HL Deb 28 July 1972 vol 333 cc1678-713

11.54 a.m.

LORD DRUMALBYN

My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now received.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

LORD STOW HILL moved Amendment No. 1: After Clause 41 insert the following new clause:

Liability of Corporation in damages

  1. " 42.—(1) The Corporation shall be under an absolute duty to prevent personal injury, loss of life and damage to property occurring directly or indirectly as a result of gas escaping from a gas main or gas pipe used for the supply of gas to consumers and shall be liable in damages accordingly in respect of any personal injury, loss of life and damage so occurring.
  2. (2) In the previous subsection the expression "gas pipe" means that portion of any pipe 1679 used for conducting gas from a gas main to a consumer's premises up to the point at which a meter is situate, and not beyond that point.
  3. (3) If it is proved in any claim for damages for personal injury or damage to property or in respect of loss of life so occurring that the claimant or, as the case may be, the deceased person was guilty of negligence or breach of statutory duty which materially contributed to causing such personal injury, loss of life or damage, as the case may be, the Court shall reduce any award of damages that otherwise might be made to such an extent as may seem just in the circumstances.
  4. (4) If in any such claim for damages the Corporation proves that the escape of gas on which the claim is founded was wholly or in part caused by negligence or breach of statutory duty on the part of some third party or parties, the Corporation shall be entitled to indemnity or, as the case may be, to contribution to such an extent as may seem just to the Court from such third party or parties in respect of any award of damages that may be matte in favour of the claimant."

The noble and learned Lord said : My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will allow me to rise to move this Amendment. I should like to say at the outset that it has been intimated to me that there may be some doubt as to whether it is wholly in accord with your Lordships' practice to move an Amendment of some importance on Report without having given the House an opportunity of considering it in Committee. If that is the case, I hope that the House will be indulgent.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, may I intervene? I think that my noble and learned friend is entitled to move an Amendment, no matter what the substance is, on Report on the understanding that the Government have had reasonable notification of the purpose of the Amendment. I do not think that my noble and learned friend need apologise to the House in that respect.

LORD DRUMALBYN

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord has been good enough to raise this point at the outset. This Amendment appeared on the Marshalled List only yesterday so that the amount of time that the Government have had to consider it has not been very great.

LORD STOW HILL

My Lords, I have fully in mind what the noble Lord has said and I hope, for reasons which I will try to explain, that the House and the noble Lord will be indudgent. The Amendment which I propose is one which affects every householder and every person who uses our streets. An Amendment on these lines was very fully discussed in Committee in another place. It was thought by those associated with me in preparing the present Amendment that it would not be helpful to the House to put down that precise Amendment without trying to deal with the points which on that Amendment were raised in reply by the Minister who spoke for the Government. To try to do that needed a good deal of thought, and some time went by. Although I and my noble friends were most anxious to get this Amendment set down for the Committee stage, and to bring it to the notice of the Minister as soon as possible. it was not feasible to do so. I hope that the House in those circumstances will be indulgent.

The Amendment proposes to insert a new clause after Clause 41. Clause 41 is in Part IV of the Bill which is designed to deal with miscellaneous topics. I hope that the House will therefore agree that the Amendment, which deals with claims in respect of damages through leakage of gas, is appropriately inserted in that part of the Bill. When one is talking about gas explosions one must speak responsibly, and I will certainly try to do so. I hope that nobody who either listens to or considers what I say will think for a moment that I am suggesting that natural gas is more dangerous than town gas. It has different properties, but it would be irresponsible to suggest that the introduction of natural gas is accompanied by any increase in the hazard which always exists when gas is employed for consumption on the consumer's premises. The word "hazard" is an overstatement ; one should say "at slight risk", which is represented by occasional but very sad accidents. I am not suggesting that the likelihood of accidents of that sort will be increased by the use of natural gas.

The noble Lord explained on Second Reading that the whole purpose of this Bill is to accommodate the structure of the nationalised gas industry to the introduction of natural gas. That is its primary purpose. It was in those circumstances that it was thought to be desirable to have a new look at the question of the relationship between the citizen and the Gas Corporation in relation to damage occurring as a result of leakages of gas. May I quote very shortly from a report by Professor Frank Morton that was referred to in another place. In 1970 Professor Morton reported to the Minister of Technology, and if I read two extracts from his Report it will give the House an indication as to the nature of the problem with which we are confronted. Professor Morton says: Leakage from the older types of gas main has been a familiar problem for many years and the gas boards are well aware of the danger from leaks and the cost to themselves of any substantial loss of gas. The use of higher pressures, drier gas and latterly natural gas in the direct systems has caused the gas board to undertake intensive programmes of clamping, sealing and—where necessary—renewal. In a later passage the Professor writes as follows: The total length of gas mains in the country is so vast, however (of the order of 120,000 miles of main and several millions of joints), that many years will be needed for the elimination of all risks. I emphasise the word "all". So far as I understand it, and I am not in any sense specially qualified to speak on these matters, the main difference between natural gas and town gas is that town gas is moist. Some of the gas mains, which may be up to 50 years old, disintegrate through rust or other causes. When town gas passes through them, being moist, it tends to make in the surrounding earth a channel of itself. Therefore there is somewhat less risk because the earth builds up into a kind of new conducting gas main. Natural gas is dry but it would be misleading your Lordships' House to suggest that all the gas passing through the mains is moist gas. I believe there is some type of naphtha gas which has had ingredients put into it which renders it dry also in this sense. The problem is that this gas, being dry, will not build up its natural passage in the surrounding earth. I reiterate what I said at the outset: I am not suggesting that there is a new risk of a serious character to be apprehended.

Accidents unfortunately have happened from time to time. They can happen in all sorts of ways. Sometimes they are due to neglect of those responsible for the mains or gas pipes which conduct the gas from the mains to the consumer's premises. Sometimes they may be attributable to third parties. There may be increasingly heavy traffic as the years go by on a road underneath which gas mains are laid. There may he a failure to warn telephone engineers who are working on underground cables: unhappily there has been a seepage of gas with disastrous consequences to the unfortunate people who have been working on the cables. I am told that there may even be a seepage of gas into a telephone kiosk.

One of the arguments advanced on behalf of the Government in resisting the proposals put forward in another place was that it was unreasonable to place the liability on the gas boards when it was found that in many cases the responsibility, not necessarily in a culpable sense but in a direct sense, was attributable to a third party. I have spoken of the increase in the volume of traffic on a road, of failure to warn telephone engineers of the risk of seepage and reasons of that sort. It was said that it was unreasonable to place the whole liability on the Gas Corporation in such situations. It was also said that the Amendment that was put forward in another place was defective because it sought to place on the Gas Corporation responsibility for an escape of gas which might have taken place between the consumer's meter and the appliance on his own premises, that is to say, in an area of the gas pipes over which the Gas Corporation could not conceivably have any control and in relation to which it was unreasonable to expect them to exercise precautions. I accept at once that great endeavours have been made to use every conceivable sort of safety apparatus. I believe I am right in saying that there are a number of new safety apparatuses being installed to deal with the new type of gas. That is the general situation.

What is the case that I would seek to deploy for the consideration of your Lordships for a new clause which seeks, in its opening words, to put the Gas Corporation under an absolute duty to prevent personal injury, loss of life and damage to property occurring directly or indirectly as a result of gas escaping from a gas main or gas pipe …."? The ease is that it is in the public interest that a person who is injured should get back to normal life at the earliest possible moment. He would have undergone the ordeal of suffering personal injury. It may even be a case of death. But let us consider a person who is injured. If it can be avoided, it is not reasonable that he should be subjected to the extra ordeal of trying, through his legal advisers, to determine where the responsibility lay for the leak of gas which caused the injury. Similar considerations arise in the case of damage to property. As I understand it—the noble Lord will be able to correct me if I am wrong—under existing law there are various types of liability. Sometimes a Statute imposes, as I seek to do in this new clause, an absolute liability on a corporate body which has under its charge a massive instrumentation such as the gas mains and the production of gas should damage or injury result from their use.

The Statutes sometimes impose that liability. In particular, the Gas Act of 1965 imposed such an absolute liability in the case in which gas was stored in underground gas reservoirs. Independent of that absolute statutory liability there is at common law what is known as strict liability, a liability which the law imputes to someone who has under his control something intrinsically dangerous. If someone has under his control and operates a dangerous machine or something of that sort common law sometimes imputes to that person, or corporation as the case may be, responsibility in the sense that that person must show that the damage did not result from a fault in the management of the dangerous apparatus. I believe I am right in saying that the cases reported in the text books are to the effect that that strict liability does not rest on those who operate gas appliances or on those who produce gas.

What remains then? As I understand it (on the advice which he has received the noble Lord will be able to correct me if I am mistaken), the position is that a person who suffers injury, or loss or damage to his property, is under the duty of establishing, if he seeks to recover damages from the Gas Corporation under existing law, that there was some neglect or default on the part of the Corporation which resulted in the loss he sustained. If I am right, I would submit that that is a position which ought to be rectified. The private citizen does not have vast resources at his disposal and the idea of briefing a lawyer—acceptable though it may be to the lawyer—does not commend itself to someone who has sustained injury in a gas explosion. In the context of our society it is putting an unfair burden on a citizen who has sustained injury when a gigantic corporation—I do not mean that in any provocative sense—has at its disposal all the information which will enable it to find out what was the cause of the explosion and to take advice from its experts as to whether there was some neglect on its part. That knowledge is locked away—I do not say that in any invidious sense—in the books and papers with which the office of the giant corporation is fully stocked. It is not available to the ordinary householder whose property may be damaged or who may have been injured. There is what was once described in your Lordships' House as an impar congressus. The two parties are not on the same plane. In those circumstances the corporation is at an obvious advantage compared with the private citizen.

As I have said, my Lords, we seek to redress that situation in the first place by putting the Gas Corporation under an absolute duty to prevent damage or injury from leakage. The result would be that in order to obtain compensation the person injured has only to establish the fact that he was injured owing to an escape of gas from the main, or from the pipe which conducts the gas from the main to his premises. That is all he has to show in order to establish his right to receive compensation from the Gas Corporation.

That situation must be looked at in the light of the definition of "gas pipe" contained in subsection (2) of the new clause, which defines the gas pipe, I hope, in such a way as to exclude any part of the pipe over which the Gas Corporation do not have control. In other words, it is designed to meet the argument that it is unreasonable to expect the Gas Corporation to accept liability for leakages from a part of the pipe which is not under their control ; that is to say, that part of the gas pipe which is between the meter and the consumer's own appliance. I hope the definition successfully achieves that.

The next qualification is in subsection (3), and that is a qualification which I think in the nature of things must always be embodied in a claim against anybody for damages in respect of loss or injury sustained. That qualification is well recognised in the law ; namely, that if the person who complains substantially contributed to his own loss by his own neglect, the court can then scale down the sum of damages which they otherwise might feel disposed to award to him, by taking into account the fact that he himself, by his negligence, contributed substantially to his loss.

Subsection (4) is designed expressly to deal with the point that was made on behalf of the Government when the matter was discussed in another place. If I may summarise it, what it provides is this: although the Gas Corporation are under this absolute duty, if they can show, the onus being upon them to prove it, that the gas escape was due to the wrongful act, breach of statutory duty, neglect, or whatever it may be, of some third party—whoever it may be, the Post Office in the case where no warning was given to a Post Office engineer, or possibly a local authority ; whoever it may be who may have interfered improperly with the gas main—in that situation the Gas Corporation are given the right to claim what in legal terminology is generally referred to either as indemnity or, if not indemnity, contribution, to the amount of damages which they have to pay to the injured plaintiff. They may have to pay to the injured plaintiff £1,000. If they can show that some third party was partly responsible they may claim, say, £500 or whatever the court thinks reasonable in those circumstances, from that third party. If the act was wholly due to the wrongful act of some third party, then the Gas Corporation can claim indemnity, that is to say repayment of the whole £1,000. I hope your Lordships will think that this is a reasonable attempt to meet the claim.

There is one further point I should like to make. It was said by the Minister who spoke in reply in another place that if he thought the acceptance of the Amendment which was proposed there would save one life he would feel very sympathetically disposed towards it, but it would not. I do not suggest for a moment that it would. This Amendment is not designed to save lives ; it is designed to bring people back to health, to restore their property and to remove from their life the anxiety which otherwise they must undergo if they are faced with the necessity of bringing a claim and they do not know against whom to bring it. Partly, of course, when one is speaking of damage to property it is largely the concern of the insurance company, if they have taken the precaution to insure, but it may well be a case where no insurance company is involved and a private individual is injured. He may be walking along the pavement when an explosion occurs and he suffers injury, and there is no question of any insurance company taking up the matter on his behalf. He has to make up his own mind against whom he will proceed. Those are the broad purposes of the new clause and I hope that your Lordships will look upon it with favour. I beg to move.

12.16 p.m.

LORD CHORLEY

My Lords, I should like to say a few words in support of this Amendment which has been so clearly and so ably moved by my noble and learned friend Lord Stow Hill. Those of your Lordships who were here during the Second Reading debate will remember that my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones gave an able exposition of the dangers of explosions in connection with the use of natural gas, and explained how this had become an urgent matter. As an old lawyer who, during his time at the Bar, was very much occupied with accident cases, in which the law of negligence is the essential element from the lawyers' point of view, I could see at once that this was likely to give rise to litigation, and litigation of a type that is exceedingly difficult for the ordinary citizen to undertake. It is expensive ; the sinews of war are all on the side of the defence—the large corporation. The courts themselves have been occupied with these problems over a long period, not only in connection with gas—indeed there has been very little litigation in connection with gas—but with other corporations. Refinements of the law, such as what is called "statutory negligence", have had to be worked out. Some of the cases have come to your Lordships' House sitting in its judicial capacity, and enormous expense has been involved. Indeed this is a difficult branch of the law.

I previously tried to put this very shortly during a Friday morning debate and the noble Lord who was answering for the Government, no doubt relying on one of the little slips of paper which are passed up from the Box, reminded me that a person injured in this way would have his normal common law remedies, and if he could prove negligence against the Gas Council he would he entitled to a remedy. Well, "teaching your grandmother was what came into my mind! It was because I wanted to draw attention to these very matters that I intervened in the debate, and, if I may be permitted to say so, the Minister's reply was not very helpful, either to me or to your Lordships' House, but as it was late I did not ask your Lord ships to allow me to say something in reply.

This is indeed a difficult problem and the only thing with which I did not altogether agree in the speech of my noble and learned friend was that he more or less accepted the view that fatal accidents would never occur. It was just a question of personal injury and damage to property. But I should have thought it obvious that while such occurrences would be rare, death might occur from explosions of this kind. After all, as the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, pointed out, in Cambridge alone there have already been (I think it is) 25 explosions, and when an explosion of this kind occurs one cannot be certain that somebody will not be very seriously injured, and very serious injuries lead to death. In my view, we should look at the whole of this problem on that sort of basis.

I do not want to take up a great deal of your Lordships' time because the matter has already been explained so clearly, but looking at this matter in the round and from the point of view of justice, surely the case which my noble and learned friend has made out is unanswerable. Here are the Gas Council bringing what is undoubtedly a dangerous substance, in the technical sense of the law, into the highways and the streets, where explosions may take place. The common law takes a sensible approach to this type of case. It follows the doctrine that a person who brings a dangerous substance on to his land—the highway is not the land of the Gas Council, but the situation is obviously similar—is absolutely responsible for any damage resulting from an escape, even if he has not been negligent. This is known to lawyers as the Rylands v. Fletcher rule.

My noble and learned friend Lord Stow Hill did not seem to think that the Gas Council would be responsible under this rule, and I suppose that this could be a subject for legal research. It may be that in earlier gas Acts the Gas Council has been excused this responsibility. This Bill, from my reading of it, does not seem to exclude the Council and I foresee a difficult legal problem arising. If the issue is dealt with in earlier gas Acts—I have not had time to read them all ; no doubt the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack has been advised on this subject—we should be informed. Otherwise somebody who is injured in this way must go to a lawyer who must look into all these matters, and his fee could be considerable.

It is wrong that this burden of expense, care and anxiety should fall on the ordinary citizen ; it should rest with the State. After all, it is to the advantage of the State that this gas should be brought into people's homes via the highways. The Gas Council will, with few reservations, have a practical monopoly in this matter. It has been the practice in the past that where monopoly rights are conferred on corporations, they are saddled with the responsibility of meeting any damage and injury which occurs from the use of their monopolistic rights. It stands out a mile that in this case the Gas Council should face up to this responsibility. It should be entitled to the necessary defences in the exceptional cases to which my noble and learned friend referred, and if there are any other cases in which that responsibility should be excluded, they could be spelled out at a later stage. By and large, however, the responsibility in this matter should rest with the Gas Council.

My Lords, consider the position of somebody whose property has been damaged or whose wife or family has been injured as a result of one of these explosions. He must bring an action to show negligence because the burden of proof is on the plaintiff. Any person who goes against the Gas Council and says, "You have caused this damage or injury" must prove his case. This could be both difficult and expensive. I will not go into the problems which might arise in conducting such an action in a court of law, with the need at great expense to call special and expert witnesses.

In the past trade unionists have time and again relied on the backing of their trade unions to conduct legal actions of this kind, particularly relating to industrial injuries, many of which have come before your Lordships' House. The ordinary citizen does not have the resources or facilities to bring the sort of action which his trade union can bring, and there is no question of insuring oneself against the sort of event we are considering. The premium which an insurance company would demand for cover would be absurdly high.

The Government have been presented with an unanswerable case and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor must appreciate the force of the arguments adduced by my noble and learned friend Lord Stow Hill. I have simply been trying to dot the i's and cross the t's. I hope that the Government will accept the new clause. A similar provision was moved in the Commons but it was not nearly as well drafted as this one. This proposal would give the Gas Council the proper safeguards and would establish the rights of the ordinary citizen. I hope that the Government will accept it.

12.24 p.m.

LORD WYNNE-JONES

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Stow Hill and my noble friend Lord Chorley for what they have said about the new clause. In view of the detailed and clear way in which my noble and learned friend explained the whole matter, I need not detain your Lordships for long. There is no suggestion on my part that natural gas is more risky in itself than town gas. As is well known, it is virtually nonpoisonous, so that from that point of view there is the minimum risk.

It is important to bear in mind that the explosion risk is greater only in the sense that the energy of explosion is greater ; the actual explosion limits (to use the technical term) which define the percentage of gas in an air/gas mixture, that will explode are rather closer with natural gas than with town gas. One does not need a complete duct full of gas for the explosion risk to be there. In fact, if it is full of gas there is virtually no explosion risk. The explosion risk occurs when there is about 5 per cent. of natural gas mixed with air. At that point the mixture will explode, whereas below that it will not. It will continue to be a risk up to 25 per cent., while above that percentage there will no longer be a risk of explosion.

Thus the real trouble arises from leakage and not from the fact that a whole duct gets filled with natural gas. The risk is there when there is a leakage of a quite small amount, since this causes the danger of an explosive condition. Because of this, and because of the fact that natural gas has no smell until an additive is put in, the detection of leaks is not easy. Indeed, most of the leaks have been detected by Post Office workers as a result of leakages into Post Office ducts from adjacent gas mains, and Post Office workers have been worried about this because small explosions have taken place. As my noble friend Lord Chorley mentioned, in Cambridge alone 25 leaks in ducts have been recorded by Post Office workers.

LORD DRUMALBYN

My Lords, I trust that the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, will forgive me for intervening in his speech. I do so only to point out that I am glad he has made it clear that these were leaks, because the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, spoke of explosions.

LORD WYNNE-JONES

My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord. What I said was definitely correct ; there have been some explosions, but in Cambridge alone there have been 25 recorded leaks. I am informed that at Kendal, in Westmorland, the leakage into a particular Post Office building was so bad that the building had to be evacuated. Fortunately, nobody struck a light ; otherwise there would have been a serious explosion. The risk is undoubtedly there, and it affects Post Office ducts ; it affects electric cables, and it affects any form of ducting. So that your Lordships can understand the sort of thing that can happen, I would recall that many years ago an explosion occurred in a duct in Tottenham Court Road. It was scientifically interesting, because the whole of the duct had gas in it. It was not filled with gas, but it had gas in it and was in an explosive range. When the explosion occurred the manholes popped up, one after the other, all the way along Tottenham Court Road. The experts were able to measure—and I believe this was the first time that this was measured on such a scale—the rate of propagation of an explosion in a gas/air mixture simply by timing the popping up of these manhole covers all the way along.

A NOBLE LORD

Did they know that the explosion was coming?

LORD WYNNE-JONES

That is the sort of thing that would occur if there was any leak of gas into any sort of ducting.

There is no blame to be put upon the new Gas Corporation that such things may occur because, as I said in our Second Reading debate, they are using old piping. This is pointed out quite clearly in the Morton Report, to which reference has been made. The Morton Report makes quite an interesting comment on the whole thing. If any of your Lordships are interested in the problem I would strongly recommend them to look carefully at the Morton Report, which was issued in July, 1970. That Report points out that in the distribution of natural gas the old distribution system is used in the towns, whereas of course, in the case of gas brought from the North Sea, the main distribution system, the high-pressure system, is entirely new and with that the risk is negligible. In fact, the Morton Report specially points out that that whole installation has been done so well that any risk from the main distribution system can be ignored.

Once natural gas comes into the towns, however, the old distribution system is used ; and furthermore, because natural gas is used at a higher pressure than the old town gas, the low pressure at which it is distributed in towns is 20 inches of water gauge, as against the 8 inches of water gauge at which the old gas used to be distributed. That means to say that, not everywhere but in many places, we have more than twice the pressure in the same pipes as we had previously. It is true that the pipes are all the time being replaced, and in this the Gas Board are doing an excellent job everywhere. I make no criticism of what the Gas Board are doing, but I am saying that the risk is inevitably there, and until the whole lot is replaced there is nothing that can be done about it. And complete replacement will take a long time.

As my noble friend Lord Stow Hill has pointed out, there are over 120,000 miles of piping in the country, and that cannot be replaced in a short period of time. I am informed also with regard to the Post Office, that the Post Office Telephone Service have been so worried by this problem that they are now proposing to spend, if they have not already done so, £50,000 on providing detectors in order to spot gas leakages. So they certainly appreciate that this is a serious problem.

My Lords, the number of types of accidents that may occur can be left to the imagination. It is quite clear that if there are these leakages into ducts which are carried under roads then there may be explosions in the roads, so that the roads are damaged. It is quite possible that there may be an explosion and that someone may fall into a manhole the cover of which has been blown off, or may fall into a hole and suffer injury. It may be that a man's motor car, or a van, is damaged. It may be that a wall of a house is damaged, not from an explosion inside the house, which is excluded from this Amendment, but from an explosion outside. So, my Lords, I submit that we are faced with the position where there are grave possibilities. I do not want in any way to be scare-mongering, but there are grave possibilities and compensation should go as of right to anyone who is injured in this way.

May I, in conclusion, point out that although it has been stated—indeed, it was stated, I think, in the other place—that the proposal to put responsibility on to the Gas Corporation is a most extraordinary one, it is not in fact new. When a Bill was introduced into your Lordship's House in 1965 (I was present actually at that debate, and I was interested in it and recollect this occurrence on May 20), my noble friend Lord Champion, who was piloting the Bill through your Lordships' House, made this specific submission. It appears in Hansard of May 20, 1965, at col. 568: As I have already told your Lordships, the Government are satisfied that this form of storage"— he was referring to underground storage of natural gas— can be safely developed and operated, and the Bill provides the safeguards I have outlined to ensure that safety. But the use of natural strata in this country for gas storage is new, and the Government accept that the Bill should offer reassurance that full and proper redress would be available if any of the conceivable risks did in fact materialise. They have therefore decided that the gas industry should be absolutely liable if any personal injury or damage to property were caused by gas in or escaping from an underground gas storage or its connected boreholes, unless the injury or damage is due to the plaintiff's own fault or that of his servant or agent. That I submit, my Lords, is exactly the purpose of this Amendment with regard to urban distribution.

LORD IRONSIDE

My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord before he sits down, can he explain how this new installation he has been talking about in the case of gas storage is related to his previous arguments concerning the non-compatibility of the pipes?

LORD WYNNE-JONES

My Lords, I do not think I have fully understood the noble Lord's question. Would he mind putting it again?

LORD IRONSIDE

My Lords, the noble Lord was referring to gas storage underground involving new installations. His arguments up to that point had all been concerned with the use of natural gas in pipes which had been laid down to work at the lower pressures at which town gas is distributed.

LORD WYNNE-JONES

Yes, my Lords. I take the noble Lord's point. The quotation which I have just given refers to underground storage of natural gas, but at the time when the Bill was introduced in 1965 there was virtually no distribution of natural gas through the town mains, and consequently that Bill dealt entirely with the problem of storage. What I am saying is that it was clearly recognised at the time that there were risks and that therefore there should be an absolute responsibility. What I am saying now, in terms of this Amendment, is that a similar responsibility, now that natural gas has been distributed through the towns, should be taken by the Gas Corporation with regard to any explosion that may occur in the distribution system.

12.40 p.m.

LORD DRUMALBYN

My Lords, may I first of all thank the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, for his lucid exposition of the purposes of this Amendment. I should also like to thank noble Lords who have spoken for the way in which they have avoided—and this is extremely important—alarming the public by this Amendment. We have, of course, to ensure that the public takes proper care ; and the Morton Report, which has been freely referred to, laid great emphasis on this. But the public taking proper care is more in relation to the use of appliances, which comes outside the purposes of the Amendment the noble Lord has moved, because the appliances themselves are on the consumer side rather than the supplier side, so to speak, of the meter.

I think we can all agree on one or two things to begin with ; I hope we can, at any rate. The Morton Report, which was commissioned by the last Government and was published in July 1970, and which has been generally welcomed, made it clear that natural gas is not more dangerous, by and large, than town gas. The noble Lord referred to the fact that to some extent it might be perhaps a little insidious—that was the word—because it is odourless ; but odour, of course, is artificially added to it, and my noble friend on the bench beside me, who uses gas for her cooking, assures me that there is no question of it being odourless.

The second thing that I think we can all agree upon is that the conversion is being accomplished with the greatest efficiency. That is extremely commendable. It is being done with great care ; the training of the teams to do it has been properly organised. There may have been certain difficulties to start with, but the mere statistics of call-back, as it is called—that is, having to come back and have a second look—have fallen very considerably, which is an indication of the extent to which the system of conversion has been improving. As I said, satisfactory training has been carried out, and there can be no doubt that the Gas Council and the Area Boards have done everything in their power to make certain that the conversion has proceeded smoothly ; and as a result, the Morton Report makes it clear that on the whole the distribution of gas in this country is now more secure than it was before conversion started. It is, of course, nothing new that there is a reduction in the water vapour content of gas, because that also took place under oil conversion when the tendency was to go over from coal production of gas to oil conversion ; so that this is not really a new situation.

The clause, as the noble Lord said, follows fairly closely, with, I agree, some improvements, the new clause that was debated on Report in the House of Commons. I think that what concerns us most is the idea that through no fault of their own people may suffer some injury or loss—perhaps the noble Lord did not refer quite so much to loss as to injury—from just one of the many hazards to which we are exposed. The issue is not whether we are lacking in sympathy for such people ; we all share that. The issue is in what circumstances, to what exent, and to whom, is it right that they should look for financial compensation. And even here we are not in dispute about what should happen when the mishap is attributable to the negligence of the British Gas Corporation. We are agreed that in those circumstances the Corporation will be liable under the normal rules of the relevant law, as the Area Boards and Gas Council are now. What we are debating is whether we should hold the Corporation liable when they have not in any reasonable sense of the term been blameworthy.

As I said, the Amendment is concerned with just one of the many hazards to which we are exposed. Such hazards are a fact of life for which we have all to be prepared. Our homes and possessions are vulnerable to fire, theft, accidental damage caused by others, accidental damage caused by our own carelessness ; the list could go on, but. I do not want to depress your Lordships any further than necessary.

LORD WYNNE-JONES

My Lords, if I may interrupt, there is no particular corporation concerned with the organisation of theft.

LORD DRUMALBYN

This is not my department, my Lords ; but I would rather doubt whether that is wholly true.

LORD CHORLEY

My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that a very great deal of modern legislation is in fact taken up with removing these risks from the ordinary citizen ; and that this would be just one addition to that protection which modern law, through legislation, gives?

LORD DRUMALBYN

My Lords, I shall be coming to that point, if I may be allowed to treat it in the due order of my speech. Some of these catastrophes can be blamed on the fault of another ; though whether he can be found, and whether when found he will be capable of paying compensation, are different questions. Most of the hazards are a great deal more likely to happen than a gas explosion. If we are prudent enough to want protection against all these hazards, the answer, as we all know, is insurance, which assures the individual that, whatever the nature of the mishap which strikes at him, whether at his possessions, his pocket or his person, he will be covered.

What, then, we must ask, underlines the approach in this new clause? Is the aim to provide a safety net for those who have not been prudent enough to protect themselves against the consequence of mishaps which are no-one's fault, or where if anyone is at fault he cannot be found? What I must make clear is that that would be a major extension of the present principles of our social security arrangements ; one which we ought not, I suggest, to deal with in the limited context of this Bill, and one on which, I suspect, noble Lords on both sides of the House would require a good deal of persuasion. Nor, I suspect, would noble Lords opposite, who might be inclined to endorse that general proposition, think it right to apply it in such a way that the scale of compensation extended to cover the full value of the loss whatever it might be ; for example, the full value of a collection of silver or old masters, in private possession, as it would, of course, under the proposed new clause. All gas consumers would then "foot the bill" for what would become in the general context of insurance an excluded risk, although the rich man or company or corporation could well have afforded, and might reasonably have been expected, to cover it within his insurance premiums.

If the issue is not a general one of providing a wider safety net for the unfortunate or imprudent, we come back to this question: why should this particular class of mishap following from gas leaks be singled out as an exception to the general rule of making legal liability dependent on common law negligence? Why should that be transferred to the very special and limited categories, to which the noble Lord referred, of statutorily created absolute liability? I cannot see any reason why it should. The other exceptions to the general rule relate to cases like nuclear power, when the risk is of an abnormal nature and of a kind over which the originator of the risk, so to speak, has, or is expected to have, full control. The instances where there is absolute liability by Statute fall into this category. I believe ordinary escapes of gas fall into a quite different—

LORD AIREDALE

My Lords—

LORD DRUMALBYN

—My Lords, may I just conclude what I have to say at the moment. I believe that ordinary escapes of gas fall into a quite different category ; and let me tell your Lordships why I think so. Before I give way to the noble Lord, may I say that I am coming to the 1965 Gas Act. First of all, gas has been piped through the streets of our towns and cities for over a century. This is almost one of the essentials of life. It is at least, to coin a phrase, an alternative essential. In reflection of this, the common law recognises the performance of a duty imposed upon an authority by Statute as a defence against proceedings, on grounds of strict liability. Gas is a safe and acceptable fuel and there is nothing in the figures to show that natural gas is a greater hazard than town gas.

The Ronan Point Tribunal found in 1968 that The risk of a town gas explosion causing structural damage in a dwelling in any one year is of the order of 3.5 in a million. Town gas is generally regarded as a safe and acceptable domestic fuel and in the light of the figures we accept this view. As I said, natural gas is not a greater hazard than town gas which has been supplied over a century. The Morton Report demonstrates this and the statistics support that explosions in the public gas system are not on the increase and, if anything, are trending down, while, on the latest years figures available to me, natural gas features proportionally less in such explosions than town gas. Fatalities and damage to a far greater extent are caused by other accidents such as traffic accidents. If damage is caused by a supply of water or electricity, or if there is a railway accident or one arising from activity of a local authority, negligence has to be proved before the courts award compensation against statutory undertakers. There appears to be no case for singling out the gas industry for absolute liability.

As I said during the Second Reading Debate, my colleague, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Industry, is fully seized of the need to maximise gas safety, and the Gas Industry and the Post Office are equally anxious to ensure that there are no grounds for legitimate criticism in this respect. But in view of some of the things which have been said to-day, there are a few points which I really must make if the House is not to be left with a distorted impression. The starting point in these cases is, of course, the detection by Post Office workers of gas in a duct. Immediately, two things happen. The Post Office, to protect its staff must withdraw them from a potential hazard ; at the same time it reports the situation to the Gas Board. And I can assure the House that when it gets such a report, the Gas Board is on the scene very quickly indeed. There may be some questions as to whether a gas leak has been fully dealt with. No doubt some of the cases that the noble Lord referred to in Cambridge came into that category. But my honourable friend has just visited the West Midlands Gas Board and at that time there were no gas leaks at all on their books, so we ought not to exaggerate this hazard.

The Gas Council has carried out a survey across the whole country which has disclosed that the average time taken by Area Gas Boards in getting a representative to the site of a reported leakage into a Post Office duct is approximately one hour from receipt of the Post Office notification. Frequently they are there sooner than that, and the longest interval disclosed by this survey is two hours. When the Gas Board's men arrive first priority is given to making safe, but full remedial measures are put in hand as soon as possible.

My Lords, I would agree it is essential to establish the proper procedures and efficient procedures for use at all stages from notification to clearance and by all involved, workers, supervision and management ; and it has been agreed that there would be advantages in establishing standardised procedures. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, is very well aware of what I am saying, but perhaps it comes better from me than from him as the noble Lord is himself involved. Steps are already in hand to work out such procedures and to have them evaluated and proven at working levels. In addition, records of recent leakage reports are being examined to see what else can be done to improve the situation. This is not just a question of putting down on paper what theoretically looks right but of being sure that the system to be set up is one that can and will work as effectively and quickly as possible right down to working levels. I did mention, and I think it had been mentioned already, rather as a criticism than otherwise of the system, the fact that new detectors are available. But there is a need for these detectors, and the more we can improve them the greater the safety will be for workers. All this of course cannot be completed overnight, but I am saying this to convince the House, I hope, that the Post Office and the gas industry are tackling this with a full sense of urgency.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, referred to the fact that traffic runs over the streets and cited this as a reason why there should be an absolute liability on the Gas Council or the Corporation where it is formed. But it is just not possible for the gas industry to achieve complete control over our streets to an extent that would justify imposing a stricter liability. It is not only the gas supply industry that excavates our streets. Others do so for one purpose or another. Fanners plough fields, contractors excavate with bull-dozers, and if it is thought right to impose absolute liability on an operator for damage following an escape of the dangerous substance involved in this particular activity it is surely reasonable to do so only if he can have a substantial degree of control over the factors which may give rise to the hazard. In the light of the Clarkston Inquiry, I understand that the Department of the Environment and the Scottish Office are giving consideration to what more can be done to protect the installations of statutory undertakers. But the House will surely agree that absolute control of the use of the streets would place unreasonable demands on those responsible for enforcement and could damage our everyday use and enjoyment of the streets. While, therefore, it may prove possible for the Department of the Environment to take some action it would be wrong to suppose it will give such full control as would make absolute liability equitable.

The view of the Government does not rest only on the question of cost to the gas industry of such a change, but rather on reason and fairness. The question is whether, in the circumstances of the gas industry, it is right to place upon the Corporation this very onerous degree of liability. This Amendment, I am bound to say, has been put down at a very late stage and, if I may say so, I think it might have been put down at the Committee stage. I cannot think it right for this House to accept it without very much more consideration being given to the proposal than has been possible in the time available. The actual form of words departs from precedent: the precedent of the Gas Act, of the Nuclear Installations Act and, I believe, of the Civil Aviation Act.

The law of liability for damage is already a complex subject. The part of it dealing with special liability for dangerous activities and substances is particularly difficult. The noble Lord has stated the two kinds of special liability: first, the statutorily imposed form of absolute liability, which applies to specific activities for substances dealt with in the relevant enactment. Examples of this are the underground storage of gas, as well as nuclear installations. In both of these cases the operator is liable for damage, whatever the cause, unless and to the extent that he can show that the plaintiff brought the damage on himself—say, by drilling a hole into an underground gas storage in order to steal the gas. In fact, as noble Lords will know there are no underground storages as yet.

The second kind of liability (which does not exist in Scottish law, so that the Amendment would not be perfect, if I may say so) is called strict liability. It is the one referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley—and I am sorry if he felt that in my reply to him on Second Reading I was—I forget the phrase he used: I think it was, "teaching my grandmother …". I know that he has made a lifelong study of these things. On the other hand, it seemed to me that it was the answer to the question. But it is a common law doctrine, as the House will know, derived from the 19th century case of Rylands v. Fletcher. The judgment in that case established that if a person keeps a dangerous substance on his land then he does so at his peril and must indemnify anyone who is injured as a result of an escape of that substance.

There are a number of defences against an action of that kind, important among which are acts of third parties and Acts of God, in addition to the plaintiff's own negligence which applies in the case of statutorily imposed absolute liability. I am sorry to weary the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, with these points, but other noble Lords may not be so familiar with the subject as he is. In order to establish common law strict liability it is necessary to show that the keeping of the dangerous thing it unnatural or abnormal use of the land. For instance, in Rylands v. Fletcher, water was stored in bulk in a reservoir and escaped, flooding the plaintiff's mine.

A further defence against common law strict liability is statutory authority. It has been held, in a series of cases going back to 1890, that (to quote a recent judgment ; that of Lord Justice Sellers in the case of Dunne v. The North Western Gas Board in 1964): Where there is a mandatory obligation, there should be no liability if what had been done had been expressly required by statute to be done, or was reasonably incidental to that requirement. And I would add: provided, of course, that it was done without negligence, since failure to exercise due care would be a ground for an action in English common law on the basis of negligence. It is indeed the practice of the gas industry to settle out of court in cases where there is a chance that negligence might be shown.

It is this defence of statutory authority which most clearly provides the industry with the protection it rightly needs for carrying on the activities which comprise its statutory duty. But it is by no means clear that an action would be successful, even in its absence. There is still the requirement of unnatural use, and it is difficult to regard the normal everday activities of statutory undertakers as very unusual. To quote again from the judgment to which I have just referred: Gas, water and electricity … are well-nigh a necessity of modern life … generally demanded for the common good. … It would seem odd that facilities so much sought after … should be actionable … because they have been brought to the places where they are required and have escaped without negligence. In the view of the Government there is nothing in the present situation to justify a departure from this view, and it seems right to continue to regard the operations of the gas industry in distributing gas as normal and natural uses of the land and streets through which it is piped. There is no reason to distinguish the Corporation from other statutory undertakers from whose activities hazards can also arise, and the correct way to reform the legal position, if reform is necessary—and I am not sure that it is—is to have a general review of the whole of this branch of the law. For the reasons I have stated, my view is that it would be wrong for the gas industry not to have the same defence in common law as other statutory undertakers have.

My Lords, I think I ought to close by quoting what the Morton Report said about leakage, because the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, quoted not from the Report but from a document reporting the Report. Perhaps I may be allowed to quote from the Report itself: Leakage from the older types of gas main has been a familiar problem for many years and the Gas Boards are well aware of both the danger from the leaks and the cost to themselves of any substantial losses of gas. The use of higher pressures, drier gas and latterly natural gas in the district systems has caused the Gas Boards to undertake intensive programmes of clamping, sealing and—where necessary—renewal. Moreover, planning the conversion of the distribution system to natural gas involves a detailed survey of the pipework and a sophisticated network analysis of the flow of gas in each sector before conversion can be put in hand. In some cases the survey has revealed the existence of old mains which were not in the Board's records. The overall effect of all this surveying, inspection and sealing work "— and I now come to that part which the noble Lord quoted— has undoubtedly been to improve the safety of existing gas distribution systems even under the heavier duty to which they are being subjected by increasing the gas loads and the use of natural gas. It goes on—and the noble Lord quoted this phrase— The total length of gas mains in the country is so vast, however (of the order of 120,000 miles of main and several millions of joints), that many years will be needed for the elimination of all risks. That does not derogate from the statement here that: The overall effect of all this survey, inspection and sealing work has undoubtedly been to improve the safety of existing gas distribution systems. … So, in view of that and in view of the difficulty of picking out the gas industry from other industries which equally provide hazards, I hope that noble Lords will agree not to press their Amendment.

LORD AIREDALE

My Lords, the noble Lord spoke of insurance. Surely, the argument in favour of transferring the burden of insurance on to the Corporation is that the premium is then shared out among hundreds of thousands of gas consumers, each of whom will have to pay, I suppose, about one-fiftieth of a penny. Surely, there cannot be a single gas consumer in the country who would not be willing to produce this infinitesimal sum in order to make quite sure that the gas on the way to him did not blow up somebody in the street and leave that person without compensation unless he could prove negligence!

LORD DRUMALBYN

My Lords, this is the general principle of insurance as exemplified in the insurance provision. I agree with that. The point is (and I think I can rest on my argument) that the hazards are no greater than they were in the past and there is no reason why we should start on the gas industry rather than to apply the same principles, if accepted, to all industries that constitute hazards.

LORD DELACOURT-SMITH

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, said that he was going to deal with the point about the 1965 Gas Act. I may have missed his explanation of why it is that a liability should be accepted by Parliament in the case of the underground storage of gas, but that liability should not be extended, as my noble friend has proposed, to cover the transmission of that same gas. I wonder whether the noble Lord would reply specifically on that point.

LORD DRUMALBYN

My Lords, the underground storage of gas could, I think, easily be shown to be the introduction of a particular hazard. It is not in any sense a natural or ordinary thing to do. It represents a great concentration of gas, and at the time in 1965 when the previous Government introduced this Act, had they thought it right to extend that protection throughout the whole system of gas transmission and distribution no doubt they would have done so. They did not reach that conclusion. They recognised that this was a special hazard of a completely abnormal kind, in strong contrast to the normal distribution of gas through gas pipes which has gone on through the past century.

LORD DELACOURT-SMITH

My Lords, as the noble Lord has indicated, I have some degree of special interest in this Amendment because of my association with a group of workers who have been particularly liable to injury as a result of developments which we are discussing this morning. But I should like to emphasise that this hazard has extended to other groups of workers and members of the general public. I am bound to say that I think the House will have listened with disappointment to what the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has said, for I thought my three noble friends built up a quite unanswerable case for the substance of this Amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, spoke with special technical knowledge and expertise and the noble Lords, Lord Stow Hill and Lord Chorley, spoke from their great legal experience. I should have thought that, taking the arguments they put forward, it was clear that we were dealing with a point of substance and seriousness, and that there was an element of risk involved for particular groups of workers and members of the general public of which account ought to be taken by the adoption of this Amendment. For there is clear evidence of injury, even fatal injury, and of damage arising from leakages of gas from the distribution system.

If I understood the noble Lord's argument aright, he was contending that the dangers arising from leakage of gas were no greater now than in the past. I should have thought it reasonable to say that although some hazards—for example, hazards arising from the possibility of poisoning are bound to have diminished because of the different characteristics of the gas now passing through the distribution system—there was equally clear evidence that other hazards, again dependent upon the properties of the natural gas, which is increasingly being used, and the condition of the distribution system, have increased.

LORD DRUMALBYN

My Lords, I am here relying on the Morton Report where, after dealing with hazards from high pressure bulk transmission, they conclude: There is no reason to believe that any greater risk exists in the high pressure transmission system.

LORD DELACOURT-SMITH

My Lords, no greater aggregate risk is the implication, is it not? I am by no means sure that there is an argument that the risk arising from leakages of gas which cause explosions has diminished. Certainly it is hard to reconcile the picture given by the noble Lord with some of the facts which I think are beyond dispute. I take as one a quotation from an official Post Office magazine, Engineering Safety, and I quote from the issue of July 1971: Gas accidents in the Post Office have multiplied more than five times over the past seven years. In the two years since Engineering Safety last put the spotlight on gas hazards the accident figures have almost doubled. Where men are involved in such accidents the consequences are almost always serious, for eight out of every 10 cases are explosions. Faces and hands almost always get badly burned, one of the most miserable and painful forms of injury, suffering can be long and absences from work of two to five months are extremely common. The accident figures are even more worrying when looked at against the huge effort being put into precautionary measures. I should like to take this opportunity to say that none of us speaking in support of the Amendment is in any way critical of the effort or attention being given to this problem by the Gas Council, the Post Office or other authority. But in spite of those efforts—and we have no doubt that the authorities concerned are doing, and will continue to do, their best—there continues to exist a substantial hazard. It is a hazard by no means confined to groups of works in other public utility services. There are cases which I am sure will be known to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn—I will not take up the time of the House by quoting them ; they were referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones—of damage to property and injury, indeed in one case fatal injury, to members of the public as a result of a leakage of gas.

As the noble Lord has rightly said, my noble friends have deliberately spoken in most moderate terms. No one would wish to cause undue alarm on this subject. But I think this should not in any way be regarded as a suggestion that this is not a matter which requires attention. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has admitted a degree of sympathy which naturally we all feel for those who are the subject of, or involved in, these distressing accidents. But he went on to say that it would be wrong to take the course which my noble friends and I are urging on the Government. The noble Lord has rested on substantially different grounds, at any rate in the main, from those which hitherto have been relied on by Government spokesmen in connection with this subject. I think he conceded that, as drafted, the Amendment moved by my noble friends met the objections which had been the substance of the case hitherto offered, or the major arguments in the case hitherto offered, by Government spokesmen. We remain of the opinion that the risk is there and that the responsibility should be assigned in the way we have described. Nobody can deny that we are dealing with a problem which arises from the properties of the new gas, taken in conjunction with the present physical characteristics of the distribution system.

My noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones, during the Second Reading debate and in his speech to-day, went into a good deal of detail. Obviously, one could go a good deal further and show precisely why this problem has developed and has assumed the urgency which attaches to it. We are proposing that the arrangements and liability already applying in the case of underground storage should apply to the transmission network.

The noble Lord hinted that this matter might have benefited from further consideration. We have timetable difficulties in this House. I think the noble Lord would concede that my noble friends have recognised this problem and have done a great deal to co-operate with the Government, through the usual channels, for the expeditious discharge of business. We should have been entitled. in other circumstances, to complain about the intervals between the Second Reading and Committee stages and between the Committee and Report stages, and also about the absence of any interval between the Report and succeeding stages. But it would be most unfortunate if noble Lords were left with the impression that timetable considerations had precluded further, possibly fruitful, examination of this problem.

The noble Lord explained the law on this matter at great length. I do not know what impression he made on my noble friends who were able to appraise his detailed legal arguments, but I must confess that he gave me the impression that in this regard the law is so full of difficulty, and possibly anomalies, that it would do no great harm if a further anomaly—or what appeared to him to be a further anomaly—were added. He talked about the possible desirability of a review of this whole field of the law. I wonder whether I might put it to him—I am sure the House will generously concede him the right to speak again—that we ought not to be left with even the possibility of the thought that, because of the legislative timetable, this matter had had less consideration than we might regard it as meriting.

There are two ways in which the noble Lord could meet our feelings. First, he could agree that the succeeding stages of the Bill be deferred a little to enable the Government to look further into this question. I am sure that my noble friends, through the usual channels, would co-operate to ensure that that did not add to the already very great timetable difficulties. Alternatively, he could accept the Amendment as drafted by my noble friend, on the grounds that, in any case, the Bill has to go back to another place for consideration of the Amendments which have already been made by your Lordships' House and that there would therefore be an opportunity of rejection or of modification of an Amendment on this point.

Surely, there is scope for further co[...]sideration of this point which has b[...]en argued by my three noble friends so fully and persuasively and with such a grasp of all the relevant fields of expert knowledge. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to defer the Third Reading—that might be the better course—or accept the Amendment, notwithstanding his doubts and hearing in mind the opportunity to have the matter considered further. I am sure that the House will accord him leave to express his thoughts on this matter.

LORD DRUMALBYN

My Lords, as ever, the noble Lord has been extremely conciliatory and persuasive, but he must realise that it would be difficult to give an affirmative answer to either of the two points which he has put to me. I am bound to rely a little on technical answers. The noble Lord suggested that the remaining stages of the Bill might be delayed. I am advised that it is very unusual for an Amendment of great substance, such as this one, to be introduced on Third Reading.

SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Report.

LORD DRUMALBYN

The noble Lord is asking me to have the matter considered and to introduce an Amendment on Third Reading. The other course he suggested was that we should accept the Amendment. I will not rely on the argument that the Amendment would not be completely satisfactory for one of the reasons that I mentioned earlier, namely that, as it is drafted, it does not cover Scotland. The noble Lord will appreciate that in the time schedule as between here and another place it would be extremely difficult to have such a major matter considered and to have the necessary amendments made. I want to be absolutely frank. We regret that we did not have the pleasure of the company of the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, during the Committee stage on Monday. For that reason the Amendment was not put down then. We have therefore had no time at all to discuss a matter of major principle.

I think I made it clear in my concluding remarks—almost my concluding remarks—that we do not readily accept this principle in relation to the gas industry alone and that, in general, we are not certain that it would be proper to make a change in the law without wide consideration of the legal implications. I am bound, therefore, to say that I do not see any particular advantage in adopting either of the courses suggested by the noble Lord. I am afraid either would bring the same answer ; the Government's view would continue to be that it would not be right in present circumstances to include such a provision in this legislation. I hope that in all the circumstances noble Lords will not wish to press the Amendment at present.

1.30 p.m.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, I am certain that my noble friends do not want to put the House in the position of having a vote on this Amendment. I only intervene because for a number of years I have been responsible both for Government business as a Chief Whip, and also as Chief Whip in Opposition. Therefore. I am well aware of the great problems that always exist at this time of the year in dealing with legislation. We have always in the past overcome our difficulties because there has been an understanding between the two Front Benches as to the way in which business is to be conducted. In this there has always had to be a degree of flexibility.

One recognises that the Government wish to get this Bill through in order that the other place can consider the Amendments before they get up for the Summer Recess. But my understanding of the Bill is that there is no time element involved. So, even if it were to miss consideration by the other place before the Summer Recess, no great harm would be done. I would only put to the noble Lord, Lord Denham—no doubt he has knowledge of the business arrangements in another place—that my understanding is that no great harm would arise if the Third Reading of the Bill were delayed until Monday ; and certainly if it were delayed until then we on this side of the House would facilitate matters. It would not affect the major legislation that is down for Monday.

What has been raised is something that the House, I am sure, will agree is of considerable importance. It does not raise any Party-political issue, and therefore there is no gain from our point of view in pressing the Amendment unless we really believe it is in the interests not only of the industry but also the consumer and those involved in industry generally. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, said in reply to an earlier interjection that he saw the Amendment only yesterday. On the face of it, that would seem to be criticism of my noble friends in having been rather dilatory in putting the Amendment down. But the Committee stage was only concluded last Monday, on my understanding, and there have only been a few days—the noble Lord shakes his head, and I may be a day or two out.

LORD DENHAM

My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, does not quite understand the position. This is not an Amendment that arises from the Committee stage. This is an Amendment that could have been put down for the Committee stage had it been possible for the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, to be here.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, this is true. But the noble Lord will acknowledge that there were only a few days between Second Reading and Committee, and here again we had facilitated speed in the taking of the various stages of the Bill. But I do not want to get into an argument as to the rights and wrongs of this. I am merely saying that we on this side of the House are working under great difficulties, as the noble Lord, Lord Denham, will appreciate. I intended to say on winding up on the E.E.C. Bill on Wednesday that what many noble Lords who have not had the responsibility of Opposition Front Bench do not appreciate is that it is not the time that is taken in the House that is the burden for those responsible for considering legislation, but the consultation, receiving representations and then drafting. All this takes time. And when we are taking legislation of major importance through at the present rate, great pressure is placed on noble Lords on this side, and particularly my noble friend Lord Stow Hill, who has done so much not only in regard to this legislation but on other legislation, and particularly the E.E.C Bill. There must be some understanding about the pressures placed on my noble friends.

All I would ask of the noble Lords, Lord Drumalbyn and Lord Denham, and of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, since he is the Deputy Leader, is whether this Amendment might not be considered between now and Monday, and if the Government are then in a position to meet us by putting their own Amendment on Third Reading I will undertake on behalf of my noble friends to see that that Amendment is expedited and that there will be no undue delay on the other major legislation on Monday. I should think that this is a reasonable request, taking into account the pressure of business and the willingness of the Opposition not only during the last few days but over the coming weeks to assist the Government to facilitate business, assistance which they really need from us. I do not make this request lightly ; I make it in all possible seriousness.

LORD ABERDARE

My Lords, naturally we always want to do everything we can to help and to do things by mutual agreement between the two

Resolved in the negative, and Amend ment disagreed to accordingly.

sides. But on this occasion, when we have had this on the Order Paper for some time and this major Amendment has been moved on the Report stage, when my noble friend has done his umost to explain the difficulties that face us in considering it—how important an Amendment it is, its implications that go wider than this Bill, and why we are unable to accept it—I do not think we can really meet the noble Lord.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord has responded in that way. No doubt in the next two or three weeks he will be coming to ask us to facilitate business. I can tell him, so far as I am concerned, in view of the reasonable request that I made, that if this is the way the Opposition is to be treated when it makes a reasonable request then the Government cannot have any hope in asking for assistance from us. In all things there must be give and take. If the Government cannot respond on a matter like this then they will have a hell of a nerve to come and ask for help when they produce their business later on.

On Question, Whether the said Amendment shall be agreed to?

Their Lordships divided: Contents, 29 ; Not-Contents, 40.

CONTENTS
Airedale, L. Henderson, L. Shepherd, L.
Amulree, L. Hoy, L. Simon, V.
Brockway, L. O'Hagan, L. Stamp, L.
Buckinghamshire, E. Pargiter, L. Stow Hill, L.
Champion, L. Phillips, Bs. [Teller.] Strabolei, L. [Teller.]
Chorley, L. Platt, L. Strathclyde, L.
Crook, L. Ritchie-Calder, L. Wade, L.
Davies of Leek, L. St. Davids, V. White, Bs.
Delacourt-Smith, L. Segal L. Wynne-Jones, L.
Hale, L. Shackleton, L.
NOT-CONTENTS
Aberdare, L. Emmet of Amberley, Bs. Milverton, L.
Amherst of Hackney, L. Ferrers, E. Mowbray and Stourton, [Teller.]
Balfour, E. Gainford, L.
Balfour of Inchrye, L. Gowrie, E. Redesdale, L.
Beaumont, L. Gridley, L. Reigate, L.
Belstead, L. Grimston of Westbury, L. Saint Oswald, L.
Bessborough, E. Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L. (L. Chancellor.) Sandford, L.
Colville of Culross, V. Sempill, Ly.
Craigavon, V. Hanworth, V. Strathcarron, L.
Denham, L. [Teller.] Harvey of Prestbury, L. Terrington, L.
Drumalbyn, L. Ironside, L. Teviot, L.
Eccles, V. Lothian, M. Thomas, L.
Effingham, E. Mancroft, L. Vivian, L.
Elles, Bs. Merrivale, L. Young, Bs.

Then Standing Order No. 44 having been suspended (pursuant to Resolution):

LORD DRUMALBYN

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.

Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, in view of the Government's attitude to the request which my noble friends put to the noble Lord, it is only because of my now well-accepted view that it is wrong for this House to vote against the Second or Third Reading of a Bill that I do not propose to divide the House on the Motion for Third Reading.

On Question, Bill read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.