Lords Sitting of 28 March 1972

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock:
THE LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Reaqd by the Lords Bishop of Hereford.

MOTORWAYS: DRIVING FAULTS IN FOG
LORD AIREDALE: 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 accept that the main cause of multiple collisions on motorways is the inability of drivers to stop within the range of their vision; and whether they can state what percentage of such drivers are prosecuted.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (LORD SANDFORD): My Lords, the Answer to the first part of the Question is, Yes. Information is not available in the precise form called for in the second part, but my right honourable friend the Home Secretary understands that the police have proceeded against about a quarter of all drivers involved in multiple collisions on motorways in fog. However, as my right honourable friend the Minister for Transport Industries has said many times, police action is no substitute for self-discipline by drivers themselves.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I am much obliged for that helpful Answer. Is it not time to impress upon drivers that they commit the offence of dangerous driving if they drive at even 10 miles an hour in thick fog if they cannot stop quickly enough to avoid hitting an obstruction in front of them?
LORD SANDFORD: Yes, my Lords, driving in fog has special hazards, and the speed, therefore, must be low enough so that the appropriate separation dis-
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tance is no shorter than the length of visibility.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: My Lords, would the Minister not agree that one of the temptations is to follow the rear lights of a vehicle in front as being the only thing giving reassurance? Would the Minister consider legislation for increasing the power of rear lights?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, a number of proposals are being actively studied by my Department, and this is one of them.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, would the Government consider closing the middle and fast lanes to all heavy motor traffic in times of fog and allowing light traffic to confine itself to the fast lane?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, the segregation of heavy goods vehicles into one lane and other vehicles into another is also being considered.
THE EARL OF LYTTON: My Lords, would the Minister agree that very often it is not viciousness that causes excessive speed, but fear—the fear of being crashed into from behind being greater than the fear of running into somebody in front?
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I should not like to commit myself one way or the other on that question.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: My Lords, does the Minister feel that the prosecution of offenders who may themselves have been seriously injured is necessarily a strong deterrent?
LORD SANDFORD: No, my Lords; I do not think I could make a general pronouncement on that issue either.

PROTECTION OF BRITONS VISITING FRENCH FACTORIES
2.38 p.m.
LORD BURNTWOOD: 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 request the French Government to protect visiting representatives of British factories from molestation and harassment when they

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are carrying out normal production reforms at associated French works.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN): My Lords, so far as I am aware, the French police afford the same protection to visiting representatives of British factories as they do to any visitors to any factory. In the case to which I believe the noble Lord is referring, I understand that the representative who was detained was released as soon as the police were called. The French authorities appear to have given every assistance necessary. I see no case for general representations to them.
LORD BURNTWOOD: My Lords, is the noble Marquess aware that in this particular case, the details of which I sent him, one lorry from England which had been sent over from Britain to obtain material was impounded and that one executive was locked up in a room in the factory for questioning? My information is that this is not the only case where this sort of thing has occurred. The answer may he that both Governments might perhaps publicise the fact that rationalisation of production as between the two countries is very important and should be encouraged, especially with our closer association in the Common Market, something which we trust is coming soon.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord. He very kindly sent me details of this case. I have not been made aware of other cases of this kind, but I agree that it is the sort of matter which should be well known to the public at large and indeed to the Governments concerned.

POST OFFICE HOROSCOPE SERVICE
2.41 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: 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 the Post Office consulted them before instituting a horoscope service for telephone subscribers in the Birmingham area; and whether they can
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say for what other branches of superstition and witchcraft the Post Office intends to cater.]
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, a decision on whether to market a particular telephone service or facility is a management function of the Post Office, which is responsible for the day-to-day running of the telecommunications services. The Post Office is not required to consult my right honourable friend the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications before it adds to its telephone information services.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, is it sane for Her Majesty's Government to spend millions of pounds on public education to spread knowledge and truth, and at the same time to allow the Post Office to institute a service to increase gullibility and foster superstition?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, as I have said, Her Majesty's Government have no responsibility here: it is a matter for the Post Office. The Post Office no doubt takes into account the fact that certain telephone lines are idle at certain times. It may therefore think it is going to earn a certain amount of money in this way.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, is the Minister aware that Lord Cones-ford's horoscope, as published in Old Moore's Almanack says, "Romance is likely"? Does not the publication of such a warning constitute a very valuable service?
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK: My Lords, is the Minister aware that, as one who is interested in psychical research, I had my horoscope cast only last Friday? Is he also aware that I was informed by the person casting the horoscope that it was essential for me to give the place and date of my birth? Is the Minister further aware that when I did not give those facts to another person who cast a horoscope, I, a bachelor, was told that I was a married man with three children?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, I was not aware of any of those interesting facts. I have no doubt that the right reverend Prelate spent a good deal more on that horoscope than a local subscriber in Birmingham, who would have to spend only 2p on his call.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, in all seriousness, I appreciate

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that Her Majesty's Government cannot dictate to the Post Office on this matter; but is it not possible for some representation to be made informally? Are there no limits? If the Post Office allows a person to obtain indecent information by telephoning a suitable number will no representations be made by Her Majesty's Government?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, I have no doubt that the Post Office will take account of everything that has been said in your Lordships' House. But I think that your Lordships are taking this matter too seriously. Many people get a great deal of fun from reading their horoscopes in the newspapers. This is obviously something that was taken into account by the Post Office when it inaugurated this service. If people took horoscopes deadly seriously it would be another matter.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, as there is a surplus of chickens, may I ask my noble friend whether he would ask the Post Office if they would care to use the entrails of chickens in order to widen the scope of their prognostications?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, I am afraid that, too, would be a matter for the day-to-day running of the Post Office. But I have no doubt, knowing the expertise of my noble friend in certain ways, that the Post Office will take this into account when it considers his question.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, does my noble friend see no difference between having a fortune-teller's booth at a funfair and what was once a reputable part of the Government indulging in the spread of superstition?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, this may have once been a reputable part of the Government—and I am sure that it is still reputable—but it is no longer part of the Government. My noble friend will realise that the Post Office also runs a service where you can dial to hear a bedtime story—perhaps the Government would not tell bedtime stories; in fact, I am sure that they do not—but my noble friend would not complain about that.
LORD IRONSIDE: My Lords, would my noble friend say whether the horoscope service is linked in any way at all to the Post Office weather forecasting service?
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord seriously whether, in view of the information that we have had in the Press that the postal service is deteriorating, he would think it his duty to advise the Post Office to attend to this matter rather than to this other nonsense?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, the noble Baroness is asking a serious question. The Press have been suggesting that the letter services have been deteriorating. Possibly other people may be dissatisfied with the telephone service. This is a case where there are certain service lines free at night. The Post Office is looking around for something that is going to be of interest to the public and will bring in a little extra money. Surely the noble Baroness would not consider that the attempt by the Post Office to bring in more money is bad.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask a supplementary question? In view of the fact that 50 per cent. of the beds in our hospitals are filled with people suffering from some mental disability, should we encourage this kind of service?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, if the noble Baroness were to listen to the "Starline forecast"—and this she could do by dialling the appropriate number in Birmingham—she would find that it is not quite so serious a matter as she thought and not liable to lead to any mental instability.
LORD FOOT: My Lords, can the noble Lord tell the House whether there is any intention on the part of the Post Office to set up a service to forecast the performance of racehorses and, if that is the lease, whether any decision has been made as to what the service should be called? May I ask the Minister whether he has given consideration to naming it, First Past the Post Office" or, or, possibly, "The Winning Post"?
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, may I ask a final question since I am most anxious not to misunderstand my noble friend's Answer? Do Her Majesty's Government consider that there is any service at all too disreputable for the Post Office to adopt?
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, if there were any service that was thought to be disreputable my right honourable friend

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would advise the Post Office when he thought it was going beyond the bounds of propriety in this matter. But really, my Lords, I feel that my noble friend is taking this matter a little too seriously.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, is one to assume that the Government do not think this service too disreputable?
LORD DENHAM: No, my Lords; Her Majesty's Government have no opinion on this because it is a matter for the day-to-day running of the Post Office. If any service was thought to be disreputable they would certainly have an opinion—and a very strong one—on the subject.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, would Her Majesty's Government urge the Post Office to confine this type of information to the Birmingham area?
LORD DENHAM: No, my Lords.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: Thank God! I can sell them broomsticks!

UNEMPLOYMENT AND INFLATION: RESEARCH STUDIES
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will publish studies on unemployment and inflation prepared by the Central Policy Research Unit which were reported in the Press on March 21.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (LORD ABERDARE): My Lords, it is not customary to publish advice given by officials to Ministers.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord for that reply, which was not wholly unexpected, may I ask him whether he would not agree that Lord Rothschild's "think-tank", as it is commonly called, might well serve a very valuable public service in monitoring our economic performance?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, if I may make one correction to my noble friend, it is the Central Policy Review Staff and not as described in his question in which he referred to the "think-tank". But the primary duty of the C.P.R.S. is to provide advice and briefing to Ministers collectively on matters of strategic importance; and in the view of Her Majesty's Government this can be done only if it is done privately to Ministers and not published.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, may I pursue that for a moment? Would the noble Lord not agree that there is need for some objective monitoring of our economic performance, and that if this can be provided objectively from this quarter it would help us all to perform, with the sanity and responsibility which the Government have asked trade unions and employers to use; and that in regard to both inflation and the shake-out of employment education by this means might be a very helpful development?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I take note of my noble friend's suggestion, but I do not think it would be compatible with the present role of the Central Policy Review Staff.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, if it is not, as we accept, the policy of Her Majesty's Government to disclose information—to publish information—given by officials to Ministers, how is it that apparently this information is given to the Press? If it is private information, can the Minister say why it comes to the knowledge of the Press?
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, the Press are always very well informed and can make many inspired guesses. But I would not go further than that.

BUSINESS: NORTHERN IRELAND (TEMPORARY PROVISIONS) BILL
2.52 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, in the unfortunate temporary absence of my noble friend the Leader of the House may I, with the leave of the House, make a Statement about how we propose to handle the Northern Ireland legislation later this week? As most of your Lordships will know by now, the Government

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have decided to introduce emergency legislation into Parliament to transfer the responsibility of the Government of Northern Ireland to the United Kingdom Parliament, and a Bill to this effect was introduced into the House of Commons yesterday. Another place will be considering this Bill to-day and to-morrow, and the Government hope that your Lordships' House will be able to consider it on Thursday. In order, however, to allow your Lordships more time in which to debate the provisions of this Bill, it has been agreed through the usual channels that a No. 2 Bill should be introduced into this House to provide a vehicle for debate to-morrow, Wednesday. My noble friend Lord Windlesham will therefore, immediately after this Statement, introduce an identical Bill to that which is now before another place. Having mentioned my noble friend's name, may I take this opportunity, I am sure on behalf of all your Lordships, to wish him well in the difficult and dangerous task that faces him.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear!
LORD ABERDARE: This No. 2 Bill will be set down for Second Reading in your Lordships' House to-morrow, Wednesday, and we will then have a full Second Reading debate on it. On Thursday we will take the remaining stages of the Bill, but only if the Commons' version of the Bill has not been received. Perhaps I could try to make this quite clear. We will continue to use our No. 2 Bill until such time as the No. 1 Bill arrives here from another place. If the No. 1 Bill reaches your Lordships' House on Thursday morning, we propose to drop the No. 2 Bill and take the First and Second Readings of the No. 1 Bill formally; the Committee and remaining stages will then follow in the usual way. If, however, for some reason the No. 1 Bill does not reach this House until after we have embarked on the Committee stage, or even Report stage, of the No. 2 Bill, we will take those stages of the No. 1 Bill formally and, if necessary, move into the Bill such Amendments as have been carried to the No. 2 Bill. I hope these arrangements will prove satisfactory to your Lordships. They are complicated, but I hope that by the use of the No. 2 Bill procedure your Lordships will have a greater opportunity to consider the pro-
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visions of this Bill, as well as getting away for an Easter holiday.
May I now turn to the question of Amendments? Amendments will be circulated on Wednesday evening for consideration on Thursday. They will be tabled to the No. 2 Bill but their line references can be adapted to the No. 1 Bill when it reaches us. In the normal course Amendments are not circulated in advance of a Bill's being given a Second Reading. If, however, the House wants advance notice of Amendments as soon as they are tabled, even in advance of the Second Reading, the Public Bill Office will be prepared to circulate any such Amendments on Wednesday morning.
My Lords, these arrangements on the Northern Ireland Bill have caused some rearrangement of our Business. Your Lordships will remember that tomorrow was one of the Wednesdays set aside for our experimental, limited time, Back-Bench debates, and I must express my thanks to my noble friend Lord Alport and the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes, for so willingly agreeing to move their Motions to Tuesday, April 18, the day the House resumes after the Recess. Your Lordships will see that I am later to move a Motion on Short Wednesday Debates. This merely regularises the procedure for these debates following on a Motion of February 22 last.
If I may mention just one other matter while I am on my feet, the Third Reading of the Administration of Justice (Scotland) Bill had been nut down for to-day but, as your Lordships will see, is no longer on the Order Paper. It transpired late yesterday that an Amendment might he required to the Bill and it was thought better that we should not take the Third Reading to-day but post-pone it until after the Recess. The Bill has had an easy passage so far in your Lordships' House and I hope that this rearrangement of Business will not inconvenience any of your Lordships. Finally, may I inform your Lordships that, with the leave of the House, at a convenient moment after half-past three my noble friend Lord Carrington will be making a Statement on the kidnapping of three British technicians in Turkey.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am sure we are all grateful to the noble

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Lord for explaining the anticipated course of Business for the next few days. As the noble Lord himself said, the procedure is a little complicated, but I think it is workable. It involves a uniquely House of Lords approach to procedure, and it has been arrived at as the result of consultations with my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition and the other side. We on this side will do all we possibly can to ensure that this procedure works. The noble Lord made some reference to the appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, and it will have been noted how warm were the expressions of agreement on this side, no less than opposite; and I should myself like to add my own good wishes to the noble Lord on his appointment. The acceptance of the office, I would say, indicates a deep-seated and wholly admirable attitude to the sense of public duty, and nothing else. With that, my Lords, I simply say that if there are any difficulties arising from this new arrangement we on our side will do all we can to help.
LORD WADE: My Lords, I should like to join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for this Statement, and also to join in paying a tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, and to wish him well in his new and very important task. I am only sorry if it means that we may not see so much of him in this House. With regard to the procedure, on behalf of my Liberal colleagues we approve of this rather unusual but necessary procedure.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I am very grateful to both the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, and the noble Lord, Lord Wade, for joining in so readily with this procedure; it is one of the assets of your Lordships' House that we have this flexibility in our Business. I am very grateful also for the offer of further discussions in the event of any unforeseen eventuality.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I congratulate the noble Lord in adopting my noble friend Lord Shepherd's procedure (which at one time was called "Shepherd's pie" when my noble friend was Government Chief Whip) and in carrying it through to a logical conclusion. It is just possible that we shall run into slight difficulties, but I am quite sure that if we do we shall
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be able to manage them. I would urge any noble Lords who are disturbed about what is proposed not to hesitate to consult the Whips on either side, or the noble Earl the Leader of the House. I hope that the absence of the noble Earl is not a result of the intellectual strain of working out these arrangements, and that he will shortly be with us.
May I also add a very warm word of good wishes, and indeed of congratulations, to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham? I notice that the Press rather suggested that he had been chosen for this job because is a Roman Catholic. We all know that he belongs to the Roman Catholic religion, and I think this is no disadvantage for the post he is going to occupy. But I am sure it is the view of all noble Lords—certainly it is of those on this side of the House—that the noble Lord is eminently capable. We have a high regard for his abilities and his qualities, and he will certainly have the good wishes and the support of your Lordships in the difficult task he will have to carry out.

NORTHERN IRELAND (TEMPORARY PROVISIONS) (No. 2) BILL [H.L.]
3.1 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD WINDLESHAM): My Lords, may I just preface what I have to say—setting procedure aside once again—by saying how much I appreciate the very generous comments that have been made by noble Lords opposite and by the noble Lord, Lord Wade, from the Liberal Benches.
My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make temporary provision for the government of Northern Ireland, and for purposes connected therewith. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Lord Windlesham.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

COSTS IN CRIMINAL CASES BILL [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to

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consolidate certain enactments relating to costs in criminal cases. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Leader of the House I beg to move the Motion which stands in his name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That, in the Order of the House made on February 22 last, relating to Short Wednesday Debates, for the date "March 29" there shall be substituted the date "April 18".—(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

CARRIAGE BY RAILWAY BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
ROAD TRAFFIC BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to with an Amendment.
SUNDAY CINEMA BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to with an Amendment: the said Amendment considered and agreed to.

SOLICITORS (AMENDMENT) BILL [H.L.]
3.5 p.m.
LORD TANGLEY: My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now received.
Moved, That the Report be now received.—(Lord Tangley.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Then, Standing Order No. 44 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of March 21, 1972):
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I understand that the noble Lord is now preparing to move the Third Reading of this Bill.
LORD TANGLEY: My Lords, I was waiting in case the noble Lord, Lord Stow Hill, had something to say. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Lord Tangley.)
On Question, Bill read 3a.
LORD TANGLEY: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill do now pass,
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Lord Tangley.)
3.6 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, before we decide (if we decide) to pass this Bill and send it to another place, may I revert to a point which I raised at an earlier stage of the Bill in order to give the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, an opportunity of telling us what further consideration the Law Society has been able to give to it? I refer to the question whether the Compensation Fund for the Law Society ought not to be an indemnity fund. I venture to raise it to-day for two reasons: first, because when, at an earlier stage, I took on purpose the case of a client of mine, Mr. Hinds, whose solicitor embezzled the £1,500 for Mr. Hinds's appeal, I obtained no reply from the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, as to what the position was in that case. As I understand it, there has never been any dispute that the solicitor embezzled the £1,500, and the non-payment of any sum to Mr. Hinds suggests that the Law Society are operating a principle that if the man whose money a solicitor has embezzled has committed a criminal offence then the Law Society do not pay. If that is so, it does not seem to me to be right. I think we ought to know whether it is so or not. Secondly, in many cases where clients have complained that they have been defrauded by their solicitor and can get no payment from the Compensation Fund they are told, "You must prosecute the solicitor first, or you must bring a civil action against him." In the case of one coloured woman a solicitor was prosecuted and convicted, but she was still told that she must bring a civil action, which of course she could not do. As Mr. Hinds's solicitor shot himself, it cannot have been a case where he could have been told that he ought to prosecute him or to take civil proceedings.

