Lords Sitting of 27 July 1972

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

LORD BALLANTRAE
Sir Bernard Edward Fergusson, G.C.M.G., G.C.V.O., D.S.O., O.B.E., Auchairne in the County of Ayr and of the Bay of Islands in New Zealand, for life-Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Bourne and the Lord Caccia.

MARITIME INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT AREAS
3.17 p.m.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what conclusions they have drawn from their study of the possible demands by bulk raw material users for development of maritime industrial development areas as originally proposed by the National Ports Council.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN): My Lords, I have nothing to add to my Answers of April 26 and June 15. The detailed consideration of the study has yet to be completed.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, in rising for the third time to thank my noble friend for that uninformative Answer, may I ask him whether he is aware that it is now 12 weeks since he told us that studies of studies of studies were proceeding? Is he aware that when the last set of studies was set in hand 16 months ago the object was to get an answer by last Christmas, and we are now therefore seven months behind?
LORD DRUMALBYN: Yes, my Lords, I am aware that it has taken some time
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to get full consideration of this subject; but I can tell my noble friend that, in the meantime, the information that is in the Report is being used, and has already been drawn on.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, could my noble friend tell us a little more about that, because we are left in the dark? Is he not aware that a neglect of our deep water sites could lead us to be, not an off-shore island but an off-shire islet in the European Community which is so near to the Government's heart?
LORD DRUMALBYN: Yes, my Lords; but this particular study was not carried out specifically to determine whether or not there should be a maritime industrial development area but to provide general background information to help with the decisions on possible planning applications over a number of years.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, could my noble friend tell us whether there is any chance of the information which has been assembled being made available?
LORD DRUMALBYN: Not yet, at any rate, my Lords. It has still to be considered by Departments, then it will be considered by Ministers, and then the Ministers will decide how and in what form any information should be made available.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, have the Government not got other deep water problems on their minds?
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that if British industry was in fact largely based on navigable water frontage then 99 per cent. of all their present troubles would be at an end?

ROYAL PARKS: ERECTION OF HIGH BUILDINGS
3.19 p.m.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what planning permission has been given, or is under consideration, for the erection of buildings over 80 feet high

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within a quarter of a mile of the perimeter of any Royal Park in London.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, this is primarily a matter for the London borough councils as local planning authorities, though my right honourable friend has to be consulted about any proposed development which is within half a mile of a Royal Park or might

London Borough

Location

Type of Development

Current Position

1. Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

121–127 Kensington High Street.

Hotel

Permission granted.

2. City of Westminster

61–69 Victoria Street

Hotel, flats, shops

Permission granted.

3. City of Westminster

Army and Navy Stores, Victoria Street.

Shops, offices, residential.

Permission granted.

4. City of Westminster

Victoria Street/Carlisle Place.

Offices

Application under consideration.

5. City of Westminster

Windsor House/Iddesleigh House, Victoria Street.

Offices, shops, residential.

Permission granted.

6. City of Westminster

21–59 Victoria Street

Offices, shops

Application under consideration.

7. City of Westminster

117A–169A Victoria Street

Offices, shops

Permission granted.

8. City of Westminster

Buckingham Gate/Palmer Street/Caxon Street.

Offices, residential

Permission granted.

9. City of Westminster

1–7 Rutland Gate

Offices, Cultural Institute.

2 applications under consideration (by Secretary of State).

10. City of Westminster

Park Road/Lodge Road

Hotel, flats

Permission granted.

11. City of Westminster

6 Princes Gate

Offices

Permission granted.

12. City of Westminster

34–5 Prince Albert Road

Flats

Permission granted.

13. City of Westminster

75 Prince Albert Road

Flats

Permission granted.

14. City of Westminster

Bayswater Road/Lancaster Gate/Elms Mews.

Hotel

Permisison granted.

15. City of Westminster

Park Road

Mosque

Application under consideration (by Secretary of State).

LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for that reply. May I ask whether he is aware of the statement made by the chairman of the Royal Institute of British Architects the other day, that there are about 30 examples of planning permissions which have been given pending the falling-in of the leases on the latter property, and that when the leases fall-in it will be possible to proceed with the building without any further bother?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am aware of the correspondence, but I do not know the source of the chairman's information. I should be glad to be told of it. As regards unused planning permissions, any development for which permission was granted before April 1, 1969, must be begun before April 1,
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affect the amenities of the Park. Since June, 1970, he has been consulted about some twenty proposals for buildings over 80 feet in height and within a quarter of a mile of a Royal Park. I will, with permission, circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT details of the 15 of those for which planning permission has been granted or which are the subject of a current application. Six of these relate to proposals for the redevelopment of Victoria Street.
Following is the information referred to:
1974, if the permission is not to expire. A time limit is generally imposed on new permissions granted since April 1, 1969. The effect of these provisions generally is that there cannot now be a substantial time lag between the granting of permission and the start of building.
LORD REIGATE: My Lords, my noble friend carefully said "since June, 1970". Can he tell us how many more skycrapers are "in the pipeline" which were afforded permission before June, 1970?
LORD SANDFORD: Not without notice, my Lords, and a very considerable amount of research. I thought it necessary to draw the line in answer to the noble Lord's first question; but if noble Lords want to press me further

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within the bounds of what is reasonable I will attempt to answer further questions.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: My Lords, have we not reached a time when there ought to be less confusion and when we should know more simply where authority lies? Would not the Minister agree that if any future Ministers should agree to a Hilton Hotel or a Knightsbridge Barracks their heads should be for the chopper? Unless we can get much more clarity here, shall we not have the same old game of bat and ball between central and local government?
LORD SANDFORD: No, my Lords, I would not agree that there is any confusion about this. The General Development Order is quite clear. Local planning authorities are required to consult the Secretary of State before granting planning permission for the development of land which is within two miles of Windsor Castle, Windsor Great Park, Windsor Home Park, or within half a mile of any other Royal Palace or Park, or which might affect the amenities of the Parks.
LORD BERNSTEIN: My Lords, would the noble Lord be good enough to inquire from the Canadian Government how they dealt with the problem of their capital, Ottawa; and how they protected the areas around Government buildings? They appointed a commission many years ago, and no building may be erected now without the approval of this commission; and there is a public announcement prior to approval of the planning.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I should be interested to look into that point.
LORD REIGATE: My Lords, has not the time now come when this matter should be taken out of the hands of the Westminster City Council? As regards the centre of capital cities, this has been done not only in Ottawa but with far longer precedence in Washington, D.C.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, that raises wider issues on which I will not comment without notice.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, why is it only those areas within
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the precincts of Government buildings that should be protected? Is it not a fact that such hideous buildings are now being erected that there should be general control over these architects, and the Government should ask all local authorities to submit their major schemes to them before they are perpetrated?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, we are getting on to quite a different topic—also a very important one. This is an area in which the role of the Royal Fine Art Commission comes in and I ought not to deal with this without a further Question being put down.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, is it not true that the result of leaving this very important matter of planning to the borough councils is that the character of London is being converted into an ugly monstrosity? Ought there not to be greater co-ordination among borough councils, possibly leading to some exercise of control by a Government Department, or even by the Greater London Council?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I think the most recent experience was with Piccadilly Circus and that indicated that in the case of an important site my right honourable friend is ready to call in an application for his own consideration.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, is the noble Lord going to reply to his noble friend behind him who asked about the number of skyscrapers in pipelines? Does he not think that pushing skyscrapers through pipelines is something of an unfair industrial practice?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, the Question I have to answer is the original one about Royal Parks.
LORD BURNTWOOD: My Lords, will the Minister be very cautious when questions of taste and design are raised about new buildings? Will he remember that when Buckingham Palace was first erected it was considered to be absolutely ghastly and unlikely to be tenanted by any decent monarch?
A NOBLE LORD: Well?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I have learned over the last two years to be very cautious on these matters.
LORD PARGITER: My Lords, would not the Minister agree that it is unfortunate that planning should be fragmented to the extent that it is?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I do not agree that planning is fragmented.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, would not the Minister agree that it is time we joined the European Economic Community and did not imitate New York?

MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES ADMISSION CHARGES
3.28 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I beg leave the ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper,
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether a Statement can now be made in connection with free access on one day weekly at certain national museums and galleries, if and when admission charges are introduced.
THE PAYMASTER GENERAL (VISCOUNT ECCLES): My Lords, discussions with the museums and galleries concerned have not been completed. The Trustees of the Tate Gallery, however, have made an interesting proposal. They want to open the Gallery without charge from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays for an experimental period of one year. They will find half the cost of invigilating during those free periods from a special donation and half from funds at their disposal. Subject to the whole cost of the experiment being met without recourse to public funds, the Government warmly welcome this particular proposal.
LORD STABOLGI: My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for that reply. May I ask him therefore to confirm whether the trustees who wish to have free days and wish to make similar flexible arrangements will not be opposed in their proposals by the Government?
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, that depends on whether the particular form in which the trustees might wish to have free days interferes or does not interfere with the main financial proposals of charging.
LORD MAYBRAY-KING: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that there are those who admire all he has done in the field of education and culture and that they would admire him more if he acted either to persuade the Government to drop the Bill or at least to grant the concessions which obtain in almost every museum and gallery in every other country in the world?
VISCOUNT ECCLES: No, my Lords. We have debated this point many times. It remains my firm conviction that the result of charging will, on balance, greatly increase the attraction, the size and the amenities of our main museums.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, would the noble Viscount agree that the "if" in the wording of this Question is far more important than the "when", and is there not still a distinct possibility that the "when" may not be realised?
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, the other place will be taking the final stages of the Bill shortly.

FUTURE BUSINESS AND THE SUMMER RECESS
3.30 p.m.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, I think it would perhaps be useful if I informed noble Lords as soon as possible of the plans for the Recess. I intimated to your Lordships last Tuesday that I hoped very much that it would be possible for the House to rise on August 11 and, subject to the progress of Business, I can confirm that this is the case. It is also proposed that the House should resume on Monday, September 11, in order to continue with the Committee stage of the Local Government Bill and take the remaining stages of the European Communities Bill. I think it would be unwise for me to commit myself as to how long we shall be sitting in September, but certainly it is my devout hope that we shall complete our business in September within two weeks.
I should also inform your Lordships that at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m., with the leave of the House, my noble friend Lord Sandford will be making a Statement on railway finance.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Earl for that Statement. No doubt he has taken note of the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alport, on the management of Business, and it might strengthen his hand, in the efforts that I know he is making to an unsympathetic Government to have mercy on the House of Lords, if we were to have an opportunity to debate that Motion. But since there is no possible time now, we will not press it.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I note what the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has said, and a sympathetic Government are aware of the position.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, following the urgent representations I made to my noble friend in the interests of providing refreshment for noble Lords, not to continue after August 11, I should like to express my grateful thanks and, I am sure, the grateful thanks of the hard-pressed Refreshment Department.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for what he has said. His representations did have considerable weight, though I must admit that a degree of self-interest was involved.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, is it a fact that the Sittings of the House are determined by our catering facilities?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think they are determined by our love of amenity and also by the forceful nature of the representations made to me by my noble friend. But a number of factors were taken into account.
LORD PARGITER: My Lords, is there any significance between the two dates, August 11 and August 12?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think we had that rather old joke yesterday.

GLAMORGAN COUNTY COUNCIL BILL [H.L.]*
The Queen's Consent signified, read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
THAMES CONSERVANCY BILL
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

BRITISH LIBRARY BILL [H.L.]
3.34 p.m.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Amendments be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Amendments be now considered.—(Viscount Eccles.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[References are to Bill 142 as first printed for the Commons.]
[No. 1]
After Clause 5 insert the following new clause:
Consultation on terms and conditions of employment of staff
" .—(1) It shall be the duty of the British Library Board to seek consultation with any organisation appearing to them to be appropriate with a view to the conclusion between the Board and that organisation of such agreements as appear to the parties to be desirable with respect to the establishment and maintenance of machinery for the settlement by negotiation of terms and conditions of employment of persons employed by the Board with provision for reference to arbitration in default of such settlement in such cases as may be determined by or under the agreements; and
(2) It shall be the duty of the Board to seek consultation with any organisation appearing to them to be appropriate with a view to the conclusion between the Board and that organisation of such agreements as appear to the parties to be desirable with respect to the establishment and maintenance of machinery for the promotion and encouragement of measures affecting the safety, health and welfare of persons employed by the Board and the discussion of other matters of mutual interest to the Board and such persons including efficiency in the operation of the services of the Board."
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1. Your Lordships will remember that during our debates on this Bill I gave an undertaking to consult the staff on future conditions, and this undertaking is now

1503
embodied in the new clause. The clause was proposed in another place by Mr. Moyle and we agreed that it is better to have this matter in the Bill, and that the clause could be inserted at this point just as well as in the Schedule.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Viscount Eccles.)
BARONESS LEE of ASHERIDGE: My Lords, as this Amendment is a clarification of a principle on which we are all agreed, I do not wish to detain your Lordships other than to say that we on this side of the House accept it.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[No. 2.]
In the Schedule, page 6, line 45, at end insert—
(" Disqualification of paid members of Board from membership of House of Commons
. In Part III of Schedule 1 to the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1957 (which specifies offices the holders of which are disqualified under that Act) as it applies to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, there shall be inserted at the appropriate point in alphabetical order the entry " Any member of the British Library Board in receipt of remuneration".")
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 2. We debated at some length the question of the disqualification of Members of Parliament to be members of the British Library Board. Several of your Lordships said in that debate that this was a matter for the other place. When the Bill was debated there in Committee, a free vote was taken and the clause disqualifying Members of Parliament was removed. But the Under-Secretary of State agreed to put down on Report stage an Amendment which would make clear that Members of Parliament could not become members of the Board if they received any remuneration. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Viscount Eccles.)
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: My Lords, we on this side of the House certainly agree with the Commons on the Amendment. I should like one point
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cleared up. If Members of the other place are to be appointed as part-time members of boards and should be called to meetings at a time when the House is not sitting and when they would not be entitled to use their travel vouchers, is it understood that a Member would be entitled to have any travelling or other expenses paid? I should like to be clear about that. It seems to me unfair that we should go to the extreme of asking a Member of the other place, not only to serve unpaid but also to be out of pocket in respect of travelling or other expenses.
This Amendment is good, so far as it goes, but I am still far from being convinced that it is right that we should have the anomalous situation of a Member of Parliament serving unpaid when other members of the board are being paid. I believe that we need not have got into this position if, instead of paying salaries to part-time members of boards, we paid expenses and an honorarium. There is no reason why the honorarium should not be generous; but I am not happy about the developing situation in which part-time members of boards, whether boards of this kind or boards in respect of museums, galleries, hospitals and other concerns, are paid a salary. Members are selected from among men, and occasionally women, who have long and distinguished records of service. Often they are asked to go abroad in an advisory capacity. I do not like the growth of the idea that at a certain time in one's career one starts gathering together part-time directorships and membership of boards. That could easily lead to certain abuses. We do not want to encourage it. I would rather that we kept to the very fine principle that we have in this country, of expecting people to do a certain amount of voluntary service. We shall not ask people to serve on these boards if they do not have a great deal of knowledge on the subject. Among their number may be distinguished professors or librarians who will be drawing a salary. Therefore I do not think we are doing a service to the Library. I want to see those voluntary part-time members playing a very important part. They will not only bring special knowledge from different parts of the country but they will also be representing the users.

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The Minister said during an earlier debate that in this new great adventure some original decisions might need to be modified. I hope we shall have an adequate number of part-time members so that they will be able to do their jobs as watchdogs and as representatives of users, as well as bringing in their own specialised knowledge. We accept this Amendment but, speaking for myself at least, I would rather there had been a different method of payment.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, in answer to the noble Baroness's first question, the Amendment reads:
"Any member of the British Library Board in receipt of remuneration".
To the best of my knowledge—and I admit I am not a lawyer—"remuneration" does not cover travelling expenses. That is to say, you can claim travelling expenses from wherever you are to the Board meetings, but "remuneration" certainly does exclude any form of allowance for the work which you are carrying on. I think we have to leave the matter there, because this was the word which the Commons wished to have inserted and they must have thought out exactly what it meant.
On the second point of the noble Baroness, I rather fear she is still under the misapprehension that she entertained at an earlier stage of the Bill. There is nothing to prevent the Secretary of State appointing part-time members who do not wish to receive any form of salary. Indeed, one may well suppose that there always will be men and women of that kind who will say, "I should like to do this as a piece of voluntary work"; but experience now shows that there are other men and women with exactly the qualities which you want to whom a small salary is really important. In order not to miss the aid of those people—and from the point of view of the Museum service that I knew I personally should be very sorry if we did—I am sure it is right to give the Secretary of State discretion to pay a part-time salary if he or she thinks it is necessary in order to persuade a person to serve. I hope that the House will accept the Amendment.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Viscount Eccles.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[No. 3.]
In the Schedule, page 7, line 2, leave out paragraph 6.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 3. The words which it is proposed to omit, "subject to any directitons given by the Secretary of State", were in our clause only because it was thought that the Board might behave rather as the old Board of Trade behaved and meet only once or twice a year. It was felt that possibly it was right to give the Secretary of State the power to say that this Board should meet at least six times a year. But I really am sympathetic to the Amendment proposed by the other place because I have great confidence in the Board and do not think they will neglect their duty. Therefore I recommend to your Lordships that we agree to this Amendment, which leaves the timetable of the Board's meetings and other arrangements that they may make entirely to the Board members themselves.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Viscount Eccles.)
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: My Lords, I certainly agree. I think it is very important that when we appoint responsible men and women to boards of this kind we should not think that they need either a wet nurse or a dry nurse to tell them how to go about their duty; and without any disrespect to the present Minister, or any of his posisble successors, I think it is very wise that these words should be deleted.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[No. 4]
In the Schedule, page 7, line 9, leave out ("subject to any directions given by the Secretary of State ").
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I should apologise to your Lordships because I have already spoken to this Amendment, No. 4 by mistake, instead of to Amendment No. 3.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Viscount? Does he consider that what he has done is

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perhaps due to the influence of the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth?
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 4.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Viscount Eccles.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
3.46 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD POLWARTH): My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Amendments be now considered.
Moved, that the Commons Amendments be now considered.—(Lord Polwarth.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[References are to Bill 173 as first printed for the Commons.]
[No. 1]
Clause 56, page 56, line 11, at end insert—
("(6) If it appears to the local planning authority to be urgent that a building preservation notice should come into force, they may instead of serving the notice on the owner, lessee and occupier of the building to which it relates, affix the notice conspicuously to some object on the building; and this shall be treated for all the purposes of this section and of Schedule 10 to this Act as service of the said notice, in relation to which subsection (1)(b) of this section shall be taken to include a reference to this subsection.").
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I beg to move that the House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1. I suggest that it would be convenient to your Lordships if we were to consider with it Amendment No. 3, which is consequential. The need for these Amendments arises from a late change made in the Town and Country Planning (Amendment) Bill which was considered, so far as Commons Amendments were concerned, by your Lordships on Monday of this week. The essentials of the Amendment Bill which apply to Scotland are already incorporated in Schedule 21 of
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this Consolidation Bill, but following the Amendment approved by both Houses in relation to the Amendment Bill it is necessary to adjust this Consolidation Bill, otherwise the consolidation measure would not fully reflect Scottish planning law. The Amendment with which we are concerned is one which your Lordships will recollect from the Town and Country Planning (Amendment) Bill, to the effect that:
"in cases of urgency a building preservation notice can be affixed to the building with the same effect as if it had been served upon the owner, lessee or occupier."
My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Lord Polwarth.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[No. 2.]
Schedule 21, page 320, line 40, leave out ("section") and insert ("Act").
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, this is a minor drafting Amendment. It has the effect of defining the phrase, "Act of 1972" in Clause 9 of the Town and Country Planning (Amendment) Bill as referring to the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1972. This is the definition used in Clause 8 of the said Amendment Bill. The omission of the definition from Clause 9 was corrected in another place at the Committee stage. As I have said, this is entirely a matter of drafting, and I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Lord Polwarth.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[No. 3]
Schedule 23, page 350, line 34, leave out ("11(1)(b)") and insert ("Sections 7(2) and 12(1)(b)").
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 3.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Lord Polwarth.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

HOUSING (FINANCIAL PROVISIONS) (SCOTLAND) BILL
3.50 p.m.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Amendments be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Amendments be now considered.—(Lord Polwarth.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT AND COMMONS AMENDMENT THERETO
[References are to Bill 149 as first printed for the Commons.]

LORDS AMENDMENT
[No. 1]
Clause 72, page 58, line 9, at end insert—
(" ( ) In subsection (1) for the words from "there has" to "this Act" there shall be substituted the words "a local authority—

(a) have failed effectively to discharge any of their functions under Part II, III or IV of the Housing (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1972; or

(b) have failed so to discharge any function conferred on them by that Act or any other enactment as to secure the effective discharge of any of their functions under those Parts of that Act;")

The Commons agreed to this Amendment, but proposed the following Amendment thereto:
Line 2, leave out (" shall be ") and insert (" were ").
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment to the Lords' Amendment No. 1. This is intended to correct a grammatical error of drafting by substituting the word " were " for the words " shall be " in line 2. By so doing there is no change of sense. The present drafting produces a reading as follows:
"Section 195 of the Act of 1966 … shall have effect as if—
( ) In subsection (1) … there shall be substituted …".
This is manifestly grammatically incorrect and obviously the word " were " is appropriate in the context. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Lord Polwarth.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT AND COMMONS REASON
[No. 2.]
Clause 81, page 64, leave out lines 35 to 38.
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:
Because it is thought desirable that certain provisions of the Bill be brought into force before the expiration of a period of one month from the date on which it is passed.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 2 to which the Commons have disagreed. This is because it is thought desirable that certain provisions of the Bill should be brought into force before the expiration of a period of one month from the date on which it is passed. The provision for the Commencement Order was originally incorporated in the Bill at the Report stage in another place. As some of your Lordships will recollect, at the Report stage in this House it was deleted amidst what I can only describe as a measure of confusion for which I must accept my full share of responsibility, though I do not think the confusion was entirely limited to this side of the House. I understand that the affair has already been enshrined in Hansard of another place under the description of the "Polwarth muddle". I felt a few moments ago that I was in good company on this matter. I hope I do not have this effect on any other noble Lords on the Bench beside me. Perhaps your Lordships will agree that I should not detain you unduly by going over in detail the purpose of this clause. The effect in brief is that, by enabling provisions of the Bill to be brought into force at any time after the Royal Assent, local authorities will be given the maximum possible time to prepare for playing their part in implementing their responsibilities under the measure. I beg to move.
Moved. That this House doth not insist on their Amendment (No. 2) to which the Commons have disagreed.—(Lord Polwarth.)
LORD HOY: My Lords, I should like to say how much I personally disagree with the Commons with regard to this Amendment. This particular clause has a long record. When it was first put into the Bill in another place the Government slipped it in at the last minute and, as a consequence of the Guillotine

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Motion, it was never discussed in another place. The matter came to your Lordships' House and we had a little more time to deal with it. I will not describe it as the " Polwarth muddle " or as anyone else's muddle. I think that for the first time Members of Parliament had a little time to consider the matter and, very rightly, came to the conclusion that it ought not to be in the Bill and threw it out. The noble Lord says that the reason is that local authorities must have time to consider the legislation, but he knows perfectly well that that is not correct. There was an instance quoted in another place yesterday. By Statute, the Town Council of Dundee never meet during the month of August. If they want to change the rule they have to give a year's notice to do so. Whatever might be done, that council cannot deal with this legislation. There are many other local authorties—and this must be known to your Lordships—who do not meet during August at all. I think that your Lordships' House rightly came to the decision, with the concurrence of the Government. that this provision ought to be thrown out of the Bill. For the first time we did it unanimously. I do not know about its being done inadvertently; I would not accuse the Government of being so incompetent. The Bill went back to another place, and the Government decided to contradict your Lordships and to put the provision back in again.
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, is not quite right in saying that we did it unanimously. I understand that certain noble Lords on the other side of the House said that they were " Not Content " on that Amendment.
LORD HOY: My Lords, all I want to say is that the decision of your Lordships was recorded as a unanimous one. No Division took place. This unanimity was all-pervading. We thought we were entitled to a little more respect from another place. The fact that your Lordships, having reaching a unanimous decision, should have it thrown back at them again is intolerable. Furthermore, the reason the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, has given to-day for asking us to agree is not correct. But I must leave it to your Lordships to decide whether we should
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say to another place, "We have considered the matter very politely, and we have reached the conclusion that we ought to insist on our opinion as the best one that we have formed so far."
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, are we to have no reply from the noble Lord? In view of the fact that noble Lords opposite tend to persist in their error and failure to understand the procedure of the House, I am shocked that the Acting Chief Whip should have said that the House was not united on this matter. There was no Division on the Amendment. The decision to accept it was unanimous, because if a decision is arrived at nem. con., or with nobody voting against,—and nobody did vote against it—it reaches its final stages by unanimous decision. I think that the noble Lord ought to take some instructions in procedure if he is to advise us.
I am deeply worried for the Government. The noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, has stood, as I thought unnecessarily, in sackcloth and ashes. It is the responsibility of the Whips to see that their side votes correctly. I must support my noble friend in this matter. This Amendment was seriously discussed and was voted on in another place. I must object to Ministers in another place suggesting that my noble friend Lord Hughes was in a muddle on this matter. We do our best to help the Government, If they shout, "Wrong" we try to shout, "Right" for them. I even tried to point out that the Government were in trouble because this is the chivalry that the Opposition—at any rate, the present Opposition—always show to an incompetent Government. Now the noble Lord, Lord Denham, comes along and says that the decision here was not unanimous. I can only say that if the noble Lord persists in this we can refer the matter to the Procedure Committee; or, if he wishes, we can now adjourn the debate in order to get the matter clear before the Government fall into more trouble. The fact is that the Opposition very quickly knew the position after being misled. I do not blame the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, in this matter. It is unfair to talk about the "Polwarth muddle". I resent that, and I think it is in the Acting Chief Whip's department that the inquiry has to take place.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord most warmly for his efforts, however belated, on that occasion to extricate me from that position, may I address myself in reply to the point raised on the subject of the Amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Hoy? He said, quite rightly, that certain local authorities do not meet during the month of August. Nevertheless, there are others who do, and this will enable work to be proceeded with by officials and by others in the meanwhile and therefore reduce the rush at the last moment.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

HARBOURS DEVELOPMENT (SCOTLAND) BILL
Brought from the Commons; real 1a, and to be printed.
CONTRACTS OF EMPLOYMENT BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to.
ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to, with Amendments: the said Amendments to be printed.
NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to, with Amendments: the said Amendments to be printed.

