Lords Sitting of 15 June 1972

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

LORD BOYD-CARPENTER
The Right Honourable John Archibald Boyd-Carpenter, having been created Baron Boyd-Carpenter, of Crux Easton in the County of Southampton, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Tweedsmuir and the Lord Boyle of Handsworth.

BRITISH AIRWAYS WEST LONDON TERMINAL
3.17 p.m.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will instruct the British Airways Board, prior to any decision being taken on the closure of the air-ways terminal at Gloucester Road, to conduct an inquiry and make public the assessment of the likely physical hardship caused to passengers in baggage handling, particularly in so far as international flights are concerned.
Earl FERRERS: No, my Lords. B.E.A.'s decision to discontinue check-in facilities at Gloucester Road is a commercial decision in which Her Majesty's Government have no power to intervene. B.E.A. have no plans to close the Terminal itself.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, would the Minister ask the Department to let me have a Written Answer to my Question of June 1, so that we may all know where these responsibilities lie? Is he aware that I have a long and obviously helpful letter from B.E.A. concerning to-day's Question, but this misses the main point? Could the
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Minister tell the House when it is expected that these changes for passengers will occur at Gloucester Road Terminal; and, secondly, could he also inform the House what is to happen to the luggage of those passengers at Gloucester Road Terminal who are en route to Heathrow?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the decision is that the check-in facilities at West London Air Terminal will be discontinued for all flights by the summer of 1973, with phased implementation of this starting earlier in that year. I would add that in the early 1950s, when the Terminal was first built, it was done to accommodate nearly 100 per cent. of the passengers using Heathrow. In the 1960s only 40 per cent. of passengers used it, and now only about 24 per cent. use it. With regard to the second of the noble Baroness's questions, Her Majesty's Government have powers to intervene or to give instructions to the British Airways Board only when the case concerned is of national interest.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, the noble Earl, I am sure inadvertently, has not answered my question. Could he please tell the House what is to happen to the baggage of those passengers using the Terminal en route for Heathrow, after these changes have been made? Finally, is he aware that the trade unions concerned are opposed to this proposal at this stage, and that it is suggested that a committee should be set up? If such a committee is set up, will there be traveller representation upon it?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the situation is that people who wish to use this Air Terminal will go there with their luggage, and their luggage will be taken on trailers of buses to Heathrow. As to the trade unions' view, all I can tell the noble Baroness is that, much as I appreciate her concern, this is a matter with which B.E.A. is primarily concerned and it is they who will discuss the matter with the unions.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, the noble Earl cannot get away with that. He has still not answered my question. What is going to happen to the baggage of these passengers when it is deposited from the bus at the Heathrow Terminal?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I am sorry if I misunderstood the noble Baroness's question. I thought she asked what was going to happen to the baggage when they went to West London Air Terminal. Am I misunderstanding the noble Baroness?
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: Yes, my Lords. I thought I had been very clear. Could the noble Earl tell the House what is to happen to the baggage of those travellers who use the Gloucester Road Air Terminal en route for Heathrow when they are deposited from the bus at Heathrow with their luggage?
EARL FERRERS: When they are deposited from the bus at Heathrow they will be responsible for taking their luggage to the check-in point.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that though the Government may consider this a commercial decision, the great majority of Her Majesty's subjects look on it as something much wider than that? Furthermore, surely it is something which is common to all civilised capitals to have a terminal in the centre of a city where passengers wishing to travel by air and unable to go to the airport some distance from the centre by motor car, as no doubt Ministers are, can check in their luggage. They can then go by bus for a few shillings, to catch the aircraft. What do Her Majesty's Government intend to do to cater for the needs of this great majority of Her Majesty's subjects?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, as I explained in my original reply, the check-in point only is being closed, and it is being closed because not enough people are using it. The fact is that at the moment many more people go direct to Heathrow and do not use the Terminal. This will make a saving of some £600,000 a year. I quite understand my noble friend's point when he says that people wish to go by coach. They will still be able to do so. It is only the check-in facilities which will be removed.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, could the noble Lord explain why, when I go to this particular point, I always stand in a queue in order to book in? Can he substantiate that reply with any real statistics?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, as I have never been with the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, when he has checked in I cannot possibly comment.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I have never had the pleasure of travelling with the noble Earl. But has he any statistics in this matter?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the answer is "None", because I have never travelled with the noble Lord.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, have Her Majesty's Government got the statistics which have enabled the noble Earl to make that particular statement that not enough people were checking in to make it economically viable?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, yes, I gave them earlier. When the West London Air Terminal was introduced it was built to take about 100 per cent. capacity. In the 1960's only 40 per cent. of the people who used Heathrow used the West London Air Terminal, and now only 24 per cent. do so. When the rail link is introduced it is expected that this number will be cut by half.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Earl whether he has any conception of the difficulties of elderly passengers who are put down at the Heathrow Terminal and have to struggle with their luggage? Does the noble Earl use the Heathrow Terminal himself? Has he any idea of the shortage of porters and trolleys? Does he propose that elderly travellers get hold of a trolley and push it to the place for making booking-in arrangements?
LORD HARVEY OF PRESTBURY: My Lords, will my noble friend ask B.E.A. to have another look at this matter, bearing in mind the great inconvenience that will be caused to at least 25 per cent. of the travellers? Could the closure of the Gloucester Road station possibly be postponed until the rail link is open and functioning?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I will certainly draw to the attention of B.E.A. the views which have been expressed by noble Lords and the noble Baroness this afternoon. It is B.E.A. which is responsible for this particular terminal. I will

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also draw those remarks to the attention of the British Airports Authority, which of course is responsible for the porterage arrangements at London Airport.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, speaking as one of the elderly passengers referred to by my noble friend and who has been in and out of Heathrow in the past week, I should like to ask the Minister whether he is aware that the facilities for moving one's baggage, either from the coach or from a car to the check-in point, are totally inadequate?
EARL FERRERS: I will certainly pass on the noble Baroness's observation as well.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I should like to ask the Government whether they are aware that many people have been using Cromwell Road Air Terminal because their luggage is much less likely to get lost than if they go direct to Heathrow? What arrangements are now being made by the Airport authorities to improve the luggage arrangements for those travellers who will go direct to the Airport?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, this is obviously going to be something which the British Airports Authority must look into, considering that there will now be more passengers using Heathrow in view of the closing of the check-in facilities at the West London Air Terminal.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, as another elderly traveller who has to walk miles and miles at airports and carry luggage, I should like to inquire if B.E.A. could be asked to give consideration to the older generation.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I am in some difficulty over this matter, because Parliament has set up these various authorities to look after the particular interests concerned. I will certainly draw the noble Baroness's observations to the attention of B.E.A., but it is its responsibility and it is not the Government's. With the greatest of respect, the noble Baroness should address her complaints to B.E.A. and then they can be dealt with.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, while entirely
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agreeing about the difficulties of elderly travellers, I should like to ask the noble Lord whether he has ever carried two suitcases in one hand, a baby in the other arm, and failed to find even a trolley to put them all on—let alone a porter?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I have carried all of those, but I do not know whether they were in the particular arms in which the noble Baroness had them.
VISCOUNT THURSO: My Lords, could the noble Earl give us information in round figures instead of percentages, because the number of passengers travelling through the Terminal has increased, I hope, since it was built and therefore the percentages may be misleading when it comes to examining the total number using it?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I entirely accept the noble Viscount's point. I cannot give him the numbers in round figures, but I can tell him that even though the percentage is now lower than it was in 1950, so is the absolute figure.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (LORD ABERDARE): My Lords, may I interrupt at this point? I know how very interested your Lordships are in this matter of air travel and how many of you might have other observations to make on this problem, but my noble friend has undertaken to have further talks with B.E.A. and with the British Airports Authority. I hope that now, after a considerable period of cross-questioning, we may move on to the next question.

QUEEN ALEXANDRA HOSPITAL AND TATE GALLERY
3.28 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will arrange to have a special survey made of Queen Alexandra Hospital, Millbank, to establish whether it is capable of being adapted as a Tate Gallery extension before having this attractive building destroyed.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, we have considered this possibility, but I am advised that even if the hospital buildings were extensively modified they could not satisfy the future requirements of the Tate Gallery as regards size or layout, and so we shall not be having a special survey for this purpose.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, is it not a very great pity that, one by one, we are knocking down some of the more interesting buildings in London? Is not the Minister aware that although this building is not of very great architectural merit, it is nevertheless part of a set-up of great attraction on the riverside, which is gradually losing all its salient attractive features? Cannot the Government turn their minds to finding a more suitable solution than knocking this one down?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I am sure that the Royal Engineers, both upstairs and downstairs, who built this hospital in 1905 will take great pleasure in the noble Lord's observation on their work. But he must appreciate that we all realise the importance of the site, and I hope that when the decision on the new building which will adjoin the Tate is taken, there will be a building fully worthy of what is needed. Also, may I say in passing that the Tate extension will require large galleries with top lighting of the rooms, and I am told that in the hospital the rooms are generally narrow on several floors? The noble Lord can be happy that there will be a distinguished building emerging at the end of the day.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, may I ask the Government whether they are aware that most people agree that the hospital would be quite unsuitable for the Tate Gallery? Arising out of that, may I ask the noble Lord whether he can give us a date when it is proposed to publish the plans for the new building?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, for his observation. I agree with him that the hospital is wrong in shape, nature and size for the new Tate extension. The answer to his question is that my right honourable friend in another place will shortly be announcing his plans in this matter.
LORD O'NEILL OF THE MAINE: My Lords, may I ask the Government whether they are aware how Central London is being ruined by the introduction of high-rise buildings, so that visitors from the ancient Commonwealth—if they are able to trace their luggage at Heathrow and can get into the centre of London—find, instead of a nice European capital, such as Paris, a cheap edition of Toronto? This is a most regrettable tendency started in the day of the previous Government, and I hope that this Government will give further consideration to this matter.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, this will be an extension of an art gallery, and I think my noble friend can rest quite assured that the Ministers in another place, and the Committee which will consider the buildings proposed, will look into the problem which he has raised.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, contrary to what he suggested, is the Minister aware that there are not several floors but two floors in the main building, and that some experts are of the opinion that this could be very well changed into an extension for the Tate Gallery, though I admit that it would not give as much room as the Tate would want? May I take this opportunity of asking the noble Lord whether he is aware that I am most grateful to the Department of the Environment and the Ministry of Defence, for the enormous help and sympathy which they have given me in pursuing this matter?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his kind remarks. I think he rather answered his own question, when he referred to the restricted space available if we kept the building.

MARITIME INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT AREAS
3.34 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 demand

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by bulk raw material users for development of Mums as originally proposed by the National Ports Council.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORT-FOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN): My Lords, I have nothing to add to my answer of April 26. Although the preliminary work on the study has been completed, the Report has still to be examined in detail by the Departments concerned with a view to its submission to Ministers.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that reply, may I ask him whether he is aware that a seven weeks' period since the last Question with no further advance brings no credit on the Government. Also, is he aware that when this study was set in hand a year ago the object, declared from the Front Bench by his colleague, was to get an answer by last Christmas?
LORD DRUMALBYN: Yes, my Lords, I am aware that it was hoped to complete the preliminary work by the end of last year. The preliminary work, as I think I told my noble friend earlier, was completed at the beginning of this year, but this further study by Departments has yet to be done.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend, may I ask him whether he will use his best endeavours to press on with this matter? Had the intended Peston study been put in hand when his Government took office two years ago, we should have had the result by now. This delay is not to the Government's credit or to the country's advantage.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, perhaps I ought to say that this study is not quite the same as the Peston study, but I will use such influence as I may have to try to get this settled.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I ask the Government whether we can finally settle whether the word "MIDA" is part of the English language? If it were part of it, then it need not be printed in capitals, and we should know whether we were talking about Midas or a lot of MIDAS.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, these Maritime Industrial Development
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Areas will no doubt become better known if and when this Report is published.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: My Lords, it is another one of those damned acronyms.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he can give us an assurance that the Report will be published?
LORD DRUMALBYN: No, my Lords. I think that would be a little premature. This has to be examined by the Departments and the Ministers will have to consider it. I should not like to give a date.

MEAT PRICES
3.37 p.m.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will appoint fair meat price officers for each area, to fix fair meat prices which will have the force of law.
EARL FERRERS: No, my Lords. It would be neither practicable nor desirable to attempt to operate a system of price control.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, if the Government can have fair rent officers to put up rents, why can they not have fair meat price officers to keep down the price of meat? Is the noble Earl aware that since last October prices have gone up by 27 per cent.? Does he really expect housewives to deny themselves the purchase of beef, and will the Government take any steps at all to try to keep prices down?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, in fact, as I am sure the noble Lord knows, there is at the moment a world shortage of beef which has corresponded with a decline in home-produced beef. It is a fact that over the past few weeks prices have risen, but it appears that the price rise is now past its peak.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, is it not a fact that for many years the British farmer has been producing the best meat in Europe, first-class meat, at the cheapest rate and it is now about time that he had

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some slight breakthrough? Will my noble friend further agree that what is proposed would be completely contrary to the regulations of the E.E.C., which we may be joining in the next six months?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I entirely agree that British beef is indeed the best; and that is the reason why my right honourable friend has spent quite a lot of time trying to encourage the output of British agriculture.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, is not one of the answers that the Government should check the export to the Continent of very good English cattle, which has already been heavily subsidised by the British taxpayer?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, that would not provide the answer which the noble Lord wants, because if exports were stopped the Continental buyers would merely go to other countries and buy in their place the food which would otherwise be imported into this country.
LORD NUNBURNHOLME: My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lord Leatherland, and to ask whether the Government are aware that during the past three weeks beef prices have fallen by about £2 per cwt. live weight? Can the Government give me some assurance that the retail price of beef has fallen in like proportion?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, in fact, the Smithfield wholesale prices—
LORD SHEPHERD: Retail prices are what we want.
EARL FERRERS: —passed their peak during last week. The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, will know that it takes some time for new wholesale prices to find their way through into the retail shops. It is merely a question of time.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, can my noble friend confirm, bearing in mind the immensely complicated nature of the meat trade, that the functions of a fair meat price officer—who is concerned not just with beef but with all meat—such as is suggested by the noble Lord opposite, would be quite impossible to carry out; and is not this whole suggestion totally unrealistic?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I am bound to say that I entirely agree with
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my noble friend. I thought that it was almost as erroneous to compare meat price officers with rent officers as it would be to compare the intelligentsia with the intelligent.
BARONESS LLEWELYN-DAVIES OF HASTOE: My Lords, does this not show that on the Government Front Bench there are far too many Guardsmen and not enough Beefeaters?
LORD ROBBINS: My Lords, would the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, agree that any such experiment as price-fixing in meat would involve, if there were not to be socially disturbing shortages of beef, the institution at the same time of a scheme of meat rationing?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Robbins, While one sympathises with the principle behind Lord Leatherland's question, his suggestion would be totally impracticable because there are hundreds of different types of cuts throughout the country.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, are there not also hundreds of different kinds of houses? Yet the Government's rent officers are going to be able to grapple with that problem. I must congratulate the noble Lord on skipping out of this question like a sprightly young heifer, but does he think that housewives are going to be convinced by this exhibition of Government inactivity?
EARL FERRERS: It is not a question of Government inactivity. Even this Government are unable to affect world-wide shortage and world-wide demand. At the moment there is a shortage of beef, prices throughout the world have gone up, but they are likely now to have passed their peak.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, if there is a shortage of beef why have we had so much to spare that we have been able to send supplies to Common Market countries?
EARL FERRERS: If, when they were in power, the noble Lord's Government had done more to expand British agriculture we might not be in this position to-day.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, is it customary for a noble Lord to make an

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unwarranted attack on the section of the community called "the intelligentsia"? Is the noble Lord aware that we are well aware that this section is not well represented on the Government Front Bench, with the possible exception of the noble Earl, Lord Cowrie? I would suggest that they turn their attention not to attacking the intelligentsia but to giving intelligent answers to your Lordships' House.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I was not under the impression that my noble friend Lord Ferrers was casting any aspersions on the intelligentsia. I thought he was merely trying to distinguish between the intelligentsia and the intelligent. I am glad to know that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, thinks that we are all so highly intelligent.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, is it fair to deprive the French of our beef, having regard to the promises made by M. Pompidou and others about the vast benefits that we are going to derive when we enter the Common Market? Is it not fair that we should sacrifice something for these great benefits? Or can the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, say that one of the benefits of going in is that we are going to have cheap beef?
EARL FERRERS: We are delighted that the French should know how good British beef is, so that when we go into the Common Market British farmers will be able to benefit.

BUSINESS
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, by leave of the House my noble friend Lord Windlesham will be making a Statement on Northern Ireland at a convenient time after 3.30 p.m.
COVENTRY CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a: an Amendment (privilege) made; Bill passed and sent to the Commons.

FRIENDS OF THE CLERGY CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE. EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
On Question. Bill read 3a.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill do now pass.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
VISCOUNT BRENTFORD: My Lords, as honorary treasurer of this particular corporation, one of the old ones, and of the new one, I should like to express our appreciation to the House for having passed this Bill.
On Question, Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

POISONS BILL [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to consolidate certain enactments relating to poisons; and to move that the Bill be read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

CONTRACTS OF EMPLOYMENT BILL [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I rise to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Your Lordships will be relieved to know that it is purely a Consolidation Bill. It consolidates the Contracts of Employment Act 1963 and the relevant provisions of the Redundancy Payments Act 1965 and the Industrial Relations Act 1971. The Bill will be examined by the Joint Committee in the usual way. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 2a, and referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.

HOUSING FINANCE BILL
3.46 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do again resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL
in the Chair]
Schedule 3 [Computation of rebates and allowances]:
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved Amendment No. 96B:
Page 126, line 43, leave out ("the duty") and insert ("within the discretion").
The noble Lord said: Having had some amusement for half an hour we must now come to more serious matters. With the permission of the Committee, I should like when dealing with this Amendment to speak on Amendments Nos. 96C and 96D. Before I do so, may I say one or two words of a general nature and perhaps make a proposal to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and to the Deputy or acting Chief Whip, Lord Denham? We are confronted with a very contentious Bill. It affects a large number of people, most of whom are least able to afford these added burdens. It is also a Bill of very considerable complexity. It is clearly the duty of the Opposition to debate it and to question Ministers on it, not devoting their attention solely to the general principles, but looking at the details and, if necessary, going through the legislation line by line.
I have heard criticism about the number of Amendments to the Bill. I was reminded earlier to-day by my noble friend Lord Henderson that during the period of the first Labour Government after the War there were over 500 Amendments put down to the Town and Country Planning Bill. It is difficult in your Lordships' House when we have Bills of this nature and when we have no Ministers with direct departmental responsibility. In this case we have the noble Lord, Lord Sandford.
One of the difficulties of the Opposition so far in this Committee is that we have had to pursue Ministers in debate and by question. I have always taken the view that if it appears to us that Ministers know but, for various reasons, do not wish to answer, then it is our task to pursue the matter. If they do not know and they clearly should know, then I think no Opposition should resist the opportunity to chase the Minister. However, from our side—and I think the Committee would generally accept it—if a Minister does not know the answer to what is clearly a difficult question, then we are always ready to accept the undertaking of the Minister that he will write to the Member concerned. I think we have a duty to press the Ministers on this Bill; and, if I may, I again add my congratulations to my noble friends Lord Diamond and Lord Garnsworthy.
However, we have business difficulties. It is now mid-June, and there is still a number of major Bills in another place. I do not know when we are going to receive them. We always have a difficult time at this time of the year, but I should have thought that to-day we are faced with a situation infinitely worse than any of us can well remember. I acquit the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the noble Lord, Lord Denham; it is not their direct responsibility. But the Government must accept the final criticism that your Lordships' House will be presented with some major Bills which it is going to be very difficult properly to examine in the time that is available. So far as this Bill is concerned. I think many of our difficulties could have been avoided if, at the outset, the Government had been a little more generous in the time made available to us for the consideration of this Bill.
I should like to make a suggestion to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, as to the future progress of the Bill. As I understand it, it is the intention to sit till 10 o'clock to-night. That is certainly satisfactory from our point of view. If I may make a suggestion to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare—and I apologise to the Liberal Party; I have not had an opportunity to discuss these proposals, but if they have any comments perhaps they would make them afterwards—I should like to suggest that on Monday

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and Thursday, the two days the Government have allocated for Committee, it should be agreed that your Lordships sit until 10 or 11 o'clock, depending on the rate of progress and where we are on the Marshalled List of Amendments. I had it in mind to propose to the Government that on Monday the 26th, which they have set aside, we should seek to pace ourselves and really break the back of the Bill, so that on the Tuesday—and I believe the Government may be generous in this matter—with perhaps a three-hour period, we might then be able to complete the Bill. But I understand through the usual channels that, in order to meet my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner, the Government wish to take the Criminal Justice Bill on Monday. Therefore, may I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, that on Monday we should sit for three hours after taking the Criminal Justice Bill, then move on to the Housing Finance Bill, and get up about 11 o'clock, hoping that we could get about three hours' work in there. If the Liberal Party are willing to cooperate and the Government are reasonably forthcoming, we on this side of the Committee feel that we should seek to complete the Committee stage at some time on Tuesday the 27th. We may have to go a little bit late, into the early hours of the morning, but we would seek to do our best. I am making that suggestion to the Government, and if they are willing to respond I am certain the Committee would be indebted to them. Every Member would then know what is the business programme for the completion of this Bill.
LORD ABERDARE: I should like to respond to the proposals made by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, and to thank him for his assistance in this matter. He himself knows only too well what the difficulties are in arranging business, because of his experience when he was doing it himself; and we are anxious to be as reasonable as we possibly can. I would certainly confirm that we propose to sit until 10 o'clock to-night, and until 10 or 11 o'clock next Monday and Thursday. I can also confirm that the original arrangement was that we sat on Monday the 26th on this Bill, and possibly for a further three hours on the Tuesday. I also realise from what he has told me
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that there are difficulties about the Monday for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, and I should like, if I may, to look at this through the usual channels to see whether we can somehow, by switching Monday and Tuesday, still accommodate what he wants to accomplish. But other than that, I hope that we can now go steadily and swiftly ahead with this Bill.
LORD BYERS: I am sorry that I had no notice of this proposal, but I wonder whether I may make an appeal to the official Opposition. One of the basic problems here, as I understand it, is that a number of Amendments are being tabled which have in fact been dealt with fairly fully in another place. It seems to me that there is a very grave responsibility on the Opposition not to bring forward Amendments which have been dealt with in the other place. To bring forward Amendments which have not been dealt with because of the guillotine is a different matter, but this House is a revising House, and it is a review body. It is a body which ought to provide original thought and original debates. I think the responsibility here lies very heavily on the official Opposition.
LORD SHACKLETON: If I may say so, it is a great pity that we did not give notice to the noble Lord, Lord Byers, because he almost invariably gets these things wrong. There has in fact been a degree of sensible discussion on these matters. Certainly there have been a number of such Amendments. I congratulate at least some of the Liberals on their excellent attendance and contribution during our recent sittings on this particular matter. We are always in difficulties. A great deal depends on how the Government handle their business, but I cannot accept that this House should not pursue matters simply because they have already been dealt with, because one of the achievements of this House—and I know this happened time and again when we were in government—is in carrying Amendments so that the Commons may think again on a point; and frequently they have in fact accepted them. This was indeed a fundamental aspect of the review. I fully accept that there are grave limitations on the resources of this House, and we certainly would not wish to dwell unduly long on anything,

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but it is inevitable that on occasions, depending on reactions from Ministers, we should sometimes take longer than at other times we should. But we have seen this, and I hope that we have arrived at a sensible arrangement—and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for his support in these matters. We shall do the best we can. I am sure that we can arrange these matters sensibly here, and I hope we shall continue to do so.
LORD AVEBURY: While of course agreeing with my noble friend Lord Byers that we should concentrate on matters that were not adequately dealt with in another place—there are surely enough of those to keep us occupied for as long as the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has suggested—Lord Shepherd has appealed to us for co-operation. I should therefore like to remind the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, that we raised this matter during the course of the proceedings on Tuesday evening, when I said that we should like to be consulted in advance of these arrangements being decided. As I understand it, further proposals are now being put forward which I am hearing for the first time this afternoon. So the noble Lord, I am sorry to say, has not kept the undertaking which he gave me in the middle of Tuesday evening. Naturally, we want to do everything we possibly can to co-operate; and I think the noble Lord will agree that, although we may have made a large number of contributions, as is our right, on the Amendments brought forward on Tuesday evening, these were all very brief, and we tried our best to expedite proceedings. We shall continue to do that, but we should like to be brought into the consultations before these things are finally decided.
LORD SHEPHERD: Perhaps I may now continue to explain the reasons why Amendments 96B, 96C, and 96D—
LORD DRUMALBYN: May I suggest to the noble Lord that it would make for a tidier debate if we had the Statement first? I beg to move that the House be now resumed.
House resumed.

