945. I would ask my noble friend to consider what is happening in Ireland to-day. I hope he will be able to give us some assurance that the Government are aware of the problems, and will be able to give us some hope that these men, who serve us so well, will receive very special consideration. I do not wish to dwell further on that subject; it has been mentioned by many previous speakers in your Lordships' House. May I confine myself to one area which I know particularly well?
I think that it would be appropriate this evening to mention some of the terrible sufferings which I know were endured in the Malayan campaign, because I was in the midst of it all. I was there in the attack on the North of Malaya. I saw the complete demoralisation of men who had very little with which to fight. They had no arms worth calling the name. You who were here in England were involved in defending these shores; you wanted all the equipment, the personnel and everything to defend Britain. We out there were short of everything. I saw young men come out who were pushed into battle within about forty-eight hours of landing on the Malayan Peninsula. They had to contend with climatic conditions to which they were not accustomed. They were completely demoralised over the sinking off the east coast of Malaya of the two great battleships which were sent out by
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Churchill. I was in the North of Malaya. We were being continuously harassed by the Japanese who had landed behind us, because our Eastern flank was exposed and there was nothing to stop them coming ashore. This went on for about five weeks in the conditions which I have described.
It was extremely difficult in those days—it was all right for me and those like me who had some experience of it—for those young men to distinguish between friend and foe; because the colour of the Japanese and of the Malays was very similar and there was a certain amount of treachery existing at the time. Before the war broke out in Malaysia we had built an extensive line of aerodromes out in the country; but there was a shortage of planes—there were only about five at each aerodrome. In the first Japanese attack, these planes were wiped out. Subsequently the Japanese flew on to the aerodromes and used them; so we had no aircraft cover. I mention those conditions because we are thinking to-night of some of these men who were wounded when fighting under the most appalling conditions and with little to defend themselves. I think it appropriate to remember something about that campaign.
But, my Lords, there was worse to follow. I would say that probably the prisoners-of-war in the Far Eastern campaign suffered more than those in any other campaign of World War II. We were incarcerated; many men were put into prisoner-of-war camps. I can tell your Lordships that 3,000 men were fed on one pig boiled in a cauldron, with the result that all that one got was the fat of the pig and some rice. Malnutrition diseases started, and some of those men, I believe, are suffering from them to-day. As I have mentioned, the Japanese did not recognise the International Red Cross, so that there were no Red Cross parcels—the only ones that arrived were those that came some three years after the war had been in operation when our enemy then realised that they must try to do something.
Remembering all these facts, we recognise to-day that we owe a great debt of gratitude to these men who served us so well. I speak with a great deal of affection and personal knowledge. I will say no more on this theme, but now is an

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appropriate moment to mention these things. I never thought, 30 years ago in a prison cell, that I, of all people, should be able to speak these words in this House. But perhaps the opportunity I have had shows the value of your Lordships' House and the fact that we are composed of various elements and can speak from first-hand experience. In conclusion, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, for introducing this Motion. I have been greatly moved by all the speeches we have heard, and I hope sincerely that we shall not forget these men. I speak with personal knowledge and gratitude for all the great work that has been done for the Far East prisoners-of-war by the noble Lord who introduced this debate.
7.35 p.m.
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: My Lords, I have the honour to be the President of the Devon branch of the Royal British Legion. I feel that it would be churlish of me, being in this House, not to make use of this opportunity to add my congratulations and thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, for bringing this matter to our attention—because this is something which, as the noble Viscount, Lord Long, pointed out, we are having to deal with month in and month out. In the few minutes during which I shall inflict myself on your Lordships, I will not go into all the points that have been made about those who have suffered and are still suffering as a result of the last two wars. I should like simply to add one other reminder that there are people to-day (and they are increasing in number) who have suffered and whose widows are suffering as a result of the"little wars" that have taken place since the last Great War.
I have a young cousin, married to a major in the Welch Fusiliers who lost an eye in the last war. Afterwards in the Malaysian campaign, because he had not got an eye on that side, he was ambushed and killed, leaving that young girl with three children to bring up. This she has now done; and they are grown up. I ask your Lordships to remember these other occasions. Again, in the village that I come from there is a retired doctor who has a son in the Royal Marines. Perhaps your Lordships will remember an ambush which took place at Muscat a year ago.