WHITE FISH (INSHORE VESSELS) AND HERRING SUBSIDIES (UNITED KINGDOM) SCHEME 1972
4.3 p.m.
LORD POLWARTH LORD POLWARTH rose to move, That the White Fish (Inshore Vessels) and Herring Subsidies (United Kingdom) Scheme 1972, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Scheme before the House provides for operating subsidies for the 12 months from August 1
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for inshore white fish vessels under 80 ft. in length and all herring vessels. It does not concern the deep-sea fleet dealt with under another Scheme which has a further year to run. The earnings of the fleet have risen continuously over the past few years. In 1969 earnings from white fish and herring amounted to £19·3 million, rising in 1970 to £22·8 million, and last year they rose further to £29·5 million. In the first six months of this year they have increased by £4·1 million, that is about 30 per cent., compared with the same period of 1971.
Average profits after depreciation have also been rising. In 1971 they were £2,200 per vessel; that is more than double the 1969 level. The industry is therefore in a strong financial position and the Government have reached the conclusion that a reduction in the subsidy level is justified. In last year's debate the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, felt that there might be something sinister in the statement made in another place that the 1971 settlement was generous and would have to be taken into account in future years. Since then, as I have said, earnings and profits have risen substantially. While I accept that fishing has its uncertainties there is every indication that earnings and profits will rise further this year. So, my Lords, in reaching our decision on subsidy rates we could not disregard the continuing upward trend in profits and the consequently decreasing importance of subsidy in relation to the industry's finances. We have therefore decided to reduce the present rates generally by about 20 per cent., compared with those approved by your Lordships last year. The proposed new rates are set out in Schedules 2 and 3 to the scheme.
The effect of these proposals will be to reduce subsidy assistance by about £300,000 in a full year and by about £125,000 in the present calendar year. There is only one change in the Scheme conditions to which I should draw your Lordships' attention. We have amended the definition of " gross proceeds " in paragraph 1(2) of the scheme to allow any earnings additional to those from the catch to be taken into account in determining whether a particular voyage should qualify for voyage rates. Where these earnings are greater than the value of the white fish and herring catch,

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stonage rates will be paid within a maximum of the appropriate daily rate. For example, any receipts from salvage or from angling party charters, which I understand is becoming an increasingly important activity in some parts of the country for some vessels, would be taken into account with any fish landings made by the owner in determining the appropriate subsidy payable. We do not expect that this provision will apply in many cases.
Moved, That the White Fish (Inshore Vessels) and Herring Subsidies (United Kingdom) Scheme 1972, be approved.—(Lord Polwarth.)
LORD HOY: My Lords, the announcement made by the Minister of State means, of course, that there is a very substantial cut in the subsidy to the fishing industry. The figure of £300,000, being 20 per cent., represents a reduction of subsidy from £1½ million to £1,200,000, so by any standard this is very substantial indeed. I do not know what negotiations took place before the decision was arrived at, nor what the association or their representatives had to say. The noble Lord omitted to tell us what consultations they had with the industry before the decision was reached and what the industry's repercussions were. I should have thought that when a reduction so substantial as this was going to be made it must have met with considerable opposition. It is true that for many years I have taken part in these debates, and it is equally true that one has about two speeches one delivers over this long number of years, depending on which side of the House one is sitting, so I am going to deliver the one that represents the Opposition side.
What I cannot understand is that this has proved so acceptable. I can remember on occasions when I was proposing cuts—absolutely minimum compared with what the noble Lord is presenting this afternoon—that I met with violent opposition from representatives of the fishing industry, and no greater opponent than the present Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. It did not matter how well the industry was doing, he could prove beyond any shadow of doubt that we had no right to make cuts at all. The Secretary of State for Scotland was a tremendous supporter
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of the fishing industry in those days, and he took good care that no cuts in subsidy were made. It may be that the figures are such that the industry is doing fairly well economically. I do not want to say, "I told you so", but the noble Lord will not be unaware that it was in our day (I do not want to claim any personal credit for it except that it was my responsibility) that we reformed the whole basis of subsidy of the fishing industry to give it a stability that it had never had before. However, I did not think we had moved so quickly that in a couple of years we would cut the rate by 20 per cent. It may be that the industry has agreed to it. Personally I have had no protest. All I can think is that the industry apparently alters its opinions, too, whichever Government is in power.
I understand that there is some proposal to cut the advertising subsidy. Is this true? The industry makes a contribution to an advertising scheme—I can never remember whether it is the inshore or deep-water fleet which does this but I raise it in case I may have overlooked it. It may be it is on the deep-water side and not the inshore side. If the noble Lord is saying to us that the scheme will go on as it is except that payments will be reduced by 20 per cent. all I can say is that I hope his optimism is justified. What we have to consider and what the House has to remember is that this industry may be in considerable difficulty very soon, because if Iceland cuts our rights to go into waters up to the extent of 50 miles there is going to be considerable over-fishing in the waters that remain to us. This might well mean a considerable change in the fortunes of the fishing industry, so I would beg the noble Lord not to be too optimistic about it and not to say that the out-turn of one year's accounts entitles him to make this cut of 20 per cent., considering what the repercussions might be on the industry in the near future.
While on this occasion and at this time we might agree to the proposal, I hope he would be able to give us an assurance that should there be a turn in the tide of the fishing industry he will, along with his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, take quick steps to put the industry right if this is the position it will then face.
4.10 p.m.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, has a wide and flexible vocabulary. I am sure it includes the word "housewife", but that word was not used at any stage of his speech. If this subsidy is to be cut we can naturally assume that the shipowners will require their net earnings after all their operations to be somewhat equivalent to the earnings which they secure to-day. The only way they can do so is by raising the price of their fish. I know all about the auctions, and so on, that are conducted on docksides, but if the people in the industry are to make as much money as they are making to-day, and if the subsidy which contributes to that money is to be cut, then obviously the price of fish on the market to the housewife will go up.
I speak feelingly because I live almost entirely on fish. Every time I say to my wife, "Let us have lemon sole today," she says, "But lemon sole has gone up since last week". If I turn to Scottish salmon it is the same. One of the scandals with which the housewife is harassed to-day is that fish prices are rising week after week. I grieve very much to hear that the subsidy is to be cut for the sake of this amount—I will not call it a miserable sum; £120,000 is not a miserable sum to people like me. If they are going to dislocate the operations of this industry and bring about increased market prices the Government are making a mistake. I would add one postscript to my few remarks. Is the subsidy going to be paid to all the "fish masters" or only to those who undergo a means test as in the Housing Finance Bill?
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I appreciate those two contributions, both from noble Lords with considerable experience of the subject, one from the production end and the other clearly from the consumption end. The noble Lord, Lord Hoy, asked about consultation. I understand that the associations concerned were consulted in the normal way. I cannot give details of the discussions but I can assure the noble Lord that they have made no criticism to the Government about the extent of the cut. In that connection I should point out that cuts have been made in the past. Out of five schemes introduced by the Administration of
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which, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, was a member at the time in another place, the subsidy was reduced in 1965, 1966 and 1967 by an overall total of about 30 per cent., although I appreciate that circumstances may then have been different. Therefore, this is nothing new. At that time, however, earnings and profits were much lower in real terms than they are now. In the light of the trend of profits which I gave to your Lordships earlier it would be difficult to justify the taxpayer maintaining this amount of support and we do not feel that a 20 per cent. cut is excessive.
The noble Lord asked for an assurance about the future. Of course we shall watch this. This is an annual event. If circumstances change and the trend appears to be likely to be reversed, I can assure him that we shall look at it speedily in relation to the next year's review. On the question of advertising I understand that this is in the nature of a levy and not a subsidy. It is a White Fish Authority publicity levy which is payable by merchants to the White Fish Authority. The Minister of Agriculture has announced the steps which he will be taking to bring this levy to an end. That is all the information I can give to the noble Lord. It is not connected with the Scheme before us.
We all appreciate the problem posed by Iceland. I do not think this is the time to go into it further. It is still under discussion and may well come under judicial discussion if a solution is not reached before long.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

BRITISH RAILWAYS FINANCES
4.15 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, with the agreement of your Lordships' House I should like at this point to repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister for Transport Industries concerning the finances of the British Railways Board. The following is the Statement:
" Despite the Board's efforts to cut costs, their financial position has deteriorated over the past year. Price restraint reduced their income: the

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coal strike caused a loss of traffic and reduced income by £18 million: £10 million of business was lost through the subsequent rail pay dispute: the high level of the settlement has added to the Board's costs.
" As was always clear, the Board will therefore need to make fare increases in September to help meet the cost of the settlement.
" Even so, the Board now expect a deficit of £40 million in 1972—over and above the amount of £27 million we provided in the Transport (Grants) Act—and a comparable amount in 1973. The Board at my request have, since the autumn, been reviewing their long-term prospects. It is clear that some new financial support will be needed and that new legislation will be required. There is an immediate need to meet their cash flow shortfall, which amounts to some £50 million-£60 million over the rest of 1972. A Supplementary Estimate will be presented to the House in due course in respect of this requirement. Any sums needed in the meanwhile will be issued from the Contingencies Fund.
" I have also to-day given my consent to proposals from the Railways Board for restructuring their field organisation. These proposals, and the reasons for them, were described in the Board's Second Report on Organisation which I laid before Parliament on April 21. They involve the creation of 8 Territories to replace the present structure based on Regions and Divisions, which no longer meets today's requirements. The changes are expected to result in further staff reductions of between 4,500 and 6,500, but these should largely be accounted for by normal staff turnover. The Board estimate that the changes will save at least £10 million a year in administrative costs after full implementation. The Board have assured me that they will do their utmost to minimise the adverse effects and inevitable inconvenience to their staff."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
4.19 p.m.
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sandford,
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for repeating that Statement. We can welcome the fact that the Government are facing up to the consequences of the loss of traffic brought about to some extent by the prolongation of the coal strike and the rail pay dispute. On both of these issues, with some justification, we charged the Government at the time with their failure to take appropriate action to shorten the period of the disputes—action which, in turn, would have lessened the deficits which we are now facing. The noble Lord told us that £18 million was regarded as the amount of the loss due to the coal strike and that £10 million was the loss due to the pay dispute. Can he tell us how much was due to price restraint which flowed from the C.B.I. initiative?
On the question of fare increases in September, has the estimate made by the Board and the Government of the amount needed to cover the likely cost of the acceptance by the Board of a further C B.I. initiative been taken into consideration by the Government at this time? On the concluding part of the Statement, I welcome the assurance of the Board that they will do their utmost to minimise the adverse effects and inevitable inconvenience to the staff resulting from the proposed reorganisation. In this connection, I am bound to say, as a man who worked for a long time on railways and knows a little about them, that this will be a further upset to the staff which has over a comparatively short period seen a reduction of 250,000—a tremendous number—resulting purely from rationalisation. Perhaps I may add that the staff knowledgeable in these matters are of the opinion that the continual structural changes introduced in the past to make major economies have in many instances had the very opposite effect. The industry is never permitted to settle down. This has been going on throughout the whole of the post-war period, and I am sure that the railways have not had a fair deal in this connection.
LORD TANLAW: My Lords, I also wish to thank the noble Lord from these Benches for his Statement. The cash flow shortfall as shown from his Statement is quite a serious one. It is to be hoped that the measures suggested at the end of the Statement will become fruitful. Every railway in the world makes losses, and

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British Rail is no exception. It is recognised that support from the public is necessary to maintain a public rail service. But if a long-term funding operation is not undertaken there will be a mammoth increase in motorway expenditure and so on. I should like the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, to tell us what plans the Board have for long-term funding of the British rail system. With regard to the cash flow, this is a normal shortage which can occur in any railway system in the world, but I should like to know what the longterm plans are. Are there any plans for consultation with the European counterparts of British Rail? This is a feature that should be looked at, especially in terms of funding, because I feel they have the same problems. Finally, may I ask the noble Lord the Minister whether the British Railways Property Board is doing its best to raise funds by releasing property in central London which is needed for housing and is also a source of revenue for the Board?
4.23 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, as I said in the original Statement which I repeated, the loss of business due to the rail pay dispute was £10 million; the cost of the settlement is of the order of £40 million to £50 million. The Transport (Grants) Act was in the main designed to enable the British Railways Board to keep in line with price restraint policy and the cost of that was virtually the whole of the cost of £27 million. The fare changes to be made this September which will involve an overall average increase of some 5 per cent.—with freight charges rising on average by 2½ per cent. and passenger fares rising on average by 7½ per cent.—are as much as the British Railways Board can make and keep within the price restraint policy. But, even so, there is a deficit of £40 million to be met in 1972.
I note the points of the noble Lord, Lord Champion, about reorganisation, but I would make the further point that this is the first major reorganisation in the main administrative structure since nationalisation, and during the intervening period there has been a reduction in staff from 650,000 to 200,000. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, I would say that one of the things that my right honourable friend has now asked the British Railways Board to do is to iden-
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tify those remaining sectors of the railway network which can continue to be run, in the opinion of the Board, on a commercial basis, and to reconsider those other sectors which need to be maintained and run with wider policy considerations in mind. I note what the noble Lord had to say about discussions with our European counterparts, but I cannot comment on that at the moment. I would certainly confirm that the British Railways Property Board are increasing the release of property to aid the cash problem, and, as I have said in connection with other matters in this House, they are making a significant contribution to the solution of the housing problem in Greater London.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether the Government have any idea of what is going to happen to the men who are redundant?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, as I think my right honourable friend made clear in his Statement, most of the reduction will be accounted for in the ordinary process of staff turnover and retirement and so on; but, of course, those members of staff who are made redundant will receive their full compensation redundancy pay.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, the procedure of the House limits my right to that of asking a question, so here it is. Are the Government aware of the increasing amount of heavy traffic which is being carried on and diverted to the already overcrowded roads; and secondly, have the Government any plan in mind for diverting some of this traffic, at least, to the railways?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I think that that point was covered in my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw. Of course, where the railways can carry this traffic commercially and it is advantageous to them, that will happen without further ado. But there are certain wider environmental policy considerations which might well lead to a decision to keep certain branches and lines open although they are no longer commercially viable.
LORD BOYLE OF HANDSWORTH: My Lords, the noble Lord said, correctly, that this is the most important and far-reaching change in organisation since

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nationalisation and it will therefore put greater responsibilities on the British Railways Board. May I ask the noble Lord whether he will take note of what was said in the Interim Report of the Top Salaries Review Body on the desirability for a more flexible approach to the payment of Board members and, in particular, on not ruling out using the top half of the scale where this might seem to be appropriate in the context of greater responsibility?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that observation and I will draw the attention of my right honourable friend to his remarks.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, following the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, may I ask my noble friend whether he would suggest to the Board that they might endeavour to get some of the enormous quantities of timber now carried on the roads carried by the railways, timber being a commodity which neither deteriorates nor is in any way injured by being transported slowly by rail? A vast quantity of timber is now carried on the roads which could well be carried upon the railways.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I am sure that all of us appreciate the environmental advantages of doing that, but there is a very large part of the railway network which is grant aided already, and this cannot go on indefinitely.
LORD COLYTON: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether, before any major changes on these lines or reductions in services are carried out, Parliament will have an opportunity of debating the matter?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, I cannot give that assurance myself. I will bring the point to the attention of my right honourable friend.

EDUCATION AND LIBRARIES (NORTHERN IRELAND) ORDER 1972
4.29 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR NORTHERN IRELAND (LORD WINDLESHAM)THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR NORTHERN IRELAND (LORD WINDLESHAM) rose to move, That the draft Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1972, laid before the House on July 10, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the first of the two Orders standing in my name on the Order Paper. This first draft Order in Council is concerned with the organisation and structure of the education and library services in Northern Ireland. These are clearly matters of some importance, and I shall explain in a few minutes the scheme of reorganisation which the Order proposes. But the educational system is something far more than a statutory service. In a very real sense it is, or is capable of being if it is used wisely, a principal means to shape a better spirit and a better future in Northern Ireland. No one can for very long carry any degree of responsibility for the affairs of Northern Ireland without concluding that it is a place which carries, often self-consciously, the marks of history. The deep divisions, the bitterness, the reluctance to look beyond the bounds of a restricted society and community—these marks disfigure a rising generation of young Ulster people, as they have done for so many years in the past.
In spite of the brave and largely unrecorded efforts of generations of imaginative teachers, the old mould has not yet been broken. Nor is there any simple nostrum by which that desirable end may be achieved. In recent years there has been much talk of integrated education in Northern Ireland. If I may express a personal opinion, I hope that the debate will continue. But we must recognise the right of parents to choose the type of school they consider best suited to the needs of their children. Nor would it accord with the principles on which British education is based to seek to impose from above some prescribed and uniform pattern, with the hope that all existing conflicts will thereby become resolved.
I am, however, certain of this: that no single group in Northern Ireland carries a heavier burden of responsibility for the future than do its educators. They have the power to use the educational system and the curriculum to promote breadth of mind and vision; to encourage tolerance; to foster a sympathetic and constructive curiosity about others. In short, to work towards the emergence of a mature and educated society in which the noble qualities of the human spirit can once again re-assert themselves against the evil forces of emotion and prejudice and self destruction. The preamble to the UNESCO Constitution put this vividly a quarter of a century ago:
"Since wars begin in the minds of men it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed."
The whole purpose of educational policy since 1944 has been to identify and to realise the full potential of successive generations of children. I do not believe that any child born in Northern Ireland has any less potential than a child born on this side of the Irish Sea. But all too often, as he grows up, he has been trapped in a narrow and restrictive outlook on the world. If the Province can, in the future, more fully realise its responsibilities towards it own children—who receive their education, we should remember, not just from the schools but from the whole society around them—then there will be greater hope that the current tragedies will not be re-enacted. That is the background against which this Order should be considered.
Turning to the Order itself, it can be most clearly described as having four main purposes. The first is to provide administrative machinery for the education and library services in Northern Ireland after the re-organisation of local government which comes into operation on April 1, 1973. On that date all the existing county, county borough, urban and rural district councils will be abolished. In their place will be 26 local government districts established under the Local Government Boundaries Act (Northern Ireland) 1971. The present position is that responsibility for the local administration of education, and for the greater part of the public library service in Northern Ireland rests with the county and county borough councils (that is,
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the councils in the 6 Counties of Ulster together with Belfast and Londonderry, making 8 in all). After they cease to exist on April 1 of next year, their duties in respect of education and the public library service will devolve on five Area Boards, which will be responsible for these services in areas made up of groups of the new district councils. This follows the recommendations of the Local Government Review Body, chaired by Sir Patrick Macrory, which were accepted by the previous Government of Northern Ireland and which have been endorsed by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
The membership of Boards will be composed, as to 40 per cent., of members of district councils in the areas of the Boards nominated by those councils. The remaining members will be appointed by the Minister. Some are required by the draft Order to represent specific interests such as transferors of voluntary schools, maintained voluntary school authorities, and teachers. At least three members must have a special interest in the library service. The selection of the remainder will be at the discretion of the Minister, with the aim of securing a wide and balanced representation of community interests in the area of the Board.
Turning now to the functions of the Boards, I have described the structure. The counties and county boroughs cease to exist after April and five Area Boards based on the groupings of the new district council take their place. I have described what the membership will be, so I will now move on to the functions. As I have explained, the membership of the Boards will differ substantially from that of existing local education authorities and their education or library committees, but the functions of the Boards—what they will actually do—will be very similar to those of the present authorities. In their day-to-day working they will be subject to much the same degree of control by the Ministry of Education as the present local education authorities. The main rules of conduct governing members and officers of local authorities are applied by the draft Order to members and officers of the new Boards. There will also be a Staff Commission for Education

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and Library Boards. This will be a new body which will exercise a general oversight of matters connected with recruitment, training and terms and conditions of employment of officers of Boards. Although the functions of the Commission are advisory and not executive, the Commission call refer a matter to the Ministry of Education which will then give such directions as are necessary. I should add that the Boards will not be rating authorities, and will receive grants from the Government of Northern Ireland to cover all of their net approved expenditure.
The second main purpose of the draft Order is to bring together more closely the administration of education and of the public libraries, and for that purpose to enact a new code of library legislation. Libraries are an expanding service in Northern Ireland, but the legislation is fragmentary and in many cases out of date. This opportunity has accordingly been taken of setting out in one document a self-contained and up-to-date code of law relating to libraries in the light, in particular, of the comprehensive legislation on this subject which was enacted for England and Wales in 1964. The most significant change is that, whereas up to the present local authorities have been empowered, but not obliged, to provide library services, the new Boards will be required to make available for their area a comprehensive library service. They will also have an obligation to work together with other Boards and, so far as is necessary, with outside library authorities, to ensure that the library needs of the Province are fully met. Although it is expected that both education and library services will benefit through being administered together, it is important to ensure that the library service is not unduly subordinated to the much larger and more expensive education service. For this reason, Boards will be required to set up statutory library committees which will have the duty, in addition to any other duties given to them by the Boards, of preparing library estimates and library development schemes.
The third purpose of the draft Order is to enable effect to be given to the results of a detailed review of existing provisions of legislation concerning edu-
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cation which are not necessarily affected by the reorganisation of local government. Of the provisions in the Order which reflect this purpose, the most significant is probably that contained in Schedule 3. This relates to the establishment of a teaching appointments committee for each board to deal with appointments to senior teaching posts in schools under the management of boards. An important feature of these teaching appointments committees will be that out of their eight members two will be serving principals of schools managed by the area board so as to ensure that the committee has available expert advice in the making of these appointments. The jurisdiction of the appointments committee will not extend to voluntary schools since appointments to all teaching staff in these schools are the prerogative of their governing bodies.
The fourth purpose of the Order is to consolidate those provisions of existing legislation which are not substantially affected by the change in the structure of local government and which do not appear to call for amendment on any other grounds. The Education Act (Northern Ireland) 1947 has been subject to very numerous Amendments, the consolidation of which in the draft Order should make the law much more accessible to those concerned with its administration.
That is a short summary of a long and, in places, complex draft Order in Council. The Order is based on a Bill which had received its Second Reading at Stormont before Prorogation, but because of the inherent importance of its subject matter, it was also considered in the form of a draft Order by the Northern Ireland Advisory Commission. Members of another place debated the Order at some length on July 14 and my hon. Friend Mr. Channon, who has a particular responsibility for education in the Province, was able to inform Parliament of the visits he had made to schools throughout Northern Ireland and of meetings and discussions he had had with teachers, pupils and those concerned with educational administration.
The Order, as I have explained, does not affect the schools directly or what is taught in them. It is designed to bring the pattern of the local control of education into line with the new structure of

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local government and to consolidate into one document, and in places amend, much of the existing legislation concerning education. It also recognises for the first time, as a statutory obligation, the duty of the new area boards to provide comprehensive library facilities. That is the basis of the Order, which I hope will commend itself to your Lordships' House. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1972, laid before the House on July 10, be approved.—(Lord Windlesham).
4.43 p.m.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the Order, though one cannot pretend that we are following a satisfactory process when, for example, one notices from the Report of the Special Orders Committee that the subject may be debated merely in the terms of the Order. Your Lordships will appreciate that this is a major piece of legislation. It contains 127 Articles and 16 Schedules, and although the Minister set the pattern admirably by explaining it under four headings I would have preferred an opportunity to consider some of what I would call the nuts and bolts of this legislation. I agree as an educator that educators will always carry great responsibility. Nevertheless, I hope that there will never come a time when enthusiasm for the integrated school will prevent parents from having a choice in the type of school they desire their children to attend.
I have said on many occasions in this House that we are all too prone to blame religious differences for many of the problems that exist in the world, Throughout history it has been the whipping boy, but I believe that the present problems in this part of the world are often exaggerated by causes which are right outside those of religious difference. It is certainly true that emotion, prejudice and self-destruction are paramount in the area we are considering. It is equally true, however, that the younger generation are the people to whom we must look.
This " Bill "—I am reluctant to call it an Order—obviously consolidates many previous Acts. As I read it I wished that we in this House could be given an opportunity to look at a major piece of legis-
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lation relative to education, something we have not had an opportunity of doing for a long time. When I learn that these councils, carrying incredibly wide powers and responsibilities, will be largely within the prerogative of the Minister, I was alerted, as one is bound to be, to the tremendous responsibilities which fall on the Minister. I notice that from the district councils, two-fifths will be the maximum number of people appointed to the boards. This will not be in any way comparable with the representation on local education committees because by my reading of the Order it means that the boards will be made up largely of people appointed by the Minister.
The disqualification provisions which will prevent people from being appointed to the boards are interesting, and as I read them I wondered whether they were comparable with English legislation. If one has been convicted by a court in Northern Ireland or elsewhere for an offence which merits imprisonment for not less than three months one is disqualified from membership. This seems rather unusual. Will one be asked, before standing for appointment to one of these bodies, if one has been in prison for three months or convicted of that type of offence? After all, certain driving offences can be punished by similar terms of imprisonment, yet a person so convicted might prove a very adequate representative on a local education authority.
I cannot understand how the medical and dental inspection arrangements will be carried out, mainly because of the vague phraseology that is used. Our legislation specifies the number of times that a child must be medically examined during its school lifetime. Perhaps the Minister will explain what is meant in this context of the Order. Neither can I understand how children requiring special education will receive it. As your Lordships will recall, we have made a major change by which no child is considered incapable of receiving education. No longer do we have transference to another service. This does not seem to be spelled out in the Order.
In relation to compulsory attendance at school, walking distance in the Order is described for a child under the age of 11 as two miles and, for any other child, three miles. I do not know whether the countryside of Northern

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Ireland is like that of Southern Ireland, but I should have thought that a child who had to walk three miles to school and three miles home, even in these days of well-fed and energetic children, was undertaking a very considerable journey.
These are some of what I would call the nuts and bolts of the Order that we should be discussing and I am particularly bothered that we should be dealing with such a major piece of legislation in this speedy fashion. We have taken over responsibility for Northern Ireland and I feel that matters of this sort should come before us in a different way. Perhaps that was impossible on this occasion. I notice that there is power to call for reports. May we have reports at more reasonable intervals and at times other than at the end of the Session, so enabling us to debate them more fully?
4.49 p.m.
LORD WADE: My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for explaining the nature of the Order. The noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, referred to the Report of the Special Orders Committee and as this matter is of such constitutional importance it might be appropriate if I were to quote a few passages from the Report.
This is the Fourteenth Report of the Committee and it states that this Order is:
" … the equivalent of a large Bill dealing with a subject of prime importance comparable to the Bills for the Education Act 1944 and the Education (Scotland) Act 1945. It may be presumed that a Bill for the some purpose as this Order would have occupied the attention of the House at every stage and, during its passage, have been amended. The effect of the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act 1972 is that this legislation will be debated once only by the House on the Motion to approve the draft. The draft cannot be amended."
I am not criticising the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, because he is faced with the situation of which we are all aware, but it is rather an exceptional one. It is clear, and to some extent illustrated by the opening remarks of the noble Lord, that in debating Northern Ireland we have to do so on two different planes. On the one hand there is the immediate situation and the continuing crisis. On the other there is the legislative programme which it is now the duty of the Westminster Parlia-
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ment to consider. It is sometimes a little difficult to divorce the one from the other.
But I should like, if I may, to make just one brief comment on the wider aspect. I still hope that Mr. Whitelaw's policy will succeed in spite of the setbacks and the aggravation caused by the activities of the I.R.A. and the necessity for dealing with violence. It does seem to me absolutely essential that Mr. Whitelaw should win over the moderates and prevent, if he can, any events occurring which will increase support for, or throw sympathy over to, the I.R.A. I hope that the critics of Mr. Whitelaw will keep this continually in mind, because if it is not kept in mind there is little hope for the success of his policy and perhaps not much point in discussing these Orders.
My Lords, when we were debating the last batch of Orders I may have preempted this debate perhaps by referring to the subject of education and in particular the religious differences. But I did so because there was a reference to the cost of education in the previous Order. I do not want to say again what I said on the last occasion except to point out that I do feel some concern for the divisive effect of sectarian differences reflected in the schools. And in saying that I am, of course, aware of what the noble Baroness has just said. I merely want to ask two questions. The first is this: I would be interested to know how many children are prevented from going to school at the present time? To what extent is the educational process being interfered with by the tragic events in Northern Ireland? When I view television, all too often one sees children taking part in riots and throwing stones and other objects. Some of them certainly appear to me to be of school age and I cannot believe that all these incidents occur outside school hours. I wonder whether the noble Lord is able to help us at all on that?
Secondly—and here I am just returning to this subject of the sectarian differences in Northern Ireland—what about the training colleges? There is a reference to the training and certification of teachers in Part VI, paragraph 55, and all I wish to ask is whether the separation of the two communities applies to training colleges. I would hope not. I would hope that so far as training colleges are concerned religious differences do not

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come into the picture. It certainly does seem to me important that if the tragedy of Northern Ireland, the sectarian differences and all that flows from them, are to diminish, it might be helped at the educational level. If so, I think that would be a step in the right direction.
4.55 p.m.
LORD O'NEILL OF THE MAINE: My Lords, I hope that everyone in this noble House will support the draft Order introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham. I do not want to go into the details, but I can assure my noble friends from past experience that governing Northern Ireland is an extremely difficult task for anybody to undertake. The noble Lord who has just sat down said he hoped that the Secretary of State would win over the support of the moderate people in Northern Ireland. May I assure him that he already has their support. The people whose support he has not got are the extremists, and the support of the extremists is quite impossible for any reasonable man to get. The extremists are and always have been the curse of Ireland in general and Northern Ireland in particular.
I have been asked by my moderate friends in Northern Ireland to say a few words in support of this Order. I believe it would be wise for this House to support it, and may I say to the two previous noble speakers that, despite the appalling difficulties through which we are passing, life does continue. People do continue to go to school. I was in the centre of Belfast last Friday when a bomb was going off every minute and I experienced this appalling problem of how one was to get out of the city, because whatever road one went down something was blown up. Somehow or other one did get out and somehow or other life has to continue.
In brief, I am merely suggesting that the House should support the Order introduced by my noble friend. I believe it is the right thing to do. The Bill was already at Second Reading stage at Stormont before the Parliament was suspended and it would be wise that it should come into operation.
4.57 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, both the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, and the noble Lord, Lord Wade, referred
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to the Report of the Special Orders Committee which drew the attention of the House to the length of this Order and to the unusual nature of the Parliamentary proceedings which relate to the draft Orders in Council. The noble Lord, the Leader of the Opposition, raised these same considerations on the last occasion when we debated a number of Orders in Council relating to the Northern Ireland legislative programme. We had the discussion on the first of the Orders which happened to be about the reorganisation of the electricity supply industry, but the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, made it clear that his remarks related to all the Orders which were brought forward in this way.
We must accept that this is a most unusual procedure and my noble friends and myself in introducing the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act 1972, to which the House gave its agreement just before Easter, made it clear that this was so. But the hard fact is that the Parliament of Northern Ireland has been prorogued, for reasons which it is unnecessary to discuss to-day, and that it had a full and important legislative programme before it. Part of that was on the Statute Book, but not very much. It was March and a number of Bills were halfway through while others had not yet started their course. So, my right honourable friend had to consider whether he would proceed with the legislative programme or whether he would curtail it.
It so happened that the very heavy burden of the legislation necessary to implement the Macrory reforms, and the whole series of linked consequential reforms that flow from it, were coming up before Stormont in this particular Session. Anyone who has been close to the situation would agree that it would have been defeatist and most unwise to have dropped the whole reform programme and to have said that this could no longer go forward. It was so far advanced—this had been going on for several years; a number of preparatory steps had already been taken, staff recruited and so on—that it would have been unthinkable to take that course of action. So what we are now left with is the fact that one Parliament cannot do the work of two. The procedure for Orders in Council is the best that we have been able to

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evolve, and it is what Parliament agreed to when it passed the Act just before Easter.
What I did discuss on the previous occasion—I shall not rehearse it to-day because it is in Hansard—was the very full process of consultation which takes place in Northern Ireland before these draft Orders in Council come to Westminster at all. We must remember that it is the interests of the people in Northern Ireland that are affected, so it is crucial that close consultation should take place there before these Orders in Council are tabled for debate and approval at Westminster. I gave details of the procedure, which can be found in Hansard.
The noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, asked me some questions which she described as referring to the nuts and bolts of the Order. The first was about the disqualification of members of boards who have served a term of imprisonment. I understand that this provision is taken from the general local government law in Northern Ireland. As regards medical and dental inspection, the Northern Ireland provision originally specified the number of occasions on which a child should be medically examined, but the medical officers thought, and advised, that this was too rigid; they pointed out that some children need more frequent inspection than others, and they thought it was better to be flexible in the way set out in the Order.
As to the composition of the boards, the local authorities will, as the noble Baroness correctly said, provide 40 per cent. of the members, and in the remaining 60 per cent. there will be a number of laid down categories: representatives of the transferors of schools, representatives of maintained schools, three teachers, and three persons with library interests. So there will then be about 30 per cent. of people who have to fall within these specified categories. The remainder are the people who can be appointed by the Minister, who has a duty to ensure that the interests of the area are represented. Here again I might say that the figure of 40 per cent. comes from the report of the local government review body and the thinking and consultation that took place both be-
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fore and after the publication of that document.
The theme of the Macrory Report was that Northern Ireland was a region of 1½ million people and that a whole number of services were best managed on a regional basis. These included education, health, planning, roads and a number of other services, but it was thought that in the case of education and health there should be area boards in between the Stormont level—that is the regional level—and the district councils and the schools themselves. Macrory recommended that between 30 and 40 per cent. of the members of those boards should be nominated by the district councils. In this Order the top figure of 40 per cent. has been taken, because this was, of course, a local authority service, as it is in this country, and it seemed appropriate to take the higher figure. In the next Order we will see that a figure of 30 per cent. is taken, because hospitals, for example, have had very few elected representatives.
The noble Lord, Lord Wade, asked me about training colleges. I understand than the position is that almost all Roman Catholic students attend colleges under Roman Catholic management. He also asked about school attendances, and was, I think, answered by the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine. The attendance figures are quite astonishingly high. I have seen a schedule of attendances, which I do not have with me at the moment, but I should like to send it to the noble Lord, Lord Wade. But the general pattern is as described by the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill, who speaks with such experience on this matter. Children do still go to school; the pattern is much nearer normality than one would expect, and it is a very encouraging sign that this should be so.
May I finally say that I welcome very much the support given to this Order by the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine. When he said that governing Northern Ireland was an extremely tiresome and difficult task to undertake, I felt like saying, "Hear hear!"
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord one question on medical and dental inspection? I listened carefully to this new recommendation, and it seems to me that it would be possible for some