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I should like to direct the attention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Tangley, to a leading article in the New Law Journal this week which says that the matter I have raised is one of considerable public importance. It then goes on:
"They"—
and they are the clients who complained that they have been defrauded and cannot get any compensation from the Compensation Fund—
"may of course be mistaken on the issue of fraud, but one of the most objectionable features of the fund as at present administered is that where compensation is refused the Law Society decline to give any reason for the refusal."
It continues:
"In reply, Lord Tangley said that he had described the fund as having in fact worked as an indemnity fund, in the sense that no admitted claim had been rejected'."
The editor then says
"That, however, begs the question on which Lord Gardiner was asking to be informed, for no one would of course expect the Law Society to meet a claim they did not admit, but the Law Society's refusal to give reasons for not admitting a claim leaves unanswered the question whether, in a particular case, a rejected claim was rightly rejected. With its present discretion, the Law Society does not, Lord Tangley explained have to insist on absolutely strict proof ', and this may work to the advantage of a claimant as well as to his disadvantage. If Lord Gardiner's point was met, this discretionary element would be lost. It was however said some centuries ago in R. v. Woolcott that discretionary is only a softer word for arbitrary, and ever since it has been said on occasions beyond number that the arbitrary and capricious administration of justice is a potent source of injustice and certainly a source of seeming injustice. Therefore we would suggest that there is a highly desirable via media between the positions Lord Gardiner and Lord Tangley represented in last week's debate, and it is this—that the discretionary basis of the Law Society's powers should remain, but only if full reasons are given for its decisions in all cases. If a decision to award or not to award compensation, though possibly involving some ex gratia element, is in fact sound, there can be no objection to stating the reasons on which it is based."
I would remind the noble Lord that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, in addressing the Law Society at Bristol, said:
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"But I say to all who are called upon to hear and determine, 'Always give your reasons.'A decision given without reasons is as bad as a decision given for no reason'. Being unreasonable it will be regarded by the loser as unreasonable."
My Lords, it is because on reflection it appears to me that either or both of these points will be dealt with by an Amendment in another place that I am sure it will be helpful to all those who are concerned with the problem to know whether either or both the alternatives would be suitable to the Law Society.
LORD TANGLEY: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, raised this question on the Committee stage, and I thought that I then gave an undertaking that the Law Society would consider the matter. The Law Society is considering the matter but it has not concluded its consideration, and therefore I cannot give any undertaking as to what may take place in another place. Of course, what the noble and learned Lord has said will carry great weight, but there are quite serious difficulties, some of which I indicated in the course of the Committee stage and some of which are tied up with the client's privilege. If the Law Society were bound to give reasons, it might be that the reasons would infringe upon the client's privilege and be made public in a totally unauthorised and improper way. All these matters are being considered and will be considered, but I cannot give any undertaking as to what stage they have reached or will reach. I can undoubtedly give one absolute assurance: that the mere per se fact that a man is a criminal is not a bar to his receiving compensation.
LORD STOW HILL: My Lords, may I take this opportunity of saying just one word? During the Committee stage of this Bill I ventured to raise one or two questions, and I only desire to thank the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, who has written to me fully on the matter and obviously given it very careful consideration. I am deeply grateful to him.
On Question, Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

BRITISH LIBRARY BILL [H.L.]
3.12 p.m.
THE PAYMASTER GENERAL (VISCOUNT ECCLES): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time. This Bill gives effect to the proposals in the Government's White Paper published in January, 1971, and debated in your Lordships' House on March 2 following. The proposals were welcomed on that occasion and I need only remind the House of their essential features. Our objective is to make the British Library the cornerstone of the country's library system by bringing together into a single organisation the four existing institutions pre-eminent in their respective fields—the British Museum Library, which includes the National Reference Library for Science and Invention, the National Central Library, the National Lending Library for Science and Technology and the British National Bibliography. Legislation is not required to effect this integration in respect of the last three institutions. But although they are not mentioned in the Bill I shall have something to say about them later.
As your Lordships know, the establishment of the British Library calls for a massive programme of new buildings, the main feature of which will be the two national reference libraries on the Great Russell Street site. I must say that my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, in addressing the House on March 16 on the future of the Public Record Office, inadvertently gave a wrong impression in saying that we do not have a site for the British Library. We have a site and we are now completing the purchase of those parts not already in Government ownership. These buildings will form part of a complex of museum and library that will add to the prestige of London, and certainly be without a rival in Europe.
Before I speak of the provisions of the Bill, your Lordships may care to have a short account of the progress which has been made in recent months. The White Paper envisaged the formation of an Organising Committee which, while the legislation was being prepared, was to lay the foundations of the new institution so that it could start its independent existence as a going concern. This Committee,
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of which my noble friend Lord Ironside is a member, has done more efficient work in a shorter time than any similar body of which I have had experience. I should like to thank its members and the many experts who are assisting them, for the skill and devotion they have shown in coming to grips with a set of very intricate problems.
The Committee has had as the first of its two principal tasks that of establishing how the main functions of the new Library—reference, lending and bibliographic services—and the staffs needed to run them, can be smoothly and effectively organised within a single institution. The Committee has kept in the forefront of its thinking the immense variety of users of the Library's services. The House can be assured that the prospective demands of all classes of reader are being equally cared for.
The second task is to provide the architect with a schedule of the Library's requirements for accommodation of all kinds. One consideration in our minds has been the provision of the most technically advanced facilities and services for both the staff and the users. In a case like this much depends on whether the right architect has been appointed. Is he open-minded to all the changes in technology in the equipment of great libraries? We count ourselves extremely fortunate to have secured the services of Mr. Colin St. John Wilson as architect of the Bloomsbury buildings. I think I can say that no one in this country, and perhaps not in the world, has made a closer study by going all round the world, of the architects role in the building of a great national library. His designs will be put on view as soon as they are completed. Discussions will be held with the local authority on the provision of living accommodation and shops.
The first stage of the building in Bloomsbury is planned for completion in 1979, when the National Reference Library for Science and Invention, now so lamentably fragmented, can become operational in its new home. We consider this priority for the science collections and the patent community to be entirely justified by their present hampering difficulties. The Organising Committee expects to give the architect his brief before the end of April. In all this work we have had invaluable help from

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the four constituent institutions and their staffs. In fact I cannot speak too highly of the way in which these institutions have contributed to our forward planning.
The buildings for the Library's lending services will be concentrated at Boston Spa. Here we are getting on very well. Construction has already begun to enable the National Central Library to be transferred to Yorkshire in the summer of 1973.
Very obviously we are planning for the long future. It would be wrong to bring forward legislation that was so tightly drawn that new developments, which we cannot foresee, might call for radical amendments in a comparatively short time. I hope, therefore, the House will agree that we are right so to draft the Bill that the objectives and constitution of the Library are described in wide-ranging terms. For example, the composition of the Board can be readily varied if circumstances show the need, and we are giving the Board powers to conduct its operations as it thinks most suited to its developing duties.
Coming to the provisions of the Bill, Clause 1 describes the comprehensive coverage of the materials which the Library will need to do its job. We have not forgotten that library materials are now appearing in new forms and that future ingenuity may well add to the list. The clause also makes clear how manifold will be the Library's duties at the apex of the national library system. It gives the Board powers to contribute financially and otherwise to other libraries and centres of information. Clause 1(3) (b) will be of interest to public and specialist libraries. For my part I like working in the atmosphere of a specialist library and I hope the Board will arrange satisfactory links with such libraries and will not try to do everything itself. But I must not anticipate. It will be for the Board to decide in what directions this power shall be used.
It is convenient to take together the provisions I have just mentioned and the powers to lend in Clause 1(4) and the similar powers in paragraphs 11(1) and 11(3) of the Schedule relating to matters incidental to the Board's role and to the acquisition and disposal of the property of the Board. We are dealing with an institution whose lending functions
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go far wider than those of the British Museum Library, and therefore the approach adopted in the Bill is, I think, right in contrast to the alternative which we might have adopted which would limit and restrict by Statute the Board's powers of lending and disposal—quite apart from the extreme difficulty of determining in legislation what the restrictions should be. The clause gives a wide discretion, but at the same time your Lordships would expect us to secure by agreement reasonable safeguards over lending and the disposal of the most valuable items in the Board's collections. It seems best to consult with the Board on these matters. They will be responsible people and as far as my experience goes are likely to be more jealous of their collections than Ministers. The Bill provides restrictions on disposal of property which is subject to trusts or conditions, and I have no doubt the Board will want to respect these trusts and conditions.
Before I leave this part of the Bill I must explain the absence of any reference to the institutions other than the British Museum Library which are being incorporated in the new Library. Both the Trustees of the National Central Library and the Council of the British National Bibliography have powers to wind up their affairs and transfer their assets to the British Library without legislation, and arrangements are in hand to this end. I should like to thank these two bodies for their ready co-operation. When one considers how difficult it normally is to get a famous institution to surrender its separate identity we can see, in the good will of these two bodies, a proof that the conception of the British Library is of the highest interest and importance. Legislation is not required for the incorporation of the National Lending Library at Boston Spa, which is directly administered by the Department.
Your Lordships will be glad to know that there will be a single uniform staff structure in the British Library. The staff of all the institutions which will be incorporated in the Library—including approximately 1,200 members of the British Museum Library and National Lending Library—will enter the new institution on terms and conditions of service at least as favourable as they now enjoy.

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I pass now to Clause 2, which deals with the composition of the British Library Board and with the provision of Advisory Councils for it or its departments. The Board itself is, as your Lordships will agree, crucial for the success of the new institution. The White Paper envisaged a body of up to 12 persons, including the Chairman. The Organising Committee gave this very careful consideration, and they came to the conclusion that this number was a little on the short side because the variety of duties of the new Library was even greater than we had at first thought. Therefore the Bill provides for a maximum of 14 and a minimum of 9. It appeared to us desirable to ensure this degree of flexibility both in the total numbers and in the choice which Clause 2(1) (a) gives, as between the full-time and part-time membership.
How then should the first Board be constituted? There are likely to be two main phases in the responsibilities of the Board. For the first ten years this body will be heavily preoccupied with the problems of transition. They will have to maintain the service in the existing buildings, to progress the new building, and to deal with the teething problems that will arise in developing an organisation of such range and complexity. Much is going to happen which we cannot now foresee so we think it would be unwise, at the outset, to lay down a hard and fast pattern for the Board's composition.
Having said that, it is clear that responsibility for the execution of the Board's policies ought to rest firmly in either a full-time Chairman, or a part-time Chairman and a Chief Executive. We were unanimous in thinking that the latter would be the more effective arrangement to make at the start—that is to say, a Chairman serving part-time and with him a full-time Chief Executive who would also be Deputy Chairman. These two members of the Board would share overall responsibility for all the Board has to do in the special circumstances of the initial stages, which may well last ten years. Three other full-time members would have charge, as executives responsible to the Chief Executive, of the main operational areas of the Library's services—reference, lending, bibliographic services and research. The
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other main area, administration and finance, and other functions common to all parts of the Library, would be the natural responsibility of the Chief Executive. Your Lordships will see that we intend to create a Management Board and not a trustee structure.
Clauses 2(1)(b) and (c) recognise the special position of King George II's Library, and the unique role which the British Museum's collections as a whole will play in the total collections in the Board's charge. It will be a matter of satisfaction to the House that Her Majesty will appoint one part-time member and that continuity with the British Museum will be maintained by the appointment of another part-time member on the nomination of the British Museum Trustees. The part-time members, among their other functions, will, I am sure, contribute greatly to the success of the Library by relating its policies and operations closely to the needs of its users, and this too will be the main responsibility of the Advisory Councils which the Board will have the duty to constitute under Clause 2(3). Three of the part-time members of the Board will be appointed after consultation respectively with the Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry, for Scotland and for Wales. The interests of literature and science, of manufacturing industry and commerce, and of the patent community will be taken into account in selecting members for the Board or for the Advisory Councils.
Subsections (1) to (5) of Clause 3 deal with the transfer of the contents of the British Museum Library Departments from the ownership of the Museum Trustees to that of the British Library Board. These provisions have been agreed with the Trustees. In case there is any doubt about the adequacy of consultation with the British Museum, I hope that my noble friend Lord Trevelyan will say a word on this aspect of our work. There is provision in Clause 3(3), which will, I am sure, strike everyone as sensible, to enable the Trustees and the Board to review together and agree on the appropriate destination of particular items now in the Library or elsewhere in the Museum. For example, there are some items—the number is not large—which, for traditional or other reasons, have been located in the Library though not falling

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within the description in paragraphs (a) and (b) of subsection (1) of Clause 3.
I have no doubt that the most difficult item of all is the stamp collection I only hope that the Board and the Trustees of the British Museum can come to an agreed decision as to where the stamp collection should go. It is a most remarkable collection and I myself hope very much that when the British Library comes into existence we shall see it put in a place worthy of it, where it is even better shown than it is now. The provisions in Clause 3(6) are designed to cover the period until the full range of new accommodation in Bloomsbury is ready and the Board can transfer the collections from the existing building, for which of course the Trustees will retain responsibility.
I do not think there are any points of difficulty in Clause 4 to which I need draw the special attention of the House. Subsection (1) of Clause 4 transfers to the Board the legal deposit provisions which now relate to the British Museum. Subsection (2) would make the Board an exempt charity. The British Museum has always had this status, and the Bill already provides—for example, in Clause 5(3)—for the kind of supervision which the compulsory provisions of the Charities Act 1960 would give. The provisions in Clause 5 relating to grants to the Board from the Secretary of State must be for final determination in another place. But in drafting we have borne in mind the wording used in other Statutes to express an appropriate relationship in financial matters between the Government, as the provider of grants, and the independent body receiving these grants. As the White Paper made clear, we wish the British Library to enjoy the maximum freedom over its internal affairs which is consistent with the broad objectives of Government policy.
Here I should make two points: first, that there is no intention to make any change in the current practice of free admission to the Library; and, secondly, that the cost of sending by post over a million books a year—that is the present figure and it goes up all the time—borrowed from the enlarged operations at Boston Spa, and of making copies of extracts from books and journals, is so great that any Government must have the power to see that reasonable charges are made.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Viscount for what he has said about free admission to the Library. But is he aware that to get to the manuscript library it is necessary to go through the Museum proper, and how will persons using the manuscript facilities be physically able to get there without paying at the turnstiles?
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, they will not be asked to pay. Anyone who can show that he is going to the Library or to the manuscript department as a genuine reader or researcher will not be asked to pay entrance charges.
LORD AVEBURY: As a matter of fact, my Lords, I have a ticket for the manuscript section of the Library. What is to stop me presenting that at the turnstiles and then going to look at something else?
VISCOUNT ECCLES: Nothing, my Lords; but I hope that the noble Lord has a fairly good conscience. We have also to be prepared for technological developments, such as facsimile transmission which will enable the reader to use material at a distance. It seems right to provide now for a charge to be made for such use if it turns out to be expensive, which it very well may be. The Explanatory Memorandum indicates that we expect the total provision from the Consolidated Fund to be about £6 million in 1973–74, rising to about £7 million in five years' time; this expenditure being almost entirely offset by the present expenditure on the British Museum and other libraries which will form part of the British Library.
I hope that this brief explanation of the clauses which I thought would be of most interest to the House will be sufficient. In conclusion, I should like to express my belief that the establishment of the British Library not only will put an end to a very long period of uncertainty, but will be of lasting benefit to the library services of this country; and from what I have already heard it will be a model for other countries as well. The Government intend to set up the Board as soon as is practicable after the Royal Assent has been given, provided that the Houses of Parliament pass the Bill which I warmly commend to the House. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Viscount Eccles.)

KIDNAPPING OF BRITONS IN TURKEY
3.37 p.m.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DEFENCE (LORD CARRINGTON): My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I should like to repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. The Statement reads as follows:
"I regret to inform the House that three Ministry of Defence civilian radar operators, working with the Turkish Air Force, were kidnapped on the evening of March 26 at Unye, on the Black Sea coast of Turkey. The Turkish authorities have undertaken a big search operation, including the use of helicopters.
"The names of the three men are Mr. Gordon Banner, Mr. John Law and Mr. Charles Turner. Their relatives have been informed. The whole House will join me in expressing to them our profound sympathy in this ordeal.
"The Turkish Government have expressed their deep regret at the incident and have assured us that they are making every effort to find the men and will let us have any further information as soon as possible. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has sent a message to the Turkish Prime Minister expressing our concern and asking to be kept in touch with developments."
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for repeating that Statement. We on this side of the House wish to express our own sympathy to the noble Lord, to the Ministry of Defence and, in particular, to the families of these three men. We are glad that immediate contact has been made with the Turkish Government and we believe that the Turkish authorities will do all they can to trace these men and return them safely. Can the noble Lord say whether any terms have been officially demanded for the release of these men? Also, may I express the hope that the Government will remember the precedent created by Her Majesty's Government in the past, in the cases that occurred both
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in Canada and in Uruguay, of not giving in to blackmail? This may appear very harsh to the families concerned, but I think the House has expressed the view that if one gives in to blackmail of this sort one immediately increases the risk to other innocent persons serving overseas.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, on behalf of my colleagues on these Benches I would express our profound sympathy with the families of the victims of this dreadful outrage. But may I ask the Government—it is more or less the same question as was put by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd—whether they, nevertheless, agree that the only sure way to prevent a repetition of such outrages is to demonstrate that they do not pay; in other words, that the very yielding to the demands of the kidnappers may encourage them to organise fresh kidnappings?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, in answer to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, may I say that the information so far available indicates that the kidnappers are members of what is called the Turkish Peoples' Liberation Army, which is an extreme Left-Wing terrorist organisation and which was responsible for capturing the four American airmen and the Israeli Consul in Istanbul last May. So far we have no information that any message or demand has been received from the captors of the kidnapped men. It might be of some comfort to your Lordships to remember that in point of fact the Turkish Government found the four American airmen and they were released. But I do not think I would dissent from the sentiments expressed by either of the two noble Lords in their remarks. I think one of the most distressing events recently has been this growing practice of kidnapping and terrorism, and obviously we must do what we can to stop it.

BRITISH LIBRARY BILL [H.L.]
3.41 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: My Lords, in turning from that sombre Statement to a consideration of the British Library Bill, may I say that this is a most agreeable occasion, and I am glad that I

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have the privilege of being the first Member on this side of the House warmly to congratulate the Paymaster General. There have been occasions when we have had to agree to differ, but no one who has worked with the Paymaster General in affairs affecting the British Museum can have any doubt about just how dedicated a servant he is of the libraries in general and of the British Museum Library in particular. Of course, at the end of this debate—I have no right to say, "of course", but I should be astonished if, all the same, there was a single Member in any part of your Lordships' House who would not want to give this Bill a Second Reading.
I want later to raise one or two points that we may have to consider when we come to the Committee stage, but the first thing I want to say is this. I hope that both the enormous building projects and the immediate relief work that has to be done to improve services in the British Museum Library and the other libraries will go ahead with all possible speed. This is a hard job, because Governments have many facets. I had to deal with the Ministry of Public Building and Works, as it then was. I was fortunate that we had a succession of most congenial Ministers—they were all my good friends—and senior officials, and I do not think there was ever one word of criticism made of the co-operation and help that I, as a newly-established minor Minister, received from the Ministry of Public Building and Works. Nevertheless, there are so many claims made on limited resources that I hope we can all cooperate to see that progress with this vast library scheme should have a first place among many.
I had responsibility for the Arts for six years, but it was not until the last year of the last Parliament that responsibility for the libraries was transferred from the Minister for Sport to the Minister for the Arts; and, very able though the Secretary of State for Sport was, I am afraid that in the year 1967 the whole thing became a kind of blood sport. It was Lord Radcliffe, who spoke up so brilliantly and vehemently for the British Museum, who first started the fun and games in 1967. That debate took place in December, but in March of 1967 Sir Frank Francis took me on a tour of the British Museum.
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I was scandalised beyond words. When we went down into the lower regions, where the wild cats live, I almost broke my leg and I certainly broke my heart. I think the neglect on all sides—the Library side, the ethnological side—of the British Museum for a quarter of a century is utterly disgraceful. I was told at that time that there were more than 100,000 books not catalogued, with more coming in all the time. I said, "But you urgently require more staff", and I was told, "Yes, but we have not got the accommodation for our existing staff". Then we went into the question of waiting time—sometimes as much as two hours for students, very serious students, waiting for their books. I was told that it was sometimes as much as ten weeks' waiting for photography of documents; and I know how embarrassed we all were when the notice went out quite recently that there was "no room at the inn" for guests from abroad in summer time.
When one thinks of the scale of this problem, two miles of books acquired each year—is that an exaggeration?—it seems almost unbelievable, but that is the extent of the problem our librarians have to deal with. So at the present moment, as we all know, the books are housed at the top of Whiteley's Department Store, in Woolwich warehouses and elsewhere. I make that point, not because I think that this is an occasion for going back on past controversies, but because there is such an obvious and urgent amount of work to be done. Perhaps I may say to the Paymaster General that I was beginning to be a little impatient before his Bill appeared. I was impatient to put the position right. In the last year of the last Parliament, when I was able to co-operate with the Paymaster General as Chairman of the Museum Trustees, I discovered that we had at least one thing in common: we were both of an extremely impatient disposition.
We want to progress as fast as possible. The Dainton Report came out in June. 1969, and I may say that if we had had to deal only with the British Museum Library, that Report would have been through Cabinet before the Summer Recess. But we had to keep in mind that we were not dealing with one library: we were dealing with all the problems and the trustees responsible for

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the British Museum, the National Central Library, the National Lending Library, Science and Technology and the British National Bibliography; and, quite properly, Members of your Lordships' House who had special responsibilities for those other libraries had many points to raise. So I say to your Lordships that if at any time there may be a case against any Government or any Minister for lack of adequate consultation, that was not the case during the period when the Dainton Report was received and published and action was taken. As I said, I should have liked to see this Report through all its stages of Cabinet consent before the Summer Recess. For the reasons I have given—to make absolutely certain that there was adequate consultation—it was only after the Recess that Cabinet consent was finally given; and then we went ahead. What is so pleasant is that the main recommendations of the Dainton Report were accepted on all sides of the House in the other place and were accepted on all sides of your Lordships' House.
What this in fact means is that, although we had a few good rows in the year 1967, at the end of the day we have a better scheme, in my judgment, than the original Sir Leslie Martin scheme. He is a great architect, but it is very comforting when we turn to the White Paper to find that, whereas so much was highly controversial before—that is, that the original Martin scheme seemed to be taking up too much space and was not leaving enough ground for the problems that St. Pancras had to face, that some of our preservationists had to face, for housing and all the rest of it—this White Paper is precisely the White Paper which was in process of preparation at the end of the last Parliament in that we are
"preserving all the more important listed buildings, in particular St. George's Church and all the buildings along the west side of Bloomsbury Square. In addition it should be possible to make space available for at least as much housing on the site, unconnected with the library, as under the earlier plans …"
I think we all like this idea. It means that it is going to be in a more lively area that the new Library is going to be more compact in structure.
So I say that at the end of the day we can congratulate ourselves that everyone has done his job. It was right that the last Government, finding how much
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opposition existed among the trustees of the principal museums, should pause and be willing to consider the problem caused by the rejection of the Sir Leslie Martin plans. I do not think that a Government is diminished in any way if it pays due attention to the views of distinguished men and women who take upon themselves the responsibility of serving our great museums and galleries. I cannot resist the temptation to ask of the noble Viscount the Paymaster General: "Will you not pay a little more attention to the views of some of your great voluntary servants?" I should have liked to have had out of the way this trivial sum that we quarrel about so much, the matter of museum charges. I think that if the overwhelming voices of those in charge of our museums and galleries were considered, we could come to terms and agree on that matter, too.
However, we are dealing with the Library. I think it was a fine thing in the last Parliament that the strength of expression by those like Lord Radcliffe should have led to the appointment of the Dainton Committee. So I congratulate the Trustees and I am not over-perturbed that some of them spoke out strongly. I have found in public life that there are times when one must shout to be heard; there are so many things going on at the same time. I unreservedly congratulate the Trustees. They may have done their job a little roughly, but they did it; and I am glad that they expressed their views as vociferously as they did, for the outcome was the setting up of the Dainton Committee. Now there is a better future for the Library than would otherwise have been the case.
My Lords, may I now turn to the Bill itself? While there are one or two provisions about which I am not quite sure, I am certainly sure about the fact that the British Library is a national library and that it is being constructed to serve not just London but the entire nation. It is extremely important that we should keep that in mind at all times. As the Paymaster General has said, with the future provisions of facsimile transmission facilities, of microfilms, of all kinds of modern magic for reproducing precious documents, there is no reason why we should not give high priority to the needs of some of the branches (as, in a sense, they will be) which exist in the North,

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South, East and West. A serious student in Rotherham will no longer have to travel to the congestion of the British Museum Library in London in order to get the documents he needs. This is marvellous; it could not have happened before. All the time I hope that we shall keep it in mind that this is a national library and not just a London library, and that we shall avoid giving our student friends and teachers in other parts of the country any feeling that their needs are in any way being ignored.
My Lords, there is one subsection of Clause 2 that I should like to read out. Clause 2(2) reads:
"In selecting persons for appointment to be members of the Board, the Secretary of State shall give preference to those who appear to him to have knowledge and experience of library or university affairs, finance, business or administration."
On the face of it, that seems reasonable; but if one sets down a catalogue of qualifications, one immediately raises questions. Such a catalogue, of its nature, is narrowing rather than widening. Surely it can be left to the common sense of whichever Minister of the day, in whichever Government of the day, has to make those appointments; for, in the nature of things, they will look over the whole field and make the most suitable appointments. This is not a major point and it is not a Party point, but it is something that we might consider on the Committee stage.
I turn now to the Schedule. I am definitely uneasy about some of the recommendations made in regard to remuneration, allowances and pensions. Paragraph 5(2) of the Schedule says:
"The Secretary of State shall, as soon as possible after the first appointment of a person as a member of the Board, lay before each House of Parliament a statement of the salary and allowances that are or will be payable to that person …"
Obviously, this is going to be a terrific job. There will be a difficult 10 years' transition stage. I think it is good that there should be flexibility about whether the Chairman should be full-time or part-time; but if there is going to be a Chairman selected who is part-time rather than full-time there must be another member of the Board who will be full-time. Anyone asked to serve full-time will require a salary and not just expenses.
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When we come to the question of members serving part-time, should we not give pause? We have a great tradition in this country of voluntary public service. I have had more experience of appointments attaching to the work of the Arts Council than of most other things. I found that many members of the Arts Council work an immensely large number of hours on sub-committees. I found that the Chairman of the Arts Council, the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, was working almost full-time. It may be said that we ought to have a change in methods of remuneration, and that in regard to a great national institution (be it Covent Garden, the Arts Council, a great museum or gallery) there should be salaries paid. But I think that we should lose something thereby.
Furthermore, when dealing with part-time (not full-time) there is a great deal to be said for not introducing the principle of salaries but for keeping to the payment of expenses. We need not be mean about them; but I am fearful about the introduction of this problem of salaries. My reasons may be more fully understood by referring to the wording of the heading to Paragraph 6 of the Schedule. It reads:
"Disqualification for membership of House of Commons"
Obviously, a Member of the House of Commons is not allowed to accept an office of profit under the Crown; but I should have been very sorry not to have been able to make a number of appointments from Members of the other place. As the noble Lord, Lord Boyle, said, his was the first appointment as a member of the Arts Council that I made—and he was still a Member of the other place. Later, there was Hugh Jenkins. There was nothing political in this. They happened to be the people I thought best for the job; both were Members of another place. If we avoided this question of salaries for part-time members we should not require to disqualify Members of the House of Commons. I think it is useful that a suitable person in the other place should have a voice in these matters, provided he has an intimate, detailed knowledge. Conversely, the other place will be much less valuable if it loses those Members who are doing outside jobs for they are the Members who are able to bring to the debates in the other place outside expertise whether in the field of business or the Arts.

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These points I am raising are not in any sense Party points. They are just a number of considerations which all of us who are concerned with our libraries would like to have looked at. We shall have the opportunity of looking at them between now and the Committee stage. The Paymaster General went on to talk about having power to charge for the various services, and all that I can say is, "Go easy!" It will depend upon the nature of future Ministers and the Government as to how far it will be thought absolutely essential to have charges of any kind. My sentiments on this point are well known, and I think that the noble Viscount has taken the point.
I should like further clarification on a point which is of interest to me. The Board are being given power to dispose. It states in the Schedule:
"The powers of the Board shall include power to acquire or dispose of any property, whether or not for the purposes of their collections …".
I think that is right. If we appoint the right members, the Board, by their combined experience, ought to be better able than a Minister to decide on questions of acquisition or disposal. I mean no reflection on present, past or indeed future Ministers, but I think that functionally a political Minister, in the nature of things, cannot be wiser, or a better informed person. So I think that acquisition and disposal should be left to the Board. The Schedule goes on:
"… except that where any property in the hands of the Board is subject to any trust or condition, they shall not dispose of or deal with it in any manner inconsistent with the trust or condition."
I am sure that some of my friends at the Tate Gallery will look at that with great interest.
Maybe we should look not only at how we are going to set up the Board which will mean so much for the future, but also at the present relationship between trustees and governors of other great institutions; because I believe that much could be done to improve our museums and galleries generally if we did a little more buying and selling. The problem presented by trusts is a tricky one. We might ask how far one generation has the right to break a trust. I was interested to note that there is to be one law for
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the Tate and another for the proposed British Library. It states quite clearly with regard to trust property that the Board
"shall not dispose of or deal with it in any manner inconsistent with the trust. …"
Another point which I wish to mention relates to the question of staff and cost. We are told that when this reorganisation takes place there will be a reduction of 1,200 in the number of staff. There must have been a great deal of wastage and overlapping and we shall be grateful if this means that there will be less overlapping—or am I misunderstanding the situation?
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I hope that the noble Baroness is not misunderstanding. I said that it is not a question of a reduction in the number of people operating the Library but of their transfer from Civil Servive status to be employees of the new institution. The reduction is in the total number of Civil Service employees.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE:
My Lords it is estimated that the stall of the public service will be reduced by some 1,200 as a result of the establishment of the British Library. I think that many members of the public will not make a distinction between "staff" which is technically civil servants, and "staff" which is employed to run our libraries although they are not civil servants. I have taken the point that this is a reduction in the number of civil servants as such, but has no relation to the total number required to man our future libraries properly.
Then, my Lords, we come to the cost. I am told that there will be an extra annual cost of only £100,000; the net annual cost to the Exchequer is expected to be some £100,000. The Paymaster General has my sympathy if, when dealing with his Treasury colleagues, he got this figure as low as possible. I do not care whether the difference is £100,000, £500,000 or a million. This kind of expenditure has to be faced by any civilised Government. I also doubt the estimate given of £36 million spread over 13 years, which means an extra annual cost of between £3 million and £4 million a year. In a period of rising prices none of us can be sure it is impossible.

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I am not making a strong point of this, I am just saying that if I were a betting type, which I am not, I would be willing to lay a bet that before the end of the decade—
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I think it would be as well to clear up the matter. These memoranda give only the estimates for the next financial year. In the next financial year the services will go on as they are now but there will be a distinction because it is really the Board which will cost the additional £100,000. Of course, in the dim future we may well expect the annual cost to rise.
BARONESS LEE or ASHERIDGE: My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, but I had moved on from the annual cost to the capital cost of building. We are told that over 13 years the cost will be some £36 million. It may be a slight comfort to our hard-pressed colleagues at the Treasury if they are told that they will not have to find more than £3 million of £4 million a year. But these are not divisive matters. It gives us all great happiness that we are to have a truly national library, that in Yorkshire we are to have the lending section and in London we are to have the reference section, the bibliographic section and the research section, and that we can begin to see a wonderful plan emerging which will mean so much to students everywhere in our own country. I think this is one field—and I agree with the Minister—where we may do great service to our students, present and future. and also where we may more than hold our own with progress in other parts of the world.
4.8 p.m.
VISCOUNT NORWICH: My Lords, I should like to echo the well-deserved words of appreciation to the Paymaster General of the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge. I would also, on my own behalf and on behalf of my colleagues on these Benches, tell the noble Viscount how greatly we admire the work which he and his colleagues on the Organising Committee have done in the past year since we last discussed the British Library, and how grateful we are for it. It is almost unnecessary for me to say how wholeheartedly and enthusiastically I support the Bill, but I do so with certain minor reservations. They are minor and I do not think that they will have any
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serious effect on the outcome of the magnificent objective expressed in the first lines of the White Paper:
"to creating a national library service without rival in the world."
But these reservations are, I think, worth giving a short airing this afternoon.
When the White Paper was discussed on March 2 last year, several noble Lords, including myself, thought that for such a magnificent objective it was a fairly short and sketchy document. It must also be said that the Bill, though it may be sufficient for its purposes, is also surprisingly short and sketchy. I am, on the whole, very happy with what it says, but I am a little concerned about the things that it leaves out. When I first read it—I am speaking here as a Trustee of the National Central Library—I was surprised to see that there was no mention of the National Central Library, or indeed of the National Lending Library of Science and Technology or the British National Bibliography, the constituent contributory libraries which will, with the main British Museum Library, form part of the new British Library. The noble Viscount has explained to us that it was not neccesary that these should be mentioned, and I willingly accept his assurance.
I was more worried, reading Clause 1 of the Bill and, in particular, subsections (1) and (2), to find that these two subsections really gave the only statement existing in the whole of the Bill of the objectives of the British Library. The White Paper, sketchy as it was, gave us a good deal more. That spelt out in paragraph (3) three distinct objectives, and very well it did it: we knew where we were. The first was:
"(a) preserving and making available for reference at least one copy of every book and periodical of domestic origin and of as many overseas publications as possible."
The second was:
"(b) providing an efficient central lending and photocopying service …"
And the third was:
"(c) providing central cataloguing and other bibliographic services related not only to the needs of the central libraries but to those of libraries and information centres throughout the country and"—
this seems to me to be particularly important—
"in close co-operation with central libraries overseas."

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Those are three splendid objectives and, as I say, we know where we stand.
But when we come to the Bill itself, all we get is three lines in Clause 1(2) saying:
"… to manage the Library as a national centre for reference, study and bibliographical and other information services in relation both to scientific and technological matters and to the humanities."
Once again we get this sort of dichotomy between science, on the one side, and the humanities, on the other, this totally spurious position of the two cultures, which I had hoped we had overcome. The objectives as given in the Bill do not—and this is most surprising—mention what is surely one of the most important aspects of the new British Library; that is, its duty to lend. I know that subsection (4) of Clause 1 speaks about lending, but it suggests to me that by relegating the question of lending to subsection (4) there is a tendency to see it as a separate and possibly slightly less important aspect of the British Library's work—as a sort of Cinderella. It is important that we should not do this.
At the same time—and your Lordships may think that I am a little confused here, as I am; and I only hope that my confusion does not reflect some degree of confusion on the part of the drafters of the Bill—I am not sure exactly where the whole question of lending fits into the British Library as we conceive it to be. On the one side, we read in Clause 1(4) of the Bill that:
"The Board may, subject to such restrictions and conditions as they think necessary to safeguard their collections, lend any item, and make any part of their collections. … available in connection with events of an educational, literary or cultural nature."
It seems to me to be of vital importance—and I remember the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, in his speech last year in the debate on the White Paper attributing great importance to this—that that part of the new British Library which is at present still part of the British Museum Library should be no more ready to lend any of its possessions than it is at the present time. The most vital thing about the British Museum Library, as we know it at present, is, at least so far as books in English are concerned, its completeness. Once it starts lending things out it will no longer be complete and half of its point will be gone.
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It seems to me, particularly in these days of easy and relatively cheap photocopying, that it should be quite unnecessary to lend books from this collection. At the same time, now that the new British Library is going to include the National Lending Library and the National Central Library, obviously it is important that the lending aspect of the new Library should be carefully defined and made far more precise than it is in the Bill, so that we all may know, once and for all, what books can be lent and in what circumstances, and what books cannot be lent. I hope that it may be possible for the noble Viscount later on to give us some further indication about this. Less important, but still, I think, worth mentioning, is the fact that the Bill, in spelling out, in so far as it does spell out, its objectives, makes no reference to other points which are spelt out in the White Paper, such as photocopying or cataloguing or—and I repeat that this is of particular importance—close cooperation with foreign libraries overseas.
I come now to the question of the formation of the Board. I was delighted to see that its numbers have been increased from the original numbers suggested in the White Paper, and also that there is no longer the question of statutory consultation with the Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry for Scotland and for Wales. As we know, the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales are not going to form part of the present system, and it never seemed to me to be particularly necessary that they should be represented on what was, anyway, to be a rather restricted Board. However, a year ago I made the point—and I make it again now, because it seems to me important—that it must be wholly inadequate for the Trustees of the British Museum to be represented by one part-time member. We have all sat on cornmittees—most of us have probably sat on far too many for our comfort—and we know how many apologies for absence are read out at the beginning of most meetings. It seems to me most important that the British Museum should he adequately, permanently and invariably represented, since it is the Trustees of the British Museum who know and understand more than anybody else how the new British Library should be run and the problems inherent in its running.

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There is one possible exception to this—and again I make no apology for repeating what I said when we discussed this subject last year. I think it is of great importance that there should be one member of the Board, part-time if you like, who represents the readers in the British Museum. I should like there to be perhaps some distinguished historian who has spent the best part of his working life in the Reading Room of the British Museum and knows it backwards and who can give first-hand opinions and advice on what the readers want, what they need and what they think. Surely, if we are now going to have more than a dozen members of the Board, it should be possible to have at least one person who can represent the reader.
Another point about which we should think a little more carefully, though I do not necessarily say that it should be written into the Bill, is the question of inter-lending. I do not want to say too much about this matter because I believe that the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, will be talking about it with much more knowledge and expertise than I can command. Once again I should declare an interest, because I am also a member of the Committee of the London Library, which is, as your Lordships know, technically speaking, although a recognised charity still a private library, in that it demands membership. I am speaking now not as a member of the Committee, but in a personal capacity. It seems to me that the moment has now come when there has to be a far greater degree of interchange and inter-lending between the private libraries such as the London Library, the libraries of a great many learned societies in this country and the new British Library.
At present the London Library does not lend its books except to those libraries which are corporate members of the London Library: it does not lend, for example, through the National Central Library. This is despite the fact that it possesses a very large number of volumes indeed, particularly foreign ones, which have probably been inherited over the past hundred years from bequests of various scholars, both British and foreign, and which are unobtainable anywhere else in the country and certainly in the British Museum. It seems to me that as
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the London Library is now a charity and rightly insists on the importance of its place in our national life it should from now on take part in a complete inter-lending scheme; but in view of its present disastrous financial position, it should be paid for doing so. I should like to think that the London Library and the libraries of the learned societies will do far more in this way, in return for proper remuneration, than they have been able, or in some cases permitted, to do in the past.
A word about newspapers. As we are now building this magnificent new building will it still be necessary to trek all the way out to Colindale every time we want to read a newspaper from the past?
I hope very much that this will not be so. I understand the problems of storage and I know how bulky and heavy newspapers can be, but I should still like to think that in these days of photocopying it will be possible to have in Central London copies on microfilm of all the important newspapers going back for at least fifty years. I am sure that we need all the space we can get everywhere, and of course in Colindale, but perhaps the time has come for us to consider whether the national archives of the Press could not be brought from Colindale to Central London so that Colindale might be used for some other parts of the British Museum collection which are less constantly in demand.
On films, I was gratified to read in Clause 1(1) the word "films". The subsection reads as follows:
"This Act shall have effect with a view to the establishment for the United Kingdom of a national library, to be known as 'the British Library consisting of a comprehensive collection of books, manuscripts, periodicals, films and other recorded matter, whether printed or otherwise."
This seems admirable. But reading through the Bill I can find no further reference to films at all. I should like to ask the noble Viscount for an explanation, if I may, of what exactly is meant. Are these commercial or B.B.C. television films, features and documentaries, and are they films in the strictest sense of the word, or video tape recordings? What will these films be, and how will they fit in with the splendid work at present being done by the British Film Archive?

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Putting on once again my hat as a Trustee of the National Central Library, I should like to touch on the question of staff. Until now the Organising Committee, the Government and indeed the noble Viscount himself have been extremely considerate of the major staff problems which have been inevitable and inescapable in this great reorganisation. Of these problems, none are more intractable than those arising from the move of the National Central Library, together with most of its staff, to Boston Spa. The National Central Library have themselves seen the necessity for this move. With reticence, may I say that I am far from seeing the wisdom of it myself, but that is not the point. Assuming that it has to be done, it seems to me that the staff have been extremely understanding, and in return the Government have been extremely considerate of their interests and of the disruptions which will occur in their private lives, et cetera. I hope that the noble Viscount will be able to reassure us that as the moment for the move becomes nearer and the Organising Committee continues its work, it will continue to be no less considerate of the problems which arise in the future than it has been in the past.
Finally, may I just repeat the wish that I originally expressed last year, that Sir Colin St. John Wilson, the architect of the Organising Committee, and all those who are now responsible and who will be responsible in the future, certainly throughout this decade, for the design and building of the new British Library, will continue to bear in mind the three vital aspects of this work of which we must all be conscious if it is to do the job that it sets out to do. What readers need above all is completeness, with all that that means where lending is concerned. The second necessity is efficiency—which means not waiting more than two hours for books when one orders them. I must tell the noble Baroness that I once waited for five hours. Lastly as regards space, please do not let us be niggardly in the allocation of space for readers. I know that the situation is much better than it was but it is nowhere near as good as it will be; and I have a horrible feeling that it will still not be good enough unless this point is borne continually in mind. If bearing this in mind means restricting the amount of
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private housing unrelated and unconnected with the Library which we are still talking about providing on this site, then please, before it is too late, let us see that it is the houses that go and not the facilities for the National Library which will be, we trust, without rival in the world, a showpiece of this country and an example to everyone.
4.27 p.m.
Lotus TREVELYAN: My Lords, I, too, should like to welcome this Bill as marking a new stage in the realisation of a great project. I congratulate the members of the Organising Committee on the progress they have made. We all know how, for a time, the project was sadly delayed by an acute divergence of opinion as to the site; but that should now be forgotten and we should remember only that the scheme as it now stands has been brought to realisation by Ministers of both Parties that have formed the Government in recent years, and in particular by two Members of your Lordships' House who have been successively responsible for the Arts, the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, and the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles. The Trustees and staff of the British Museum are grappling, as we all know, with ever-mounting difficulties in the administration of their libraries. The noble Baroness has described with characteristic picturesqueness how inadequate the British Museum Library building now is to serve efficiently the ever-increasing number of students coming from all over the world and wishing to take advantage of its unrivalled collections. We are doing all that is humanly possible to overcome these difficulties, and in this we are being helped by the noble Viscount and the Prime Minister, to both of whom I express our gratitude.
The Science Library is, as the noble Viscount has said, divided among four separate buildings in different parts of London. It provides as good a service as these conditions permit for the increasingly complex requirements of modern science and technology. In spite of the admitted deficiencies arising from the inadequacies of the buildings, and in particular from the inflexibility of the British Museum building, many users of both libraries, and of the Departments of Manuscripts and of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts of the British

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Museum, testify to the good service which they receive, and realise the difficulties which are caused by the changes in modern life and, in particular, by great improvements in our standards of education. I wish to pay my tribute here to the staffs of the British Museum departments concerned for their devoted work for the public in the face of so many handicaps and difficulties. But we all know that the standards of efficiency necessary to the intellectual life of our country can be attained only by the creation of the new Library and the new unified library system.
The British Museum Trustees have already welcomed the White Paper following the Dainton Report, and I have spoken to this effect in your Lordships' House. The Paymaster General did not accede to their wish that one of their members should be on the Organising Committee. They were, however, represented on the Committee by the Director of the Museum and the Keepers of the British Museum and Science Libraries and the Department of Manuscripts, who have given the noble Viscount and his Department the benefit of their expert advice on the Bill. Since they have not had an opportunity to discuss the Bill, I cannot commit my fellow Trustees; but I give your Lordships my personal opinion that it represents the general principles of the White Paper which they have approved. For reasons of law, the Bill reads as if there is to be an expropriation of the property of the musuem, but this has been implicit throughout in this scheme, though it is still believed by many people that the British Museum is creating the new Library. The Library will no longer be theirs; the responsibility is now squarely with the Government who have established the organising committee and introduced this Bill. After vesting date the existing libraries will be transferred, as the Bill provides, from the Museum Trustees to the new Board.
The Trustees are however vitally interested in the Library and have an inherited responsibility for its future management, which is to some extent recognised in the Bill by the provision for their nominating a member of the new Library Board. But, particularly now that the size of the Board has been in
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creased, I should like strongly to support the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, in his proposal that the representation of the Trustees should be by more than one member, at least during the interim period before the books are moved from the Museum. There will be this intermediate period, of perhaps ten years, until the new libraries are built when most of the books and all of the manuscripts must remain in the Museum buildings, the administration being inevitably still to some extent a part of the general administration of the Museum. This dual responsibility will have its difficulties, but I can assure your Lordships that the Trustees and the staff of the British Museum will approach this task with good will and a desire to co-operate in every way with the new Library Board. The essential basis of this co-operation, as the Trustees have already pointed out, must be not a division of responsibility but a joint responsibility, through the medium of a joint executive committee which will be responsible for such matters as security, hours of opening and for co-ordination of negotiations with the unions and staff associations on pay and conditions of service.
Since the Bill, rightly, has not spelled out the administrative arrangements in too great a detail, I should like to be assured that there will be no legal impediment to matters relating to the administration and staff which concern both the Museum and the Library Board being decided, in effect, during the interim period by the joint executive committee to which I have referred. I should be grateful to have this assurance from the Government. I do not propose to attempt to dissect the Bill; there are only one or two points that I want to raise on the Bill and the Explanatory Memorandum preceding it. If the noble Baroness had not mentioned it, I should have referred to the curious sentence in the Explanatory Memorandum which suggests that there will be a reduction of 1,200 in the number of people running the new Library as compared with the old Library. I understand that this is a piece of esoteric Civil Service theology, and I suggest that for the general good, this particular sentence might be explained a little more clearly.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: Hear, hear!
LORD TREVELYAN: My Lords, there is one point about which I have a reservation in principle: it occurs in the financial section and relates to the administrative arrangements in subsection (2) of Clause 5. I do not want to trespass on the privileges of the other place, but it is a matter of importance to the museums in general. It seems likely that if there is to be any devolution of Government control the method of administration of the new British Library will eventually be applied generally to national museums and galleries. If this is to mean anything, then all such bodies should be entitled to apply the revenues which they earn for the purposes of the institutions which they administer as trustees.
The noble Viscount and the noble Baroness have both spoken about the power of disposal, which is very much wider than the very restrictive powers now possessed by the British Museum Trustees under the British Museum Act. I, too, think that this is right, although I would not go so far as wishing to amend the existing section in the British Museum Act in relation to the Antiquities Departments which will remain in the British Museum.
There is one other point which has just been brought to my notice by a member of the committee of the Science Reference Library who is concerned with patent agents' work. I refer to the statement in Clause 2(2) about the qualifications of persons selected for appointment to be members of the Board. They are to be persons who
"have knowledge and experience of library or university affairs, finance, business or administration."
The gentleman I refer to quarrels with the word "business", which does not seem to be a very common word in an Act of Parliament. I do not know what it means. Does it mean commerce? I think what it should mean is "industry" which is the nearest to the requirements of the Board of the new Science Library. My Lords, may I conclude by again expressing my satisfaction? By this Bill we are advancing one step further towards the realisation of this great project which will enrich the cultural life of this country.
4.37 p.m.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: My Lords, in general, like those who have spoken already, I welcome this Bill as I
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and others welcomed the White Paper. I do not want to repeat this afternoon what I said on that occasion beyond saying how I welcome in particular Clause 1(3)(b) which will enable the Board to co-operate fully with some of the special libraries. I want to deal with only one point about which I am very exercised. It is fundamentally important, when we are now for the first time bringing together the whole of our library service, the reference and lending libraries, the libraries for the humanities and for the sciences, the national bibliography and the like, that it should get off cm the right foot with the complete trust of all the interests concerned that the project will be properly dealt with, and, in particular, that the Board should be so constituted as to secure the trust of all those various interests. I am bound to say that I fear that the Board, as set out in the Bill, will not secure that trust and confidence of the whole scientific world which I should like to see it secure.
I find it quite extraordinary that in view of the emphasis in Clause 1(2) on the sciences and technology there is no reference to them in Clause 2(2), although I fully appreciate the point which the noble Baroness made that you cannot give a list of every man, woman and child in the country, which is what you might have to do if you were trying to cover everything. I find it quite extraordinary that there is no representative qua science—and there would have to be two, one for the natural sciences and one for the physical sciences—on the Board. The only outside representatives are two representatives of the Board of the British Museum. With the greatest respect, the member representing the King's Library is virtually indistinguishable from all the others. I do not think that either those trustees, or the noble Viscount, realises the disastrous effect which their conduct had when they were responsible for the British Museum of Natural History when it was sadly neglected over a long period. What was even worse, its library, which is particularly important to-day, was sadly neglected.
I do not think those responsible realise what a traumatic effect that had on those like myself as well as professionals who are interested in the natural sciences. That of course can easily happen when you have people who are fundamentally

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interested in the humanities trying to administer a large research institution, and a large research institution's library, which is not something they are normally brought into contact with. But 80 per cent. of the income of that large institution, the British Museum of Natural History, is spent on research—research of which when we discussed that Green Paper the other day neither Rothschild nor Dainton had any criticism to make—pure and applied research dealing with animal and plant life all over the world, whether recent or fossil. For centuries that research has been supported and carried out on material collected from all over the world: something which still continues to-day, and doubtless some of your Lordships, like the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, opposite, have contributed to it, and others in Central Asia and the like.
An essential part of any biological collection is its documentation: the field notes made by the collector—by Darwin on the Beagle", by Banks on the "Endeavour", or by anyone of us here who has been on less important and less famous expeditions. The notes on how and where the specimens were found, the behaviour or the ecological niche into which they fitted—all those manuscript notes, and drawings related to those specimens, not one of us to-day in his senses would deposit in any other place than the research institute in which they were going to be kept and in which they were going to be studied. The whole of them would together form a single entity: the collections strengthened by the documentation; the notes and the pictures are an essential part of the specimen. That is probably only necessary in the biological sciences where things of that nature never become out of date; where the examination of specimens and their related documentation is not of course a continual process but is a recurrent process recurring at relatively frequent intervals. Anybody doing to-day a revision of the birds of Central Asia would have to have the specimens and the notes collected together by the late Lord Tweedsdale, by the noble Lord opposite, Lord Hunt, on one of his expeditions, and (perhaps I should declare my interest) my collections which I made myself some forty years ago. Those are of continuous impor-
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tance; they are quite unlike the notes and manuscripts produced by, let us say, Priestly in the 18th century or even Marconi in this century, which rapidly become part of the history of science and are not used at all by a modern research worker. Our predecessors knew that as well as we do. Banks, who went round the world with Cook in the "Endeavour", wrote when he made his will in 1820:
"I leave … my library, herbarium, manuscripts, drawings and everything that is contained in my collections"
as an undivided whole—exactly as any one of us doing the same sort of work would do to-day. None of us, as I said, would leave the documentation apart from the specimens; nor indeed did Banks.
When the collections made by Banks, those made by Sloane and the whole of the natural collections were moved from Bloomsbury to South Kensington their associated documentation was kept in Bloomsbury. The Trustees then split them apart, kept them apart, continue to keep them apart; and not only the Banksian papers but many others; and that even though at that time both were under their control in national collections, and are still in national collections governed by exactly the same Act of 1863.
Only this morning I learnt of a foreign scientist who came into this country to work on American plants, because we have here one of the best collections in the world. He was dismayed and surprised—I put stronger words into his mouth but he would not put them stronger than that because he is not so intemperate as I am myself—to find that all the relative documentation, the notes of a Frenchman called Plumier which form part of the Sloane collection, are not where they should be, next door to all the specimens which have to be consulted with them, but still hidden away up at Bloomsbury unknown and unstudied because they are miles away from the collections. That was difficult for the people who were showing him what we had at South Kensington to explain. I have found myself in exactly the same position of finding it difficult to excuse and to explain to foreigners in the same way.
I realise of course that in the libraries and collections to which I am referring there are many exceedingly valuable

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books, a few incunables and the like, which are of greater interest to the student of printed books—I would say of more importance probably, being unique, to the student of printed books than they are to the biologist—and which can either be sent or he can with difficulty go and visit them because, by and large, not very frequently do they have to be consulted. But basically we cannot get away from the fact that the prime necessity of every collection of this nature is to have the documentation and the specimens in the same place, under the same control, so that the scientist can consult them when he likes together. This is the fundamental difference between a library run by people who are interested in the humanities and a library run by people who are interested in the sciences. I suspect myself (I know only of the biological sciences) that it is a purely biological problem, and the noble Lord, Lord Ironside, who is to speak after me, will say whether the same sort of thing applies to the physical sciences; but I do not think it does.
The scientific world, the biological world, is not going to trust this new library set-up unless there can be some assurance that these sort of mistakes which were made, obviously by people who think that they are doing right from the point of view of humanities although wrong from the point of view of sciences, are going to be put right; otherwise this Library will start off on the wrong foot. We shall none of us trust it; we shall none of us believe that it is going to do what we all want: to bring the sciences and the humanities together with a complete understanding of each other's problems. I have talked to the Royal Society about this and I am authorised to say that they feel as worried as I do. I have talked to a number of other people who are interested in the natural sciences, and one of them produced a phrase which I think is a little stronger than I would have put it myself, but it is such a nice one I cannot refrain from throwing it at the noble Viscount's head: that unless some alteration is made into the hoard as now constituted, unless a representative of the scientist is brought in—speaking and declaring my own interest, I should have liked to see somebody nominated by the Trustees of the British Museum in Natural History; I think certainly
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there ought to be a nominee by the Royal Society—
LORD TREVELYAN: My Lords, may I say that I do not think I could admit necessarily that mistakes had been made, either by my colleagues, many of whom are distinguished scientists, or their predecessors. This is a complex matter. It is under discussion by the British Museum Trustees, although I have some doubt whether it would be advisable to make any changes in the last few months before the Trustees give up control of their library.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: My Lords, I am glad to hear that there has been such full discussion, but unless Section 9 of the British Museum Act 1963 is carried forward, under which the Trustees could hand over the documentation with the material, I do not think it would be possible, other than by a general giving away, which one would hardly think was the right way of doing it in this case. This is of fundamental importance, although it may seem to be a small point. It is to get the trust of the scientists working together with those who study the humanities, and unless we can be quite certain that both sides are represented on the new Board I believe it will get off on the wrong foot.
4.52 p.m.
THE EARL OF SHANNON: My Lords, this Bill is one which generally, from what we have heard, meets with the approval of all noble Lords who have spoken so far in the debate, and I do not wish in any way to spoil its welcome. My sole reason for intervening has already been very largely and very ably made by the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, and was also to a certain extent mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan. What interests me most particularly is the small change which has occurred between the actual wording of the Bill now before the House and the White Paper which was issued by the Government in January. In view of what we have just heard from the Minister, the noble Viscount the Paymaster General, in opening this debate, the assurance that all classes of user had been considered by the Committee, I hope that he and the House will forgive me for mentioning this small point. I refer, of course, to the specifications for the composition of the Board of the

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British Library. Here I may enter into a slight disagreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Lee; I do not think it is a serious one. I believe she is suggesting that we should not define the specifications or the capabilities of the members. I would agree with that; but if we are going to define them at all I think we should define them completely and not partially.
The noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, has already mentioned that in the White Paper provision was made for four part-time members to be appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Science after consultation with the Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry, for Scotland and for Wales, and the Trustees of the British Museum. Quite a party! I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, that perhaps some of them were a bit unnecessary, but one I think was very necessary. In the Bill, however, the obligation to consult has been entirely dropped, although in his speech the Minister referred to it again. The only trace now left in the wording of the Bill is the upgrading only of the Trustees of the British Museum to the position not just of being consulted but of having the right to nominate one, and possibly as a result of this debate this afternoon two, part-time members. A statutory obligation to consult, especially with the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, would be especially valuable, in that it would ensure that consideration would be given to the needs of industrial users, for whom the Science Reference Library is a library of first resort, unlike the British Museum Library, which, as the White Paper admits, is a library of last resort to scholars.
The decision in respect of the concentration of the fragmented Science Reference Library is one to be welcomed wholeheartedly. The Library itself is, as the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, said, of great use to those working in industrial fields and in patent work, and I suspect that it will be found that the readers using that Library—the industrial users and the patent users—will be by far the largest group of users of the British Library. I wonder whether the noble Viscount the Paymaster General would consider the statutory re-inclusion of some
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representation on the Board from trade and from industry, to redress a balance which I feel is far too much librarian and scholar-orientated. I appreciate that in the wording of the Bill the Secretary of State for Education and Science is required to give preference to those who appear to have knowledge and experience of, inter alia, finance and business. Again, the word "business" has been mentioned. It is somewhat vague; it does not in fact define industry and it would seem that some more definite provision should be included for industrial users. I do not think there is any point of difference between the Minister and myself in this regard. He mentioned in his speech, I believe twice, that this consultation would take place. These assurances are valuable, but it would be more helpful if they could be written into the Bill, provided that there was no other reason to debar that from being done.
I know that there is also a provision for advisory councils for each directorate. This is helpful, but is not in any way comparable to having a member of the Board appointed after consultation with the Secretary of State most concerned with the needs of one particular type of user. I appreciate that this is only a small point, but I believe it is an important one, and I should welcome the further observations of the noble Viscount as to how the change occurred between the White Paper and the Bill, although not in his speech this afternoon. I should be glad to know whether he would consider restoring the position at Committee stage, as the arrangements at present written into the Bill seem too orientated towards library administration and scholars. I hope that this little request of mine will meet with favourable consideration and that the noble Viscount the Minister will indicate his preparedness to consider the matter at the Committee stage.
5.0 p.m.
LORD ANNAN: My Lords, I rise only because I am the Chairman of the Committee on Printed Books and Manuscripts, and therefore as a Trustee of the British Museum particularly concerned with this Bill, since the items which come under the Committee are to be transferred from the British Museum.

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I should like to say at once how greatly I welcome the fact that all three Parties have welcomed the Bill, so that it is in the strictest sense non-controversial. I thought that the warmth with which the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, spoke to-day was characteristic of her natural good will towards the British Museum and its troubles. We owe a great deal to her in that during that difficult period when the site of the Library was in question she used her good offices. We also owe something to the then Secretary of State for Education and Science, Mr. Short, who, having heard all the arguments, agreed that the site on which the proposed new Library should be built should be preserved and in that way, and brought about the Bill. Indeed, I believe that, had business been otherwise arranged, it is even possible that the Bill might have been introduced by the Labour Government whose term of office came to an end in 1970.
But, my Lords, that said, let me at once say that the person to whom this Bill owes most is, of course, the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles. Before he assumed office as Paymaster General, he was a tremendous driving force, as Chairman of the British Museum Trustees, first of all in mending the bridges (which were in danger of being broken) between the Trustees and the Government of that day; and, secondly, in organising the management of the Museum in a way that enabled it to put its case adequately to the Dainton Committee and thereby convince that Committee of the need for the provisions which now appear in this Bill, having had their first airing in the White Paper. I congratulate the noble Viscount very warmly and thank him for all his good offices in this respect.
I have only two points to make—because I do not want to go over points already made by other speakers. First, I am a little puzzled, as I think was the noble Baroness, Lady Lee, by the fact that in Clause 5(2) the Secretary of State is at that point brought in. I wonder whether the Board itself might be trusted. There is a slight difficulty here when it comes to accumulated balances which have come from public funds. It is one which we are finding challenged in the universities. Under the University Grants Committee a special fund was set up in all universities for the provision of scien-
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tific equipment, and this fund has been wisely and prudently accumulated by universities against the day when they may have a new building to equip or some particular crisis requiring the installation of very expensive scientific equipment. We are now finding this challenged by the Comptroller and Auditor General's Department, who ask, "Why do you need these balances? You have not spent them. They should go back to the Government." Upon my soul! prudence is sometimes penalised. I would ask whether there is any intention that balances accumulated by the British Library Board shall suddenly be snatched away by the intervention of a Secretary of State who might be less wise than the noble Viscount.
The second point I would make is this, Clause 3(5) refers to the transfer of property from the British Museum to the new Board. I should like to ask whether there is to be transfer of trust funds which would be appropriate to the Library. There are some small trust funds connected with the Department of Manuscripts, and there is one, in particular, in which I, in my position as Chairman of the Committee on Printed Books, am particularly interested. I refer to the Shaw Fund, which came to the British Museum by tortuous means, the courts having ruled on Bernard Shaw's will. As a result of the court's wise judgment, the British Museum became one of the residuary legatees under that will. That would not have been of very great moment but for the happy chance that Pygmalion was turned into a musical, and subsequently into a film, called My Fair Lady. As a result, the British Museum now has a very subtantial sum at its command. What is so splendid is that it is completely unallocated money; we can do what we wish with it to help the purposes of the Museum as a whole. The money is not tied up, as are other funds, to the purchase of, for instance, Oriental objects or books or manuscripts. I think there should be some idea in the mind of the Government about what they intend to do on the trust fund issue.
I would certainly not take the view that the whole of the Shaw Fund should be transferred to the British Library. I think it is perfectly true that Bernard Shaw was much more interested in what went