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This son was wounded in that ambush, but not badly; and he told me of one of his comrades who will be very severely disabled for the rest of his life.
My Lords, I come to my last point. As some of your Lordships will know, I have a son who is a soldier. Returning from his second tour of duty in Northern Ireland, the troops arrived at Chelsea Barracks early in the morning The day was spent in setting up the men and sending them on leave. He, as Assistant Adjutant, was sent off in the afternoon to visit the hospitals to which are sent those severely wounded in Northern Ireland. Two Red Cross helicopters fly in each week with the severely wounded. I had arranged to meet him here in this building that evening, and we were going to drive home during the night. He came in. He was not looking at all fit. I got him a drink and I thought that this, obviously, was not the time to talk about these things. But he made a remark which I think might well be brought to your Lordships' attention. He said,"What you chaps ought to do is to find out how many there are of these people who have been listed as wounded in Northern Ireland who will be cabbages for the rest of their lives." I believe that the figure is about 1,500. I took the liberty of asking the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, whether it was possible to find out the exact percentage because I think it important that people should realise that there is a large percentage. The noble Lord has promised to write to me about it. I mention this in case the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has heard anything in the meantime.
What many people must realise about the type of bullets used in Northern Ireland now—the bullets which are producing what we are talking about this evening, the severely disabled ex-Serviceman—is that after entering the body they expand inside and cause tremendous internal damage. I notice that a doctor dealing with these cases was reported in The Times the other day as saying that this is a more modern function of this type of bullet. He said that you do not see much damage where the bullet goes in; but it does a great deal of damage inside and is responsible for a large number of the severely disabled young men—young, that is to say, by our standards in the last war.

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The only contribution that I wanted to make this evening was to remind your Lordships of this daily occurrence; to try to find out how many are suffering in this way, and to thank the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, for continually bringing up this subject to remind successive Governments of what we all feel is their duty.
7.40 p.m.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, at this late stage I shall be very brief. By chance, though very appropriately, this debate is taking place on the same day as the Not Forgotten Association's Christmas Party at Buckingham Palace. Something like 400 or more ex-Servicemen were being entertained there this afternoon, and from the days when I was privileged to be Parliamentary Secretary in the Department I can remember and vouch for what great joy these parties brought into the lives of hundreds of men. The Not Forgotten Association is a society which cares particularly for the old, the home-bound and those threatened with loneliness. After what we have heard about Wiltshire, I am wondering whether we could not all resolve—even though we cannot arrange parties on the scale of that at Buckingham Palace—to try in our own counties to arrange something similar and bring a little joy into the lives of many of these people, ex-Servicemen and widows, who in their old age often find life very difficult.
My Lords, I want to keep to the welfare side of the Department's work. The welfare work is very extensive and, rightly I think, those engaged in it, officials and voluntary workers, have never sought publicity. They have worked quietly away where it was felt there was a job to be done. I wish to mention only two points. A noble Lord opposite spoke about Remploy. We must not forget that there are a number of men and women who are 100 per cent. disabled, home-bound and not fit enough to work even in Remploy factories. But they are not forgotten. Any man or woman in that position who wishes, can be taught a craft or trade in his or her own home by the Department. If any noble Lord here has never attended the annual exhibition and prize-giving of the
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work of these people done in their own homes—it is held in May in an office in the Department—he should write to the Minister and ask for an invitation next year. The standard of much of this work will astonish any visitor. Of course the best workmen are lost sight of because they can earn their own living and no longer need help from the Department to sell the work they have done. This is a small thing and affects few, but it is something which is very important.
I do not wish to talk about the erosion of disregards, but I should like to refer to the erosion of what in the Department used to be called the ex-Serviceman's preference: a number of small things, but many of them were important. They were particularly important before the days of so complete a National Health Service and the elaborate system of treatment under the Industrial Injuries Scheme which in some ways, though by no means all, compares with the ex-Service side of the Department work. I hope that the Minister will be able to say that he is a stout defender of the ex-Serviceman's preferences. They include such things as not having to wait so long for treatment, or for early admission to hospital if there should be a long queue. In the days when I served with him, the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter (as he now is), was insistent that these preferences should not be lost sight of.