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children not to be subject to examination during the whole of their school attendance. Is that correct?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I should not like to speak with great authority on this matter, and if I am wrong I will let the noble Baroness know. I understand that the position is that no number of occasions is specified in the Order and there is no actual obligation, which I think is what the noble Baroness is asking me. But I feel quite certain, in view of the consultation that has taken place with the medical officers, that it is most improbable that a child could go throughout its whole school life without being examined by a medical officer. I can look into this point. The Ministry of Education is not one that I have direct responsibility for, but I can find out the position and let the noble Baroness know.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I hope the House might be just a little indulgent, because, as my noble friend Lady Phillips indicated, this is some Order! and the House is being asked to accept a very great deal. My noble friend raised the matter of the presentation of the annual report and the timing. I wonder whether we could be given some answer to the point that she made on that. While I am commenting very briefly, may I say that we are very fortunate in having the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine, here with us this afternoon. I wonder whether Her Majesty's Government might consider some means whereby perhaps a small number of your Lordships' House might be sent to Northern Ireland from time to time to acquaint themselves with the situation there.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I think we must regard this as a continuous reply.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, before the noble Lord replies, perhaps I may intervene; I may help him. This is becoming a regular performance. The House ought to welcome the interest that noble Lords show, but unforunately they have not always read what has been said in the previous debates. We have gone round this subject as to how we should consider these Orders. It is an inevitably
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very unsatisfactory situation at the moment, but I am bound to acquit the Government of responsibility for it. As the noble Lord will know, and as other noble Lords who heard the earlier debates will know, discussions have been going on through the usual channels in this matter. As I understand it, when another place comes to make up its mind—and unfortunately we have been hung up as another place would not make up its mind on how to deal with these matters—I hope we shall have the sort of committee which will be able to examine legislation which is, as both my noble friends said, major legislation. Incidentally, I am grateful for the fact that the Special Orders Committee have acceded to the suggestions we made and now draw attention to the special nature of this. I think we are in a difficult position. My feeling at the moment is that it is quite impossible for us to do justice to this sort of legislation. There is hardly a page in the Order which is not susceptible to full discussion and analysis. I certainly do not want to press the Government tonight, because we have further business coming on.
It is satisfactory to see noble Lords taking an interest. Neither the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, nor I myself, who have been handling these matters up to now, can possibly be remotely expert on them, and I welcome the interventions of people like my noble friends, Lady Phillips, Lord Garnsworthy and Lady Summerskill. But I am afraid that it will be a frustrating experience for them at the moment, and I am quite sure that, before the House meets again in the autumn, we shall need some sort of committee which I hope will be able to examine these Orders (I would repeat this, although it has been said already), not merely in draft form, which is the form they are in now, but in a form which will enable the Government to take heed of the advice of noble Lords. I think it will be important that this consideration should take place after the Commons have considered the Orders, because there is actual representation in the Commons from Northern Ireland, and they will be able to do a more thorough job. I am attracted by the suggestion from my noble friend Lord Garnsworthy, to the effect that there are noble Lords who are willing to devote

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time to this matter, and that it should be possible for them to be given information in advance of the sort of legislation which is coming, and possibly also smile information on consideration and deliberations of the Advisory Committee. Indeed, their activities might well include visits to Ireland.
My Lords, we shall be deluding ourselves if we suppose that we can do a proper job on this sort of legislation. It is one of the unfortunate consequences of the present situation in Northern Ireland that proper Parliamenmentary scrutiny is really impossible. I accept, as the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine, made clear, that the Government were right to get on with these Orders, even if the legislation is imperfect, because the matters concerned are so important. But it will not necessarily be essential for this legislation always to be taken in the form of Orders. Some ought probably to be introduced as main legislation and be subject to amendment, as is the case with Scottish Bills and so on. But at the moment I think the Government should welcome the interest which noble Lords are taking, and I would only say that it is a source of regret to me—as indeed it is to Lord Windlesham himself—that the difficulties perhaps in arriving at agreement in another place before it rises for the Recess have been a factor in preventing our adopting the sort of propositions made by my noble friend. I must apologise for intervening, but I thought it was fair to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, to say that some of these points had been made and although it is not perfectly desirable they should be made again we must recognise the difficulties of the situation we are in and hope to do better in the next Session.
LORD O'NEILL OF THE MAINE: My Lords, may I make a very brief intervention, before the Minister rises to his feet? I had no idea that the discussion would assume such a wide aspect, and of course I am probably not privy to certain discussions which are going on through the usual channels. But I should like just to make one or two observations. Stormont has been prorogued or suspended, whatever language one likes to use, for one year—
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, may I interrupt my noble friend for one moment? In fact he is out of order. This is not a Committee stage, and I believe he is entitled to speak only once, which he has already done.
LORD O'NEILL OF THE MAINE: My Lords, may I have the leave of the House to address your Lordships to make a very brief—
A NOBLE LORD: No.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, on business the House cannot give leave to noble Lords. If any noble Lord would read the Companion he will see that it is expressly confined to Ministers, Chairmen of Committees and movers of Motions. May I also suggest there is another Order coming along shortly, and the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill, will be able to direct his remarks in these general affairs to that Order?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, it is with some trepidation that I ask for the leave of the House. I was the mover of this Motion, and I have already spoken a second time; and therefore I should only do so again briefly and with the leave of the House. This does, I think, illustrate one of the difficulties in this procedure, that points occur as a debate develops and noble Lords like to put points at the appropriate time. But of course as I have already answered earlier perhaps it is difficult to reply to a further series—
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord on business? I wish he would read the Companion; he can speak as often as he likes, with leave—it says more than once, not twice, carefully chosen to give him the opportunity.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I am always grateful to have that guidance; and often I am in need of it, I regret say. That does not prevent my saying that I think I ought to speak again very briefly.
The fact that we have had this discussion this afternoon, and with noble Lords such as the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, and the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips—who takes a particular interest in education—taking part, is extremely welcome to the Government, and

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I think it arises partly from the attitude of the Government Whips' Office in putting these Orders on early. The previous Orders we have had have tended to come on rather late at night, but, because of the significance of these two Orders, on education and health, they come before your Lordships at an earlier time when a bigger House can be expected. The noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, asked again about the publication of the reports of the new area boards for education and libraries. These area boards, and the committees they have, do not start operations until April 1, 1973, so I do not suppose since these are annual reports, that one would expect to see a report until the summer of 1974. What the situation will be at that time it is difficult to speculate on to-day.
As regards visitors, visitors from your Lordships' House to the Province are always welcome. There have been a large number of visitors from another place, and one or two from your Lordships' House. But if any of your Lordships individually or in parties wish to come, we shall be glad to do what we can to facilitate your trip and make it as rewarding and as useful as possible. As the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, correctly said, there have been fairly prolonged discussions on this matter of Parliamentary control, and I think that all of us—certainly my noble friend the Leader of the House—are concerned that the House of Lords should have the opportunity to give propery scrutiny to these matters. There will be a new situation in the new Session. The Orders we are considering now are, in the main, Bills which were before Stormont or which had been presented to Stormont. The Education Bill had had a Second Reading; the Health Bill had been published, but had not yet had its Second Reading debate. But in the new Session we shall have a new situation. The Government's feeling is that, in the next Session we should certainly like to do anything we can, together with noble Lords opposite and the Liberal Party, to come to some form of understanding as to how a more appropriate form of scrutiny can be given to Northern Ireland affairs.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

HEALTH AND PERSONAL SOCIAL SERVICES (NORTHERN IRELAND) ORDER 1972
5.19 p.m.
LORD WINDLESHAM LORD WINDLESHAM rose to move, That the Draft Health and Personal Social Services (Northern Ireland) Order 1972, laid before the House on July 11, be approved. The noble Lord said: I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. This Order will provide a new administrative structure for the personal health and personal social services in Northern Ireland. It is based largely on a Bill which had been presented to the Northern Ireland House of Commons, but which lapsed when that Parliament was prorogued.
Although the reorganisation of local government in Northern Ireland (discussed in the debate on the last Order) was a factor in the sequence of events leading up to the present draft Order, it was not the main reason for making a structural change of this kind. As in Great Britain, the personal health services in Northern Ireland are at present divided in a tripartite structure. There are the hospital and specialist services; the family practitioner services; and the local authority personal health services. Each of these is administered by separate authorities. There is general acceptance throughout the United Kingdom, however, that the time has come to begin bringing the three branches of these services together into one unified structure, both in the interests of patients and to enable the most effective deployment of resources. A National Health Service (Scotland) Bill, integrating the health services in Scotland, is already before Parliament, and a similar measure in relation to England and Wales will be introduced later. Therefore what is proposed in this Order is broadly in line with the new pattern that is emerging throughout the United Kingdom.
There are, however, certain regional differences in each part of the British Isles. In Northern Ireland the most important of these is that the personal social services at present provided by local welfare authorities will be included in the new framework. Because of the reorganisation of local government in Northern Ireland a new base had to be found for these services and it seemed

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sensible to take the opportunity to combine their administration with that of the health services. In many fields the health of a community and its social needs are inter-related. The elderly, the handicapped and the mentally ill, for example, are particularly vulnerable groups in need of both medical and social care. The combined administrative structure will enable the health and social services for these groups to be fully co-ordinated. I should add that certain safeguards will be included in the administrative structure to protect the professional autonomy of both services.
Consultations and discussions about the restructuring proposals have been going on in Northern Ireland over a lengthy period. A Green Paper containing tentative proposals was published by the Northern Ireland Government in 1969, and in March, 1971, the Ministry of Health and Social Services issued a Consultative Document. These two documents provided the main bases for the consultations with interested parties. When one considers the many interests involved and the radical nature of the proposals, it is fair to say that a most encouraging measure of agreement has been reached. There are, inevitably, some differences of opinion on certain aspects of the proposals, but generally the concept of a unified service has been welcomed. In addition to its reforming character, this Order consolidates into one basic code most of the existing health and welfare legislation, and this should be a considerable convenience for those who need to be familiar with the law in this field.
The draft Order brings within the direct responsibility of the Ministry of Health and Social Services at Stormont all the personal health services: that is to say, the hospital services; the family practitioner service; and the school health and other personal health services provided by the local health authorities. Moreover, it transfers to that Department the personal social services functions of local welfare authorities (such as the care of the old and the handicapped) other than those in relation to child care and adoption services which transfer to the Ministry of Home Affairs. The main functions of the Ministry of Health and Social Services are set out in Part II. Article 4 is really the foundation of the whole Order. It
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underlines the fact that the health services will be integrated and will be co-ordinated with the personal social services. I should perhaps also mention Article 15. This provision gives the Ministry broad powers to promote social welfare and subsumes the functions of welfare authorities under a variety of provisions in the Welfare Service Act (Northern Ireland) 1971. It also enables assistance to be given to persons in social need who do not come within the specific categories mentioned in that Act.
Part III of the draft Order contains important provisions. It provides for the establishment of Health and Social Services Boards to undertake the area administration of services on behalf of the two Ministries. In practice there will be four boards, each of which will be responsible for providing or securing the provision of a comprehensive range of health and personal social services in its area. Membership will be broadly based, and there will be wide-ranging consultations about appointments. As I mentioned in the debate on the last Order, it is the intention that about 30 per cent. of the membership of each area board will be nominated by the district councils in its area; approximately another 30 per cent. will reflect professional interests; and the balance will be appointed after consultation with other interests such as the universities, voluntary organisations and trade unions.
It is vital that the boards should be appointed as quickly as possible after the making of the Order so that they can make adequate preparation for the assumption of their functions when they come into effect on April 1, 1973. The management structure of the boards is not detailed in the Order, but in practice there will be a system of district management with each district normally corresponding to the area of one or more of the new district councils—as I mentioned, the 26 new district councils under local government reorganisation from April next year. It is planned that there will be 16 management districts for health and personal social services. The district services will be provided on an integrated basis by district officers appointed by the board and responsible to their chief officers. In order to represent public opinion concerning services at the local level, each board will be

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required to appoint district committees, which will have an important consultative and advisory role. Membership of a district committee is likely to include local members from the parent board, district councillors, and other persons in the district with an interest in voluntary service.
Moving on to Part IV of the Order, the provisions here are fundamental to the new structure, and concern the future central machinery for the health and personal social services. The Northern Ireland Health and Social Services Council will be established with membership drawn from the boards, the central professional advisory committees to be appointed under the Order, and other interests. The Council's main function will be to advise the two Ministries on matters of major policy, but it will also provide a useful forum for discussion of matters and problems of common concern. Under Article 24, specialist central advisory committees can be appointed for a profession or professions, or for a particular service. For example, under this provision committees will be appointed to replace the existing Standing Medical and Standing Nursing Advisory Committees, and one will be appointed for the personal social services. These committees will give professional advice as necessary to the Northern Ireland Health and Social Services Council and to the Ministry of Health and Social Services. Article 25 further enables the appointment of ad hoc committees to advise on particular matters.
Two other important central bodies will be appointed under Part IV. The creation of the Northern Ireland Central Services Agency for the Health and Social Services is a departure from earlier proposals set out in the Consultative Document in the light of comments received from various interests. This agency will provide certain executive services on behalf of the boards and the Ministry which can most effectively be organised on a regional basis. It is the intention that the agency will provide, for example, central legal and supply services, central payments machinery for the independent contractors in the health services (that is the family doctors, dentists, pharmacists and opticians). The
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other body to which I referred just now is the Northern Ireland Staffs Council for the Health and Social Services which will undertake functions in relation to recruitment, selection, appointment and training (other than professional training) procedures for various staff in the health and personal social services.
In Part V of the draft Order the Ministry is given a number of functions supplemental to its main functions in Part II. Most of these are a restatement of existing provisions. Part VI provides for the administration of the family practitioner services by the Health and Social Services Boards on behalf of the Ministry. Here again, this is a re-enactment of existing legislation: Part II of the Health Services (Northern Ireland) Act 1971 refers, although there are some adaptations to meet the new structure. Part VII recognises the need for close co-operation between the health and personal social services authorities and other bodies, in particular the district councils and voluntary organisations.
Part VIII defines the duty of the Ministry of Home Affairs with regard to child care and adoption services, and is complementary to the duties of the Ministry of Health and Social Services under Article 4. I should perhaps just pause here for a moment to explain that the reasons for this division of responsibility in Northern Ireland stem from the fact that the child care services are and traditionally have been related to the functions of the Ministry of Home Affairs, such as the courts and the Probation Service. We intend to see, however, that there is the closest working relationship between the two Departments in the administration of the personal social services. Nor is the door closed to some re-allocation of Departmental responsibilities at a later stage. The issues involved, however, my Lords, are complex and require study before any firm decisions can be taken. It would not be practicable, in our view, to undertake such an inquiry within the very tight timetable of re-organisation to which we are committed by the local government reform programme. Once the new structure for the health and personal social services has been successfully launched, my honourable friend Mr. Channon, who has responsibility for the

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Department of Health and Social Services, and myself, since I have responsibility for the Ministry of Home Affairs, have agreed that the Departments concerned should review the situation to see whether any re-allocation of Departmental responsibilities and a greater measure of integration would be justified.
Part IX of the draft Order is concerned with the winding up of existing authorities and the transfer of staff, assets and liabilities to new ones. Part X deals with endowments and other trust property. Part XI contains financial provisions; and Part XII a number of miscellaneous and administrative provisions, many of which, again, are modified versions of existing legislation.
My Lords, that is necessarily a brief summary of a long Order, although, as I have mentioned, a good part of it consists of consolidating, and in places amending, existing legislation. I hope I have said enough, however, to give an indication of the significance and the range of the changes involved. Undoubtedly this Order will be a landmark in the development of the health and personal social services in Northern Ireland. It will enable a better service to be given to patients and persons in social need. It will help to ensure the most effective use of financial and manpower resources. It is a reform which is in line with the pattern in the rest of the United Kingdom. For these reasons, I commend it to your Lordships. I beg to move.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE): My Lords, before I propose the Question it might be convenient to the House if I explain that after this item of business I shall be giving the Royal Assent to a number of Acts and Measures under the Act of 1967.
Moved, That the Draft Health and Personal Social Services (Northern Ireland) Order 1972, laid before the House on July 11 be approved.—(Lord Windlesham.)
5.35 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I shall be as brief as I can because I am very conscious that there is a lot of important business before the House in
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relation to which the House is in a position in fact to influence matters in a way in which we are not able to with regard to these Orders, except by an actual act of rejection. I should like to apologise to the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine. Perhaps I have lost confidence in the Government Front Bench after the disaster over the Scottish Housing Bill, but it is surprising how many noble Lords do not know either the contents of Standing Order 29 or the explanation on page 82 of the Companion. But (if I may have the attention of the noble Lord) having been really rather pompous about the whole thing I feel I must apologise to him because I rebuked him, perhaps incorrectly, when he said that, on the Scottish disaster, the matter was not carried unanimously, which was in fact what my noble friend had said. I am told that in any case this is a term which has no meaning in your Lordships' House, and perhaps, therefore, he was all right, and I apologise to him.
All I would say on this Order is this. I have actually prepared quite a long speech, but it is quite obvious that it is really not much use our discussing this—and again I exonerate the Government. But I should like to make one or two quick suggestions. First of all, the noble Lord's statement, which was of course the sort of statement that would be made on the introduction of a Bill going through Parliament in the normal way, is probably going to be helpful to another place, which I believe has not yet discussed it; but it would be helpful if, during this difficult time, the Government could perhaps (and it sounds absurd) circulate in advance what will be the contents of the Minister's speech. It is very difficult for us to make comparisons with English legislation and before we come on to the new Order, and the vital Order, with regard to proportional representation, it would be very helpful if the Government could publish informally the basic documents, whatever they are, or provide some sort of memorandum referring to them, and give an indication. We are all anxious to co-operate on this, and I think it would save the time of the House on what is going to be a very crucial subject. In fact, we are having to invent our procedure as we go along.
I should have liked, if the noble Lord had had time to answer, to have asked

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him how far in fact this Bill (or Order, as I must call it) differs importantly from the proposals in the Consultative Document, because the Consultative Document, like all Consultative Documents, was easier to follow than the Bill itself; and I make no criticism of his explanation. I was not quite clear, either, how much consultation there was. It may be that we will just have to take it that there was the fullest consultation. Again, I am a little bit bothered about the amount of participation by local authorities here as compared with the proposals in the Act, where apparently they have absolutely no power. The district councils, certainly, have no powers at all to speak of; all they can do is to write reports, and this may be right. Here again, the members of the boards are appointed. How far are the boards going to be related? I think the noble Lord said, "in due course in relation to local government reform", and clearly there is no finality at the moment. I was interested in the noble Lord's explanation as to why the dual system with regard to the two Ministries is being maintained. Of course, as he knows well, the Home Office in this country, too, has had a major role to play in children's affairs, and we have altered it. But none the less, I understand the Government have not had time at the moment to set the inquiry in train. I notice one other thing, and that is that doctors do not appear to be members of Area Boards. There is nothing that we can do about this at the moment, but, of course, when the first report comes out there may then be a question of a need for some amending legislation. But certainly we will speed this Order on its way. Indeed, as I say again, there is nothing else we can do about it, and we ought not to pretend that we are giving it proper consideration.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, with regard to this Order I should like to follow the example given by my noble friend Lord O'Neill, in of course giving support to the Order; but it would seem from its title that it would not be out of order to raise a question with my noble friend Lord Windlesham with regard to the administration current in Ireland, which presumably, such as it exists now, will be continued under this Order—and we have to look to the noble Lord as
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the line of contact which this House has between Northern Ireland and ourselves. Would he be inclined to make any comment on the widespread reports that have appeared in the Press—presumably in relation to this Order and in the light of a Statement made in the House yesterday that there are areas of Northern Ireland in the control of enemies of the Crown where the authority of the United Kingdom does not appear to hold—that under this Order in future benefits and allowances will continue to be paid as they would have been paid under normal conditions? It would help if the noble Lord could make some comment on that.
Before I sit down I should like to endorse what the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition has just said: that from our past experience of attempting at Westminster to legislate for Ireland we should not delay too long the setting up of some kind of mechanism for the efficient application of legislation to Northern Ireland where such machinery does not now exist.
5.41 p.m.
LORD O'NEILL OF THE MAINE: My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, floored me at a stroke, I had been going merely to make an observation emerging from the conversation across the Table between the noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham. As I was just about to say, I may not be privy to certain discussions which may have taken place through the usual channels. The observation I was intending to make was as follows. Stormont has been suspended or prorogated for one year. We do not yet know what the future will hold. There was a little discussion on the previous Order about the fact that if another place had come to some determination about how to deal with these matters, we might have found them a little easier to deal with here.
I was going to observe that if, in fact, Stormont has been suspended for only one year (and, at the moment, we are still some way away from the end of that period) is it wise, either for us here or for another place, to produce some elaborate machinery for dealing with Northern Ireland affairs in the Parliament at Westminster, if some new assembly or another will emerge next March? I

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should have thought that the Government ought to give consideration to the possibility of deferring any final decision as to how Northern Ireland legislation should be dealt with in the United Kingdom Parliament, until they have themselves made up their minds what they are going to do with the future of Stormont.
My Lords, I am not making these remarks in a vacuum. I am making them in the knowledge that the Alliance Party, which is the only non-sectarian Party in Northern Ireland, is in favour of the reconstitution of some local assembly; I am making these remarks in the knowledge that the S.D.L.P., who (thank God!) yesterday changed their mind and are now willing to have discussions with the Secretary of State, are in favour of having some new assembly re-established; and in the knowledge that Mr. Jack Lynch, in a very notable speech last week, himself suggested that some new assembly should be established in Belfast. In view of all this personal knowledge that I have, I am wondering how wise the United Kingdom Parliament would be, either in another place or here, to produce some new elaborate machinery for dealing with Northern Ireland affairs in the new Session, when there will be only four months before it will fall to the Government to make some announcement as to what they will do with Stormont after next March.
I had no intention of saying any of this until the little discussion over the last draft Order took place across the Table. I am not doing anything other than giving some personal advice and my personal observations to which I hope the Government will give a little consideration.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, the Government are willing to make available any information that is helpful to your Lordships in advance of debates of this kind. There is, in fact, an explanatory document published together with each Order in Council. They are widely available in Northern Ireland and are considered by the Commission, as a guide for them, when they go through the Orders. I believe that these are available in your Lordships' House.
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Should any more information be required we would consider providing it.
The noble Lord asked about the extent of consultation. I understand that it has been very considerable. A consultative document, a Green Paper, was published in 1969 on the administrative structure of the health and personal social services in Northern Ireland. Debate and consultation took place on the basis of that Paper and it was followed by the consultative document on the re-structuring of the personal health and social services in Northern Ireland. Finally, a Bill was drafted, following the usual consultation with interests concerned. This Bill was presented to the Parliament of Northern Ireland before Prorogation but did not receive a Second Reading. I believe that the main difference between the draft Order before your Lordships and the consultative document is the establishment of the Central Services Agency. This departure from the proposal contained in the consultative document was made in the light of comments received.
The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, also asked about the powers of the district committees. Here again there was representations from certain interests that these committees should be given some executive powers. But this would have breached an essential principle of the new structure, which is that in Northern Ireland there should be a single tier of management authorities; namely the boards themselves, under the central department. The committees will have an extremely useful function in keeping in touch with local opinion and ensuring that this is done in an efficient and sympathetic way; but the Macrory approach, as explained on previous Orders, is that education and health should be regional services, with area boards—four for health and five for education—covering the whole extent of the Province.
The noble Lord also asked about doctors in regard to membership of the area boards. I understand that the intention is that there will be a number of doctors on the area boards perhaps up to half those representing the professional interests.
The noble Lord, Lord Barnby, asked about social benefits. I do not think this

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arises on the Order before your Lordships, but I can tell him that social security benefits, retirement and unemployment pensions are still paid throughout Northern Ireland. Everyone in Northern Ireland has a statutory right to receive these benefits; and legislation will be needed if that position were to be altered.
The noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine, made a useful and constructive contribution to the earlier discussion we had about our Parliamentary procedures for considering Northern Ireland legislation. I think the right thing for me to do would be to pass on his comments to my right honourable friend the Leader of the House, who for some months now has been considering the question of holding discussions with representatives of the other Parties, so that he may be aware of the most useful views put with such authority by the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of the Maine. That is a brief reply, my Lords, but I know that other Members of your Lordships' House are waiting to move on to business of some importance and significance. I hope that I have covered the main points that have been raised.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

ROYAL ASSENT
5.51 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I have to acquaint the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967 that Her Majesty has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:

Finance Act,

Town and Country Planning (Amendment) Act,

Field Monuments Act,

Children Act,

Trading Representations (Disabled Persons) Amendment Act,

Housing (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act,

Housing Finance Act,

Parliamentary and other Pensions Act,

Affiliation Proceedings (Amendment) Act,

Legal Advice and Assistance Act,

Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons (Scotland) Act,

Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act,

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Contracts of Employment Act,

British Library Act,

Sri Lanka Republic Act,

Culag (Lochinver) Pier Order Confirmation Act,

Stromness (Vehicle Ferry Terminal) Pier &c. Order Confirmation Act,

Railway Clearing System Super-annuation Fund Act,

Bath Corporation Act,

Sunderland Corporation Act,

Upper Avon Navigation Act,

Killingholme Generating Station (Ancillary Powers) Act,

Westminster Abbey and Saint Margaret Westminster Act,

Greater London Council (Money) Act,

Cornwall River Authority Act,

Coventry Corporation Act,

Devon County Council Act,

Derby Corporation Act,

Friends of the Clergy Corporation Act,

Kensington and Chelsea Corporation Act,

Oxford Corporation Act,

British Railways Act.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE BILL
5.54 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross I beg to move that the House do again resolve intself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do again resolve itself into Committee.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD ALPORT in the Chair.]
LORD GARDINER LORD GARDINER moved Amendment No. 39:
After Clause 23, insert the following new clause:
Conspiracy to corrupt public morals
" .—(1) No person shall be proceeded against for an offence at common law of conspiring to corrupt public morals or to outrage public decency or to do any act contrary to public morals or decency in respect of an agreement to publish an article or to have an article for publication or in respect of an agreement to cause an article to be published or to be had for publication.

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(2) A person publishing an article or having an article for publication shall not be proceeded against for an offence at common law in respect of such article when it is of the essence of the offence that the article was obscene indecent offensive disgusting or injurious to morality.
(3) In this section the expression "article" shall mean any description of article or anything to which the Obscene Publications Acts 1959 and 1964 apply, and for the purposes of this section

(1) a person publishes an article if he does any act which for the purposes of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 is the publication of an article;

(2) a person shall be deemed to have an article for publication if he has the article in his ownership or possession or control with a view to publication or for the reproduction or manufacture therefrom of an article for publication."

The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment is confined within a very much smaller circle than that so ably moved by my noble friend Lady Birk on Monday. If the wording of it seems in places curious, this is simply because it follows, and I think necessarily follows, the somewhat unusual terminology of the existing Act. If I may say a word first about some preliminary objections which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor intimated that he might have, he suggested first that it was outside the scope of the Bill, and that it was not an Amendment which ought to be moved in the Second House at the end of a Session. I cannot altogether agree with those contentions.
The Bill has been described as a rag-bag Bill. It deals not so much, as I think the noble and learned Lord suggested, with evidence and procedure; it deals in the first place with new methods of treating convicted persons, particularly those who have committed less serious offences involving compensation orders, restitution orders, criminal bankruptcies, suspended sentences and so forth. Then in Part II there is an extraordinary collection of miscellanea which, I think, helped to earn the Bill its title of a rag-bag Bill: increases in the maximum punishment for firearm offences; further provisions regarding the possession of firearms by persons convicted of crime; maximum punishment for the unlawful harassment of residential occupiers; extension of the definition of " public place " in the Public Order Act; power of a constable to take
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a drunken offender to a treatment center, and about another ten of these. And as to not altering the law, Schedule 3 repeals parts of about 35 Acts dated between 1870 and 1971.
The further contention which I understood was going to be announced, or taken, was that this is not the sort of Amendment which ought to be moved for the first time in the Second House. I find that a very strange contention for this Government to advance, bearing in mind that the very next Amendment is a Government Amendment which will change the whole nature and constitution of juries in every criminal trial in the country in future. The Amendment I am moving arises because of the decision of your Lordships' House in Knuller which was decided only on June 14, and therefore had not been reported by the time the Committee proceedings in the other place had concluded. But the Amendment which the Government are next to ask the Committee to approve arises from a report made about eight years ago. I am not criticising their doing it—better late than never—but this could have been put in the Bill from the very start in the other place; and that seems to me a rather curious objection.
There is one other point. In Knuller's case the argument—so far as I know an entirely new argument—was advanced by one or more of the noble and learned Lords of Appeal that because Parliament had not acted already to overrule the decision in Shaw's case the judges would assume that that meant that Parliament agreed with it. What I do not want to happen is for judges in future to say that because in connection with this Bill nobody raised the question whether Knuller's case was properly decided, it shows that we approve it.
This is a much shorter subject than that discussed on Monday and I shall be as short as I can. Briefly, the story is this. It deals solely with the field of obscene publications. In Shakespeare's time we had no law against obscenity, and there is in Shakespeare a certain amount of rough matter to do with sex; but nothing, I think, which occupies a bigger part in his plays than sex occupies in the lives of men and women. In the rest of the 16th century we had no law against obscenity, and in the 17th century

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we had no law against obscenity. It was in the 18th century that Chief Justice Holt declared that we had no law against obscenity; there was no Act of Parliament, there was no Common Law offence. It was only towards the end of the 18th century that the judges began to create Common Law offences in relation to obscenity.
The first Statute we had was the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. That was not an Act under which anybody could be sent to prison for publishing obscene matter. All it did was to provide that the police might seize and destroy obscene matter. The progenitor of the Act was Lord Campbell, then Lord Chief Justice, who introduced the Bill. It was violently attacked by the noble and learned Lord Chancellor, Lord Brougham, and also by Lord Lindhurst, and was only passed on an assurance by Lord Campbell who said:
"The measure is introduced to apply exclusively to works written for the single purpose of corrupting the morals of youth."
We know of course by this time that it is always dangerous to accept assurances from Ministers as to how an Act is going to be applied, and it had not long been in existence when another Chief Justice, Chief Justice Cockburn, substituted an entirely different definition of obscenity. Of course, what Lord Cameron told Parliament would apply would apply only to what is normally called "dirt for dirt's sake". If I may repeat them, the words were:
"The measure is intended to apply exclusively to works written for the single purpose of corrupting the morals of youth."
But, as laid down by Lord Cockburn, it has since in fact been applied to anything which has a tendency to deprave and corrupt.
After a great deal of public dissatisfaction, the culminating point came really in the 1950s, when the then Director of Public Prosecutions, instead of putting into the dock at the Old Bailey those who published perfectly obviously pornographic matter in paperbacks (very often dressed up to represent historical events in ancient Greece or Rome), did not put into the dock at the Old Bailey the editors of Sunday newspapers who were publishing in those days matter much of which might be thought to be obscene, but did put into the dock at the Old Bailey a
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number of perfectly reputable publishers of books which, whatever view one took of some of their contents, were undoubtedly works of serious literary quality. This matter really came to a head in 1959, when Parliament decided to pass an Act which was to contain the whole of our law on obscene publications. In the first place, it provided that instead of, as at that time, the prosecution being able to say to a jury, "Look at these paragraphs or at this page: if you are of the opinion that that is obscene then there must be a conviction", the Act provided that what was to be regarded was the whole of the book. Secondly, it set up for the first time a defence of public good, as follows:
"A person shall not be convicted of an offence against section 2 of this Act, and an order for forfeiture shall not be made under the foregoing section, if it is proved that publication of the article in question is justified as being for the public good on the ground that it is in the interests of science, literature, art or learning, or of other objects of general concern"
—and then provided that expert evidence might for the first time be produced under that head.
Parliament was evidently a little apprehensive that prosecuting authorities might find some way round this and therefore, although they were advised that it was not necessary, they inserted section 2(4):
"A person publishing an article shall not be proceeded against for an offence at common law consisting of the publication of any matter contained or embodied in the article where it is of the essence of the offence that the matter is obscene."
It would, I suggest, be unusual for Parliament to make so plain that this that is in the Act is in future to be the law in this field and that the common law is to be ousted. When therefore in 1962 a prosecution took place in relation to a publication called the Ladies' Directory and the House of Lords, by a majority, upheld a prosecution which had not taken place under the Act but on the footing that there was a conspiracy to corrupt public morals, it was naturally very much criticised in many quarters.
Parliament made it plain that they were In 1968 we had to consider, as many of your Lordships will remember, the question of censorship in the theatre. Here this was all set out in the Act of 1968. But in view of Shaw, here again

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not going to have the judges again seeking to inveigh against the obvious intention of Parliament; and Section 2(4) accordingly provided:
"No person shall be proceeded against in respect of a performance of a play or anything said or done in the course of such a performance (a) for an offence at common law where it is of the essence of the offence that the performance or as the case may be what was said or done, was obscene, indecent, offensive, disgusting or injurious to morality, and no person shall be proceeded against for an offence at common law of conspiring to corrupt public morals or to do any act contrary to public morals or decency in respect of an agreement to present or give a performance of a play or to cause anything to be said or done in the course of such performance."
Now, my Lords, in June of this year a further case which had been charged as a conspiracy to corrupt public morals came before your Lordships' House in its judicial capacity and to the surprise, I think, of many people, the decision in Shaw's case was upheld by a majority, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid, who had dissented from the judgment in Shaw. Indeed, in his judgment in this case he says:
"I dissented in Shaw's case. On reconsideration I still think that the decision was wrong and I see no reason to alter anything which I said in my speech. But it does not follow that I should now support a motion to reconsider the decision."
After discussing that, he ended by saying this:
"I think that however wrong or anomalous the decision may be, it must stand and apply to cases reasonably analogous unless or until it is altered by Parliament."
He therefore thought that only Parliament could now deal with the matter before the Committee. Then, as to the undertaking which had been given at the time, he says:
"In Shaw's case it was argued that section 2(4) excluded prosecution for the offence of corrupting public morals. The matter is dealt with by Lord Tucker at p. 290. Technically the distinction which he draws is correct but it appears to me to offend against the policy of the Act and if the draftsman of the 1959 Act had foreseen the decision in Shaw's case he might well have drafted the subsection differently. This matter was raised in the House of Commons on 3rd June, 1964 when the Solicitor General gave an assurance, repeating an earlier assurance, 'that a conspiracy to corrupt public morals would not be charged so as to circumvent the statutory defence in sub-section 4.'
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"That does at least chew that Parliament has not been entirely satisfied with Shaw's case. It is not for me to comment on the undesirability of seeking to alter the law by undertakings or otherwise than by legislation. But I am bound to say that I was surprised to learn that nothing effective had been done to bring this undertaking to the notice of the legal profession. Very experienced senior counsel in this case had never heard of it. It was not said that the course of the present case would have been different if counsel had known of the undertaking. But I cannot avoid an uneasy suspicion that ignorance of it may have affected the conduct of some other prosecution for this crime."
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Diplock, who dissented, after tracing the history of conspiracy from the Star Chamber, where it started, said:
"It is suggested that to over-rule Shaw's case would bring uncertainty to the criminal law—a field of law where certainty is particularly desirable. Shaw's case upon the count which charged him with conspiring to corrupt public morals did make it certain that to publish advertisements offering the services of prostitutes was a crime irrespective of whether the advertisements themselves were 'obscene' within the meaning of the Obscene Publications Act, 1959. To over-rule Shaw's case would make it equally certain that it is not. The vice of Shaw's case was that it opened a wide field of uncertainty as to what other conduct was also criminal. Previously it was possible for a citizen to regulate his conduct in the knowledge that if what he was minded to do was not specifically prohibited by a criminal statute and did not fall within any of those equally specific categories of conduct which had already been held to constitute offences at common law, he could do it without risk of incurring punishment even though most of his fellow citizens might be shocked at it as immoral or indecent. As a result of Shaw's case it would seem that any conduct of any kind which conflicts with widely held prejudices as to what is immoral or indecent, at any rate if at least two persons are in any way concerned with it, may ex post facto be held to have been a crime".
With this strange crime of conspiracy to corrupt public morals, obviously its application depends, so far as convictions are upheld or not, on the length of the judge's foot.
He then says:
"It is urged that even if the decision in Shaw's case was an improper exercise of legislative power by this House acting in its judicial capacity, it has now been ratified by the legislature itself, because the legislature has allowed ten years to pass without taking steps to overrule it. It seems to me that to infer parliamentary approval from parliamentary inaction is to take an unrealistic view of the pressure on parliamentary time under party government and of the way in which priorities in competing claims for time for legislation are settled. The suggestion that Parliament tacitly

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approved Shaw's case by omitting to deal with it when the Obscene Publications Act, 1959, was amended in 1964 has a particularly hollow ring in the light of the disclosure of the assurance given to Parliament by a Law Officer of the Crown in the course of the debates on the amending Bill that a conspiracy to corrupt public morals would not be charged so as to circumvent the statutory defence in section 4 of the Act of 1959—which was precisely what had been done in Shaw's case."
That is perhaps one of the primary objections to the decision in Shaw's case. There are two well-understood and important principles affecting the judges. One is that the judges must do what they are told by Parliament; that it is for Parliament and not the judges to decide what the law is to be, particularly in the field of morality. The other equally important principle is that the judges are independent of the Executive; it is not the function of any Minister to tell the judges what they are to do, nor need the judges pay any attention to what the Ministers say. Here was a case in which Parliament had manifestly intended that the law in this field should in future be conducted according to the provisions of the Act of 1959; and it received assurances that that would be the case. Then it found the judges inventing (if that is the right word) that which it was contended had not previously been the law but in this same sphere.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Diplock, then said:
"Since every private citizen has the right to initiate a prosecution for criminal conspiracy and the executive government has no power to prevent his doing so, it is difficult to see how effect could be given to this assurance except, perhaps, by unprecedented use by the Attorney-General of the power of entering a nolle prosequi after the indictment had been drawn; and no steps seem to have been taken to draw the assurance to the attention of the police authorities by whom prosecutions are generally undertaken in the way in which the case was presented to the jury. The instant prosecutions appear to be in breach of it. Yet it seems not improbable that it influenced Parliament in deciding on the contents of the amending Act."
Later, the noble and learned Lord said:
Your Lordships need have no fear that to over-rule Shaw's case would subject an unwilling public to forced participation in immoralities or exposure to indecencies which are indulged in by a minority in a permissive age.
He then goes on to explain why. I thought it best to use the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Diplock, rather than my own in explaining my
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objection to the decision—particularly the decision in Shaw's case.
May I conclude by quoting another noble and learned Lord whom I heard delivering a talk only a fortnight ago at the annual general meeting of Justice? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Devlin, was giving an address on "Law in a Restless Society". He said that he thought that the function of law was not really to lead the way in changes in our moral laws. He said:
"I do not mean that the law is to be oblivious entirely to changes. I mean merely that it has to wait for them. The law must follow the consensus in morals and customs but it must be in the rear of the movement, its function being to occupy the ground once it is consolidated. It is for the legislator, it seems to me, to decide when the time has come to consolidate new ideas into the consensus and likewise to expel the old because the decision, the right estimation of what that time is, is essentially part of the area of politics.
So I would regret a decision like the celebrated Shaw case which has recently been reaffirmed in the House of Lords. I am not talking about the reaffirmation because that introduced a lot of different considerations."
"The function of the Judiciary, I think, is to administer law, not to make it. Of course, in the act of administration, it is sometimes very difficult to avoid some manufacture, but it should be the thing behind the mind of the judge that what he is doing is administering and not making, but because of the Judiciary being the voice of the law, the way in which it makes itself known to the public at large, its role is generally thought to be much more important than, in fact, it is. I think it is just worth exploring that point. Some of the misconceptions, it seems to me, on that is something for which the Judiciary is itself to blame. It has never thoroughly disentangled itself from its old role when judges were servants of the Crown, and men therefore who took that place were servants of the Crown as well as judges. They were, if one goes right back, of course, almost the equivalent of Ministers."
Later, he said:
"I think that law and order is a very unfortunate conjunction of words because they signify for this purpose two things that are quite different. The judges are responsible for the maintenance of the law; the Executive is responsible for the maintenance of order. Order may spring from the law, but law and order coupled like that as if one body or one person had to enforce both, gives a wholly misleading idea of what the judges ought to be doing."
Then he said:
"Coming back to Shaw's case; it seems to me that it is quite wrong for the judges to think that they are responsible for the moral

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health of the community in some way; they are not at all. The law, of course, should be so laid down as to give effect to those moral ideas which are part of the consensus, but having taken the law, they are no more responsible for moral health than a medical officer of health is, or a sanitary inspector. Equally, they take the law and it is their business to see that it is properly applied."
Lord Devlin then referred to suggestions which had been made that the law was an instrument of social purpose, and he said:
"I do not believe that either. If one said to anyone that proclaims that the law is the instrument of moral purpose he would say, 'disgraceful; you must be an upholder of Shaw's case'."
And he concluded by saying:
"The common law is no longer the right medium, it seems to me, for carrying out either social or moral purposes. Both should be left to statute to create the framework within which society can express and achieve its ends and its purposes."
I submit to the Committee that that is the right view. It is unfortunate that there has been this conflict of opinion between Parliament and the judges, but it is for Parliament to decide, and I hope that this Amendment will be approved. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor indicated on Monday that he had not decided whether on my Amendment he was to deliver what he called his " full speech ". Naturally that is entirely a matter for him. But in case it saves any time may I say that I do not propose to ask the Committee to divide on this Amendment. My reason is this. My main object in moving it is to ensure that no noble and learned Lord, when the next round comes, will say, "We are going to assume that Parliament agreed with our decision in the Knuller case because they have not considered it in the House at all."
The reason why I do not propose to press the Amendment to a Division is that I agree with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, that it is really the other place which ought to consider a matter of this kind first (this Bill, of course, did not start there), not because this Amendment ought to have been taken there but for another simple reason: that the other place is the elected Chamber and the Government, whatever it is, has to retain the confidence of that Chamber. One is here very much on a question of public opinion. This Cham-
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ber is a place in which the Conservative Party always have a large built-in majority. That is an aspect of your Lordships' House which the all-Party Conference on House of Lords reform regretted, in a White Paper which was subsequently approved by your Lordships' House; but it is still the case. The last thing that would be likely to result here is an expression of the view of Parliament as a whole; and while I regret it—and I suspect that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor also regrets it—however much one says, and however much one totally says, this ought not to be a Party political Bill at all. When the Division bell rings and noble Lords come in from the Libraries it is almost impossible for the Government to lose a Division, unless somebody has miscalculated. I do not think therefore that any useful public purpose would be served by my pressing this Amendment to a Division, but for the reason I gave I propose to move it.
6.23 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am glad to note that the noble and learned Lord is not going to press this to a Division. I think that his self-discipline in this respect may exonerate me from making quite as long a speech as I was proposing to do, and he will therefore acquit me of discourtesy if I do not go into all his arguments. I should like, if I may, to take up his last remarks about this Assembly. If he knew the difficulties which the Conservative Party has in the House of Lords in controlling their own supporters and preventing them from voting against them I do not think he would have said what he did. I say that with a longer experience of this House at one time or another than even the noble and learned Lord and in the memory that in a former incarnation I had to lead it for a time.
I once said in that incarnation that although there was perhaps nothing more Conservative than an independent Peer there was equally nothing more independent than a Conservative Peer. This is one of the things which gives the House of Lords its peculiar characteristic. Certainly on a matter of this kind, which concerns public morals, I would have thought that this House was at least as familiar with the general aspects of life which are covered by the subject of

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public morals as even an elected Chamber is capable of being. That at any rate is my experience, based, I am afraid, on a distressing and increasingly long experience of both Houses. I do not think I am at all repentant for having said that this, if pressed to a Division, would have been an inappropriate Act to use as a vehicle for legislation of this kind. It may be I ought to have added penal treatment to my description for the purposes of the Act.
I agree that the Government are going to propose a change in the law affecting juries. This was not originally our intention. It was originally our view that this Act was an inappropriate vehicle for that too, but we intend to do so now partly because it is long overdue, in our view, to give effect to proposals of the noble and learned Lord sitting on the Cross-Benches who reported nearly eight years ago, and partly because a request was made by all quarters in another place that we should swallow our principles in this respect; we were happy to yield to the persuasion to which we were then subjected. As it could not be done in the other place owing to the nature of the Long Title of the Bill we are going to do it, if the House will follow us, here. I will not say any more about that as it would take too long.
I come, therefore, to the main purpose of the Amendment. Here I do find myself in considerable disagreement with the noble and learned Lord as to what the effect would have been had this Amendment been inserted into the law of the land. It would have been on the grounds of my difference from him for this purpose, in a fundamental respect, that I should have advised the Committee to reject it on its merits. The noble and learned Lord began by saying that his Amendment dealt with obscene publications. In my judgment this is not so at all, nor did Knuller, nor did the earlier Shaw or the Ladies Directory Case, as it is sometimes known. In my judgment—and I must apologise for differing from the noble and learned Lord about this—neither the Ladies Directory Case nor Knuller was a case about obscenity at all, and I will tell the noble and learned Lord and the Committee why I think that is so.
There were three points really in the Ladies Directory Case and they ought to
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be carefully separated in one's mind. I did make a special study of this case, not because of any natural salaciousness in my mind but because I had to study it in relation to another case, Bhagwan, which I did in the Court of Appeal and which came to the House of Lords two days after my appointment as Lord Chancellor and after I had prepared my argument, which I bequeathed to my son. The reason I say so is this: the three separate points in Shaw are: (1) have the courts still got—at one time they undoubtedly exercised—a residual right to extend the Common Law in the field of substantive offences? I think Shaw decides that they have. This, as the noble and learned Lord said, is a highly contentious point. It may or may not be true that this is over-stepping the bounds of what the Judiciary is about. I personally like a bit of Common Law which is furry at the edges and which has a few growing points. I quite recognise in this field it may be far too sensitive for judicial extension to what has already been decided and the matter ought to be left to Parliament. That was an aspect of the law of conspiracy which we discussed at a little length when the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, was proposing her Amendment on the last occasion when we dealt with this Bill.
The second question in Shaw was whether you ought to label the particular things about which Shaw was concerned with the curious label, "conspiracy to corrupt public morals". In other words, was there an offence on the decided authorities—not about the furry edges or the growing points—but was there on decided authorities an offence which one could label, "conspiracy to corrupt public morals"? Lord Reid thought not; the majority thought, Yes; and Lord Simonds made a very fine piece of judicial rhetoric which I have cited in court with the utmost relish. For the purpose of this discussion that is a totally unimportant point, because it is simply a question of what label to give to an offence if you decide that it is an offence.
Now you come to the heart of what was decided in Shaw. Shaw was not about obscenity in the ordinary sense. Shaw was about a very important question of public policy, about which it is possible to hold more views than one.

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As regards the question of public policy, assuming that an advertisement can be inserted in a public newspaper without offending against the law of obscenity in any way, but advertising in fairly concrete terms, but in discreet language, the wares of a professional prostitute, ought that to be an offence against public order, or not? Obviously, as I said last time when I touched on this matter, it is possible to construct a case either way on the merits of that, but it is not a case about obscenity.
May I illustrate what I mean? I took the trouble to send for the actual advertisements in the Ladies' Directory case. Noble Lords will see at once what I mean if I quote one of them. It is the first, as it happens; I have taken them at random. It begins with the words, "Miss Wyplash" and underneath are the words "ex-governess". Following are the words "Strict disciplinarian, telephone Bayswater—". Perhaps I had better not give the actual figures. That is no more obscene than a telephone directory or a railway timetable. It is not about obscenity at all. The question is whether you ought to allow that, as a matter of public policy or of substantive law, to be an offence against the law of the land. There are many countries where advertisements for prostitution are freely admitted into the Press. At the moment, they cannot be admitted into our Press because of the decision in Shaw. But it is not a decision about obscenity but about public policy, which may be right or wrong.
If I come to Knuller, which is the Oz case, noble Lords can see exactly the same principle at work. In that case, by substituting male prostitutes for female prostitutes you had exactly the same principle of public policy. There was an issue about obscenity there, because they were not so obviously harmless as the advertisement of Miss Wyplash, but they were advertisements for and by professional male prostitutes, explaining what their physical attainments were and what their physical conformation was, in order to show how desirable they were or what was required. This was not intrinsically obscene literature in the ordinary sense. The question was whether professional male prostitutes, or their customers, ought to be put in touch
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with each other by means of advertisements in the public Press. That was the issue of public policy. It is something about which views may differ, but it is well to get it clear. I am sorry, but I referred to Oz when I meant It; may I apologise both to your Lordships and to Oz for being misleading. It is very important to get clear what the Knuller case was about. It was not about obscenity primarily, but about whether it is desirable for male prostitutes to advertise their wares or to be advertised for.
Again, I want to be perfectly explicit. There was an argument presented by learned counsel on behalf of the publishers, that this was a sort of male homosexual Heather Jenner Bureau. It was not. There was no nonsense about lonely souls wanting to get in touch with one another. It was:
"Pretty dolly boy wanted for sex and travel by boy, 21. Ample bread."
That, of course, means money; then there was a box number. Another advertisement was:
"Ex French foreign legionnaire, handsome, active, 25, seeks assistance from gentleman of means. Anything legal considered."
Then there was another box number. Another was:
"I'm 23, passive, presentable. Bored with 'teeny' men. Want to meet the 'larg(est)' men…."
This is the kind of thing which was at issue in Knuller. Do not let us deceive ourselves by talking about conspiracy to corrupt public morals or about obscenity, because it is nothing to do with it. It is a question of public policy whether you want that kind of advertisement to be allowed or not. The reason why I say that this Amendment is wholly inappropriate to a procedural or penal treatment measure of this kind is for some of the reasons, although not all of the reasons, which the noble and learned Lord gave. It is quite unsuitable to insert this in a Bill while the Law Commission is considering the law of conspiracy, when the Commons have not had an opportunity to discuss it. It would have some bizarre results.
In one respect, I may have misled the Committee and in order to redeem my reputation I must now seek to amplify what I have said. The noble Baroness, Lady Birk, said in the previous debate

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which we had about conspiracy that the Home Office was rather coy about revealing the nature the other prosecutors for conspiracy to corrupt public morals. I do not know what they were all for. I think there were about 30 between the Ladies' Directory and Knuller. But most of them were for "blue" films and that is about obscenity. That is to say, what I have been talking about hitherto—the desirability or otherwise of prostitutes advertising their wares—has nothing to do with obscenity but is a problem of public policy. But the "blue" films are straight questions of obscenity—people who allow themselves to be photographed copulating in various positions and displays for the purpose of commercial exploitation. There a question of public policy is involved, quite apart from obscenity. Obviously, opinions may differ as to how far this ought to be permitted.
Under the law as it is at the moment—I shall not go into the long history of it which the noble and learned Lord set forth—curiously enough, you can prosecute a "blue" film for obscenity only if it is shown in a private house. This seems bizarre. I did not know this until I had to consider this Amendment. It is one of those curious aspects of criminal law which I had not fully researched. You can be prosecuted, apart from the law of conspiracy, only if you show it in a private house. If you show it in a factory—which I am told is increasing in practice—or in a club, you have to be prosecuted under the old law of conspiracy. Again, whether it is desirable to use conspiracy for this purpose or to make the showing of a "blue" film in a factory or a club an offence, as it is under the law of conspiracy but not under the law affecting obscenity, is a matter of policy which we can all discuss. Simply to remove the law of conspiracy means that you let it in by a side wind. You would simply let in the situation that you would allow "blue" films in a factory or a club but not in a private house, which would seem slightly anomalous.
The end of it all is that we must discuss this again on some other occasion. I should hope that it is discussed in another place. I should think that this is the kind of matter that can best be discussed by the House of Commons after
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the Law Commission or the Criminal Law Revision Committee have produced some kind of working paper, because it is highly complex. I personally think that that is the way that law reform ought to be in the future. Had the noble and learned Lord been threatening to divide—which he is not—I was going to beg him not to strangle his own child in this way, but that will be unnecessary. I am afraid that I have been longer than I intended, but I hope that I have made my own position on this subject plain.
LORD FOOT: May I ask the noble and learned Lord a question? It arises out of his concluding remarks, when he was saying that there had been about 30 prosecutions, so far as he was aware, between the case of Shaw and the later case, and he thought that most of them had been in respect of "blue" films. He then went on to explain why it had not been possible to take obscenity proceedings in respect of them if they were shown in a public place, as opposed to a private house. But can he give us an assurance that, since the Attorney General said that the authorities would not try to avoid the operation of the obscenity defence by seeking to bring a charge of conspiracy to corrupt public morals, no case where a prosecution for corrupting public morals has been launched has been covered by obscenity?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I cannot from my own knowledge do so, because I have not been through these cases personally; but I believe this to be the case. As the great majority, of course, were in the period of time of the Labour Administration, it was in the nature of things, I think, a Conservative Solicitor-General who gave the undertaking to which the noble and learned Lord referred. It was a Labour Government which inherited it, and it is now a Conservative Administration which has inherited it from the Labour Government. I have absolutely no doubt in my own mind that all the Law Officers of the **three Administrations have honestly abided by the undertaking which was then given. But I cannot say that I have checked it from any personal view of the files. I believe it to be true, but I believe it because I know the men concerned and believe them to be absolutely honourable.
6.42 p.m.
BARONESS BIRK: May I make one or two brief points? The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor was good enough to reply to a point that I raised about the number of prosecutions. I see that I also have got my figures wrong, because, reading the judgment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, in another case, I see that he says:
"We were told that in one period of four years since that time there had been over 30 prosecutions for conspiracy to corrupt public morals. We do not know how many in total there have been …"—
That would indicate that there have probably been a great many more. I imagine it is a considerable piece of work, but it would possibly be helpful for future occasions if one could have some breakdown of these cases so that we were all more aware of the position. This covers a period of 11 years; and there were 30 cases in four years.
On a general point (and I do not want to repeat any of the remarks and arguments I put forward the other evening; nor should I like a further set-to and tangle in one week with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor), I should like to support the Amendment moved by my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner, because it seems to me that he is dealing in the first part of his Amendment with (although it is a rather narrower aspect of what I was referring to) a specific part of the law of conspiracy. It highlights what is a rather vague and whimsical offence, which brings in what to me, as a lay person, is the most important factor of all; that is, the whole question of uncertainty; of not knowing whether one is going to come in conflict with the law or not. It is clear from what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said—he put it extremely clearly—that this question of public policy is one on which many different views are held. I personally take the view on the first example he gave us, of "Miss Whyplash", and then the telephone number, that it is not mandatory on anybody to use that telephone number. On his second case, he says, "Is it desirable that male prostitutes should advertise in this way?" With great respect, I would put it the other way round and say, "Is it so undesirable that people should be able to do this that it
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is going to be harmful to the rest of society?"
I would further argue that perhaps one could put forward the case for saying—this is just an example—that it could in fact be helpful that people who want this contact with each other can find it in this way, rather than by going around soliciting unwilling people or making attempts to solicit people under age. I think that in another case the prosecution made it clear that they were not bringing a prosecution under the Sexual Offences Act because, presumably, there was not enough evidence. There is this whole vagueness and a question of wondering, as I said the other evening, where the judicial knife is going to stick in next, which is of great concern to many people—not only judges and not only lawyers, but the citizens of this country.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I was careful not to prejudge the merits of the question as to public policy which I raised, although the noble Baroness may not be altogether surprised to hear that I do not take exactly the same view as that for which she has now argued. I do not propose to enter into the matter. I would only say, having spent some of my life in the House of Commons, that she will not find in that very acrimonious body unanimous approval for what she has just said.
As regards the rest of the question, it may be that I slightly misled the Committee, because there has since been put into my hands a Question and Answer of the other place, dated June 30 of this year. I notice that the Attorney General answered a Written Question by Mr. Hamling in that House, and his Answer was as follows:
"There have been 41 prosecutions for conspiracy to corrupt public morals from 1st January, 1960, to date."
That is, to June 30 last.
"Convictions were obtained in 33 of these cases."
This is where I got my figure
"The total number of defendants convicted was 133."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons; 30/6/72, col. 428.]
There were 33 convictions in respect of 133 defendants.
Then a Table is set out, which noble Lords will find in Hansard of the other place for June 30. The table sets out the

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names of the convicted defendants, or the names of the cases, from 1959 to 1969. It appears that there had not been any recently. But if the noble Baroness would like any further information I should be prepared to give it if she would put down a Written Question to the Government or if she would write to me specifying the information she wants. I would try to get that information for her, and if she wanted to put down a Question for Written Answer it could of course be published in Hansard in the ordinary way.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE: Before my noble and learned friend replies, I should like a little clarification. I always enormously enjoy these legal arguments between our two distinguished Front Bench noble and learned Lords. We are getting more and more of them, and in general I understand less and less of them; but I suppose that is the way it goes. My noble and learned friend has produced an Amendment of three subsections dealing almost entirely with articles which are published, which I take it means are written for newspapers. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has replied entirely about "blue" films, and has made the clause apply only to some "blue" films and not to others. I am in a state of total confusion. I thought that this was an Amendment to show that prosecutions against obscenity which depended on conspiracy would no longer be valid. Was I right? Are only "blue" films concerned? Could it be spelt out very simply for those of us who are not very good at these matters?
6.49 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I will try to spell it out. I think the noble Lord was misled by the fact that he had not read the definition section in the noble and learned Lord's Amendment concerning the word "article". The noble and learned Lord has indulged, I am—I do not know whether to say—sorry or glad to see, in legislation by reference. But if the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, will look up the Statute to which reference is made in subsection (3) of the noble and learned Lord's Amendment, he will see that "article" does not mean an article in a newspaper
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in the ordinary sense; it means anything which is capable of being read or looked at, roughly speaking—I forget the exact language. He will see that roughly speaking it is something which has to be looked at or read.
The reason why I introduced the passage in what I said about "blue" films is this—and perhaps I had better spell it out at greater length. This is what I would have said had I been making a longer speech on the subject. The majority of prosecutions for conspiracy to corrupt public morals instituted since the Shaw decision have concerned the showing of "blue" films. These offences are usually committed in clubs, and sometimes even in factories. The Obscene Publications Act 1959 can be used only if the exhibition was given in a private dwellinghouse. This is because the proviso to Section 1(3) of that Act, provides that the definition of "publication" should not include anything done in the course of a cinematograph exhibition, other than one given in a private dwellinghouse to which the public are not admitted. That is the technical explanation underlying what I said. I was trying to spell it out in plainer language than is perhaps contained in that rather compendious technical passage from my brief. I hope it is now plain to the noble Lord.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE: I am extremely grateful, and I shall go to bed with the 1959 Act.
LORD GARDINER: I do not want to prolong the argument but I should like to add my own explanation in relation to the point raised by my noble friend Lord Donaldson. This question of the "blue" films was dealt with by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Diplock, as follows:
"Next, it is said that the circumstance that there have been at least 30 successful prosecutions for conspiracies to corrupt public morals following the decision in Shaw's case supplies an additional reason for not overruling it. Your Lordships were informed that most of these arose out of the exhibition of obscene films to members of the public, which is not a statutory offence under the Obscene Publications Acts 1959 and 1964."
Then he added this:
"This conduct too would constitute the well-established common law misdemeanour

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of conducting an obscene or indecent public exhibition and a conspiracy to commit it would have been a misdemeanour apart from the decision in Shaw's case."
Secondly, may I say that—
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The noble and learned Lord has quoted the noble and learned Lord, Lord Diplock, but I think perhaps he has forgotten the proviso to the section, to which I made reference in replying to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson. I know that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, has a great respect, as I have, for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Diplock; but he was in the minority, and he is not always right.
LORD GARDINER: None of us is always right, but I think that he was right on that point.
As to the Law Officers, I hope I did not say anything to place any blame on the Law Officers of either Government, but I think it is clear from the judgments that the difficulty which arose was due to an extraordinary failure of communication between the Law Officers—which I am sure was not deliberate—and those responsible for prosecution. At the end the day the vice of Shaw's case really is this: that prostitution is not, and never has been, however immoral, a criminal offence; and, subject to statutes like the Street Offences Act, there is nothing to stop a prostitute from advertising her services as she likes—unless of course she does it in an obscene article. I should have thought myself—and probably everybody would agree—that one cannot distinguish between Shaw's case and others. I should have thought that both were, prima facie, obscene. The vice is in not prosecuting as Parliament had intended for that, but basing the whole thing on conspiracy. It requires two people to indulge in an act of prostitution and this, however immoral, is completely legal. Yet, two people being concerned, I suppose that one day the judges might support a conviction for a conspiracy to corrupt public morals, holding, no doubt rightly, that prostitution is immoral.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: But surely that is a question of private morals.
LORD GARDENER: I do not want to pursue the matter further. I rather hope that we shall not have to wait for the
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Law Commission to deal with the whole law of conspiracy before Parliament deals with this subject. The whole law of conspiracy is something much more complicated and I apprehend that it may yet be a matter of years before the Law Commission can deal with that. I hope that Parliament, if not in this Session, then fairly soon, will find an opportunity of removing these unfortunate decisions as I regard them. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.55 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved Amendment No. 39A:
After Clause 23 insert the following new clause:
Qualification for jury service
("23A.—(1) Subject to the following provisions, every person shall be qualified to serve as a juror and be liable accordingly to attend for jury service when summoned under Part V of the Act of 1971, if—

(a) he is for the time being registered as a parliamentary or local government elector and is not less than twenty-one nor more than sixty-five years of age; and

(b) he has been ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man for any period of at least five years since attaining the age of sixteen,

but not if he is for the time being ineligible or disqualified for jury service; and the persons who are ineligible, and those who are disqualified, are those respectively listed in Parts I and II of Schedule (Ineligibility and disqualification for, and excusal from, jury service) to this Act.
(2) A person summoned for jury service shall be entitled, if he so wishes, to be excused from jury service if he is among the persons listed in Part III of Schedule (Ineligibility and disqualification for, and excusal from, jury service) to this Act, but (except as provided by that Part of the Schedule in the case of members of the Forces and others) a person shall not by this subsection be exempt from his obligation to attend if summoned, where the summons has not been withdrawn under section 31(6) of the Act of 1971 and he has not under section 34(2) of that Act been excused from attending.
(3) A written summons sent to any person under Part V of the Act of 1971 shall be accompanied by a notice informing him—

(a) of the effect of subsections (1), (2), (4) and (5) of this section; and

(b) that he may make representations to the appropriate officer with a view to obtaining the withdrawal of the summons, if for any reason he is not qualified for jury service, or wishes or is entitled to be excused;

and where a person attends in pursuance of such a summons or of a summons under

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section 33 of the Act of 1971 (summoning without notice in exceptional circumstances), the appropriate officer may put or cause to be put to him such questions as the officer thinks fit in order to establish whether or not the person is qualified for jury service.
(4) Where it appears to the appropriate officer, in the case of a person attending in pursuance of a summons for jury service, that on account of physical disability or insufficient understanding of English there is doubt as to his capacity to act effectively as a juror, the person may be brought before the judge, who shall determine whether or not he should act as a juror and, if not, shall discharge the summons; and for this purpose "the judge" means any judge of the High Court or any Circuit judge or Recorder.
(5) If any person—

(a) having been summoned for jury service makes, or causes or permits to be made on his behalf, any false representation to the appropriate officer with the intention of evading jury service; or

(b) makes or causes to be made on behalf of another person who has been so summoned any false representation to that officer with the intention of enabling the other to evade jury service; or

(c) when any question is put to him in pursuance of subsection (3) above, refuses without reasonable excuse to answer, or gives an answer which he knows to be false in a material particular, or recklessly gives an answer which is false in a material particular; or

(d) being ineligible for jury service under Group A, B or C in Part I of Shedule (Ineligibility and disqualification for, and excusal from, jury service) to this Act, or disqualified under Part II of that Schedule, serves on a jury,

he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine of not more than £400 in the case of an offence of serving on a jury when disqualified and, in any other case, a fine of not more than £100.
(6) The fact that a person summoned to serve on a jury is not qualified to serve shall be a ground of challenge for cause; but subject to this nothing in this section affects the law relating to challenge of jurors.
(7) In this section "the Act of 1971" means the Courts Act 1971; and that Act and the foregoing provisions of this section shall be construed and have effect as if this section were contained in Part V of that Act.
(8) Any enactment included among those repealed by this Act which would otherwise have any effect in relation to coroners' juries, or a person's qualification or liability to serve on such a jury, shall cease to have that effect."
The noble and learned Lord said: Here, to some extent, I have reached a terra incognita for which I must offer my apologies to the Committee. I am in the humiliating position of having to "devil" for my noble friend who is still,
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apparently, detained in the Isle of Man. However, roughly speaking, I know what this Amendment is about, and if I am slightly less well-informed about it than I should like to be I hope that the Committee will forgive me. I certainly hope that my learned junior will appear to relieve his leading counsel before the leading counsel is hopelessly found out. As I said in the course of my speech on the last Amendment, this Amendment is really to carry out an undertaking given in another place, and incapable of performance in another place because of the Long Title to the Bill, to introduce and implement the Report of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, about jury qualification. In passing, I should like to express the gratitude of successive Administrations, and I am sure of the House, to the noble and learned Lord, whom I am happy to see sitting on the Cross-Benches, for the work that he did on that occasion which is the basis of this Amendment, although I think in one respect we have not followed him.
There has been one change in the law since the noble and learned Lord reported, and that reflects itself in the terminology of the Amendment which I am now proposing. When the noble and learned Lord reported, the ordinary age of majority for a variety of different purposes, including Parliamentary representation, was 21 and, as the House knows, it has since been reduced to 18. The Government considered carefully whether to reduce to 18 the age for eligibility for jury service, which would simplify the administration of the new laws so that the jurors came straight off the electoral list, but on reflection—and we do not think we have been very seriously criticised on that yet—we thought that human liberty was very important and that people might be a little uneasy if they could have their liberty taken away as a result of a verdict of a jury containing a substantial proportion of those between 18 and 21. We may have been right or we may have been wrong, but I think we have not been unduly criticised about it. Of course if it turns out to be wrong after a period of years we can put it right.
My noble friend has just arrived—the relief of Mafeking!—What is at present proposed is that the ages should be a minimum of 21 and a maximum

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of 65. I will return to the maximum in a moment. On the whole I think I am right in saying that the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, recommended this precise age bracket although at the bottom end he did not then know that the voting age and the majority age was going to be reduced to 18. But at any rate the upper limit at 65 still stands. For various reasons we have not included coroner's juries, which are selected on an entirely different basis, and we have differed from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest in one respect which I will explain as compendiously as I can to the Committee.
At the moment, the jury list comes off the electoral roll, but the householder—as noble Lords will doubtless all know, from having done it themselves—has to put in his own age and the age, if over 21 or 18, of the other inhabitants of his house. Nearly always only the householder is qualified for jury service and he has the letter "J" against his name. When this reform is carried out nearly all the adult members of the household will be between 21 and 65, so that most of the electors on the household electoral list will be eligible for jury service, which means that in principle the letter "J" will not appear against only the householder's name; they will all be eligible.
The Morris Committee proposed that each person should be sent a separate questionnaire which would have to be answered and that it would contain all the questions relevant to eligibility: age, I suppose previous convictions, whether a Peer, barrister, justice of the peace, or incapacitated in some way which would exclude them from jury service. A corollary of that would have had to be that if they did not fill in the form at all, or, alternatively, if they filled it in knowingly falsely, they would be guilty of an offence. The forms having been collected, a suitable summons would be sent out for the jury.
According to the plan in the Amendment, we have thought it right to retain the duty on the householder to state, in addition to whether the inhabitants of the house are over 18, to the best of his knowledge and belief whether they are between 21 and 65; and this we think will save a number of unpleasant events
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which would otherwise inevitably have taken place. If one were to send out, as was originally recommended, a number of questionnaires to a random number of voters—say, 200,000 to produce a panel of 100,000 jurors—one would have found in practice that a number of them went to the very old, the weak or those unable to read, and that a great many questionnaires were not replied to. The next thing would have been that those people would have been summoned to a magistrates' court for committing a statutory offence, after which someone would have had to go round to arrest a proportion of them. That would probably have yielded 10 minor scandals a year, and I think your Lordships will agree that we were well advised not to try that course. I hope that this is generally accepted. If it is not—and there are arguments both ways—at least I have given the reason why we did not follow the noble Lord in this matter, though it was no disrespect for his opinion. I beg to move.
7.3 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: I will be brief because we have the great advantage of having with us the Chairman of the Committee, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest. We of course congratulate the Government on at length giving effect to the recommendations of that Committee. That should have been done by the previous Government; I am glad to see it being done now. I suggest very tentatively, knowing so much less about this issue than the noble and learned Lord, that while votes at 18 may make it impossible for the recommendations of the Committee to be carried out exactly as the Committee planned, what is now proposed raises considerable difficulties.
As I understand it, the Government propose making each householder responsible for declaring the age of each person resident in the household, so providing a list of 30 million to 35 million people each year, only one in 1,000 of whom will be required. This raises several difficulties. First, lodgers, students and even families will in many cases object strongly to informing the householder or landlord of their ages, and perhaps it is wrong to place the onus on the householder to give this information.

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Secondly, there may be a considerable degree of error. Many householders do not complete the registration forms, and many who do so give inaccurate information. I am told that well over one million people fail to be registered each year. The Government survey of May, 1967, into the accuracy of the register of electors showed that between 3½ per cent. and 4 per cent. of people were not registered. Even on this small survey, of 3,441 inquiries, 25 per cent. refused to state their age group.
Thirdly, it will have an adverse effect on the register of electors, and this is a point which troubles a good many people. Already some people have found that the easiest way to avoid jury service is to refuse to return the registration. With this widening of the field for jury service this practice is likely to increase. The form "A" is already rather complicated and people find difficulty in completing it. Efforts have been made in recent years to simplify it. The proposal we are discussing will in my view put the clock back and there is a fear that the incidence of non-registration will increase considerably.
It may well be that some other alternative to what the Government propose would be an improvement. It seems that to approach between 35 million and 40 million people when one wants only one in 1,000, and to do so in a way which will adversely affect the electoral list by reason of the proportion of people who do not even like giving their age groups and who refuse to give other people's, could cause considerable difficulty. However, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, and no doubt other members Of the Committee know very much more about this than I do, I will leave my comments there.
7.8 p.m.
LORD MORRIS OF BORTH-Y-GEST: I wish to speak briefly in support of the Amendment, and in doing so to thank Her Majesty's Government for having proposed it and others, and in so doing for implementing the main recommendations of the Committee over which I had the privilege of presiding. I thank the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for what he said, and for the way in which he explained the matter.
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It is of course some years since we were appointed. We were invited to serve in 1963, when the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, was Home Secretary. We reported in 1965, when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stow Hill, was Home Secretary. Successive Governments have in principle expressed approval of our main recommendations but there has been this—I will not say "delay"—interval of time since we reported until now. I have never, either in your Lordships' House or elsewhere, made any complaint about this. I have always taken the view that if one is invited to undertake some public service, one is always happy to do so and one gives the best advice that one can. But having done that, I have never taken the view that I ought to make it a matter of personal complaint if action has been somewhat tardy in following our Report. Members of a Committee—and I think this applies to the members of the Committee over which I presided—do of course inquire from time to time and many have asked me: "Is anything going to happen?" And members of a Committee, members of the public who give up their time and use their energy in serving on a committee, feel a certain sense of frustration if nothing happens. So I should like on their behalf, although I am not in touch with them at all these days, to thank Her Majesty's Government for introducing these Amendments now.
The fact that they are introduced is very much the result of the efforts in another place of Mr. Edward Gardner, Queen's Counsel, who was a member of the Committee and who, I believe, in another place urged Her Majesty's Government, and had support I think from both sides of the House, that it would be desirable to take some action at the present time. I am very happy to support these Amendments because they will introduce a useful change in our system, in our criminal administration, indeed in the administration of the law, because although there are very few civil juries these days I imagine that these proposals will apply to all juries, though of course juries now are mainly used in criminal cases.
I should think that in all parts of your Lordships' House there would be a feeling that the system that has now

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continued for the last 150 years is a system that is inadequate, outdated and no longer one that would conform with our current ideas. We all know that, broadly speaking, those eligible to serve on juries to-day are householders or those on the electoral register who are householders of houses of a certain rateable value. The rateable value is rather low in figure, but the result of having that system has been that if at any time there was a revaluation of rateable values, automatically the number of those eligible for jury service would be vastly increased. I do not think that that is a system that to-day can be justified.
The preponderance of opinion expressed to our Committee—though now some years ago—was that it would be a more rational basis to make the electoral register the general basis for service on a jury. As the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has said, when we were considering our problem, hearing evidence and when we reported, the age of majority was 21. The top age for jury service was and still is 60. We aid consider what would be a suitable age. I do not think that we gave any consideration, in the nature of things, to reducing the age below 21. There was no reason why we should. There was no contemplation at that time that the age of majority would be lowered. We did give some consideration to the question as to whether it should be a higher age than 21.
As regards the upper age limit, we thought that 60 was much too low and we recommended the age of 65. We might have recommended a higher age and many views were expressed that those over the age of 65 would not only have the experience of life and affairs that would so well equip them to serve on juries but also that they would be likely to have more time available. We thought of all that, but we also thought that, apart from those who are accustomed to sitting for hours on end and day after day concentrating and listening to evidence, it involves quite a strain, and we thought that on the whole there would be many over the age of 65 who would find it rather too tiring to concentrate for several hours a day and for days on end by sitting on juries. So we decided to recommend that the lower age should
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continue to be 21 as it is now, but that the upper age should be 65.
Now the age of majority is 18, and in another place I believe one or two Members expressed the view that liability for jury service should be between the ages of 18 and 65. I naturally cannot speak for the members of the Committee, not only because I have not seen them, but also because we did not consider any question of service under the age of 21. I would merely say that my personal view is that Her Majesty's Government have decided wisely in deciding that the age should be from 21 upwards. I do not think that the duties of an elector and those of a juror are to be exactly compared. This may be controversial and others in your Lordships' House may think that at the age of 18 people should serve on juries. But there is a great deal to be said for having a good distribution of ages and certainly for having a quite reasonable proportion of young people, because we have to remember that of the people who are convicted of crimes in the higher courts—and in this consideration of jury qualifications we are considering mainly criminal trials; and I speak now in reference to the year 1963—half of the total were under the age of 25 and two-thirds of the total were under the age of 30. It is rational to hope that a jury should be composed, or capable of being composed, of those coming from a wide range of ages. As I say, my own personal opinion is that I would be content, certainly for the time being, with the age of 21 as decided by Her Majesty's Government. Others, and I think also Mr. Gardner in another place, took a different view.
I do not want to take up too much of your Lordships' time but perhaps I may briefly mention one or two other matters. We thought, and we recommended, that it was only right that those serving on juries should have resided in this country for a period of years. We thought that those who have only recently become citizens should have a period during which they will become familiar with our way of life, and thus will be more competent as jurors if they were called upon to act in that capacity. That forms part of the Amendment which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, has moved. We did consider very carefully whether there could be some

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tests imposed for service on a jury. This raises a very difficult question indeed. On the whole, we came to the conclusion that it would be difficult to do more than to hope that those serving on juries would be able to read, write, speak and understand the language of the court.
May I just say a word in regard to the matter that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has so helpfully referred to; namely, the system of summoning. We did make a recommendation, which is not carried out in these proposals, rather on these lines: we were contemplating an electoral register which would contain the names of people from 21 upwards. For the future I imagine that the electoral register will not be, as it is now, virtually a jury list. At the present time the electoral register has opposite the names of householders who are qualified the letter "J"; over the years the list has been compiled, and any who for the first time seem to be qualified as jurors have sent to them a letter or a form. They, of course, have a right of appeal, but in addition to that they have a form sent to them, and they may be able to show reason why they ought not to be on the list of jurors.
For the future—I hope I am right in saying this—the electoral register will not have this letter "J", and therefore you cannot, by looking up the electoral register, say who will be eligible to serve. I quite see the force of the point taken by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner; but if administratively it is not going to be too difficult, I can see that there will be advantages in having an electoral register with the information which will enable registration officers to send to the Lord Chancellor's Department the names of those on the electoral register between 21 and 65. The scheme that we had in mind, that we hoped would be of assistance to those compiling the electoral register, was roughly this: we thought, supposing you need 100 jurors, send a letter to 200 who will be on the register (and that means, as we contemplated, those over the age of 21) with a questionnaire so that it may be seen whether they are eligible, whether they are disqualified, whether they wish to be excused. The letter would, of course, go to some over the age of 65, but it could easily be arranged that those over 65 would merely have to say that
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and return the form and nothing else would happen.
But there is the change in the situation now, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor pointed out. If a letter was sent to those on the electoral register, it would have to be sent to a number of people under 21, and they would also have to return the form and say they were not eligible. I can quite see that it may be very convenient, if the difficulties mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, can be overcome, that the information should be fully available as to those on the electoral register who are between 21 and 65.
That leads me just to ask this one further question: whether, even assuming that the register will be available with information as to ages, it might nevertheless not be helpful to have a preliminary letter of inquiry before sending a summons. Under the scheme as it will now be, as I follow it, a summons will be sent; but with the summons there will be careful information, informing the person summoned that if he is within certain groups he will be ineligible to serve; within another group he will be disqualified; within another group he will be entitled to be excused as of right, and furthermore there may be excusals if good cause is shown. I think it simply comes to this—and perhaps it is a matter of what is best from an administrative point of view: Is it, as the scheme is now proposed, appropriate to send a summons which may then be withdrawn, or will it be more convenient to send a letter of inquiry which might be followed by a summons? A summons is rather a serious thing; all people wish to obey the law, and it can sometimes upset people to get a summons.
Perhaps I am making too much of this point. It may not matter very much which way it is done. I do not know whether it would be possible, if the system as proposed in the Amendments is followed, to have by administrative arrangement some preliminary inquiry. That is merely the point that I raise. Is it desirable in all cases to have a summons which then may be withdrawn, or is it possible to have in some cases a preliminary inquiry which may have the result that no summons is ever served. I have no doubt that those who have

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looked into this matter have considered the present scheme very carefully, and if it is thought that administratively it will be satisfactory I do not press this point at all. In short, it is this: could there be some system whereby we avoid having a summons which may be withdrawn; to have some sort of inquiry which would result in no summons being sent?
I am afraid I have spoken rather at length. I would end by again saying that I very much appreciate the fact that these Amendments have been introduced and I greatly welcome them. It was never a term of reference of our Committee to consider the merits of the jury system as such; nor is it now in issue before your Lordships. There might on some occasion be a necessity to consider the whole system. We are not discussing that now. If in general we were considering whether the jury system in criminal cases—and at the moment I only speak in reference to criminal cases—is a desirable and effective system, I would for one claim that it is, and I would think that the general feeling, not only in the legal profession but in the minds of the public, is that our jury system is a desirable one. The reason why I think it has great merit is that it involves all citizens in honouring the law and in preserving and maintaining order. None of us think of the law as something that is imposed by those in authority upon citizens. We think of the law as provisions which are just to all citizens, which are provisions which enable all citizens to have freedom under the law and to enjoy security of person and security of property. In that way I personally think that the jury system has great merit because it involves all citizens of good will in maintaining those standards we think should be maintained.
7.30 p.m.
BARONESS ELLES: May I add a word of gratitude to that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, and to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, for moving this Amendment. This means one more tick on the list of recommendations made by the Cripps Committee. Of course we, in our recommendations, paid tribute to the work done by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, and
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his Departmental Committee. We in no way claim to have made any original recommendations, but we were supporting those made in his Report; and I also, as one of the many complainants since 1965, had a personal word of gratitude. May I say just one word on the consideration of the age limit of 21. At the time when we were studying the proposals of the Morris Report in 1969, the question of the age of majority was being discussed in Parliament. Our feeling was very much that in the field of criminal law those who are under 21 are in any case treated rather differently from those who are over 21. We therefore did not feel it right that should legislation be introduced (which, indeed, it was later) to reduce the age of majority to 18, that people of 18 should be sitting, so to speak, in judgment or in any case in a form of criticism of people who are in fact in a different field of the criminal law.
Another point is that not all of the country has the opportunity (if one could call it such) of reading publications such as It, Oz or the Ladies' Directory. Many people of 18 to 21 remain blissfully innocent of many of the crimes committed by fellow-citizens. We therefore did not feel it was right, especially in the more rural areas of the country, that people from 18 to 21 should be asked to sit on juries and listen to the kind of criminal case that sometimes comes to the courts. The third point we also thought about, especially regarding the age of 18 to 21, was that many people of that age are engaged in full-time educational courses, and whereas one can give some form of financial recompense, however small, to somebody who sits on a jury and who has to leave his business, one cannot recompense a student for hours lost, if indeed they are lost. Therefore we did not feel it was right, even if the age of majority was reduced to 18, that people under 21 should be asked to sit on juries.
I wish to make those particular points and to say how very glad all the women's organisations will be that this Amendment is at last going forward; also, that in an age of participation, which may be a very fashionable word, this course is also justifiable, and in some cases, even desirable. I think that in this particular case women will certainly want

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to exercise their rights as citizens. Also it is high time they realised that they have duties and responsibilities as citizens, and that they can take them equally with other citizens in this country.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: I have just escaped from a position of silence in time to add a few words on this Amendment. I should like to dissent from the views just put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, that selection of the age of 21 is still right. I think that 18, which obviously Lord Morris's Committee could hardly have foreseen as a possibility, is now right for three reasons. First of all, it would be administratively very much simplier that those who are old enough to be on the voting list should also be eligible for jury service. Secondly, I would argue that it is quite irrational to keep pretending that people are grown up for some purposes and are not grown up for other purposes. It is true, as the noble Baroness opposite just said, that young offenders who are for instance at an age to be sent to borstal are treated differently; they are subject to different sentences from those over 21. But it is also true that after the age of 17 they appear in the same courts, and that they are tried by juries in the same way as are older people. I would think that when we have decided they are old enough to vote, then that they are old enough to take out mortgages and old enough to marry without anyone else's consent, we should regard them as grown-up persons.
The third reason I would give is that we all know that no jury would be composed entirely of very young persons any more than any jury has been entirely composed of women since women were made eligible for jury service. Women continue to be in the minority, I think, not only because of the householder or ratepayer qualification. One of the arguments which I think was used in another place in favour of lowering the age to 18 was that most crimes are committed by relatively young people and that it is a good idea to have people in an age group who are understanding of the kind of temptations to which their contemporaries are exposed. I think it is now true that the peak age for indictable crimes for both sexes is 17, and I would have thought
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there is a great deal to be said for allowing on juries persons who have just passed the peak age for the commission of indictable crimes. For those three reasons, I should like to associate myself with those who believe that if you are grown up you are grown up, and if you are not grown up you are not grown; that we might as well settle for some age that must be arbitrary, and that we might settle for the same age for this purpose as for others.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: I hope your Lordships will forgive me expressing my personal pleasure at being present at to-day's proceedings. I have sometimes wondered whether I would live to see implemented by Parliament the excellent recommendations of this Committee, which reported in 1965, and which I had set up nine long years ago. I have made many mistakes in my life, no doubt, but I do not think I could have made a better selection of a Chairman for the Committee on Jury Service than the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest. All my life I shall be grateful to him for undertaking this public service.
LORD JANNER: I want to add one word from a source which is rather different. I should like to be excused for not having been here at the commencement, but I am not going to raise any controversial issues. I am merely going to say that those of us who were concerned with these problems in another place, and some of us who appeared before this Committee and expressed our views, are extremely grateful to the Government for having introduced this measure. There are of course points which have been raised now which are of a controversial nature in a certain sense, but by and large I think that the recommendations made by that excellent Committee, under the excellent chairmanship of the noble Lord, were entitled long ago, if I may say so with respect, to have their views expressed in the manner they are now expressed in the Amendment before the House. I should like to add my commendation to those already expressed. That applies not only to this Government but to previous Governments.
7.40 p.m.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE: Could I ask one question on the word "excusable" in Part

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III of the new Schedule? I can see that the noble and learned Lord, for example, is ineligible from his position, but it seems to me that as a Peer entitled to sit and vote in the House of Lords, until next October when both he and I will go over the age limit, I am excusable. If I want to serve on a jury, which as a matter of fact I do because I never have, what do I have to do? Do I have to sit tight and hope to be asked and then not disclose the fact that I am a Peer? What is the procedure under "excusable"?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am afraid that they know from the jury list that the noble Lord is a Peer. Perhaps I should have said that if the noble Lord wants to serve on a jury and gets leave of absence, the Schedule will allow him for the first time in English history to serve on a common jury. That is what he must do if he wants to serve on a jury before he becomes 65 on October 9 next.
BARONESS BIRK: Could I ask a question partly relating to that? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, talked in his extremely interesting speech on this Amendment about changing the Act and an antiquated and outdated system. He also mentioned "excusable if good cause is shown". It seems to me that to-day, when we are talking about people serving on a jury, while we consider that it is a duty for people to do so, it is also a very important and heavy responsibility. I am rather worried that it should still be considered mandatory that people should serve on a jury, and also be liable to a fine if they evade service. I wonder if it is possible for the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to enlarge a bit on everyone being excusable if good cause is shown. I would have thought that it would have been better, particularly as the people to be chosen will be from a wider category, that they could be chosen completely voluntarily rather than having to be excused if liable to be called on a jury. The noble and learned Lord said that his Committee was not considering the merits of the jury system and that there are various views on it, but one thing I would have thought important to-day is that people
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should not only be eligible but also be willing to serve on a jury.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am not sure that I can answer that offhand. Perhaps my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross will be able to do so when we formally propose the Schedule attached to this Amendment. It is true that jury service is a heavy responsibility. My experience is that if anyone had asked me to be a juror at any time of my adult life I think I would have run a mile. Fortunately I have always been ineligible for one reason or another. I am only too glad to think that I am ineligible. Of course, "excusable for good cause" is allowed under Section 34 of the Courts Act, which will continue to apply if this Amendment is passed.
May I come back to the beginning again. Having thanked the noble and learned Lord once more for his lucid and characteristically courteous speech, which was of great assistance to the Committee, I should like to say that obviously the question whether it is 18 or 21 is capable of being argued both ways, and it has been argued both ways. Our experience in discussing the matter among ourselves was that probably 21, for the reasons given broadly by the noble and learned Lord, represents the highest common factor of approval. But I cannot pretend that there is any magic in 21 any more than there is any magic in 18. It is a question of judgment and degree. I would agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, that in some ways the administrative task would be rendered easier if we had only one age for voting and one age for juries.
Coming back to the administrative point, which was the question raised in substance by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, I think we have to face the fact that this is going to complicate administration quite a lot, whatever we do. Under the old system, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, reminded us, the householder had to fill in his own form and, as very few houses were so low in rateable value as to come below the qualification, virtually every householder in the country was a juryman by the gradual development of property values. The result was that the present system was very much more

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simple in many ways than the system we are now introducing.
What we are now introducing is a proposition whereby about 30 million voters will become eligible for jury service unless they are under 21, or over 65, or entitled to some other form of ineligibility, disqualification or excusal. This is a very much more difficult plan to administer. It is quite true, as the noble and learned Lord said, that there are quite powerful arguments on both sides of this question as to which method of summoning you are going to adopt. My office, which in fact I am sorry to say will be responsible for summoning them, very much prefers the method proposed in the Amendment, and very largely I think that is why it is being done.
There are objections on the other side, but I think that the noble and learned Lord will reflect, after he has read Hansard, that most of his objections are applicable whichever method you choose. It is perfectly true that a great number of people do not register now for the election roll. I am afraid that will go on. If they do not register for the election roll, then, probably, they will not get votes and will not serve on juries; and there is a minority of persons who would probably prefer it that way. That would arise whichever way we ran the system. Then there are a number of people who refuse to state their age, but they will not have to state their age under the system proposed. What has to happen under the system proposed is that householders will state whether they are somewhere between 21 and 65.
The noble and learned Lord referred to students. Of course students will have to state their age, anyhow, to decide whether or not they have a vote; otherwise, they will not get one. They have to be marked as " Over 18 ". They may be a very tiny minority which does not at all mind saying they are " Over 18 ", but which is rather coy about saying they are " Under 21 ". I do not know, but I think they will be a relatively small minority. The broad point is that the householder will have to state whether inhabitants of his household are between the ages of 21 and 65, and there will be a separate box in the form to enable him to do so. Sixty-five is conveniently placed, at any rate for males, because it
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will probably be known whether or not they are getting an old age pension, or are entitled to one. The householder will not need to state their age, nor will they have to state their own. If they are unwilling to state their age to their own householder, they will probably—at any rate, some of them—be unwilling to state their age to the Lord Chancellor's Office. Therefore, you would be no further on if you did it the other way round.
The reason why we ultimately came down in favour of the system proposed is that we will get a certain number of rather painful incidents every year if we have to send them a questionnaire. It will distress a number of very old people who get a questionnaire, if—as we should have to do—we had to create a summary offence if they failed to fill it in, or intentionally filled it in wrongly. I should certainly like to consider what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, has said about sending a letter before sending a summons. I am told that my Office prefers the method I have announced, but I can tell the noble and learned Lord that we could do what he suggests under this Amendment without any further change, and that we will consider his proposal very seriously.
I was grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, who served the Conservative Party—and I think the public, too—very well in Fair Shares for the Fair Sex. I was never very convinced that Fair Shares for the Fair Sex really involved doing jury service. It always seemed to me to be a horribly rough experience for the fair sex to make them do it which is what we are proposing, but if that is what they want then that is what they have got. I certainly see no reason against it. I am not myself an enthusiast for serving, but if others queue up I am only too pleased. At any rate, we are very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, for the work she has done, and I am delighted to know that she is supported by the women's organisations. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, for stating the case on the other side of the 18 to 21 controversy. I cannot get very excited about it myself; but, on the whole, I come down on the more conservative side, as I expect she would expect. I thank your Lordships very much for the friendly way in which this series of Amendments has been

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received, and I do not think there is anything more I want to say.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Amendment No. 39B is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 23 insert the following new clause:
Electoral register as basis of juror selection
(" .—(1) In Schedule 4 to the Representation of the People Act 1949 (provisions which may be contained in regulations as to registration) the following paragraph shall be inserted after paragraph 2:—
" 2A. Provisions imposing on registration officers the duty of requiring persons to give information required for the purpose of the officer's duty under section (Electoral register as basis of juror selection) of the Criminal Justice Act 1972";
and in paragraph 12(1) of that Schedule (power to make breaches of regulations punishable on summary conviction), after the words "paragraph 2" there shall be inserted the words "or 2A".
(2) Every electoral registration officer under the said Act of 1949 shall as soon as practicable after the publication of any register of electors for his area deliver to such officer as the Lord Chancellor may designate such number of copies of the register as the Lord Chancellor's officer may require for the purpose of summoning jurors, and on each copy there shall he indicated those persons on the register whom the registration officer has ascertained to be, or to have been on a date also indicated on the copy, less than twenty-one or more than sixty-five years of age.")—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I think this Amendment No. 39C, could also be regarded as consequential. It affects payments for jury service. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 23 insert the following new clause:
Payments in respect of jury service
(" . In section 1 of the Juries Act 1949 (payments in respect of jury service), the following shall be substituted for subsection (1)—
" (1) Subject to the provisions of this Act, a person who serves as a juror shall be entitled, in respect of his attendance at court for the purpose of performing jury service, to receive payments, at the prescribed rates and subject to any prescribed conditions, by way of allowance—