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on in the Reading Room of the British Museum than what went on in the Collections; I would say that his interest in the Mummy Room was minimal. The money was left to the British Museum, and it would be wrong to suggest that the whole fund should be transferred to the British Library. Nevertheless, I should be very pained if, when break-up takes place, the whole of that money were to remain purely under the control of the British Museum. I feel that it would be more equitable if it was divided. There is no mention in the Bill of what happens to trust funds.
If I may turn, very briefly, to the Board itself, I would make a plea to those noble Lords who have criticised the composition of this Board. Every special interest, of course, makes out its own case for representation on this Board, but I think (I may say that here I am speaking entirely personally) the noble Viscount is placed in an almost impossible position if the British Museum claims two members instead of one; or if, for example, every other library or interest claims that it should nominate a member. I am very much with the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, in thinking that way. Certainly, if we are to have a categorisation of the kind of interests which should be represented we should have the word, "industry" inserted after "business"; and certainly there should be some mention of "science": on that I am absolutely with Lord Cranbrook. I hope that there will not be, as it were, an attempt to swamp the membership of the Board with special interests. I do not believe that good management is obtained in that way; good management comes through consultation rather than through representation.
Again, if I may refer back to one point which Lord Cranbrook raised on the Banks Collection, I think that was answered by Lord Trevelyan. I might again say a word of warning. If the principle enunciated by the noble Earl were carried to its logical conclusion, and all books went where their comparable material in other fields was, we should soon have the break-up of the British Museum Library and the Reference Library, as it will now be.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: My Lords, I did intend—and I hope that I
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made it clear—to exclude most books. I was referring to documentation, and I think I went far beyond Banks, to the manuscripts of the Sloane Collection which are associated with a great number of collections which came to South Kensington.
LORD ANNAN: My Lords, I am delighted to hear that from the noble Earl; I am sorry if I misunderstood him. I think the point should be decided, after consultation, on an issue coming before the Board of the Library. I do not want to make any other point. I give the Bill a very warm welcome, and express thanks to all those who have joined with me in hoping for its speedy passage through Parliament.
5.10 p.m.
LORD IRONSIDE: My Lords, I should like first to apologise for the fact that my name is not on the list of speakers. This is unintentional; indeed, I was surprised to find that I was not supposed to be speaking to-day.
My Lords, I think that the introduction of this Bill marks the emancipation of the National Library Services: 1972 is the year of British "Lib", as one might say, and I should like to congratulate my noble friend on introducing the Bill promptly so as to maintain the momentum that has been built up by those who are now working on the transformation, the housing of the collections, and keeping the services running. My noble friend the Paymaster General has paid a warm tribute to the work of the Organising Committee, and as a member of the Organising Committee I should like to thank him for it and to say that the whole Committee will appreciate very much what he has said. My noble friend mentioned skill and efficiency. He himself, of course, has shown some skill in working us all very hard, but I would go further and pay tribute to the planning staff, who have had to carry the whole burden of interpreting the Committee's requirements and of formulating detailed plans, some of which have already led to decisions. This is being done as rapidly and as effectively as possible within the limits of the Committee's powers and resources, and with the co-operation of all the existing Library organisations. It is, I think, imperative that the directors and keepers, and through them their respective staffs,

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should be able to see that they have Parliamentary endorsement of the new Library behind them as early as possible and that they not be left in suspense about the principal issues.
There are, of course, many decisions that can be taken by the Organising Committee, but there comes a time when one must have the Board to exercise the managerial and directing functions. The Organising Committee cannot do any more than manage at arm's length, as they have not the executive or financial authority—or even the time—to do more. But with the pace that things are moving now, sooner or later (and in my opinion sooner rather than later) it will become impossible to follow up many of the initiatives which are now being taken or are about to be taken. Therefore I welcome the Bill wholeheartedly as timely and essential to the process of smooth changeover. I think that there is very little to criticise in the Bill itself, as it clearly sets out the pattern of operation. Clause 1 sets out the basis of the new Library organisation, and it is important to realise that the duties of the Board are defined in terms that show how it will reach out to many as an institute and that it will not set itself up in grand isolation from the rest of the library system in the country.
As to the selection of the Board itself, which is dealt with in Clause 2(2), it will be seen that the success of operations will depend upon the abilities of those who are chosen. Herein lies the difficulty, particularly in the initial phase, the formative years. Naturally one wishes to be able to recruit people who are conversant with, or who have been trained in, the disciplines which the Library serves, as well as the professional librarians themselves. There are many disciplines to consider and they cannot all be mentioned, but it is important, to my mind, that when this clause is looked at in future years the Secretary of State will be able to exercise his discretion in respect of selection without prejudicing the needs of the major users as services develop and technology changes. It is industry that matters, and it is industry's needs that must be looked after more than scholarship and the humanities, which are not subject to the same patterns of change. I think that the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, mentioned this
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when he relegated to the past Marconi's development.
The White Paper goes so far as to say that four of the part-time members of the Board will be appointed after special consultations with the Trustees of the British Museum, and with the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales and Trade and Industry—the latter representing a very large slice indeed of the user interests. This seems to me to be pretty specific, and I think that, whatever the method of selection, the Department of Trade and Industry are vitally concerned with the development of the Library, particularly the Science Reference Library with its role in serving the patents community. I should like to ask the Minister whether, in spite of what he has said in his opening speech, he is satisfied that the industrial needs are fully catered for. I realise the difficulties of cataloguing or arranging patronage, as it were—and this point has been mentioned by a number of speakers this afternoon. I do not want to labour it, but I should like some assurance that in fact the industrial needs are fully catered for.
Now I come to Clause 3, which deals with the transfer to the Library Board of British Museum Trust property. In the main it is the contents of two departments which come under the hammer, so to speak, and we have to consider how to deal with the various classes of material which might come our way from the ancient to the modern and from the bound to the unbound. There are items such as postage stamps, which my noble friend mentioned, political ephemera, tracts, manifestos and other such oddities to consider, and all I will say is that I hope that maximum consultation will take place between those concerned and that it will be possible to reach fair agreement about the various items that are involved.
Finally, I want to say one word about the Advisory Councils. I have served on one of these, and it is my experience that they are a most valuable forum for users to communicate their needs to the Library Executive and for the Library to keep users informed of developments. It is thus essential that the Executive should be adequately represented at council meetings, possibly in the chair, and it should be possible for Board members to attend if they wish to do so.

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It is not precisely clear to me in this Bill whether or not this is what the Minister has in mind, but I hope that he will be able to enlarge on the way in which he sees the Advisory Councils working in principle.
My Lords, I think that this Bill is to be commended and that it has been introduced in your Lordships' House at an appropriate time to cater for developments which are already under way. As your Lordships know, the most important part of the plan will involve the new building complex in Bloomsbury, part of which will be the Science Reference Library. As this is due to open by the autumn of 1979, much will depend upon the architect's having the final brief in his hands and being able to present his designs by the end of this year. If the timetable is to succeed, it is most important to avoid any delays at this present stage. The passing of this Bill now will, I think, secure the future to a greater extent, and I heartily support the second reading.
5.18 p.m.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, I apologise for detaining your Lordships for another minute or so, particularly as I have not notified my intention of taking part in the debate. However, I want to raise one point which has been drawn to my attention only this morning, and another one on which I had some discussion with interested parties yesterday. As regards Clause 2(2) the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, asked whether it was wise to enter into a catalogue of names. From the speeches that have been made so far this afternoon it appears that a serious exclusion exists; that is to say, whether the needs of manufacturing industry are properly taken into account. I know that the noble Viscount, in his opening speech, said that they will be taken into account, but if that is not written into the Bill how is it to be done? Are the interests of manufacturing industry to be included under those of "business or administration", or do the words "business or administration" in subsection (2) really refer to the qualifications of a person who is to be appointed to run the British Library rather than the affiliation that he may have with the users who will be taking books out and referring to documents?
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In the case of those interested in patents I agree entirely with the noble Earl, Lord Shannon, and it appears from the advice that I have been given that the number of users of the British Library coming from industry will be larger than all the scholars put together. Without in any way denigrating the interests of scholars, I think that from the nation's point of view we ought explicitly to take into account in the wording of the Bill the needs of manufacturing industry, and not only of business and administration. So I hope that as the noble Lord, Lord Ironside—whose knowledge of this subject is unrivalled—has said, some further attention will be given to the subject before Committee stage. I also hope that the noble Viscount in winding-up will at least be able to assure the House that his mind is not entirely closed about the wording of this subsection.
The second point I want to make follows on what my noble friend said about the objectives of the British Library. He referred to paragraph 3 of the White Paper, and I want to remind your Lordships that sub-paragraph (c) of that paragraph states that among the objectives of the British Library is the provision of:
"… central cataloguing and other bibliographic services related not only to the needs of the central libraries but to those of libraries and information services throughout the country".
One of the functions of the British National Bibliography is to provide a catalogue on tape for county libraries serving users up and down the country. I was very recently discussing the use of this tape with some county librarians, and they told me that it was not really as useful as it might be, because books that are the subject of the Copyright Act have to be deposited on demand with the libraries only within one month of publication. Publishers are very slow to respond to this demand, with the result that the tapes which go out to the county libraries are not by any means complete. They contain only about 40 per cent. of the new titles. As a result of that, an immense amount of labour, which would be quite unnecessary if publishers were compelled to deposit books at the time of publication instead of within a month thereafter, goes into cataloguing in county libraries up and down the country.
I really cannot see any difficulty in rectifying this. After all, publishers send

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out review copies to the newspapers and I should have thought that, at the same time, they could make available to the British Library a copy of every new publication when it comes into existence. A central catalogue could then be provided on tape for the county libraries up and down the country and an immense amount of labour could thereby be saved to local authorities, as well as providing a much better service to the ordinary readers who make use of these services which are provided by the local authorities. It seems to me that we have an opportunity of rectifying the matter under Clause 4 of this Bill. Perhaps the noble Viscount will say that this is a matter which should be raised when we come to the Committee stage, but I thought it would be as well if I gave notice of it now.
5.23 p.m.
LORD HURCOMB: My Lords, I shall not detain your Lordships for more than a moment, but I should like to make two points. I agree in general with what the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, has said but, as a Trustee under the old régime, I do not think it is really correct to say that there was any humanist bias among the Trustees against the interests of South Kensington. In my time, the Trustees were A. V. Hill and Henry Dale, to name no others, and they were intensely interested in South Kensington. They would have been very quick to take any point necessary in its interests. If there was any oversight or failure to deal with the real needs of that Museum, then I think the fault lay with the people in the actual practical management of the Museum who did not have the knack of asking, or did not think it appropriate to ask, the Trustees to take action in any particular direction or put them in a position to do so.
Though I agree with the noble Earl in his main argument, I hope that no kind of rivalry will develop in the new governing body between the humanities and science. How that can be avoided can, I think, safely be left to the Minister. In a much more general way, I have served on bodies constituted under this kind of procedure, and have had to advise over a great many years on what the Minister should do when Parliament gives him this kind of direction. I am convinced that the wisest course is that
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Parliament should not attempt to direct or fetter the Minister in his choice, but should give him the very widest field over which to roam in making his choice and should trust him to act sensibly, as Ministers of the Crown of all Parties almost invariably have done.
I would merely raise again the question whether the use of the word "business" is altogether happy. I do not know whether it has ever been judicially construed in this connection. I cannot charge my memory with seeing it in any of the Acts which I ever had to administer. But I am sure that the Minister will not allow himself to be pushed into being told that he must appoint so-and-so and such-and-such an interest. On the other hand, if is going to accept a general direction of Parliament he should be sure that he is using appropriate language and, from what I recall of the past, I am not sure that "business" is a word which was very much in favour 20, 30 or 40 years ago. If the Minister will consider that, I am sure the House can be very content to leave matters in his hands.
I should like to say how much I, like everyone else who has ever been concerned with museums, owe to him for having at any rate settled and reversed the absurd decision to move the Library away from where it is now and to divorce it from the whole of the other collections. The point of the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, about not divorcing documentation on birds or insects of which specimens have been preserved, applies with equal force to not moving the books which the scholar requires away from the artistic and other objects which he wants to study. The noble Viscount made short work of that very wrong step and we owe him great gratitude on that account. I am sure that if he were to look a little more closely at the wording of the direction which he is getting Parliament to impose on himself in his choice of the Board, he will ensure that he retains freedom to act as wisely in that respect.
5.28 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, like other noble Lords, I should like to give a warm welcome to this Bill and to congratulate the Paymaster General on it. My only regret is that it has taken so long to introduce. It was a year ago, in March,

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1971, that your Lordships debated the White Paper, and the Bill has just been introduced in March, 1972. Of course I can well understand that no doubt the noble Viscount has been engaged in other much more controversial, and possibly less pleasing, matters connected with the Arts. I welcome his assurance that the new Library will he built on the Bloomsbury site. I was rather puzzled by the reply of the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack to a Question by the noble Lord. Lord Teviot, on the Public Record Office, that no decision had been made. I am very glad to know that this site is now assured.
As my noble friend Lady Lee of Asheridge said, there have of course been great advantages in the delay over this decision, and also in the appointment of the Dainton Committee. As the noble Lord, Lord Annan, said, this might well have been the Labour Government's White Paper and in fact, from her speech, I thought my noble friend Lady Lee was looking forward to piloting it through herself. There have been many advantages in the delay. We have managed to preserve several listed buildings and the whole of the West side of Bloomsbury Square. We have also managed to preserve St. George's Church and as much housing as before. Most important of all, of course, the Science Reference Library will now be on the site. I never agreed with the view, held by some people, that it should be divorced from the main humanities library and set up under a separate body of trustees. At one time it was even planned—it was a crazy idea—to put it on the South Bank. Therefore, my Lords, there have been great advantages in these delays.
I was also very glad to hear from the noble Viscount that the Science Reference Library will be complete and open in 1979. In the debate on the White Paper he said that it would be 1978, but perhaps there have been slight delays since then. I should also like to welcome the appointment of Mr. Colin St. John Wilson, as the noble Viscount told us; and I am sure the whole design and structure could not be in better hands. I must say that I agreed very much with the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, when he regretted that the list of the libraries concerned
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was not to be included in the Bill. I know from the Paymaster General's speech that there are good legal reasons why they should not be: on the other hand, I think it would be a great advantage, because the Bill really tells only a small part of the story. The White Paper, of course, describes the whole scheme, and I think it would be very convenient to have this set out, with other details, in the Bill. The same was the case with the Museums and Galleries (Admission Charges) Bill. I am not trying to be controversial here at all, but in that case the whole scheme was set out in the White Paper and the Bill itself was a short enabling Bill, dealing with only 4 out of 18 galleries. It seems to me that we are arriving at a stage of government by White Paper instead of by Acts of Parliament.
My Lords, I should like to ask just a few questions about the Bill itself. I agreed very much with the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, when he put in a plea for the newspaper library at Colindale. I see from the Bill that almost all aspects are going to be included, even periodicals, films and other recorded matter. I know that there are difficulties with the bulk of a newspaper library, but with microfilming coming in I should have thought that in the future a great deal of our newspaper archives might be held in this way. I hope that the Government will have another look to see whether in some way the newspaper library might be brought rather nearer the rest. It would also be an advantage. I think, to have it referred to in the Bill. If the word "magazines" is in the Bill, it seems a great pity that the word "newspapers" is not also there. Furthermore, the newspaper library will be out of date in 25 years, and not really very long after this whole scheme is finished, when a decision must be made.
I am also, with the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, rather concerned about the question of lending. Here again. I think the section on lending which is Section 4 of the British Museum Act. 1963, is much better, and I think we ought to have a look at that in Committee. Of course, there are different kinds of lending. There is the whole lending part of this scheme, which will be up at Boston Spa; but then there is a quite different type of lending, too, which is the lending of rare books

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and manuscripts by the reference library. I am very much opposed to reference libraries lending in any way at all. In fact, the Dainton Committee, after much thought, rather reluctantly I think, came to this conclusion, too, although they thought that there were advantages in lending what they described as "lightly used foreign material", whatever that might be. But there are these very rare books which are national treasures, many of which are held in the British Museum, and no doubt the Trustees, in whom we have every confidence, will wish to lend them for exhibitions in this country and abroad. The noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, said that reasonable safeguards will be required for the more valuable books, and I would submit to your Lordships that this clause needs redrafting to take account of the two types of lending which will take place under this structure.
I agree also with what other noble Lords— the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, and the noble Lord, Lord Hurcomb—have said about the word "business". I agree fully that the word "industry" might be better. On the other hand, I am very sympathetic to what my noble friend Lady Lee said. It is probably better not to attempt to describe the various functions which will be represented, but to leave that to the good wisdom of time. I am grateful to the noble Viscount for explaining the intention of Clause 3(3); and I hope, too, with him, that some place will be found for the stamp collection.
My Lords, I should like to raise briefly the question of the Science Museum Library and the Lyon Playfair Library, which I touched on during the debate on the White Paper. I understand that since then there have been discussions between the Department of Education and Science, the Science Museum and the Imperial College about which books are to be transferred. I should like to ask how these discussions have been progressing, and what the position is. Perhaps the Minister will also confirm that, after some of the Science Museum books have been transferred, the Lyon Playfair Library will become and remain an open library, which it is not at present.
I should also like to ask about automatic data processing. In reply to a Question by the noble Lord, Lord Bird-wood, last February, the Paymaster General said:
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"The Report on Automatic Data Processing is now being studied by the Committee, which is due to give the architect the final schedule of requirements in April."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9/2/72, col. 1133.]
I wonder whether he can let the House have any further information.
I should also like to ask about the effects on manpower. In the Preamble, the Bill envisages a large staff reduction of about 1,200. The White Paper, though, makes no mention of staff reductions, although paragraph 17 says that the concentration of lending services at Boston Spa will allow economies. But is it wise to reduce staff until we can be sure that a first-class service will be maintained? I agree very much with the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, about the delays. In fact, he has been rather lucky if he has had to wait for only two hours or five hours. I have had to wait much longer; and one often finds that the books arrive just at the time the library is due to close. Also, it is open until 9 o'clock only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. On the rest of the days it closes at 5 o'clock. I hope that this new library will be open every night except Sunday, as the great Lenin Library is in the Soviet Union. I endorse everything the noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, said about the staff. I think they do a splendid job under very great difficulties. But I wonder whether this is the time to reduce them, until we are quite certain that a much better service can be given with a reduced staff.
My Lords, there is no mention of staff in the Bill, and no mention of transfers. There is no reference to the conditions under which the civil servants will serve after their transfer to the new organisation. Paragraph 15 of the White Paper says that the intention is that these will be no less favourable; but here again, my Lords, the White Paper is not legislation. I think that perhaps there is a case for having an Amendment at the Committee stage to give this intention some statutory authority. This is an important matter. There are about 1,200 people involved. The great majority of them are either civil servants or, like the British Museum staff, enjoy conditions similar to those in the Civil Service. I know that the Institution of Professional Civil Servants consider that the last sentence of paragraph 15 of the White Paper is completely inadequate. But, as I said, we shall have to consider this in detail

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at a later stage. These are details, but in general, as I said, I think that this is a most exciting project—one of the most exciting projects that I think we have had in our lifetime—and if this Bill sets it in motion, I should not be one for a moment to delay it. I commend it warmly to your Lordships.
5.40 p.m.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, with permission, I should like to reply. First, may I thank all noble Lords who have spoken for the warmth of their welcome. I appreciate that very much, as will the members of the Organising Committee without whose work we could not have brought forward this Bill. The reason why it has been delayed is that we have had four quite different institutions to consult. It would not have been satisfactory to bring legislation before your Lordships until we were quite satisfied that the four constituent parties had had a really good look at it and were satisfied with the lines on which we were going to ask for Parliamentary approval. The noble Baroness was extremely kind in her speech. I hope that she will not mind my reminding her that the noble Viscount, Lord Radcliffe, is very much alive. I am only sorry that we do not see him frequently in this House. I think your Lordships know the reason why.
Running through the debate were two main themes, both of which are extremely important. I anticipated that the Bill would look small and sketchy. I foresaw that, as the noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, said, there would be questions as to why we had not defined in greater detail the objectives of the British Library. But the more we looked at this proposition, working on it with all these experts, the more we felt that this is really a growth "institution. We do not really know in what direction it may need to expand or what kind of relationship it may have with all the libraries in this country—with the county libraries system, the other national libraries, the specialist libraries and with libraries overseas. Nor do we know what are going to be the methods of retrieval, or what will he the advances in all the photographic services and so on, in computers and A.D.P., all of which are coming over the horizon. I felt—perhaps it is
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due to my experience in business—that it would be unfortunate to draw the "articles of association" too tightly; because, although we are all agreed on the great objectives we have in mind, we cannot really know exactly how they are going to develop and how in any detail they should be described. I may or may not be right in that; but it was a view that was taken not light-heartedly in order to make the Bill short but deliberately when we saw what an interesting and complicated future was in front of this Board. The objectives that were spelled out in the White Paper will remain; but as the years go by, and they will go quickly, I am sure that we shall find all sorts of new problems and new adventures in the library world. I do not want to hamper the Board by trying to give too tight a description to begin with. That is the reason for the rather terse way in which it is described.
The other question is really of the nature of the Board. Do we want a representational Board or a Board in which the members are chosen with a keen eye on the various great types of user, but not representing this or that society or industry, whatever it may be? I think that this is an organisation which will require the highest skill in management as well as immense attention to the various types of user. Therefore I am against the proposition (at any rate, against writing it into the Bill) that certain members of the Board should represent, as it were, certain interests outside. More particularly I feel that we have reached a point where the scientists and the industrialists need not really feel inferior and demand that their particular interests should always be written into a Bill. After all, literature is a very great interest in this country, scholarship is a great interest in this country; but nobody expects that we should write into the Bill that those interests should have representatives. Looking at the Board of Trustees of the British Museum, I feel that the balance between the humanities and the sciences is pretty well kept—and it works well. Of course, I give an assurance, as I said in my speech, that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will be consulted and no doubt will put forward the name of some part-time member of the Board.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: My Lords, may I ask whether Mr. Vic Feather, representing the unions, will also be consulted?
VISCOUNT ECCLES: There we are, my Lords! We are on the slippery slope. Before I know it I shall have to consult the Patent Society, the trade union community or, say, the architects—and we have already heard about the Royal Society. All ought to be consulted. What we do not want is to put it into the Bill that they have a right to a particular representative.
I accept the point that the word "business" is not a good word. I shall be delighted to move an Amendment myself on the Committee stage to substitute "industry" for "business". That was an error. I am grateful that it has been pointed out to me. The noble Baroness spoke about the salaries for part-time members of the Board. I believe that I am right in saying that this is becoming a much more common practice; that if one wants someone to give up, say, one whole day a week, and in certain circumstances two whole days, it is not unreasonable to offer a small salary. Therefore to take power to do that in the Bill seems to be wise. It might be that there was someone with a great contribution to make who really could hardly afford to make it if there were no remuneration of any kind.
BARONESS LEE OF ASHERIDGE: My Lords, would the Minister not agree that by giving adequate allowances and expenses instead of a salary, certain Members of the other place could, without disqualification, be included on the Board? I am dubious about this expansion of paid salaries to part-time members in public boards.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I should have thought that the Treasury would be even more dubious about big, untaxed allowances. I think myself there is no question of a very large salary being offered to part-time members. I think that the noble Baroness will know from her own experience that it would not be likely to be agreed to. But there should be powers in the Bill for the Secretary of State to offer, say, £1,500 a year or something of that order for a useful member of the Board who felt that unless there were a small remuneration
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he could not serve even part-time. I hope that that will not appear unreasonable to the House. I think that I explained to the noble Baroness that the cost of estimating refers only to next year's Budget. It will, of course, rise. We have put our estimate from £6 million to £7 million over five years. It may or may not turn out to be enough. I cannot say.
The noble Viscount, Lord Norwich, thought that we had not put in enough about lending, and that subject was also raised by other noble Lords. I am not sure whether you can define the two categories of lending. If you say that there are certain books in the collection of the British Library which they can lend, you must also give a definition of those which they cannot lend. I think that would be extremely difficult to do. When I was at the British Museum I took a very purist view and said that it was wrong for the Library to lend anything at all. It was the staff of the British Museum who argued against that, and I feel pretty sure it was the evidence of the British Museum staff that led Sir Frederick Dainton to put in the passage in his Report that in some cases even the British Museum Library should lend books. My Lords, we look forward to a time when the copying of extracts from books will be much easier and when it will be possible to borrow in that way. Perhaps I ought to interject here that there are some difficulties with the copyright law; but, so far as I know, many great national libraries in all pants of the world are now concerned with this problem, so I think that we must give the Board broad powers to lend if they think that is right.
The noble Viscount rightly mentioned the London Library. May I wish him and his colleagues every success in their appeal, I agree, too, that it would be a great mistake if the Board of the British Library did not make every possible arrangement with other libraries for inter-lending, in order that to make the most economic use of the various stocks of books which there are in different parts of the country. He asked whether Colindale—that is, the newspaper library—could not be brought on to the site. Well, my Lords, not the physical body of the newspapers, because there really is not room. This is an enormous store, as the noble Viscount very well knows; but now that

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it is possible to put newspapers on microfilm they take up a very small amount of room. Last night, in The Times building I saw quite a small room which contained on microfilm the whole of the issues of The Times from 1785 to the present day. No doubt there will be some arrangement of that kind, but I do not think we can do without Colindale.
The noble Viscount mentioned that the word "films" is included. I said on a previous occasion that one looks forward to having in one place all the material which the modern historian needs. Photographs and films and sound records are all part of the quarry which nowadays the historian wishes to dig out. It may be that in time the Board of the British Library, who certainly have the powers, will make some offer about the British Film Archive and suggest that it is passed over to them. I think it would be a rational move.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: My Lords, I am glad that the Minister has brought up this matter. Those of us who have been in contact with the subject are amazed at the advances made in school lessons on films. Some of that film is well worth preserving. While that subject does not come directly under this heading, I hope that it will be remembered in the future.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, I very much agree with the noble Lord. To me it seems a great pity that some television film is immediately scrubbed after use. It would be better if we could make arrangements for a complete library of all these things, and perhaps in time, if we have enough resources, we may be able to do this. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Trevelyan for the welcome which he gave to the Bill. I would thank him and his colleagues for their co-operation. There would be no legal impediment in the interim to a joint committee of the representatives of the Trustees and the representatives of the Board, deciding to do this or that about their affairs. Indeed, my Lords, so long as the books and a great many of the staff are in the building of the British Museum it is obvious that we shall have to have a joint approach to these problems. But I think, with men of such eminence and good will, that will be possible.
LORD ANNAN: My Lords, would the noble Viscount care to elaborate on one point? The essential for the joint interim committee is the preparation of the architect's brief of the interior of the building. It is extremely difficult if more than one institution or committee is trying to give the architect a brief.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Annan, is absolutely right, but the British Museum representatives on the Organising Committee have been fully associated with its work. In fact, without them we should not have been able to do it. We are now very near to the architect's brief. The noble Lord, Lord Ironside, said that he hoped it would be ready by the end of April. In all those things there has not been the slightest difference between the Department and the Museum in our approach to the problems.
The noble Lord, Lord Trevelyan, mentioned Clause 5(2), and the problem which arises if surplus revenue is accumulated; and the subsection gives the Secretary of State power to say how it shall be disposed of. This is common practice; these words occur elsewhere, and I think one could imagine a situation rather different with the British Library than, say, the museums; they are hardly comparable. A large part of the British Library will be in the nature of a commercial undertaking. As I said in my previous speech, we already lend a million books a year. On all those books postage has to be paid, and there is the packaging, and it amounts to a very large sum of money. I suppose it is possible that these operations, the supply of photographs, extracts and that kind of thing, might yield a very large revenue; and, of course, since that is the basic operation at Boston Spa, it is not unreasonable that the Treasury should say that they want to see how the moneys are disposed of. It is rather different if money is earned by the sale of postcards or something in a museum: that is not their basic operation. But at Boston Spa the business they are carrying on really is supplying books on loan, so I think that Clause 5(2) is not unreasonable.
My noble friend Lord Cranbrook is always very anxious that we should secure the good will of the scientists. I can assure him that we are, too, and

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when we come to decide on the members of the Board we shall naturally see that the scientists are properly represented. I have not the slightest doubt that we are moving into a time when the sharp division between science and the humanities is being blurred, particularly in respect of the social sciences, and therefore I do not anticipate that we shall be unfair, as it were, to any one section. The Library will be a failure unless we do pay equal attention to the various great disciplines. The noble Earl will not expect me to go into the long history of the Banksian Papers and where they ought to be. I can only say to my noble friend that this matter has been looked at by the Trustees of the British Museum over and over again, and in every case there were very distinguished scientists on the body of Trustees, and there are strong arguments on both sides.
The noble Earl, Lord Shannon, made the same point about science in industry. I can assure him that the British Museum Library now has very considerable experience with the National Reference Library of Science and Invention which renders a service that in my experience is greatly appreciated by the industrial, engineering and patent communities. I should like to pay a tribute to them. I think the way in which they manage that open library in four different places is admirable.
The noble Lord, Lord Annan, raised the same problem about Clause 5(2), which is in regular language. He also raised the problem of a transfer of trust funds. This is not something that I particularly wish to discuss without looking at it with the greatest care. But I can tell the noble Lord that I have read Mr. Bernard Shaw's will at least six times, and every time I have come to the conclusion that the money that Mr. Shaw left he left to the complete discretion of the Trustees of the Museum to use in any way in the interests of the Museum.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked me about the B.N.B. catalogues on tape. I agree with him that the coverage is not as good as it ought to be; but this is one of the very things that we are going to get right when the B.N.B. come into the British Library. We are well aware of it, and it certainly is a service which we cannot allow to be second rate: in other words, when a book is published
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it is really important that all libraries and all booksellers shall have notice of what is published at the earliest possible moment. We are going to improve that service. That fact that it is not complete is no fault of the B.N.B. They are very efficient people, and will, I am sure, show that very much when they come in.
LORD AVEBURY: My Lords, if the noble Viscount will allow me to interrupt, this seems to me to be a question of some change in the rules for depositors' books, so that they become available to the persons in the B.N.B. compiling these catalogues on tape at the earliest possible moment and not a month after they have been published.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: My Lords, the simplest thing to say to the noble Lord is that when the B.N.B. and the British Museum Library become part of one organisation, and to that organisation we have transferred the rights of legal deposit, thereafter the difficulties that we have encountered will disappear.
I was glad that my noble friend Lord Hurcomb, with his unrivalled experience, intervened. I was particularly glad to hear him say that he thought we ought not to be fettered in the choice of Board members. As in all such operations as we are carrying out now, the crucial question is: who do you choose to run this institution? I can assure your Lordships that we shall have to give all the serious thought that we can to that question.
I come now to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi. I thank him for his welcome of the Bill. He again raised the question of why we did not include some reference to the three libraries for which no legislation is required: in other words, that they already possess the powers to wind themselves up and transfer their assets. I think the simple answer there is that if there is no need for legislation one does not legislate. It would be difficult to legislate for something for which there is no need to legislate, and therefore they are not in the Bill. But I hope that I referred to them sufficiently in my earlier speech, and I am grateful for the way in which they have co-operated in carrying out the ground work of the new institution. I can tell the noble Lord that

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"periodicals" in Clause 1 includes newspapers. That is a term of art and therefore we are not leaving Colindale out at all; it is part of the new institution.
I think the noble Lord has a point in regard to lending, in that the section describing lending in the British Museum Act 1963 is based on a different principle from Clause 1(4) of this Bill. Clause 1(4) is designed to safeguard the collections so that there is no risk of their being dispersed in a way in which they might come to harm. But the section in the British Museum Act, if I remember rightly, is designed to protect the reader. It is designed to see that a reader shall not turn up at the British Museum Library and discover that a lot of books he expected to find there were out on loan somewhere. This is a somewhat different objective. I will look at it and see whether we ought to bring back the particular facet of lending that is contained in the British Museum Act. I am not sure about this.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Viscount, but I should like to point out that the British Museum Act also includes the words, "the degree of rarity of the object in question". It is not only a question of the convenience of the reader, but of the value of the book itself.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: I know. But it is difficult to see how one defines in a Statute the degree of rarity. I believe that we should do better to come to agreement with the members of the Board, and I do not think there will be any difficulty about this. I do not like putting into an Act of Parliament a phrase like "the degree of rarity", when nobody really knows what it means. However, I will look at the lending clauses. The noble Lord asked me about the Science Museum Library. That remains outside the new British Library, as does the Lyon Playfair Library. I am afraid that I have not at the moment an up-to-date report on how the conversations are going, but I will ask for it and let the noble Lord know. Mr. Lines' expert report on automatic data processing will be published shortly. I tried hard to understand it, but it is very difficult reading. I am assured, however, by the experts on the Organising Com-
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mittee that it is extremely valuable and that they will make full use of it.
The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, referred again to the question of the reduction in staff. There is not going to be any reduction in the total number of people employed: it is simply that their status will be changed. Furthermore, the prospect is that, even while the British Museum Library remains where it is, they will need an increase in staff because the demands upon libraries are increasing at such an enormous rate. I have had a letter from the I.P.C.S. Among other things they asked me to give a pledge that the conditions of service under the Board would be in no case less favourable than the conditions of service that exist now: and I gave that assurance in my speech. I am not clear that it is necessary to put it in the Bill. I have given a clear pledge, and possibly that is all that is required.
I again thank your Lordships for welcoming the Bill, and if there are any other points no doubt we can discuss them in Committee.
LORD IRONSIDE: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, will he say something about the intentions concerning the Advisory Council? I ask this because it occurs to me that there is here a statement to this effect:
"The Board shall pay to the chairman and other members of an Advisory Council … remuneration "
et cetera. This rather implies, if they have to pay a fee, that they are not already employees of the Board or Board members themselves. Therefore, I was wondering what in principle my noble friend's intentions are concerning the Advisory Councils.
VISCOURA ECCLES: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for raising that point, which I am afraid I had forgotten. I have attended Advisory Councils of which my noble friend Lord Ironside was a member, and I agree with him that they voice the wishes of the interests of the users in a most useful manner. Certainly we need these Advisory Councils, simply because the range of interests of those who are going to use both the reference and lending sections of the Library cover the whole nation. The problem of communication between a management structure of the

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kind we are going to create and this vast number of people, all with their different interests, will be difficult. Therefore it would be my intention to ask the Board, when they come to set up these Advisory Councils, to make them as useful as they possibly can. From my own experience as a Board member, going to sit in the chair of the Advisory Council is a very good way of operating. I thank the noble Lord for having raised the point.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

UNITED REFORMED CHURCH BILL [H.L.]
6.11 p.m.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
LORD WADE: My Lords, I welcome the opportunity of saying a few words in support of this Bill. I am extremely grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Hereford, and to other noble Lords who have kindly indicated their intention to speak on this Bill. I am very much aware that the subject uppermost in the minds of many to-day is not this Bill but the situation in Northern Ireland and the Bill that is to be debated in this House to-morrow. Having heard very much—perhaps over-much—about religious conflict in Northern Ireland, I hope it is not inappropriate to turn our attention briefly to a Bill which endorses a small but quite important step towards Christian unity.
This Bill marks one of the final stages in the uniting of the Presbyterian Church of England and the Congregational Church in England and Wales. It is not a mandatory Bill and it does not compel anyone to join or to unite with a particular Church: it is an enabling Bill. An Act of Parliament is required to give legal effect to the alteration of trusts and other changes necessary to carry out the expressed wish of the large majority of Congregationalists and English Presbyterians. That is the object of this Bill.
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Although I have been interested in the fortunes of the Bill from the outset I did not comment on it at Second Reading, but thought it would perhaps be more fitting to await the Third Reading. I knew that a Petition had been entered against certain parts of the Bill, which would be considered by a Select Committee, and I was quite content that this should be left to the Select Committee. The Bill has now been carefully examined and reported, with Amendments. I urge that it be supported in this House. The Bill is of some considerable historic importance. This is the first union of two Churches of different denominational traditions in these Islands since the time of the Reformation.
Perhaps I should say just a word about nomenclature. The Congregationalists were originally called "Independents", so that the word "Congregationalists" is a comparatively modern one. I do not think there is any great enthusiasm over the name of the new United Church, but one had to consider a name which was not too long, and the words chosen indicate a link with Churches on the Continent and also farther afield. In the seventeenth century attempts were made to bring together the Presbyterians and the Independents, but without success. New attempts were made early in this century, again without success; but in recent years there has been a marked change of climate, and the task was therefore easier. Nevertheless, I think that a tribute is due to those who have served on the Joint Committee and taken part in the joint conversations which have led to a successful conclusion. After all the talk about the need for greater unity, it is satisfactory to be able to refer to a case where something has actually happened—and the fact that it has happened is, I think, significant.
As I have already said, Parliament is being asked to give legal effect to decisions already arrived at. The Scheme of Union very properly required evidence of substantial support, which was forthcoming. All the 14 Presbyteries voted in favour of unity and only two Presbyterian congregations exercised their right to opt out. All the Congregational County Unions voted in favour; 73·7 per cent. of the individual Congregational Churches did so, and 82·2 per cent, of the membership of the Congregational Churches voted

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in favour. That represented more than the required majorities. Adequate provision is made in the Scheme for the non-united Churches and also for the division of funds. That will be overlooked and examined by the Charity Commission. Those Churches opting out will have the opportunity of joining later if they so wish.
It is perhaps important just to note that this Union is not regarded as an end in itself. If I may say so, the Scheme is open-ended and there is provision for other Churches to join and for further conversations to take place. It is not for me to comment on the Anglican/Methodist conversations and the voting which is taking place. But whatever the outcome of those discussions, representatives of this united Congregational/Presbyterian Church will be ready and willing at an appropriate time to enter into discussions with a view to a further move towards Church unity. To the on-looker, this must seem desperately slow, but of course the differences that have given rise to the creation of separate Churches are the result of views very strongly and sincerely held.
Before I sit down, I should like to make one comment of my own on this Bill. I believe that there is a distinction to be made between unity and uniformity. I cannot foresee the time when everyone will hold precisely the same beliefs or, for that matter, precisely the same non-beliefs. I cannot foresee the time when everyone will travel the same road in the search for Truth. There are hound to be differences, and I would much rather that were so than that no one cared one way or the other. But it seems to me that theological differences to-day cut right across denominational boundaries and that the real issues now have little or nothing to do with our present denominational dividing lines. In fact, denominational divisions are in many respects irrelevant. I say that as one whose independent forebears suffered many handicaps and hardships as a consequence of their unwillingness to accept the authority of an established Church. My Lords, I think I have said enough. I commend this Bill to your Lordships' House and I hope that it will have an easy passage through the other place.
6.20 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF HEREFORD: My Lords, I am very glad indeed to be able to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wade, who has given us such valuable information about the Bill now before your Lordships. All I would like to do is to add my voice as representing the Prelates of the Established Church of England, in congratulating the united bodies on the happy conclusion of their legislation in this Bill. It has been quite a long and, I believe, happy courtship. If you have read your background material about this Bill you may know that the Churches started "walking out" in 1933, and they became "engaged"—I think I am right in saying—in 1951, so you cannot say that this legislation of the union of the two Churches is a hasty marriage.
On February 17 I was present in your Lordships' House when the Bill was read for a second time, and the right reverend Prelate, the Lord Bishop of Coventry, then said how glad he was that there was going to be a great service in Westminster Abbey. May I, if it is not out of order, say that we should like to congratulate the new United Church on its first President-elect, the Reverend John Huxtable, who for so long has been distinguished in ecumenical circles far beyond the two uniting Churches. It has been said that every scheme of reunion of Churches that is successfully carried through advances the hope of reunion of the whole of Christendom. We therefore may be grateful to the Congregational Church in England and Wales and the Presbyterian Church of England for the lead that they are giving. I am sure that your Lordships will approve the Bill before us and wish the uniting Churches well.
6.22 p.m.
LORD SOPER: My Lords, I must ask the indulgence of your Lordships' House. This is Holy Week and I suppose that is a very suitable time for doing a good thing, and I am quite satisfied that it is a very good thing that this Bill invites your Lordships to do. But Holy Week carries with it the obligations on such as myself of conducting devotional services, one of which I have to attend immediately, and I hope that your Lordships will understand. As the representative of the Methodist Church I want to add my

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congratulations and good wishes, and my commendation of this Bill, to the words which have already been said so eloquently and movingly by the two previous speakers. We in Methodism are not unaware of the ecumenical movement and, as the noble Lord, Lord Wade, said, we are in ecclesiastical cahoots with our friends of the Establishment and we very much hope that in a very short time from now there will be such a substantial vote that we shall be able to copy and follow in the steps of this most excellent coming together of two Churches with both of which Methodism has much in common and very great respect.
There are those outside who would think that this is a prudential measure in days of great stress. Well, perhaps it is. There are others who will think that this is a pis-aller and probably a last dying gesture on the part of a declining nonconformity. I will not enter into that question, although I am satisfied that the City of God remaineth. In any case I am in "sales" rather than "management". One of the things which I am sure will flow from this particular coming together will be an enlargement of our "Common Market". I hope very much that as Methodists we shall be the beneficiaries also of this enlargement and reunification of the evangelical message, at a time when I, for one, am satisfied that it is desperately needed. We wish well to those who have already shown the way to some of us laggards in the recovery of the unbroken body of Christ. It is with that in mind, and with that in heart, that I commend most heartily this Bill to your Lordships, and say how eagerly we shall seek to follow in the steps of our denominational friends in the independency and in the Presbyterian framework of denominationalism, and how much we hope that this will be the bellwether and forerunner of even greater and more comprehensive attempts to bring together those who believe in the Christian faith that they may more adequately present its unbroken message to a broken world.
6.25 p.m.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, as a member of the other Established Church in this United Kingdom I should like to join with the right reverend Prelate in welcoming this Bill. I, as a Scot, support this Bill, fully conscious that in the
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past thousand years of Church history no country has been more addicted to seism than my native land. Perhaps that is why the negotiations for union between the Congregational Church of Scotland and the Church of Scotland are for the moment in abeyance. However, hope springs eternal in the ecumenical breast. We can detect certain slight breezes blowing over Scotland. There are hopeful signs in the multilateral conversations which are just about to produce a report—a long report, as you would expect from ecclesiastical Scotland. The remit has been to prepare a basis for a plan among the six major non-Catholic Churches. This union of the Congregational and Presbyterian Churches in England will undoubtedly provide a stimulus to these conversations and ultimately, we hope, to church unity in Scotland. Unfortunately in Britain the ecumenical movement has much less impact than in many other countries where Christian unity is far more evident; hence the step, as the noble Lord, Lord Wade, has said, is not merely historic as the material provision for the first union of two separate communions in these Islands, but it is also a real incentive to the other Christian Churches in this land to take courage and do likewise.
In conclusion, may I revert to a very Presbyterian point of view. Through the Moderator of the General Assembly, the Church of Scotland are making clear how much we welcome this initiative, and how we join in the prayers for its success in furthering the Christian message throughout the Kingdom of England.
6.27 p.m.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I hope that it will not be thought impertinent for a Roman Catholic to join in the welcome that has been extended to this Bill. I was just now advised by a friend—not a Roman Catholic—that we may be actuated by an instinct of self-preservation; the thought might occur to us that unless we got moving we should be left on our own. Be that as it may, quite dispassionately, in a general desire to encourage Christianity in all its forms, any Roman Catholic must be very pleased to see this day. I can speak for no-one except myself and possibly my noble friend Lady Phillips. I am sure she will allow me to speak for her. At any rate, let us say that all

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Roman Catholics here and elsewhere will be pleased to see this Bill. I do not know whether my old and dear friend Dr. Micklem has had anything to do with this; he used to be a very tough negotiator in the old days. When I was a Labour candidate for Oxford he was president of the Oxford City Liberal Party and we used to have endless discussions with regard to some amalgamation or co-ordination between our forces. These negotiations never got anywhere because the war came and that swept us away. I like to think that this day will rejoice Dr. Micklem and other great Congregationalists and Presbyterians.
In this age when so many things are either going wrong, or appear to be going wrong, and certainly giving us great anxiety—not least in Northern Ireland—it is a fine, encouraging thought, and a fine reflection that everywhere, even in Northern Ireland, the Churches are coming together. If anybody said, "What is the best thing that has happened in this sinful world in the past 15 years?" I would have no doubt at all in saying that it is the development of the ecumenical movement, and this Bill and this day make their contribution. I offer my heartiest congratulations to all those concerned.
6.30 p.m.
LORD GREENWOOD OF ROSSENDALE: My Lords, there is of course no Party line on this measure, but I hope that the speeches of my noble friends Lord Longford and Lord Soper have made perfectly clear that we on these Benches, of all denominations and probably of no denomination, welcome very much this ecumenical Bill which is before your Lordships' House. We welcome particularly the spirit which prompted it. The Preamble to the Bill, in paragraph 7, makes clear that the Churches themselves firmly believe that what they are proposing is the will of God. The noble Lord, Lord Wade, referred to Northern Ireland, and it recalled to me lines which I think many of your Lordships also will recall, the lines of Chesterton in Lepanto, where he wrote:
"The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room …".
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To me, those are sad lines which epitomise the tragedy of the crimes which have been committed, and which are still threatened, in Northern Ireland in the name of religion.
The measure before us, on the other hand, providing for the merging of two Churches, each with so long a tradition of democratic practice and humane social service, is in marked contrast with the sectarianism which in the past has done so much harm and destroyed so much that was good. Therefore, my Lords, we on these Benches welcome the removal of one obstable to what the noble Lord, Lord Wade, called the Christian unity, and we extend to the members of the two Churches, and particularly to Dr. Huxtable, our appreciation of all that they have achieved in the past and our best wishes for the work which they have to do in the years that lie ahead.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords. I am grateful to all the noble Lords who have spoken and to the right reverend Prelate for their comments on the Bill, which I am sure will be studied with great interest and satisfaction by the Promoters and those who are affected by its provisions.
On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commmons.

COMPANIES (FLOATING CHARGES AND RECEIVERS) (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
6.33 p.m.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This Bill has its origins in the Companies (Floating Charges) (Scotland) Act 1961. Perhaps I should begin by reminding your Lordships of the main provisions of that Act. The Act made it competent under the law of Scotland for a company to give security for any of its debts by creating a floating charge over all or any part of its property. The Act provides that on the commencement of the winding-up of the Company the charge shall "crystallise"; that is, that it shall cease to float and become a fixed security over such of the company's assets as are then subject to it. The holder of a floating charge is therefore a secured creditor in

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a winding-up; and, provided that ground for a winding-up exists, the holder can enforce his security by putting the company into liquidation. The 1961 Act also provides for registration, with the Registrar of Companies in Scotland, of charges over the property of companies registered in Scotland and of charges over the property in Scotland of certain other companies. The charges to be registered are certain fixed charges and floating charges.
By 1966 it was evident that some of the provisions of the 1961 Act were giving rise to difficulties. So the then President of the Board of Trade asked the Scottish Law Commission to consider and advise on the provisions of the Act. The Commission's Report on the Companies (Floating Charges) (Scotland) Act 1961 was made in January, 1970, and presented to Parliament in April, 1970. The Commission said in their Report that they proposed such extensive changes to the Act that they considered that it would he unsatisfactory to give effect to them merely by amendments. They therefore proposed that the Act should be repealed and re-enacted with the amendments. The Commission also considered whether receivers should be introduced into Scotland. As I have said, under the 1961 Act the holder of a floating charge can enforce his security by putting the company into liquidation. He cannot enforce it by appointing a receiver. The Commission came to the conclusion that it was desirable that the holder of a floating charge should be able to appoint a receiver. They gave as the two main arguments for their conclusion that the appointment of receiver and manager might in some cases revive the fortunes of a company and prevent unnecessary liquidation; and that the rights of a holder of a floating charge are weakened by his inability to take possession of and realise the security without liquidation.
Her Majesty's Government accept the Commission's recommendations, both as regards the re-enactment of the 1961 Act and as regards the introduction of receivers into Scotland. The Bill before the House is substantially the Bill which the Commission drafted and appended to their Report. I take this opportunity to express Her Majesty's Government's appreciation of the work done by the
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noble and learned Lord, Lord Kilbrandon, and the members of the Scottish Law Commission.
I now turn to the Bill. Part I of the Bill and the Schedule re-enact with modifications the Companies (Floating Charges) (Scotland) Act 1961. Part II of the Bill provides for the appointment and functioning of receivers in respect of companies which the Court of Session has jurisdiction to wind up. Part III of the Bill repeals the 1961 Act and preserves the validity of anything done under it. It also makes provisions concerned with interpretation, commencement and extent. So far as Part I of the Bill and the Schedule are concerned—that is, so far as the provisions relating to the creation of floating charges and the registration of charges are concerned—I need explain only those provisions which differ from the provisions in the 1961 Act which they replace.
Clause 1 makes it competent under the law of Scotland for a company to create a floating charge for the purpose of securing any debt incurred, or to be incurred, by the company or by any other person. The reference to a debt incurred, or to be incurred, by any other person is new. One of its effects is that a subsidiary company will be able to create a floating charge over its property to secure a debt incurred by its holding company. Clause 2 states how a floating charge is to be created. The section which it replaces requires the instrument creating the charge to be in the form set out in Schedule 1 to the 1961 Act. That Schedule is not re-enacted and the clause does not specify the form the instrument must take. The effect of this change is that a company wishing to charge only part of its property has greater freedom as to the way it specifies what is and what is not charged.
Clause 5 deals in more detail than does the section which it replaces with the ranking of a floating charge with other charges, whether fixed or floating, over the same property. It provides that the instrument creating a floating charge, or a subsequent instrument which alters it, may contain provisions which prohibit or restrict the creation of any other charges, or which regulate the order in which the floating charge shall rank with other charges. Where the instruments

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contain provisions of this kind, the ranking is determined by those provisions; where the instruments do not contain provisions, the ranking is determined by the provisions in the clause. This clause will remove doubt as to whether it is competent in the instrument creating a floating charge to reserve the right to create a limited amount of fixed security which will rank in priority to or equally with the floating charge. There is no explicit provision in the 1961 Act for the registration of instruments which alter floating charges. Certain instruments are registrable as their effect is to create new or further charges. But there are others, such as those which affect the ranking of charges or release property from a charge, which ought to be registered.
Clause 7 states how an instrument of alteration is to be executed, and it requires it to be registered if it prohibits or restricts the creation of other charges, or affects ranking, or releases property from the charge, or increases the amount secured by the charge. Clause 10, in addition to making consequential changes, makes a small substantive change in the Industrial and Provident Societies Act 1967. The time within which a charge created by a Scottish society must be registered is increased from 14 days to 21 days.
The eleven clauses in the Schedule to the Bill will, if the Bill is enacted, become Part III of the Companies Act 1948. They will replace the existing Part III, consisting of eleven sections, which was added to that Act by the 1961 Act. The Schedule provides for the registration in Scotland of certain fixed charges and floating charges created by Scottish companies and of fixed charges over property acquired by Scottish companies.
Clause 106A in the Schedule requires charges to be registered and defines the charges which are to be registered. The greater part of this long clause effects no change. The main new provision is in subsection (9), which resolves a difficulty that exists where there is an ex facie absolute disposition or assignation qualified by a back letter or agreement. As it has been judicially decided that it is the constitution of the real right under the ex facie absolute disposition or assignation which creates the charge, where the back letter or agreement limits
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the amount for which security is granted a further loan cannot be secured by executing a further back letter or agreement. The reason is that under the law as it stands the further back letter or agreement cannot be registered as it does not create a charge; and if it is not registered, the lender of the further loan would be unsecured as against a liquidator of the company. Subsection (9) deals with this difficulty by stating in effect that the further back letter or agreement shall be held to create a further charge and that the further charge is registrable.
Clause 106F is concerned with memoranda of satisfaction. It adds to the existing provision by stating that the registrar shall not be satisfied that a debt secured by a floating charge has been paid unless the creditor certifies as correct the particulars on which the registrar would rely if he were to enter on his register a memorandum of satisfaction. The existing Section 106K aims to extend the provisions for registering floating charges to floating charges created by companies not registered in Scotland. This meaning of this section is not at all clear. It is replaced by Clause 106K which extends the duty to register charges with the registrar of companies in Scotland to any company incorporated outside Great Britain which has a place of business in Scotland. Such a company is required to register any charge which it creates over property in Scotland. Such a company is also required, if it acquires property in Scotland which is subject to a fixed charge, to register that charge.
I turn now to the subject of receivers. The law in force in England on receivers has not been codified. The Scottish Law Commission did not consider it essential that before providing for receivers in Scotland the English law should have been codified. They considered that receivers could be introduced by legislation which defined the circumstances in which a receiver could be appointed and the rights and duties which would attach to his appointment. Part II of the Bill contains proposals for legislation on these matters. Clause 11 makes it competent under the law of Scotland for the holder of a floating charge, or the court, on application of the holder, to appoint a receiver; and Clause 12 sets out the circumstances in which the

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appointment may be made. Clause 11 applies even although the charge was created prior to the coming into force of the provisions of this Bill and, because the instrument creating such a charge may well contain no reference to the appointment of a receiver. Clause 12 sets out events, such as interest due and payable on the debt being in arrears, which justify an appointment. I should draw the attention of the House to the retroactive nature of these provisions. The Scottish Law Commission suggested that the justification for the retroactive element is that if it did not exist holders of floating charges might well call up their loans and grant them as of new, so as to have power to appoint receivers. This would cause needless work and expense.
Clauses 13 and 14 deal respectively with the method by which an appointment of a receiver is made when it is made by the holder of the charge, and when it is made by the court. In either case the holder is required to notify the registrar of the appointment and the registrar is required to issue a certificate of the appointment. The appointment becomes effective when the registrar issues his certificate, and the charge then operates as though it were a fixed security over the property to which it has attached. A charge will often be in favour not of one person but of the holders of a series of debentures. Clause 28 so defines the expression "holder of the charge" as to enable the trustees to act for the holders of a series of debentures or, if there are no trustees, for the holders to act through those of their number who hold a majority of the debentures. This should enable a receiver to be appointed quickly when speed is important.
The powers of a receiver to carry out his duties are dealt with in Clause 15. He will have such powers as may be given to him by the instrument which created the charge in respect of which he was appointed, together with nineteen powers set out in the clause, although he cannot exercise any of those nineteen powers which are inconsistent with the instrument. One of the nineteen powers is power to carry on the business of the company: in general a receiver in Scotland will be a receiver and manager. As the property of a company may be sub-
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ject to two or more floating charges, there may be two or more receivers of that property who may or may not have been appointed to act jointly. Clause 16 deals with precedents among receivers in these situations.
In England a receiver may at different times he regarded as a principal, or an agent for the company whose property he deals with, or an agent for the debenture holders who appointed him. However, it is usual practice for the debenture deed to state that he shall be an agent for the company. Clause 17 adopts this practice and makes the receiver an agent for the company whose property he deals with. The clause also sets out his personal liability on contracts entered into by him or by the company, and his right to be indemnified out of the property in respect of which he was appointed. The remuneration of a receiver will normally be determined by agreement between him and the holder of the charge. Where this is not so, Clause 18 provides for his remuneration to be fixed instead by the Auditor of the Court of Session. An application to the Auditor may be made by anyone interested: the receiver himself, the holder of any floating charge or fixed security over any property of the company, the company, or, if there is one, the liquidator.
Clause 19, which is based on Section 94 of the Companies Act 1948, places on a receiver of a company not in liquidation a duty to pay those debts of the company which would rank for preferential payment if the company were being wound up. The preferential payments are payments in respect of taxes, and employees' salaries and wages. Clause 20 states how a receiver is to distribute the moneys which come into his hands, not all of which are moneys payable to the holder of the floating charge in respect of which he was appointed. The receiver must have due regard for the rights not only of preferential creditors for taxes and wages but also of other creditors, such as the holders of fixed securities over the company's property. Clause 21 assists a receiver who finds that he is unable to sell or dispose of some part of the company's property because it is subject to a charge, or encumbered in some other way, and the creditor concerned will not give his consent.

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The clause provides that the receiver may apply to the court for authority to sell or dispose of the property free of charge or encumbrance. Clause 22 permits a receiver to resign and empowers the court, on the application of the holder of the charge, to remove a receiver. The clause provides for the consequences of the resignation or removal of a receiver.
Clause 23 provides that the holder of a floating charge may apply to the court for directions in any matter arising in connection with the performance by the receiver of his functions. Clause 23 also deals with the position of a receiver who is appointed under a charge which is afterwards discovered to be invalid. Such a person may incur heavy liabilities. The clause enables the court to relieve him from his personal liability in respect of anything which he did if that thing would have been properly done had he been validly appointed. The court can then make the person who made the invalid appointment personally liable to the extent that the receiver is relieved.
Clauses 24 to 27 are based, with some modifications, on provisions in the Companies Act 1948. These clauses are concerned with notification on business letters that a receiver has been appointed, with the preparation by a company in receivership of a statement of its affairs, the preparation by the receiver from time to time of abstracts of his receipts and payments, and the enforcement by the court of the duty of a receiver to make returns and give notices.
My Lords, I thought it right to go into some considerable detail in introducing this Bill because it is being introduced into this House for the first time, and I hope that that will enable its provisions to be studied. I commend the Bill to the House as one which will re-enact with improvements the provisions of the 1961 Act and will enable receivers to be appointed under the law of Scotland. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
6.53 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, for having explained in such detail the purposes of this Bill. It is one
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which is of particular interest to lawyers and to accountants in Scotland, but even more so to those who are running companies. I must say that I continue to marvel at the extent to which matters undertaken in the time of the previous Government are still resulting in legislation from this Govenment which would have been introduced in any event even had the Election resulted in a different way. This is yet another of those Bills.
The Bill differs very little from the draft Bill contained in the Report of the Kilbrandon Commission, to which the noble Lord referred. I suspected that the noble Lord would find it necessary and desirable to go into some detail in explaining the purposes of the Bill. I also suspected that it would not turn out to be the sort of listening, or the sort of reading subsequently in Hansard, which would keep one entranced out of one's bed at a late hour at night. I therefore resolved that I would not be any longer in replying than absolutely necessary, and I did write to the noble Lord indicating the points which had occurred to me for querying. It seemed to me that there was little between the two Bills, the draft Bill and the published one, which was other than of an obviously drafting nature, but there were a number of clauses, to which I directed the noble Lord's attention, where some changes may be drafting but to a layman it was not obvious that they were merely drafting.
I noticed, for example, that the noble Lord said that the 1961 Act was repealed. In the draft Bill the 1961 Act was repealed, but in the Bill before your Lordships it is not completely repealed. Clause 30 is in a changed form, as published, from the recommendation of the Kilbrandon Commission, and in the Bill as it stands Section 7 of the 1961 Act remains. It seemed to me that if it were possible to remove the 1961 Act in its entirety instead of letting this one little section remain, the Commission might have hit on the better way of doing it. On the other hand, it may be that there are sound reasons why the 1961 Act should survive in this attenuated form.
The other point to which I wish to refer is a reference in Clause 11. I must admit that I missed one part of what the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, said, because a remark was made to me by a colleague; I missed a few words of what the noble

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Lord said. I hope it was not an explanation of what I am now about to talk about. In Clause 11, the first clause dealing with the appointment of receivers, there are those who are disqualified from being appointed, and among those disqualified, along with "a body corporate" and "an undischarged bankrupt", are "a Scottish firm". The Law Commission pointed out that it was not necessary to disqualify a Scottish firm because it is in terms of the law of Scotland a legal persona, which is not the position South of the Border, so that it could quite competently have been appointed. In other words, a firm of accountants could be appointed as receiver, whereas if the firm is disqualified it would need to be an individual partner of that firm.
It was suggested to me that in seeking to put the new Scottish law in line with the English law—to which, I may say, I have no objection—this particular form of words might have the effect of disqualifying a Scottish firm but not necessarily disqualifying a firm from somewhere else. If, for instance, there was a German company set up in Scotland, and the German firm had the same sort of status in Germany as a Scottish firm has in Scotland, it would not be disqualified in terms of the Bill. I do not know whether that is the effect, but obviously the intention is that firms, whatever their place of functioning, should be disqualified. It may be of course, on the other hand, that the Bill is so drafted that only a person doing business in Scotland should be a receiver; I do not know. Perhaps the noble Lord would deal with that point, and perhaps he would also tell me just why it was decided to keep the rump of the 1961 Act in existence rather than have the Bill in the form in which the Law Commission proposed.
6.59 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords. I should like to thank the noble Lord for his welcome to this Bill. As he says, it results from action taken by the previous Government. The Kilbrandon Commission was set up in 1966. This is really just another example of the continuing work of the Law Commissions, which goes on, I am glad to say, whatever Government is in power, and which produces a good deal of useful legislation as a result. The noble Lord asked first about the proposal in the original draft
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Bill which was attached to the Report on the abolition of the 1961 Act. There is no substantial reason for this. I think it has been purely a question of taste in drafting. The effect of Clause 9 of the Bill as introduced, together with the saving from repeal of heads (b), (c) and (d) of Section 7 of the 1961 Act, effected by Clause 30, is exactly the same as the Commission's Clause 9 would be. As the noble Lord will see, what is retained is Section 7(b), (c) and (d), which refer respectively to the preferential creditor's provision in Section 319 of the Companies Act; the definition section of the 1948 Act, which is Section 455 as to floating charge; and thirdly, the provisions in Schedule 15 which relate to the Section in the 1948 Act regarding false statements made. It is a penalty section. It has been thought easier to deal with it in this way.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I just do not understand that. It seems to me that it is always easier if people have only to look at one Act of Parliament to decide, and the Commission proposed a way in which everything could be contained in the new Companies (Floating Charges and Receivers) (Scotland) Bill 1972. The way in which the draftsman has chosen to do this is going to keep a part of the 1961 Act in existence and, if the Law Commission are right, unnecessarily in existence because it could have been incorporated in the Bill which is before us. While the noble Lord is telling me what is being kept, he is not telling me why, other than as a matter of preference, it is felt better to do it in this apparently more complicated way.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I certainly take note of what the noble Lord says in this matter. I should have thought that this was not an unusual procedure. I should have thought that the direct references to the three places in the 1948 Act are as well preserved by the one way as the other. I think we must leave it like that for to-day at any rate.
The second point that the noble Lord made concerned the disqualification of a Scottish firm from being appointed as a receiver. Perhaps I should explain that in this way; when Sections 366 and 367 of the Companies Act were enacted—those are the ones which disqualified from appointment as receivers bodies corporate

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—because there were no receivers in Scotland Parliament had in mind only receivers in England. There is no explicit disqualification of an English partnership or a Scottish firm. In practice, in England a receiver is invariably, I am told, an individual. The introduction of receivers in Scotland makes it more important than it has been hitherto to consider whether a Scottish firm should be qualified to be appointed as a receiver. The Commission evidently considered that as a Scottish firm is a separate legal persona, and therefore has some of the characteristics of an individual, it might be possible to regard it as qualified. But they nevertheless thought that it should not be qualified. They did not say why they thought that, but one reason may well be that it would be more difficult to pin responsibility on a firm than on an individual. The Commission evidently thought it desirable to remove all doubt, and therefore in their proposal disqualified explicitly in Clause 11(3) a body corporate, an undischarged bankrupt, and a Scottish firm, and the Bill, as introduced, does the same.
The noble Lord asked whether a German firm, or a foreign firm of one sort or another, is excluded—or an English firm, for that matter. In terms, there is no such exclusion, but in practice as only individuals are appointed as receivers in England it seems likely that this will be the same in Scotland. The disqualification of firms should cause no difficulty in practice as it is always possible to appoint a member of a firm, or even two members who would act jointly. As the noble Lord knows, under the Act of 1890, in Scotland:
"Persons who have entered into partnership with one another are, for the purposes of this Act, called 'a firm'".
I should add that the section expressly preserves the rule of law of Scotland that a firm is a legal personality distinct from the persons who compose it, and that this is a principle which is not recognised in the law of England. Therefore, there is this distinction here. I suggest to the noble Lord that the Commission were right, in the circumstances, to exclude a Scottish firm.
I hope, with that explanation, that the noble Lord and the rest of your Lordships
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will be willing to give this Bill a Second Reading.
On Question, Pill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

DEPOSIT OF POISONOUS WASTE BILL
7.6 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: 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 Sandford.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD ROYLE in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [General prohibition on depositing poisonous and other dangerous waste]:
VISCOUNT SIMON VISCOUNT SIMON moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 2, line 30, leave out from beginning to ("that") in line 31 and insert ("or (iii)").
The noble Viscount said: The purpose of this Amendment is to extend to persons charged with depositing waste the possibility of establishing a defence already available and set out in Clause 1(6)(b), to those charged with causing or permitting the deposit of waste; namely,
"that he took all such steps as were reasonably open to him to ensure that no offence would be committed."
I must explain that because of the very tight programme for this Bill I had to put down this Amendment before I had an opportunity to discuss the matter with my noble friends. Therefore, I would ask the Committee to accept this as an Amendment for which I am solely responsible, although I would hope to be able to persuade your Lordships that it is one that should be adopted.
My reason for putting down the Amendment is that in my opinion the Bill, as drafted, is both unfair and illogical. On Second Reading I touched on this question of unfairness, and of course I listened carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, said in this respect. I am bound to say that I did not

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find what he said entirely satisfactory. If I may quote from column 909, he said:
"when it comes to the company responsible for generating the waste being charged with depositing it … the company itself ought to be fully aware of what it is doing and take responsibility for its actions."
I fully agree with that. I do not dispute that at all, but it is necessary to look and see what the offence is.
The offence is depositing waste of a kind which is poisonous, noxious or polluting and is
"liable to give rise to an environmental hazard."
I find the word "liable" a difficult one. It is interesting to observe that the first paragraph of the Explanatory Memorandum states that it is an offence to deposit dangerous waste so as to give rise to an environmental hazard. That, I think, is a little different from "liable to give rise". It is also curious to observe—and I noticed this only a few minutes ago—that in the rubric Clause 1 is described as a
"General prohibition on depositing poisonous and other dangerous waste."
As the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, pointed out in moving the Second Reading, there is no general prohibition on the depositing of dangerous wastes. What he said, very rightly, was that if dangerous wastes are deposited the proper procedures must be undertaken for making them as safe as possible. He instanced—and this is a point of great importance to my argument—the advice which I think was originally given in the Key Report, that at the end of each day's work the waste should be covered with earth. However, the waste is covered with earth not by the person who deposits it, but by the person who looks after the tip. So, as I read the Bill, the situation arises that when the depositor—the man who has produced it—deposits the waste on the tip, has done everything he ought to do and has consulted the owner of the tip about what the waste is and about the quantities and the timing of the deposits, if by some misfortune the owner of the tip does not take the precaution of covering it with earth and the potential hazard becomes a real hazard, then the depositor of the waste will have committed an offence for which he has no defence, because he is not allowed to
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plead that he has done everything possible to limit it.
It might be said that he would surely not be prosecuted in such circumstances, but the facts could be elicited only at a trial. In any case, we have to remember that if the new clause in the name of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is accepted, there will be a civil liability following a conviction and a person who had been injured—and we must also remember that a prosecution can be instituted by a private party—would be very foolish not to prosecute somebody who had no defence whatever. This seems to me quite unfair, and I should have thought it was entirely reasonable that if the depositor—in this case, the firm which had produced the waste and deposited it on the tip—had taken every reasonable step to ensure that environmental hazard did not follow, he should be able to escape liability if an environmental hazard followed through somebody else's fault.
I now come to the second respect in which I feel that the Bill is illogical. In winding-up on Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, said that paragraph (b) is intended to provide a defence for the contractor and not for the firm from which the waste comes. I confess that I find it very hard to see that as a proposition in common sense. If we are distinguishing between somebody who deposits waste and somebody who causes waste to be deposited, I should have thought that it was the firm which produced the waste which caused it to be deposited, and that it was the contractor who deposited it. It seems to me that the argument put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, was back to front in that respect. But in any case—and this is the main point which I tried to make on Second Reading, perhaps not very effectively—the person who produces the waste can always be charged as the man depositing it, because he is depositing by his servant or agent. It is because of that that he would lose the defence which is allowed to someone who is causing the deposit. Since in any prosecution the prosecutor wants to get a conviction, he will obviously choose to prosecute him as the depositor and not as someone causing the deposit.
I have one final point, and I must here refer to the reply of the noble Lord,

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Lord Sandford, to the debate on the Second Reading. He said:
"The main purpose of paragraph (a) is to provide a defence (and the noble Lord"—
I think that was myself—
"reminded us that we are dealing here with a phrase which is deliberately ambiguous".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23/3/72; col. 909.]
I do not think I can have reminded the House of that, because I certainly was not aware of it. But in the noble Lord's own words, here is a phrase in this Bill which is deliberately ambiguous. So I ask whether it is right for Parliament to enact a Bill containing a deliberately ambiguous phrase, or even an ambiguous phrase—because I recognise that the noble Lord may have used the word "deliberately" without due deliberation.
If this Bill were going through the normal course, I could no doubt raise this matter on the Question, Whether the clause shall stand part of the Bill? Then I should hope that between the Committee and Report stages the Government would find some means of removing this ambiguity. But that course is not open to us, because we shall be taking the Report stage immediately after this Committee stage. That is why I suggest, in all seriousness, that it would be quite wrong to let the Bill go through with this ambiguity. Since it brings all the people concerned on to the same basis, my Amendment removes the ambiguity and, if it is accepted, will not only cure the unfairness and the illogicality but also prevent us from enacting an ambiguous Statute. I beg to move.
7.18 p.m.
LORD GREENWOOD OF ROSSENDALE: It is always only reluctantly that I disagree with the noble Viscount, and on this occasion I do so perhaps with more reluctance than usual. But it seems to me that this Amendment is unacceptable. Unless I misunderstood the noble Viscount, what he is proposing is to give to the firm which is disposing of its own waste the same defence as a lorry driver can plead when he is disposing of somebody else's waste. If that is so, I think it would seriously weaken the Bill. In my view, there can be no doubt that the liability in a case like that should be an absolute liability, rather than one dependent on a question of intention. After
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all, it is an offence, I understand, to keep a Colorado beetle, whether or not one knows that it is a harmful insect. It is an offence to serve a policeman on duty with a drink, whether one knows he is on duty or not. That is an absolute liability, and it seems to me that the same liability should rest upon disposers of waste who are guilty of the conduct referred to in this Bill.
It seems to me that tremendous pressure must have been brought to bear from all quarters for a measure of this kind, before the Government decided to legislate. This is a matter which has been discussed for a considerable time. I believe that the Government have got the balance about right and that it would be a mistake if at this late stage we started to upset the rather delicate balance which has been achieved. I wonder whether perhaps I might save a little time by saying that this is, as we have been told, an interim measure. We know that the Parliamentary timetable is not going through an easy period, and I have therefore not sought to amend this Bill on Committee stage. I have been tempted to do so. I think the £400 penalty is ludicrous. I should have liked the Bill to last for only one year, to make quite sure that we got the definitive legislation in a very positive form at the earliest possible moment. But I have resisted those temptations, and if the noble Lord who replies from the Government Bench is able to tell us that it is the Government's firm intention to produce and bring before your Lordships' House the definitive legislation at the earliest possible opportunity, I personally shall be perfectly happy to treat the Amendments and the new clause which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is going to move as purely formal.
7.22 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: I will return to the substance of the Amendment moved by the noble Viscount. Lord Simon, and deal in the first place with the word "person" in the first line of subsection (6). As I said at Second Reading, it is quite commonplace in legislation (in fact we have had exactly the same thing in the measure we were dealing with immediately before this one) for the word "person" to refer to an individual or to a corporate body. It has been specifically used in this particular case because it is

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desirable for the purposes of this clause that it should be able to relate, on the one hand, to the individual lorry driver who deposits waste and, on the other, in certain circumstances, to the firm that generates the waste or, alternatively, the contractor who is dealing with the waste and whose lorry driver deposits it. This is a dual meaning with which I think all legislators are familiar, and it is the case that in this particular clause that word bears one or other of those meanings.
The defences are provided, and necessarily provided, for any lorry driver, whether he is working for a firm which has generated the waste and is depositing it on their behalf or is working for a contractor who is handling the waste on behalf of another company. It is unreasonable to suppose that the lorry driver, athough he is actually doing the depositing, can be fully responsible for the processes which have produced the waste, or be expected to know in detail what is noxious, poisonous or polluting in the waste; so he cannot bear the full responsibility for the effect of what he is doing. The defences provided for him are those set out in subsection (6)(a)(i). Again, in this business we have to deal with the situation where waste can be generated by one firm but can be disposed of by another, and the people there concerned deserve the defences provided under subsection (6)(a)(ii) or (6)(b). I think the Committee will agree that it is reasonable that they should have those defences, depending on whether they are charged with the offence of depositing waste or with causing or permitting waste to be deposited.
But we have a further case to deal with, and this is the one about which the noble Lord is concerned; that is, when a firm that is responsible for generating waste also undertakes its deposit and disposal, perhaps directly or perhaps by the use of lorries and drivers in its own employ.
VISCOUNT SIMON: Perhaps I may interrupt the noble Lord for a moment, because I fear that I have not made myself clear. The case I make applies just as much if the owner of the waste has employed a contractor to deposit it. He still has the responsibility, and he still has no control over the owner of the tip,
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as to whether the owner of the tip performs the necessary procedures.
LORD SANDFORD: I am coming to that point. But the firm that undertakes the disposal and deposit of its own waste, by means of its own employees or the use of its own processes, does not deserve, I submit to the Committee, the same range of defences as is provided for either the individual lorry driver who does the depositing or the contractor who does the depositing on behalf of the firm that generates the waste. A firm which generates noxious or polluting waste and deposits it itself must be held responsible for the whole of the process. That firm can be expected to know, or should know, what noxious, polluting and poisonous substances are contained, in what quantities and at what strength, in the substances with which it is dealing. It is not right, in our view, that the firm dealing with material in that way should have the defences provided for in subsection (6)(a). That is not to say that, in Common Law, if a firm so charged is able to show that the environmental hazard has been caused by circumstances entirely outside its own control, it will not have the same sort of defence that would be available in Common Law in all sorts of instances. But the defences provided here are not ones which should be available for a firm which could be held entirely responsible for the whole process, from the beginning of the generation of the noxious waste to its actual deposit and disposal. For those reasons, and for the other reasons set forward by the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, I cannot advise the Committee to accept this Amendment.
May I take this opportunity to deal with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, who asked me for an assurance—and it might be helpful for me to give it straight away—about future legislation. We have already stated our intention that there should be more comprehensive legislation, but that it could not fully operate until the new local authorities have been reorganised. But it is our aim that a new system of control should be operated by the new county councils as soon as possible after they have come into existence. We are, if I may remind the Committee, now acting in response to an undertaking given by the noble Lord's friends in another place that if in the circumstances revealed by

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the episode at Nuneaton on February 25 we saw fit to bring forward emergency legislation, we could count on their support. We do see fit to bring forward this emergency legislation, and we are grateful for their support.
VISCOUNT SIMON: Along with my noble friends I support this Bill, but that does not mean that we should not try to improve it if we think there is a fallacy in it; and I must say that I am not very much wiser now than I was before. The noble Lord, Lord Greenwood of Rossendale, said—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, repeated it—that it was unreasonable that the firm should have the defence open to the lorry driver. As a matter of fact, it has the defence open to the lorry driver under Clause 1(6)(a), although it is not of much good to him, I must confess, because they are rather irrelevant points. But he has this defence open to him. But what I still feel is quite wrong is that he should be in jeopardy when the responsibility for the hazard arising is clearly not his. The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, said, if I understood him aright, that he would have a sort of Common Law defence. If we can be assured that this is so, I should be quite happy, but reading the Statute it says quite clearly that it is an offence to deposit waste which creates an environmental hazard. If there is no question that he has technically deposited the waste and therefore that he has created an environmental hazard, as he is specifically told that he cannot plead that he has done everything possible to stop it, I do not see where his defence comes. But if, perhaps, the noble Lord or the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor can assure me that he in fact has this defence that it was not his fault, then I should be perfectly satisfied.
I am still a little worried about the question of ambiguity in the clause; but perhaps this was explained by Lord Sandford's saying that the word "person" refers both to companies and to people. I do not think that anyone is in doubt about that. If that is all the ambiguity, then the point is not important. If, in the circumstances I have described, it can be shown that the ultimate cause of the hazard is that some action was probably not taken by the man on the tip, would that be a correct defence to this charge
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of depositing noxious waste which is causing an environmental hazard?
LORD SANDFORD: I do not think I can go beyond what I have already said. I hope that that will be some sort of reassurance to the noble Viscount. There is the ordinary defence in Common Law that if the person charged with a particular offence can show that the offence has been caused by circumstances wholly outside his control, he has a defence. It is not the man who is depositing the waste within the curtilage of his own factory who needs the defences provided for the contractor and the lorry driver.
VISCOUNT SIMON: I leave out the man who tips waste within his own curtilage. I am thinking of the man who deposits waste on a public tip. The offence in the Bill is to have deposited the waste, not anything else. He has deposited it; how can he escape conviction? I do not know.
Loan SANDFORD: The offence is to deposit the waste so as to cause an environmental hazard. His defence, if he has none of the defences indicated in the Bill, would be to show that the environmental hazard has not been caused by him but by circumstances wholly outside his control.
VISCOUNT SIMON: I am much obliged to the noble Lord. I must not keep the Committee any longer. The offence is that of actually depositing poisonous waste that is liable to give rise to an environmental hazard. If it has given rise, then it was obviously liable to do so. In view of the time I will ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
7.33 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 2, line 34, leave out ("punishable under this section") and insert ("to be taken as a contravenion of subsection (1) above").
The noble and learned Lord said: I rise to move the first of a series of Amendments which stand in my name, and I may do so simply by saying that Amendments Nos. 2 and 3 are linked, paving Amendments for Amendment No. 4; and as I do not want to repeat myself

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I hope to be able to deal with all three of them together. There is a consequential Amendment later which I shall move formally. The point is this. As noble Lords will know, ever since 1898, where Parliament imposes a statutory duty to do something and imposes a criminal penalty, as here, in some cases it is the case and in some cases it is not the case that civil liability accrues against the person who commits the offence in favour of a person who may be individually injured by it. The commonest example is the liability of an employer for not fencing dangerous machinery where his employee suffers an injury by reason of the failure to fence. There are many other examples. There are also very many other examples where no civil liability accrues.
It is now Law Commission policy—and I must apologise for being rather a nuisance about this—to ask Parliament, where a statutory offence is committed, to say whether or not civil liability accrues. From my point of view, from the technician's point of view, it would not very much matter which of the two alternatives were chosen provided we made it clear which it was we meant. The danger being safeguarded against is the anxiety, expense and doubt as to whether there is a statutory civil liability or not. In this particular case I should have thought that the answer was fairly obvious. If a child gets damaged by cyanide illegally deposited in defiance of this Bill, he ought to have a civil remedy. Although the draftsmen may be thought to have made rather a meal of Clause 4, in point of fact that is what it is designed to do. With that explanation and in the light of what came from the noble Lord, Lord Greenwood, when concluding his remarks on the last Amendment, I move these Amendments. That is what they are all about.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I beg to move Amendment No. 3.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 39, leave out ("prohibited by subsection (1) above") and insert ("a contravention of that subsection").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I beg to move Amendment No. 4.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 1, insert the following clause:
Civil liability.
.—(1) Where any damage is caused by poisonous, noxious or polluting waste which has been deposited on land, any person who deposited it, or cause or permitted it to be deposited, in either case so as to commit a contravention of section 1(1) of this Act, is liable for the damage except where the damage—

(a) was due wholly to the fault of the person who suffered it, or

(b) was suffered by a person who voluntarily accepted the risk thereof.

(2) The matters which may under section 1(6) of this Act be proved by way of defence to a charge of contravening section 1(1) may be proved also by way of defence to an action brought by virtue of subsection (1) above (references in paragraphs (a) and (b) of section 1(6) to the charge being construed as references to the act alleged to give rise to the liability).
(3) In this section—

(a) "damage" includes the death of, or injury to, any person (including any disease and any impairment of physical or mental condition), and

(b) "fault" has the same meaning as in the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945.

(4) For the purposes of the following enactments, namely—

the Fatal Accidents Acts 1846 to 1959,

the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945, and

the Limitation Acts 1939 and 1963 and the Law Reform (Limitation of Actions, &c.) Act 1954,

and for the purposes of any action of damages in Scotland arising out of the death of, or personal injury to, any person, any damage for which a person is liable under subsection (1) above shall be treated as due to his fault.
(5) Subsection (1) above is without prejudice to any liability which arises apart from the provisions of this section").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT SIMON: I hesitate to detain the Committee. I still feel that Amendment No. 1 having been rejected, there is a difficulty here because the only matters which can be taken into consideration in an action for damages under this provision are the defences allowed under Clause 1(6) of this Bill. Here we have a position where the depositor does not have the defence that he has done everything reasonable. I think his outlet by the Common Law defence that somebody else did it probably does not apply when any person who has deposited

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it can be sued for the damage. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord can help me.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: With great respect, I should have thought that, on general principles, the noble Viscount was not correct about that. He will have noticed from subsection (1) of the new clause that the defences of volenti non fit injuria and total fault of the plaintiff are expressly included. Secondly, in the general law of civil liability there must be causation; that is to say, there must be the link of causation in order to give rise to an action for damages. All that strict liability in civil law amounts to is that where there is causation there is liability irrespective of negligence. That is the intention of this new clause. It always was. This is a factor common to almost every case of statutory tort.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 2 [Duty to notify responsible authorities before removing or depositing waste]:
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: This is a drafting Amendment to cure a rather ludicrous mistake in the original draft which would have compelled the court to impose a £400 fine, instead of allowing them to impose something up to £400. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 15, after ("of") insert ("not more than").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 2, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 3 [Operators of commercial tips]:
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I beg to move Amendment No. 6. This is the same point as the last one.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 25, after ("of") insert ("not more than").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 3, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: This Amendment to the Title is consequential on the first four Amendments. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
In the Title, line 3, after ("hazard") insert ("and to make offenders liable for any resultant damage").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Title, as amended, agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with the Amendments.
Then, Standing Order No. 44 having been suspended (pursuant to Resolution):
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now received.
Moved, That the Report be now received.—(Lord Sandford.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Bill read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

CONGREGATIONAL CHAPEL AND TRUST PROPERTY DEPTFORD BILL [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments.