Lords Sitting of 16 March 1972

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Newcastle
The Earl of Clancarty—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his brother.

SCHOOLCHILDREN'S SIGHT AND HEARING TESTS
BARONESS MASHAM OF ILTON: 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 encourage local health authorities to make available to all children, irrespective of the school that they may be attending, the service of inspection of sight and hearing at present available only to children in maintained schools.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE (LORD BELSTEAD): My Lords, local health authorities provide such services for children of under school age. Local education authorities may, by agreement with the proprietors, extend to pupils in non-maintained schools the medical services they provide for pupils in maintained schools.
BARONESS MASHAM OF ILTON: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that Answer, may I ask him whether he does not think that children can suffer as much, if not more, in the way of educational troubles, from the physical defects that they may have; and does he not think that this service should be made available to all children?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, if we are talking about the school health service, of course the obligation which local education authorities have under Section 48 of the Education Act 1944 is
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to promote and maintain the health of the children in their own schools so that their education does not suffer. Implicit in the noble Baroness's Question, though, is: what about the other sector? My answer to that would be that the proprietors of non-maintained schools make their own arrangements for maintaining the good health of pupils attending their schools. Sometimes it is by their own arrangements for medical or nursing cover, and sometimes it is by arrangement with the local education authority itself.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I should like to ask the Minister whether he is satisfied that local education authorities have sufficient qualified staffs to undertake these and other essential medical inspections, including the examination of children who may be in need of medical milk.
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, on the question of sight, almost all pupils are tested during the first year of entry to school. Some authorities have annual tests thereafter, and all provide at least three tests during a pupil's school life. On the question of hearing, over three-quarters of all local education authorities test all children on entry into school; a few test them at age 6 or 7; and the remainder provide selective testing if there is any indication of a possible hearing problem. Without giving the noble Lord the statistics of staffing for which he has actually asked, and which I will try to send to him, that, I think, is the answer I ought to give him.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: My Lords, I think we are aware of the number of children who, because of poor sight and poor hearing, were supposed in the past to be backward and we know that a certain amount of care is now being taken in the schools. But will the Minister not listen very seriously to the plea which has been made, that all children should, automatically, have regular tests to ensure that their hearing and sight are normal?
LORD BELSTEAD: Yes, my Lords. I have given the statistics to the House. I should have thought they fell very well within the expression in the relevant section of the Act, "medical inspection at appropriate intervals". As regards the relevance of the noble Baroness's question

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vis-à-vis the original Question, children who are not in maintained schools can, as I have said, be catered for, either by private arrangements made by the proprietors or by arrangements made between the proprietors and the local education authority. The House may like to know that it is a requirement of all independent schools which are recognised as efficient that, before recognition is given, suitable medical arrangements are made.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, as the noble Lord has said that some non-maintained schools may have this service provided, can he tell me what conditions have to be fulfilled before the service is provided?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, this is by arrangement between a proprietor and the local education authority.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: But why only "some" schools? The noble Lord said that "some" may have it provided. What does the proprietor have to prove to the local authority before he is given these services? Does he simply have to ask for them?
LORD BELSTEAD: Yes, my Lords.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the operative part of this Question is the phrase
"irrespective of the school that they may be attending"?
Are education authorities encouraged to approach every school which is set up? Is the noble Lord aware that some private schools are set up and that, because of some snob value, people whose money is young send their children to schools which are almost Dame schools? Are schools like that first looked at from this point of view before they are allowed to teach children, of whatever class or whatever origin?
LORD BELSTEAD: No, my Lords. The relevant section for this is Section 78 of the 1944 Act, and under that section local education authorities are not so encouraged. This is the section under which an agreement has to be reached between the local education authority and independent schools, and it would be at the discretion of a local education authority—nothing more nor less. As regards the noble Lord's final remarks,
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may I remind the House that it is open to any parents who are at all bothered about their children to seek the advice of their family practitioner and that the resources of the National Health Service are of course available to all children?
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the information given in reply to my supplementary question. May I ask him whether he will deal with what I think was the last part of that question: whether he is satisfied that the local education authorities have staffs adequate to examine all children who may be in need of medical milk?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I am sorry. It is extraordinary; but I did not pick up the expression "medical milk"—and we are talking about sight and hearing.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, may I ask the Minister about eyesight examinations carried out in a maintained school on, say, a child of 9? Is he aware that if that child is found to be in need of spectacles the parent has to pay a fairly heavy sum in order to get those spectacles supplied? Is that in accordance with the regulations?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I cannot answer the noble Lord's question—I must have notice of it—but I will do my best to write to him. I can tell him that guidance on special hearing and loss of vision tests to be performed by the local authorities is contained in memoranda of the Standing Medical Advisory Committee, as are the laid-down intervals at which hearing and loss of vision tests should be given.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I should be grateful if the Minister would write to me.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, is the Minister indicating that the staffs responsible for examination of school-children are not involved in inspecting children who may be in need of medical milk? I am certain that I used the term "medical milk" in my first supplementary. I should have thought that it was quite relevant. Are the staffs large enough to undertake these duties and all others they are called upon to perform?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I apologise for any discourtesy that I may have shown; it was not intended. The Government have no evidence that the staffs are inadequate.
BARONESS MASHAM OF ILTON: My Lords, would it be possible for the noble Lord to find out how many schools do not have health screening?
LORD BELSTEAD: My Lords, I could write to the noble Baroness. I cannot add to the answer which I gave to the first supplementary question of Lord Garnsworthy, in the course of which I gave the House some statistics on the screening of children for sight and hearing.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords—
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, I hesitate to intervene; but it is past 3.15 and time that we passed to the second Question.

WATER SUPPLIES AND CYANIDE CONTAMINATION
3.17 p.m.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: 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 to what extent public water supplies have been tested in recent years for the presence of cyanide, and with what results.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, water undertakings regularly analyse the water they put into supply, and they carry out special tests if they have any reason to suspect the presence of any particular contaminants.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that reply, which does not really meet the point I had in mind, may I say that what I want to know is the frequency and extent of the analyses which are made, because unless they are carried out on a systematic basis the result will not be statistically significant.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord a full answer to that question because I should have to relate it to the whole range of hundreds and hundreds of water undertakings, all of whom test their water supplies in different ways. But I think it likely that next week we shall be discussing a Bill dealing with dumping of poisonous wastes when there will be ample opportunity to go further into this point.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, may ask the noble Lord whether any of these analyses have disclosed the presence of cyanide in water supplies?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, over recent weeks the results of these tests, or some of the results, have been submitted to the Department; but the inspections of these do not lead us at the moment to feel that any regular arrangements on these lines ought to be made. As the noble Lord will see when we get the Bill which has been introduced in another place, it will be a requirement under that Bill that the dumping of polluting substances should be reported to river authorities.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, is it not very remarkable, in view of the number of cases which have come to light recently of the indiscriminate dumping of cyanide, that none of this has got into any water supplies? Is that really credible?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I leave it to the noble Lord to judge whether it is remarkable; but it is a fact.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, is the noble Lord specifically saying—because he did not give that answer the first time—that no cyanide has been found in water supplies in recent years? It may be that he does not wish to cause alarm and despondency; but if he could give an answer to this question it would be helpful.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I think the noble Lord will realise that to give an absolutely categorical answer to that effect would be impossible without carrying out a tremendous amount of research. The significant fact is that the tests that the water undertakers have been carrying out over a whole range of likely contaminants of drinking water

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have not yielded any results which cause anxiety or which would require the existing arrangements to be amended.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, whether the results are significant or not, will the noble Lord try to answer the question: has any cyanide been found in water supplies? If he does not know the answer then I am sure the House will be content to accept a "Don't know"—in which case we might ask the question another day.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, it is not so much a question of knowing as of not having complete access to all the information, which has not hitherto been referred to the Department of the Environment. It is held by the water undertakers themselves.

UNEMPLOYMENT: WORKING HOURS AND PENSION AGE
3.20 p.m.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, as a means of reducing the high rate of unemployment, they would advise a reduction of working hours and a pensionable age of 60 and would enter into discussions with the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. on the subject.]
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN): My Lords, the Government believe that their measures to stimulate the economy and to contain inflation are the best means of dealing with current unemployment and we would not advise a reduction in the minimum pensionable age or in working hours as likely to be effective for this purpose. We do not, therefore, propose to initiate discussion with the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. on these subjects.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that a high rate of unemployment is inevitable for a considerable time to come? Would it not be desirable—owing to the ineffectiveness of the Government's proposals and the doubts as to whether they are
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likely to be effective in the future—to break through with something in the nature of an innovation? At any rate would it not be desirable to enter into discussions with C.B.I. and the Trades Union Congress General Council on a subject of this character?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, my difficulty is to know exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, has in mind when he asks us to "advise a reduction" in the pensionable age. I assume that he means that employers should be encouraged to retire their employees, or should themselves encourage employees to retire, at 60. I am sure he realises that this would entail some reduction in occupational pensions, particularly where they are funded, or an increase in the cost of goods and services. If that is what he means, I do not think that this would be desirable. Nor do I think that a reduction in working hours would necessarily lead to increased employment.
LORD SHINWELL: But, my Lords, is it not obvious to the noble Lord and to the Government that automation, rationalisation and the decision of many industrial firms of stature to impose redundancies of a voluminous character create unemployment, because the firms are unable to absorb the labour supply; and that we must adopt some measure of this character to absorb the unemployed? Why does the noble Lord say that he cannot understand the meaning of my Question? All I am asking is for a reduction in the existing hours of labour to something like 35 or 30. Is he aware that that course is now being adopted in the United States and in some other countries? Surely, too, it is desirable to reduce the pensionable age?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, the difficulty is that although the normal hours of work have been reduced to a considerable extent over the last 25 years, the actual hours worked have remained more or less the same.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, does my noble friend recall that the Labour Government, of which the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, was such a distinguished member in 1951, suggested that the retirement age should be raised to 67? In the last twenty years surely it has been

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proved tha older people can make a very worthwhile contribution to the economy of our country and that older Members of both Houses can make very worthwhile contributions long after the age of 60?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he would take a long view of my noble friend's Question? This is not a question of arguing about who did what in 1951; it is a question of future progress. Is he aware that undoubtedly there will need to be reductions in working hours and that immense problems arise, particularly on pensions? And is he aware that all my noble friend is asking is that the noble Lord should start considering, and if necessary discussing, future progress?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, questions of reductions in hours are essentially matters for negotiation between employers and employees. All I am saying is that in the past the trend has been that where negotiations for a reduction in normal hours have taken place a reduction in the average total hours worked has not resulted. Therefore, in view of the massive steps that have been taken, we think that the better course is to see how these measures develop, and we believe that they will be successful in reducing unemployment.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether the time has not arrived when, on health grounds, the number of hours and the pensionable age should be reduced for men engaged on heavy manual work?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, again I think this is a question of negotiation between the two parties. I am sorry that I did not reply to my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing but the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, got up first. But it is true that there was a recommendation, which I think was made by a Committee set up by the Party opposite but during the period of a Conservative Government, and it was to increase the retirement age to 67. I think I should add that retirement ages vary considerably in different countries, but they generally run to about 65. Where there is a lower retirement age than 65 it is quite common to have a lower pension,
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and I doubt whether this would be acceptable. Perhaps I should add also that the reduction of the pensionable age to 60 would cost around £700 million.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he would agree that if the Government's proposals to reduce inflation and the like seem to be ineffective in the foreseeable future—say within the next couple of years of high unemployment—the Government would consider the proposals contained in my Question?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I do not think one can ever close one's mind altogether to proposals of this kind, but I think they would require quite a considerable change in attitude on several sides.
LORD RAGLAN: My Lords, is it not the case, despite what my noble friend Lord Shinwell suggests, that if we compulsorily retire people earlier all we are doing is increasing the number of unemployed but calling them by another name?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, to a large extent this is true, and I think that one has to bear in mind that about one-sixth of the total of unemployed at the present time are over 60.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that at the time of the recommendation referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, the level of compulsory unemployment was considerably lower than it is to-day?
LORD DRUMALBYN: Yes, my Lords; that was exactly why the recommendation was made, because we wanted to get more people in work. But it is very difficult to have a varying age for retirement from work. Once it is lowered it tends to stay at the lower level.
BARONESS SEEAR: My Lords, could we not ask the Government again to consider that very point? Surely what is required at the moment is the option of retirement at the age of 60. If everybody retired at 60, as the noble Lord said, it would cost a very large sum of money. But for retirement to be available at the age of 60, while a large number of people would not avail themselves

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of it, could be of very considerable advantage, at a very much lower price than noble Lords have quoted. May we ask the Government to consider reviewing the position from that point of view?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, as the noble Baroness will be aware, this is the sort of question which has often been looked at within what was the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, and I am quite certain that it will be borne in mind.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, is not this yet another instance of gross discrimination as between the sexes? Why should men continue to suffer the disability of a later pensionable age compared with that of women?
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: Hear, hear!
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, would not the Minister agree that there may be something to be said for my noble friend's suggestion in the short run? In the long run it would be a counsel of despair, because if we permanently reduce the labout force, we are permanently shutting the door on a rising standard of living. I am sure that my noble friend desires that there should be a rise in that respect.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I entirely agree with the noble Baroness.