(a) for travelling and subsistence; and

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(b) for financial loss, where in consequence of his attendance for that purpose he has incurred any expenditure (otherwise than on travelling and subsistence) to which he would not otherwise be subject or he has suffered any loss of earnings, or of benefit under the enactments relating to national insurance, which he would otherwise have made or received."")—(The Lord Chancellor.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 24 [Increase of maximum punishment for firearms offences]:
On Question, Whether Clause 24 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD GARDINER: This clause is the first of the miscellaneous ones and therefore may provide a convenient opportunity, on the Question, Whether the clause shall stand part?, to ask merely one question, which is whether the Government have any plans for at any time providing that complaints against the police are not decided simply by policemen. We shall or may, I suppose, even next Session, have to consider the Report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee. For many of us, the basic question really is: what ought to happen in a police station when somebody goes there at the request of the police? A great deal of course depends, and depends in the public's mind, on their confidence in the police, which has, I am afraid, deteriorated of recent years. Of course, I am not alone in thinking (indeed, there are a great many who think) that this confidence will never really be restored so long as complaints against the police are dealt with solely by policemen. I apologise for not having given the noble Viscount notice of this question, and it may be that he cannot therefore answer it, but if he knows what the Government's intentions are some of us will be very glad to be told.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: The noble and learned Lord has said that he had not given me notice. The result is that I am not equipped with an answer to him. I accept what the noble and learned Lord says about the anxiety on this point, but exactly what stage the consideration of this matter has reached at the moment I simply cannot tell him. It is something of which we are well aware, and I know that we are looking into it.
Clause 24 agreed to.
Clause 25 agreed to.
7.53 p.m.
LORD STOW HILL LORD STOW HILL moved Amendment No. 40:
After Clause 25 insert the following new clause:
Fines for use or occupation of certain premises
" . In sections 16(6), 22(4) and 27(1) of the Housing Act 1957 (which deal with penalties for offences in respect of unfit premises, and premises subject to a demolition order and closing order) there shall be substituted for the words "twenty pounds" the words "two hundred pounds" and for the words "five pounds" the words "fifty pounds" ".
The noble Lord said: I beg to move the new clause which we suggest should be inserted after Clause 25. May I briefly indicate what its object is? The Housing Act 1957 is a consolidation Act. It puts together a whole series of sections which include, among other things, the provisions relating to the closing of premises which are unfit for human habitation. The process can include the making of a closing order; it can include the giving by the owner of the premises of an undertaking that he will carry out certain repairs to make it habitable; it can include the making of a demolition order; and there is also provision for the making of a clearance order.
The sections which deal with those various methods for securing that premises which are unfit for human habitation are not used for that purpose are contained in the various sections which are mentioned in the proposed new clause—Sections 16, 22, 27, 45 and 73. Those sections in the Housing Act 1957 also provide for penalties which can be exacted from the owner of the premises if he fails to comply with the orders or the undertaking, as the case may be. The orders and the undertaking include a requirement that the premises which, in the assumed circumstances, are unfit for human habitation shall not be used for that purpose. The penalties which are referred to in the new clause are the penalties ordinarily, though not exclusively sought to be exacted from the owner in the event of his continuing to use those premises for various purposes notwithstanding that they are in that sense unfit. The obvious and immediate purpose which everybody who has concerned
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themselves with this topic has in mind is the purpose of letting them to persons who are ready to become lessees of them or tenants of them in exchange for a rent which, as matters have now turned out, enormously exceeds the amount of the penalty which can be imposed for that unlawful user.
The new clause proposes that the existing penalty of £20 should be increased tenfold to £200, and that the daily penalty of £5 which now can be imposed should equally be increased tenfold to £50. This is a Criminal Justice Bill, and I do not know whether it may occur to any of your Lordships that it could be open to question whether it is the right receptacle for a clause of this sort. I respectfully submit that it is. We have sought to insert it into Part II, which is headed, "Miscellaneous Provisions"; and Clause 24, which your Lordships have already agreed to, does precisely with regard to various offences therein described relating to firearms what we are seeking to do. If your Lordships would look at subsection (5), for example, it substitutes for the penalty of £20 the penalty of £50; and there are similar substitutions in other cases outlined in the clause.
When this Bill was being discussed in another place, the Government agreed in the course of that discussion, at the instance of certain of my honourable friends, to include Clause 26. Clause 26 does with regard to the offence of harassment of tenants with a view to getting them out of premises in order that those premises can be put to a more profitable use by the owner of them, what we are seeking to do: it also increases the penalties. So I hope the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, will agree that we are acting perfectly in accord with the general purpose of this Part of the Bill in seeking to insert this new clause.
Your Lordships may next ask: what is the case for it? The case for it is this. The existing penalties of £20 and £5 daily date back, in the case of the penalty of £20, to 1919. That was introduced by Section 32 of the 1919 Housing and Town Planning Act. The daily penalty of £5 was introduced in 1923 by Section 16 of the Housing Act 1923.
My honourable friend, Mr. Cunningham, in another place asked a question

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which I think it would be in order for me to summarise, though not to repeat verbatim. His question was directed to this: when last the Department of the Secretary of State for the Environment reviewed the level of the penalty for breaches of a closing order as enacted in 1923, with a view to introducing legislation to raise it to a realistic level in present-day conditions. May I quote the answer given by the Minister, Mr. Graham Page? He said:
"The level of this penalty of which the maximum is £20 arid an additional £5 for every day of contravention after conviction has not been specifically reviewed by the Department since its introduction."
I do not know whether that is to be taken literally as meaning that the Department and its predecessor Departments have not addressed their minds to the question as to whether these penalties are realistic in modern circumstances since 1919 and 1923 respectively; but that is what it looks like. I have been furnished with some information as to the increase in the scale of rents since that time. I am told (I cannot vouch for the figures) that between 1920 and 1970 the rents of local authority dwellings have increased by 682 per cent.; the rents for other unfurnished premises have increased by 461 per cent. The penalties have increased by no percentage. I submit that they are really in present day circumstances utterly unrealistic.
The proposal that your Lordships have before you emanates from the Islington Borough Council and the Islington Borough Council point out that there is really serious difficulty in preventing what is now a monstrous abuse. A closing order is made or a demolition order is made: the owner of the premises does not take the slightest notice of it; he goes on using the premises for letting purposes. He makes by so letting them a revenue which is wildly out of accord with any penalty that can be imposed on him. The court can impose £20 plus the daily penalty. He can draw in the way of rent by the use of the premises a rental which is many hundred times more than that.
The difficulty is that the staff of local authorities available for the purpose of checking in the case where closing orders and demolition orders have been made
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whether an offence has been committed by a continuance to use the premises for the purposes of letting, is too small to be able to conduct a really effective check as to whether there are offences being committed. In Islington, apparently, at the present time there are approximately 570 closing orders in force and they are being made at an annual rate of about 100. The number of contraventions reported has increased over the past seven years and if it were not for the fact that there were these staff shortages which make it impossible to carry out effective checks no doubt the number would greatly exceed those which have come to notice.
The Islington Borough Council cite a case in which, to use the language of the document they have put before me:
" … a house recently was let at a quarterly rental of £205. Within three months of the original tenants having been rehoused by the council, magistrates imposed the maximum fine of £20."
Compare a quarterly rental of £205 with the penalty of £20 which was the maximum penalty that could be imposed! The Islington Borough Council is one borough council. The Association of London Boroughs in 1967 had to consider a letter from the London Borough of Hackney. I will not read that letter, but may I cite from what I think, if I correctly understand the document before me, is an extract from it? The extract reads:
"Shortages of staff prevent closed premises from being kept under continual surveillance. A contravention may have existed for a long time before discovery. In one case a room was occupied for 14 months after a closing order had become effective during which time the gross income from the re-letting amounted to £285. Proceedings in respect of the contravention of the order resulted in the imposition of a penalty of £20."
The result of that was that the housing committee of the Association passed a resolution that the penalty should be increased.
I have in my hand also a letter from the Association of Municipal Corporations. It is signed on behalf of the Association of Municipal Corporations, and if I may I will quote shortly from it. The passage to which I should like to direct your Lordships' attention is as follows:
"The Association in 1967 and 1968 expressed the view that these penalties should be

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increased. I am therefore confident they would support your Amendment. I have written to the Department in the hope that the Government will give sympathetic consideration to this matter. I feel that the reasons for the Amendment are self-evident. However, I understand the problem is particularly acute in London, Whereas it is relatively easy to deal with the situation where the whole of the property is subject to a closing order, there are an increasing number of cases where only part of the property is closed. In these circumstances it is difficult to prevent the continued use of that part of it as a dwelling and the only effective remedy is recourse to the courts and the sanction of a substantial penalty."
The whole problem has been thrown greatly into relief in recent times by the enormous increase in the values of real property; the enormous scaling up of rents. It is now well worth the while of an unscruplous owner of premises to snap his fingers at what is really in modern terms a rather derisory penalty. It is well worth his while to undergo a conviction even if he has to pay the daily penalty as well as a maximum penalty of £20, if by committing an offence he can draw revenue—by letting those premises which are subject to a closing order or a demolition order—many times in excess of the maximum penalty, including the daily penalty, which could be imposed on him.
The problem is accentuated by the fact that there are so many people who want premises. I think experience shows that a number of them, hoping that they will be rehoused by the local authority, are only too ready to go into unsuitable premises, underground, damp, wholly unfit for human habitation, hoping that by so doing at long last they may be rehoused by the local authority. That is the experience that is being met. One is dealing with a section of population which is among the most unscrupulous possible. They batten on the fact that accommodation is limited and expensive, and that people must have somewhere to live under a roof. They take advantage of other people's misfortune to make grossly inordinate revenues for themselves. I submit that that is conduct with which no Member of the Committee could have the least possible sympathy. That is the case for this Amendment. I submit that it comes plumb within the purposes of that part of the Bill, to which I have referred, which has already been adapted for the purpose of increasing penalties
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in appropriate cases. That is the case I seek to deploy on its behalf. I beg to move the new clause.
8.10 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: The noble and learned Lord, Lord Stow Hill, has made a very powerful speech. On the other hand he himself will recall that when he was Home Secretary there was such a thing as departmental legislation. He will remember that the Home Office had a certain jurisdiction and areas where it dealt with matters, and that there were many other matters with which it did not deal. I am bound to say that in a moment there is to be an Amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Derwent which comes within the jurisdiction of the Home Office and which, unless they are violently against it, I shall advise the Committee to accept. It is Home Office matter and one entirely within our knowledge. It is a matter which has been discussed in your Lordships' House on many occasions and one which we think could with advantage be put into the Bill.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Stow Hill, is here dealing with about five of a very large number of penalty clauses in the Housing Acts. Incidentally, I am obliged to the Town Clerk of Islington for ringing us up this afternoon; but, with respect, had he telephoned the day before yesterday it would have been slightly more helpful. However, suppose one accepts that there is a case for this Amendment, is this Bill the vehicle for it? It is true that in Clause 24 there are some increases in some penalties for firearms offences. That is a Home Office matter.
In Clause 26 there is an increase in the penalties for harassment. This is the direct fulfilment of an undertaking given by this Government to implement part of the Francis Committee Report at the earliest possible legislative opportunity. On the other hand the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stow Hill, has told us that the penalties to which he is referring have stood since 1919 and 1923. In practice I think he was right to concentrate on the occasion where a closing order has been made because in the case of the other provisions to which he referred the housing authorities have powers to enable them to demolish a property and

1603
recover the cost from the owner if the order they have made in relation to the property is not complied with.
With regard to closing orders, I see that there may be a point. But in 1967 the Government of which the noble and learned Lord was an ornament—I cannot remember whether he was at that time still Home Secretary; he had just finished his most distinguished tenure of that Office—the Government of which he had just recently been a Member had carried out a Whitehall-wide survey of penalties which resulted in an enormous number of increases of the most diverse character in a Schedule to the Criminal Justice Bill of that year. In 1969, if my memory serves me aright, the same Government introduced a fairly large Housing Bill. On either of those occasions, I submit, it would have been possible to deal with the point which the noble and learned Lord has now raised, and to do so in a context which would have been really apt.
In the first place, in 1967 it would have been part of the absolutely overall survey which took place then and which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, no doubt, will remember. I expect that he contributed to it greatly. I remember him being very much involved in the Bill during its passage through your Lordships' House. In 1969 the Government would have been able to deal with it in the context of the overall position under the Housing Acts. Now here we are with a Criminal Justice Bill, and while the proposition put forward by the noble and learned Lord may be very powerful it is linked up with a very large number of other provisions in the Housing Acts which are the responsibility of the Department of the Environment.
I have, of course, discussed it with the Department, and the advice I am given is that it would be a mistake to deal with a certain small, selected number of the criminal parts of the Housing Acts in isolation from everything else. I can tell the noble and learned Lord that the Department of the Environment were aware—after having listened to the speech of the noble and learned Lord they will be even more aware—that this is something they ought to look at. They were already looking at it. But we say firmly to the Committee that despite the
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exceptions which may appear on the face of the Bill the proper way to do this is in the Housing Act context and not by putting yet another anomaly in this Criminal Justice Bill.
I am sorry to say this to the noble and learned Lord, but if one tries in a Bill to fulfil the sort of undertaking given about housing which the noble and learned Lord mentioned; if one tries to increase penalties in what one considers to be very serious offences like firearms offences in order to show how gravely Parliament considers these offences, I submit that this cannot be an opportunity to carry out, completely haphazardly, an overall sweep of the Statutes imposing criminal penalties and then if one happens to come on what appears to be a good case, to put it in the Bill as a new clause. I suggest that is not good government. This is not the proper context and, with the greatest regret, while offering the further consideration of the Department of the Environment and the possibility that they will deal with this when housing legislation comes up, I cannot recommend this new clause to the Committee.
LORD STOW HILL: I listened to that reply, I must confess, with rather less pleasure than I experience when I listen to the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, in general. I always think, if I may say so, that he prepares his arguments with the greatest prudence and delivers them with the greatest clarity. Perhaps the noble Viscount will be able to tell me that the Department of the Environment will, within a short time, introduce legislation covering the points which I have been putting to the Committee, and the other points which apparently they have in mind and which were mentioned by the noble Viscount. If he is telling me that will happen, that legislation is well on the way to being prepared and shortly will be introduced to Parliament, I should feel perfectly content.
I do not know whether the noble Viscount is able to give an affirmative answer to that. If he is not I must ask him: can he really maintain the ground he has chosen, saying that this is not strictly Home Office; that he accepts—as I think he does by implication—that there is a strong public requirement for this and that I have put my finger on

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something which is a grave public mischief and which enables a lot of thorough rascals to batten and prey upon unfortunate people and to make money which does not belong to them? Does he accept all that and simply say, "I am sorry but this is not a Home Office matter."? I may tell him that if any of my advisers had asked me to advance an argument of that sort when I was at the Home Office I should have made myself rather difficult with them. I do not think that is an adequate answer when one is faced with public need.
What is the public going to think when it hears that there is something which urgently requires treatment by way of legislation but that it so happens that the Home Office have a general supervision over this Bill and do not feel that this is really within their province? The Home Office have only to see the Minister in charge of the Department of the Environment and discuss it with him. Surely it cannot come to them as such a surprise that this sort of thing goes on? I think I am right in saying that the Association of London Boroughs and the Association of Municipal Corporations had resolutions to this effect, or in this general sense at any rate, way back in 1967.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Yes.
LORD STOW HILL: This is not something which has burst on them out of a clear firmament. All that has happened is—
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I wonder whether the noble Lord would forgive me if I just said that they did, and the Government which preceded this one had a Housing Act in 1969. Had the matter been considered to be as urgent as all that, I think, with the greatest respect to the noble Lord, that the matter would have been dealt with by that Government then. To deal with it piecemeal now, I would suggest, would not be appropriate.
LORD STOW HILL: It is not very satisfactory for people who are affected by legislation which goes through Parliament to be told that they have to continue to put up with their grievances because they were not remedied in 1969. Three years have passed and a good deal has
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changed in those years. Prices have rocketed. We are now in a period of grave inflation and people could perhaps have afforded to be bled rather more easily in 1969 than in 1972. I am not for one second arguing that it should not have been done in 1969—I dare say it should have been; but that really is not much of a consolation to people who are being bled by these rascals.
I would hope that the noble Viscount would be able to tell me that if I asked the permission of the Committee to withdraw this Amendment he would go and discuss this matter with his right honourable friend in another place, the Secretary of State for the Environment, and that he will, after discussion with the Minister, come back on Report with something in the way of an Amendment which is designed to meet this mischief. There really cannot be much difficulty about that. This must have been a matter under consideration not for months but for years, for the reasons that I have given. It has become vastly more urgent now because of the rocketing of prices, rents, the prices of real property and the general pace of inflation. It is more urgent now by a long short than it was in 1969. I do not wish to use pejorative terms, but for the public to be "fobbed off" with the answer that a particular Department does not feel inclined to deal with this, I do not really think is very satisfactory.
I hope that the noble Viscount will be able to tell me—and I will accept his assurance at once without the least qualification—that if I ask the Committee's permission to withdraw this Amendment he will have a serious discussion with his right honourable friend and will do his level best to come back with something on Report, or at least to communicate with me indicating what his intentions are about this matter. I hope he does not think I am being cantankerous or unreasonable, but that he will agree with me that it is not satisfactory from the point of view of Parliament to leave the matter where it is. Of course, heaps of things ought to have been done earlier, but human judgment is subject to error. It is the easiest thing in the world to say, "Why did you not do this, that or the other?" Perhaps we ought to have done it. Lots of people should have put their hands to it; but it has become much

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more urgent now than it has ever been before, and I really do make an earnest plea to the noble Viscount. I do not want to flatter him or to say this in a way which would embarrass him, but he is a man of the greatest possible judgment and discernment and I am sure he must feel the difficulty in which I suggest he finds himself in having to advance the sort of argument that he has advanced in reply to this Amendment.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, has done me justice and I am not really very ashamed. I will of course do what he says. I will again—and I stress the word "again"—consider this question with the Department of the Environment. Why the noble Lord should suggest that I have not already seriously done so, I cannot imagine. I have told him what has happened; I have told him that I have consulted the Department of the Environment and that the advice I have been given is that it would be a mistake to single out five of the particular penalties which appear in the Housing Acts, and deal with them alone on the basis of increasing the penalties, without looking at all the others. I should have thought this was a perfectly respectable point of view, because, after all, the Housing Acts, although complicated, hang together. It is true that the 1957 Act was a consolidation Act and that there have been some Amendments added since then; but they are part of the consolidated code, and if I am told by the Department of the Environment that they think the penalties ought to be looked at over-all rather than piecemeal, it may very well be that what the Department has in mind is that there are cases other than the ones about which the noble Lord has so eloquently argued which should be looked at as well.
I cannot promise the noble Lord that legislation is being prepared to deal with this matter. What I do suggest to him is that there is a Housing Act context which is relevant and should not be dissociated from the particular items that he has selected. The noble Lord has made a powerful case; there is a new approach from the London Borough of Islington, and it may be that they are very hard done by, for the reasons given
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by the noble Lord. I will certainly go again to the Department of the Environment and I will tell the noble Lord what happens; but I am bound to say that I cannot promise that the result of this visit will be an Amendment from us on Report. I think that is as far as I can possibly go this evening, for the reasons I have explained. Having heard the noble Lord's speech, I will certainly do that; but I must do it without any commitment as to what might happen.
LORD STOW HILL: I cannot ask for a commitment, and I do not. I think the noble Viscount is endeavouring to be reasonable in his reply. He says he cannot understand why I feel a little upset about the seriousness of his discussions with his right honourable friend. I can give him the answer to that easily: I should have thought that if they had been serious discussions the answer would undoubtedly have been "Yes"—but the answer has not been "Yes". That is what caused me some slight hesitation. Perhaps that is an unjustifiable conclusion. I am a little disconcerted by the use of the words "may be" and "possibly". However, I do not want to prolong the controversy. The noble Viscount has gone as far as I can reasonably ask him to go, and I am sure that he will take this matter seriously and do his best. That being so, I should like to ask the Committee's leave to withdraw this Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.28 p.m.
LORD STOW HILL LORD STOW HILL moved Amendment No. 41:
After Clause 25 insert the following new clause:
Amendment of Civic Amenities Act 1967.
(" . In section 15 subsection (1) of the Civic Amenities Act 1967 (which provides penalties for offences in relation to tree preservation orders) for the words 'two hundred and fifty pounds' there shall be substituted the words 'five hundred pounds'.")
The noble Lord said: I move this Amendment with rather a sinking heart in view of the fate that was accorded the last effort I made. This is a very similar Amendment and I cannot pretend that it is as urgent as the previous one. However, I will make a case for it, if I may. It is susceptible, I suppose, to the same sort of answer that we received last time

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—I cannot remember whether or not it was a Home Office perquisite.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Again this is very much the concern of the Department of the Environment.
LORD STOW HILL: I am much obliged. Let me just make a case for it anyhow, because I think it is a case which will attract general sympathy and I hope that the noble Viscount will be able to include it in the general indication which he promised to give me on the previous Amendment.
The situation is one which arises regarding tree preservation orders. I hope I do not speak in terms of sentiment when I ask your Lordships to think of the beauty and majesty of our great trees, some of which have stood for a thousand years, and of their nakedness and weakness in the presence of the profit motive of developers who can make an enormous amount of money in these days by not taking too much notice of what the law tells them to do. The position is that the 1962 Housing Act enabled tree preservation orders to be made under Section 62(1). Then, the Civil Amenities Act, which was passed in 1967, provided in Section 15(1) that if the offence against the tree preservation order consisted in lopping down or wilfully destroying a tree, or topping or lopping a tree in a manner which is likely to destroy it, the fine should be £250 or the value of the tree, whichever is the greater, instead of the fine of £50 which was imposed by the 1962 Act.
I seek a very modest amendment of that provision in the hope of preserving some of our very lovely trees. I seek to increase the figure from £250 to £500. I hold in my hand a letter sent to me by The Arboricultural Association which says that in their view the present £250 fine is seriously inadequate and is an insufficient deterrent on sites subject to development where the current high values of land are applicable. The letter says:
"The figure of £500 is, in our view, more appropriate."
I am the more encouraged to cite the view of that Association when I look at its very distinguished membership. Its President is the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe. Its Vice-Presidents are my noble friend Lord Kennet, the right honourable
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Duncan Sandys, and Mr. John Parker, M.P. Those are people whose judgment and concern in these matters should influence us if we are not already sensitive to the immense pleasure we derive from the wonderful foliage and trees that we enjoy and can look on in this country. A property developer, because the value of land has risen, is able to say, "I do not care two hoots for a tree preservation order; I can make a lot of money and pay £250 over and over again without even noticing it out of my profits", and he should be discouraged from doing so.
The noble Viscount has indicated that the answer he gave on a previous Amendment he would wish to give me on this Amendment. There is no point in my taking more of the Committee's time if that is his answer. But I think he probably would also be ready to include this proposal in the discussions which he has said he will be having with his right honourable friend. If the noble Viscount is able to indicate that by nodding his head I shall be quite content to accept his undertaking and not press him to go further, and I shall ask the Committee's permission to withdraw the Amendment.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: I should like to support the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, on this Amendment. I think that it is well known that the fine simply does not deter contractors from removing trees which they should not remove. We can distinguish this Amendment from the previous one. In the first place it stands alone; I would have thought that there was no question of other offences of a similar nature being considered, or being interlocked with it. The second point is that I do not think that this is something which will be altered for a number of years unless the Government are going to have some convenient legislation in the near future. Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether some legislation in which this penalty could be increased is somewhere near the Statute Book. If it is not I feel that it is an insufficient reason to say that this provision may be inappropriate in this particular Bill. One knows that civil servants like to keep things tidy, but there are occasions where one should press forward where there is a clear need and there are no reasons against it other than administrative convenience. I feel that unless the Minister can produce a better reason against the

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Amendment, other than pure administrative convenience, it would be better to take this matter into the Division Lobby.
8.35 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I hope that the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, will not persist in that view, having listened to the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, moved the Amendment. Perhaps I was rather aggravating on the previous Amendment; that being so, the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill's remarks seemed to me a model of moderation, which I very much appreciate. The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, though he is as keen as I am regarding the preservation of trees, is a little faulty in his recollection. The history of this matter is that the power to make a tree preservation order has existed for a long time. This legislation was consolidated in 1962. The Civic Amenities Act 1967, which has now been repealed and consolidated into the Town and Country Planning Act 1972, increased and varied the powers of local planning authorities to deal with those who offended against tree preservation orders. The previous Administration in 1969 introduced, a wide-ranging and profound review of the whole of the town and country planning legislation in the Act which was passed in that year.
The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, said that so far as he knew there was no cognate material which would go with this; but I would ask the noble Viscount to consider for a moment the whole question of listed buildings where we have an extraordinarily similar state of affairs, and where all the penalties and all the machinery for enforcement, listing and everything else, were completely overhauled in the 1969 Act. That has now been consolidated again in the 1972 Act. Therefore, once again we are in a field of amenity where I personally am very much at home, because I used to practise at the Bar in this field. I did so for a very long time. We are in the field of amenity which has a very large number of different aspects to it, all of which carry financial penalties.
Having said that about trees and listed buildings, I ask your Lordships to consider the question of penalties for failing to comply with enforcement in this matter. Somebody builds a house or
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carries out some other development which they ought not to have done without planning permission. An enforcement notice is served upon them, it is finally upheld and the matter goes to the magistrates' court. Does the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, really say that the tree situation is totally different from the case where somebody builds a bungalow for himself, refuses to pull it down when the Minister upholds the enforcement notice, and then goes before the court? If he does, then I suggest to the Committee that the noble Viscount is wrong. The whole of the area of the enforcement of town planning and amenity hangs together. In exactly the same way the penalties hang together, too. The noble Viscount shakes his head, but I must suggest that this is so. It was considered in 1969 and this matter goes a good deal wider than trees.
Having said that, I have enormous sympathy with the noble Viscount's point of view. But does the Committee recall that in Section 62 of the consolidation Act of this year we have a penalty for cutting down trees. If you cut down or dig up a tree the great pity is that you cannot put it back again. It is fatal. The same situation arises if you knock down an historic building: you cannot build it up again because you have probably broken it to such an extent that, if even you could collect all the materials, you could not put them back together, and even if you could do so the building would not be the same. Under the existing legislation the local planning authority can require the offender to plant another tree, but of course it takes a very long time for the tree to grow.
The noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, said that he had had certain representations made to him. We have carried out consultations and we have taken the noble Lord's Amendment seriously—we do not lightly brush aside Amendments from the noble Lord, or treat them as if they had no effect at all. There is no indication that we have been able to obtain from local planning authorities, who are the people who have to enforce the legislation, that the penalties are inadequate. It is perfectly true that this is a matter of judgment. It is not primarily a matter for my judgment or for the judgment of the Home Office because this is a matter for the Department of the Environment.

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The noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, asked if I would consider the matter again. The noble Lord has my sympathy here, and of course I will consider it again. But I cannot say with any degree of encouragement that I shall be able to come back to the House at the next stage and tell him that we can deal piecemeal and in isolation with just one of the penalties under the Town and Country Planning Acts. But I will consider this again in conjunction with the matter under the Housing Acts, and I will write to the noble Lord and tell him the result of the further consideration. I hope that this will be enough to satisfy him. I would be grateful for a copy of the letter to which he referred so that we may look at that as well. If the noble Lord is satisfied on that count he may be inclined to withdraw the Amendment, and I hope that the noble Viscount will not wish to divide on it after the explanation that I have given.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: I am afraid I do feel that the Minister's statement on this Amendment is not satisfactory. It appeared to me that the only point he made was that bungalows and houses were on all fours with trees, and I maintain that they are a completely different thing altogether. If you knock down a tree or cut its roots the results are irreversible. In the case of a house or a bungalow that is put up where is should not have been, there is an obvious remedy.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: The noble Viscount has not done my argument justice. What about listed buildings? The same matters apply to listed buildings as to trees. If you pull down a fabulous house, Grade 1 on the list, you cannot put it up again.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: I think there is a strong difference. You are very unlikely to be able to get away with pulling down a listed house. It is only too fatally easy to cut the roots of a tree or to cause it to die in one way or another. Nobody is going to get sufficiently "het-up" to take any action. I consider that these arguments are not on all fours. I am not convinced either by the argument that the local authority has not complained. This is an argument that one hears very often. Not
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everybody complains about everything all the time. This is Lord Stow Hill's Amendment, and as strongly as I feel and as unsatisfactory as I must say I think the Minister's reply is, I personally would not wish to divide the Committee unless the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, wishes to do so.
LORD STOW HILL: I am grateful for what my noble friend has said. I feel that on balance—and I say this with great respect to the noble Viscount—that the general interests would be best served if we asked him to fulfil the undertaking he kindly gave to consider this point further and discuss it, although he has perfectly fairly said that he does not wish to be encouraging in this matter. He is a persuasive Minister, and if he has persuaded me, as he has, I have confidence that he will not have great difficulty in persuading his colleagues. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 26 agreed to.
8.42 p.m.
LORD DERWENT LORD DERWENT moved Amendment No. 42A:
After Clause 26 insert the following new clause:
Increase of penalties under Part IV of Shops Act, 1950
" . In sections 59(1), 64 and 67(5) of the Shops Act 1950 (which impose penalties for certain offences of trading or carrying on business on Sunday) for the words 'five pounds' and 'two pounds' (wherever occurring) there shall be substituted the words '£50'; and for the words 'twenty pounds' (wherever occurring) there shall be substituted the words '£200'".
The noble Lord said: This Amendment seeks to alter the penalties under Part IV of the Shops Act 1950. Part IV is that Part of the Act which deals with Sunday trading. Some of your Lordships know what I feel about Part IV. I have been almost as rude about it as have the courts. The fact remains that it is the law of the land and has been since 1950; therefore it has to be enforced. To make it enforceable it must have adequate penalties for those who break the law. Your Lordships have already agreed to this Amendment in the Sunday Trading Bill which I introduced last Session. There was a good deal of opposition to certain aspects of the Bill,

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and your Lordships amended the Bill very heavily and considerably improved it.
One of the few matters which even the opponents of the Bill agreed with—even Her Majesty's Government agreed at that time—was that the penalties as they exist at present are absurd and should be altered. The penalties at present for breaking the Sunday trading laws—and, believe me, the wise boys have got very busy lately in trying to find ways around these laws—with one exception which I will mention, are £5 for the first offence as a maximum, and a maximum penalty of £20 for the second and every subsequent offence. Supposing you are an antique dealer and not allowed to trade on Sunday; supposing you sell Rolls-Royces from your showroom on Sunday which you are not allowed to do, what does a fine of £5 matter? You make that in ten minutes over one deal, and you might make dozens of deals. It is really no penalty at all. Exactly the same argument applies with the £20 penalty for the second and every subsequent offence, because it is really worth while trading on a Sunday when it is possible to make many times £20 very quickly. Your Lordships agreed that the penalties, which are over 20 years old (probably because they are over 20 years old) are quite inadequate.
The other penalty I would mention—I am not an expert on this matter—in Part IV is a penalty of £2 for the first offence in the case of Scottish barbers and hairdressers. I do not know why that is the maximum penalty for the first offence, because for the second offence the penalty is also £20. The Scottish Office advise me that the reasons for that now no longer exist and they wish the barbers of Scotland to come into line with the other traders. When your Lordships passed this Bill it was agreed that the new penalties should be £50 for the first offence and £200 for the second and every subsequent offence. These are maximum penalties. For technical reasons, it is the usual thing for a warning to be given the first time.
I would only add that at the present time the penalties are so absurd that in many cases the enforcing authorities are unwilling to prosecute; they do not think it worth it. To have a law enforced
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in that way is absurd. Finally, may I thank my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross for having my original drafting of Amendment No. 42 put into proper order. That is why the Amendment is now 42A. I beg to move.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, will not consider that there is any political partiality in this if I advise the Committee that there is a certain amount of merit in this Amendment. In the first place, it is self-contained. So far as I know, it is connected with no other serious penalties of the law in any fashion which might, even by me, be thought to be relevant—pace the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth. Secondly, your Lordships have already expressed your opinions upon it and expressed opinions in its favour. Therefore adding the third thing, which is that it is matter within the ambit of the Home Office, I would have no objection if the Committee were to accept it.
LORD GARDINER: I would certainly not accuse the Government of any political partiality in accepting this Amendment. All I would do is to say how much I regret that they never accept any Amendments from this side of the House, which is quite another matter. The Government have been extraordinarily unaccommodating throughout the Committee stage of this Bill. Hardly a single Amendment has been accepted so far. I hope that Wednesday may show a different attitude.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Does the noble and learned Lord not recall an Amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, which I happily accepted? I gave him the draft.
LORD GARDINER: I did not say none at all. After all this is the third or fourth day we have had innumerable Amendments and practically none has been accepted. I am not blaming the Minister of State. We all know that the Home Office is the Home Office and that, in a sense, is disadvantageous to whichever House does not have the Minister in it. If the Minister is not there, there are marching

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orders which may have to be obeyed. I am not blaming the Minister of State. Considering that it was generally said that this is not a Party-political Bill the Government have so far been extraordinarily unaccommodating in accepting practically no Amendments.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clauses 27 and 28 agreed to.
8.51 p.m.
LORD STOW HILL LORD STOW HILL moved Amendment No. 43:
After Clause 28 insert the following new clause:
Parole Board
" .—(1) If a person who is undergoing a sentence of imprisonment of not more than three years duration makes an application in that behalf to the Parole Board, the Parole Board may make a recommendation to the Secretary of State that instead of undergoing the remainder of that sentence or such part of the remainder of that sentence as seems appropriate to the Parole Board, such person should comply with the terms of such a community service order as the court by or before which he was convicted would have been empowered to make against him under the provisions of section 14 of this Act, and the Secretary of State shall have power to give effect to such a recommendation, with or without such modification as he may think appropriate, and if any person with regard to whom such a recommendation is made and given effect as aforesaid, fails without reasonable cause to comply with the terms of such an order, he shall undergo the sentence of imprisonment imposed upon him, subject to such remission if any as the Secretary of State, after consulting the Parole Board, may determine.
(2) The Parole Board in making any such recommendation as aforesaid, shall include in such recommendation the terms of any such community service order as they think, appropriate in the case of that person."
The noble Lord said: I am quite sure that the noble Viscount will agree that this is as Home Office, Home Office, Home Office, as it could conceivably be.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Hear, hear!
LORD STOW HILL: I am glad that I have his assent at least to that. A meritorious feature of this Bill is Clause 14 which provides for the making of community service orders, the maximum number of hours for which can be up to 240. I do not know how it is intended that this system should operate, but I suppose that so many hours would be worked in a day and therefore the total of 240 could extend over a fair period
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of time. I suppose it is envisaged that the individual who is subject to such an order would reside at his home and that he would perhaps do his ordinary work plus so many hours towards the 240, or whatever the number might be under the community service order. I would have thought that that was an admirable scheme and I would wholeheartedly support it. It is designed to do those things which we all think are extremely important; to prevent families being broken up, to prevent the prisons being overcrowded and to give someone who has transgressed against the law in a sense which he may regret, but who has some good in him, a chance to pull himself together before he comes to real harm. That is admirable.
I should like to tell the Committee what those who are associated with me in this proposal have in mind. They and I wonder whether it would be possible to go a little further in a practical sense and to move along the road towards the objectives which I have just described, which all noble Lords in this Committee, wherever they may sit, have deeply at heart. I envisage a man who has been sent to prison for a term of not longer than three years. I shall assume that he is a man who has good in him, who is capable of being re-established in society, who is far from being anything like a sworn enemy of society, who has character and who, if given the requisite opportunity, could pull himself up.
Like the noble Viscount, I have spent many hours in many prisons. I am sure that he and many other noble Lords with the same experience feel that the bad effect of prison is that it loosens a man's will. Decisions are made for him. He is terribly humiliated. He drifts further and further away from being able to get a grip on himself and to say, "Yes, I will do this," or "No, I will not do this." He slides into a position in which he is progressively less suited to be re-integrated into society. Every noble Lord who has had experience of prisons will agree that that is the effect. I know there is no substitute for prison, although we all support the endeavour in this Bill to try to find some other forms of punishment, notable among them being the community service order.
We have the Parole Board and the Amendment seeks to enable the Board

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to make a recommendation with regard to a prisoner who is of that sort, and who has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment not in excess of three years. The proposal is that he should be allowed to serve part of his term not as a prisoner in prison, but working under a community service order. The objective would probably commend itself to the noble Viscount. He would probably agree that there is feasibility and that it would conduce to the sort of objectives I have described in keeping a prisoner's will solid, so that he could build up when he came out of prison.
I take the case of a prisoner who is earning his ordinary remission of one-third of his sentence for good conduct. He is well behaved and co-operative and would accordingly, in all probability unless something goes wrong, earn his one-third good conduct remission. But he is of the type who might be considered by the Parole Board to be suitable for the extra one third period of parole. The Parole Board might take the view either that he should have the whole extra year on parole, or, if they are not quite so confident as to go that length, they might be disposed to say that when he has done his first year they will give him a chance of doing community service. That is to say, at some time during the first year or the second year—probably, it would not arise in the third year—instead of being a prisoner he would go back to his home, rejoin his wife, be re-united with his children, relatives and friends, go back to work at his job, but should set aside a certain portion of each week to work under the terms of a community service order.
The noble Viscount has been kind enough to discuss this with me and advise me and I am conscious of the great burden that there is now upon the Parole Board. Every noble Lord feels that we all as a nation owe a great debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and his colleagues for the admirable work that they are doing in the general endeavour that society is making to achieve the objectives which I ventured to describe earlier in my speech. We have framed this new clause in the hope that by making this suggestion we are not unduly burdening the Parole Board. I would go so far as to say that this work
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is so important and that Lord Hunt and his colleagues are doing so much good, that society should endeavour to make available more staff and facilities if they are needed because the reward in terms of human advantage would be so overwhelming. With the present staff, I hope that it would not place an unreasonable burden upon the Parole Board if, when they have before them a prisoner who seeks the year's parole, they could also ask themselves whether they should, in addition to acceding to his application or as an alternative to his application, resort to this new remedy under the new clause, and recommend to the Secretary of State that this prisoner should, either at the end of the period of imprisonment which they think he ought to serve, or in lieu of a period of imprisonment, or however they frame it, and subject to whatever conditions within the scope of Section 14 they feel appropriate, undergo a community service order.
That is the proposal. If it means—and I hope it does not mean—putting an intolerable extra burden upon the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and his colleagues, I do not think we should want to put it forward. We have thought about it very carefully and we believe that it probably should not do so. We would hope that the noble Viscount would agree in principle that, even if it does somewhat enlarge the burden on the Parole Board, it is highly desirable that, if possible, extra facilities in the way of staff, and whatever is necessary, should be made available to the Board because it is so important that they should achieve their obiective. That is the proposal. But of course that proposal cannot stand without more. One has to take into account the situation in the event of the prisoner's showing himself unworthy of the trust which is reposed in him and failing to comply with any order that the Secretary of State may think it appropriate to make on receiving the Parole Board's recommendation. Well, that is not difficult to deal with. If the prisoner fails to comply with the terms of the order, then the new clause provides that he shall
"undergo the sentence of imprisonment imposed upon him, subject to such remission if any as the Secretary of State, after consulting the Parole Board, may determine."
Then the next subsection provides that the Parole Board are to include in any

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recommendation they make any conditions or any qualifications which they think appropriate to embody in it.
That is the proposal, but unfortunately I am afraid that I personally have not discussed this matter with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who I think is abroad at the moment. But he was so very kind as to write a letter to my noble friend Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, in which he expressed views which (I think I correctly construe his words) I am authorised, with my noble friend's assent, to read to the Committee. Lord Hunt uses the words, "You may certainly mention that if you wish". The letter states:
"I have not had a chance to discuss your proposal with my colleagues, but I thought it might be helpful to give you my personal, off-the-cuff views about it. You may certainly mention that if you wish. In practical terms it should certainly be possible for the Board under present arrangements to consider the suitability of prisoners who are eligible for parole and whose cases are referred to the Board to undertake community service work during the period of parole licence. You are well familiar with the system of referring such cases to the Board but I should remind you that a considerable number of cases which are not recommended by local review committees do not reach the Board. It would clearly not be practicable for the Board to consider applications of any prisoners regardless of the length of sentence they are serving to undertake community service."
The new clause limits, of course, the period to three years service.
"Moreover, another clause in the current Bill would result in a considerable number of cases of parole-eligible prisoners being granted parole without their cases having been referred to the Board at all. In such cases it should presumably be feasible for local review committees to make the relevant recommendations. I have purposely not gone further than to speak about the practical aspects but I am very happy to add a personal view that it would not seem fair to have some applications for community service considered by one body and others by another body."
If I may respectfully say so, that last comment seems to me to be very valid, and it might be that we who propose this new clause should think again in order to try to embody in it some proposal which would meet the point that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, makes in that last paragraph. We should be very willing to do so. Clauses such as this are not easy to draft. There are a whole number of points one has to foresee and consider. This is one of the points which comes straight from the mouth,
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after all, of the greatest expert we have among us on this human public problem.
I have sought to explain the general purpose of the new clause and how it would work. I think I have the noble Viscount's agreement that it would be useful. The big question is: Is it practicable? If it needs change, I, and I am sure those associated with me in this proposal, would certainly be only too glad to endeavour to incorporate any change which the noble Viscount thinks ought to be embodied in the new clause. But we have put it forward at least for consideration; and the noble Viscount always gives serious consideration to these human matters relating to human frailty and the endeavour which we commonly make to try to regain our citizens as friends and co-operators, instead of enemies of society. With that general objective I put this Amendment forward and ask the Committee to consider it.
9.6 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: The noble and learned Lord, Lord Stow Hill, has done us a service in making this suggestion. If I am a little discouraging about it, it is not because I do not think that this is potentially a very promising idea. What I think the Committee would like to bear in mind—and this is something which I have stressed fairly earnestly before in answering, for instance, the noble Lords, Lords Wells-Pestell and Lord Hamilton of Dalzell—is that the community service orders are an experiment. We hope they will be a highly successful experiment. But one has also to bear in mind that, as envisaged in the Bill and in the experimental form that they there take, they are to be the alternative to a prison sentence altogether. This is the whole concept that underlies them. Not only are we using them to keep people out of prison, as a non-custodial treatment, but we are using them because we think that those concerned can do better if they do not go to prison at all, and that that is to their advantage and to the advantage of the community and everybody else.
That being so, unless this concept is wrong, there is a philosophical difficulty about combining community service with a prison sentence. Until we know how this is going to work, until we know

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whether this is really going to be an adequate substitute for a prison sentence, I do not think that any of us is in a position to say that community service following a prison sentence is as good as, or better than, the ordinary parole licence system which operates anyway. I do not think any Member of the Committee would be able to say one way or the other whether this is so. Therefore, I would suggest that this is a development of the system that we ought to await while we assess how the thing works. That means that it is something that we shall have to bear in mind, but over a rather longer term than between the Committee and the Report stages of this Bill, because we shall not have community service in operation yet.
The practical difficulties which arise on these Amendments really are substantial. The noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, has spoken of the burden on the Parole Board. The Committee will see that in Clause 29 we are attempting to relieve that burden by allowing certain suitable and rather less difficult cases to be dealt with by the local review committees, which have adequately proved themselves. The problem of the Parole Board, if I may suggest this to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stow Hill, is not one of staff; it is not even one of membership, although membership is a difficult problem and one which is of the greatest importance. It is a matter of uniformity of decision.
I think that were he here the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, would say that underlying Clause 29—and this is certainly the view of the Government—is not the suggestion that the Parole Board could not be manned and made big enough to deal with an even larger number of prisoners, or to experiment on new sorts of prisoners for parole. The difficulty would be that if we had more than the existing number of panels there would be the danger of getting out of step with each other, and if there is one subject, which I know even from my short experience of dealing with prisoners, that causes the maximum nausea among the prison population it is what they consider to be an unfair distinction between one case and another when parole is or is not given. I think there is a certain amount to be said for keeping the Parole Board of the highest
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possible calibre, as it is now, and small enough to be able to make sure that all its members are thinking along the same lines.
This Amendment refers to prisoners who are sentenced to a term of imprisonment for up to three years. In an average year there are something of the order of 35,000 such prisoners. Under the terms of this Amendment each and every one of them would have to be considered by the Parole Board at the proper stage of his prison sentence. Frankly, this is utterly and totally impossible. In the first place the numbers are absurd and simply could not be dealt with by the Parole Board, and there is an obvious limitation there. But even more important, if I may respectfully suggest it, is the way in which the system would work.
If one looks at a parole case, as I not infrequently do, one cannot fail to be impressed by the series of reports which have been prepared on the offender, both before he went to prison—that is the probation report and social inquiry report—and since he has been in prison. One of the most valuable sources of information which enables the local review committee and the Parole Board—and indeed, if it comes to that, myself, and my right honourable friend the Home Secretary as well—to decide whether a person is worthy of parole are the reports prepared on him in prison.
If somebody goes to prison for three months and is covered by this clause, in the first place he probably will not get to his final prison within the first month. Can the Parole Board or the local review committee really be expected to assess him for an immediate release on community service at the very moment he arrives? Even if that is considered to be an absurd case is it really going to be possible for them to deal with perhaps a slightly smaller number who have not been in prison long enough for the full reporting process to take place? It is this which is vital, I suggest to the Committee, before they can say whether or not the person is suitable for parole.
Indeed I rather suspect—and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, may be able to remember it—that this is why a minimum period was included in the 1967 Act, before which parole was not even considered. It was during that

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period that the prison officers and the other people concerned—the medical officers, the probation, after-care officers and the prison welfare officers and the chaplains—could assess a person and see whether he was suitable to go up for parole, and so that the local review committee could examine the case.
The burden under this Amendment is such that the Parole Board and local review committee could not deal with it. The time scale is such that even if they had the numbers, they would not have the information. I appreciate that this is disappointing for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stow Hill, but I think he will recognise the practical difficulties I have mentioned and will, I hope, be comforted by the thought that the principle of his argument is something which I do not in any way reject. I am not sure that I can say at this moment whether one would be right to combine community service with a parole or instead of a parole set of conditions. However, I see no reason why one should definitely say not at this stage. It is a practical and encouraging point to look at as the scheme develops and I assure the noble and learned Lord that we will do this.
We will assess the way in which the community service progresses to see whether this sort of combination is the way in which it can be used. If it is, then it will probably mean legislation. That is not certain but probable. I think that the conditions of licence of parole would probably not include the full rigours of community service orders with the implication that the person would be taken back to court rather than back to prison, as occurs now. If the noble and learned Lord will take my earnest assurance that we are interested in this, and would like to see how it would progress when we know more about the structure under Clause 14, perhaps he will not press the matter, but will take it as a positive contribution that I should look earnestly at what he has suggested and that I should thank him very much for bringing it to the attention of the Government.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE: Being conscious of the clock, I allowed the noble Viscount to reply first, so that I would duplicate as little as possible. He has already said more than I expected and I regarded his
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comments as broadly favourable. I suggest that the way in which the matter is put forward in the Amendment is by no means the only way of dealing with it. It is not my choice and I have discussed the subject at length with my noble and learned friend.
If the C.S.O. and day training centre perhaps equally, being parallel, were treated as alternative forms of prison, it would become an administrative problem whether a man went to an open or closed prison or, on the governor's recommendation after four or five months, was let out on a C.S.O. This would be a more practical way of dealing with the matter and it is the way that I would like to see it done. Every governor has a list of perhaps 30 people whom he would love to get rid of, so to speak, and whom he would guarantee. I appreciate that this might not be within the time scale of the Bill, but I suggest that it could be looked at from the point of view of an alternative.
The Parole Board members who retired after three years have issued a memorandum, which doubtless the noble Viscount has seen, in which they point out that the least satisfactory aspect of their work is the number of people in prison who ought not to be there. That I suggest would be a quick and neat way of getting some people out and I do not believe that it need necessarily be done through the Parole Board.
LORD STOW HILL: In view of the noble Viscount's reply, I should be most unreasonable if I were to ask your Lordships to divide on this matter. I am grateful to the Minister and it is obvious that he intends to consider this matter carefully. I have only one proposal to make, after which I will seek leave to withdraw the Amendment.
My proposal is that one could frame a clause, bearing in mind the difficulty of obtaining fresh legislation, in such a way as to make it come into operation on a day to be decided by the Secretary of State. That would give ample time in which to consider the kind of proposal which my noble friend Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge has just made, and to weigh carefully the obviously serious administrative difficulties to which the noble Viscount referred. If the clause were drawn in sufficiently wide terms so

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as to comprehend anything which could be feasible, it could provide that it should not come into operation until a date to be decided upon by the Secretary of State—namely, a date when he has been thoroughly able to consider with the noble Viscount all the administrative aspects and the ways of going about it. So long as the clause were drafted in such a way, being sufficiently comprehensive within reason to include whatever ultimate scheme was decided upon, then without further legislation it could be brought into operation by the Secretary of State deciding the day when it should take effect. Having made that suggestion, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 29 agreed to.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: This might be an appropriate moment for us again to pause on this Bill, and I beg to move that this House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

V.A.T. AND CHARITY WELFARE ACTIVITIES
9.20 p.m.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL THE EARL OF KINNOULL rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will reconsider the case of charities being zero rated for certain welfare activities in the social field under the current proposals of value added tax, in view of both the very widespread concern that has been expressed and the fact that parallel services organised by local authorities are proposed to be zero rated. The noble Earl said: My Lords, after listening to my noble friend the Leader of the House in his admirable and powerful wind-up last night at the end of the marathon debate on the Common Market, I was a little anxious, with specially charitable thoughts in mind, on the condition of his over-taxed voice and whether he would be able to take part to-night. I am very pleased to see him in his seat, and may I say to my noble friend, and to other noble Lords and the noble Baroness who have been kind
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enough to put down their names to-night and who have also been kind enough to remain in the House, how very much I appreciate their taking part this evening. I would say also that if the question could have been put off for an earlier hour on another day it certainly would have been.
My Lords, in raising this subject to-night it is perhaps significant to note that the Finance Bill received its Royal Assent to-day. So the value added tax now becomes a reality, and unless something is done before next April, and unless the Government are prepared to take some action on the further consideration which they have promised, charities right across the board from giants to the pygmies will find themselves facing the effects of that tax next April, whatever these effects may be.
The purpose of raising this question to-night is not just to repeat the many arguments that were raised in some depth and detail in another place, both in Select Committee and at the Report stage of the Finance Bill, nor was it to ask my noble friend simply to repeat the sympathetic understanding that was expressed by the Chancellor on that occasion. The purpose, in the first place, is to express a certain disquiet between the apparent gulf of thinking that at present exists between the Board of Customs and Excise and charities as to the likely effect of the value added tax on charities. And, secondly, in raising this question I was hoping that the Government may have the advantage of listening to the views of certain other distinguished noble Lords and Ladies who devote a great deal of their time to charities and who would speak on their behalf with authority, experience and wisdom.
My Lords, that is why I am particularly grateful for those present to be taking part. The question I put down on the Order Paper concerns specifically those charities involved in running welfare services such as the homes for the aged, the homes for the sick, the orphans and the drug addicts. Many, as noble Lords will know, are parallel services to local authorities. They are a vital addition to our national welfare service. Other societies act, as we know, as agents to local authorities. All of these give enormous service to the community and no one, I am sure, would wish to

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hinder their work, reduce their capacity, sap their strength, or stifle their enthusiasm. Yet as the Finance Act stands these charities, along with others, appear possibly in danger of this very thing and liable for purchase tax on their operations.
Many of these charities, as we know, provide parallel services to the Welfare State. Many receive local authority grants. We know that the reason why local authorities have been zero rated on their similar services is simply to withdraw any extra burden on the rates. To many it may seem a gross iniquity that the parallel services in the charitable field should be faced with not having the benefit of zero rating. I believe that the case for these services being zero rated is extremely strong. The other point I should like to mention is that if the additional cost on charities reduces the facilities they are able to provide, then, of course, the ultimate responsibility goes back on to the rates.
As one would expect, the Government showed a great deal of sympathy in another place to the position of charities under the new V.A.T. system. Indeed, the Chancellor gave a clear undertaking that if any particular charity suffered unduly he was prepared to consider the merits of the case. The Government also expressed the view that, taking charities as a whole, what with the removal of purchase tax and selective employment tax, plus additional benefits they would be receiving in estate duty legacies and exemption of gifts from capital gains tax charges, they would substantially benefit under the Finance Act. The Chancellor appeared to anticipate that only a minority may have a case for special consideration. I believe that the charities themselves consider that the opposite will prove the case. Although they will warmly welcome the benefits given by the Chancellor under the Finance Act, it is estimated that they will benefit only a minority of charities, whereas the majority will suffer losses of income on their covenants and in increased costs of their operations.
In another place, the Government seemed to indicate that they were coming to the view that, while they were wholly against across the board zero rating for charities on the grounds of administrative problems and the fact that many charities
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had very limited charitable purposes, they were possibly sympathetic to the imposition of categories of zero rating. If one accepts categories, and I know there are many who do not, one realises the difficulties of drafting such categories so as not to exclude any deserving case. If the Government move on categories, and I hope they will, I hope they will move as quickly as possible to remove the worry that faces many of our charities. Another category for zero rating would clearly be the churches. I am sorry that no Bishop is present here to-night. One of the factors which is perhaps disturbing is the figures produced by the churches. One reads the figure of £800,000 per annum that would fall on the Church of England if they did not get zero rating on their buildings. If this figure is correct, it seems quite inequitable.
If I may stray briefly from the Question I would ask my noble friend three other questions of which I have given him notice. First, there is, I believe, general confusion, particularly among the smaller charities, as to precisely how the value added tax will affect them. I am sure that it would be of great help to them, and would be welcomed, if the Board of Customs and Excise could publish in the very near future a simple man's guide for charities, showing the effects of value added tax. I should like to ask my noble friend whether this is planned in the near future. Secondly, there has, as many noble Lords know, been published an enormous number of figures which various charities claim will arise from the V.A.T. One understands that the Customs and Excise have also produced figures. I think it would be of general interest to know whether they are different from the charities' figures. Are the figures the charities claim wildly wrong, due to some misunderstanding of how the V.A.T. will work? Had they been advised of the figures by the Board of Customs and Excise.
Lastly, I should like to raise with my noble friend the question of covenants. Between 1970 and 1973, the covenant income of charges will have dropped some 18 per cent., as I understand it, and dropped in global figures to £3·6 million a year. This is entirely due to the change in the structure of tax and the change in the structure of tax rebates. We know that these covenants provide a vital pillar for

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charities in giving them continuity for their services. I should like to ask my noble friend whether the Government would consider, first, the single donation system as exercised in America and, secondly, whether they will consider raising the tax rebate for the benefit of charities under the new unified system.
My Lords, the work of charities in our country is unique. It has been said of their role in our Welfare State that no Government and no local authority can ever wholly replace the particular advantages of voluntary service. I hope Her Majesty's Government will firmly watch that both now and in future no penal tax will be allowed to cloud, impair, restrict or stifle the splendid work charities perform throughout the country year after year. I believe that one way to do this would be if my noble friend could rise to-night and say something encouraging towards those deserving charities and that they will be considered favourably for rating.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, may I first of all express my appreciation to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for putting down this Question. I have often listened to him speaking on Unstarred Questions and admired the way in which he has taken up quite unpopular and lesser-known causes and remained to the end of the debate and waited patiently for the reply from the Government. I hope that this will he one of his more successful evenings. I think there would be no need to try to make out a very long or complicated case for this. My own case will be a direct appeal to the goodness of heart of the Minister who is to reply on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, because during the debate on the voluntary social services he said:
"May I emphasise the high value which this Government places on the voluntary social service movement and of the partnership between the movement and the statutory services".
I have spent all my working life in the voluntary social services and I can assure your Lordships that this is one field where you do not receive high salaries—you are never attracted for any high monetary gain. But you do get the devoted service of so many people giving their services freely and voluntarily. I feel that this new tax is going to have
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a very adverse effect in several ways. If we are going to have the tax on some of the smaller nursing homes, for example, there will be a necessity to add V.A.T. to the charges made for the services to the beneficiaries. If we think of the rehabilitation centres, the youth hostels or day centres or, indeed, if we think merely of the way people have to raise funds on the sale of donated or second-hand goods; if we think of charity first nights—all these things have become an accepted part of fund-raising; indeed, they are a vital part, because it becomes increasingly difficult to find ways of extracting money from people who are already being appealed to from all sides.
I notice that the noble Lord mentioned the reply of the Chancellor in another place, and I hope with him that the Minister in his reply will be able to assure us there will be categories of charities. It is not always desirable to place the onus on the charity to be the suppliant. It is much better if they are able to plan their budget knowing precisely what is going to happen during the year. I could select various figures that I have been given, but I will merely select one to give some indication of what V.A.T. could mean. There is a small group which I have known for many years, called the Over Forty Association for Women Workers. This little group have placed many people who were unable to get work anywhere else. Indeed, they also provide hostel accommodation. Under the existing system they would be asked to pay £67 on their expenditure which is liable for tax; with V.A.T. at 10 per cent. they would be asked to pay £767. This may seem a small sum if you are dealing in millions; to an organisation which is struggling eternally to raise funds for perhaps not the most popular of causes, this can be a vast sum. I have merely selected that one to show your Lordships, but it is very typical, and I know that many of your Lordships who follow me will be able to give other examples.
May I conclude with another statement from the Prime Minister, when in the very inspiring speech which he gave to the National Council of Social Service, which I had the pleasure of hearing, he said:
"Voluntary effort not only helps us to right social wrongs, to widen and improve services,

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to protect and care for people, it enriches the life of the community as a whole."
May I add my plea to the Government to look again at V.A.T.?
9.37 p.m.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, may I thank my noble friend Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, for what they have said in this matter. I am interested in a number of charities, mainly charities concerned with the welfare of the blind. At this late hour I do not want to repeat any argument, or emphasise any point, except just to say that I fully support what has been said by my two noble friends. What I want to do is to call attention to one particular activity, which I will do as briefly as possible. First, may I apologise for my "sad" voice, which is a bit of a "lame duck" to-night.
This is an example of the way in which Parliament, or the Governments of both main Parties, voluntary agencies and the B.B.C. have co-operated in order to produce an extremely good result, and a result which has been maintained for nearly half a century. My plea is to ask that it shall go on, and not be thwarted or handicapped at this stage by a change in the method of tax collection. This is very briefly the story: In 1926 I introduced in another place a Bill the purpose of which was to give a free wireless licence to every blind person. The Government of the day gave it the very few minutes of time that was required, the Postmaster General backed it, the two Houses expressed their sympathy, and it became law, so that for 43 years every registered blind person has had a free wireless licence. Even though the method of licensing has changed that is still valid, because, by a subsequent amendment, it was arranged that of the money which the person would pay for a television set, there would be a deduction of the amount which had previously been given for a free radio set.
Forty-three years ago—that is two years after the Act of Parliament to which I have just referred—the Royal National Institute for the Blind, St. Dunstan's, and the county charities for the blind throughout the land, came together. I happened to be chairman of the committee at that time—and still am—and we founded a charity called the Wireless for the Blind
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Fund. The B.B.C. gave us their help from that date onwards, and have given it us every year, in a single appeal at Christmastime on radio, and sometimes an additional appeal on television. But that is the only appeal that we make, because we do not want to conflict with other charities for the blind or for other people. Roughly speaking, in all these years we have had an average income of £112,000—our only income being from this one appeal plus a few legacies. At the price at which we can buy radio sets we are able to buy about 8,000 wireless sets a year, and 8,000 happens to be the number of new persons each year who go blind, in middle age or old age, mostly, plus the number of sets which get out of order after long use. So we have just been able to keep this thing going, and for 43 years the boast, generously made by Mr. Churchill when he made one of our very early appeals, that it was the custom of this country to see that every blind person had a wireless set, has been kept; and, in fact, up till this day this has been the case. This year, the cost of a wireless set will have gone up owing to wage increases, other overheads and general inflation, and unless we can raise another £20,000 a year we cannot supply the 8,000 sets that are required.
I will now tell your Lordships that in 1946. when the war was just over, the then Government included a clause in the Finance Bill passed in that year which freed the wireless sets I have been talking about entirely from purchase tax. It will be remembered that purchase tax was introduced only during the war. In 1946 it was completely abolished so far as these sets are concerned; and there are proper safeguards against abuse which, in order to save time, I need not go into now. The sets remain the property of the Fund, and are lent to the blind persons for life, which is a safeguard against a tax-free set getting into unauthorised hands or being sold. But now instead of being free of purchase tax, these sets are going to be subject to V.A.T. This will mean that some 800 to 1,000 blind persons will have to go without wireless sets this next year unless we can raise the difference. Seeing that Parliament—Governments of both great Parties—and the B.B.C. have co-operated for nearly half a century to give every blind person a wireless set, I express the

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hope that my noble friend may be able to tell us that the Chancellor will between now and the time when V.A.T. comes into operation, make some arrangement whereby these sets are excluded, or at least that he will put the matter down among the smaller but nevertheless important items which he will consider in his next Budget.
My Lords, my last plea will be very brief, because the story almost speaks for itself. Blind men and women pay taxes, as others do, for general amenities. But there are many amenities which they cannot enjoy by nature of their disability. This particular amenity might have been invented for them. After all, those who listen to ordinary radio are, for the purpose of their receiving information orally, in the same position as the blind person. There seems therefore to be every reason now (as in the last 45 years) that this particular gift from those in the nation that can see to their blind brothers and sisters should continue. I ask the Government therefore to give us an assurance that, if they cannot do this between now and the time when V.A.T. comes into operation, they will at least put it at the top of their list of minor matters for consideration in the next Budget.
9.46 p.m.
VISCOUNT SIMON: My Lords, I rise warmly to support the appeal to the Government to reconsider the position of V.A.T. in relation to charities which has been so ably put by the noble Earl and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, and the noble Lord, Lord Fraser of Lonsdale. I think we are all grateful to the noble Earl for raising this matter which, unless something is done about it, is likely very grievously to affect a large range of charities which provide welfare services to the less privileged people of this country.
I think it should be unnecessary in this House to argue the value of the services provided by charitable organisations. They have been widely accepted everywhere. They supplement and fill gaps in the welfare services provided by the State and they have, in the nature of things, a special advantage in that welfare organisations have a greater flexibility than any State scheme in
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dealing with the almost infinite variety of cases where individuals stand in need of help from the community. Again there is the case where a pilot scheme can best be organised and tried out by voluntary organisations and then, perhaps, if it is a great success, it can be applied in due course nationally by the central Government or local authorities. It is to some of this type of scheme that I intend to refer briefly in a few minutes.
As the noble Earl has said, it is surely anomalous and unfair that voluntary organisations performing services of this nature should find themselves in a worse position tax-wise than the local authority performing similar services. Yet that seems to be the result of the law as it will stand when V.A.T. comes into force under the Finance Act. Happily, the Act itself provides for modification by Treasury order of the Schedules of zero-rated and exempt supplies. That is in Schedules 4 and 5 of the Act. So, we are able to take action to correct the position without further legislation.
I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I speak briefly from the point of view of a particular charity with which I have been closely associated. It is not, of course, that I would seek or expect special consideration for it, but rather because the problems we are concerned with are, I think, more easily understood and brought into focus if they can be presented in a concrete form. The Royal National Institute for the Deaf maintains, among many other activities, an establishment for the training of profoundly deaf young men, most of them deaf from birth and therefore backward in education. Also, because of the frustration caused through all their earlier years by their inability to communicate, a frustration which not only arises in them but in their parents and a frustration of the parents which reacts on the children, it has to be accepted that their personalities are often seriously maladjusted.
At the establishment of which I speak the institution seeks to turn these young men into useful citizens. This is a difficult task involving immense patience and skill. It also involves, among other things, trying to make up to whatever extent is possible the deficiencies in their education, and training them for some occupation that they can perform satisfactorily

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in spite of the crippling disability which will follow them all through their lives. I think the extent of this disability is often not fully appreciated by people who have the inestimable blessing of good hearing.
Most of these youths come to this establishment from local authorities who pay fees for their training. These fees are deliberately fixed at a level which leaves the charity to meet a substantial deficit. How is this sort of activity affected by V.A.T.? I confess that I find the interpretation of the relevant sections of the Act not very easy, and I dare say in that I am in good company. I should like to ask the noble Earl a few questions of which I have given him notice, although I know it was very late and I shall quite understand if he is not able to reply. Although these questions relate to a particular charity I hope that they may be of interest because there will be many charities carrying out analogous duties in other fields.
My first question is this: if a charity provides a welfare service and recovers payment, still however leaving the charity with a substantial deficit, is this
"providing a service in the course of business carried on",
to quote from Section 2(2) of the Act? In another place there was some discussion about the sale of goods for charity. I think I should make quite clear that the mere fact that sales might be of a fictitious value does not affect the situation. If it is right that this is a service in the course of business carried on, as I understand it, the service is a taxable supply and V.A.T. has to be charged. The fact that the purchaser is in most cases the local authority who can recover tax under Section 15 is, I understand, irrelevant. It is conceivable, though I think unusual, that the purchaser of the service may be another charity. For example, a young man might be the son of an ex-Service man's widow and the British Legion might want him to be given the advantage of this training. Or there might be a case where the young man's parents were prepared to pay. I should very much like to know whether this is in fact a taxable service. The implications of it will not have escaped the noble Earl, the Leader of the House.
My other questions relate to the interpretation of Schedule 5 and particularly
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the items in Group 6 headed " Education ". First, does education which is mentioned in item 1 of Group 6 include training? There is a note which says that education includes training in any form of art. I suppose, by implication, that excludes any other form of training. Is not this rather a curious distinction to make? I wonder what is the reason for it. What is the exact implication of the words which appear in item 3, "instruction supplemental to" education or to the provision of education? I think that "supplemental to" must mean something different from "other than" but I wonder what it does mean. Does this phrase by chance embrace training? In any event, does it include, as in the case of the institution that I have been talking about, instruction designed to remedy the deficiencies in earlier education? Because even if the noble Lord tells me that training as some form of art is not included, there is clearly an element of education in the service which the institution provides.
My last question is really in two parts. I would, first of all, direct the noble Earl's attention to Group 6, item 2, which exempts from V.A.T. the supply of goods incidental to education included in item 1. I am not clear whether this exempts, for example, desks supplied to a school or whether, for example, it exempts only books supplied by a school for students. It seems to me that the former are "goods incidental to the provision of education", and I hope it may be held that they are therefore exempt. Finally, is it intentional and, if so, why, that this item, in exempting goods incidental to the provision of education, appears to apply only to goods and services incidental to the provision of education in item 1, and not to similar goods and services incidental to the provision of supplemental instruction? Is that a distinction which is made and, if so, is there any reason for it?
In the case I am talking about, of the burden falling on the charity in respect of these activities, a great deal obviously depends on the answers to these questions. In asking them I would not wish the noble Earl to think that I am not wholeheartedly supporting the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, who asked this Question, in urging that all welfare activities of charities should be zero-rated,

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so that, in effect, charities offering welfare services can be put effectively into the same position as local authorities offering the same services.
9.57 p.m.
LORD GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, I wish to associate myself very warmly with other noble Lords and with the noble Baroness in expressing appreciation to the noble Earl for having given us this opportunity to discuss this very important and very human subject. I should also like to join with him in thanking the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, for being with us, because I, like many others of your Lordships here, was present last night at his very lengthy ordeal and we all very much appreciate his coming to help us on this occasion. I must also declare an interest here in that my work is very much concerned with the Save the Children Fund and I must say that, listening to other speakers, and particularly to the noble Baroness, I feel modest because I am very much a neophyte—and if I am a newcomer to this, I doubt whether I shall ever be a "comer" in fiscal matters, with which this is very much concerned.
May I say, first, that it is very important that one should not approach this subject in a spirit of "nagging" the Government. If one reads the report of the Proceedings in another place, it is very clear that the Government, from the Chancellor of the Exchequer downwards, are acutely aware of the complications of this problem and that great thought has been taken about it, so that we have much to be thankful for. There has, as noble Lords have mentioned, been the abolition of S.E.T., the invitation to "talk it all over with Customs and Excise"—though there I have one small qualification. It was said during the debate that further guidance would be sought from Customs and Excise, which means that this is a matter for ministerial decision if anything more is to be done than what we know about already.
There is one point on which the noble Earl may be able to help us, and if he cannot do so to-night it may be my fault, because I have not given him notice of my intention to raise this matter. However, it arose in another place. I assume that it has to be the policy of
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the Government, so far as possible, to equate our taxation with that of the rest of the Economic Community. In this particular field which we are talking about, of course, voluntary activity is something which is peculiarly British in its inspiration and inception. Anybody who was abroad and saw the results from this country in the International Refugee Year was extremely proud of one's countrymen, and one knew how much this activity belonged to this country.
I wonder if the noble Earl could say whether there will have to be an equalisation of taxation in this respect, or whether there is any means by which we can, within the framework of the E.E.C., take special notice of our own unique national voluntary service effort. The nub of the question that we are discussing, as I see it, is the matter of classification. The Save the Children Fund is, I understand, to be zero rated in respect of operations overseas, but is to be exempt—which we know means to be half exempt—in the matter of operations at home. We shall benefit very much indeed by zero rating for operations overseas, because we carry out work in nearly 50 countries. Insofar as exemption in respect of operations at home means that we do not pay output tax but pay input tax, then by the normal process of logic the children are paying for some of the work that is done in playgroups and other work for children at home. Not only that, it must be the case that if an organisation is to proceed under two different forms of tax at once, as it were, which is what this means, there will be a problem of administration. I know that the idea of exemption, as defined in paragraph 12 of the White Paper Cmnd. 4929, is to minimise administrative complications. None the less, this double form of administration means more of precisely that kind of expense which any charity is proud to see at the lowest possible figure. I am authorised to say that I know that this matter of administrative complication is also causing concern to our friends of the Red Cross.
With this brief intervention, I should like to support those noble Lords and the noble Baroness who hoped that the question of the zero rating of charities might be reconsidered. There is one last point in connection with this. One speaker has mentioned that there is an

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administrative problem for the Government; namely, the categorising of charities, the selection of charities under the Act who are suitable for zero rating treatment. All these things are a matter of judgment and I cannot believe that it is beyond the judgment of Government Departments, or the Government itself, to make the right selection of organisations who rate at least as much as those on the list of bodies, in what is, I believe, Clause 15(3) of the Finance Bill, who come in that category. Many noble Lords have given reasons for this
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that on the straight merits voluntary organisations do work which would otherwise be done by public bodies, and they deserve consideration on that level. Once again, I should like to underline the point, both in my capacity as working for the Save the Children Fund, and in my individual capacity, that I have no wish to nag at the Government in this matter, for the Government have shown considerable sensitivity and understanding. But I should like to express the hope, as other noble Lords have done, that the Government can go a little further still.
10.4 p.m.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to by noble friend Lord Kinnoull for asking this Question. I hope that the noble Earl the Leader of the House will go away with the clear feeling that there is real anxiety on this subject everywhere. This is partly due to the very large increase of administrative costs on the one hand, and substantial uncertainty as to exactly what is meant by these proposals on the other hand. I should like straightaway to thank the Government for Clauses 119 and 121. Both help in regard to capital grants to charities, one from the living, one from the dead. We are very grateful for these concessions which have been made by the Chancellor. I think they are of great importance. But let us be quite clear on this: You cannot change your fund-raising methods overnight. If one organisation has been raising funds in a certain way they cannot suddenly switch away to another one. The benefits which will come from the two clauses will only come after some years and will not operate straight away.
This is where the new arrangement for V.A.T. comes into operation. The theory behind V.A.T. is excellent. It is dis-inflationary, it is an encouragement to saving; but the rub is that it is directed against final consumption. But who are the final consumers in charities? They are the beneficiaries. So the whole of this part of the Act is directed towards the beneficiaries, the charities. This is the difficulty which the Government have to face. I must say, reading Hansard, that my impression is that the Chancellor has been misled by Customs and Excise. From figures made available to me I cannot believe that it is true to say that charities, by and large, will not suffer. This, it appears, is the advice which was given to the Chancellor.
In the first place, I do not think anyone can tell very well what the future is going to be in regard to new forms of taxation. In any case it affects different charities in different ways. If I may give the figures which the National Council gives—this is allowing for changes which have taken place—when you have taken away purchase tax Dr. Barnado's Homes will have to pay an additional £30,000. This is the nearest assessment which the
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National Council can give. The Spastics Society will double the tax it formerly paid in purchase tax. The National Trust will pay an additional £50,000. The National Children's Homes will probably pay twice as much as they did in purchase tax. These are big figures, and I think the Government must think seriously whether this is right or not. The burden on administration is very disturbing. This is the point which the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, made when he wrote on voluntary service many years ago, that people will not give for administrative services; but they are essential and in most charities are done on a shoestring. One to whom I spoke this morning said that V.A.T. will kill the treasurer; he is already almost under the water and this will be the final act which will bring an end to him. In many charities organisation will positively break down. This is a matter which the Government must look at very carefully indeed.
If I may go a little further, it seems to me to break the first canon of taxation which Adam Smith mentioned: that it ought to be certain and not arbitrary. I hope that the Chancellor will bear in mind that this tax is very unpleasant indeed. May I give one or two examples which I think are important? I understand that what is produced from Sheltered Workshops will be liable to 10 per cent. tax. That means that the poppies we buy on Armistice Day will be subject to tax. The Government realise that this is too bad, so now they have undertaken to increase the capitation grant to the Sheltered Workshops. That is one way of doing it. But what about the old lady who knits a jumper and takes it to a jumble or local sale for sale? Is she to be charged a licensing fee of 10 per cent. before she can legally sell that jumper on behalf of a charity? The noble Earl may say that the organisation sales are under £5,000. Some are, some are not. Some are associated with bigger associations in which case to be within the law, the lady will be charged 10 per cent., in order to have the honour of selling her own material, her own labours, on behalf of charity. This is something that requires further examination. I asked the noble Lord for some more information; but this point is really about "disaggregation." That is a word used by the Chancellor

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and not invented by me. I should like to know what is meant by it. Is this a geographical term? Is it a legal expression, a separate body corporate, or a functional expression? Can it be organised in any other way? It will be tremendously important to many charities to know what this means.
Passing from that, let us suppose that a charity raises more than £5,000. Is it then liable to 10 per cent. tax over the whole of the amount, or only for that part which is over £5,000? If one subscribes to a charity or is a member of, for example, the R.S.P.C.A., is the contribution liable to value added tax? It is important that we should know the answers to these questions. One of the things in which I am particularly interested is hostels for students. What will be the effect on them? Here again, they are very often run at a loss. They are all subsidised. Making them subject to V.A.T. will only increase their losses. We are proud of the number of students who come to this country to seek many different forms of education and training. We try to find as good accommodation as we can for them. It is a very difficult task because there is never enough; we should like a great deal more. I do not know whether this can be brought under education just as life boats have been brought under transport. Perhaps there are means of doing this. If the noble Lord could help here I should be grateful.
The noble Viscount, Lord Simon, mentioned the subject of homes for the old which are free of tax if run by local authorities, but not if run by the Red Cross. This is a matter which should be sorted out. One of the things which emerges from this is that because the Chancellor does not like some charities—perhaps he is right—he is making a division between those which he wants to help and those which he does not. There may well be a case for redefining a charity, but I do not think it should be done as a side effect of the Finance Act. The question needs to be looked at more closely. Those who work in charities have to work according to the law. If the law is to be changed let us know how it can best be done.
Zero rating as asked for in the Question is not an unreasonable request. If
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one look at the Finance Act one will see the items for which special arrangements are being made. These are not just things like food, power, rent or wages, but lighthouses, crematoria, caravans, newspaper advertisements, broadcasting, gambling and lotteries. I do not think that the standard of the special arrangements for all those items would be reduced in any way by bringing in charities. It might increase the quality.
I shall only add that if one thing that we need today is greater human understanding. This is the great purpose which, in one way and another, charities have. They try to help people to understand the problems of others. If anyone thinks that this is competing with the Welfare State let me end with what Lord Beveridge said 20 years ago; he said that the State should make amends for the damage to voluntary efforts by generous agreed measures of legislation opening the road to new services in future. That is what we are asking the Government to do.
10.14 p.m.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, I apologise for intervening at this late stage and I do not propose to keep your Lordships very long. I rise to endorse what has been said very well by other noble Lords and by the noble Baroness who have spoken before me and to congratulate the noble Earl who introduced this subject. The last remarks of the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, ought to be carefully studied, as I am sure they will be. Because it seems to me that voluntary organisations—this, of course, is very well known to everyone here and to most people throughout the country—have contributed, and are contributing, to a very large extent not only towards relieving distress, but also towards relieving the Treasury and municipalities of the burden of meeting commitments. I hope that when the noble Earl the Leader of the House replies he will keep this point in mind.
Perhaps your Lordships will forgive me if I say that I happen to belong to a community, the Jewish community, which regards voluntary service as one of the primary duties of the community, not only in so far as its own charities are concerned but outside charities also. Within our own community I know organisations which have existed for

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many years and which have to a very considerable extent relieved general rates and taxes of quite a heavy burden. The human element which is prepared to sacrifice its time and its finance ought to be drawn on, and I think is drawn on to a considerable extent in this country; and it should be encouraged to extend its efforts rather than have barriers placed in the way of its extension.
I know that the noble Earl the Leader of the House has a very warm concern for these matters, but there is grave concern among charities on grounds which have already been expressed in this House. One could continue to give examples of the various types of charities involved, but I do not propose to do so tonight. However, I hope that in considering this new tax the Government will go the full way towards granting relief to the charities concerned. Not only is it a humane matter for them; charities encourage members of the public to assist in a hundred and one—a thousand and one—directions which would otherwise have to be attended to from public funds, from taxation and rates. My Lords, I make this strong appeal because I feel that to-day we are dealing with the lives of men and women and with a large variety of help. It would take weeks of debate to refer to them in detail. In these circumstances, may I, knowing what is done by charities, and as one who participates in a fair amount of their work, appeal that this matter be considered. I do so in view of that background, and that background alone.
10.19 p.m.
BARONESS HYLTON-FOSTER: My Lords, I apologise for not putting down my name to speak, but I was not sure that I should be able to attend this debate and did not know what time it would begin. A problem about this tax is that the situation is very complicated, and it is difficult to understand how the tax is going to affect the charities. I should declare my interest, which is of course the Red Cross. One of the things the Red Cross is concerned about is disaster relief. Probably as regards relief for disasters overseas we may be exempt but for disasters in this country it is not at all clear what the position will be. It
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may be that we shall be able to reclaim the input tax, but this raises the question of all the administration involved in reclaiming it. Another problem, which was touched on by the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, is the question of training, and what happens with regard to the sale of equipment and manuals for courses for teaching not only members of voluntary aid societies but also the public. Will these items be subject to tax, and will it be possible, or necessary, to reclaim the input tax? That, too, would be an awful waste of time for our volunteers.
I should also like to reinforce what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, about residential homes, because homes and day care establishments, if they are run by the local authority, are completely free of any tax, but if they are run by voluntary societies they are not. This does not seem to be fair because we—the voluntary societies—are doing the job for the local authorities. The problem is not only that of having to pay the tax but also, as has already been said, of all the paper work connected with it. It is bound to be a great waste of time for the volunteers who will have to be deflected from doing the worthwhile job they would otherwise be doing. There is the further problem of having to employ probably a highly professional person to deal with it. I hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be sympathetic about this and that the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, will be able to give up some encouragement.
10.22 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think we all owe a real debt of gratitude to my noble friend Lord Kinnoull for giving us the opportunity, in one of our short debates on an Unstarred Question, for dealing with the impact on charities of value added tax. I must once again apologise to your Lordships—and I do so in a somewhat smaller House than I did last night—for the fact that my voice this evening may be rather basso, although if the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, provokes me I may become suddenly castrato, because my voice is in a most erratic state at the present time.
My Lords, last night we were discussing the not unimportant subject of the historic step which our country may or

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may not be taking into Europe. Tonight we are discussing a subject which is a great deal closer to home but also one of significant importance. I think that what underlines our discussion here tonight is our general standpoint towards charitable endeavour within our society and, within that general context, our fiscal policy towards charities. As noble Lords have generously recognised I have a certain personal commitment in these areas, and therefore I am very glad that recently another place has given a great deal of attention to this matter. For that reason, too, I am very glad that my noble friend has given us the opportunity of discussing the subject this evening. I think that in so doing he has established something of a precedent for your Lordships' House. It is rare indeed that your Lordships should be discussing the Finance Act and how it bears on organisations, so soon after its enactment. It is almost equivalent to turning Mr. Lloyd George on his head.
This particular subject is rather close to my heart, and it is also something to which the Government attach great importance. And perhaps I may just say this by way of introduction: in our Election Manifesto we pledged ourselves to encourage the flow of private funds to charities, including voluntary social service; and in his speech to the National Council of Social Service (as the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, has reminded us) last December the Prime Minister explained how the Government intend to give practical effect to this pledge. There are the increased grants to voluntary organisations, the details of which I will not trouble your Lordships with at this late hour. These increased grants should make it possible for voluntary organisations to do a lot more in the spheres in which they work. I know, too, that my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer had our commitment to the stimulation of the voluntary services very much in mind when considering his fiscal policy in general and his fiscal policy in particular towards charities. This was one of the factors he had in mind in framing his last Budget.
As for the impact of V.A.T. on charities, it is easy at this rather early and uncertain stage, when we are dealing with something of a novelty in taxation, to overstate the case. We are walking
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across a very unfamiliar field and I appreciate that people find this a complex subject. I am aware of the complexities in a field which I can only barely understand.
I assure your Lordships that, while I understand the apprehensions which the voluntary organisations may feel, it is my right honourable friend's belief that the impact of V.A.T. will be more than counterbalanced by the trio of measures which he introduced in his last Budget and to which reference has not been made in this debate. I refer of course to the abolition of purchase tax, the abolition of S.E.T. and his very significant concessions on capital gains tax and estate duty so far as charities are concerned. These, taken together, are important in the charitable sphere. I have seen it stated that the effects of these, and particularly the concessions on estate duty and capital gains tax, may have a greater impact on larger than on smaller charities. The answer to that suggestion is that we shall have to wait and see. However, they are very important measures.
It will be within the recollection of noble Lords who are interested in these matters that the National Council for Social Service made some valuable proposals earlier this year about the precise subject of capital gains tax and estate duty. Whatever apprehensions may exist about V.A.T. and its impact on charitable endeavour, I believe that any fair-minded person will be glad to concede that the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget has gone a long way to meet the N.C.S.S. in the particular areas to which attention has been drawn.
That said, this debate is of course primarily concerned with V.A.T. and charities. By way of background I am sure that most noble Lords will agree that many charities have substantial trading interests. The Chancellor of the Exchequer therefore came to the conclusion that the trading interests of charities should be treated in the same way as those of commercial enterprises and that the rest of their activities should be right outside and, in effect, exempt; and that is the position.
My noble friend Lord Kinnoull asked whether the Government would reconsider the position and provide full relief

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from V.A.T. for certain welfare activities in the social field. Charities will not, of Course, be accountable for V.A.T. on welfare activities such as homes for children, old people or the disabled; but in the same way as purchase tax is at present charged they will bear a certain amount of V.A.T. on their expenditure.
Relieving a section of charities (those engaged in welfare work) from this tax of course raises the question of how they are to be defined. Noble Lords who have spoken on these matters are very well informed about them and, that being so, they will know that the Advisory Group of the National Council of Social Services which was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Heyworth, recomended in their Report at the beginning of this year, that all charities should be entitled to recover V.A.T. charged on that part of their expenditure which is designed to further their primary purpose.
When we debated charities and charity law on June 30 last year, my noble friend Lord Belstead reminded us that when the Charities Act was passing through Parliament an attempt was made to define "charity" and "charitable purposes" and that it really proved to be impracticable. Your Lordships will appreciate the parallel difficulty of distinguishing welfare activities in the social field from the many other kinds of work carried on by charities, and you may come to the conclusion that charities do not easily lend themselves to classification according to their purposes. The reason for this, my Lords, is because, however carefully various categories of charities are defined, some charities could well be placed in more than one category.
I know that this is a very difficult area and one which is very open to argument and further looking at. But this is one of the great difficulties of categorisation in this field. Yet, if all charities were relieved in this way we would be bound to be faced with serious anomalies between organisations which straddle this borderline—such as bodies which perform valuable social service but which are not, at the same time, charities in the legal sense. I have in mind the friendly societies and industrial and provident societies whose work is of very great value to our community.
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I should like now to turn straight away to some of the specific questions, and if I do not answer all of the specific questions—and some of them are rather detailed—put to me by noble Lords I hope they will forgive me now at this rather late hour. I shall have a look at this discussion and I will certainly endeavour to answer—though whether or not to the satisfaction of noble Lords, I do not know—those questions which I fail to answer this evening.
The noble Viscount, Lord Simon, whose interest in this field I should like to acknowledge, asked me a number of questions. The first was—if I remember correctly—whether a charity providing training for disabled persons and charging part of the cost (the charity bearing a substantial deficit out of the funds) is providing a service in the course of business carried out so that the fee charged is subject to tax. I think that was his question and I am grateful to him for giving me previous knowledge of it. We think it extremely unlikely that this would be a business activity within the terms of the Act. I can give the noble Viscount that assurance. But if necessary we—that is, the Customs and Excise—should be very pleased to look into any individual cases; but if that were the case, then very full details would be needed. That is the position as I understand it.
The second question which the noble Viscount, Lord Simon put to me was whether the exemption in Schedule 5, Group 6, includes training as well as education. No attempt has been made in the Act to provide a detailed definition of education and it is my understanding that this would, if necessary, be a matter for the courts.
The third question he put to me was: what precisely is the significance of the words "supplemental to" in Schedule 5? This item, as I understand it, exempts the provision by or on behalf of an institution within Item 1 of this group of instruction, such as music, dancing, typing or swimming, which supplements the main curriculum. It does not include activities clearly distinguishable from the normal activities of the institution: activities such as, following the analogy, driving or flying instruction.
The fourth, and I think the final, specific question the noble Lord put

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to me was this: Does the exemption in Schedule 5, Group 6, Item 2—and I apologise to noble Lords for these details, but I am bound to use them as these were the specific questions put to me—apply, for example, to a desk supplied to a school, or only, again for example, to books supplied by the school to pupils? The position is that this item exempts the supply of equipment and materials and services by any institution or person whose education is exempted under Item 1. If the equipment, material and services are provided in connection with the provision of that education, it does not apply to the supply of goods or services to the institution or person providing the education. I think that is clear; at least. I hope it is clear. Again, if the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, is unclear about these answers—we are very technical here—I hope he will get in touch with me, and that I shall be able to give him satisfaction.
My noble friend Lord Fraser of Lonsdale—and we acknowledge all that he has contributed in this field—asked about wirelesses for the blind. I wish that I could give him satisfaction here, because I listened very carefully and with great sympathy to what he had to say. But at this stage, at least, I am not able to give him satisfaction. I know that my right honourable friend the Chancellor feels that he must draw a clear distinction between the items which my noble friend instanced—wirelesses for the blind, and more specific devices such as talking books for the blind. The reason for this is that a talking book for the blind is designed exclusively for the use of the blind, but a wireless to which the blind may listen and from which they may gain great pleasure and delight is not designed exclusively, and cannot be so easily distinguishable, for the use of the blind. In resting on this point, which is really one of being able to draw a clear distinction, I hope the noble Lord will not feel that I am without sympathy for those whose case he has so eloquently represented, and if he would like to come back to me on this point I should be very glad to look at it in correspondence with him.
The noble Lord, Lord Gore-Booth, also asked me a number of questions. He asked about the problems of harmonisation with taxation in the European
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Economic Community. Here we follow on naturally from our debate yesterday evening. The answer is that this, of course, is a long term aim; but we shall have our opportunity of taking part in the discussions which will be going on in the Community in this area, and I think it would be a mistake for me to pre-judge in any way the outcome of those discussions. But I have noted clearly what the noble Lord had to say.
He also asked about administrative difficulties for charities. I would like to say something very clearly on this. Finding the complexities of V.A.T. so considerable myself, I am very much aware how complex voluntary organisations and charities, especially the smaller ones, particularly those who cannot call upon a great deal of advice, must find them. But what I should like to tell the noble Lord is that the Customs and Excise are very much alive to this problem, and they have taken great care in working out the accounting arrangements to keep them as simple as possible for all businesses, and not least for the voluntary organisation. Here again, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. That is the position as I understand it, and I can assure your Lordships that the Customs and Excise are very much alive to this problem.
My noble friend Lord Selkirk asked a number of specific questions, and I am grateful to him for giving me prior notice of them; I hope that it will enable me to answer them in terms. The first question bore on the difficult issue and terms of aggregation. The position, as I understand it, is that a charity whose turnover in taxable goods and services, such as the selling of greeting cards, for example, exceeds £5,000 per annum is registrable for V.A.T. purposes and accountable to Customs and Excise for V.A.T. on supplies of this type of goods. Some charities, such as OXFAM, have numerous branches, and as the organisation is legally one entity the turnover of branches is aggregated towards the £5,000 limit, though some individual branches may have a turnover below this particular and important threshold. It has been argued in another place that the turnover of such branches should be disaggregated, so that each individual branch would stand on its own feet for this purpose, and if its turnover did not exceed £5,000 per annum it would be exempt. The Chancellor of the

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Exchequer has agreed to look into this possibility very carefully and has asked any charity which might be affected adversely in this way through aggregation to get in touch with Customs and Excise. This is the position. I hope that my explanation is clear to my noble friend. Again I shall be glad to follow it up in correspondence if this will help.
He also asked me whether hostels for students and accommodation for students in halls of residence or houses administered by an exempt educational institution—which includes a school, a university or a polytechnic—would be exempt from V.A.T. I can give my noble friend that assurance. However, accommodation provided in private "digs" will be taxable at the standard rate, though there is a provision in the Government's proposals for a reduced value base to apply to accommodation where it is occupied for more than four weeks. I am wondering whether my noble friend Lord Selkirk asked me any other questions. I hope that I have replied to the specific question he asked.
My Lords, I do not think I should detain your Lordships much longer, but I should just like to add this. I have listened with considerable interest and a lot of concern to what my noble friend Lord Kinnoull has said, and what other noble Lords have said. In what I am saying in these last few minutes I should like to make it clear where we stand on this matter, and where the Government stand. I hope that in my opening remarks I was able to bring it home to your Lordships that the Government are committed and have acknowledged a commitment to the furtherance of doing what they can to encourage charitable endeavour and to the fostering of the ethos of voluntarism in our society. I am not prepared to walk back one step from our general standpoint on this issue. I hope that our public declarations, the real and dramatically expanded grants to voluntary organisations, what the Chancellor has done in his Budget, and indeed the appointment of my noble friend Lord Colville as a Minister to help co-ordinate activity in this field, all help to demonstrate that this is in fact our position.
That, my Lords, is but one side of the coin. The other side is that we are
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committed, for what we believe to be very good reasons, to introducing a new and rather special measure of taxation: V.A.T. This poses—and I fully recognise this—special problems, both for my right honourable friend the Chancellor and for those who are taxed, and not least the charities whom we have been discussing this evening. I hope I have made it clear that we recognise that in this matter there may be special problems. I hope, too, that I have made it clear that we are very willing to look at those special problems. The Chancellor has already made concessions, as have Treasury Ministers in the course of debates in another place.
That said, I would only assure your Lordships that we are very willing to continue to look at these problems with an open mind and, bearing in mind what has been said in this short debate this evening, in the interests of charities; in the interests of the voluntary spirit in our society, and, if I may be allowed to say so, in a real desire to see that a fair deal is given to people and to organisations whose only desire is to give a fair deal to others. That is our standpoint on this matter. If there are issues arising from this short debate which noble Lords who have spoken in it would wish to follow up with me, or with my noble friend Lord Colville, who has special responsibilities in this field, I shall, I repeat, be very glad if they will get in touch with me or my noble friend.

LIVERPOOL CORPORATION BILL
Reported, with Amendments
GLAMORGAN COUNTY COUNCIL BILL
The proceedings of this day, relating to the Third Reading and passing of the Bill, ordered to be vacated.