Lastly, may I mention again the word loneliness? Organised by the Department, not only centrally but also in every district of the country, there are voluntary workers who make it their job to visit both ex-Service men, and the widows and families of ex-Servicemen, in their homes. There is no reason for anyone to be lonely or short of visitors. If people do not want visitors they can say so; but if they do want company they can ray what they would like; what sort of people they would like to meet, and at what time of day—small things, but they can make lives a little happier. If any noble Lords should ever find in their district anyone who is a good, kind, sympathetic, reasonable person and who, by chance, has not enough to do—there are not many of them—they should suggest that he goes at once to the Ministry of Pensions (to use the old honourable title) and volunteer to do some visiting on some of his fellow men and women

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who are too old or too disabled to get out from their homes and enjoy the things that mean so much to the rest of us.
7.45 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (LORD ABERDARE): My Lords, I join very willingly with other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, for giving us this opportunity to talk about this very important subject at an opportune moment when, as my noble friend Lord Inglewood has reminded us, the Not Forgotten Association party is being held at Buckingham Palace; and at a time so soon before Christmas which is an appropriate time for us to give some consideration to those who may be worse off than we are. The noble Lord, Lord MaybrayKing, is well known in this House for his wisdom and for his wide and humane interests. I think that all ex-Servicemen and FEPOWs owe him a great debt of gratitude. He is a very worthy champion of their cause and has been for a great many years.
I am also grateful for the very reasonable and constructive tone of this debate which, on the whole, seems to me to reflect the responsible attitude of those voluntary bodies that represent the interests of the ex-Servicemen. We have had some most interesting speeches. The noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, and my noble friend Lord Long, reminded us that we are talking about the disabled ex-Servicemen not only of two major wars but also of many other minor wars and, most tragically of all, of the present conflict in Northern Ireland. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, drew attention to some of those who have suffered severely. I am glad to say that, thanks to the skill of doctors and the devotion of nurses, many of them recover, some sufficiently to continue their Service careers. Your Lordships may like to know that there are now 84 war widows' pensions in payment in respect of casualities in Ulster. Of these, 69 include allowances for children. There are 15 war widows' pensions in payment in respect of the widows of men in the Ulster Defence Regiment. We in your Lordships' House often pay handsome tributes to the Army for the way in which it is carrying its burdens in Northern
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Ireland. This is the sort of price that the families of those men are paying.
I should like, therefore, at the start, and particularly in response to what has been said by my noble friend Lord Inglewood, to put on record that the Government are committed to maintaining the existing preferences shown to war pensioners within our system of social security. This we have done in all our recent up-ratings. We are also determined to continue to improve the lot of the disabled generally; and indeed, war pensioners have benefited from improvements that we have made in that respect. May I turn to some of the special points raised in the debate. First, the Far Eastern prisoners of war, regarding which my noble friend Lord Gridley gave such a graphic account of his experiences. As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, the National Federation of the Far Eastern Prisoner of War Clubs and Associations made representations to the Government for more favourable treatment of claims for pensions made by men who had been prisoners of war in the Far East. My colleague, Mr. Paul Dean, met a deputation from the Federation in May and one of the matters discussed was the seven-year rule to which the noble Lord referred. We believe that the existing rule is a fair one. Now that we are 27 years on from the end of the war the exceptional provisions of Article 4 would not be appropriate, either for FEPOWS or any other group of Second World War ex-Servicemen now claiming war pensions. Over a quarter of a century after the end of the war it seems only reasonable that a claimant should be asked to show that the disablement for which now, for the first time, he claims a war pension is related to service. But I should like to emphasise—I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, mentioned this—that he does not have to prove beyond doubt a connection between his disablement and war service. All he has to do is to raise a reasonable doubt as to whether his disablement is related to service and he is given the benefit of that doubt.
But, as a result of those meetings, we wanted to do what we could to help: and the noble Lord has acknowledged, first of all, the FEPOW unit at Blackpool, which handles the claims of FEPOWS and any borderline case which is specially referred

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for consideration to senior officials in London. The unit was set-up in May, and by the end of November 753 claims for pension, increase in pension, or for the various supplementary allowances which go with the pension, had been dealt with. Of these 753 claims, 491 have been awarded and 262 rejected. So far as official claims for pension are concerned, over 60 per cent. have been awarded to FEPOWs as compared with 48 per cent. to all other claims over the same period. I think that this goes to show that Article 5 is not a barrier to a well-founded claim.
The noble Lord mentioned the tropical disease specialist members of medical boards and the option of a man to attend one of these specialist medical boards. I will not go further into that, but I should like to thank the noble Lord for the generous remarks he made about the satisfactory outcome of these consultations. He also mentioned the level of the war pension itself. There has in fact been a substantial improvement in its real value over the years. The 100 per cent. rate of pension has gone up from £225 in February 1946, to £11·20 to-day, an increase of just under 400 per cent., compared with a rise in prices of just under 200 per cent. The increase in October of some 12 per cent. in the basic pension, which followed on the previous 20 per cent. increase in September, 1971, is a clear indication of the assurance I gave at the beginning that the Government do recognise the importance of keeping these pensions level with the rise in prices and with the preference which they have always enjoyed.
The introduction of an annual review of war pensions, together with social security benefits, with increases in November each year, does provide pensioners with the assurance that the extent to which their pensions are eroded by price increases is strictly limited. To make a specific comparison is quite interesting. If one leaves aside the allowances for the more severely disabled, and any part-time earnings that a pensioner or his wife may have, the unemployable war pensioner who is a family man can now receive an income which, because it is entirely tax-free, approaches, and in some cases exceeds, the net take-home pay of the average wage earner. To give an example, the married pensioner
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with a 100 per cent. pension, unemployability supplement, comforts allowance and £1·15 invalidity allowance now receives £24·70 a week. If he has two children, that amount goes up to £31·30 per week. And that very approximately corresponds to the take-home pay of the married man earning £35 a week who, after paying tax and National Insurance contributions, would as a married man without children get £26, or, if he had two children, £28·95. There have been considerable increases even since September, 1971. The figures have gone up, for a married man, from £17·57½ to £24·70 from September, 1971, to date. So there have been substantial improvements in the basic war pension.
I now come to the question raised by several of your Lordships about the disregard. The disregard dates back to 1948 when the Poor Law was abolished and a unified system of National Assistance was set up. The war pension disregard was kept at £1, when then the basic 100 per cent. disablement pension rate was £2 5s. Since 1948, the disregard has been raised on two occasions: in 1959 to £1 10s., and in 1966, when the Supplementary Benefits Scheme replaced the National Assistance Scheme, to £2. Each time the increase was approximately sufficient to restore the real value of the disregard to what it had been in 1948, but not to increase it proportionately in relation to the 100 per cent. rate of war disablement pension, which in 1966 had reached £6 15s. and is now £11·20, or the scale rates of supplementary benefit, which have also increased substantially in real value over the years. There has never really been any suggestion that a disregard of half the basic 100 per cent. pension rate is right in principle, nor has it ever been accepted that disregards should necessarily increase at the same rate as benefit increases. And, of course, I should make the point that the £2 disregard for the war pensioner is double that of other pensioners. Nevertheless, we have made it clear that we intend to review all the disregards in the Supplementary Benefits Scheme at an appropriate time, though I cannot say when that might be. So far we have been successful in raising the pension itself, and we have retained the disregard at the present level.

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So far as the disregard for the rent rebates scheme is concerned, I think the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King, made the position absolutely clear: that under the Housing Finance Act and the Housing (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act all local authorities have to operate a rent rebate scheme for council tenants from October 1 of this year, and a rent allowances scheme for private tenants in unfurnished accommodation from January 1 next. They contain model schemes providing, among other things, for a £2 a week war disablement pension disregard, and also £2 of standard war widow's pension. I think the noble Lord also made it clear, but I should like to emphasise it, that local authorities have a discretion, at the expense of the rates, to disregard more, or even the whole of these pensions if they wish, provided that this and any other departures from the model scheme do not increase the cost by more than 10 per cent. overall. This discretion to disregard the whole of the war pension has been emphasised both in the White Papers and in the circulars which were subsequently issued to local authorities. I am sure that those who represent the interests of war pensioners will not be slow to bring pressure on their various local authorities to see that they consider their powers under these Acts.
Lastly, I come to the question of the provision of vehicles, to which the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, among others, referred. At the beginning, I would say that of course the whole scope and nature of these services is at present under review by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. I know that she would have wished to be here to-day, but I am sure she will read with great interest what has been said. The present arrangements are the outcome of an original scheme launched over a quarter of a century ago. Various modifications and additions have been made since then. These changes were reasonable and appropriate at the time they were made, but whether the service effectively meets the needs of the present day is rather questionable. I am sure that in due course the noble Baroness will present us with proposals to ensure that the service is improved. We expect to receive her report next year—though perhaps not until late summer—and I do not think it would be sensible for me to try to anticipate her recommendations
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now. We feel that it would be quite wrong to make piecemeal changes whilst awaiting the report.
Certainly we still continue to take note of the preferential treatment hitherto accorded to the disabled in this field, too. I listened with interest to what the noble Lord said about the package deal on the vehicle front, introduced by my right honourable friend in February. This has caused some apprehension, I know, among the disabled. I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity of discussing the whole matter with representatives of BLESMA the other day, and I listened most sympathetically to what they had to say. We are still talking matters over with them; but I think it is right just to recall that there were many benefits from the changes which were made last February, although, as the noble Lord said, it is perfectly true that a few war pensioners did get less in the way of grants as a result of the total provisions of the package deal.
If one leaves aside for a moment the National Health patients (because we are not really discussing them this evening) there are very large numbers of war pensioners—now over 300—who under the scheme are now getting cars for which before last February they would not have been eligible. Those of your Lordships who know the details of the invalid vehicle scheme will know that before these changes were made those who suffered a severe mobility handicap from a disability unconnected with the loco-motor system—for example, a weakness in the heart or lung—were eligible for help only if they needed a vehicle to get to work. Such people are now judged on the degree of their disability and not on its basic nature. This change has resulted in over 300 war pensioners being helped. However, I am sure it is right for us to await receipt of the report of the noble Baroness before going further.
The other point worth noting is that, in relation to services for the war disabled, more than 300 additional war cases have been helped—largely out of savings on the National Heath Service side, because there is an economy whenever a National Health Service patient accepts a car maintenance allowance instead of one of the Department's three-wheelers. So to that extent the preference has gone to the war pensioner. As to the question of

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the withdrawal of a car, this is a very sensitive area and one on which my colleague, Mr. Michael Alison, has been having further conversations with BLESMA, and also recently with Mr. Dunham. I can say that he has undertaken personally to consider any case where the withdrawal of a car rightly arises and to correspond with the relevant voluntary body before reaching a decision. In fact there have been only three cases so far. I can assure your Lordships that this is something we are very anxious to see administered fairly.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, for mentioning the work of Remploy to which I should like to pay tribute. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Inglewood for his kind remarks about the Department's welfare efforts in this field. Finally, I am grateful, again, to the noble Lord, Lord Maybray-King.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, with regard to Remploy, I asked whether the noble Lord could give an assurance that if there are opportunities for expanding their work they will not he restricted by a ceiling on the Treasury grant.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I remembered that question, but I am afraid I cannot give the noble Lord an answer now. Perhaps I may write to him later.
LORD MAYBRAY-KING: My Lords, I should first like to thank the noble Lord for the patient and detailed way in which he has replied to the points made in the debate. I expect from him sympathy and courtesy, and he has shown these in the way in which he answered this debate. I hope that the debate has been useful. I hope that it will show the ex-Serviceman outside that Parliament still remembers and Parliament still cares. I know that the organisations of ex-Servicemen will study every word that the Minister has said; will extract what comfort they can from the points he has made and will be at him again and again—as they have been at Minister after Minister ever since 1945.
The participation of Lord Inglewood, himself a former Minister of Pensions, in this debate serves to illustrate the warm-heartedness that all the time has
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pervaded the Department that the noble Lord the Minister himself represents today. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, also took part in this debate to remind us that the problems I have been talking about over the last two wars still obtain for the Serviceman in Northern Ireland—the Serviceman who is serving with the same courage and devotion as did the men who served in two world wars. My Lords, I ask leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.