NORTHERN IRELAND: PROPOSED CONFERENCE AND LOCAL ELECTIONS
4.1 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR NORTHERN IRELAND (LORD WINDLESHAM): My Lords, this may be a convenient moment for me to repeat to your Lordships the Statement being made in another place by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The Statement reads as follows:
"Mr. Speaker, I will with permission make a Statement on two steps upon which Her Majesty's Government have decided in relation to Northern Ireland. In assuming direct responsibility for Northern Ireland on March 30, the Government held it to be an important objective to create an atmosphere in which the varying political views in Northern Ireland on the future of the Province could be brought together and discussed. As I said in the debate in this House last Monday, there is a strong desire in Northern Ireland that discussions on the future should now begin. It is therefore my intention to enter into immediate conversations to arrange an early conference and the conditions under which it might he held. I believe that the conference should he a conference of the people of Northern Ireland. The object will be to enable those who hold a wide variety of political opinions to exchange views to see what common ground can be found concerning the future of democratic institutions in Northern Ireland and report the conclusions to Her Majesty's Government and to this House.
"If my conversations show that there is also a widespread desire for a plebiscite on the Border at an early date the Government would he very ready to arrange it.
"The second step relates to the local government reforms which were inaugurated by the previous Northern Ireland Government. As I previously confirmed, to that end elections to the new district councils will be held in the autumn of this year.
"Her Majesty's Government have been giving much thought to the most

1131
appropriate basis under which these elections might be held. During the 1920s both Parliamentary and local elections were held under a system of the single transferable vote with multimember constituencies. In the previous Northern Ireland Government's Consultative Document, published in 1971, the possibility of this system was put forward for discussion. Her Majesty's Government have decided to propose to Parliament that in the present particular circumstances in Northern Ireland it would be right to hold these local elections under Proportional Representation by means of the single transferable vote.
"I should like to make it clear that this decision relates only to these particular elections. It in no way prejudices decisions on Northern Ireland's democratic institutions in future, nor on subsequent local elections. The required administrative preparations will make it necessary to postpone the elections from the date hitherto envisaged in the second half of October to November or December. However, the councils elected will still take office in April, 1973, as planned."
That ends my right honourable friend's Statement.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, we thank the noble Lord for making that Statement in this House. I take it as a further indication of the courage, the patience and the persistence of Mr. Whitelaw and his colleagues whom we have entrusted with this task of trying to improve affairs in Northern Ireland. May I put the following points to the noble Lord? I understand the delicacy of the talks about talks, but may we assume that information will be given about their progress? In particular, I note the reference to the use of a plebiscite on the Border. I wonder whether the noble Lord could give us any further information as to what he has in mind there.
There will be many on this side, including, I have no doubt, the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, whose Bill dealing with this matter has already had a First Reading, who will welcome what is said about Proportional Representation. I content myself at this stage with saying that I hope those upon whom the situation in Northern Ireland ultimately
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depends—namely, the Northern Irish themselves—will respond to what has been said and what has been offered.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, we should very much like to endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, has said about Mr. Whitelaw and the part he is playing in Northern Ireland. I welcome the proposal to call a conference on the future of the Province. May I ask the Government whether it is the intention that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland will chair this conference and take it under his own auspices.
I should like, from these Benches in particular, to congratulate the Government on their wisdom in agreeing to ado Proportional Representation for local elections, and particularly the decision to use the single transferable vote in multi-member constituencies. This system should ensure a more balanced representation in local government. I would ask that when drawing up instructions for voting they will bear in mind the tremendous experience which resides in the Electoral Reform Society who can give help on this subject.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I should like to thank both noble Lords for their expression of appreciation on the progress being made in Northern Ireland by my right honourable friend. I am pleased to know that the two important measures he has announced to-day command their general support. I am sure it will be possible to give this House regular reports as we go along in the same way as they will be given by the Secretary of State in another place. He has already indicated that he will be reporting regularly and I hope that I can keep your Lordships' House similarly informed.
The noble Lord, Lord Byers, asked about the chairmanship of the conference. My right honourable friend would like to keep open as long as he can his options on the chairmanship, the composition and the agenda of the conference in order that he may bring as many people as possible together to express their views. He hoped not to be pressed too hard on detailed matters of this sort to-day.
As to the plebiscite, the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, may remember that the Prime Minister referred to this before

1133
Easter. We have said that there will be a plebiscite on the Border to enable the people of Northern Ireland to express their views as to whether they wish to remain part of the United Kingdom. The question is when this plebiscite should take place; whether it should be held as early as possible or later on.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, regarding the plebiscite on the Border, is it a question for or against the Border, or for any alteration in it?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, a great deal of thought has been given to the form that a plebiscite might take. As your Lordships might expect, it is one of those subjects that sounds very simple, but the more you look into it the harder it is. I depends very much on the methods used, the type of questions put and the context in which they are put. We are giving careful thought to all these matters. The reference to the plebiscite in the Statement referred to the timing, rather than to the detail.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, could the noble Lord tell me whether the membership of the conference will be on a proportional representation basis, divided as to various political Parties and shades of opinion in proportion roughly to their numbers?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State hopes to have as free a hand as possible. The nucleus will be representatives of the recognised political Parties in Northern Ireland, but it is difficult to say at present in what proportion.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I welcome the Statement which the noble Lord the Minister has made. May I take the opportunity of saying—I regard it as a matter of honesty—that I want to withdraw the cynicism which I expressed when the Minister of Northern Ireland was appointed and, instead, to congratulate him.
May I ask two questions? While I recognise that the composition of the conference must still be a matter for further discussion, I was interested in the use of the phrase that it should "represent the people". In that instance, is it proposed to have not only the political Parties represented but also some representation
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of the expression of opinion that is coming from the roots and which is so welcome in Northern Ireland to-day? The second question is this. May I welcome particularly the decision to apply Proportional Representation to the local government elections? My Noble friend was slightly in error in saying that my Bill had had a First Reading this year; in fact, it was a Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Archibald. But I did a year ago secure a First Reading for a Bill upon this matter, and quite clearly, although that Bill is on the Order Paper, it may be desirable in view of the Statement which has been made to-day, to withdraw it. But particularly I want to congratulate the Minister on both the proposals in the Statement.
LORD ARCHIBALD: My Lords, I have no cynicism to withdraw, not having expressed any; but I will give very careful consideration to the withdrawal of the Bill in my name which has had a First Reading.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords. My memory is not sufficiently long for me to remember any cynicism being expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Brockway. I can therefore assure him that there is nothing for him to withdraw. I feel that it would not he right at the moment to add to what I have already said on the composition of the Conference. The mind of the Secretary of State is open on this matter. He wants the widest and most representative composition that he can possibly achieve. I must emphasise that the decision mentioned in the Statement on Proportional Representation in the next local government elections is a decision for those elections only. It would not be right to prejudice the future system for Parliamentary elections, or local government elections, which relate to the future of Northern Ireland as a whole. But a decision had to be taken quickly, and after careful thought as to what electoral system should be used we came to the conclusion that, on balance, this was the best solution.
LORD BOURNE: My Lords, may I put a small question to the noble Lord? In the Statement there was an announcement about a plebiscite on the Border

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and about a future conference to be held. The question of timing was obviously very delicate. Is there any connection between the two? Is the plebiscite on the Border to take place before or after the conference?
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, some people have expressed the view that an early plebiscite should be held; others feel that it would be better to defer it for a time. The Secretary of State has made it clear that he would like to hear people's views on the timing of the plebiscite at the same time as we are holding talks about talks on the subject of the conference.

HOUSING FINANCE BILL
4.10 p.m.
House again in Committee.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: The Amendment before the Committee is No. 96B.
LORD SHEPHERD: We are now dealing with Schedule 3, paragraph 17. This is the paragraph that causes us considerable concern. It is for the purpose of computing allowances in regard to the earlier part of the Schedule. Paragraph 17(2) says:
"It shall be the duty of every authority, for the purpose of computing the amount of an allowance—

(a) if they consider that the tenant is in occupation of a dwelling larger than he reasonably requires, or

(b) if they consider that, by virtue of the location of the tenant's dwelling, its rent is exceptionally high by comparison with the rent payable under comparable private tenancies of similar dwellings in the authority's area…"

to take these various matters into account in deciding whether they should reduce the grant.
First, we do not like the word "duty". In my first Amendment (96B) we are seeking to use the words "within the discretion"; in other words, to make it discretionary upon the authority in carrying out the requirements of sub-paragraphs (a) and (b). I hope the Committee will feel that it is right to give the authority discretion in this matter as opposed to laying down a specific duty. It may be for the convenience of the
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Committee if I were to speak to Amendments 96C, 96D and 96A.
The purpose of 96C and 96D is to bring in a new limitation which the authority will take into account in making up its mind whether the allowance grant should be reduced. We are dealing with the private sector and we are seeking to ease the difficulties and problems of those who live in privately-rented accommodation. We have already said on this side of the Committee that we support the idea of the allowance. I wonder whether it is really an injustice to ease the burden for one and not to do so for another merely because of the type of premises the person is living in. It may be because the premises are too large or in too expensive an area in relation to the other tenancies within the authority's area. In many cases people are forced to live where they live because the accommodation was available or perhaps because their circumstances have changed. I am not quite certain myself, it is a question of justice, whether one should remove the rights that a person obtains under this Bill merely because his accommodation is different from that of the area in general.
On the other hand, I can understand the difficulty of the Government and local authorities when they see the under-use of premises, premises that perhaps could be used to house larger families if an occupier who did not require the larger premises could be moved elsewhere. Therefore, we have sought in Amendment 96D to ease the limitation by which the authority could still reduce the allowance that could be granted if a person were living in premises as specified in paragraph 17(2)(a). But in Amendment 96D we seek to insert the words:
"and reasonable alternative accommodation has beer. offered to the tenant which the tenant has unreasonably refused and provided that there shall be taken into account when determining whether the refusal was unreasonable the period during which the tenant has occupied the dwelling, his age, health and other personal circumstances."
I should not like to think of an elderly person, or a family of elderly people, who might have been in a house for 20 or 25 years, in the evening of their lives being forcibly removed or denied the assistance which it is possible to provide under the provisions of this Schedule. I think that that would be very hard and,

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therefore, this is a factor which an authority ought to take into account. No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, will say that it will be taken into account. If so, I think it should be included in the Bill.
As to other people, if their existing accommodation could be put to better use, I suppose that it ought to be made available; but they should not be forcibly removed and the Government have not that intention. But before a person in that category is denied the full allowance I think it is up to the authority to provide suitable accommodation. The Committee would support the general sense and principle behind the Amendment. If the Government cannot accept the present drafting I hope that they will accept the principle and provide an alternative Amendment at a later stage.
4.22 p.m.
LORD AVEBURY: I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, that under-occupation is a serious problem and if it could be solved that would go a long way to meet the housing shortage which exists at present. I remember that some years ago I made the pretty mild suggestion that local authorities should offer alternative accommodation to people in houses much too big for their needs, and I was violently attacked at that time by the Daily Telegraph for suggesting that people should be forcibly induced to move into more suitable accommodation. That was not my intention. I was saying only that local authorities were paying little attention to the problem of under-occupation and to seeing what could be done in the way of voluntary co-operation by their tenants to sort out the matter.
I think the situation is very different when you look at private tenancies because most landlords have not a variety of accommodation into which they could move tenants who are in houses or flats which are much too large for their needs. Therefore, were the Clause left as it stands you would be faced with a situation whereby the financial penalty would be imposed on people who may have lived in their flat or house for many years. Their children may have grown up and there may be only an elderly couple living in a house or a flat with three or four bedrooms; but what are they
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to do? Generally speaking, their landlord would be unable to offer them a nice little two-bedroomed flat and they would not get on to the local authority housing list because, naturally, the local authority will say, "You are in a flat which is more than suitable for your needs; you are very well off compared with people that we have on our waiting list."
As it stands, I think that this provision is extremely unfair and I should like particularly to see something on the lines of Amendment 96D written into the Schedule, so that the landlord must offer alternative acommodation which must have been refused; and for the reasons I have explained I think that the offer of such alternative accommodation is extremely unlikely. In the circumstances I think that a local authority would say, "Why should we help people who already have premises when we have families on our waiting list who are occupying slum dwellings or living with relatives in highly unsatisfactory circumstances?" We should not look to local authorities for a solution to the problem of under-occupation in the private sector. I think we have to say that the private landlord must have offered more suitable accommodation, which must have been refused, before the provisions of this paragraph come into effect and the rebate reduced.
I hope particularly that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, will see the point behind Amendment No. 96D, the wording of which, I think, is not absolutely perfect. We ought to make clear that the offer must have been made by the landlord, or by some other private landlord. But, with that qualification, I wholeheartedly support the principle of Amendment No. 96D and I hope very much that the Government will accept it.
THE EARL OF BALFOUR: Surely Schedule 3 deals with both private and also local authority tenants. I am sure that this is the case, although I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, said.
LORD SHEPHERD: If the noble Earl will look at paragraph 17 he will see that it refers specifically to "allowances". In the case of local authority tenants the reference is to "rebates" and, therefore, it is the private sector to which reference is made.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: I should like to support Amendment No. 96D; it underlines the objection that we have to the authoritarian tone of the whole Bill. Throughout there is a persistent erosion of local authority responsibility and power. The Government cannot keep a day-to-day watch on all these detailed difficulties and arrangements about housing. The local authority will be burdened with the cost of rebates and this chipping away all the time at the powers of local authorities seems to me thoroughly undesirable.
4.29 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: On this group of Amendments the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has raised two main points. The first wasp the question whether it should be the duty of the authority, or whether it should be within the discretion of the authority, to treat the rent as reduced by an appropriate amount where there was under-occupation by the tenant and where there was a question of giving an allowance to the tenant. It relates to where the matter of an allowance arises. The matter was debated in the Commons and as a result of that debate an Amendment was made to increase the discretion of the authority. As the subsection was originally drafted, it read:
"It shall be the duty of every authority… to treat the rent as reduced by an appropriate amount."
To meet the lack of discretion this was changed to:
"It shall be the duty of every authority… to consider whether they ought in all the circumstances to treat the rent as reduced…"
That is a very big change and introduced a very large degree of discretion for the local authority. What we are really considering here is whether they ought in those circumstances, in every case of this kind that comes to their attention, to consider whether to treat the rent as reduced at all; whether they are to consider if it shall be reduced; or whether they should have a double discretion. I do not think that double discretion would be justified.
There is a real point of principle involved here. It is the principle that where there is provision for assistance to be given to the public there should be a genuine need of that assistance. In the field of housing, as in every other field, if the commodity or the service is underpriced there is a tendency for that com-
1140
modity or service to be over-used. In other words—to turn to housing—so long as there is less than a fair rent for houses people will tend to occupy larger houses or houses in richer areas, if I may put it that way, than they otherwise would do. Once the rents are increased to the fair rent it is then a matter very largely for the individual, in the first place, to decide whether he is occupying a house appropriate to his needs. If he is not, I think we should all agree that it would be right for him to consider whether he should move. Indeed, it would be in many ways the sensible thing to do.
LORD AVEBURY: May I say—
LORD DRUMALBYN: Please allow me to argue the case. Where it is the case that if they do not move they then become entitled to a rent allowance, it seems not unreasonable that the local authority should have the duty to consider whether that rent allowance should in those circumstances be granted in full, because otherwise the occupier is really being put in a better position than many other tenants. The discretion here, I am sure, will be reasonably exercised. The authority will have to decide whether in any particular case they are actually to treat the rent as reduced and, if so, by how much, before calculating entitlement to rent allowance. The local authority will be able to judge what is appropriate in any given circumstances, and in deciding whether the rent is to be treated as reduced they will be able to consider whether the tenant could obtain other accommodation in the area; that is to say, whether he is occupying his present dwelling from choice or from necessity. If he is exercising it from choice, it is not unreasonable that the rent allowance should be reduced. If he is occupying it from necessity, either because he cannot move or because of his age, I have no doubt that the authority will consider that he should get the rent allowance in full. If it is also from necessity because he cannot find any other accommodation, then again I have no doubt that the authority will treat this as a case where the rent allowance should not he reduced.
But the actual Amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has put down is very restrictive:
"…reasonable alternative accommodation has been offered to the tenant"

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I suppose this was intended to cover the case where it is offered by the landlord or by the local authority or by anyone else. Perhaps "available" would have been better in the circumstances. We think that, given the redrafting of this sub-paragraph in the Amendment that was introduced on the Report stage in another place, we have got it about right; that we will meet the humanitarian needs and at the same time secure that public money is not paid out where an individual is, of his own choice, occupying a house which is either far too big for him or far more than he can really afford. This is a commonsense matter, and I hope the Committee will agree to leave the sub-paragraph as it is.
LORD FISKE: What the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has suggested underlines the difficulties we are in with this Bill, in that we are moving rapidly away from the social considerations of housing to the cash position. I am sure the noble Lord is aware that local authorities with a vast experience have a rooted objection to moving people from houses in which they have lived for a great number of years. It would be unfortunate if anything that was in this Bill encouraged that to happen. Local authorities on their part, if the case were put to them that somebody wanted to move—wanted to move, not was being forced to do so —would willingly assist, especially if it were made possible for them to purchase the house that was being vacated. That is difficult in the present circumstances because we are all waiting on fair rents. Nobody knows what fair rents are going to be, and therefore nobody can value what a house is going to be worth to its owner, whether that owner be a local authority or a private landlord. But please let us not, in this Bill, do more to move away from some social considerations in the provision of housing.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Perhaps I could answer that very briefly. We are not moving away from the social consideration because we are leaving the discretion with the local authority here. We are only saying that in every case where you find happening the sort of thing that is mentioned in the paragraph you must have a look at it, and if you consider that, having regard to the tenant's age, the length of stay, health and
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all the rest of it, the tenant should be allowed to remain where he is, then you will maintain the rent allowance as it is, or perhaps reduce it by a little but not very much. On the other hand, where there is really no obstacle to the tenant's making way for somebody who would make full use of the house, then in that case there is a social obligation on the tenant to move in order to help the housing needs of others.
LORD SHEPHERD: I have a feeling that Lord Drumalbyn's reply was very carefully drafted by one of those cool, impartial officials who write speeches for Ministers. I do not think it is the sort of speech that the noble Lord would have delivered from his own heart. I have accepted that it would be unjust for a person to occupy a house too big for him or that is in a locality which is more expensive than perhaps would be the area in which he would live as a consequence of his income. I have accepted that. My Amendment specifies age. Just think of this. A house is a person's home. A person may have lived in that house and made it his home, and may—I have used these words earlier—in the evening of his days, have nothing else but those rooms and the memories of those rooms. It may be a house that is too big, and may be socially it is right that that old man or old lady should move—socially, taking the community as a whole. The communtiy has a generous heart and I do not believe such a community would like the idea of forcing that old person out of his home or denying to him, who may be in great need. the new allowances that are being made available for the private tenant where that person's income clearly does not match the rent that is being charged. On the question of age, the noble Lord said that maybe the local authority would not move that person. The local authority could remove that person.
LORD DRUMALBYN: No. The local authority cannot move that person. All that can happen is that the local authority might reduce the allowance.
LORD SHEPHERD: But effectively it could be the same thing. What one is denying to this person is what other people have available. You are really saying to that person that he or she must

1143
move and leave home or they will not get this allowance. I recognise that the Government have i lade some move in this direction, but I remember, as no doubt does the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, the Committee stage on Wednesday morning when the noble Lord, Lord Crawshaw, spoke about the disabled. I feel that this falls rather in the same category. We ought to make certain exceptions. I have in mind the question of age, health and personal circumstances. These things are difficult to define of course. But I wonder whether the noble Lord will have another look at this. I think that in his heart this is the sort of thing he would expect a heal authority to take into account in granting allowances. If that is so. then is there any great harm in putting it into the Bill? I should feel much happier if the noble Lord would undertake to look at this, and if this is what the Government expect an authority to do, I should be much happier if it could be put into the Bill.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Of course I respond to what the noble Lord has said. But what he is really asking is that we should spell the thing out: not that we should go further, because you cannot go further than, "In all the circumstances"; all you could do would be to say, "This, that, and all other relevant circumstances". If that is what he wants done, then I will look at it and see if this would be good guidance and whether it would be worth doing. Perhaps I can just put this thought to the Committee. Those of us who have been Members of Parliament will know how often people have said: "Here we are living in a house that is very much too big for us because we cannot afford to move." And the reason is that at the time their rents were fixed; because they had a house their application for a local authority house would not have been entertained, and they could not rent a house elsewhere more suited to their needs. The point is that this Bill will introduce a great deal more mobility; not straight away, but in the long run. I agree that there will probably be a difficult transitional period in the first place, and I feel sure that all local authorities will realise that up to the point when fair rents are reached. But I think it is worth bearing in mind that
1144
there will be a greater possibility, as the Bill begins to have its full impact, for people to move from houses that are too big to houses elsewhere. But having said that, I will gladly look at the point the noble Lord has raised, although I do not think it will be possible to go all the way that he has suggested.
LORD SHEPHERD: I am grateful for what the noble Lord has said. I hope he will also bear in mind the question of making available alternative accommodation. The noble Lord, I think from what he said, presumed that this would be "in all the circumstances". I would only say to the noble Lord that he could set my mind immediately at rest in this regard if he were able to tell me that there was to be an appeals procedure, and if there was a question of doubt as to whether a local authority was acting fairly there will be an impartial body to review it. If we could be told this, then I think a lot of our fears as to the way in which some of these words can be interpreted might well be set at rest. Unless any noble Lord wishes to say anything further on this Amendment, I beg leave to withdraw.
LORD AVEBURY: Before the noble Lord withdraws the Amendment, I should like to say just a word or two. Some of us are not so sanguine as the noble Lord appears to be about the increasing availability of private rented accommodation which he anticipates will result from this Bill.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Not only privately rented accommodation.
LORD AVEBURY: Very well; not only privately rented accommodation. But the noble Lord has just admitted that when he was a Member of Parliament—and I had the same experience—he found that local authorities would not entertain applications from people who were already, as they saw it, perfectly satisfactorily accommodated in privately rented accommodation. This is a point that I was trying to make, and I was going to underline it, but the noble Lord has done it for me. What we are saying is that these people who are occupying accommodation which is too large for them, or in a more expensive locality than is suitable to their means, have to move into another privately rented house or flat.

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I gave some figures the other night—I do not know whether the noble Lord was on the Front Bench at the time—showing that ever since 1957, whatever legislation had been brought into force, including the 1969 Rent Act, the numbers of privately rented houses and flats in England and Wales had declined by 6 per cent. per annum, plus or minus 2 per cent.
Notwithstanding any legislation, including this Bill. I believe that that will continue. Therefore we shall be faced with a situation where we are going to penalise these tenants who are occupying bigger houses, or houses in more expensive places than is necessary, and will say to them: "You find somewhere else", in a period when there is less and less private accommodation for them to look to. Therefore I think the noble Lord has helped the Committee in saying that he will look at this again. In particular, while he is looking at it, I think he should form some assessment of how the numbers of privately-rented property are likely to move over the next few years, until this Bill begins to bite. He may then come to the conclusion that something on the lines of this Amendment ought to be written into the Bill.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
4.50 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved Amendment No. 96E:
Page 127, line 9, leave out from beginning to end of line 8 on page 128.
The noble Lord said: In moving this Amendment I should like also to speak to Amendment No. 99D. In Schedules 3 and 4 Part II deals with persons who are receiving supplementary benefit. We have on a number of occasions in discussing previous Amendments strongly objected to the proposition in this Bill that those people who are within the poverty line, and who are receiving supplementary benefit as a consequence, should in the first instance be placed in an increasingly difficult position, in that the Government propose that part of the supplementary benefit a person would receive will now become payable through the housing authority. I understand that administrative arrangements have been made and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, would say a word about this
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which could remove some of the difficulties of a person having to go to two places basically to receive what would be the equivalent of an inclusive supplementary benefit.
Our basic objection to these two parts in the Schedule is that we believe that those persons who need assistance as a consequence of poverty relate to what is a national responsibility, and it should not be placed upon any particular local authority. We now know that one local authority is different from another. One has greater problems and greater requirements to assist. Therefore, we believe that this is a matter that should not be borne financially by the local authority, but should remain a charge upon the national Exchequer. At present I gather that the sum involved, if the transfer were to be made immediately from the Supplementary Benefits Commission to the local authority, is £170 million. Certainly in four years' time when this part of the Schedule becomes fully operational the sum will be very much more. Therefore, the argument in support of this Amendment is that much greater.
We feel strongly as a matter of principle on this Amendment, and have grave objections to these two particular parts of the Schedule. Perhaps the noble Lord would confirm the administrative changes. If he wishes to defend himself, he may do so; but I must tell him that, unless he is prepared to take these parts out of the Schedule, I certainly intend to vote against them. I thought I would give that warning to the noble Lord so that he does not need to spend too long in seeking to defend an impossible position.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I readily respond to what the noble Lord has said, the more so as I found this particular part one of the most difficult parts of the Bill to understand fully. The question of the broader principle that he has raised is rather a different one, because what we are here considering is how the amounts should be paid rather than whether they should be paid—which we have considered already when considering Clause 19. Now we are considering how these payments should be dealt with. On the broad principle, I think I need only say that rent rebates and allowances give help not towards

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meeting poverty but towards meeting housing need. This is a general principle that I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, opposite has yet accepted from us, but this is the principle on which we are working.
It is not true that there are two kinds of housing need which merit different treatment: one where there is a tenant in work and one where he is not in work. Local authorities have by law special responsibility towards their own tenants and general responsibility for assessing the housing needs in their area. It is just because rent rebate and allowances are a contribution towards housing needs that they are administered by local authorities. A tenant whose income is low because he is not in work needs the same amount of help as a tenant who earns the same income. A local authority therefore has no less duty to help a tenant with his housing costs when he falls sick, or when the becomes unemployed or when he retires, than when he is in work if his earnings are low.
To deal with the particular point that the noble Lord was raising, where a local authority now makes a rate fund contribution to keep down all rents it does not distinguish between dwellings occupied by tenants receiving supplementary benefit and dwellings occupied by tenants not receiving supplementary benefit. But it is true that at present local authorities which have rebate schemes usually exclude from them tenants receiving supplementary benefit. But under the Bill it will no longer be possible for a local authority to disclaim all responsibility for meeting the housing needs of the tenant merely because he is sick, unemployed or retired. The contribution which the ratepayers may be asked to make towards the rent of a supplementary benefit tenant will be modest. The cost of any rebates to supplementary benefit tenants will fall to be met by a subsidy or rate fund contribution only in so far as they give rise to a deficit in the housing revenue account. If they do, then normally the rebate will meet up to 60 per cent. of the rent. This is because the Supplementary Benefits Commission will meet 40 per cent. of the rent. If the rebate is meeting 60 per cent. of the rent, the maximum contribution of the ratepayers is 25 per cent. of that 60
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per cent.—that is, 15 per cent. of the rent of the supplementary benefit tenant.
In practice, the supplementary benefit tenant will not be put to any considerable inconvenience by having to rely on help with his rent from two sources, and this is what this part is about. Parts II of Schedule 3 and Schedule 4—and I understand that the noble Lord is taking Part II of Schedule 4 at the same time as this—make it possible to set up administrative arrangements between local authorities and the Supplementary Benefits Commission so as to make it unnecessary for the supplementary benefit tenant to apply for a rebate or allowance to more than one body.
Any tenant who receives supplementary benefit for more than eight consecutive weeks will be granted the appropriate rebate or allowance automatically by an exchange of information between the authority and the Supplementary Benefits Commission. If he is a council tenant he will be charged the rebated rent only; if he is a private tenant the authority can arrange to pay his allowance in a way which will avoid a separate visit; for example, by a postal order cashable when the tenant takes his supplementary benefit order book to the Post Office for payment. In both cases the part of the rent not met by the rebate or allowance will be taken into account in the assessment of supplementary benefit.
I hope that this explanation will satisfy the noble Lord, especially when I add that the tenant will not be any worse off under these arrangements than if the whole of his rent were paid, or the proper proportion of his rent was paid, by the Supplementary Benefits Commission. But it will tend to remove difficulties that have been increasingly arising between the Supplementary Benefits Commission and local authorities on the way in which the Supplementary Benefits Commission should meet the rents of people who receive supplementary benefit.
4.58 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: I do not want to confuse the situation, but it would be useful if the noble Lord could introduce a little greater clarity in referring to the difficulties that have been experienced, and are being experienced at the present time. I wonder whether he does not think in point of fact that, if the scheme is going to operate in the

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way he says, there is going to be a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing in the matter of communications between the local authority and the Supplementary Benefits Commission. Would it not be better and simpler that the whole of the money should come from the Supplementary Benefits Commission? People are sick or unemployed for comparatively short periods of time. There is going to be a tremendous volume of work building up, and one is a little disturbed that, in so far as the administration of rent allowances is concerned, the local authority has to carry the cost of doing this for the private sector. I wonder whether more confusion and more difficulties are not going to be created than have been experienced to date. I think the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has put it reasonably well, but even so it sounds to me a clumsy arrangement.
5.0 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I will respond to that. Perhaps it would help the Committee if I were to give a concrete example. To my mind, a concrete example always helps in a case like this. Let us take a man with a wife and four children and an income of £30. Let us take it that he is paying a rent of £6. In that case his total needs allowance is £25·75. His rent rebate works out in that case at £2·88, so that of the £6 he would be paying a rent of £3·12. If that man then loses his job the Supplementary Benefits Commission pay him the minimum rent figure, which is two-fifths of the £6—that is to say, £2·40—and the authority increases its rebate by 72p because of the decline in his "resources", if that is the way in which the Supplementary Benefits Commission like to put it. So the full rent is covered.
For the first eight weeks the local authority continues to pay the old rebate of £2·88 and the Supplementary Benefits Commission makes up the difference of £3·12. This is because they arc in a position to work out what has to be paid. In fact the rent payable is the rent that in the first place the Supplementary Benefits Commission will pay. This meets the point made by the noble Lord about those who are out of work for a short time. It is a perfectly simple, straightforward arrangement. The local authority continues to pay the old rebate and the Supplementary Benefits Commission pays the
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difference. In the ninth week, if this is going to be a prolonged absence from work, or if it is a retirement, the Supplementary Benefits Commission changes (for the purpose of administrative convenience) to paying the minimum rent of two-fifths of the £6—that is, £2·40—and the local authority increases its rebate to cover the difference, which is due to the fact that the tenant's needs allowance remains the same but his resources are lower. This is the operation of the Schedules. If, because of administrative difficulties, the local authority does not get round to recalculating its rent rebate, the old arrangements continue and the local authority and the Supplementary Benefits Commission can sort out the difference afterwards. The important thing is that the tenant will get his full rent while he is in receipt of supplementary benefits. I hope that will help the noble Lord.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: Do I understand that in the ninth week the local authority contribution goes up to three-fifths?
LORD DRUMALBYN: Yes, in a case where the whole of the rent has to be found; but of course that is not so in the case of every recipient of supplementary benefit.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: Can the noble Lord say at what point the local ratepayers will be reimbursed (even if it is only a small amount) from the Exchequer? And if he is not going to be so reimbursed, why should the local ratepayer have to carry any burden at all in the case of sickness and unemployment?
LORD DRUMALBYN: This is the "by and large" scheme and I have no doubt that it has been worked out on the general average basis. It is plainly quite a sensible arrangement that the Supplementary Benefits Commission should be responsible for a proportion. After all, the sort of people who get into a supplementary benefit situation will be the sort of people who will have been receiving a rent allowance or rent rebate, and the small extra amount that the local authority has to pay will not be all that great. But in any case it also reflects the housing responsibility of the local authority, and this seems to be a reasonable division of responsibility between the Supplementary Benefits Commission and the local

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authority. When one comes to think of it, it would be rather absurd if, simply because a tenant fell out of work for one reason or another, or retired—let us take the case where the needs allowance and the earnings are at exactly the same level, where the tenant was already getting three-fifths of the rent in the form of a rebate and was only paving the minimum amount of two-fifths—that burden was transferred from the local authority to the Supplementary Benefits Commission. I say again that the point here is that it does not matter whether poverty arises when a man is in work or because he is out of work; the responsibility of the local authority remains the same. It is housing need.
LORD AVEBURY: It would only be absurd because the Government do not accept the principle that these payments are a national responsibility. If the noble Lord accepted that principle, as we do on this side of the Committee, it would be absurd that the local authority should have to bear any of these costs while the man was in work. But taking the figures given by the noble Lord, the local authority will have to pay £3·60 of this man's rent, whereas under previous conditions it would have paid nothing; the whole of the £6 would have been met by the Supplementary Benefits Commission. This is exactly what we are complaining about: that the noble Lord and his Party are shifting the burden from the taxpayer on to the ratepayer, and in this particular case they are taking £3·60 out of the pockets of the ratepayers which would formerly have come from the taxpayers.
LORD SHEPHERD: The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, will now appreciate that there is a deep cleavage of opinion between us. But there is one thing upon which we can agree, and that is the phrase used by the noble Lord when he described this as a "by and large" scheme. We all know what that means. Like the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, I feel that the Government are seeking to put upon the local authority the basic responsibility for poverty within its region in order to reduce the burden upon the central Exchequer and the taxpayer. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, to consider this: if one goes to the North-East of England or to other industrial parts of this country one finds that when
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there is unemployment, these are the areas that always have the hard pockets of unemployment of 8 to 10 per cent. As a consequence of this Bill they will carry the full burden which was originally the responsibility of the central Exchequer.
LORD DRUMALBYN: May I just correct the noble Lord because I think he was going a little far in saying the "full burden". He knows that for the next 10 years, at any rate, the most that the local authority can possibly bear will be 25 per cent. of the burden, and that is only if there is a deficit in their housing account.
LORD SHEPHERD: We are back to the "by and large" burden, are we not? This is placing on a part of the population a burden which did not previously exist and is relieving the Exchequer, the general taxpayer, of what we believe to be a national responsibility. Why are the Government doing this? Is it designed to make taxes a little easier? Is it right to place this burden on a group of the population in this way when, at the same time, it would be possible for me, having bought a house with a shower and two lavatories, to buy another and borrow the money to do so from the bank and charge the interest against my income tax? We are up against a serious question of priorities and standards here. I do not like this Part of the Bill. It is absolutely unjust, if not amoral, and I therefore ask my noble friends to vote against it.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: There seems to be a disparity here—and I apologise to the Committee for not being in my place yesterday when these matters were being discussed. It seems that under this part of the Bill private and public tenants are being treated differently. If a private tenant is entitled to a rebate he will receive cash, whereas a council tenant in that position will receive his entitlement in the form of reduced rent. There seems to be a second disparity. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that ultimately the Government will reduce their contribution to 80 per cent., meaning that local authorities, or the community at large, will have to find 20 per cent.
LORD DIAMOND: The figures are actually 75 per cent. and 25 per cent.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: I should like this point clarified before we vote.
LORD DRUMALBYN: The answer to the first part of the noble Lord's question is simply that the private tenant gets cash to pay the balance of his rent whereas the local authority tenant gets a reduction in his rent because it is paid to the local authority. The answer to the second point is that I was taking the worst case, though not with the idea of exaggerating the point. The reduction in the percentage of total rent rebate which a local authority has to find will be reimbursed as to 75 per cent., and in the case of the rent allowance by 80 per cent. To start with, it will be 90 per cent. for the rent rebate and 100 per cent. for the rent allowance.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: But that will be the case for only a period of time.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: It is difficult to understand why, the Government having accepted the figure of 100 per cent., they intend to reduce it and make local authorities bear part of the burden. It is particularly difficult to understand why it should be 100 per cent. in the
private sector but not in the public sector. I do not want to traverse ground which we had covered before, but to the man outside this does not make sense. Why should there be this difference in treatment? If the Government accept the need for a 100 per cent. contribution now, why reduce it later?
LORD DRUMALBYN: I can reply in almost a sentence by repeating that one reason is that 60 per cent. of local authorities are at present running rent rebate schemes and getting no assistance for them, except in the sense, as the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, said, that they are getting housing subsidies related to their house building. Apart from Birmingham, no local authority is giving rent allowances to its tenants. An authority must set up a rent allowance scheme itself and get it going. and we do not know how this type of scheme will work out compared with the rent rebate scheme.
5.15 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 96E) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 61; Not-Contents, 102.

CONTENTS

Annan, L.

Fiske, L.

Phillips, Bs. [Teller.]

Archibald, L.

Gaitskell, Bs.

Platt. L.

Arwyn, L.

Gardiner, L.

Royle, L.

Avebury, L.

Garnsworthy, L. [Teller.]

Sainsbury, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Gladwyn, L.

Seear, Bs.

Bernstein, L.

Greenwood of Rossendale, L.

Shackleton, L.

Beswick, L.

Hale, L.

Shepherd, L.

Blyton, L.

Henderson, L.

Shinwell, L.

Bowden, L.

Heycock, L.

Slater, L.

Brockway, L.

Hoy, L.

Stow Hill, L.

Brown, L.

Hughes, L.

Summerskill, Bs.

Buckinghamshire, E.

Jacques, L.

Swaythling, L.

Carnock, L.

Janner, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Chalfont, L.

Leatherland, L.

Thurso. V.

Champion, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, Bs.

Wade, L.

Chorley, L.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Walston, L.

Crook, L.

Maelor, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Davies of Leek, L.

Morris of Kenwood, L.

White, Bs.

Diamond, L.

Moyle, L.

Winterbottom, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Nunburnholme, L.

Wynne-Jones, L.

Faringdon, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Beauchamp, E.

Camoys, L.

Abinger, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Carrington, L.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Belstead, L.

Chesham, L.

Alport, L.

Berkeley, Bs.

Clancarty. E.

Ashbourne, L.

Blackford. L.

Coleraine, L.

Atholl, D.

Boyd of Merton, V.

Colville of Culross, V.

Auckland, L.

Boyle of Handsworth, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Balerno, L.

Braye, L.

Courtown, E.

Balfour, E.

Brecon, L.

Cowley, E.

Balfour of Inchrye, L.

Brentford, V.

Craigavon, V.

Crathorne, L.

Hawke, L.

Monckton of Brenchley, V.

Crawshaw, L.

Hertford, M.

Montagu of Beaulieu, L.

Cromartie, E.

Hewlett, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.[Teller.]

Daventry, V.

Hood, V.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Howard of Glossop, L.

Moyne, L.

Derwent, L.

Howe, E.

Northchurch, Bs.

Digby, L.

Hurcomb, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Hylton-Foster, Bs.

Rankeillour, L.

Eccles, V.

Kilmarnock, L.

Reigate, L.

Elles, Bs.

Lansdowne, M.

St. Just, L.

Elliot of Harwood, Bs.

Latymer, L.

Sandford, L.

Emmet of Amberley, Bs.

Lauderdale, E.

Sandys, L.

Ferrers, E.

Limerick, E.

Sempill, Ly.

Ferrier, L.

Long, V.

Shannon, E.

Fraser of Lonsdale, L.

Loudoun, C.

Somers, L.

Gage, V.

Luke, L.

Strathclyde, L.

Garner, L.

Lyell, L.

Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie, Bs.

Goschen, V.

Macleod of Borve, Bs.

Vernon, L.

Gowrie, E.

Macpherson of Drumochter, L.

Vivian, L.

Greenway, L.

Mancroft, L.

Wakefield of Kendal, L.

Grenfell, L.

Mar, E.

Windlesham, L.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

May, L.

Wolverton, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Merrivale, L.

Wrottesley, L.

Milverton, L.

Young, Bs.

Hatherton, L.

Monck, V.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Schedule 3, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 4 [Rebates and Allowances: Procedure]:
5.23 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved Amendment No. 96F:
Page 128, line 15, leave out ("at any time") and insert ("at the intervals at which the rent is payable").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move this Amendment and with the permission of the Committee and for the convenience of the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, will speak to Amendments No. 96G and 97C at the same time. These are three Amendments which seek to remove some of the possible difficulties of a tenant in obtaining either a rebate or an allowance. Paragraph 1(1) says:
"Subject to the provisions of this Schedule, an authority may pay a rebate or allowance at any time and in any manner that they think fit."
On the face of it this is a pretty wide discretion. An authority which may not be as good as it ought to be could make life very difficult for its tenants and, therefore, we thought that we should insert the words
" at the intervals at which the rent is payable".
Most of us would recognise that for persons who will be receiving rebates or allowances, the small sums of money which may arise as a consequence of this Schedule wi11 be very much needed by
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the tenant and, therefore, they ought to be paid regularly. In our view they ought to be paid at those times or close to those times when the rent is payable. I hope that the noble Lord can at least accept the principle, even if he may not be able to accept the actual wording.
Amendment No. 96G would require that the sum of money should be delivered to the tenant by post or by any other manner not involving the applicant personally claiming the allowance, unless the applicant elects to do so. We have to take account of the fact that it may be very difficult, particularly if the husband and wife are both working, for either of them to go and collect the allowance or the rebate within the normal office hours of a local authority. Therefore, we think that in this particular case the sums that are available should be delivered by post or by any other manner that does not require the person to go there and collect it.
Amendment No. 97C requires:
" An authority shall be under a duty to determine with the utmost promptitude whether an applicant is entitled to a rebate or allowance and in any event within 21 days of the date of receipt of the application."
The purpose of this Amendment is to stress the importance of the local authority acting with great expedition and recognising that the applicant will be in need of these rebates and allowances, especially as the Government is raising quite substantially by £1 a week the rent of a local authority house. I hope that

1157
the noble Lord will accept the principle of these Amendments. If they are not perfect in drafting, of course we can co-operate in that, but I hope the noble Lord will agree that these ought to be incorporated into the Bill. I beg to move.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: We obviously sympathise with what the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, is trying to do. This is so to the extent that I accept that he is trying to make the recipient's plight easier. But we have to consider the authorities who are going to operate this scheme and the existing provision in paragraph 1(1) to which he referred is intentionally wide to avoid restricting authorities to any particular method or time of payment. In practice the authorities can be expected to take a reasonable and commonsense view. Authorities already have wide experience of rent rebates and normally they will be granted by means of a reduction in the collectable rent and will automatically be linked to the rental period. The authorities should also be able to pay the rebate or allowance in a lump sum.
In the case of the payment of allowances, I must draw the noble Lord's attention, which I am sure he already knows, to paragraph 12(3) of the Schedule on page 132 of the Bill which already provides that the authority must have regard to the reasonable needs and convenience of the tenant. That is a statutory obligation. Such reasonable needs may very well be met by the authority paying the allowance by post or some other means which will avoid a separate visit of the tenant to the town hall. The rent allowances under Birmingham's discretionary scheme are credited to an account opened by the tenant at the municipal bank. The tenant could, for example, ask for his monies to be paid direct to the landlord and then he would pay the smaller amount of rent after that period. This is a matter of flexibility, and experience can show us what is needed if the authorities and the recipients find life awkward.
Paragraph 12(3), to which I have referred, also provides for the Secretary of State to give directions as to how often these payments of rent allowance should be made. It is intended initially to direct under this provision that these allowances should be paid with the same frequency
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that the tenant has to pay his rent, excepting that for weekly rent payments the rent allowances should be paid not less frequently than fortnightly. But in the light of experience a different approach may be acceptable, either generally or for particular authorities, and the direction making power does provide the necessary flexibility. We do not want to hinder the councils unnecessarily with the allowances, in doing what is best for their tenants and for the private tenants.
With regard to Amendment No. 97C, this is going to require an authority to determine the entitlement within three weeks of receiving the application. We think it is wholly unrealistic to suppose that any authority could, in practice, in every case, determine the entitlement within any stipulated period in such a way as to give proper consideration to the application. There may be some difficulty in establishing whether the applicant is a tenant who is eligible for consideration by the authority in question, or in assessing the income of the tenant, because the tenant perhaps cannot quickly provide the necessary information or evidence. It may even be greatly to the tenant's disadvantage if the authority is obliged to make a determination in relation to him within a stipulated time limit, as this might prevent him from getting together the information which would enable him to obtain his full and proper entitlement. So a provision on the lines proposed in the Amendment would not only be rare but I believe may be unprecedented in existing discretionary schemes which local authorities operate. We think it certain to be opposed by nearly all authorities. The tenant is protected to a large extent by the requirement that any rebate or allowance is granted from the rental period in which the application was received. I hope with these few words the noble Lord will see the point of leaving the Bill as we have drafted it.
LORD SHEPHERD: I am grateful for what the noble Lord has said. I must say I am still surprised that he uses again this defence about the local authorities and the need by Her Majesty's Government to see that the local authority's wishes are carried out, whereas in most parts of the Bill they are going flagrantly against what the local authorities want. If I may say so, using an unparliamentary

1159
phrase, it sounds to me a little bit of humbug. I will accept what the noble Lord has said. I think the words in subparagraph (3)(b) perhaps meet our fears, but we may have another look at this in the light of later discussion on the system of appeals and possible maladministration. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I beg to move Amendment No. 97. This is a drafting Amendment similar to one moved at an earlier stage.
Amendment moved—
Page 128, line 19, after first ("for") insert ("or collected in").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
5.35 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved Amendment No. 97A:
Page 129, line 40, leave out ("gross") and insert ("nett").
The noble Lord said: We had a discussion the other day about whether a person's gross salary, wages or fees should be taken into account. We feel that in the light of the quite considerable sums that are to-day deducted from a person's income by way of income tax and other direct charges for social service benefits, it would be fair to a person that his net income should be the amount to be taken into account. We discussed this point rather late, if my memory is right, or rather early in the morning. I wonder if the noble Lord has changed his mind as a result of my rather impassioned plea. I beg to move.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: Gross income has been taken in this case for the calculation of eligibility for rebates or allowances because there are a very great number of practical difficulties, as the noble Lord will know, in defining and checking net income in order to assess a tenant's resources. For instance, the statutory deductions vary according to gross income or class of employment and they can reflect the individual's personal and family circumstances. Other voluntary deductions such as National Savings, insurance premiums and union dues can also vary according to an individual's employment, or his voluntary choice. It would be necessary in this case for tenants to disclose in their applica-
1160
tions all the various deductions, and considerable administrative difficulty would be caused to local authorities in checking the assessments. To ensure, however, that entitlement is fairly assessed, I think it important to remember that the needs allowance does take notional account of these various statutory deductions and other unavoidable expenses to which the noble Lord referred. Gross earnings is the normal basis of most existing rebate schemes, and was recommended in fact by the Government in which the noble Lord was a Minister, in the illustrative scheme which they circulated to all local authorities. I hope those few words will explain the case as we have it.
LORD SHEPHERD: A few words, but they do not take us much further. If I may say so, my plea to the noble Lord was, has he changed his mind. He might have saved the time of the Committee if he had risen and said, No. I would not be any more or less dissatisfied than I am, in spite of what the noble Lord has said. It is quite clear that it is an area in which we are not going to shift the Government, not at this stage at least. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: I beg to move Amendment No. 98. This is a drafting Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 129, line 47, leave out ("and to paragraph 12(2) of this Schedule").—(Lord Mowbray and Stourton.)
5.39 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved Amendment No. 98A:
Page 130, line 22, leave out from ("period") to end of line 23 and insert ("to which the application for a rebate or allowance related being not earlier than six months before the application").
The noble Lord said: I hope the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, will reply to this Amendment because normally I seem to get a more conciliatory answer from him than I do from his colleagues. This is an important Amendment. Paragraph 4(1) of the Schedule says:
"Where a rebate or allowance is first granted, the rebate period or allowance period shall commence at the commencement of the rental period in which the application for a rebate or an allowance was received"
I am quite certain that the Government and the local authorities are going to give considerable publicity to the availability of these schemes. I hope, too, that it will be continuous, because people do fall into need and often they may not know about what is available for them. Apart from that, I hope that publicity will continue to be given so that more and more people who need this assistance will not only know about it but will accept it. It may be that a person may have only recently been persuaded to make application. One knows that often it is necessary to put considerable pressure on a person to apply for what may be regarded as charity; and, of course, a person may not know of the circumstances and the method in which an application is made.
The object of this Amendment is to ensure that an authority can give back payments to the beginning of the rental period if an application has been made and it is perhaps later than it ought to have been. It is a means of making it possible for a local authority to meet a person's existing and real need, even though there may have been some slowness or some reluctance to apply for that assistance. I hope the noble Lord will feel this is a right proposition to put into an area where we are seeking to deal with people who are in need and who often may not know the services and allowances which may be available. I beg to move.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: I am sorry, but the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, will again have to be content with me. I can assure him that my kindness of heart is as great as that of my noble friend the Minister. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, will listen to my explanation, which is the same as the explanation would be if my noble friend the Minister were speaking instead of myself.
There is no case for allowing a tenant to obtain a rebate or allowance for a rental period ending before the date of application, because a tenant can apply at any time. If the tenant is ill or away, application can always be made on his behalf. Paragraph 4(1), as now drafted, makes adequate provision to ensure that the tenant does not suffer from any delay in determining his application, since if a
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rebate or allowance is granted it must start with the rental period in which the application was received, not when it was determined. If that rental period is a monthly period, the rebate or allowance could take effect from just short of a month before the date on which the application was received.
The proposed extension of the maximum rebate or allowance period for a tenant of pensionable age would mean that the amount of the rebate or allowance would not be automatically reviewed for a period of three years. During such a long period there could be many changes of circumstances affecting the amount of the rebate or allowance, including changes affecting the amount in the tenant's favour. Difficulties could arise, especially with elderly tenants, if any change in the rebate or allowance during such a long rebate or allowance period were made largely or entirely dependent on notification by the tenant. The local authority associations regard a twelve -month period as reasonable. In practice, the rebate period will often be for longer than twelve months, as it begins with the rental period during which the application is received. Your Lordships will see that I have spoken to Amendment No. 98B as well as No. 98A. They rather go together, and thought it would save your Lordships' time if I took them together.
LORD AVEBURY: While the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, is thinking about that one, may I say that the reply does not seem to take into account the difficulty we were talking about the other night: that the take-up of benefits of this kind is always less than the ideal. We were given a figure of 75 per cent. as a very rough estimate, which means that in any case the Government are anticipating that 25 per cent. of the people eligible for rebates or allowances are not going to put in their applications, in spite of all the steps the Government are to take to draw the attention of the tenants to the rights they have at their disposal.
The noble Lord will be aware that in the nature of things there are some people who need a little persuasion before they can be induced to exercise their rights. It is easy to imagine a set of circumstances in which somebody goes to his Member of Parliament—I would appeal

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particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, to consider this point—and say that he or she is having great difficulty in meeting the ordinary expenses of rent, light, rates and so on. The Member of Parliament will say it seems to him that when this Bill comes into effect the person may qualify for a rebate or an allowance, as the case may be. The tenant may then reply, "I do not like this sort of Government charity. I am not going to apply for it" After a time, if the Member of Parliament is tactful and puts his case well, perhaps that tenant may be persuaded to change his or her mind and put in the application. In the meanwhile, several weeks have elapsed, and what the Schedule is saying is that the tenant is not entitled to a retrospective allowance or rebate for the period in which he has been making up his mind. As he would have been entitled to it had he applied in the first instance, to backdate it in the manner suggested in this Amendment is perfectly reasonable. I cannot understand why it should be refused.
LORD LEATHERLAND: We all know that the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, has a kind heart, but I think he has been rather hard-hearted in his reply to this Amendment. He told us on the last Amendment that local authorities would be put to a great deal of trouble in handling these applications. He said that there would be considerable administrative difficulty. If town clerks, qualified accountants and council treasurers find difficulty and trouble, what will be the position of some poor old widow who has spent 60 years of her life in a cotton mill and can hardly read? Five minutes ago I was replying to a letter from such a person, who feels that she is being improperly and unfairly treated in respect of her house.
People do not always realise what is available for them under this scheme of rebates. While it may seem generous, up to a point, to back-date the allowance to the beginning of the period in which the application is received, surely it is not asking too much to allow it to go back for a few more months if the case is a very hard one. When all is said and done (my noble friend Lord Diamond will know far more about this than I do), one is allowed to have adjust-
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ments made in respect of one's income tax for a period six years back. If it can be done for income tax and surtax payers, why cannot it be done for the poor old people who will be the beneficaries under this provision?
LORD SHEPHERD: Perhaps the noble Lord can put us out of our difficulties. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, about the problem of an ordinary person seeking to understand what is his entitlement and his rights when one looks at this Bill. Reference is made to the rebate period and the allowance period. I may be wrong, but I imagined that these would be set periods laid down by a local authority. It may be a period from January 1 to May 1 or July 1—a matter of a month or six months—although it has been suggested by my noble friend Lord Diamond that it may be the period when a person pays his rent. In other words, if he pays his rent weekly then it is a weekly amount; but it may also be a monthly period. If that is the case, while my Amendment may be useful it is not one that I should want to go the last ditch about. If it is a period laid down by a local authority—three months or six months—there could be considerable hardship to a person who may not have applied, and I would have thought it would be right that there should be some basis of back payment where a person could show that there were good reasons why he had failed to apply earlier.
5.50 p.m.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: What noble Lords are trying to do, out of the kindness of their hearts, is really to put an intolerable burden on the authorities. We accept that it is difficult to find out present earnings and allowances, but what is now being suggested is that the authorities should have put on them the onus of checking up on past history. What a person's earnings and allowances are to-day may not be the same as they were six months or a year ago.
LORD SHEPHERD: I do not understand what the noble Lord is talking about. He is not dealing with my point. I asked him what is meant by the rebate period or allowance period in sub-paragraph (1). I spoke for a little while,

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because I could see that the noble Lord was looking at his brief and I wanted to help him. But, having done that, I expect an answer to my point.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: I think the answer is given immediately underneath in sub-paragraph (2), which states that for a pensioner the period is twelve months and for a non-pensioner it is six months. Does that answer the question?
LORD DIAMOND: We are all trying to understand, and we are not trying to do anything more than that at the moment. We take the curious view that if we understand what the Bill is about we shall be in a better position to see whether or not we agree with it. So I hope the noble Lord will realise that we are doing no more than trying to understand, and that it does not help us very much to understand when a period starts to refer to a sub-paragraph which states that it shall end on a certain date. So we are getting back to subparagraph (1), which, as drafted, provides that the rebate or allowance period commences at the commencement of the rental period in which the application is received. If the rental period provided for under an agreement for a tenancy lease were a calendar year, that would presumably mean that the allowance—. and I shall deal with the allowance by itself, first—would commence on January 1, provided that the application was received no later than December 31.
LORD AVEBURY: May I interrupt? I have discovered that the rental period is defined in the interpretation clause, Clause 100. The subsection states that:
"rental period' means a period in respect of which a payment of rent falls to be made"
Therefore, if the tenant pays the rent fortnightly, the rental period is a fortnight.
LORD DIAMOND: That is exactly what I assumed. I am on the point that it is a period of a year, and the rent is therefore payable once a year. In those circumstances, an application is received with a request for a rent allowance, and so long as it is received no later than December 31 it is in the period of twelve months commencing on
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January 1. Let us suppose that the application is received on December 1 in this rental period which covers the calendar year. If that is the case, it would be necessary to go back to the start of the year and calculate income, allowances and so on. Why, therefore, did the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, say in his last answer that it would be adding unbearable burdens on to the local authority if they had to do this very thing? Either that answer was not quite to the point, which I find it difficult to believe, or I misunderstood the paragraph, which I find it easy to believe. We should be much helped if the noble Lord would tell us which is right.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: I was trying to answer what the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, asked about the period before the application was made. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, I think that yearly payments would nearly always be made in advance.
LORD DIAMOND: But yearly payments are not always made in advance, and what my noble friend Lord Leatherland said about the period before the application was submitted relates to paragraph 4(1) which reads:
"…the rebate period…shall commence at the commencement of the rental period in which the application…was received".
Therefore, if the application is received on December 1 and the rental period is a calendar year, then December 1 is within the calendar year and it will be necessary to go back to the beginning of the calendar year to make the calculation. Therefore what the noble Lord said about the complications of going back, and about putting undue weight and difficulties on to a local authority, was, to put it mildly, not right.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: No. I totally accept that what the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, has said is quite correct. It can go back to the beginning of the period concerned.
LORD LEATHERLAND: This short discussion is showing how very difficult it will be for my poor 60-year old cotton worker to understand the ramifications of this Bill. She will need to have a note sent to her by the local council

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stating: "Will you please refer to page 130, line 20, of the Bill which deals with rental periods? Will you then refer to page 106, line 16, which deals with the interpretation of the expression 'rental period' "? It may very well be that all of these poor old people will not have copies of this Bill. They may not have people of the intelligence of the noble Lord to explain its ramifications to them. What is more, although the interpretation clause states on page 106, that
"'rental period ' means a period in respect of which a payment of rent falls to be made",
in the case of many council houses the rental period may well be no more than a week. That will be very hard indeed on some of these people who are not very prompt in making their application.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: The simple answer is that application can be made by the noble Lord on his old lady's behalf or by any other friend of the lady concerned. The authorities have to publicise the scheme in the best way possible and the news must be spread.
LORD LEATHERLAND: What the noble Lord has done is merely to publicise the fact—and it will be spread throughout the length and breadth of the land—that if any old lady wants to make an application she should get in touch with the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland. I beg to dissociate myself from any public service of that kind at this moment. But there is no doubt that these people will be puzzled. Can this not be simplified in the way my noble friend Lord Shepherd has suggested, and if a poor old lady is not so prompt as we, with our secretaries to assist us would be in putting in the application, give her a little latitude.
LORD DRUMALBYN: As I understand it, the effect of the Amendment would be to prevent exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, talked about when he referred to going back over the whole of the period. I do not know whether that was the intention of the noble Lord. The difficulty which the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland posed will not really arise, because Clause 24 shows how these schemes are to be publicised. The application will be made, and no doubt it will state what the rental period is. That will then be worked out
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by the local authority and that will be the end of the matter. It will be a simple administrative matter to fix.
LORD SHEPHERD: I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for directing our attention to the definition clause. This illustrates some of the difficulties under which we have been working in discussing the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, shakes his head. If twenty minutes ago he had made the intervention that he has just made we might have saved some time. I agree with him that our Amendment is exactly the opposite to what we had intended it to be. We did not appreciate the significance of the clause. As I say, if the noble Lord had intervened earlier we could have saved a good deal of time. This is in no way a criticism of the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton. We recognise that he has no Departmental responsibility here. He has to work with briefs that are just as complicated and difficult to understand as the provisions of the Bill.
If the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, who is the one Minister with Departmental responsibility, had been present at this Committee we might have saved some time. I wonder whether this is the right way in which to treat this Committee. It is not often that we have a Minister who has Departmental responsibility, and I should have thought that when a Bill of this nature was being discussed he would have been present. It is not so late in the day that he needs to be out for refreshment. It would have been a matter of courtesy to the Committee if the Minister responsible for what is a very complex Bill could have been present to give assistance to noble Lords who sit on the Front Bench opposite and indeed to save the time of this Committee. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Before the noble Lord withdraws his Amendment may I say that I do not think that he ought to take up the time of this Committee with this sort of thing? We were dealing with two Amendments, one of which was concerned with the rental period and the other with the rebate period.
LORD SHEPHERD: I am sorry, but I was dealing with only one Amendment.

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I spoke on Amendment No. 98 and did not refer to any other Amendment.
LORD DRUMALBYN: When I said, "we", I meant the Committee. My noble friend Lord Mowbray and Stourton dealt momentarily with the other one, as the noble Lord opposite is aware, and he may have confused the two. We all know what the rental period is without having to look at the definition.
LORD SHEPHERD: If the Departmental Minister had been present we might have avoided that difficulty. As it was, I moved only one Amendment and did not speak on the other.
LORD AVEBURY: We may think we know what the rental period is, but the fact that it requires mention in the interpretation clause shows how important it is for us to have clarity in these matters. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, could have given the definition as easily as I could.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved Amendment No. 99:
Page 133, line 25, at end insert—
("( ) where the rent is payable under such a tenancy as is described in paragraph (f) above, but no rent is registered (whether provisionally or otherwise) for the dwelling, and the authority are not satisfied that the rent paid is equal to or less than the fair rent, as estimated by the authority, any rent paid in excess of that estimated fair rent;")
The noble Lord said: This Amendment deals with a situation not already covered in paragraph 14(1) of this Schedule. This sub-paragraph requires an authority not to grant rent allowance towards any amount of rent paid above specified limits. This limitation is to prevent rent allowances from subsidising an amount which a tenant need not pay; for example, an excess over the controlled or fair rent registered for his dwelling or the rent limit for those housing association tenancies to which Part VIII of the Bill applies.
Where the rent of a housing association tenancy has not been registered, the rent limit is determined in accordance with Clause 84(3) and (4). This limit may be in excess of the fair rent. Accordingly, for unregistered housing association rents a provision is needed which is similar
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to that in sub-paragraph (1)(c) for regulated tenancies, whereby the local authority must disregard any excess beyond its estimate of the fair rent. The Amendment contains this provision.
6.7 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved Amendment No. 99A:
Page 134, line 11, at end insert—
("The Tenant shall have the right to appeal to the Advisory Committee on Rent Rebates and Rent Allowance.").
The noble Lord said: In speaking on this Amendment I should like the permission of the Committee to speak on Amendments Nos. 99B, 99C and 106A. Whatever differences of view we may have, we can all agree that this is a very complicated Bill. Even those of us who have had a few years' experience of dealing with legislation in your Lordships' House would agree that this Bill ranks with the more difficult—I would not say the most difficult—pieces of legislation. Yet it is a Bill which will affect many hundreds of thousands of people. We shall be putting new burdens upon one group and we shall he seeking to give another group some relief from their present difficulties.
We welcome this aspect, and therefore it must be our concern that the new benefits will become available to the greatest number of people possible, that there will be a proper administration and that all persons involved will obtain a satisfactory service. Most local authorities will give a good and understanding service, but it is right that we should recognise that there are some authorities which are not as good as others. The noble Earl, Lord Balfour, will agree with this and I hope, in view of his criticisms of some local authorities, he will speak in support.
A tenant may make an application for either a rebate or an allowance or may be informed by his local authority as to changes in his rent. These various complicated circumstances are provided for in the Bill. If a tenant is placed in this position and has a doubt as to whether the authority has judged the facts of his application aright, or if there is any doubt between a tenant and the local authority, we take the view that that tenant ought to have a right of appeal to

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some independent authority. It is perfectly true that we are dealing with elected councils, but the councils for London boroughs and the cities of Birmingham and Manchester are authorities dealing with tremendous numbers of people. The bigger the numbers the more detached and the further removed are the officials and indeed the elected members. It is sometimes difficult for a small, timid and nervous individual to go to his councillor, if he can find him, or to get into the offices of his local authority to see a person of sufficient stature and authority as to be able to give him a satisfactory answer.
I think it is right, therefore, that we should give to the tenants who are now involved in the provisions of this Bill the right of appeal. I think we should consider the sort of things that might arise. First of all, there is the question of the income of the tenant, or of any spouse of the tenant, during the period of a rebate period; then, whether a child should be counted as a dependant; whether a joint tenant is to be treated as such, or as a non-dependent member of the household; at what rate a wrongly-granted rebate or allowance is to be recovered, and whether as a reduction from the rebate or an allowance for a subsequent period; or the matter we were discussing recently of whether a person should lose an allowance he would normally be entitled to merely because he lives in a house which is judged larger than he may personally need, or, for that matter, because a person may be judged to be living in a more expensive area than perhaps he ought to be, taking into account his circumstances.
All these are questions not only of fact but also of judgment. I would not want to be critical of officials of local authorities, but the pressures under which these officials work are really tremendous, and there are circumstances—we all know it—in which awards are made which are highly questionable. It may be that the local authorities already provide wide-ranging services and that in the past we have not required some form of independent appeal. But this Bill imposes new rents and raises new problems, new questions, about what is or what is not a fair rent, what balance is available, what rebate should be avail-
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able, and so forth. A whole wide aspect needs to be taken into account. I should have thought, therefore, that the Committee would take the view, without in any way criticising local authorities, that a tenant should be able to go to some independent body to seek a hearing and have a judgment upon it.
I have put down two possible alternatives for the appeal procedure. There is the one that was identical to that proposed in another place, that it should be the local Supplementary Benefits Appeal Tribunal. I was reading the Commons Hansard this morning, and I saw that the Government had some basic reasons for not accepting this particular proposal. Therefore it is fortunate that I had in fact put down on an earlier occasion an Amendment of my own drafting proposing that it should be the Advisory Committee on Rent Rebates and Rent Allowances. This Amendment, No. 106A, does not call upon this committee. recognising that it is an advisory committee, to make a judgment and a ruling. What it would be required to do would be to consider such appeals as a tenant might submit and then give its findings and its recommendations to the housing authority. It would then be for the housing authority, of course, having listened to the arguments and having read the findings and recommendations, to make up their minds whether an injustice had been done. The subparagraph then goes on:
"… a tenant shall be any person who claims to be the tenant of the premises".
This was particularly included in the Amendment in the light of an earlier part of the Bill, where it is said that a local authority can maintain that, because a person has a higher income than the actual tenant, he is to be the tenant. This is also an aspect as to which there might well be a dispute between the original tenant and the authority, because the authority says, "So far as we are concerned, you are not the tenant because you do not earn sufficient, as opposed to someone who is now living in this dwelling."
So I hope the Government will respond positively in this matter. I hope the Committee will feel that, as is proposed in Amendments Nos. 99A and 99B, the tenant should have a right of appeal. As to whether either of these bodies is the

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right one, I leave that to the Government, but I hope they will accept that there ought to be a system of appeal so that the tenants will know that they have somewhere to go if they are in any way dissatisfied with an award. It may be that, as the previous Administration had hoped to see, in due course the Government will appoint an Ombudsman for local authority matters. The previous Administration felt that this new system of Parliamentary Commissioner ought to be kept for Parliamentary and central Government services; that it would be too big a burden to place upon this body if we included local authority matters. I believe the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, might confirm that hospitals and medical service matters are now subject, or are likely to be subject, to an appeal to an Ombudsman. If the Government have in mind the appointment of an Ombudsman in the field of local authority affairs—and this is a matter particularly in the field of maladministration—then I would be quite content with it. But until that appointment is made, I hope that the Committee will feel that we ought to set up a body to which a tenant may make an appeal if he feels dissatisfied, in one way or another, because of the provisions in this Bill. I beg to move.
6.17 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: The noble Lord, I know, feels strongly on this matter, and I think he has set his case out very clearly. But I am afraid it is my duty to resist it, and I hope that the noble Lord will understand and appreciate the reasons why I feel bound to do that. To start with, I think one has to remember that while there is probably more discretion on the part of local authorities given in this Bill than noble Lords are sometimes apt to concede, at the same time there are very clear and specific provisions in the Bill as to the duties of authorities under their rebate or allowance schemes, and the specific new right is given to the tenant to make representations on any determination made in respect of him, and to have them considered by the authority—that is in paragraph 15(2) of the Schedule—provided that those representations are received within one month of the notification of the determination.
I think one has also to bear in mind that local authorities have very wide
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experience in the operation of rent rebate schemes, and there never has been any statutory right of appeal against determinations under existing rebate schemes. But in so far as they will now have specifically defined duties to grant rebates or allowances, the tenant can have recourse to the courts in the event of a failure by the authority to perform such a duty. Where a duty is laid upon an authority in this way, an appeal lies to the court to enforce the performance of that duty. The purpose of the advisory committee, to which the noble Lord suggests representations should be made—I do not think "appeal" would be the right term to use in this case. They are representations for the advisory committee to consider and in turn to advise the local authority upon—is a much more limited one so far as the numbers of cases are concerned. It is to advise the Secretary of State for the Environment and the Secretary of State for Wales on the general working of this national rebate and allowance scheme. It will advise on such matters as the basic tariff of the scheme, on the items of income to be disregarded or the relationship of the scheme to other means-tested benefits. It would be dealing with matters of general principle, although a particular case can give rise to consideration of the general principle, and there is nothing to prevent representations from being made where things are going wrong. In these circumstances it would be inappropriate to give such a body, a national advisory committee of this sort, power to adjudicate in individual disputes between tenants and their authorities. The cases might be very numerous. The kind of body that you would set up to deal with this sort of thing would be different from that set up to deal with matters of general principle. The latter would be more similar to the National Insurance Advisory Council.
Difficulties of general application will find their way to this committee. In such cases the committee may provide helpful guidance to the Secretary of State and to the authorities on points of principle or of difficulty which have arisen on a disputed determination, but it is not really appropriate that representations that may be made from time to time should be called appeals. Nor is it appropriate to encourage individuals to make

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representations on the exercise of clear duties placed upon the authority. In particular if, as the noble Lord was suggesting, there were mistakes in calculation, or things not taken into account that should have been taken into account, the right course would be for the tenant to make representations to the authority itself. If the officials of the authority will not listen to those representations the same thing will happen as happens in all other local government—the individual will then go to his local government representative and complain there. He may even go to his Member of Parliament who will tell the person concerned that this is not a matter for him and the right course is to make representations to the local government representative, as the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, and I have often had to do.
I think the noble Lord is unduly worried about this matter, if I may say so, and I hope for those reasons that he will not press the Amendment. This right to make representations is a good one and it will bring to the attention of the local authority, probably at a higher level, mistakes that have been made at a lower level. If that is not done the complainants will then go to their local government representatives and the local government representatives will bring them to notice at their own level, as they so often have to do in other matters. I think this is the right way of dealing with local government affairs and I hope that the noble Lord will accept this view.
BARONESS SEEAR: It is very regrettable that the Minister has not been able to consider this Amendment and is taking the line that there is no need for this kind of third party appeal, a body to which the ordinary tenant can go. The noble Lord says that the local authority has clearly laid down lines which they are supposed to follow, but I do not believe that that will be clear to ordinary people. A large local authority and officials of the local authority are nearly as remote as is Parliament itself. This is one of our great difficulties. The Minister says that they now have a right of appeal, and that is a good thing. I think it is a scandal that they have not had it in the past. There is a feeling that we are more and more in the hands of faceless bureaucrats: that is a trite phrase but it is widely felt. People at
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this level find it extremely difficult to disentangle cases of this kind. Some of us—and at least the Government have accepted this—believe that it is high time that we had an Ombudsman at local level. If—and the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, made this point—there is to be a local Ombudsman who can help people vis-à-vis the local authority, well and good, but until that time comes surely we need a committee of this sort. An appeal to the local authority against an official is simply not adequate. You are appealing up the line in the local authority against the person who has handled the particular case. True, you can go to a local councillor; but I do not think that is adequate. There will be a great deal of anxiety and worry and confusion about the application of this Bill when it is an Act, and the more help that we can give people the better. I hope the Government will consider the Amendment again.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: The noble Baroness has made a quite strong case. I think the Government could go a little further than it has done. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, will know that this matter was raised in Standing Committee E and I think I am correct in saying that as a result the last line and a half of this sub-paragraph was added to the Bill, bceause before my friends in the other place raised the point local authorities were under no obligation to notify a tenant in writing of the reasons for altering or confirming the rebate or allowance. It is only too easy to find reasons why this or that body is not acceptable as an appeal body. I could hope that half as much ingenuity was being put into discovering what would be a right and acceptable appeal body as has been put into saying why none of the bodies that has been suggested is suitable. In suggesting the one we have here, the Advisory Committee on Rent Rebates and Rent Allowances, I think we are on the right track. The noble Lord said that this was a body that was intended to advise. I should think that anybody wanting to make an appeal would be appealing to a body that had a pretty good understanding. I do not think the Government would be taking any undue risk if they said, "We will look at this proposal; there is something in it".

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The noble Lord said that the tenant could go to his local representative, who quickly passed the tenant up to his M.P.: well, by and large he did—if I may use a phrase which the noble Lord coined earlier in the debate. The local representative passes the tenant up to the M.P., and the M.P. passes him back to his local government representative even more quickly. What is happening to the tenant while all this is being done?—because I am sure that the noble Lord has met people who have been engaged in this kind of process, and he will know that they get very bitter and feel a tremendous sense of frustration. It is true that sometimes they are successful and then they feel very pleased and think they have gone the right way about it. I know that some of these people are very difficult to deal with. Like others who have been members of local authorities, I have had the experience of their coming to my door at all hours of the day and night and expecting me to drop everything and to give them attention. The first inclination is to be a little impatient at this intrusion; then one realises that for these people this is a tremendous problem, that they have experienced nothing like it before, and one tries to help. In such a case, the local government representative goes to the local authority and says: "Jones has been to me and he made a strong case. It is something that ought to be looked at." But he may be unsuccessful in persuading his authority to do anything about it.
The noble Lord suggested that people have the right to go to the county court. I do not wish to misquote the noble Lord and I hope he appreciates the point that I am making. But, in general, we are dealing with people who are not fond of going to court. I sit quite regularly in courts, as do a number of noble Lords, and I am struck again and again by the number of people who come before the Bench and who have no understanding of how to handle their own case. They really need legal advice. I shall be coming back to that point on a later Amendment. If at this stage the noble Lord could indicate that he is likely to accept that later Amendment which deals with recovery of the costs of taking the dispute to the county court, I do not think that there would be too much difficulty in persuading us now to let this
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matter go by. Perhaps this is the time to ask whether we are likely to get any kind response to the suggestion that where a tenant is dissatisfied with the reason given by the local authority he will, as of right, recover the costs of taking the matter to the the county court. It seems to me that that would meet our case. If that Amendment is going to be resisted I would ask the Committee, as I ask the Government from their own experience, to give considerable thought to whether the kind of person who is likely to be caught up in this situation is, by and large, capable of looking after his own interests if he goes to the county court. The noble Lord used the word, "undue"; he said that we were attaching undue importance to it. I do not think that that is so.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I said that I thought the noble Lord was unduly worried.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: I think that is about the same thing. Of course, my noble friend is unduly worried. It is a worrying matter; it is a fundamental matter.
THE EARL OF BALFOUR: I have listened with great interest to this discussion. The sort of people who get involved in these cases do not like going before tribunals or courts or similar bodies. I am wondering whether it would not be possible, in cases of disputes over rent rebates or allowances and the like, for the local welfare officer to act on their behalf. One of the problems with which we shall be faced (in England before it occurs in Scotland) is that after the reform of local government, we shall have fewer local representatives and they will cover much larger areas. Therefore some of the people we are concerned about may not be able to get in touch with their local councillors as easily as they can at present. Perhaps some arrangement might be made, through the welfare services, for somebody to visit them at home and talk about these allowances. I do not believe that people, whose standard of living and whose standard of intelligence may not be very high, will go to tribunals if it involves travelling perhaps 30 or 40 miles. It would mean the loss of a day's work, if nothing else.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE: I should like to add my weight

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to the case put by my noble friend and by the noble Baroness, not necessarily to repeat the argument but to take up one point relative to it. The noble Lord, in replying, said that Paragraph 15(2) gives this right. Since when did we require Parliament to give us a right to question a decision about a contract we make with somebody who is supplying us with something? This is every citizen's right in every country. If you make an agreement to take a house for rent from a private individual or from a public individual; and if that agreement is varied to reduce or increase the rent, you do not require Parliament to give you the right to dispute it. This is a basic right of everyone in the country. I thought I would correct this statement which the noble Lord made and which gave a strength to his argument that it does not possess.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am not certain that I accept that. The right to make representations is accompanied by a duty on the local authority to consider the representations. This is also in the sub-paragraph. I think that we are all sympathetic to this problem. The difference between the two sides is that we on this side—I speak particularly for the Front Bench and I hope my noble friends feel this, too—feel that a scheme of this sort, which runs along the same lines as many rent rebate schemes already operated by many local authorities, will be operated as sympathetically as it is at present. After all, it is not being operated by some statutory body which consists of non-representative members; it is being operated by local authorities who have their local councillors to whom application may be made. The ordinary person who thinks he is not getting his rights may perhaps, if he is a recluse, or if he does not like to discuss his private affairs, keep it to himself. But that sort of person is going to do that in any case. Otherwise, if he is not getting his rights, he may go to a solicitor; he may get legal advice under the scheme or he may well get assistance in other ways. I presume—I should have to verify this—that if he won his case in the county court he would be eligible to get his costs. The noble Lord shakes his head; but we are dealing in large sums. Some of
1180
these allowances may be £3 a week, which amounts to quite a lot in a year. This is not a negligible matter and it is not the sort of matter which people, if they feel they are being done out of something, will be altogether unwilling to take to court.
LORD SHEPHERD: The noble Lord knows that if you go to a county court you need a lawyer, a solicitor—perhaps a barrister. These gentlemen need money; they need their fee. In most cases, they want the fee on the table before they take the case and before they appear in court. We are talking in the main about people who will be seeking allowances because their income is so low that they cannot meet the fair rent. The noble Lord is suggesting that these people should risk whatever small savings they have for the purpose of going to a county court. If the noble Lord really regards that as a satisfactory answer I feel very sorry for him.
6.40 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Obviously, this is absolutely a last resort. No local authority is likely to want to be taken to court if they are in the wrong. There will have been all the possibilities of having the matter put right by representations made by the applicant to the local authority, and the rest. When we are setting up a scheme of this sort we believe that this is the right way to go about it. I am not saying that later on some other arrangements may not be made. It may be that the advisory committee on rent rebates and rent allowances would not, at some point, recommend some form of appeal. But the difficulties of setting up courts to deal with this are very considerable. The volume of work might be very great. These are essentially administrative matters, and surely it is right that good administration should deal with them.
LORD DIAMOND: I am sorry to detain the Committee, but I appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, to say that he will take this matter away and reconsider it. We are not on a Party issue at all; we are on the issue of whether it is necessary to establish such machinery in order that justice may be seen to be done. It is a very familiar circumstance and is provided for in almost all the comparable schemes I can think of. The

1181
noble Lord paid little attention to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear.
One can put this argument on two legs. First, there is the question whether an appeal to an authority to the councillor level of an authority, is an effective form of appeal. We all know that it is not completely effective. Every local authority, when faced with the difficulty of having a point of view put by a ratepayer, and by an officer, does not consider only the facts of the case. The local authority, the committee or the council has also to consider its permanent relationship with the officer, and that is a bias in favour of the officer which is built-in and absolutely inevitable. The local authority has to live with the officer and the official's advice, be it at local government or national level, and at all times has to take that into account. That in itself, apart from the weight of the argument, is one reason why people do not feel that they will get justice done completely by appealing to a council member over the head of an officer.
Far more important than that is the feelings of the persons involved. Let us assume that justice has been done—this is the part to which the noble Lord paid no attention at all. It is a new scheme and it is not right for the noble Lord to say that many councils have rebate schemes. No one has a rent allowance scheme, and a rebate scheme will be imposed by the national Government and carried out by the local authorities. It will affect millions of people. I do not know how many all told, but when you take into account council tenants and those in receipt of rent allowances the total may be 7 or 8 million; a very substantial portion of the whole population. And, as I say, the scheme will be new. To assume that in every case the right answer will be arrived at is to be impossibly optimistic; but what happens when some people do not believe it? I think the Government are being extraordinarily narrow-minded in not being willing to establish some kind of machinery so that an appellant can let off steam and then be told, "We have considered your case carefully and have listened to what you have to say, and we think that you are wrong. But you have
1182
had the satisfaction of coming to someone who has considered it."
When he was a Member of Parliament in another place the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, had his Friday night or Saturday morning political surgeries, as I did. I do not know what he found, but I will tell him what I found. Quite half of the people who came to see me with various complaints wanted only an opportunity to talk to someone who would treat the matter in confidence and someone whom, if I may say so, they could treat with respect. They knew that they would get a sympathetic hearing, and then they went away feeling a lot better and, thank heaven! I had nothing to do about it. That must have been the experience of the noble Lord, as it is the experience of every Member of Parliament. Surely it is a well-established fact that human beings feel better if they know that they have the chance to go to an independent party—not a man's boss; not the officer's councillor who will have difficulties with the officer about it, but to an independent party—who will listen and will say, "Yes, you have not understood. I will explain why this is right. These are the facts, these are the figures and this is the addition, and that is why you have to pay."
I should have thought that, with a new scheme which will create so much difficulty, the Government ought already to have established some kind of machinery. As I have said, this is not a Party point. We do not want to win or lose on a Division. We want a situation in which the Government scheme, if they insist on it, will cause the least upheaval in human relations. So I hope the noble Lord will recognise the argument I am making in support of the plea of my noble friends on the Front Bench and on the Back Benches and what has been said by the Liberals. It is something about which the noble Lord ought to be willing to say that, without commitment, he will take it away and consider it. He is a member of a learned profession. The principle of appealing is a well-established one with him and lie would not dream of departing from it in respect of that profession, I should have thought. Even in respect of something like the industrial relations legislation I understand that it is possible to appeal from one court to another; and

1183
everybody knows what trouble we have had about that. I leave this appeal with the noble Lord in the hope that he will respond.
LORD HYLTON: This is a most important Amendment and I urge my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn to say, if he possibly can, that he will reconsider it. In particular, will he consider whether the supplementary benefit appeal tribunals might not be the right bodies to consider the matter?
LORD DRUMALBYN: The supplementary benefit appeal tribunals were not set up for this purpose and have no experience of housing matters. I think that many of the people who would be receiving rent rebates and allowances would not he anxious to go to one of these tribunals. I think I have stated the case fairly, though I omitted to say that the Party opposite set up the rate rebate scheme and gave no right of appeal there. This is a similar matter, and I do not see why there should be an appeal in this case either, unless it transpires later on that things are going wrong; and I do not believe that they will go wrong.
The local authorities, obviously, will be changing their attitude to the whole business of rent collection. The rent collector will himself become more like a welfare officer. I agree with what my noble friend Lord Balfour said about that. There is quite a possibility that the welfare officer will be a sort of tribune of the people within the local authority in these matters. But I do not think it would be right at this time to take the view that the local authorities are not going to run this scheme sympathetically. I believe that they have the ability and good will to run it. They are already doing it well without any sort of appeal. I hope that the Committee will resist this Amendment while at the same time having every sympathy with the intention that there should be every possible incentive for the individual to obtain his rights. We believe that the Bill as drafted secures that.
LORD SHEPHERD: I hope the Committee will recognise that my noble friend and others made an appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, to reconsider
1184
this matter. There was no obligation whatsoever. What the noble Lord has said is: "We will not reconsider. It is dead. Take it or leave it". There was some heated feeling on Tuesday about the conduct of this Committee. if I may say so to the honourable Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, one of the reasons for the protracted discussion was basically due to the fact that Ministers were not willing, or were unable, to give a satisfactory and full answer and we therefore had to go back time and time and time again to extract one crumb after another. It was not until about 2.30 a.m. (perhaps it was because my bleeding face appeared on the scene) that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, started to say: "I will look at it". Until then, my noble friends had been confronted with the same attitude: "We, the Government, have made up our minds. We are not prepared to reconsider this matter despite what has been said". The noble Lord may be being honest. He may know that his Minister, no matter what the noble Lord may say to him, will not change his mind.
I come back to the criticism I made earlier. This is a fundamental Amendment of principle involving many hundreds of thousands of people. All the noble Lord can say is: "Well, they can go to the courts". Where is the Minister who is responsible in this Department? He is not here to listen to the debate but no doubt he will read it and convey his views to his own Secretary of State. This is not the right way in which this Committee of your Lordships' House should be treated, particularly where there is an important Amendment of principle. It is not only discourteous, it is utterly unfair to those whose interests we are seeking to protect. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has made it clear that he will not reconsider this matter. I regret this because I have not the slightest shadow of doubt that his cohorts who are around the passageways will march into this Chamber, will vote without any knowledge of what is involved, and will perhaps not even know the number of the Amendment. Those of us who have listened or who have taken part in this debate and who understand it will be voted down. This is not Committee. I find myself speechless. I intend to divide the Committee.
6.54 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 99A) shall be agreed to?
LORD DRUMALBYN: It may be convenient for the Committee to adjourn for an hour, and therefore I beg to move that the House do now resume.
House resumed.
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 46; Not-Contents, 73.

CONTENTS

Archibald, L.

Gaitskell, Bs.

Nunburnholme, L.

Avebury, L.

Gardiner, L.

Phillips, Bs. [Teller.]

Barrington, V.

Garner, L.

Platt, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Garnsworthy, L.

Seear, Bs.

Blyton, L.

Granville-West, L.

Segal, L.

Brockway, L.

Greenwood of Rossendale, L.

Shackleton, L.

Carnock, L.

Hale, L.

Shepherd, L.

Champion, L.

Heycock, L.

Shinwell, L.

Crook, L.

Jacques, L. [Teller.]

Slater, L.

Davies of Leek, L.

Leatherland, L.

Somers, L.

Diamond, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, Bs.

Summerskill, Bs.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Loudoun, C.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Douglass of Cleveland, L.

McLeavy, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Energlyn, L.

Maelor, L.

White, Bs.

Evans of Hungershall, L.

Morris of Kenwood, L.

Wynne-Jones, L.

Fiske, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Cromartie, E.

Lyell, L.

Alport, L.

Daventry, V.

Macleod of Borve, Bs.

Atholl, D.

Denham, L.

Macpherson of Drumochter, L

Balerno, L.

Derwent, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Balfour, E.

Digby, L.

Milverton, L.

Balfour of Inchrye, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Monck, V.

Beauchamp, E.

Eccles, V.

Monckton of Brenchley, V.

Beaumont, L.

Elles, Bs.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.[Teller.]

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Elliot of Harwood, Bs.

Belstead, L.

Falmouth, V.

Northchurch, Bs.

Berkeley, Bs.

Ferrers, E. [Teller.]

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Birdwood, L.

Ferrier, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Gainford, L.

Reigate, L.

Brecon, L.

Goschen, V.

Rhyl, L.

Brooke of Cumnor, L.

Gowrie, E.

St. Just, L.

Coleraine, L.

Greenway, L.

Sandford, L.

Colville of Culross, V.

Grenfell, L.

Sandys, L.

Colwyn, L.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Sempill, Ly.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Strathclyde, L.

Courtown, E.

Teviot, L.

Cowley, E.

Hawke, L.

Vivian, L.

Craigavon, V.

Hertford, M.

Wakefield of Kendal, L.

Craigmyle, L.

Howard of Glossop, L.

Wolverton, L.

Crathorne, L.

Latymer, L.

Wrottesley, L.

Crawshaw, L.

Limerick, E.

Young, Bs.

Moved accordingly and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

MATRIMONIAL PROCEEDINGS (POLYGAMOUS MARRIAGES) BILL
7.0 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Baroness Summerskill.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD ALPORT in the Chair.]
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 [Matrimonial relief and declarations as to validity in respect of polygamous marriages: Scotland]:
On Question, Whether Clause 2 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD SIMON OF GLAISDALE: I must apologise to the noble Baroness and to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor that I have given them no notice of the question that I am going to raise, which is a question of Scottish law on which I am quite ignorant myself. I notice that in Clause 1(2)(f) the Bill extends relief in courts of summary jurisdiction, in my view quite rightly, and the noble Baroness's new clause dealing with Northern Ireland has a similar provision. But there is no such provision in the Scottish clause. It may be that there is no court in Scotland of summary jurisdiction which can award maintenance, but I should like to draw attention to that point in case, in spite of the close timetable, it needs consideration and can be considered.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: As the noble and learned Lord has said, I have had no notice of this, and as I am as innocent of Scottish law and legal procedure as he is, I think it is rather hard that I should be asked the question. But the noble and learned Lord will see that the court in Scotland is not precluded from entertaining proceedings for or granting any such decree as is mentioned in subsection (2) of that clause by reason only that the marriage to which the proceedings relate was entered into under a law which permits polygamy.
I am not sure that I can give without notice a compendium of the law of Scotland about summary jurisdiction, but I think that the following considerations should be borne in mind. The law of Scotland is the same as the law of England in two respects. A polygamous marriage cannot be validly contracted in Scotland, and a person of Scottish domicile cannot contract a valid polygamous marriage overseas. Such a marriage would undoubtedly be void, and as a result of this Bill, a Scottish court would be able to grant a decree of nullity in respect of it. There is no need to make provision for this in the Bill, because the. Scottish law of nullity has not been codified into a Statute. Clause 3 applies only to England and Wales,
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because the Nullity of Marriage Act 1971 extends only to England and Wales, and for the same reason in that clause there is no particular reason to include Northern Ireland.
The list of the decrees mentioned in subsection (2) of Clause 2 which relates to Scotland is limited, according to my information, to those decrees which the law of Scotland requires for the purposes of this Act. I am myself quite confident that it has been both exhaustive and exclusive. But what the particular answer is about summary jurisdiction courts in Scotland, I am not sure that I can say without notice.
LORD SIMON OF GLAISDALE: The noble and learned Lord—and I cannot blame him for this—in the first part of his answer did not deal with the point on which I was proceeding. It seems odd that subsection (2) of Clause 2 should be different from the English and Northern Irish sections. Certainly, so far as I know
"a decree of separation and aliment, adherence and aliment, or interim aliment"
can only be given in the Scottish High Court. It seems therefore, at first sight, that there is a lacuna here, and I hope that the matter can be considered.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I will look into the matter, so far as I can. But I do not believe there is a lacuna here, because, although I do not know the detail of it, I do know that the law of Scotland differs on this point. If the noble Lord had given me notice, I would have found out the answer and given it to him. As he did not, the best I can do is to find out from a Scottish lawyer and tell him what the answer is. That I will do.
Clause 2 agreed to.
7.10 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL BARONESS SUMMERSKILL moved Amendment No. 1:
After Clause 2, insert the following new clause:
Matrimonial relief and declarations of validity in respect of polygamous marriages: Northern Ireland.
".—(1) A court in Northern Ireland shall not be precluded from granting matrimonial relief or making a declaration concerning the validity of a marriage by reason only that the marriage in question was entered into under a law which permits polygamy.

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(2) In this section "matrimonial relief" means—

(a) a decree of divorce, nullity of marriage or judicial separation;

(b) a decree under section 12 of the Matrimonial Causes Act (Northern Ireland) 1939 (dissolution of marriage on presumption of death);

(c) an order under section 4 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act (Northern Ireland) 1951 (wilful neglect to maintain);

(d) an order made under any provision of the said Act of 1939, or under section 4 of the said Act of 1951, which confers a power exercisable in connection with, or in connection with any proceedings for, any such decree or order as is mentioned in the foregoing paragraphs;

(e) an order under the Summary Jurisdiction (Separation and Maintenance) Act (Northern Ireland) 1945.

(3) In this section "a declaration concerning the validity of a marriage" means—

(a) a declaration that a marriage is valid or invalid; and

(b) any other declaration involving a determination as to the validity of a marriage,

being a declaration in a decree granted under the Legitimacy Declaration Act (Ireland) 1868 or a declaration made in proceedings brought by virtue of rules of court relating to declaratory judgments.
(4) This section has effect whether or not either party to the marriage in question has for the time being any spouse additional to the other party; and provision may be made by rules of court—

(a) for requiring notice of proceedings brought by virtue of this section to be served on any such other spouse; and

(b) for conferring on any such other spouse the right to he heard in any such proceedings,

in such cases as may be specified in the rules."
The noble Baroness said: I think this Amendment is self-explanatory. The purpose of this clause is to make for Northern Ireland provision corresponding to that contained in Clauses 1 and 2 for England and Wales and Scotland respectively. I beg to move.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I would advise the Committee to accept this Amendment. We have gone through all the processes of consultation which are necessary, and this is desired as much in Northern Ireland as it is here.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 3 [Amendment of section 1 of Nullity of Marriage Act 1971]:
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: Clause No. 3, Amendment No. 2, Lord Simon of Glaisdale.
LORD SIMON OF GLAISDALE: Are we not speaking to the Motion, Whether Clause 3 shall stand part of the Bill?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: No, I think not. With respect, I am now not on the Woolsack and can possibly rise to a point of Order. No, we are not dealing with Clause 3 stand part. We are amending Clause 3 before we discuss Clause 3 stand part; and that is the ordinary procedure.
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: I am directed on this. The Question is, Whether Clause 3 shall stand part of the Bill?
On Question, Whether Clause 3 shall stand part of the Bill?
7.12 p.m.
LORD SIMON OF GLAISDALE: As I may now speak to what I thought I was about to speak to, on this matter I venture to raise two queries, of which I have given both the noble Baroness and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor notice. The purpose of Clause 3 is to enable the court to annul a marriage which is polygamous, if either party was domiciled in England at the time of the marriage. It is dealt with in the Law Commission Paper, paragraphs 18 and 19, and they suggest in effect that the provision of the Bill does no more than give statutory form to the existing rule. That was repeated by the noble and learned Lord on the last clause, to which it was not in fact relevant. I myself have great doubt whether they are right on that. I do not think it matters. I am sure the noble Baroness is right to include the provision.
But I have myself very serious doubts on two matters. The first is the last sentence of Clause 3:
"For the purposes of paragraph (d) of this section a marriage may be polygamous although at its inception neither party has any spouse additional to the other."
The intention of that, as I think, is to include within the relief of the Bill not only polygamous marriages but also

1191
potentially polygamous marriages, with which I venture respectfully to agree. But I do not believe that it does that. The words "at its inception" are liable to be construed in this way: that what you must show is that neither party had another spouse at any time during the marriage. I am sure that that is not the intention; the intention, as I think, is that it is sufficient for relief if either spouse could at any time during the marriage have another spouse. But the words
"may be polygamous although at its inception neither party has any spouse additional to the other"
seem to me to exclude the case where the marriage is potentially polygamous at its inception and there has been no after-taken spouse at all. I hope that that matter can be considered. As I say, I gave notice of it. The words to which I venture to take exception are "may be polygamous" and "although at its inception" et cetera. It suggests that only polygamous marriages are within the Bill if at some time during the currency of the marriage one party has a spouse additional to the one who is seeking relief. I repeat, I do not believe that that is the intention—that it must be actually polygamous at some time—and I hope there may be an opportunity to consider the wording of that particular sentence.
The second question I wanted to ask is this. What is the legal situation if someone domiciled in Scotland enters into a potentially polygamous marriage? This is the point that the noble and learned Lord spoke to on my previous Amendment, and obviously the Law Commission considered that such a marriage would be invalid. I myself think that that is extremely doubtful. It depends on two cases at first instance which have been found very puzzling; one called re Bethell and the other Ali. It also seems to be difficult to reconcile with the generally held view that whether a marriage is monogamous or polygamous or potentially polygamous is referred to the law of the place of celebration and not to the law of the domicile, whereas this seems to proceed on the basis that it is the law of the domicile which prevents a Scotsman from entering into a potentially polygamous marriage. Unless that is right, unless no domiciled Scotsman can enter into a potentially polygamous
1192
marriage, whatever his religion and whatever the place of celebration which may permit polygamy, it seems to me again there is a lacuna in the Bill which ought to be filled.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Perhaps I ought to speak next; I do not really know. It is quite true that the noble and learned Lord gave notice of this point. I am advised, and so far as the law of England is concerned I am convinced, that there is no need to alter the words of the Bill in either respect. If I may deal with the points in the order in which the noble and learned Lord raised them, the first question related to the last sentence in Clause 3 of the Bill, the sentence reading:
"For the purposes of paragraph (d)"—
which is an amendment to the Nullity of Marriage Act 1971—
"… a marriage may be polygamous although at its inception neither party has any spouse additional to the other."
The point I think is this. We are dealing with nullity of marriage and the question whether a marriage is to be treated as a polygamous or a monogamous marriage can only be decided at the time of its inception. That is the time when the marriage is celebrated. What the last sentence says is, if at that point of time it is polygamous then it is void under the section. At any other point in time, if somebody enters into relations of some matrimonial kind with some second person it is not the first marriage which becomes polygamous ex post facto; the polygamousness, or monogamousness, of the first marriage, or of any marriage, must be decided at the moment at which the marriage is celebrated.
What the last sentence of Clause 3 says—and it says no more—is that if at that moment the marriage is polygamous, the mere fact that actual polygamy is not being committed at that moment because the man has no other wife does not prevent the polygamous character of the marriage from operating. I am advised that the last sentence of Clause 3 is simply to make it clear that the phrase "polygamous marriage" is not confined to cases of actual polygamy but includes a marriage which, from the outset, is potentially polygamous in character, although there are at that time only one husband and one wife. My view, taken after having had notice from the noble and

1193
learned Lord and having taken counsel with those who drafted the Bill, is that Clause 3 as drafted achieves that purpose and achieves it perfectly satisfactorily.
With regard to the second of the two points made by the noble and learned Lord—the law of Scotland—I fear that to some extent the point is one in which the noble and learned Lord has not the same expertise as he undoubtedly has in the law of England. Nor have I, so to some extent the Committee is in the position of the blind leading the blind. But I have this advantage, that I again have had notice of this point. I have taken counsel, and the counsel that I have had is that the law of Scotland is the same as the law of England: a polygamous marriage cannot be validly contracted in Scotland and a person of Scottish domicile cannot contract a valid polygamous marriage overseas. Such a marriage would undoubtedly be void under Scottish law and as a result of this Bill the Scottish court would be able to grant a decree of nullity in respect of it. I am advised that there is no need to make special provision for this in the Bill because the Scottish law of nullity has not been codified in Statute. But as the noble and learned Lord and the Committee will remember, we did codify the English law of nullity in 1971, and it is for that reason that the law needs to be changed in Clause 3, because the law of England being codified in that way requires this additional Amendment. That is the advice which I received. So far as the English law is concerned, I am satisfied about it, and I have no reason to doubt the validity of the advice I have received about Scottish law.
Clause 3 agreed to.
7.22 p.m.
LORD SIMON OF GLAISDALE LORD SIMON OF GLAISDALE moved Amendment No. 2:
After Clause 3, insert the following new clause.
Amendment of section 2 of Divorce Reform Act 1969 c. 55
". In subsection (1) of section 2 of the Divorce Reform Act 1969 (which states what facts a petitioner may satisfy as proof of breakdown of marriage leading to divorce) after paragraph (e) there shall be added—
"(f) that the respondent being the husband has married again after his marriage to the petitioner and that the other wife so married is still married to the respondent
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at the commencement of the proceedings, or that any other wife of such respondent husband was alive at the time of the solemnisation of such marriage and is still married to the respondent at the commencement of the proceedings."".
The noble and learned Lord said: The main purpose of the Bill is to enable the court to grant matrimonial relief to a spouse who was married according to a law which permits of polygamy. For the reasons that I ventured to give when this matter was debated last summer, I entirely agree with that proposal. Mr. Justice Lawson, however, as he now is would have restricted the relief to financial relief. He would not have extended it to direct relief from the bonds of matrimony so contracted; in other words, contracted polygamously. He felt that it would be a direct recognition of the validity of an institution; namely, polygamous marriage, which was fundamentally repugnant to the people of this country (as I believe it to be) because it is degrading of the status of women.
The majority of the Law Commission, although not agreeing with that argument, saw the force of it, as did indeed the noble and learned Lord when he spoke on the matter last summer. I myself ventured to take the same view, though I felt that the arguments in favour of the measure as proposed by the majority and by the noble Baroness carried the day. Nevertheless, it remains a fact that polygamy is an institution which is really repugnant to the social life of this country.
As the noble and learned Lord pointed out, this Bill does not allow—nor does the present law allow—a polygamous marriage to be contracted in this country. He has been advised that no-one domiciled in this country can contract a polygamous marriage, as to which I confess myself far from convinced, in spite of the advice that he has received. In any case, the fact remains that someone may have validly contracted a polygamous marriage in a place which permits of polygamous marriages and which is valid by his own personal law, and if he comes to this country he is married polygamously. He may, of course, bring more than one wife to this country, although I understand from the Law Commission Report that that is a very unusual circumstance. But certainly what he may do is to bring one polygamously married wife

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to this country, leaving another one, say, in his domicile of origin. If he becomes domiciled in this country it will not affect the marriage. It would if he only had one spouse, because according to one decision at first instance that would convert a potentially polygamous marriage into an irredeemably monogamous marriage. But if he is already married polygamously, so far as I know he would continue to be married polygamously. Certainly that would be so if he did not acquire a domicile in this country. That would mean that he could live with a wife in this country and, say, visit another wife in another country and the wife in this country would have no relief at all. She could not obtain a divorce under the existing law because sexual intercourse with a polygamous wife is not adultery. She could not prove desertion if the husband intended to return to her after visiting the other wife. The only possible relief open to her would be to wait five years in separation and then go ahead for divorce.
The new clause that I venture to lay before your Lordships allows a wife an immediate divorce on the very ground of polygamy. That is not an original proposal. It follows the Indian Hindu Marriage Act, although much more restrictively. That Act of 1955 abolished polygamy so far as Hindu Indians were concerned, and various other similar sects. Therefore no future marriage could take place polygamously, and any actually monogamous union was converted into an irredeemably monogamous union. But the Act—as my new clause does—went on to provide that anyone married polygamously or potentially polygamously could on that very ground obtain a divorce. Where the new clause that I have ventured to propose is more restrictive is that I have limited it to cases where not only was the original marriage polygamous but it is still polygamous at the time of the proceedings. It seems to me that what was permissible for India would hardly be proper in this country in deference to the different customs of different people, but it also seems to me that we should entitle a wife who is polygamously married and who remains polygamously married to terminate the union.
I know it will be said—because I had a courteous answer from the noble and
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learned Lord's Department—that that might be difficult to reconcile with the Divorce Reform Act 1969, which lays down in Section 1 that breakdown of marriage is to be the sole ground for divorce. I do not agree with that objection because Section 2 of that Act goes on to say:
"The court hearing a petition for divorce shall not hold the marriage to have broken down irretrievably unless …"
one of five conditions is satisfied, and my proposal would merely add a sixth. It goes on to say in subsection (3) of that section:
"If the court is satisfied on the evidence of any such fact as is mentioned in subsection (1) of this section …"
any of the facts of those five matters to which I would add a sixth—
"… then, unless it is satisfied on all the evidence that the marriage has not broken down irretrievably, it shall … grant a decree.."
that is, a decree of divorce. The new clause I propose fits perfectly well into that. I appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, and the Lord Chancellor have always seen the point that one spouse need only say, "I will not in any circumstances live with the other," and the marriage has broken down irretrievably. No court can gainsay that. One cannot say, "We have seen your husband in the witness box and he is a most charming man. We have seen your wife in the witness box and she is a most charming woman. We find it difficult to believe that the marriage has really broken down irretrievably." The spouse has only to say, "I am sorry, it is not your opinion but mine that matters. You may like him or her very much, but I do not and, what is more, I will not live with him or her any longer."
If a polygamously married wife were to say that to the court, then the court would, in my view, hold that the marriage had broken down irretrievably. It seems to me that if we really mean what we say—that polygamy is repugnant to the social life of this country as degrading to women—then some such provision as I have ventured to propose to your Lordships should be inserted in the Bill. I hope that it can be accepted as it stands because I do not want to do anything that might prejudice the passing of the Bill, which I regard as a valuable measure of social reform. I beg to move.
7.35 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: I was particularly glad to hear the last sentence of the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, in which he said he did not wish to prejudice the Bill. I confess that when I first saw his Amendment—he will agree that we have had very little time to consider it—I was somewhat apprehensive lest tomorrow, when the Bill goes to another place, it might provoke discussion and consequently jeopardise the Bill. I am therefore pleased to know that the noble and learned Lord feels as strongly as I do on this score.
I listened with interest to the remarks of the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, when he said that he had had to take counsel. I always think that his wisdom is so profound that he never needs to take counsel in any legal matter. I, too, have had to take counsel, and no doubt my information, because it comes from the Lord Chancellor's Department, is already known to the noble and learned Lord. However, I think that in the circumstances there should be a record of it in Hansard.
It would appear that the proposed clause has two limbs. The first would enable a wife to obtain a divorce if her husband took another wife after marrying her. The second would enable a second or subsequent wife to obtain a divorce on the sole ground that her husband had a previous marriage subsisting when she married him.
LORD SIMON OF GLAISDALE: And is still subsisting.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: In either case, the other marriage must be still subsisting at the commencement of the proceedings. It seems to me that neither of these limbs can realistically be regarded as evidence of breakdown, which is now the sole ground for divorce under the 1969 Act, into which the new provision would be inserted.
Under the first limb, the husband has done what his wife well knew he might do when she married him—namely, take another wife. Under the second limb it is the mere fact that she has herself married him when he had another wife which enables her to seek a divorce. These are novel principles which do not fit easily into the concept of breakdown.
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Furthermore, the proposal seems to conflict with the basis of the Law Commission's Report, which is that family relationships validly created abroad should be recognised here unless there are compelling reasons of public policy to the contrary. Their recommendations were that such relationships should be subjected to the normal English matrimonial law and not that they should be treated differently.
Whether public opinion would endorse this proposal is by no means certain. The leaders of the non-Christian communities living here might find it objectionable that a marriage valid under their law could be dissolved on grounds relating not so much to the conduct of the parties as to the essential characteristics of the marriage. Moreover, a divorce on those grounds might not be recognised in the parties' country of origin, and more "limping" marriages might be created.
English public opinion might also be divided. The wife of a polygamous marriage could obtain a divorce under this proposal on no other ground than she wished to be free from the marriage. An English woman cannot do that and I am sure, knowing and admiring the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, so much, that he would not like to establish this discrimination. She, the English woman, has to establish one of the grounds of breakdown and may have to wait five years.
It seems that the Indian Hindu Marriage Act is not a good precedent. It was passed to stamp out polygamy among Hindus but it had no effect on persons living in India of other religions. A Muslim woman cannot get a divorce in India on these grounds, nor, so far as is known, in any other country in the world. There is certainly no need for legislation to discourage polygamy in the United Kingdom because it is not permissible here. I therefore feel that the noble and learned Lord's proposal must be justified on some other ground than a mere comparison with the Indian Hindu Marriage Act. The noble and learned Lord will agree that a substantial new principle is therefore at issue and cannot properly be decided without most careful research and consultation.
It was clear to me from what he said and from what the noble and learned Lord Chancellor said that even with the

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profound wisdom of such eminent members of the legal profession, questions of this kind did pose other questions of such importance that it will take some time to examine it very carefully. Therefore I do ask the noble and learned Lord to leave this matter for this consideration because the reaction of the other place is unpredictable. We who have been Members of that other place know what can happen on Fridays and I am quite sure that my noble and learned friend does not wish to imperil this Measure and I do ask him therefore at this stage to withdraw his Amendment.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I can never listen to the noble Baroness on a legal subject without thanking my stars that she never went to the Bar and adopted instead the humane profession of medicine because all of us would have been out of a living if she had really been given a chance. I doubt whether she is ambitious that way—
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: It is too late.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: —but if she did I feel sure she would sweep to the top in a very short time.
I should like to join with her in a plea to my noble and learned friend not to pursue this Amendment at this stage and I do so broadly on similar grounds. I do not want to be pedantic but I must point out, in support of what the noble Baroness has stated, what the long Title of this Bill is about. It is not a Bill to alter the substantive law on divorce in this country. It does in one respect amend the Nullity of Marriage Act which is not the same as divorce. It gives matrimonial relief which includes divorce. It does not alter the grounds of divorce and what the noble Lord is seeking to do—and it is not a matter of pedantry; it is a matter of reality—is to go outside the ambit of the Bill altogether. It would be out of order in the other place and will only become in order in this place if we alter the title of the Bill.
This is rather a serious matter. We passed a special suspension of Standing Orders in order to allow the Bill to get to the other place for ratification tomorrow if need be as it has got to be amended in one respect, as the noble Lady has already done, and now we are being asked by my noble and learned
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friend to add a provision to the Bill which is actually outside its ambit and to send it back to the other place to-morrow. I must beg him not to try that. It is a very piratical thing to do, if he will forgive me for saying so. I will come to the merits of this in a moment.
This Bill was after all fully ventilated in this House last year. It was drafted on the basis of a Law Commission Report which has been very well known for much longer than that—I forget the exact date of it. It has gone all the way up the other place. Its terms were perfectly well known to my noble and learned friend and at any time from the first delivery of this Report from the Law Commission my noble and learned friend had only to communicate with me, or with my predecessor, to say that he wanted to achieve this particular result, and we could have taken the necessary counsel to do it. We would have at any rate given it a very fair consideration coming from so eminent a source as my noble and learned friend. But to do it now at the notice of something like 48 hours is to put us in an impossible position. I should never like to alter the substantive law on divorce even at the suggestion of my noble and learned friend without consulting the judges of the Divorce Division through the President and I could not possibly have time to do that. The Law Commission cannot be consulted in the time.
As the noble Baroness has pointed out and as my noble and learned friend will remember from his less respectable days as a member of a political Party in another place, the Commons could quite easily resent the sudden intrusion of this Amendment into the Bill asking them to pass it at the last moment. The noble Baroness is right; it departs from the basic approach of the Law Commission Report, which was that the status of a marriage validly acquired overseas by persons of foreign domicile should be respected. That was their design. The Bill is designed to extend matrimonial relief to them but the Bill is not designed to cast any doubt on the validity or propriety of their marriage previously entered into.
I would have thought myself that at any rate in some of the circumstances postulated by my noble and learned friend divorce would have been available to the

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wife treated in that particular way. It is true that sexual intercourse between polygamous partners cannot be adultery to one other partner of the triangle—if one can put it like that—but if he keeps a wife in two countries one of which is England, I would have thought that the English wife, with a certain amount of sympathy from the Divorce Court, could have said that the marriage was irretrievably broken down on the basis—and here I quote:
"… that the respondent has behaved in such a way that the petitioner cannot reasonably be expected to live with the respondent".
I would have thought that if he did visit India from time to time to visit his polygamous wife, came back to England and expected his wife to live with him indefinitely without getting a divorce, that there was anyway a reasonable prospect of her going to the Divorce Court and saying that he behaved in a way up with which his English wife cannot be expected to put. Of course, that would be a question to be thrashed out in the courts. But in the meantime we have to deal with the Amendment. I agree with the noble Baroness that the provision may very well be regarded as objectionable by leaders of non-Christian communities here. They are entitled to expect their personal law to be respected unless there is good reason to the contrary.
It could well be objectionable to English opinion here because it would put Muslim women in a privileged position. It would be open to them to bring divorce proceedings as soon as their jurisdictional qualifications were satisfied without bringing in the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage. Others of the population have to satisfy the breakdown requirements. It discriminates between the sexes. And, as the noble Baroness has also pointed out, there is the fact that the Hindu Marriage Act in India is not open to non-Hindus and it represents not a real contribution to the law on Christian marriage but a social policy of the Indian Government with which all of us must sympathise, to discourage Hindus from having more than one wife, which they do for various reasons, some of which are good and some of which may be more questionable.
All this, I would have said, leads me to reinforce the noble Baroness's plea.
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This proposal forms no part of the particular law reform which the Bill is about. It is no part of any necessary consequence of the law reform which this Bill is about; it relates to the law of divorce and would need the closest consideration before it could be accepted in principle. The Law Commission have not considered it, the Divorce Judges have not considered it, the various interested bodies have not considered it, and I would suggest that the best thing to do if one wants to pursue a separate proposal of this kind, is to put it forward in the ordinary way as a potential law reform and not to seek to tag it on as part of this Bill.
LORD SIMON OF GLAISDALE: I am accustomed to eat out of the hands of the noble Baroness and my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. I confess that this evening I have been far less than convinced by the arguments of either of them, which were indeed to some extent mutually inconsistent and contradictory. However, I see no purpose in arguing the matter in detail. As I assured the noble Baroness—and I adhere to this—I shall take no step that might endanger the future of this Bill in another place. Therefore I do not propose to pursue the Amendment, and I beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 4 [Short title, interpretation and extent]:
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL BARONESS SUMMERSKILL moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 3, line 26, leave out subsection (3) and insert—
("(3) In subsection (2) of this section "enactment" includes an enactment of the Parliament of Northern Ireland; and for the purposes of section 6 of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 this Act shall, so far as it relates to matters within the powers of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, be deemed to be an Act passed before the appointed day within the meaning of that section.")—(Baroness Summerskill.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with the Amendments; Report received.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to Resolution) Bill read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.
[The Sitting was suspended at eight minutes before eight o'clock and resumed at eight o'clock.]

HOUSING FINANCE BILL
8.2 p.m.
House again in Committee.
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD GRENFELL): I understand that Amendments 99B to 99D are not being moved. There is a mistake in the Marshalled List, and Amendment No. 100 should be in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON
moved Amendment No. 100:
Page 134, line 46, after ("been") insert ("or may be").
The noble Lord said: I should like to speak to Amendments Nos. 100 and 101 together. These Amendments are consequential on a similar Amendment made in the House of Commons. Some of the directions which it is intended to make under paragraph 16 of this Schedule will deal with circumstances where the tenant might be entitled both to supplementary benefit and also to a rebate or allowance, and it is intended that he should have the option, if this is to his advantage, to receive a rebate or allowance on the basis that he is not receiving supplementary benefit, in preference to receiving supplementary benefit plus a rebate or allowance under the normal arrangements for long-term supplementary benefit tenants under paragraph 19 of Schedule 3. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Amendment moved—
Page 135, line 2. after ("been") insert ("or may be").—(Lord Mowbray and Stourton.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON moved Amendment No. 102:
Page 135, line 45, leave out ("make") and insert ("grant").
The noble Lord said: I should like to speak to Amendments Nos. 102, 103, 104 and 105 at the same time. These Amendments are all helpful to the exercise of this Bill. The first two are drafting Amendments, and Amendments 104 and 105 are purely administration details. I beg to move.
LORD SHEPHERD: These look fairly substantial Amendments, but the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton,
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passes them off and says they are administration details. He might give a little further explanation to the Committee.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: The first two are purely drafting Amendments. Which Amendments does the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, want me to explain?
LORD SHEPHERD: Amendments Nos. 104 and 105.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Amendment moved—
Page 135, line 47, leave out ("make, or refrain from making"), and insert ("grant, or refrain from granting").—(Lord Mowbray and Stourton.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON moved Amendment No. 104:
Page 136, line 12, at end insert—
("(4A) Without prejudice to paragraph 16 above, the Secretary of State may give directions to authorities in general or any individual authority or description of authority requiring them in such cases and circumstances as may be specified in the direction to grant a rebate or allowance greater than, or less than, the amount required by or under their scheme, or to grant, or refrain from granting, a rebate or allowance where the provisions of the scheme provide otherwise, and to pay to the Secretary of State such amount, to be estimated in such manner as may be so specified, as reflects any liability to give relief to the authority's tenants which is transferred in accordance with the directions from the authority to the Secretary of State.")
The noble Lord said: The new paragraph 17(4A) and the Amendment to paragraph 17(5) are inter-related and are intended to ensure a smooth transition to the new arrangements for granting rebates and allowances to persons receiving supplementary benefit under Part II of Schedules 3 and 4 respectively. When an authority first introduces its rebate or allowance scheme under the new legislation, the transitional arrangements envisaged in the existing paragraph 17(4) of Schedule 4 will be essential, as otherwise severe administrative difficulty will be caused to the local offices of the Department of Health and Social Security in attempting to transfer many thousands of cases to an authority in a single operation when the authority's rebate and allowance schemes come into force.
Accordingly, unless there are transitional arrangements for a gradual handover of cases, there is a danger that there will be overpayments from public funds towards help with rent—for example, the authority might be granting a rebate to a tenant who was still receiving supplementary benefit in respect of his full rent. Most authorities are expected to cooperate in (his matter with the Department of Health and Social Security under the provisions for making voluntary arrangements in paragraph 17(4), and, indeed, authorities can be expected to find such arrangements beneficial to themselves by spreading the administrative load of many new rebate or allowance assessments over a reasonable period. A small number of authorities are showing reluctance to enter into voluntary arrangements—that is, they propose to grant the appropriate rebate under Part II of Schedule 3 to all supplementary benefit tenants immediately, with effect from the coming into operation of their scheme. The Department of Health and Social Security is extremely concerned that such a course, particularly if adopted by many authorities, could result in disruption of its local offices and overpayment of supplementary benefit to tenants who receive their rebate before the Department of Health and Social Security has had a chance to adjust the supplementary benefit. The new paragraph 17(4A) will ensure that such disruption does not occur by providing that the Secretary of State may direct that authorities are not to grant rebates or allowances to tenants to whom Part II of Schedule 3 applies until they are notified by the Department of Health and Social Security that the latter is ready to adjust supplementary benefit to reflect the new rebate or allowance from an agreed date. The Amendments to the existing paragraph 17(5) are mainly consequential on the new paragraph 17(4A).
In practice, transitional arrangements with the Department of Health and Social Security, whether under paragraph 17(4) or 17(4A), will take the same form. The authority will refrain from granting a new rebate or allowance or from altering an existing one for a tenant to whom Part II of Schedule 3 applies. It will instead continue to grant any existing rebate or allowance, or none at all, as
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the case may be. The Department of Health and Social Security will continue to base supplementary benefit assessment on the rent in payment until it is in a position to amend the assessment, usually at the time when the supplementary benefit order book is due for renewal. The authority will then pay the Department of Health and Social Security a lump sum calculated on a formula basis in respect of the rebates or allowances withheld under the arrangements. Any sums paid under such arrangements to the Department of Health and Social Security will be taken into account in determining the authority's entitlement to rebate or allowance subsidy. The amount of help received by a supplementary benefit tenant towards his rent will not be affected in any way by these arrangements. I hope the noble Lord will be content with that explanation about the administrative problem. I beg to move.
LORD SHEPHERD: I can now understand why the noble Lord sought to move this Amendment with so few words by saying that it is an administrative arrangement. I sought to take in what he said. I am afraid that I did not, but I will certainly not embarrass the noble Lord by asking for further explanation. But it is really extraordinary that the Bill has been through another place, which is responsible for seeing that public money is not lost or abused in any way, and the Government have only now discovered the need for this Amendment and have brought it before this House which has no power or responsibility in regard to finance. As I said, that is extraordinary, although perhaps it is not, in view of the ineptitude not of the noble Lord but of the Government in general. I shall look at the report of what he said and will see whether it is necessary to come back to it at a later stage.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: I beg to move Amendment No. 105.
Amendment moved—
Page 136, line 14, leave out from ("allowances") to ("above") in line 18 and insert ("granted by an authority for a year or other period shall include an amount which in the opinion of the Secretary of State represents the rebates or allowances which would have been granted but for any arrangements under

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sub-paragraph (4) or directions under sub-paragraph (4A)").—(Lord Mowbray and Stourton.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 4,, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 21 [Extent to which authorities may depart from model schemes]:
8.13 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved Amendment No. 105A:
Page 26, line 17, leave out subsection (5).
The noble Lord said: When we were discussing the last Amendment before we adjourned, I hazarded the guess, which proved correct, that we should be "clobbered", to use a crude and un-Parliamentary word, by the influx of noble Lords who had not participated in or listened to any part of the debate. That was an Amendment of very considerable principle and I was very unhappy. My guess is that the number of noble Lords opposite who were present in that debate was less than 20, and yet there were 73 in the Division Lobby. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, will also remember that I was bitterly critical of the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, the one Minister in this House who has departmental responsibility for this Bill. But the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, was able to enter this Chamber and vote.
LORD DIAMOND: Which way?
LORD SHEPHERD: It is obvious. The noble Lord opposite may laugh, but the Amendment which we were then considering was of great importance to a vast number of people who may be affected by this Bill. It was concerned with the normal right of a man or woman in this country to have some system of appeal when he or she is in conflict with an authority. If the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, had been present, he might have been impressed by the argument but he was absent, as he is now absent. I must tell the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, that, despite all the respect which I have for him, since he does not belong to the Department concerned, since he may not have the ear of the Secretary of State to the same extent as the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and since the Chamber is again nearly empty, I do not intend to press this or the next
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Amendment, which raise a matter of very considerable principle, or to speak further to them.
If the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, had been present, I might have been prepared to argue with him. I might have sought to persuade him to go back to his Secretary of State. But he is not present, the Chamber is nearly empty, and it would be a waste of time to divide, only to be "clobbered" again by those who had not listened to the debate, if I considered the reply unsatisfactory.
This is one of the difficulties of taking a Committee stage on the Floor of the House at this time. We as a Committee are not being treated properly by Government Ministers, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, will convey to the noble Lord who is now acting as Leader of the House the view which I have just expressed and which I think most Members will share. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, cannot be held responsible, but I do not believe that Committees of this House should be run in this way, or that an important Amendment dealing with a matter of high principle should be discussed under these circumstances. I beg to move.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I do not want to detain the Committee, but may I make two brief points? First, one of my noble friends counted the numbers in the Committee before the Division was taken, and there were more on our side than on the opposite side. I do not make any complaint at the moment of the fact that the noble Lord has only one Back-Bencher present, who is outnumbered by the Liberals. Secondly, I am in charge of the Bill, I have been put in charge by the Government, I am the Minister without Portfolio, I have no departmental responsibility of my own, and I am in a position to make representations to any Minister. What is more, my noble friend Lord Sandford is not a Housing Minister; he is a Minister of the Department of the Environment as a whole. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, that I rebut absolutely his statement that the Committee is not being treated properly. The noble Lord knows how difficult this Bill is, and I can assure him that we have been working very hard on it, have been in contact with Ministers and shall continue to be.
LORD SHEPHERD: I acquit the noble Lord, and one point about him is his utter devotion to his duty in this House. As regards the numbers, he may well look at my side and compare it with his side, but I would ask him only to look at the numerical strength of the two Parties. I suspect, if he wants to compare figures one with another, that there were proportionately more Members of my Party present, taking the Party as a whole. What I am complaining about is that there is very little point in proceeding, when one is dealing with matters of principle and problems of ordinary people, if one knows that one will be defeated by an influx of noble Lords who have not participated in the debate.
My criticism of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, is made in all seriousness. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has said—and I fully accept it—that he is in charge of the Bill. But I have been a Minister and have also had to take Bills of a Department to which I did not belong. The noble Lord will no doubt agree that one has often more influence within the Department to which one is accredited than a more senior Minister outside the Department. As a Minister of the Department one is in constant contact with the officials of the Department and they are the people who at the end of the day weigh up the pros and cons of the issue and advise the Minister. I do not wish to delay the Committee. I have made my protest. It was not made lightly. It was in no way meant to be a criticism of or any reflection upon the noble Lord's position in this House or in the Government.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, but as the person in charge of the Bill I am responsible for who is on the Front Bench at any one time. I think the noble Lord will get better answers from my colleagues who are not on the Bench at present if from time to time they take a rest and bring themselves fully up to date with the various parts of the Bill. This is a very common procedure and has always been done by Governments. Bills are divided into Parts and when the Minister in charge may have to be present for most of the time the other Ministers can come in to deal
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with points on those Parts for which they are responsible.
LORD SHEPHERD: I fully accept that. I would not wish to protract this debate. One always accepts that a Minister requires a rest and moments for consultation, but, if I may say so, the Minister of this Department has been noticeable more for his absence than for his presence.
LORD HYLTON: Before we leave this clause I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, whether he can make any estimate or even a guess of the number of authorities which might need to exceed the 110 per cent. of their standard amount of rebates and allowances.
LORD SHEPHERD: I might remind the Committee that we have had a very wide exchange of views. At the beginning of my discourse I moved the Amendment formally. I now beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 21 agreed to.
Clause 22 [The permitted totals of rebates and allowances]:
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved Amendment No. 106:
Page 26, line 43, leave out ("subsection (9)") and insert ("subsections (9) and (10)").
The noble Lord said: This Amendment makes the provision of subsection (4) subject to the new subsection (10) as well as to subsection (9). It was added at the Report stage in another place by Government Amendment 59 and is consequential on that Amendment. It simply puts the situation in order. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 22, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 23 [The Advisory Committee on Rent Rebates and Rent Allowances]:
8.26 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved Amendment No. 106B.
Page 28, line 18, after ("appointed") insert ("on the advice of the local authority associations").
The noble Lord said: Subsection (2) of this Clause says:
"The Committee shall consist of a chairman appointed by the Secretary of State and

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such number of other members so appointed as the Secretary of State may from time to time determine …".
Although we are moving this Amendment I must say that on reflection I am not certain that the wording is correct because I am not sure that the Secretary of State should take the advice of local authority associations. Perhaps the noble Lord when he comes to reply will take it that what we have in mind here is "after consultation with the local authority associations". If he will reply on that basis I shall not press the Amendment. I feel that in the appointment of this advisory committee on rent rebates and rent allowances there should be some form of consultation with bodies which represent local authority associations which will have to administer the scheme and which will be aware of the difficulties and the problems that may arise or may not be met by the proposals in the Bill.
LORD AVEBURY: Whilst not disagreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, that the local authority associations should be consulted not only in regard to the appointment of a chairman but in regard to the other members appointed by the Secretary of State, it is equally important that the interests of tenants should be borne in mind in the composition of this extremely important body. The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has drawn attention to defects in the wording of this Amendment. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, when he looks at the phraseology of the subsection, will consider if there is any way in which important bodies such as the Association of London Housing Estates could be brought into consultation.
The noble Lord will be aware that the Association of London Housing Estates asked for an interview at an earlier stage when the Bill was in another place and was refused on the grounds that Ministers could not see one association representing tenants without laying themselves open to a series of demands from all the cities of Britain in which this happens to be a large problem. I do not subscribe to that view. The A.L.H.E. represents such a large number of tenants in our capital that it would have been, to say the least, courteous if Ministers had agreed to meet
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its representatives. For that reason and because it has had so little opportunity to make its point of view known, except in writing, to Ministers I should like to see, in addition to local authority associations, provision being made in this subsection for consultation with bodies representing the interests of tenants.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: Clause 22 is absolutely outrageous. The Secretary of State is taking great authority unto himself in appointing this committee and the rent officers without consultation with anybody in the field of housing. Hundreds of these Committees are going to be set up and he is going to do this all by himself. It does not make sense.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: I hope that we are going to get some detailed information from the Minister as to how the Secretary of State is going to set about this business. Perhaps he will be able to give us some indication if there is any intention to consult and with whom. He ought to consult with local authority associations. I was at the Annual Conference of National and Local Government Officers at Eastbourne yesterday and I was handed a verbatim report of what one of Her Majesty's Ministers—I think it was Mr. Graham Page—had said to them when addressing the conference the day before. He indicated that the Government had always been prepared to meet responsible bodies of the associations such as the one I have mentioned. The associations representing local authorities—the A.M.C., the U.D.C.A., and the R.D.C.A.—have very good reason to resent a number of features in this Bill. It has been raised again and again. If I may say so, although we have repeatedly asked we have had no reply to the question—and we shall have to keep coming back to it—why the representations they have made to the Government on certain matters have been ignored, why they have not been met in any way at all. There has been a complete absence of information as to why the Government have rejected the representations. I do not think I need go into detail, because we have raised it again and again and I do not want to repeat it; but while I am on my feet I want to support the plea made by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that we ought to get some indication whether the Secretary of State is going to consult with those responsible associations speaking

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for large numbers of tenants. There is the Association of London Housing Estates. Nobody who knows anything about them can question their standing and their sense of responsibility. I hope we are going to get something helpful on the Record here, so that local authorities and tenants can feel that the Secretary of State is not going to be a law unto himself in this matter but is going to consult and take into consideration the advice given.
BARONESS SEEAR: This is surely once again a very important general principle, as to what the advisory committee are supposed to do. Ever since we have had this extensive legislation which deals with matters of intimate concern to ordinary citizens—matters which cannot be dealt with adequately by the representative bodies, be they at national or local level, because they are too detailed and too complex—we have had this system of advisory committees. Surely there are two functions of the advisory committee. One is to give specialist knowledge to the Minister and to the officials, and the other is to be representative of interests, directly and very often tacitly, of a quite intimate range, affected by the decisions made. If these advisory committees are there solely because of the specialist knowledge that they have, we are losing the whole democratic side of such a committee, which is to extend the democratic procedure which the existing institutions do not adequately serve when we have legislation of this very detailed and personal kind. I think we are losing sight of this if we do not have these representatives.
LORD DRUMALBYN: In this case I am in the position that I find myself in agreement with almost everybody in what they have said, but not the Amendment. I wonder whether, on this subject, it might he convenient to the Committee if we grouped all these Amendments about the composition of the advisory committee together. That would include Nos. 107, 107A and 107B. Perhaps we could speak to them all together, because I have been invited to speak rather generally on the composition of the advisory committee. Would that meet with general approval?
LORD SHEPHERD: We are quite happy.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am very grateful. May I say at the outset that I agree with the noble Lord's criticisms of his own Amendment: I think the meaning of the Amendment would certainly have tied the Secretary of State much too much. The second thing I would say is that we must get out of the habit of thinking that the Government will never do the sensible thing unless the law tells them to do so. After all, consultation is something which goes on in any sphere of government. In fact, the Government simply cannot operate in this kind of field, and there is no point at all in setting up a committee of this kind, unless they consult with the authorities concerned.
BARONESS SEEAR: Then why not accept the Amendment?
LORD DRUMALBYN: Because in that case you are tying the Secretary of State down to consultation with particular bodies, and he may find from time to time that he wants to go further than that. There are two different ways to approach it: either you give the Secretary of State the general power to form a committee, in which case the consultation almost invariably, wherever appropriate, takes place; or else you have to specify all the various bodies that have to be consulted. If we start specifying one body, then—
LORD DIAMOND: If the—
LORD DRUMALBYN: Would the noble Lord please let me make the point? I am probably coming to the point the noble Lord wants to make.
LORD DIAMOND: We have had it so many times it would not surprise me.
LORD DRUMALBYN: If we start consulting one body, we should have to consult a vast number. Here, the clause lays down specifically:
"The members of the Committee shall include persons with experience of matters relating to local government."
The reason for that particular selection is because local government is so much involved from the financial point of view. In this case it does not mean, as is sometimes said, that if you mention one only you are excluding everybody. It certainly does not mean that. It merely makes it

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quite clear that, whoever else is a member of the committee, there must be members with experience of matters relating to local government. But members with experience of matters relating to local government generally have experience of a lot of other things as well; and so it is in the selection of members of committees as a whole: you look to see what is the width of their experience and whether you can get on to a committee a person who has a wide experience covering several of these things which are mentioned here—social work, for example; the chronically sick; low income families and elected members of tenants' associations. They may have had experience of all of these things at one time or another. But what you do not want to get is delegates. This is very important. Nor do you want to get nominees of particular bodies. The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, was careful not to suggest this: he is much too sensible to do that. You want to get together a body which can preserve its independence of judgment and which regards itself, and is regarded by the public, not purely as a body of spokesmen or representatives of particular points of view but as people who will take a broad view and who, while they have special experience of certain things, will be able to give advice to the Secretary of State, and who will be able to combine in giving advice (which is always an important advantage) to the Secretary of State, which will be firmly based on experience and on common sense.
The noble Lord then asked: what sort of qualifications will one look for? Those of your Lordships who have read part of the proceedings in another place—I am sure nobody has read all the proceedings there—will have noticed what my right honourable friend Mr. Amery said in this matter. He mentioned that the committee would be bound to include people who have made studies of sociological problems; academics; council or private tenants, who may also have local authority experience; private landlords, also, since rent allowances are involved; persons with experience of low income family problems; and people with experience of dealing with the chronically sick and the disabled. All these will come into the list of the qualifications that he will want to see covered on the advisory committee. As I say, people may have
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experience of several of these things, so it may not be necessary to have one specifically with the experience of each. But what you will want to get is the proper kind of representation, covering the whole area.
I hope, therefore, that the Committee will be prepared to allow the Secretary of State to carry out his intentions in this matter without being tied down in a way which might unbalance the committee as he would want to establish it. I hope that your Lordships will give him the widest possible latitude in this matter and rely on the assurance which he has given, and which I now repeat, that these various interests—if that is the right expression; people with these various kinds of experience—will be fully covered in the committee.
8.40 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: I do not really like saying what I am going to say, but I have an idea that if it was a Labour Secretary of State, with powers to appoint to this committee members who are going to have their expenses paid and any loss of remuneration made up, he might be charged with giving jobs to the boys. We suggested to the Minister that he might consult with associations and organisations of standing. The Minister very kindly gave us a great deal of information—and I am sure that the Committee appreciates his anxiety to meet us—about the sort of qualifications which the Secretary of State would be looking for, hut he did not tell us whom he would consult before he selected. I think this is important.
The noble Lord said how necessary it was that the people serving on this committee should have experience, that they should have common sense, and that they should be held in regard by the public. What better way is there of securing regard from the public for these people than by giving us some indication that the Secretary of State, before he makes appointments, will consult with associations of standing—and I should have thought it reasonable to indicate the type of organisation. The noble Lord said that the committees would include some landlords. I think the Committee would like to know where he would be turning for this kind of person to serve on the committee. There are all kinds of landlords and, if I may say so, the

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people who are getting worried about the effects of this Bill are not just people living in local authority houses or even in houses privately owned in the lower realms of rateable value. A great many other people are getting very worried about their future as tenants and I would suggest that it would be helpful if the Government were a little more forthcoming than the Minister has felt himself able to be up to this point.
LORD WELLS-PESTELL: Before the Minister replies, may I underline what my noble friend Lord Garnsworthy has said. Clause 23(2) states clearly that the chairman and the members of these committees will be appointed by the Secretary of State. We know that there will be several hundred such committees throughout the country—there must be if this is going to work—or at any rate a large number of committees. I think it would be unrealistic to suppose that the Secretary of State would be able to do this in an individual capacity. He obviously has to delegate this kind of authority. What so many of us are afraid of—and the noble Lord the Minister made this point—is that the financial aspect is going to be of supreme importance. Many of us are afraid that, although the people on these committes will have a good deal of local government experience, will they be people who have had experience in the field of social welfare?
Although my name stands against Amendment No. 107, I think that probably Amendment No. 107A, which stands in the names of my noble friends on the Front Bench, is better than Amendment No. 107. Perhaps one can draw too narrow a definition of the sort of people we want on the committee. We want people who have had wide experience of social work, and all local authorities to-day are responsible for a great deal of the social work that is being done in the boroughs. I would ask the Minister to bear in mind that we want some kind of assurance that there will be on the Committee men and women who are not going to look at this matter in a narrow way, who are not going to be concerned with the financial aspects, which may well happen eventually. We want something laid down in the Bill in clear and precise terms that there must be on the committee a sprinkling of people whose only reason for being there
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is that they have a wide knowledge of social welfare.
Since the passing of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act some 18 months ago, local authorities have been staggered by the large number of men and women in their area in very grave need, whom they did not know existed. Hitherto their needs had not been taken into account because they were not known. Now we know something about their suffering and their needs, not only physical and mental but also financial. My noble friend Lord Crawshaw and myself, and my noble friends on the Front Bench, want an assurance that there will be clearly set out in the Bill a statement to the effect that certain people, in addition to a knowledge of local government, will have a knowledge of the social welfare work and need in the particular area in which these committees are going to be established.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: I want to press the point to which my noble friend Lady Seear drew attention—that is, the undemocratic nature of this particular clause. An assurance from the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, is very nice indeed, but it is an assurance outside the Bill. It is the principle that is wrong: that the Secretary of State should have so much power in his hands; that he should be working on what I call the gauleiter principle. It is not right that so many committees, so many people, should be appointed by him alone.
LORD AVEBURY: If we were in the United States we might take the view that a committee of this sort should be elected wholly or in part—they elect all sorts of people there who in this country are appointed. With great respect to my noble friend Lady Gaitskell, one has to take the situation as one finds it and see how we can improve the wording of this Part of the Bill covering appointments to be made by the Secretary of State. In my opinion, the only way we can do that is by requiring him to consult with the various bodies which are representative of opinion in the fields we have been discussing.
The noble Lord has suggested that we carry the debate beyond the Amendment we started with, 106A, and talk about Amendments 107, 107A and 107B

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at the same time. I quite agree that we should take into account these various interest groups and lay an obligation on the Secretary of State to consult with them in making the appointments that are so important to the A.C.C.R.A. The noble Lord said that various undertakings had been given by the Minister for Housing and Construction in another place, but I thought he was going a little beyond what his right honourable friend, Mr. Amery, said. I have looked up the passage in his speech and all he said was:
"We intend also to include among members of the committee persons who are council or private tenants or who have experience and knowledge enabling them to reflect the point of view of such tenants."
That is not at all what we are seeking—because he might take a "tame" council tenant or a "tame" tenant of a private landlord who would reflect the point of view of the Secretary of State. We are not asking him to pick any private tenant or any council tenant but to consult with bodies such as the Association of London Housing Estates and listen to the recommendations of those bodies before making appointments.
I cannot see why the noble Lord should make difficulties about it because he has already written into the Bill some provisions relating to experience of matters of local government. I agree that this does not go as far as the first Amendment in that he could pick any councillor or any persons who have served on local authorities without consulting the local authority associations. As the noble Lord has said, that is inconceivable. The Government would be bound to go to the A.M.C. and to the County Councils Association and ask for their advice before making these appointments. It is very simple. I do not know why we are making heavy weather of it. All that we are asking is that the noble Lord should agree to the same kind of machinery in respect of the persons who, as Mr. Amery said in another place, are going to represent "the council or private tenants"; not to make these appointments purely on the initiative of the Secretary of State but to consult with responsible bodies in the field. I really think that the noble Lord might accept that.
LORD CRAWSHAW: I felt fairly confident about Amendment 107 because of
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the generally warm reception that the Committee gave the Amendment on the needs allowance that I moved on Wednesday morning. I felt confident also because the Minister in another place said that he was greatly attracted by the idea of including on the Committee a person associated with the problems of the critically sick and disabled. Moreover, in reply to the Second Reading debate the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, said that he had this very much in mind. It is a question of getting these things in black and white into the Bill. That is what I tried to emphasise in all my previous Amendments.
The wording in this Amendment comes directly out of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, and I was thinking at a later stage in terms of a refinement to it; because in the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act we added the words:
"person or persons with that experience being or including a disabled person or persons",
which of course emphasises the point that if you are going to have somebody there is nothing like a little practical experience. I should like to test the Minister on that refinement. I think that that is all I need to say at this stage. I cannot see why we should not have this Amendment in the Bill. I think that it would help the Minister when he selects the committee.
LORD SHEPHERD: May I intervene before the noble Lord replies; it may save him making another speech on this Amendment. It seemed to me that the impression given by the noble Lord's speech—not so much his exact words, for they no doubt reflected the official line—was that he had a certain sympathy with the general proposition that lies behind these Amendments. I hope that we are not going to be confronted with a Division on this. The noble Lord himself said that he expected the Secretary of State to have on the committee persons who have experience of and who know the needs of the chronically sick and disabled. The noble Lord, Lord Drumablyn, used these words.
The noble Lord also said that it would be obvious that there would be persons with experience in social problems. I well remember the words he used: that there will be persons who would have

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experience of the problems of low income families; that the question is whether it should be written into the Bill; and that if we voted it into the Bill it would tie the Minister's hands. Year in and year out we have legislation in which there is specified a certain category of people whom the Secretary of State would consult or who would be on a particular board. This is not new; it is a regular feature of legislation where a wide spectrum of opinion is required and desirable. As for tying the Minister's hands, it is quite simple to avoid that: you specify certain bodies and then use the phrase "and others". There is no limit to the size of this committee. In regard to the other Amendment which I moved officially, it is true that the wording is wrong, that it should have included the phrase, "after consultation". I should have thought that here again the Government could concede.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, will now rise to say that he has listened to this debate and that he is in general sympathy with what we are seeking to-day. May I say that we do not want to tie the hands of the Secretary of State too much. What we want is to have included the type of person we have in mind and to see that it is so specified in the Bill. Since the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, is now with us I hope that he will press on the Secretary of State our feelings in this matter. This is not a Party issue; it is a matter of principle. It springs from a desire to make the role of the Secretary of State easier. I should have thought that the noble Lord could take this away and that the Government could then come forward with an Amendment which would comply with the general sense of the Committee. I hope that the noble Lord will undertake to consider this matter, to take it up with the Secretary of State and to come back to us on Report.
LORD HYLTON: When appointed, this committee will consist of from 12 to 15 members. If that is so, it would not unbalance the committee to have representatives of each of these three listed categories on it. Surely that would not tie the hands of the Secretary of State. I feel that all these Amendments are very desirable.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am tempted in reply to use almost exactly the words
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suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd. I have listened to the debate and I am in general sympathy with the spirit of the Amendments. It is a question either of putting it down in black and white in the Bill that there will be consultation or of whether the Committee are prepared to rely on the fact that we have listened to the advice of noble Lords and will do our best to act in accordance with it. But I should like to make it quite clear that not only will the local authority associations be consulted, but that they will be invited to suggest names of people who might be appointed to the committee because of their special and varied experience. It is not only the interests that happen to be mentioned in the Amendments we have before us that will be consulted. To reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, it is not a question of having power in one's hands. It is a question of the Secretary of State seeking advice—and normally you seek advice from people whose advice you value. Therefore, it is important to keep the power of appointment in the hands of the Secretary of State. So far as consultation is concerned, this is absolute common sense; it must be done if you are going to get a wide range of advice.
I do not think that I need delay the Committee any further on this subject, except to say to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, that I am not certain whether he quite understood what is involved. Here we are talking about a committee and not a network of committees all over the country. I fully agree with what he said. I mentioned the financial aspect because this is the way it is expressed, in pounds and pence. But, of course, this is a housing Bill. We are dealing with housing authorities and essentially there should be a basis of people with such experience on the committee. Of course there must be people with wide experience of social welfare. I have taken careful note of the expressions of feeling in the Committee that we should not only intend to do this but also say in the Bill that we intend to do it. I shall most willingly take this away and consider it with my right honourable friend, and I hope that we shall be able to produce something of value to the Committee. However, I must not enter into any commitment beforehand.
LORD SHEPHERD: In the light of that assurance of the noble Lord, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
9.1 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved Amendment No. 107C:
Page 28, line 27, at end insert ("and expenses shall include such sums as the Secretary of State may authorise for research or investigation for the purpose of ascertaining hardship or anomalies.").
The noble Lord said: On behalf of my noble friend Lord Diamond, I beg to move this Amendment. Clause 23(4) says:
"The expenses of the Committee to such an amount as may be approved by the Minister for the Civil Service may be paid by the Secretary of State out of money provided by Parliament."
It then deals with the various expenses. The purpose of this Amendment is to ensure that the expenses shall include
"such sums as the Secretary of State may authorise for research or investigation for the purpose of ascertaining hardship"
and any anomalies which may be involved as a consequence of this Bill. This committee, certainly in its very early days, will have a formidable task before it. Whatever experience it may have, it may well need to set up investigations and some degree of research of an immediate sort and of a longer-term nature. I should like to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, that under subsection (4) it will be possible for the committee to undertake or to authorise research, admittedly with the approval of the Secretary of State because in the end it is public money, and that such expenses will be permitted.
BARONESS SEEAR: I strongly support this Amendment, not only at this stage but also continuously. Throughout the working of a complex measure it is vital to have research going on into the way in which the Act is working, and unless there is adequate money available we shall fail to obtain the information needed to amend the legislation later on.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am sure my right honourable friend is well aware of what the noble Lord has said. I am bound to say that this Amendment struck a chord for me particularly. I am assured that there is no need for a specific
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provision requiring the Secretary of State to meet reasonable expenditure on research which the committee might wish to be undertaken. In practice, the research might well be commissioned by the Secretary of State on the committee's recommendation rather than by the committee. If a statutory advisory body advising the Secretary of State wishes to study in depth any question on which it is the body's function to advise, and if the study involves research, it is quite normal for the required research to be undertaken and paid for by the Secretary of State. No doubt there is the usual sort of Treasury control. I need only give the example of the Central Housing Advisory Committee, which advises the Secretary of State on a variety of housing questions and has issued a number of reports in recent years involving research carried out at Government expense, notably the Cullingworth Report on Council Housing Purposes, Procedures and Priorities. For the purpose of that report Birmingham University undertook the analysis of questionnaires on local authority policies on the allocation of council houses. So I see no need to accept this Amendment and to incorporate it into the Bill and I can give the noble Lord the assurance that he requires.
LORD SHEPHERD: I am grateful for that response from the noble Lord. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 23 agreed to.
Clause 24 [Publicity for Schemes]:
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON moved Amendment No. 108:
Page 29, leave out lines 35 to 37.
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 108 and with it I should like to discuss Amendment No. 109. These two Amendments simplify, without significantly altering, the requirement on the authority, under Clause 24(5), to furnish at regular intervals statutory particulars of their rent rebate scheme to their tenants. The requirement at the end of the existing subsection (5) was added by Government Amendment No. 63 at Report stage in another place, to ensure that, where rents were not being increased or a rebate scheme changed, tenants would receive statutory particulars at

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least once a year. The proposed Amendments will still secure this result, but more simply.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: I beg to move Amendment No. 109.
Amendment moved—
Page 29, leave out lines 40 to 42 and insert ("and
(e) at such other times as will ensure that each tenant is furnished with the particulars at least once in any twelve months.").—(Lord Mowbray and Stourton.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved Amendment No. 109A:
page 30, line 44, leave out ("£50") and insert ("£100 and not less than £25").
The noble Lord said: Clause 24, subsection (12), lays down certain penalties where a landlord fails to fulfil duties required of him in subsections (10) and (11). We all know that in the private sector relations between a landlord and a tenant are often strained. Subsections (10) and (11) require certain information to be given to a private tenant. It seems to me that the penalties in subsection (12) are inadequate. It may be that the Minister who replies will say that this is in line with existing legislation. We had this not so long ago in the case, I think it was, of legislation about medical inspection in factories. The House then took the view that the penalty, which I think was similar to this, was inadequate, and it agreed, in view of the fact that money is no longer quite as valuable as it was in 1970, that the penalties should be raised correspondingly. I therefore would suggest, first of all, that if there was an offence the maximum penalty should be £100 as opposed to £50, and that the minimum fine should be £25.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: I understand the point the noble Lord is trying to make—that in the age of inflation prices change. But this maximum fine of £50 was the considered opinion of the Home Office which advised on this particular point. They had regard to the fact that Clause 24 contains a number of provisions for giving publicity to rent allowance schemes, which should between them ensure that private tenants are made aware of their entitlement to rent allow-
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ances. The second part of the Amendment which prescribes a minimum fine is quite unacceptable, as it would completely fetter the discretion of the courts. This penalty provision has been drawn in a way which will prevent fines from being imposed on landlords who fail to carry out their duties solely through ignorance. If the landlord can show that he has failed in this duty but that there was no wilful neglect on his part, the courts should have this latitude. They can consider the matter like that.
LORD SHEPHERD: I will not pursue this matter. The noble Lord has a point as regards the minimum requirement. I am not entirely certain that the view of the Home Office is one that one must naturally accept. That was the advice they gave us on previous legislation and your Lordships' House took the view that the advice was not acceptable and raised the limits. However, I recognise that while this is an important matter, it is not in what one might call the criminal sense or in an obstructive sense, and I am prepared to leave it there. No doubt we may need to look at it in the light of future legislation to bring it into line. At half-past two on Wednesday morning I took over what was then the morning shift. I am now leaving it to my noble friends. I shall be coming back, but I say thanks to the noble Lords, particularly Lord Drumalbyn, for the way in which affairs have been conducted since half-past two on Wednesday morning. I hope he will continue to be as conciliatory.
LORD DIAMOND: A lot more.
LORD SHEPHERD: A lot more. We can always live in hope.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 24, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 25 and 26 agreed to.
Clause 27 [Conversion of Controlled Tenancies]:
9.14 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY LORD GARNSWORTHY moved Amendment No. 109FA:
Page 33, line 35, at end insert ("subject to the provisions of section 37 (Fair rents etc.) and section 38 (phasing of rent increases) of this Act.").
The noble Lord said: We have now reached Part III of the Bill, and we are dealing with rents of dwellings in good repair and provided with standard amenities. Clause 27 provides for a controlled tenancy to be converted to a regulated one when the local authority issue a qualification certificate certifying that the dwelling has all the standard amenities and is in good repair. The clause itself is subject to Clauses 37 and 38, and the Amendment draws attention to this fact. It may be argued that the Amendment in no way affects the position as already set out in the clause, and that it is unnecessary. None the less it is generally agreed, and for very good reason—indeed the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has drawn our attention this evening repeatedly to this fact—that this Bill is a most complicated one. I think that all of us who have had to make preparation for the Committee stage of this Bill have been called upon to do an unusually heavy stint. Since the Amendment I now move draws attention to following clauses of substance and importance, it would serve to assist in understanding Clause 27.
There is a point at which the layman ought to be given help in making sense of legislation. We ought to do as much as we possibly can without in any way affecting the revision provisions of the Bill, and I believe, to that end, this Amendment would be most helpful. My noble friend who has just said that he is taking a rest from speaking, and who has served the Committee extremely well, drew attention to the somewhat easier attitude, in the sense that Government spokesmen were giving an indication of being a little more conciliatory than they were when we were dealing with Part I of the Bill. I hope that we shall not only continue in that way, but that we shall find the sense of conciliation developing more and more. I do not know whether the noble Baroness is going to reply to this Amendment, but if she is, I think it is about time that the Government gave her the pleasure of saying that they were prepared to be accommodating on a matter that is, after all, a comparatively simple one. I beg to move.
THE EARL OF BALFOUR: I should just like to say here that this is not any-
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thing new. Almost exactly the same words occur in Section 43 of the Housing Act 1969.
LORD SANDFORD: If the noble Lord will be patient—after all, we have only just begun another Part, with a change of bowling and batting—he will find that not only will he have the pleasure of my noble friend's conversation, but also meet with some conciliation and some willingness to consider his Amendments. But I do not think we have quite reached that point, and I do not think this is a matter of sufficient substance to be worth spending very long upon.
Before dealing with the noble Lord's Amendment, I should like to spend a moment or two, as it were, setting the scene for this Part, and reminding the Committee of the kind of people with whom we are dealing, the kind of tenancies with which we are dealing, and the changes that will be brought about, in the circumstances both of the buildings and of the people, by the measures that are in this Bill.
Leaving aside council houses, to which we shall come later, there are about 2½ million tenancies either regulated or controlled: slightly more regulated, 1⅓ million, as compared with 1·1 million controlled tenancies. In considering this Part, I suggest that we need to address our minds to the typical tenant of the controlled property—and I know that we have already been doing this in Part II. They are old people; over half of them are well over 60, and they are poor. Well over half have incomes below £10 a week. Their rent now in London is £1·50 and their rent elsewhere is about 90p. Under the move to fair rents—and this is the sector in which the Party opposite introduced the concept of fair rents—their rents would be going up to £5 in London and £4 elsewhere. And noble Lords opposite had already started this process in a phased programme over five annual steps, without introducing any rent allowances. So some of these classes of tenants would have had theoretically the whole of their income absorbed by rent—or a half of it, or a large and considerable proportion of it.
Under the effect of rent allowances—and I am leaving to one side those who are drawing supplementary benefit, because in their case the whole of their

1229
rent, whether a fair rent or any other, would be catered for—the rent of a tenant now paying 90p outside London would actually fall to about 25p, and elsewhere somebody with an income of £10 and paying a rent of 90p outside London would not have that increased by more than, say, 30p or 40p. This is the effect of the allowances, and in those circumstances we can consider the operation of the provisions of this particular Part.
I say that just by way of setting the scene for this Part to which we now move. In answer to the particular Amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, has moved at this point, I can say that it is clear to the Committee what he is aiming at, but if you once start on this kind of sign-posting within the Bill itself—and this was a point very thoroughly discussed in another place—there is no limit to the number of references you have to make. In this clause alone, we should need to refer to Clause 44 and Clause 46; and in the end the result would be to obscure rather than to clarify the Bill as a whole. I am not saying there are not other ways in which the Bill can be made clearer and easier to understand for landlords and tenants and many other people concerned. But I would recommend to the noble Lord and to the Committee that this particular way of building it into the Bill itself will lead, not to clarification but to obscurity. For that reason, I hope the noble Lord will feel he need not press this particular Amendment any further.
9.24 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: When I saw the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, rise to answer me instead of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, I feared the worst. My understanding of the position was not too far out. I indicated that I thought I might obtain reasonable—no, perhaps I should say "sympathetic"—treatment from the noble Baroness, but the Minister himself was gallant enough to reply. May I take the point he made in closing? We shall be returning again and again to the need for clarification. This Bill is very confused and confusing. What it involves for a great many people at the moment is so far as they are concerned very obscure. I thank him for setting the scene in the way he has done
1230
and, as he usually does, he has put it in a straightforward fashion. He has warned some 2½ million people that they are going to be affected and that in London it will mean increases from £1·50 to £5, and elsewhere from 90p up to £4 per week.
I hope that we are not going to spend too much time in being reminded of the failures of Labour Government to take everything into consideration. If we had our time over again it might well be that we should do a number of things in a somewhat different fashion. The present Government would do well to learn from the omissions of the 1968 Act, or any other Act that may be mentioned in connection with rents. We have now reached the year 1972 and if we bring forward matters that have been excluded hitherto I think we are fully entitled to do so, even if only on the basis that this Bill is concerned with a great many more people than were included in the earlier legislation. Nobody knows better than the noble Lord who has just spoken, because indeed he said it, that the people on supplementary benefit would get the increased rents paid.
We are not dealing here with supplementary benefits; we are dealing with rents. I think the charge does not lie that no thought was given to them. I return to something I have said before; we regard housing as a social service. We regard the relief of poverty as not being the duty of local authorities. We regard the duty of relieving poverty and undertaking the administration of that relief as being properly the business of national Government and something that ought to be charged to the Exchequer. The noble Lord himself quite clearly recognises that there is need for signposting in this Bill, and while my Amendment may not commend itself I think I have raised something that we shall have to return to again and again and again.
This Bill is so complicated that something needs to be done to make it more easily understandable to the millions whom it will adversely affect. Not enough is being understood at the moment of the full implications, and the information being provided in the Bill is not in language that the layman will understand. We have been signally unsuccessful this evening in securing an assurance that as much help as we should like to see given is going to be extended to those who for

1231
very good reasons will feel themselves sufferers as a consequence of this legislation.
9.28 p.m.
LORD AVEBURY: Since the noble Lord on the Front Bench has rather widened the debate beyond the scope of the Amendment I hope I may be forgiven for saying one or two words about the figures that he gave to the Committee, namely, that we have in this country at the moment 1⅓ million regulated tenants and 1·1million controlled tenants. I think the figures that he has given are a little out of date. I seem to recall that these come from the housing statistics of 1971, and perhaps the noble Lord will verify that when he winds up this particular debate.
In this connection may I now return to a point that I have made once or twice before in the course of these proceedings, that the number of these dwellings is declining at a fairly constant rate over the years and, therefore, we ought not to look at the statutory position as we see it at a particular stage but at what will happen to the controlled and regulated tenants over the course of a number of years as these provisions come into effect and they begin to "bite" on the tenants concerned?
I appeal to the noble Lord again to try to appreciate what will happen to controlled and regulated tenants. The rate of decline anticipated by the Government is much the same as we have experienced more or les continuously since the passing of the 1957 Rent Act, notwithstanding the various legislative changes such as the 1965 Act which have taken place in the intervening years.
Some information which the noble Lord gave the Committee was extremely interesting. He spoke of the sort of increases that could he anticipated in the controlled rents that are now payable—from £1·50 to £5 in London and from 90p to £4 elsewhere. The noble Lord made a political point of the fact that under the Labour Government these increases, which would have taken place in any case in dwellings with standard amenities and in good repair, would not have been taken care of by the sort of rebate scheme that is now being introduced.
The noble Lord is well aware that most of those who live in controlled
1232
properties, being the old and the poor, the least well off members of the community, are the most likely to be in receipt of supplementary benefit. I believe that figures are available from the Child Poverty Action Group to show the number of tenants of controlled properties who are in receipt of supplementary benefit.
The noble Lord's claim of generosity is spurious because the vast majority of the 1·1 million people who will benefit from the allowances would in any case have had their increases taken care of under the supplementary benefit system. Perhaps the noble Lord will water down his political claims by giving those figures before the end of the debate.
The tenants about whom we are talking will have the additional responsibility of making claims on two different sources under the noble Lord's scheme in order to get their money back. Instead of simply going to the Supplementary Benefits Commission and receiving the whole amount back, they will have to go both to that Commission and to the local authority to obtain a rent allowance. Thus, from the point of view of these tenants the noble Lord's scheme is less desirable. Life would have been far simpler for them if they could have got their money back from one source. Now they will have to claim a rent allowance. which means a positive action on their part, as was the case with supplementary benefit, but in this case it will be a positive action that will be doubly complicated compared with the scheme that was previously in operation. The noble Lord cannot make any great claim of humanity on behalf of these 1·1 million tenants.
THE EARL OF BALFOUR: This part of the Bill replaces Part III of the Housing Act, 1969, with a few definite improvements. There is nothing here that is new in legislation, as it were.
LORD DIAMOND: I do not wish to delay the Committee and I rise simply to make sure that I have understood one aspect of the speech of the Minister. Did I understand the noble Lord to say that the words in the Amendment are literally just signposts and will have no legislative effect; that, for legislative purposes, the decisions in this clause will be the same whether or not these words are included?
LORD SANDFORD: If I could just deal with the point of the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, first. That was my understanding, and that was my understanding of what Lord Garnsworthy claimed for them, that they would just draw people's attention to those other parts of the Bill to which this particular clause referred. I think that is what Lord Garnsworthy said.
LORD DIAMOND: With the greatest possible respect, my noble friend is very knowledgeable and very experienced but he has not got behind him quite the Government Department resources that the noble Lord has. What I am asking the noble Lord to be good enough to say on his responsibility is that it makes no difference for legislative purposes whether these words are included or not—perhaps for convenience purposes but not for legislative purposes—because they are, in fact, no more than signposts. He did indicate that they were inadequate as signposts and if you had these signposts you really needed further signposts as well but all I want to be quite sure about is that these are just signposts. If they are there is no need to pursue the matter. But if they have as they might have—and we can only rely on lawyer's advice—legislative effect then it would be a different issue entirely.
LORD SANDFORD: The effect of these particular Amendments is, as the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, claimed they were, just signposts. To people who were operating and using the Bill they would serve to remind them that what applied here were Clauses 37 and 38. But to carry that idea through one would have, even in this clause, to refer to Clauses 44 and 46 and this would apply all over the Bill. I do not think there is really much difference between us. We all recognise that this is a complex Bill and for anyone other than solicitors and barristers, for tenants and landlords, and local authorities, there will have to be explanatory circulars, pamphlets, leaflets, housing advisory centres, and a whole apparatus designed to make it easier for laymen to see what their rights are under this Bill and to see how they set about getting them. They need to follow the whole procedure which is brought in by this measure which, because it is so radical and because it has complex trans-
1234
itional procedures is very difficult for the layman to understand.
We are absolutely at one in recognising that the Bill as it stands, is beyond the wit of anybody except those who are involved in getting it through Parliament and those who are legally trained to operate it. Of course, explanations are needed, but this kind of explanation, this kind of signposting, really does not help a great deal and if carried through to its logical conclusion there would be so much of it in the Bill connecting one clause with another that in the end it would lead to more obscurity than clarity.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: Does the noble Lord mean us to assume that the Bill is unintelligible?
LORD SANDFORD: It is very difficult and I think all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate will recognise that.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, followed up a number of points that I made by way of my opening remarks. I was not meaning to get into an extensive debate on the statistics that I mentioned but if I can add to them in the way the noble Lord wishes me to do I will try to do so. I certainly was not trying to make or score political points. If noble Lords feel that I did, that is up to them to interpret it that way. All I was trying to do was to explain the difference from the tenant's point of view of the procedure which is operating now and was introduced by the Party opposite of five annual steps, slower than we are proposing.
The arrangements here were in addition to the questioning effect of supplementary benefit which applies in both systems. There is the questioning effect of rent allowances because it requires the awareness of this to appreciate the reasons for the charges that are brought about by the new clauses which we shall need to discuss in Part III. That was my only reason for doing it. If I cannot do that without making a political point, I apologise to the Committee but it was a point I felt would be helpful to the Committee to have in its mind.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: I am grateful to the noble Lord for the time he has taken and the effort he has made to deal with the points that have been raised. I think inevitably from time to time he is

1235
bound, as I suppose most of us are, to give the appearance of making a political point. He is a political animal—a very political animal. I suppose that is equally true of most people who sit on the Front Benches in this House, and a number behind, and for that he need make no apology; nobody in this House needs to apologise for being a political animal, he no more nor less than the rest of us.
LORD ABERDARE: I would remind the noble Lord that we have Cross-Benchers.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: We have Cross-Benchers and Cross-Benchers, and I am not going to differentiate between them. I think they are quite capable of making political points and I think some show a considerable sense of political awareness at times, and the House is better for that. They are probably not as committed as those on the Benches opposite or as on these Benches here. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for his support and the points that he has raised, as indeed 1 am to my noble friend Lord Diamond. I think the debate has been thoroughly worth while and that the Minister has shown his awareness, and, if I may say so, an acute awareness, of explanatory leaflets and explanatory campaigns of one kind and another to try to make this Bill intelligible. I have the feeling, having listened to him and he having shown such understanding, that the best advice we can give to the Government in connection with this Bill is that they should drop it and save everybody many headaches. In the meantime, with the leave of the Committee, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 27 agreed to.
Clause 28 [Application for qualification certificate]:
9.42 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY LORD GARNSWORTHY moved Amendment No. 109FB:
Page 34, line 18, leave out ("where subsection (3) below applies")
The noble Lord said. In moving this Amendment, I wish also to speak to Amendments Nos. 109FC, 109FD, 109FF and 109FG. I think it is to the convenience of the Government if I do
1236
that. Amendment No. 109FB is to leave out, "where subsection (3) below applies". The next Amendment, No. 109FC, is consequential, and I want to speak to that and to the others I have mentioned. On this side we are concerned that the Bill does not adequately protect the position of the tenant. The clause, as I am suggesting it should be amended, would provide that the tenant as defined in the clause shall receive a copy of the application for a qualification certificate which is necessary for the change from a controlled tenancy to a regulated one, and the notice required by subsection (3).
Here again there is one of the greatest difficulties so far as this Bill is concerned: that is to say. its complicated structure. What we wish to ensure is that where a landlord applies for a qualification certificate, even though he may have received a grant in respect of premises, he must still give notice to the tenant. It is surely nothing less than proper that the tenant should know that the landlord is making application that his tenancy will be taken out of control and turned into a regulated tenancy, whatever the circumstances. It is our view that the present Bill does not fully preserve the right of the tenant to be informed of such application. He should always be notified. It may be claimed that this would lead to unnecessary delays. It used to be argued that a man's home is his castle. It will no longer be a feature when his interests are determined and may be prejudiced without his knowledge.
Some may feel that those who live in rented accommodation are second-class citizens. I doubt whether anything that I could say to-night would change their thinking. I am sure that those who proceed on such a presumption make a great mistake and eventually will pay a just penalty. I have spoken briefly. I hope the Committee will not interpret that as meaning that these Amendments are moved lightly or without very serious intent. They are moved with very serious intent, and I should like to say here and now that it will take a great deal to persuade us not to put this issue to the vote.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: I have listened most carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, and I wonder whether

1237
I may ask him one question based on his Amendment. What is the difference between the security of tenure for those regulated tenants and the security of tenure for those controlled tenants? I believe they have exactly the same security of tenure, and I believe this was the purpose of his Amendment.
BARONESS YOUNG: In the course of the Committee we have discussed a great many very controversial matters, but I should have thought that on large parts of Part III we could be in agreement, because the one thing which everybody wants to achieve is the improvement of a great many old houses in the nation's housing stock. Large parts of Part III, including the particular clause in question, are designed to simplify the procedures so that the process of improvement can be carried out more quickly.
The series of Amendments moved by the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, suggest that tenants ought to have this right to make representations as soon as the landlord has applied for a qualification certificate to see that the amenities of the house will be brought up to standard.
There are two reasons why the Government feel unable to accept these Amendments. In the first place, when a local authority is giving the standard grant it must be satisfied that when the works are completed the dwelling will satisfy the conditions that bring it up to standard. In fact, a local authority would never pay the grant unless it was satisfied that the conditions had been met, and it is rather difficult to see how representations from the tenant would improve the tenant's position when it is in the local authority's interest to see that all the conditions have been effectively met. The work must be carried out to the satisfaction of the local authority. It seems to us that to add something further, or to take out these clauses which have been put in to simplify the position and make it easier for landlords to improve their property, would not benefit the tenant in the end. This is something we would all want to see so that we shall get the maximum number of houses improved.
I understand that this clause is similar to the clause in the 1969 Housing Act which did not give tenants a right to make
1238
these representations. We all appreciate that this change from a controlled to a regulated tenancy is a serious matter for tenants. Underlying the whole of Part III are the provisions for rent allowances, and all the effects of the increased rent must be seen against this new background. Therefore the position of tenants is different from what it has been in former Acts when there were no rent allowances to meet this need.
There is an opportunity for tenants to comment on landlords' improvement proposals, and it does not mean that a tenant is left without any form of redress at all. If a tenant believes that the landlord's plans will not bring the dwelling up to the qualifying standard, he can refuse to consent to them. The landlord will then have to apply to the county court for an order under Clause 33. The court can only grant a landlord an order empowering him to carry out works which are required for the qualifying standards to be satisfied, and if a tenant satisfies the court that the works proposed by the landlord will not satisfy the qualifying conditions the court cannot grant the landlord an order empowering him to carry them out. I hope I have satisfied the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, and that he will recognise that this attempt to simplify procedures is an attempt to speed up the improvement of the nation's housing stock.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: May I say right away that I very much appreciate the effort which the noble Baroness has made to satisfy me? I was quite sure that she would not be able to do it. I do not think we have made any progress in the matter since it was discussed in another place. I hope that she has to some exetnt replied to the question asked by her noble friend Lord Kinnoull. I should have thought that with his background he did not need to ask we that kind of question. I should have thought that with his kind of experience he would know the answer. If he does not, then I invite him to attend the meetings of this Committee regularly and I think that he will learn as we go along. This is a matter of some difference between us and I shall press this Amendment to a Division.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: Before the noble Lord divides the Committee on this

1239
Amendment, I hope he will be able to give an answer to the question which I put to him. Ii: was perfectly serious and I think that the Committee is entitled to know the answer.

CONTENTS

Ardwick, L.

Heycock, L.

Shackleton, L.

Barrington, V.

Llewelyn-Davies, L.

Shepherd, L.

Beswick, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, Bs.[Teller]

Stow Hill, L.

Champion, L.

Strabolgi, L. [Teller]

Davies of Leek, L.

Maelor, L.

Walston, L.

Diamond, L.

Morris of Kenwood, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Gaitskell, Bs.

Platt, L.

Wynne-Jones, L.

Garnsworthy, L.

Segal, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Killearn, L.

Abinger, L.

Denham, L. [Teller]

Kinnoull, E.

Aldenham, L.

Digby, L.

Luke, L.

Amherst of Hackney, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Lyell, L.

Auckland, L.

Eccles, V.

Macleod of Borve, Bs.

Balfour, E.

Effingham, E.

Mountevans, L.

Beauchamp, E.

Ellenborough, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.[Teller]

Beaumont, L.

Elles, Bs.

Belstead, L.

Emmet of Amberley, Bs.

Rankeillour, L.

Berkeley. Bs.

Falmouth, V.

Redesdale, L.

Bethell, L.

Ferrers, E.

Ruthven of Freeland, Ly.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Gainford, L.

Sandford, L.

Coleraine, L.

Gowrie, E.

Sandys, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Thomas, L.

Courtown, E.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L. (L. Chancellor)

Tweedsmuir of Belhelvie, Bs.

Cowley, E.

Vivian, L.

Craigavon, V.

Hertford, M.

Wolverton, L.

Crawshaw, L.

Hylton, L.

Young, Bs.

Clause 28 agreed to.
House resumed.

MARQUESSATE OF ELY
Report made by the Lord Chancellor that Charles John Marquess of Ely has established to the satisfaction of the Lord Chancellor his succession to that Marquessate in the Peerage of Ireland.