MINIMUM WAGE LEGISLATION
3.30 p.m.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper, in the hope that I may have some greater measure of success.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what consideration has been given to the introduction of legislation for a minimum wage, enforceable by law, in selected industries and the public service to ensure that no person should be in receipt of wages which fail to provide a reasonable standard of living.]
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, Wages Councils in industries where col-
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lective bargaining is not sufficiently developed already lay down statutory minima enforceable by law. The Government do not favour the wider application of minimum wage legislation at the present time. We do not consider that this is the most effective way of achieving a reasonable standard of living for low-paid workers.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, do I understand from the noble Lord's reply that the Government prefer the present chaotic, anarchic method of dealing with the wage rates of those on the lower scale? Do they prefer that method, with all the consequential turbulence? Would it not be far better to adopt the proposal that I have suggested? May I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that 61 years ago the late Winston Churchill, when he was President of the Board of Trade, was responsible for the Trade Boards Act, and appointed me as a member of the Trade Board: and we succeeded in providing a minimum hourly rate for workers in selected industries which produced beneficial effects? Why not adopt that system now?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, an official Report on a national minimum wage, published under the previous Government, said:
"The value of a national minimum as a means of relieving poverty is limited … by the fact that it takes no account of family circumstances."
What is more, my Lords, it does not offer an easy, direct way to effect a permanent improvement in the relevant position of the low paid: experience shows that it has only a temporary effect.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, would the noble Lord be kind enough to delve into the archives and ask for a Cabinet Paper on a national wage policy which I produced when I was Minister of Fuel and Power, in which the full argument is set forth and is unchallengeable? Am I to understand that this Assembly is so unprogressive that it refuses to accept what is in effect a breakthrough against low rates of pay for a large section of workers in the country?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, this question has often been looked at in the light of circumstances prevailing at the time. In fact it was, I believe, the subject of the last Report of the National

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Board for Prices and Incomes, which tendered the advice that I have already indicated.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that a selection has already been made on a sex basis, because it is the women in the country who receive the lowest wages?
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, even if the Government cannot accept this proposal for private industry, may I ask the Minister whether there is not a case in the nationalised industries, for which the Government and Parliament have direct responsibility, for establishing a minimum wage, based on the cost of living standard, for those who are directly serving us?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I think it would be difficult to treat the public sector differently from the private sector in this matter. The overriding aim surely is to achieve moderation in all wage settlements. This is in the interests of all concerned, and not least in the interests of the lowest paid. I would just say this in addition. The Government are certainly not against negotiations which result in differential improvements for lower paid workers.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the late Ernest Bevin, when he was a member of the 1945–51 Government, introduced the Catering Wages Bill, which became an Act of Parliament and which is in effect a minimum wage Act? It is in operation already. Why cannot it be applied, as I have suggested, not to all industries but to selected industries?
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: My Lords, do I take it from the noble Lord's reply that it is proper to use the public sector to hold down wages, but it is not proper to use it in order to set better standards for the rest of industry?
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, before my noble friend answers, may I ask whether an economic debate is in order at Question Time?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, perhaps I may just answer the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, on this point. He is well
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aware that there are a large number of wages councils which have minimum wages, but he is also well aware that it is the general policy to replace these wherever possible by voluntary negotiation.

THE EASTER RECESS
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if I inform your Lordships about the Easter Recess. Subject to the progress of business, the House will rise for the Easter Recess on Thursday, March 30, and reassemble on Tuesday, April 18.
BARONESS WHITE: My Lords, can the noble Earl enlighten us as to how long into August we shall be obliged to sit?
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I am flattered that the noble Baroness should think that my powers of forecast are that good. I am afraid that the answer is, No.

LLOYDS AND BOLSA INTERNATIONAL BANK BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
NEATH CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
HARBOURS (LOANS) BILL
Read 3a, and passed.

SOLICITORS (AMENDMENT) BILL [H.L.]
3.38 p.m.
LORD TANGLEY: 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.—(Lord Tangley.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 to 10 agreed to.
Clause 11 [Management of and grants from Compensation Fund]:
LORD GARDINER: I should like to raise a point on Clause 11 of the Bill. It is a point which could have been raised on the Second Reading, but unfortunately I had an engagement which would have precluded me from hearing the reply if I had raised it then, and that is not a situation in which one wants to find oneself. I have not put down an Amendment because I imagine that the matter is not in dispute with the Law Society, and I am merely asking for information. If I had put down an Amendment, it would have been to omit from subsections (2) and (3) of Clause 11 the words, "may if the Council think fit" and to substitute the word "shall" In other words, the question which I wanted to raise was whether, looking to the future rather than to this Bill, the Law Society think that this fund ought to be a guarantee or indemnity fund or a compensation fund. The difference of course is quite a simple one. If it is an indemnity or guarantee fund, then anybody who is defrauded of his money by his solicitor has a legal right to be indemnified out of that fund. If it is as now a compensation fund, a client has no legal right of any kind; it is a purely discretionary, ex gratia fund.
In raising this point I am doing so not for the first time. When the original Bill was before this House in 1940 the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft (the father of the present noble Lord), raised it himself on the Second Reading on July 4, 1940. At column 790 of Hansard he said this:
" With regard to Clause 1, which deals with what is called the Compensation Fund, I do not like the idea of the fund in the form of a Compensation Fund. I do not like the word 'Compensation'. It is not a guarantee fund; it is merely a Samaritan fund. I wish that the Law Society had not included this clause to set up a fund in the form in which it now appears in the Bill. It is a fund to be administered at the discretion of the Law Society. If there is going to be a fund, I think that it should be a guarantee fund with a cash deposit or a fidelity bond put in by every solicitor. A skeleton idea is to be found in Lloyd's Underwriters' Fund".
He then discusses that, and goes on:
"… then I think that this clause ought to provide a regular guarantee fund. Whether there will be any discussion in the other House or whether Amendments will be put down here to deal with that point of view about the Compensation Fund, I do not know. I do
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not like the word 'Compensation' at all, for reasons which I will give, and I think that the operation of that clause in its present form ought to be dropped."
The answer was that the Bill was not prepared in this form and all that the Law Society had agreed to was that this method should be given a trial to see how it worked. That was a very natural answer, because as a country we are very good at trying out things, and I myself am a great believer in trying things out and seeing how they work. Since then thirty years have gone by and from time to time one has read statements by the Law Society which, though I am sure not so intended, might well be read by the ordinary layman as meaning that if there were a defalcation by one's solicitor one would have a right. The noble Lord, Lord Tangley, on the Second Reading on March 2, 1972, at column 1217 of Hansard said:
" The principle of the Compensation Fund is that the whole profession stands behind every solicitor, so that any client who suffers from dishonesty can make a claim on the Compensation Fund. We call it the Compensation Fund because that is what it is; but ever since it started it has operated as an indemnity fund. We do not dare call it that yet, but that is what it has been in the past, and in this sense no admitted claim has yet been rejected by the Fund."
I am bound to say that in the course of a fairly long life in the law I have on a number of occasions been approached by clients who have said they have been defrauded of money by their solicitors but they cannot get anything from the Compensation Fund and the Law Society have declined to give any reason. I have not taken up those cases because I have usually referred them to their Member of Parliament: the last thing I want to do is to get involved in a dispute with the Law Society. However, may I take one example of a client for whom I appeared in the Divisional Court and who will be known to many of your Lordships in this House, at least by name—Mr. Hinds. Mr. Hinds was convicted of burglary of a safe at Maples and he ultimately persuaded a King's Bench jury in a libel action that he had been in the right throughout. When I say "throughout", I have in mind that he was refused bail for no reason that I could ever discover, and while in his prison cell he wrote to his Member of Parliament and said, "I am being 'framed' by Superintendent

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Sparks and this man at Maples", and that is what he said ever since.
He had bad luck: he got bail eventually without sufficient time to prepare his defence, so his leading counsel returned the brief the night before the trial. He applied to Lord Goddard, who was to try the case, for an adjournment. This was refused, and a new counsel had to be found at the very last moment. The criticisms which have been made of the conduct of the trial by Lord Goddard are well known. On conviction, Hinds gave his last £1,500 to his solicitor to get him a really good Queen's Counsel for his appeal; and his solicitor promptly embezzled the money and then shot himself. So all he had for his appeal were two youngish junior counsel. I took the case up with the late Secretary of the Law Society, but I was told that they never give any reasons. Hinds applied for compensation both at the time and particularly after a Queen's Bench jury was satisfied that he had been so "framed" and that he had not in fact been in Maples that night, as I and a great many other people were firmly convinced.
Therefore the short question I want to raise is: is this kind of thing suitable to the reputation of a great profession? Would it not be very much better if an English solicitor could say what every New Zealand solicitor can say: "No one need ever fear giving his money to his solicitor, because in the very unlikely event of his going off with it there is an indemnity fund and you have a legal right to be indemnified from that fund"? I believe, too, that every solicitor in New South Wales can say this. Thirty years have now gone by, and I do not raise this question in any hostile spirit at all, but because I believe that the reputation of English solicitors would stand even higher than it already does if they could proudly say, "You need have no fear whatever of giving money to your solicitor because there is an indemnity fund from which you will have a legal right to draw." I raise this point, hoping that the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, may at some later stage of the Bill be able to tell us that the Law Society have reconsidered this point.
3.47 p.m.
LORD TANGLEY: If it is in order I should like to say a few words now
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on what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, has said, while the point is fresh in your Lordships' minds, rather than at a later stage of the Bill. I chose my words rather carefully on Second Reading and said that the Fund had in fact worked as an indemnity fund, in the sense that no admitted claim had been rejected. This proposal to convert the Compensation Fund into an indemnity fund has, if I may say so with great respect to the noble and learned Lord, a deceptive simplicity about it. It sounds magnificent to say, as he said, that everybody who is defrauded by a solicitor has a legal right, et cetera; but I am not sure that to amend the law in that way would be as useful to claimants as it looks at first sight. When the Law Society has a discretion, as it has to-day, it does not have to insist upon absolutely strict proof that the client has a claim against the solicitor. There are numerous cases where the benefit of the doubt has been given to the client.
If we are to lay down by Statute that there is to be an indemnity, it must be defined as an indemnity against something, and the indemnity presumably means that it is an indemnity against any legal claim the client might have against the solicitor. As the operators of the Fund, that would put the Law Society in the position that they would have to be satisfied that there was a legal claim. At the moment they do not have to be satisfied that there is a legal claim, and there are numerous cases where the client has obviously been defrauded but might not, for various technical reasons, have a legal claim. Therefore, in my belief, your Lordships can take it that many people get compensation to-day who might not get it if we went in for all the rigidity of an indemnity fund. Notwithstanding that, the Law Society are considering this matter. The noble and learned Lord admitted that this is not something that we can deal with in this Billf; but I can assure the Committee that if it were possible and satisfactory to the claimants to make it an indemnity fund and the fund could be advertised as such, nobody would be happier than the solicitors' profession. There are difficulties about this which the Law Society are considering and will continue to consider. I hope that that assurance will satisfy the noble and learned Lord.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: May I add one word to what my noble friend Lord Tangley has said? It is certainly very attractive that this should be made an insurance fund but it involves the consequences that he has mentioned, that it would have to be administered upon insurance lines. There is another difficulty about it: it is not entirely desirable to encourage people to believe that they ought not to take the slightest trouble in looking after their own affairs. Let us say that some foolish person had put into the hands of a solicitor who turned out to be fraudulent the sum of £1 million and the sum was embezzled. Under the proposal of my noble friend Lord Gardiner, that person would presumably be entitled to make a claim for £1 million. The result would be a levy upon the members of the solicitors' profession out of all proportion to any reason. There could be cases in which people behaved extremely foolishly and brought the consequences of their foolishness on themselves. That is another reason why it is not entirely desirable that the present principle, which so far as I know has worked perfectly well and which has saved a very large number of people from losses which they would otherwise have incurred, should be abandoned.
Clause 11 agreed to.
Clauses 12 to 15 agreed to.
3.54 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE)THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE) moved Amendment No. 1:
After Clause 15 insert the following new clause:
". After subsection (3) of section 29 of the principal Act (which requires the Council to make rules as to the keeping of accounts by solicitors) there shall be inserted—
'(3A) The Council shall be at liberty to disclose a report on or information about a solicitor's accounts obtained in exercise of powers conferred by rules made under subsection (1) or subsection (2) above to the Director of Public Prosecutions or a member of his staff authorised by him, in connection with the prosecution or contemplated prosecution of the solicitor for a criminal offence.'"
The noble and learned Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 1. This Amendment is largely declaratory. Whether it is declaratory or not, it cor-
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responds to what is being done now. What is being done now has given rise to some question on technical legal grounds and it is thought proper to insert a clause to put the matter beyond reasonable doubt.
This clause gives statutory authority to the Law Society to forward to the Director of Public Prosecutions the report of the Society's investigating accountant where his inquiries have revealed the commission of criminal offences by a solicitor. The investigating accountant's inquiries are conducted under Rule 12 of the Solicitors Accounts Rules 1967, and Rule 11 of the Solicitors Trust Accounts Rules, 1967. Both sets of rules were made in accordance with the provisions of the Solicitors Act 1957, Section 29(1) and (2). The rule in each case enables the Council of the Law Society to require a solicitor to produce all the documents and information necessary to the inquiry.
The report is expressly prepared on the direction of the Council for their information as to whether the accounts rules have been complied with and may be used for proceedings under the Solicitors Acts 1957 and 1965. These Acts make provisions for proceedings relating to solicitors' accounts to be heard before the Disciplinary Committee constituted under Section 46 of the Solicitors Act 1957. There are no express provisions for criminal proceedings. The question therefore has arisen as to whether the accountant's report or other information obtained in the investigation could be disclosed to the Director of Public Prosecutions in connection with the prosecution or contemplated prosecution of a solicitor.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, in a case called Parry-Jones v. The Law Society, reported in 1969, said this:
"In my opinion that rule is a valid rule which overrides any privilege or confidence which otherwise might subsist between solicitor and client. It enables the Law Society for the public good to hold an investigation, even if it involves getting information as to clients' affairs. But they and their accountant must, of course, themselves respect the obligation of confidence. They must not use it for any purpose except the investigation, and"—
these are the critical words—
"any consequential proceedings. If there should be subsequent application to the Disciplinary Committee, the information can be used for

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that purpose. In all other respects the usual rules of legal professional privilege apply—see section 46(6) of the Act."
The new clause I am proposing resolves any ambiguity inherent in the phrase, "and any consequential proceedings."
The new clause is clearly justifiable on the ground that it is important that the Director should bring defaulting solicitors to justice with a minimum of delay and difficulty. If the information is not available, the Director could experience considerable delay and expense and it would be particularly embarrassing for the Law Society to have the means of avoiding such delay and expense and not to be able to make it available to the Director. It has been the practice until very recently for the Law Society to make this information available to the Director of Public Prosecutions, but it was recently questioned, and therefore as the question has been raised it has become necessary to legislate. The purpose of the new clause that I now propose is to legislate. I am sorry that I did not notice my noble and learned friend Lord Denning was in his place. If I had I would have drawn attention to his presence because I was quoting from one of his famous judgments.
3.59 p.m.
LORD STOW HILL: I should like to raise one or two points from these Benches on the Amendment which the noble and learned Lord has just moved. When I first looked at the Amendment I was rather puzzled as to the need for it. Anybody can engage an accountant to produce a report, and if a report is produced anybody may show that report to the Director of Public Prosecutions. But the noble and learned Lord has explained—and I am grateful to him for so doing—how it is that a doubt has arisen in view of the reasoning of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, as to whether it is permissible so to do. If I may respectfully say so I should have thought that amply justified the case for proposing this Amendment.
The object of the Amendment, namely, to remove a doubt, is one which I should have thought the whole Committee would readily support, and I certainly do so. I should like to raise one or two points on the language in which the Amendment is couched. I am quite certain that the noble and learned Lord would agree
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with me in this: the language chosen should specify as clearly as possible the circumstances in which the report may or may not be shown to the Director. After all, there are really two parties to this and there is a civil liberties aspect to it. There is the Law Society acting through its Council, on the one hand, in the protection of the public; and, on the other hand, there is after all the solicitor whose behaviour is suspect. I am sure that the whole Committee and the profession would wish to be perfectly fair to that solicitor. It is in that context that I should like to draw attention to the words:
"in connection with the prosecution or contemplated prosecution of the solicitor for a criminal offence".
The Amendment allows the report or the information in question to be disclosed to the Director only if that disclosure is
"in connection with the prosecution or contemplated prosecution of the solicitor for a criminal offence".
The first limb of those words, "in connection with the prosecution", clearly posits, I should have thought, that a prosecution has already been undertaken and is in progress. Unless there is a prosecution pending, I should have thought those words were not satisfied and would not justify the Council of the Law Society showing the report to the Director. One then goes on and looks to the second limb of the wording; namely, the words "or contemplated prosecution of the solicitor". I would have respectfully submitted to the noble and learned Lord that they would give rise to some doubt which he might like to examine a little further. Contemplated by whom? Has the prosecution to be contemplated by the Council of the Law Society or by the Director of Public Prosecutions? One does not know: the language is ambiguous.
Secondly, at what stage can it be said that a prosecution is contemplated? Supposing that all that has happened is that the Law Society has had the report from its accountant which discloses matters extremely suspicious in themselves and seeming to point to the fact that there has been a criminal offence committed, or at any rate establishing a strong likelihood that there has been such an offence. I should have thought

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that the objective of the Amendment would be that in those circumstances the Council of the Law Society could certainly forward the report to the Director for him to examine to see whether in fact there are materials upon which to found a prosecution. But the prosecution has got to be a contemplated prosecution. The Director at that moment does not contemplate any prosecution. He has not seen the report. If one looks at the mind of the Council, they do not contemplate a prosecution. All that they do is to say to themselves: "The report discloses very suspicious circumstances. Perhaps there has been an offence committed here. It ought to be investigated to see whether there is an offence." I should have thought it could not possibly be said that at that stage a prosecution is contemplated. Nobody knows whether there will be one or whether there will not be one. It is simply a possibility. There may be a "Yes" or there may be a "No" to the question whether a prosecution is at that stage "contemplated". If that interpretation of the language which I venture to put before the Committee is correct, it would follow that the Law Society at that stage could not forward the report to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Clearly that, I should have thought, was not what is intended, and I should be most grateful, speaking for myself, if the noble and learned Lord were able to say that he would consider that language a little further to see whether the doubts I have raised are well-founded or not. If he says that he has already considered it, I shall be perfectly content, but I thought it right to raise the matter.
The next point is this. The new clause authorises the forwarding of the report to the Director. Supposing that report is defamatory of the solicitor concerned—and, as I say, one must in fairness to him consider his side of the matter. Sometimes of course the report will be defamatory. It will be mistaken, perhaps, in putting an adverse view upon things that have happened which are capable of perfectly innocent explanation. It will be defamatory, and when it is forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions there will be a publication in every sense. What is the position to be if the report is defamatory? Speaking for myself, I should have thought that the Council of
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the Law Society should then have—as I should have thought it would probably have—a defence of qualified privilege. It would not be liable in damages for making that defamatory publication unless it could be shown that the publication was made with malice; and I should have thought that that was what the law should provide. I hope the language of this clause so provides.
I simply raise the doubt, however, as to whether the contrary could not be argued on these lines. It could be said, "After all, what is it that the new clause allows? The new clause authorises us, the Council, to forward the report to the Director of Public Prosecutions. That is all we have done. We did not prepare a defamatory report. We did precisely what the new clause authorises us to do and nothing else besides." Perhaps the answer to that could be, "Well, there is something else besides. You not only forwarded a report but you made a defamatory publication." Again, I should be perfectly content if the noble and learned Lord were able to tell us that he had considered that, and if he is in agreement with me that the Law Society should have a qualified defence that the language chosen only gives them that defence. I think he probably would agree with me that if the language per incuriam does have the result of giving the Law Society an absolute privilege in the case of the publication of a defamatory report, then some change should be introduced in it. But the noble and learned Lord always considers these matters with the greatest care, in spite of the many responsibilities he has, and if he tells me that he is satisfied on the advice of his advisers that there would be only qualified privilege, I certainly shall be satisfied.
The final point is this. I notice that in paragraph 21 of Schedule 1 to this Bill, on page 18, the Council of the Law Society and its servants are given an express right of indemnity out of the Indemnity Fund in the event of a claim being made against the Council or its servants in respect of something done in the execution of the powers or the implement of the responsibilities conferred by Schedule 1. The forwarding of the report under this new clause would not come within the scope of that indemnity. It would not be something done in pursuance of Schedule 1; it is something

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completely extraneous and outside Schedule 1. It would be done under Section 29 of the 1957 Act, which is something different. I am wondering whether it would not be desirable, in the event of the involuntary publication by the Council of a defamatory report, that they should have some indemnity at least in respect of the costs that they may be put to in defending what perhaps may be a wholly unjustified action brought in the courts by the delinquent solicitor, which may put them to a very considerable amount of expense. I have been through the 1957 Act and the 1965 Act to see whether I could find any section in either of those Acts which would grant such a general indemnity. I have not found one; maybe I have missed it. But I would just raise the point for consideration.
Those are points I simply raise. I would not advise your Lordships to seek to vote against the clause. Personally, I would certainly support it, but I should do so the more readily and with greater peace of mind if the noble and learned Lord were able to tell me either that he has considered those points or, if he feels that they require further consideration, that he will have a further look at them between now and the Report stage.
4.8 p.m.
LORD DENNING: I would support this Amendment. Of course it is a strong power which the Law Society have by which they send an accountant down to a solicitor's office to go through his books to see whether they are in order or not, or to see whether the monies are properly accounted, and so forth. But that is a very necessary power for the discipline of the profession and for the protection of the public. In order that that may be effective it must be necessary for the Law Society to use such information when the matter is put before the Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal. In the case which my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor has mentioned, a solicitor, Mr. Parry Jones, objected very much to accounts being used without his being told about it and to what he thought was a further breach of privilege. But it was held, and rightly, I submit to your Lordships, that it is right that they should be placed before the Disciplinary Tribunal. But, if that is so, it is only a logical consequence that if it is a very serious
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case, such as to merit proceedings not merely before the Disciplinary Tribunal but before the criminal courts, then the material should be placed before the Director of Public Prosecutions. So I would suggest that this Amendment is desirable in order to clear up doubts. As to what my noble friend Lord Stow Hill said, I should have thought that a "contemplated" prosecution was probably a prosecution contemplated by the Professional Purposes Committee of the Law Society on the one hand. As to privilege, I should imagine that this would be clearly qualified privilege, but I support the Amendment.
LORD TANGLEY: With a certain amount of hesitation and reluctance I am prepared to accept this Amendment. My hesitation and reluctance are entirely due to these facts. It may well be that a complaint dealt with before the disciplinary committee of the Law Society has no criminal element in it whatever, and it is perhaps going a little far to mix up a criminal and a non-criminal proceeding. The second thing that makes me hesitate a little is that the question of client's privilege may enter into this. After all, the accountants' report may make remarks about a client's affairs or dealings with a solicitor, which would normally be privileged; and of course your Lordships all know that this is not a privilege on the part of a solicitor, but a privilege on the part of the client; and the client's privilege has to be preserved.
There are points also which have been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, but I think the answer to my own hesitations and doubts is that this new clause does not make it compulsory upon the Law Society to make available to the Director of Public Prosecutions any document. It will be entirely within the discretion of the Law Society whether or not they act on an invitation by the prosecution. In those circumstances, I think it is reasonable to leave it to the discretion of a rather expert body to decide whether it is safe from the point of view of defamation, or whether it is proper from the point of view of client's privilege, or for any other reason, to make these documents available. I notice that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has expressly refrained from introducing any element of compulsion into this. It is a matter resting

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entirely at the discretion of the Law Society and that being so, on second thoughts I feel that it must be safe to accept this Amendment.
I myself think there is no doubt that it would be a case of qualified privilege in an action for defamation, and I do not quite see why there should be any indemnity for the Law Society or for any member of its staff if the Law Society itself exercises the discretion (for under this new clause it will still be its own discretion) to produce some documents to the Director of Public Prosecutions. So, on balance, I am prepared to accept this new clause, which I believe is a safe clause to accept, even taking into account the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill.
LORD CONESFORD: After the very distinguished noble Lords who have spoken I hesitate to intervene and I do so only because I share to some extent the doubts on the actual wording raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill. I should have thought that, for the reasons given by the noble and learned Lord the Master of the Rolls, the words in the Amendment as it stands would probably just do and would be construed as I am sure the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor wishes. But I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, raised a point of some substance when he asked, in connection with the prosecution, at what point it can be said there is a prosecution in connection with which these documents are forwarded. I also thought there was some substance in what he said to the effect that when they were forwarded some further investigation might be necessary in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. I could not suggest with any confidence alternative words that would do, but I would ask my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, unless he is completely satisfied that there is no substance in the criticisms of the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, to consider some alternative words to the conclusion of his Amendment, such as
"for investigation and possible prosecution of the solicitor for a criminal offence".
It seems to me that some words such as those would get rid of all the difficulties as to who is contemplating the prosecution within the meaning of the Amend-
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ment. Simply looking at the words in their natural sense I cannot help sharing the doubts expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill.
LORD TANGLEY: I should like to deal with one or two remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Conesford. I think the practical situation is this. The Law Society is not going to volunteer any documents or statements. Such documents or statements will be given to the D.P.P. only if he asks for them, and it is within the discretion of the Law Society whether it gives effect to that request or not. Therefore it is perfectly easy for the Law Society to say to the D.P.P., "What are you going to do with these things? Are you going to prosecute?" If he says "Yes", there will plainly be a prosecution in contemplation. Of course anybody can contemplate a prosecution, just as I can contemplate the heavens, but I do not think that is what this new clause means. The practical position is surely this: that the D.P.P. will say, "Please, Law Society, you have something that I very much want to see for the purposes of looking into this case and possible prosecution." That would bring it straight within the clause as almost nothing else would.
LORD JANNER: I rise for a moment as a practising solicitor to say that what we are concerned about is that the public should realise that if there is a transgression against the law that transgression will be dealt with. The profession itself is a very honourable profession, very often misrepresented, as I have said dozens of times in the other place, and I repeat it here, and I think it is highly important that the public should realise that if there happens to be a "black sheep" in the profession (and there are very few) that "black sheep" will be dealt with adequately.
As a lawyer I am not over-happy with the words "0contemplated prosecution" and I am not sure that they can be easily defined because I think the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, was right: it is a question of contemplation by whom and how. I am not altogether satisfied; but as the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, has said, any doubt of that nature is outweighed by the fact that eventually it rests in the hands of the Law Society, which is a most honourable Society, the members of

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which are careful about the image of the profession and about the correctness of the profession, and in those circumstances I do not think it would be unsafe to accept the new clause as it has been proposed.
4.20 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am grateful to the various noble Lords who have played a part in this debate. I think the logical way to reply to them would be to start with the first intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, because he came back to the point about what this clause is all about, and I think I can answer the other points in relation to that rather than vice versa.
This is a clause in the public interest but to protect the Law Society. It is not a clause to cause the Law Society to do something they do not want to do, or indeed to cause the Law Society to do something they have not in fact been doing. There is co-operation, or has been until very recently indeed, between the Law Society and the Director of Public Prosecutions in cases of this kind. In his second intervention the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, really explained the sort of thing that happens. I do not know, not being very familiar with this ground, certainly not so familiar as either the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, or Lord Tangley, whether the Law Society ever in fact volunteers information. The ordinary straightforward case is that the Director wants to get the information from the Law Society, and he wants to get it for the reason that Directors of Public Prosecutions do want to get information, because they have in contemplation a prosecution.
By "contemplation" I do not mean (this brings me back to the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill) that they have already made up their minds to prosecute; because Directors of Public Prosecution are cautious people, with a certain discretion as to whether to prosecute or not, and the degree of probability of conviction and the seriousness of the offence are matters which necessarily they have in mind before they decide to prosecute. But they ordinarily have it in contemplation to prosecute when they invite the Law Society to let them see the documents in relation to their investigation. This is the reason why the word "con-
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templated" and not "intended" was used. I dare say that some form of words revolving round the words "investigate with a view to prosecution" might well have been substituted. Although I am not at all uneasy about the word "contemplated" in my Amendment, I will, at the invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, undertake that this shall be examined again by my advisers to consider whether the form of words used is the most appropriate for the purpose in mind, because obviously one does not want to do anything other than the best.
In the same breath, may I go back to my noble friend Lord Conesford (I think it was he, but certainly one noble Lord) who asked me when a prosecution actually begins. There is legal learning about this; there are cases. I would not like to say without notice what the result of them is. My recollection is that a prosecution begins when a charge is laid; not before and not after, but when an actual charge is made in the formal sense. If I should turn out to be wrong about that, I will take steps to try to correct myself to anybody who may be sufficiently interested to want to know. So much for the first question which the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, raised.
Then comes the question of privilege in case the report is defamatory. Again this is something which, at the invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, I must have looked at again, and I promise to ask my advisers to give a report on it. I personally have no doubt—and I am reinforced in this by the opinion of my noble and learned friend Lord Denning from the Cross-Benches—that it gives rise to qualified privilege and not either to no privilege or to absolute privilege. But it is obviously a point that we must get right, and so I will, if this Amendment is agreed to, refer it back.
The third point that Lord Stow Hill raised is not really a question for me, but I will say what I can about the disposal of the compensation fund under Schedule 1 to which he referred. Paragraph 21 is, in effect, a direction about the disposal of the compensation fund, by way of indemnity, to the committee which has in fact carried out the investigation. But this is a matter for the Law Society, not for the Government, and they no

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doubt will take into account what Lord Stow Hill has said. It is not strictly a matter for me to tell them what to do or how to do it.
I should like to thank my noble and learned friend Lord Denning for coming here to give us the benefit of his experience. Not merely is he President of the Court of Appeal with a long and distinguished contribution to English law as such, but, of course, as Master of the Rolls he is also in a special relationship with the solicitors' profession, which gives him particular authority upon this point.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, for expressing one of the points I had intended to raise to the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill. This is not purely a question of the civil rights of solicitors who may be under suspicion, but client's privilege is of necessity also involved in any examination of a solicitor's accounts or the report in relation to them. I had intended to say that myself. I am also grateful to him for making it easier for me to reply to the first point, by indicating what I began by endorsing; namely, that the purpose of this Amendment is in fact the protection of the Law Society in pursuing a practice which is already familiar to them but the legality of which has been called in question. Therefore legislation is necessary, for which the present Bill affords an admirable opportunity. Having said that, I hope that the Committee will now feel able to accept the Amendment.
LORD STOW HILL: I rise only to thank the noble and learned Lord for what he has said. I am very content. I should have thought probably the answer in each case is satisfactory as it is, but it was I think right to raise it because two sides are involved.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
Schedule 1 [Property in the possession or control of certain Solicitors and other persons]:
LORD TANGLEY: This is a purely drafting Amendment, and, if it is not indiscreet, I may say that it was suggested to us by Treasury Counsel, which adds much more weight to it than I can. It
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makes no change in the sense of the paragraph at all. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 13, line 23, leave out ("notification") and insert ("notice").—(Lord Tangley.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD TANGLEY: The same remarks apply to this Amendment as to the last. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 13, line 29, leave out sub-paragraph (3).—(Lord Tangley.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD TANGLEY: The same remarks apply to this Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 14, line 36, leave out ("may").—(Lord Tangley.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD TANGLEY: I beg to move Amendment No. 5. The same remarks apply to this Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 18, line 1, leave out paragraph 20 and insert—
("20. Without prejudice to the foregoing provisions of this Schedule, the Society may apply to the High Court for an order as to the disposal or destruction of any documents which may be in its possession by virtue of this Schedule or as to the transfer or payment by any person of any moneys to which this Schedule relates.")—(Lord Tangley.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD TANGLEY LORD TANGLEY moved Amendment No. 6:
Page 18, line 31, leave out ("and 13") and insert ("13 and 24").
The noble Lord said: The same remarks apply also to this Amendment, but I ought to draw your Lordships' attention to another slip in the Bill. I am advised that it does not need an Amendment and can be dealt with on the reprinting of the Bill, provided I draw your Lordships' attention to it. With his meticulous care, the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, drew my attention to this on Second Reading. In Schedule 1(6), line 2, at page 15, there is a printing error: a little "i" appears instead of the word "if", with the result that the sentence makes no sense at all. I believe that this can be dealt with on the reprinting of the Bill provided I draw

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attention to it now, so I do so. Having made that explanation en passant, I formally move Amendment No. 6.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 1, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with the Amendments.

WARBLE-FLY CONTROL
4.32 p.m.
LORD GISBOROUGH LORD GISBOROUGH rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what action they are taking to eliminate the warble-fly. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the warble-fly is the gadfly. We have all seen cattle gadding around the field with their tails in the air, and we know that the gadfly is after them. The menace is mainly in the warm, humid South-West of the country. To give an example of that, in June, 1971, no less than 100 per cent. of the cows killed had warble damage, a state of affairs one may compare with that which exists in Scotland, where in fact the warble menace is very much less. Another comparison is that in June, 1971, 76 per cent. of the hides in the South West of the country were warbled, and throughout the whole of the country 33 per cent. were warbled. So there is quite a percentage in the whole country, but it is very much higher in the South-West.
The warble-fly, or gadfly, flies after the cattle which gad about, eventually catches them and lays up to a hundred eggs on the hairs of the legs or the underparts of the body. After a few days, these eggs hatch and the larvæ then largely go into the skin and migrate up to either the gullet or the backbone of the animal. Later, in December or January, they creep up and lie underneath the skin of the back. Here they grow into pupæ about one inch long, having made a hole in the back through which they can breathe, and eventually in about May or June they go out through the hole, drop into the ground, a few weeks later come up again, change into flies and fly around to start the cycle once again. They fly only up to a mile from where they actually hatch. These flies soon die, because they are unable to eat.
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The losses caused by the gadfly are quite large, and occur chiefly with the hides. The holes that the pupæ make render the hides unusable for any large-scale use—for example, for the upholstery of these Benches, because it would obviously have holes in it. The losses from bad hides amount to about £1 million a year, and in addition to the hide losses there are the losses of milk. It is estimated by the Irish that a cow with 30 warble holes will probably lose about three pints of milk per day. It is also estimated that the quality of the milk will go down by between 10 and 25 per cent. The Irish have carried out certain experiments and discovered that in a 43-day period the difference of weight gain between animals with warbles and those without warbles varied as between 15 lb. and 47 lb. In addition, the butcher will have to cut away probably 2 lb. of what is known as "licked meat", where the warbles have been in contact.
There may be considerable injuries during the gadding period, when beasts will gad into perhaps wire fences or into each other, and hurt each other with their horns. What cannot be estimated, but I think it is quite considerable, is the suffering that can be caused, because I have no doubt that an animal with any number of these pupæ in its back must suffer considerably. There is the average lessening of value of the beast in the market to take into account, with the high likelihood of the hides being warbled, and the result is that the farmer who has taken trouble and has a warble-free beast will suffer as he is averaged down, and the farmer who has not bothered will gain because he will be averaged up. It is interesting that the Danish hides which are imported—there is no warble-fly in Denmark—command an increase of price of some £2·50 per hide. It is also interesting that in 1970 the £4 million-worth of exported hides from Britain averaged £181 per ton, whereas the £7½ million-worth of hides imported into this country averaged £191, a difference of £10 per ton. This difference in fact has amounted to quite a great deal, even up to £25.
The warble can be killed by interfering with its life cycle at any stage, but the only stage at which it is practical to interfere with its life cycle is when

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it is actually in the beast. There are several ways of doing this. I was reminded recently by somebody who had been a farmer that he had been told by a veterinary surgeon that there was nothing like a pair of strong thumbs. This reminds me of a story my mother told me. When she was young, she answered an advertisement which said, "Send half-a-crown and receive an instrument guaranteed to kill flies". She received two pieces of wood and the instructions, "Place a fly on one piece and strike firmly with the other". The strong thumbs are rather like that. The more practical method, the one that has been used throughout the ages, is derris, which is a chemical which has come out of the derris root. This has to be applied once every month. The back of the beast is scrubbed so that the holes are exposed and the derris goes down through the holes and kills the pupæ underneath. However, it is a monthly dressing.
More recently, there has been developed the systemic dressing, which is much more efficient. This is put on between August 15 and November 15, when the larvæ are migrating round the beast and have not actually reached under the skin. The advantage of this method is that it has to be done only once, and it also kills the larvæ of liver fluke and kills lice, but it is difficult to use, because the quantity used is quite critical in relation to the weight of the beast. It is imperative that it is put on in the right way, and it is necessary to use rubber gloves and to take certain safeguards. So it is necessary for it to be put on by a trained operator, and it is not practical for every farmer to use it himself.
I am afraid that it is necessary to look at some figures. In England and Wales in 1961 no less than 31 per cent. of all hides were warbled. This figure came down in 1969 to 8 per cent. on a gradual scale, which looked quite reasonable. But in 1971 the figure went back up to 14 per cent., so it is getting worse. The reduction was due to various reasons, perhaps mainly the efforts which the Irish made in the mid-sixties when they introduced what was first a voluntary scheme and then a compulsory scheme to treat their warbles. It was also partly due to the efforts of the drug manufacturers, the leather associa-
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tions, the farmers' unions and the Ministry of Agriculture, who made great efforts to have the warble dealt with.
The bad figures later were partly due to the warm summer of 1969, which encouraged the warble fly. It is interesting that in June, 1969—the summer months being much worse-16 per cent. of the animals killed were warbled, whereas in 1971, just two years later, the figure had doubled to 33 per cent. These are only summer examples, but they are critical due to the fact that the warbles are obviously living in the ground and will infect the whole national herd. If one takes ox and heifers, one finds that in mid-1961 there was 56 per cent. infection: in 1968 the figure went down to 19 per cent.—a great improvement—but by 1971 it had gone up again to 39 per cent. It had doubled in fact. So the infection is obviously getting very much worse and will spread throughout the whole herd.
The Irish had their voluntary scheme in 1964–65, which was made compulsory in 1966. The effect of that was enormous. Their infection came down from 65 per cent. to 2·4 per cent., and I have already explained the effect on cattle coming over from Ireland and being killed here. But there were pockets of infestation left in Ireland which were not dealt with, and they have been the source of more infestation. The Irish were very aware of the lessening from physical injury due to the lower amount of gadding. In 1971, they had a compulsory scheme and the farmer paid 20p to have each beast treated by the artificial insemination operators. In 1972, the scheme will continue and it is hoped that the warble will be wholly eliminated from Ireland. Since November 15, 1971, it has been an offence for any farmer to own or to put into the market any animal which does not have an ear tag with the accompanying certificate, to show that it was treated last autumn with systemic dressing. As a result of this, Irish cattle are fetching much more at Smithfield.
What the Irish scheme does, and what it is necessary for any British scheme to do, is, first of all, to see that all cattle are dressed during this period in the autumn. It must also be illegal for cattle to be put into a market unless they are accompanied by a certificate and an ear tag showing that they have been dressed,

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and any infested cattle will have to be treated. It is necessary to have trained operators running a scheme and for it to run for two consecutive years. The second year is extremely difficult, because by then 98 per cent. of the cattle are free of warble so that most of the chemical is wasted. But it is necessary to have a second year in order to catch the final 2 per cent. The cost of the scheme if it were applied to England is estimated at £2½ million for the first year, which would represent 25p per beast to the farmer, and it would then cost £100,000 a year to keep up the scheme subsequently. But it is estimated that the annual benefit in hides alone would be £1 million, and the Irish found that there was great benefit because of the lack of gadding. There would also, of course, be higher milk yields and so on. The return on capital with a single year's dressing is estimated at 35 per cent., and with a two-year dressing it is estimated that it would take seven years to break even on the cost.
There are no regulations here about the warble at the moment. There was an Order in force up to 1964 but that was largely unenforceable, and when it was taken off it had no noticeable effect. It is strange that the Order in Ireland of 1964–65, which was first voluntary and then compulsory, had such a great effect and that the fly was almost eliminated, because it was an Order similar to ours and I have always understood that we are a rather law-abiding race, whereas the Irish have always prided themselves on saying, "If it's the law we are agin it." It seemed to work there, but not here. But if we have a scheme here it must be compulsory, and we have the enormously valuable experience of the Irish scheme on which to base it.
The Ministry will say that if a farmer thought it was worth while getting rid of warble, he would do it himself. That is not correct, because although a farmer might do it himself his neighbour might not do so and it would be wasted effort. One knows that in the case of tuberculosis and brucellosis it was in the farmers' interest to get his cattle declared free, but until the scheme became compulsory most of them did not bother. In much the same way, their neighbours' cattle might have reinfected their own herds or they might have bought infected cattle from
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the market. There has been a suggestion that there should be financial incentives or penalties. The cost of tracing a hide back to the farmer who grew the beast would be so high that it would not make an incentive worth while; and the penalty would have to be very high because of the cost of tracing back. Also, if a farmer knew that by sending his cattle to a certain market or to a certain tannery he would suffer penalty, he would send his cattle somewhere else. So that penalties and incentives are nonstarters.
There are few rules in the E.E.C. about the warble, but there is nothing to stop any country having any health laws, provided that the rules applied to incoming beasts are no more stringent than the rules applied to farmers within that country. Belgium has free treatment on demand by the Ministry. In Denmark, the warble was virtually eliminated 30 years ago with derris. In Germany, there is a law for eliminating the warble but it has been put into effect by only two States. There is evidence that the E.E.C. is watching Britain to see what we are going to do about this, when Ireland is taking such great steps. I believe that if we put a scheme into operation the E.E.C. might well follow suit. But I am quite sure that if we do not do so they will take it as an excuse to do nothing. I am confident it will be said that it is too difficult to institute a scheme when the Ministry is flat out trying to get itself sorted out for going into Europe.
So far as I know, Ireland is also going into Europe, so I do not see why it should be more difficult for Britain to do anything about this than for Ireland. Anyhow, the operators in this country could be the A.I. operators, just as they are in Ireland, which would not bear directly heavily on the Ministry. It will be said, no doubt, that it will be too expensive, but I do not think it is going to be any cheaper in the future. It will probably be more expensive still. When we go into the E.E.C., and when Ireland has warble-free cattle, I wonder whose cattle the Continent will prefer? Will they prefer the Irish warble-free cattle or will they prefer the British warbled cattle? When it comes to hides, will they prefer the Irish hides or the English hides? I do not think there is any doubt which they will want. It is also said

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that the farmers will not agree. Of course, farmers seldom do agree, so I think that can be discounted.
My Lords, the figures that I have given clearly indicate that this problem of warble was getting better but is now getting worse again; and this increase of numbers will mean a spreading of warble throughout the British herds very shortly. There is the enormous value of having the Irish scheme on which to base any scheme we might have, and we can see the pitfalls they fell into. I am sure that there must be a value in running a scheme at the same time, using the same momentum as they have. I am sure that we should set an example to the E.E.C., and that we should also be able to compete with the warble-free Irish cattle next year or the year after. I believe this Question is timely. I believe this is a moment of opportunity for having a warble scheme; and I believe that a compulsory scheme should be initiated now, so that action may be taken to ensure that all cattle are dressed this autumn.
4.52 p.m.
LORD HOY: My Lords, we are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, for raising this particular subject, which is of course important to the agricultural industry; but if we are to understand what the problem really means to the industry as a whole perhaps the Minister this afternoon will bring us up to date with the figures which are involved. It is always interesting to go back and make comparisons between 1971–72 and 1961–62, but with the great variation in the disease itself, and in its inicidence, it is not a matter in which it is possible to compare 1972 with 1962 and say that the situation is either better or worse. But what I think we are all concerned about is the total cost of the damage, not only to the agricultural, industry but by way of losses to the country as a whole. It appears to me that there are three things we have to take into consideration: (a) the meat loss; (b) the milk loss; and (c) the hide loss—because there is no doubt at all that when the warble-fly is active then the value of the hide goes down considerably. Indeed, if we accept the noble Lord's figures about milk losses and multiply them per animal over a year, we see that
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we are dealing with a considerable sum of money; and certainly it cannot be denied that any animal affected by this particular insect is bound to have weight loss. In addition to all the discomfort, and the pain caused to the animal, there is a great restriction in its growth capacity.
I should like the Minister to bring us up to date this afternoon, because quite obviously the Department of Agriculture will have made some estimate of what the total losses are. We are not asking them to be absolutely precise, but to give us an idea, at least, what are the total losses. If we know that figure, we can then make up our minds, I think, rather more readily whether or not we ought to have a compulsory scheme. It seems to me that, if we decide that there should be a compulsory scheme, it will be difficult, as it always is, to enforce—because it is of no use if one farmer does it and his next-door neighbour does not. The disease will still be there.
But, my Lords, if we are to have a compulsory scheme, we must know from the Ministry what would be the cost of introducing it. I do not know what it would be. I hear the figure given as 25p per animal, but there will have to be follow-up treatment over a period of years. What the total cost would be I do not know, but I am certain the Ministry will have made some estimate of what is going to be involved. If that is so, it seems to me that, if the Ministry are going to make such a scheme compulsory, then obviously they will have to pay at least part of the cost—make a contribution to it—unless they can prove beyond peradventure that it is so good for the farmer that he is going to get a lot more for each animal at the end of the year. But I should have thought that, if a scheme was to be made compulsory, the Minister might well consider making a contribution to it.
I do not think that any of us, on either side of the House, would doubt the benefits that would arise if in fact this particular disease could be treated and obliterated. It would also be good to know what up-to-date method the Ministry have devised to deal with this disease. I know that they have moved, though not altogether, from the powder treatment to the systemic treatment. I do not know what it all costs, but I should have thought that the Ministry

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would be very competent to deal with this problem because (if the Minister will allow me to say once more what I have said so frequently) in Britain we enjoy the best agricultural advice services in the world. We have a Department second to none in this respect, and they, I am certain, could give all the advice required. Is there in fact a scheme carried out on a voluntary basis now? Is the Ministry saying to farmers at this particular time, or at the appropriate dates, "Here is what you ought to be doing with your cattle, and if you choose to do it we are prepared to render a service to you in carrying it out"? At the end of the day, we shall all be better off if we can eradicate this disease: the animal will have its suffering reduced; the farmers will get better results for their money; and we shall have supplies of the three things that I mentioned in greater quantities than ever before. But I think that what we have to wait on now is the answer from the Minister to the questions I have asked, because from what he tells us we can make our decision as to the best way to tackle this particular problem.
4.58 p.m.
BARONESS MASHAM OF ILTON: My Lords, first of all I must declare a personal interest in the warble-fly, and this is why I felt inclined to say a few words on this Question. It is very likely because of the warble-fly that I sit in a wheel-chair to-day. The horse I was riding in a point-to-point had a warble lodged in its back. The horse was going well when it came into the jump. Suddenly, as we were in mid-air, he gave an extra sort of violent cat-jump, and that was the last I knew. The explanation I have always given is that at that moment, with the pressure of the saddle, the warble irritated to such a degree that this episode took place. For me, it was a lesson too late for the learning, but as the noble Earl who is to answer has several children I thought perhaps others should be made aware of the danger. As the warble surfaces in spring, when riding schools get busy in the Easter holidays or tracking centres start up and the point-to-point season is in full swing, I suggest that enthusiastic young people should not be tempted to ride a horse or pony with a warble until it has been treated and the lesion has healed.
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My Lords, this condition in horses is rare compared with its incidence in cattle. I have personally pressed out many warble grubs from their beds of pus in cattle, and I can assure your Lordships that these animals must be much happier without them. With the modern treatment, and with more cattle spending time inside, the problem may not seem so great as it used to be. A law requiring that cattle should be treated against warble-flies might be difficult to enforce, but it would, I believe, be useful. Without this regulation the importance of the matter is not emphasised, and the bad or lazy stockman or farmer may shirk his responsibilities. I am glad to give my support to the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, in the hope that the Government may do something to run a concerted and extensive campaign with the farmer against the warble-fly, so that it can be eliminated altogether.
5.0 p.m.
LORD BELHAVEN AND STENTON: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Gisborough for putting down this Question and for his very constructive speech. I was also interested in the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton. I am rather ignorant about horses; I did not realise that they had warbles. I shall certainly take her warning seriously. My noble friend Lord Gisborough said that you had to have an A.1 man or an expert to use the systemic treatment. This puzzled me, because I have used it myself, with rubber gloves, and I am still alive. It has a perfectly awful smell; but so have a lot of things on the farm and one takes them as they come. But that is by the way. The point I wanted to make bears on something that my noble friend said about the hides of these cattle and the fact that it is impossible to trace them. I do not understand why it should be impossible to trace the farm from which a particular hide came.
Before I continue, I may say that I am not declaring an interest because I have just sold my farm. Three months ago I should have done so. My Lords, the individual farmer who has a herd of cattle must get them into the yards and handle them. There are many other things besides warble. There is worming, weighing, testing and other processes. No one really enjoys it. The cattle hate

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it. The men tend to get cross-grained after an hour of this dirty, sweaty work and it causes a flow of unprintable language; but it is also unavoidable. Warbles are a nuisance. They are uncomfortable for the cattle and no farmer likes to see his best beast run like an express train across a field with his tail in the air. I have sold bullocks for slaughter and some have had punctured hides and some have not. I used to take beasts on short keep so that I could not always control the warble even if they had them; for they might have had them when they arrived. Noble Lords who are not acquainted with agriculture would imagine that if I sold a beast with a clean hide I would get £3 or £4 more for such an animal. Those noble Lords who are acquainted with agriculture will know that that is not the case at all. You get the same amount for a beast with a punctured hide as you do for a beast that is clean.
The business of yarding cattle and treating them for warble is smelly, sweaty and distasteful to man and beast. I agree that one should control warble in cattle. As a farmer I did it myself and I think that most of my neighbours did so. But I would put this point. Let us suppose that I buy 50 bullocks and, looking at them, find that some have warbles but that they are not too bad. I want them to grow fast because they are on short keep. It is April or October and I should bring them in and treat them for warbles. This may mean that I have to go round and get them into the yards and perhaps chase two or three beasts round the field for two hours. This can happen. It is not always a smooth business: some revolutionary beast makes for the next county because it knows what you want. I treat them for warbles and I return 50 exhausted, dirty, bad-tempered steaming bullocks to the field and I wonder how much growth they will put on in the next five or six days. Being perhaps a man with a very poor social conscience I decide not to treat them. I agree that it is wrong; but I think perhaps they will grow faster if I do not treat them. That is the sort of thought that comes into the minds of certain farmers. It may be impracticable, but it seems to me that if the farmer were paid morè for clean hides, if when he
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sold bullocks with clean hides he were paid £3 or £4 more, then he will carry out the necessary treatment. I can understand that this could be difficult to carry out where beasts are sold at ordinary auctions, but where they are sold on the hoof to an organisation like the F.M.C., it should not be difficult at all; for the hides can be inspected at once. They are either with warble or without; and you get your £3 or £4 or you do not. I may be wrong and this may be impracticable, but if it is I should be glad to know why.
LORD STRANGE: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask one of the experts if it is not true that this dressing in the autumn does not also interrupt the cycle of the liver fluke which is causing widespread trouble every year? Has any noble Lord the answer?
5.5. p.m.
LORD RAGLAN: My Lords, I think the answer to the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Strange, is that it affects some of them but does not eliminate them completely.
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, gave an awful warning. I was horrified to hear her story. I did not know that warbles affected horses. They affect cattle and they affect them horribly. The term "warble-fly" has a humorous ring about it. This debate on the Order Paper may look quite funny to some people, but to anybody who has seen gadding in a field it is quite a frightening experience. The herd will suddenly rise and for no apparent reason run full tilt in all directions. I have seen animals smash through fences, knock down strong barbed-wire fences and emerge, cut, bleeding and baffled on the other side in a really very sad condition. It can happen several times a day on every day of a summer week. Those who like me run a large herd of cattle take particular care to do what we can to eliminate the warble-fly; but we do know that our plans are very often put awry by the fact that our neighbours may not dress their warble-flies. As Lord Gisborough said, the fly does not go very far and does not like crossing streams and thick hedges, but it will go through fences. For somebody with a permanent dairy herd who has taken the trouble to dress his warbles from year to year, to have his

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cattle reinfested is a very tiresome and tedious experience.
The noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, said that the treatment could be applied only in autumn. This is not true in my experience. I go on applying it until the end of May. The measure of how much these animals are irritated by the warble is shown by the fact that when you apply this particular systemic liquid, the pupae under the skin start to wriggle and I have seen animals lying on their backs and scrubbing themselves on the ground in agony to try to relieve themselves of the irritation. Whether it is dangerous to apply this systemic dressing at this time I do not know. The fact remains that I have to do it when I buy cattle.
All we need, my Lords, is a co-ordinated scheme run by the Government, rather like the Government-sponsored sheep-dipping scheme. Sheep dipping is no longer necessary. In my early days of farming I used to have to dip my sheep compulsorily; but now I do not have to dip them at all because the reason for which I had to dip them has disappeared. I hope that the Government will heed the plea of the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, and will give us a co-ordinated compulsory dressing scheme from which every farmer in the country may benefit.
5.11 p.m.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, at the outset I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Gisborough for having introduced this debate. To farmers and cattle owners this is a very serious subject and the examples which have been put forward by noble Lords this afternoon must have horrified many of us. I am bound to say that the contribution made by my noble friend Lady Masham of Ilton illustrates beyond anything else how terrible the effects of the warble-fly can be. The Government are most concerned about the continued incidence of warble-fly. It causes losses which could be avoided by quite simple treatment of cattle. The means to prevent losses are available and I suggest that it is simply a matter of good husbandry that these methods should be used.
The noble Lord, Lord Hoy, asked what is the loss to the industry caused by the warble-fly. This is a very difficult matter to evaluate. One of the difficulties about
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obtaining recognition of the effects of this problem is that it has not proved possible to put a figure on the losses caused. There is no doubt that losses are considerable, and basically they affect three main interests: farmers, butchers and the hide trade. When cattle stampede they cause injuries. As the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, said, animals may horn each other, cut their udders and so forth, which results in a loss in the milk yield and a lowering of the condition of the animal. But it is difficult to say how much the loss amounts to. The passage of the grub through the animal, which is a pretty horrible experience anyhow, as my noble friend explained, is that it starts in the back leg of the animal and goes through the body and ends up, via the gullet, on the back of the animal. This obviously causes concern to the animal and a loss of condition.
The point I wish to emphasise is that these effects represent losses to the farmer. For the butcher there can be losses in trimming the carcase but I cannot say with any degree of accuracy what the loss would amount to. Indeed, my Lords, I think it would be fair to say that there are more estimates than there are estimators. Some indication may be given of the loss to the hide trade. It is possible to quantify the loss to a degree and the Meat and Livestock Commission have estimated that on average the loss is about 50p on a warbled hide.
Your Lordships will be aware that there has been a long history of attempts to deal with this problem. Before 1964 there was an Order requiring that all cattle visibly infested with warble-fly should be dressed with derris periodically from mid-March until the end of June. This Order was dropped in 1964 because of enforcement difficulties and the fact that the requirement to do this was badly observed. The then Minister of Agriculture drew attention to the merits of systemic insecticides which are more easily administered than derris, but he expressed the view that the Order requiring treatment by systemic insecticides would be no more enforceable than the older Order.
My noble friend Lord Gisborough said that it was not possible for a farmer to dress animals with systemic insecticides and that it would have to be done professionally. I should have thought that

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that is not exactly so, and that provided the manufacturers' instructions are adhered to, and rubber gloves are used, the job could be undertaken by normal farm staff. I would also emphasise that the cost of doing this works out at about 20p per animal of an average weight of 7 cwt. Obviously, with a heavier animal the cost would be marginally more. That is not a very great cost. Since the early 1960s, when systemic dressing became widely available, the incidence of warbled hides fluctuated, which is shown by the figures collected at 40 representative hide markets by the Hide and Allied Trades Improvement Society. The figures indicate that in England and Wales the percentage of warbled hides fell substantially from over 30 per cent. in 1961 to just over 8 per cent. in 1969. I confirm that these figures are the same as those given by my noble friend. As he said, the figure has risen again to nearly 14 per cent. in 1971.
The incidence of warble-fly varies substantially from area to area, being at a very low level in most areas of Scotland and highest on the Western side of England. My noble friend Lord Gisborough claimed that the enforceable Order in Ireland reduced the incidence of warble-fly hides, but the graph of the effects in Ireland has been very similar over the same period as that in England where there was no enforceable Order. I would not draw any conclusion from that. I merely say that over the period given by my noble friend the figures in Ireland did drop and so they did in this country.
From these analyses three important points emerge. The first is the difficulty of the enforcement of treatment; the second is the successful reduction of the incidence of warble-fly by the voluntary use of systemic dressings in the 1960s, and the third is the varying degrees of incidence from one area to another. All these factors would seem to indicate support for the Government's view that dressing against the warble-fly is primarily a matter of good husbandry and not something which has proved, either at home or overseas, to be amenable to Government control. As the 1960s showed, it is something that the industry can deal with if producers are prepared to make the effort. What the Government can do is to advise and exhort pro-
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ducers to dress their cattle in the interests of good husbandry and greater profitability.
LORD RAGLAN: My Lords, why should dressing be less amenable to control than the compulsory dipping of sheep, where a person either asked for a policeman to be present or went to the police station and signed a certificate that he had carried out this operation?
EARL FERRERS: In a nutshell, it is very difficult to tell after the occasion whether or not the animal has been dressed. However, I will deal with that more fully in a moment. We have tried to exhort the farmers to undertake this dressing. The Agricultural Departments have mounted publicity campaigns. They do this in the autumn and the spring, and they have been successful in stimulating a good deal of publicity on the subject in the Press, through leaflets, through posters and even through franking marks on envelopes. The Meat and Livestock Commission have also recently made an important contribution in this field.
My noble friend and, indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Raglan, have both argued that the Government should go further than this and organise a once-for-all effort to eradicate this fly. It has been argued, and quite rightly so, that this would produce dividends in the long run, in spite of its cost. It is claimed that Government intervention in what is basically a good husbandry matter would be justified by the fact that only a major effort by the Government could organise the country-wide campaign that would be needed; that once the fly is virtually eradicated, control could revert to the producers once again as a matter of good husbandry. The Ministry of Agriculture have in fact re-examined this possibility only recently and have come to the conclusion that, even if there were no other objections, this could not be contemplated at present because of the manpower which would be required to implement such a campaign. Past experience of enforcement problems, and the impossibility of proving conclusively after the event that dressing has or has not taken place, strongly suggest that in order to achieve the comprehensive coverage essential to eradication the Ministry would almost certainly have to provide for officials to carry out the

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dressing, or at least to supervise it. Each beast which had lived outdoors would require to be dressed between mid-September and the end of November for at least two and probably more successive years. Inspections in the spring would be necessary for at least five years after that, so that any cattle found to be visibly affected could receive further dressing.
LORD GISBOROUGH: My Lords, on the point of checking, surely if the systemic dressing had a dye added it would be an easy matter to check whether or not it had been applied.
EARL FERRERS: I do not think it would be quite so simple as that. It would depend very much on the time when the people came to inspect the animals and how long the dye would last. It would not be beyond the wit of some farmers to obtain the dye without having obtained the material.
LORD HOY: Surely not.
EARL FERRERS: The noble Lord knows farmers. But if we are to have the order, we obviously have to make it such as can be reasonably carried out. The manpower problem, although it is an overriding one, is certainly not the only difficulty. A comprehensive national campaign would be essential. It would not be easy, for example, to justify to Scottish farmers, with their low incidence of warble-fly, an imposition on them of the cost of regular dressing. But Scotland could not reasonably be left out. Another problem which has been encountered by countries which have attempted eradication is that, as the incidence of the fly is reduced, so it becomes increasingly difficult to justify incurring the cost of comprehensive dressing. But unless this is maintained, the fly population will rapidly resume its former level.
I suggest, my Lords, that these are fairly serious difficulties. The noble Lord, Lord Hoy, asked: what would it cost to undertake this? It is difficult to put a figure on it, but my advice is that if this were to be properly done it would cost at least £5 million. At a time when the official veterinary staff and other manpower is stretched to the limit by other—and I am sure your Lordships would agree as to this—possibly more
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urgent tasks relating to disease prevention, disease control and disease eradication (I would only mention in this respect the brucellosis scheme, in which many noble Lords here have had a significant part to play), the additional manpower required could well run into four figures during the dressing period, and it simply is not available.
While I should not wish to be (if I may so put it) under-encouraging to my noble friend, because I share his horror of the pest, and I am grateful to my noble friend for raising the matter this afternoon, the conclusion to which Her Majesty's Government have come is that an eradication scheme for the warble-fly simply is not feasible at present. But the position on the dressing of cattle against the warble-fly is absolutely clear-cut. We now have systemic insecticides, they are easy to apply, they are relatively inexpensive to apply and it is a matter of pure, basic good husbandry. The remedy for this trouble in fact lies in the farmers' hands and there is a simple method of treatment. I suggest that it is for them, and not for the Government, to make use of that remedy.

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE: DISPERSAL OF CONTENTS
5.27 p.m.
LORD TEVIOT LORD TEVIOT rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they still intend that part of the contents of the Public Record Office should be removed to Kew; and whether every possible alternative site in Central London has been examined, and, if so, what sites. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. I must disclose an interest, in that I am listed as a Public Record Office Record Agent and I accept fees from commissions gained. This naturally makes me a very frequent reader indeed. I am most grateful to my noble and learned friend who is going to answer this Question, and indeed to all noble Lords who have indicated their intention to speak and those who have been good enough to remain behind. The main points that I shall cover are, to begin with, a brief history of the Public Record Office as it affects the situation with which we are faced at the present day; the total impracticability of splitting or dispersal

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of the records; the gross inconvenience caused to the readers and the staff in having to travel out of Central London; and, finally, the viability of other London sites.
My Lords, we are all aware that we are as a nation justly proud of our heritage. The preservation of our rolls and records stands very high. In the Public Record Office there is the Domesday Book, followed by various types of rolls and all sorts of Chancery and Exchequer records. To-day it also contains the records of the Departments of State, the War Office, the Admiralty, the Atomic Energy Commission and, of course, the Cabinet. Until the 19th century records were kept in various repositories all over London, in many cases in very bad condition. As early as 1703 there was a Lords' Committee set up,
"to consider the Methods of Keeping Records in Offices, and how they are Kept, and to consider ways to remedy what shall be found to be amiss."
From this Committee there followed a succession of Reports in 1719, 1725, 1732 and 1772. But only in 1800 did a full-scale inquiry produce a comprehensive Report. A Record Commission was then set up which, besides publishing some texts and investigating various repositories, finally reported in 1836 that the best solution was to bring all the records together into one place. There was a copy of this Report in the Library which contains no less than 931 pages.
This Report of 1836 was happily speedily adopted by the Legislature which, by the Public Records Act 1838, set up the Public Record Office under the Master of the Rolls, gave wide powers and allowed for amendments by Order in Council. The most important of these was one in 1852 which extended the type of records to include the modern departmental records. This was a great step for the historian and for the public, who could now see the records at their ease; but once the Departments had cleared their cellars, attics and corridors of these records, they lost interest.
The first stone of the present building in Chancery Lane was laid in 1851 on the old Rolls estate. The first block was opened in 1856, and at that time it was planned to build a very large office about
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four times the size of the present building. It would have stood on a great new thoroughfare running from Oxford Street to St. Paul's. That scheme of course was never realised, and instead there followed a series of expedients to meet the constantly expanding demand for space. A disused, gaol in Cambridge was used in 1920, followed by the old House of Correction in Canterbury and Ashridge Park, which is used to this day to store many records. Recently, part of the Land Registry building in Portugal Street has been given over to records: this is a two-minute walk from Chancery Lane. However, both this and Ashridge Park are only temporary measures. The Land Registry wants its building back, and the Ashridge lease expires in a few years.
The criterion, surely, is to find a site in Central London to accommodate all the records. The next best course would be to continue as at present and for the reader to continue to have access in one central place or, to split hairs, in two almost adjacent centres. The worst thing would be to split the records, and I would emphasise very strongly the total impracticability of splitting them. No matter how this is done, it cannot be done with any great degree of satisfaction. Here I must say that the greatest care has been taken to make the split as cut and dried as possible. The present proposals, as I understand them, are to keep the mediæval records—that is to say, the Chancery and Exchequer records and the State Papers, the nineteenth-century decennial Census returns and the Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills—at Chancery Lane. All the Departmental and Cabinet records will go to Kew. There will be a few cases of overlapping. In the first place, the naval and military records are analogous to the Census records for genealogical purposes. Secondly, the Chancellor of the Exchequer records are analogous to the Treasury as well as to the State Papers, the Treasury Papers, and some Board of Trade papers. This seems a great tragedy, especially as our forefathers, as I have explained, struggled in the 18th and 19th centuries to get all the records under one roof—a great achievement, when it is considered that it was even more difficult then to get things done than it is to-day. I have spoken to many distinguished architects on this subject and they all wring their

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hands and shake their heads at the very idea of fragmentation and dispersal.
In doing my homework I have also made various inquiries into the situations in other countries. I found that it was difficult to compare these, but practically all have dispersal problems. Those who have been forced to split archives have bitterly regretted doing so. Also it can very firmly be said with absolute truth that no repository in the world attracts so many readers. In 1970 there were 78,000 readers at the Public Record Office, which averages out at 350 a day. This figure increases yearly. Readers come from all over the world as a result of three centuries of Empire.
Before I pass on to the inconveniences of the proposed move to Kew, I must say that there has been regrettably little publicity on this matter. The only official notification, other than in the Keeper's Annual Reports, was a Question asked in your Lordships' House by the noble Lord, Lord Caccia, in 1969, as to whether the Public Record Office would be moved to Kew: The then Lord Chancellor replied in the affirmative and said that this would be some time in the mid-1970s.
In 1970 the Ministry of Works commissioned Market Opinion Research International, Limited, to prepare a study of the Public Record Office readers and their requirements. The findings were printed in the Keeper of the Public Record Office's Annual Report in 1970, Appendix 1. I will not weary your Lordships by analysing this, line by line and figure by figure, but will pick out the most important points. Only 8 per cent. of the readers will have a shorter journey, and most will have a journey which is a good deal longer. In the year under review only a small percentage used their own transport to go to Chancery Lane, and therefore the great majority used public transport of one form or another. Practically all readers used one or more other research centre; for instance, 73 per cent. visited the British Museum; 25 per cent. the Guildhall Library; 30 per cent. the General Registry Office; and 25 per cent. the Principal Probate Registry. All these, as your Lordships know, are within a mile or two of each other, in perhaps the greatest concentration of information in the world.
Those using the General Registry Office and the Principal Probate Registry will be less affected, because their searches will probably be of a genealogical nature and they are likely to use the Census records which are to be housed at Chancery Lane. But it is the scholar—whether the undergraduate, the postgraduate or the university teacher—who will be most affected. The time taken in travelling between Chancery Lane, the British Museum and the Guildhall is roughly about 20 minutes. From either of those places to Ruskin Avenue, Kew, will take 70 minutes. There are many other smaller matters of convenience, such as getting Xerox copies, but I will not pursue these at the moment. People in this country do not mind temporary inconvenience, but we are dealing here with a building to contain the nation's archives which is to be built for posterity. Another point will be the extra expense involved in travelling to and fro, for many people who use the P.R.O. have to count every penny.
So far I have mentioned only the inconvenience to the readers, but the staff also are concerned in the proposed move. They will be inconvenienced, and are disturbed at the thought of it. Being a helpful and friendly sort of fellow, I have talked to many of them over a period and I must confess that I have yet to meet anyone who is looking forward to this proposed move. It will be bad enough for the higher grade staff, such as assistant keepers and executive officers: they will, in the main, have to travel some distance, or may have to move to an area which, though desirable, is very expensive. But it is the repository assistants and messengers for whom I am most concerned and who will be most affected. The P.R.O. can be justly proud of its staff, for whom I have the highest regard. I understand that many reside in North-East or East London and feel that it would be impossible for them to travel daily to Kew. Over the past few years the P.R.O. has been lucky enough to recruit many very able women to its staff—work to which they are eminently suited and which they enjoy. For obvious reasons the women are not so free to travel as men are. Being civil servants, they would not be out of a job, but it would be to the detriment of the establishment to have to recruit a new

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staff and in an area where recruitment would not be so easily forthcoming.
Finally, my Lords, I would earnestly ask my noble friend again to look closely into the matter and to consider all the implications. The decision to move to tion, I believe as part of a dispersal tion. I believe as part of a dispersal policy—a policy they have since regretted. I submit also that this could have been a panic decision: they feared that unless they moved very sharply to the first available site they would be swamped by paper. I understand that every year one mile of paper flows from Government Departments to the P.R.O. However, I will leave that for the moment.
This decision was taken, I believe, against the public and the national interest. I must remind your Lordships that it is the historians who use the Public Record Office; it is the historians who write our history, and it is they who reflect the age. There is no doubt in my mind that in the years to come, if we take this decision, the historians will take their revenge on those responsible for it. Before I sit down I should like, if your Lordships will forgive me, to refer very briefly to the question of alternative sites. I should like to ask my noble and learned friend a question (and I have given him private notice about this) about the possibility of using St. Katharine's Dock, or perhaps any other site in East London which would be more convenient, as an alternative site. I thank you, my Lords.
5.41 p.m.
LORD DENNING: My Lords, I am sure we are all most grateful to the noble Lord for raising this important subject of where the Public Record Office extension should be. As Master of the Rolls, historically I have a long connection with records—for nearly 600 years. My full title is still the Keeper or Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England, and I still have charge of those records. But at the present moment I am just Chairman of the Advisory Council on Public Records. It has been a part of the Council's duty, at the request of the then noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, to consider the questions which the noble Lord has raised. On this Council we have the historians and their societies well represented. We
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have most distinguished professors of history in the universities; we have Members of both Houses; we have my noble friend Lord Caccia—a very representative body.
The Lord Chancellor at the time, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, asked the Council to inquire most closely into the ways in which we could provide for the records of the future. It was over 100 years ago that my predecessor, Lord Langdale, became responsible for the great cathedral-like building in Chancery Lane. The Master of the Rolls at that time used to own all the land between Chancery Lane and Fetter Lane, and he had the great Rolls House in which he held his court. He had the Rolls Chapel; he was a well-to-do man. But Lord Langdale gave all this over so that the great building should be erected, as it was and is now in Chancery Lane, where we hope it will long remain. The Master of the Rolls at that time was given in compensation £7,000 free of tax, but that has all gone now; he has been shorn of his estates and of his remuneration.
But howsoever that may be, as Chairman of the Advisory Council I can say that the Council have closely considered the problem. First there was the urgent short-term problem of scholars and students from all over the world who could not get access for reading room facilities in Chancery Lane. The Public Record Office was swamped. The students used to queue up in mid-summer and still could not get in. Various projects for the short-term were considered, such as putting an extra floor on the building in Chancery Lane; but under the influence of the Lord Chancellor of that time, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, a good solution was found for the short-term. The old Land Registry building was becoming vacant and Lord Gardiner provided that excellent short-term accommodation which has immensely relieved the immediate problem.
But then for the long-term. The Advisory Council were most concerned and most insistent that it should, if possible, be kept in Central London with, as the noble Lord has said, the British Museum, the Guildhall Library and all the other such facilities in the City of London. We considered that possibility. We considered the building of

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a tower block in Chancery Lane. We considered using St. Dunstan's House which was hard by; these premises were acquired by the Ministry of Works and could become available. We asked: With all the mechanical equipment now available, could not the premises be made modern? The advisers said, "No". We went so far as Southwark to see what we could do there. Other proposals were suggested. We could not find available anything that was within a mile or two miles of our area. Then there was this alternative: at Kew there was a big estate owned by the Government ready to be made available for the public records, a site where work could be started quickly and with plenty of room for expansion. We not only must look forward to the year 2000; we must look further beyond. Records accumulate and are accumulating at a faster pace to-day.
After exploring all the possibilities the Advisory Council felt that Kew was the best available. There are criticisms: the historians and staff will realise the difficulties of access but we did the best we could. We visited St. Dunstan's House, and at Kew we tested out the distance and the time taken in travelling from the underground station and the like. Having weighed up all the alternatives we thought that the solution which offered least disadvantage was the great new purpose-built building at Kew. The Lord Chancellor at the time went into the matter, too, and accepted the recommendation.
Work on the Public Record Office at Kew has been going on exceedingly well. It will be a fine new building with electrical trolleys running through it to deal with the records, and so on. There may be some difficulties of access. I agree that access will be quite inferior to what we should have liked in Central London. But it will be a fine new building. Work is well advanced; it is in the preparatory stage. Planning approval has been given. All is well forward. I hope that noble Lords will realise that so far as the Council is concerned we have done all that we can to meet the problem.
5.48 p.m.
LORD BURNTWOOD: My Lords, it would be very hard indeed to resist the arguments put forward by the noble and
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learned Lord, Lord Denning, but I do not feel particularly convinced by them. The paramount interest to be considered should be that of the user of these records and, more particularly, the students and the academics. I find it difficult to believe that with the benefit of more recent experience it is impossible to find an answer which would permit the retention of a central storage of these records in London. The noble Lord who introduced this short discussion referred to the difficulty of access for students (I use "students" in the general sense) who would have to travel to Kew. He did not say, but it was implict in his words, that the calculation has been made that it would add one hour in each direction in terms of travelling time for anybody who has to go out to Kew.
According to the 1970–71 figures, as I read them, the budget for maintaining the Public Records Office amounts to a total expenditure of £1,108,000, from which can be deducted the relatively small amount of £105,000 in respect of income to be derived from photo-copying, et cetera. It is my belief that the position ought to be reviewed in the light of what has been going on in research into the possibilities of computer-indexing, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, will know all about. The progress on this research seems to be slow. I do not say it is unreasonably slow, but it is slow, and other countries have used other systems such as the retrieval system to make the records more easily usable by the would-be student. I have not used the Public Record Office very much myself, though when I have been there I have always received the greatest courtesy and kindness from the staff. Some two years ago I was looking into the ships' manifests of the ships that took those sentenced to transportation following convictions for crimes against the game laws of this country and rick burning in the early 19th century, and I was amazed at the speed with which they could extract these original documents under a system which was, quite frankly, primitive and early Victorian. If we can introduce something much more up-to-date, more speedy, in the way of computer indexing, and if we can find an alternative site, how much more readily available these public records would be to students, who are increasing in number

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from year to year at a very substantial rate! I think the current rate of increase of attendances at the Public Record Office runs at approximately 40 per cent. per year.
Be that as it may, have all the possibilities really been examined? We hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, supported by another noble Lord sitting by him, saying that they have looked at every possibility. What about Somerset House? In fact, I made this suggestion in this House some months ago. We know that in Somerset House there are certain offices which should not be moved: I am thinking of the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths. But there are wings in that beautiful building which are occupied by people who, I should have thought, could be shifted elsewhere. Has a proper survey been done on this matter? This is a building within a few yards, almost, of Chancery Lane, and I should have thought that the matter ought to be reviewed to see whether we could not deal more satisfactorily with the whole question of retaining these centralised records. We do not want to repeat what has happened in the matter of the storage of old historical newspapers. If one wants to examine an 18th century newspaper one has to go out to Colindale, and it is very inconvenient indeed for people whose time is limited. That is especially so in the case of students who are limited not only by the time in which they have to do their research but, of course, by the opening hours of the P.R.O.
So, my Lords, my plea to the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack is this. I accept that dispersal has appeared at times to be essential. I do not accept that we know all there is to know about alternative places, and I do not think the whole question can be settled until we have come to a decision covering computerised indexing, which should be adequately financed. That is in process of research and examination, which in my view could be speeded up.
5.53 p.m.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, I have no particular qualifications to enter into this debate, but as soon as I heard that the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, was going to raise this question I became so shocked with the idea that cur records of this
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country should be split up that I felt that I had to say a few words. A great majority of the records are, as the noble Lord has said, within a few miles of each other in a very historic part of London which contains the British Museum, the Inns of Court, Guildhall, Somerset House and so on. I was so horrified that there should be a move to split up these records that I felt I should say something in support of the noble Lord who has asked the Question. What can I say? I can only reiterate what has been so well said by the noble Lord himself and by the noble Lord, Lord Burntwood, and indeed by the noble and learned Lord the Master of the Rolls, who quite clearly realises the seriousness of the problem. I know that he has had a strong advisory committee; but I may say that I know it now for the first time, because very little has been said about this move which is going to take place. Advisory committees composed of the most learned professors in the country do not always come to the right conclusions. My Lords, I will shorten my remarks, because I feel that everyone in this House really knows in his heart that these records should remain in this part of London, and it is only a question of how it can best be done.
I make two points. One is to support the noble Lord, Lord Burntwood, and perhaps go a little further and say that computer recording and storage and retrieval is only in its infancy. I should say that in ten years' time we may be told that the whole of these records, in one form or another, could be kept in this building—in this Chamber. So I think this is quite the wrong time to build some enormous place miles away from where anybody wants to travel to—unless one wants to see Kew Gardens or Hampton Court. That is a very good object, but not the object of scholars in history and genealogy. My other point is to ask a question. Is there not an enormous building at the corner of Tottenham Court Road which is completely unoccupied and which, I believe, is being kept empty in order that some vast profits may be made out of it? Could there not be a compulsory purchase order to buy a building such as that for public records before we start splitting them up? Another Department of Government has been split up, so far as I can see. At any rate, I seem to

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receive letters from Middlesbrough and Cardiff and occasionally from Worthing about the state of my taxes. I would say that none of them seems to know what the other is doing. Certainly none of them seems to know what income tax I ought to be paying. The great point is that they will soon be eight years out of date and then I think there is something called the Statute of Limitations which will save me from having to pay any income tax at all. I only put that remark in rather facetiously, as an example of what can happen when we start splitting up such things as records into various sections and putting them in different parts of the country. I hope that all the learned people who, I am sure, have given a great deal of their time and thought to this matter will go on giving their time and thought to it a little longer.
5.58 p.m.
LORD CACCIA: My Lords, may I make just one or two remarks to support what the noble and learned Lord the Master of the Rolls has already said so ably about the work of his Advisory Council. As he has pointed out, it is there only to give advice, and the advice now goes to the Lord Chancellor and it is for him to dispose; only for us to propose. I myself greatly welcome this short debate, for it has given a further chance for more publicity on the decision and the reasons for it. Here I should say that, both so far as the Council is concerned, and certainly so far as the Keeper is concerned, it is fair to say that at every stage we have tried to see that facilities should be given to those concerned, and the Press in particular, to explain what is being proposed, and why, and how it should be carried out, so that the public who are interested will be able to follow this. The fact that the matter has not hit the headlines in the Press is not in any way to be imputed, I think, against the Keeper, who in this respect has done all that he can, and more; and he will, I know, continue to do so if this decision is upheld and a building is set up. Then, no doubt, the Press can be invited to see it, as well as the plans which have already been put forward.
The second thing I should like to say about the Advisory Council is that I am sure that all of us—the Master of the
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Rolls himself and all of us, whether historians or not—started with the same prejudices that have been put before us, very rightly, by the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, and other speakers to-day. This was the natural approach, and it was only after much heart-searching that we were forced to the conclusion that the best—that is, something alongside the existing Record Office—was not to be had, and it was only in those circumstances that the decision was taken to go to Kew.
The historians made their own case. The noble Lord, Lord Platt, has said that sometimes learned people are not the best advocates of their own cause, but I can assure him that the historians in this case were eloquent in this very sensible cause. But it was not a question of what was desirable or what was the optimum; it was the possible. And it was on these grounds that the Council finally made the recommendation that they did, and of course into that decision there came not only the question of space but the problem of time: when could this sort of thing be done? How urgently needed was it, and in the light of that what was the best practical thing to recommend to the Lord Chancellor? I dare say that the historians of the future will be as rude as everybody else about the historians on the Council for the recommendation we made, but if so I think we should console ourselves that many of us will have cause to get bad notices from historians on many other grounds than the decisions we took in the Council, and it is just too bad.
I say this only because I wish to emphasise what heart-searching went into the deliberations of the Council as to what they ought most properly to recommend in time and space, and on a small detail in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, I think it is a little hard to say that everybody's journey will be increased by an hour or more either way. This depends upon whether or not he starts from the old Record Office. Many of the historians, if they do not actually live in London, will come to London by train and we did the time and motion study between the various stations at which they would be most likely to arrive and Kew; so that point was not overlooked.

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Also of course it is not only a question of storage; that is not the only problem which a new Record Office would have to face. As the noble and learned Lord the Master of the Rolls has said, it is necessary to provide also for people to go there to study, space for searchers. Then there is the obvious question of the future. I do not know but I accept the fact that every year a mile is added to the length of documents provided by the State that have somehow or another to be filed. In that connection I think one can only remember Osbert Lancaster's cartoon, "Where we, of course, file our trash"! I hope it does not turn out like that.
My Lords, I hope that I have said enough to persuade you that we started with all the right prejudices and that on practical grounds we were forced to the conclusion that was put before the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor. Therefore, as I have said at the beginning, I welcome this debate on one condition; that is, that I hope we shall hear that the decision will be upheld so that work can proceed, and that in reasonable time the sort of further facilities which are so urgently required will be provided.
6.4 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, I do not want to take up your Lordships' time, but I thought that as it was the Government of which I was a member which made the decision about Kew, and since there is, as your Lordships know, a limit to the extent to which an incoming Minister can see the papers of his predecessor, I ought perhaps to say something.
First, may I say how delighted I am at the great interest which the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, has shown in the Public Record Office. I am grateful to him for having put down this Question, because it brings the position before the public. Perhaps I may make an awful confession to the noble Lord: all my working life I worked in the Temple, and nearly every day I passed the bottom of Chancery Lane to go to the Law Courts, and I have to confess that until I was Lord Chancellor I had never been in the Public Record Office in my life. I was not conscious of any public records that I wanted to see; I had no idea that there was a museum there, containing the Domesday Book, Shakespeare's Will and, as the
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noble Lord knows, many other fascinating documents. Of course as soon as I became Lord Chancellor and I went down there I was as fascinated by it as is the noble Lord. I used to go down there and ask people what they were doing, and I got some very odd answers. I remember one professor of American history who told me that there was a period of about three to four years in our history, I think about the time of the Commonwealth, as to which no history book explained what had happened. The whole country was under martial law at the time. So this professor had come to London to read all the reports of the courts martial which had taken place, in order to see what had been going on.
When I took office I found two great difficulties about the Public Record Office. There was an acute immediate problem because, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, will remember, there were days on which there were more would-be readers than there were readers' seats, and we were having to put up "House full" notices. This was intolerable, because men came from America, from South Africa and from Commonwealth countries to read the history of their own constitutions. They had allowed a certain amount of time for this, assuming that the Public Record Office would be open and that they could sit there reading; so something had to be done urgently. I was fortunate enough to be able to obtain sufficient accommodation in the Land Registry nearby to cure that problem. Then there was the long-term problem. It was obvious that there had to be a large extension to the Public Record Office, preferably a purpose-built building, because the Public Record Office, as the noble Lord knows, is rather sui generis. The idea that members of the public could see all the beauties of Somerset House if the Public Record Office were there is not, with great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Burnt-wood, realistic, because the Public Record Office as a whole is not open to the public. It is only the Reading Room that is open. There are miles and miles of shelves and a good deal of machinery, and so on. The public would not be able to see the glories of Somerset House and, with great respect, I do not think that that would be a particularly suitable building.

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Therefore we needed preferably a purpose-built building of, I think I am right in saying, about 325,000 square feet, and preferably as near to the Public Record Office as possible. Every sort of site was scoured. I remember the roof scheme, and the chief trouble was that what had been happening for years and years was that people had got out a scheme for the extended Public Record Office and just when it was arriving at fruition somebody else had some alternative plan, and so the whole thing was put into the melting pot again. Since the end of the First World War there had been at least eight entirely different schemes as to where the Public Record Office should go, and I found that by the time we got our plans and got planning permission from the local authority—and it shows how little I knew, because I had no idea that a Government had to get planning permission from the local authority—four years would have elapsed. Therefore the thing to do was to take a decision.
With every assistance from the Ministry of Public Building and Works, we scoured all the sites more central than Kew and could find none that was suitable. Kew had great advantages because it was already a Government site, there was sufficient room for a building that would last us certainly until the year 2,000, and additional space to provide for a period even after that. Just as I was concluding in my own mind and with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, that Kew was the place, I found there were colleagues of mine who thought—as indeed we all did—that in the case of a Government Department which was really a postal one, if it was not necessary for the civil servants to be in central London they ought to be elsewhere. Speaking for myself, I do not mind paying my income tax to a gentleman in Bootle, because this sort of thing is done by post. I was suddenly told, "Oh no; under the dispersal policy the Public Record Office ought to go to Milton Keynes". My noble friend Lord Campbell of Eskan was the king of Milton Keynes, and he was very anxious to welcome me and the Public Record Office to Milton Keynes. But it is one hour's journey from a London main-line railway station and about £1 return fare, and there were no student hostels or
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anything like that. I had a great battle through 1967 and 1968 to persuade my colleagues, as I did eventually, that it should go to Kew. This was decided in March, 1969, three years ago, and in November the decision was announced. The noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, will tell us what has happened since I left office. While greatly welcoming the interest the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, has shown in this subject, I should personally regard it as an absolute disaster if, three years after the decision was taken, we were to put the whole matter back into the melting pot for somebody to start looking at different sites to see whether somewhere else would not be better.
6.12 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, since 1958 the Record Office has been the responsibility of the Lord Chancellor, but I am in this case advised by a very powerful Advisory Council, two members of which have already addressed your Lordships as to the grounds for the decision which is now in question. I am also in the fortunate position of having been preceded by a lawyer of great eminence of the opposite Party, who took the decision which is under scrutiny by the House at the moment and who has given us the benefit of his opinion. Therefore what would have been a very highly complicated and lengthy task, to explain all the reasons for it to your Lordships, has become much easier as a result of their speeches.
I should like to begin by thanking my noble friend Lord Teviot, as have other noble Lords, for introducing the subject. The Public Record Office is not, unfortunately or fortunately, a matter which naturally provides headline material for the popular dailies, but I welcome such modest opportunities as we have to put one of our great national institutions on the map. My noble friend Lord Teviot has undoubtedly done what was possible to give the Government and others an opportunity of saying what a great national institution this is: because, as he and others have said, people come from all over the world to see this unique collection, probably the greatest collection of public documents, except perhaps that of the Vatican, which exists anywhere on the earth. It is, therefore, a great national asset. I say this for a

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reason which will emerge during the course of my speech, because some borough councillors, I think at Richmond, rather tended to regard the Public Record Office, when the news came that the noble and learned Lord was going to send it to Kew, as a dump for old pages. This is not quite true. The Public Record Office is a great national institution of which we should all be proud, and it is in fact a great asset to this country, both for its cultural life, and also even for its economic life because it attracts scholars from overseas.
But having thanked my noble friend Lord Teviot, I must add that I fear he is not going to get very much comfort from the rest of my Answer. I must apologise equally to the noble Lord, Lord Burntwood, and to the noble Lord, Lord Platt, who backed him up. I think I should be crazy, no less, to disregard the opinion of my Advisory Council on this matter. They are not just learned gentlemen, as the noble Lord, Lord Platt, put it. They include Members of Parliament; they include great administrators; they include Lord Caccia, who is not a bit learned—I can tell him that because I was at school with him. There is also the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, who has given us, for the second time to-day, the great privilege of listening to him in counsel in debate. I think I should be mad to disregard this body of men and women, and I think I should be extremely foolish not to pay very great respect to the considered decision of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, who preceded me, for which he has given his reasons.
I think I should have refused to reverse it even if I had thought it was wrong, for the very reason that he gave at the end of his speech. I have been through this in one way and another, man and boy, I should think twenty or thirty times in my life, where a decision is taken and then, at the moment when something is going to happen, somebody says "Have you not thought of Somerset House, or St. Katharine's Dock, or the empty building at Tottenham Court Road?", and everything starts all over again. If you want an example of what happens if you listen to such advice, you need only look at the British Museum, which is still without a site for its new
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building after many years of this sort of thing happening again and again. I would not reverse the decision if I thought the noble and learned Lord had made a mistake. But, my Lords, I do not think he has made a mistake. I believe that the country owes him a great debt of gratitude in many respects, and particularly because he insisted on regarding this not merely as an important question but as an urgent one, and because he came to the right decision about it. I will now proceed to say in my own words why in general I think it is the right decision, taking rather less time than I otherwise would, because some of my work has been done for me, and so much better than I could do it myself, by the three noble Lords who have addressed the House.
I do not think anyone would have gathered from the three speeches of noble Lords who wanted the decision reversed—and certainly the noble Lord, Lord Platt, did not gather it from my noble friend Lord Teviot—that so far from it being a national disaster if we split the Public Records, they are hopelessly split at the moment.
LORD TEVIOT: My Lords, may I be allowed to intervene? I know they are dispersed at the moment, but readers can read them in one place, which is the most important point.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, even that is not quite true, and it is not, according to the Advisory Council, the most important point, as I will explain to my noble friend. They have carried out market research, and they consider, as a result of taking out market research from the users, as I emphasise to the noble Lord, Lord Burntwood, that centralisation of search is not the most important point. What they want is speed of availability. Perhaps I may proceed to show how it is split. I think I have got my figures something like right.
There are about 128,000 linear feet of shelves in the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane. They will, of course, stay there, subject to the possibility of turning some of the accommodation into search rooms. That is 128,000 feet. In the Portugal Street extension, as it were, provided as a result of the decision of my noble and learned predecessor of which

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he told us, there are about 28,000 feet more. But even that is only half of what there is at the moment, because at the depository at Ashridge (wherever Ashridge is, in Hertfordshire or Bedfordshire, or somewhere like that), there are about 162,000 feet. How many miles that is I am not quite sure, but one can do the sum. There is capacity for about 174,000 feet; that is about another 10,000 feet or so. That will be exhausted by 1975, and then there will be no more room at all. It is not a question of the lease running out. The lease does not run out until 1984—a date of doom. The space will be miles and miles short by the end of 1975, and, with the greatest respect to noble Lords who have suggested alternative sites, I must tell them that not one of the sites they suggested could be ready in time, apart from any other difficulty; and all of them, as I shall show, were totally unsuitable for different reasons.
The situation is that every year records increase by 6,000 linear feet; that is 1 mile 240 yards. Therefore, not only must I provide an alternative site to cover what there will be in 1975, there being no more room for anything else, but I must also provide an expanding site, because I do not know how long this country will remain before it is utterly polluted or blown up. At any rate, I must provide sufficient room for the public records to expand. So far as I know, Somerset House is not capable of expansion. I must tell the noble Lord, Lord Burntwood, that I am not the only candidate for Somerset House. I have two candidates already, one of which is the sitting tenant, the Divorce Registry. There is a queue a mile long for Somerset House. St. Katherine's Dock, apart from the fact that it could not be made available by anything like the right date, is only marginally nearer to the Chancery Lane site—I forget the exact figures—than Kew, and no other site is within miles of Kew's accessibility. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Platt, that I am looking out for a purpose-designed building. It is no good talking about modern things such as computers and retrieval, and electrics trolleys, until you have a modern, purpose-designed building. I do not want to take over an empty block of offices, designed as offices, for the public records. It would be totally
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unsuitable both from the point of view of retrieval and from the point of view of security, which has a certain relevance to this whole issue. So none of those will do.
We then get the situation that the Ashridge site will be completely chock-a-block by 1975. Working at the greatest speed that we can work, we can only get the Kew site ready to begin to receive it by 1975. It will be a photo finish. Now I am asked to try and find somewhere else instead, and I could not do it. In addition to Ashridge, Portugal Street and Chancery Lane there is Hayes, which is not a public record office depository proper; it is an office operated by the Public Record Office in which 46 departments are the users, customers, and where the public records are stored before they go to the Public Record Office. Before the Kew site comes into operation, this year I shall be taking over, in addition, the control of the British Transport Historical Records at 66 Porchester Road, and Portugal Street, Ashridge and Porchester Road will close when Kew comes into operation. The result will be that when Kew comes into operation the records will be less split than they necessarily are now.
The only other option which is a viable option would be to send everything to Kew. That was very carefully considered by the Advisory Committee, who positively thought that some of the older and more historical documents had better be in proximity to the British Museum. This is a matter of judgment; judgment in the interests of the user and of disposition, but this seems to me to be a very powerful argument. I should also like to point out that they also thought that it is not considered reasonable to provide for search rooms in a central place—and here I come back to a point which was made by my noble friend—and bring the documents in for inspection. Ashridge made sense in the context of the 50-year rule. One of the reasons for the increase in the use of the Public Record Office was the successive decisions of, I think, two Governments; one introducing the 50-year rule, and the other introducing the 30-year rule. The combined effect of this has not merely been to make public records available at a much earlier time than they would otherwise be, but the adventitious effect

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has been to introduce public records of the Second World War, which naturally enough have attracted a great deal of attention. Ashridge made sense in the terms of the 50-year rule when records were not open to inspection and could be housed there, although even then there was a heavy rate of requisitions by the Department. Under the 30-year rule which now operates, it has become necessary to redeploy the total repository space so that the records in least demand are kept out of London. Even so, 8 per cent. of all records produced in the public search rooms have to be brought in from Ashridge, so that they are, in general, available 48 hours after a reader has first requested them.
I am told that few of to-day's readers would support the old dictum of the Advisory Council which turned out to be a heresy, that convenience of venue is of much more significance for the average reader than delay in the production of documents. The market survey of 1970 laid great emphasis on speedy production, the majority being prepared to wait no more than 30 minutes. For the user departments speedy service is not the only problem. If we were dealing with a Domesday Book, or things of that kind, nobody could altogether overlook the security hazard. Not only could there be theft—and I think that there are people who would steal our national records—but there is also a danger of road accidents and fire; and loading and unloading involves repeated handling, with the consequent risk of damage and misplacement.
LORD PLATT: My Lords, I apologise for intervening at all and for not intervening in the right place, but I am afraid that the noble and learned Lord has gone on further than the time when I meant to intervene. He is speaking of miles of records. This is bound to be an out-of-date conception of record keeping in a few years' time. A professor of physics calculated that by the year 2000 there would be so many papers on physics alone that there would not be room for anyone to live on the earth. Therefore, if we are going on collecting records by the old methods and not by computer systems, there just will be no room, and I quite agree with that. I do not think that the
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noble and learned Lord dealt adequately with the question of that concept being out-of-date.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I was about to come to that, but I shall probably not be Lord Chancellor in the year 2000—at any rate, if I am I shall be 93. What I am concerned about is 1975 and, whatever may be true by the year 2000 we shall, so far as I know, continue to be accumulating one mile 240 yards of records every year till 1975. It may be, for all I know, that by the year 2000 there will not be any more historians. They may have discovered something else. But I can tell the noble Lord that I raised this quite obvious point when I went around the Public Record Office at the beginning of my term of office, as did the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, at the beginning of his term of office, and of course computerisation, miniature photography and other things have a part to play. But over a very wide range of subjects the original document is absolutely essential, and scholars will not be satisfied with the various devices in the white heat of the technological revolution. They want Domesday Book, they want the King's Bench Rolls, they want the records of the Chancery Court in the Middle Ages, they want the courts-martial records at the time of the Commonwealth and so on. The idea that you can substitute some kind of mechanical device for public records may be true by the year 2000, but it will certainly not be true at any time that I can foresee in my useful life on earth. Therefore, I have to face the situation as it is.
I now come to the staff, of whom my noble friend quite rightly took account. Of course we consulted the staff very carefully, and the fact is that two-thirds of the staff would be prepared to move out. This is an encouraging feature of the matter. Obviously, some will be transferred when Ashridge is complete; then there will be some movement out. Kew is a very convenient place from the point of view of access compared with any other point to which access can be obtained. The ground at Hayes could have been used for the new building, but the access was nothing like so good there. I could go on explaining why we had rejected particular plans and particular sites in the past—when I say "we"

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I refer to the Advisory Council of that day—and why the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, found a crisis on his hands in 1969.
But the pattern of events is the one to avoid. The pattern of events is that which the noble and learned Lord described: that, first of all, they tried a high building in St. Dunstan's and that approach broke down, I think owing to planning; then they tried a low building in St. Dunstan's and found that it was not big enough; then they thought of putting a new storey on to the Pennethorne Building, and that was too small even before they had drawn the plans; then they tried I forget how many others. They tried every conceivable site in Central London which is in Crown ownership. Certainly, at the time when this debate is taking place, one could not possibly get a new building built by 1975. We should be stuck with Kew, I am pretty confident, even if the Advisory Council was wrong and even if the noble and learned Lord had not taken its advice in 1969.
But I am quite satisfied that it was right, and I am quite sure that the nation owes a very great debt of gratitude to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner. Therefore, although I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for bringing this matter to the public attention—and I could give him a great deal more detail if he wanted it, because I was provided with a draft speech of 24 pages
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of foolscap to deliver, which was full of interesting material and which I am perfectly prepared to recite—the fact is that I am going to stick to my decision as of now, and I am afraid that I cannot yield to his persuasion.

WHITLEY BAY PIER (EXTENSION OF TIME) BILL [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments.