Lords Sitting of 16 November 1972

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

MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN
LORD MACLEAN: My Lords, I have the honour to present to your Lordships a Message from Her Majesty the Queen, signed by her own hand. The Message is as follows:
"I have received with great satisfaction the loyal and dutiful expression of your thanks for the Speech with which I opened the present Session of Parliament."

SILVER WEDDING OF THE QUEEN AND THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH
3.7 p.m.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE)THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (EARL JELLICOE) rose to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty The Queen to congratulate Her Majesty and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh on the occasion of the twenty-fifth Anniversary of their Wedding, to express the deep gratitude of this House for their contribution to the affairs of the nation and for their unfailing example in public and family life, and to convey every good wish for their continued happiness. The noble Earl said: My Lords, it is with humble duty—to use the old and happily still valid phrase—that I have the honour to move the Motion standing in my name. Both Houses of Parliament presented Addresses on the occasion of the Silver Wedding of Her Majesty's Grandparents, and indeed of Her Father and Mother, the late and greatly loved King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, now our greatly loved Queen Mother. She must derive a very particular pleasure from this happy occasion which we shall be celebrating shortly.
Six months before the Silver Wedding of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth this House submitted an humble Address
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of congratulation on "the approaching marriage of Her Royal Highness, to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten", and in that Address we expressed the satisfaction of this House on an event which promised "to secure the happiness of Her Royal Highness". I think we all felt that when the time came for her to Succeed (and we did not know then how soon that time would be) it was right that Her Royal Highness should not be asked to withstand alone "the fierce light that beats upon the Throne". My Lords, that marriage which we now commemorate has indeed secured the happiness which we then hoped for. Moreover, it has been a happiness not only for Her Majesty, His Royal Highness and their family, but also, by extension, for this country as a whole, for the Commonwealth and for many other countries outside our immediate family circle of nations.
A Silver Wedding is above all a family occasion, and it is fitting that this Silver Wedding is one which is being celebrated in a particularly close and united family. It is my belief that the family life of our Sovereign constitutes one of the main bonds which has strengthened what my noble friend Lord Blake described in moving the humble Address as,
"the free, friendly…yet basically kind social order which prevails in Britain."
My Lords, it is almost a truism to-day to say that we live in an era of rapid, almost revolutionary, change. And it would seem almost a paradox that in these circumstances the Monarchy should, as I would opine, have never been more secure than it is to-day. The explanation for this seeming paradox is of course easy to find. It lies in the shining example which the Royal Family have given of family unity and, above all, of dedicated service to our fellow countrymen. This service is manifest in all areas of our national life, from the proudest State occasion to the most informal and humdrum sporting event. Indeed, my Lords, there are few nooks and crannies of our national life which our Royal Family have not explored.
As we know from the gracious Speech, Her Majesty and His Royal Highness are to visit Canada and Australia in their Silver Wedding year. They will not be going abroad, since they will be on home territory. The same love and respect

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which we feel in this country for Her Majesty and His Royal Highness are also felt by the Queen's subjects across the Atlantic and in the wide Pacific. All this the world well knows. But fewer, perhaps, know well the extraordinary impact of Her Majesty in representing the United Kingdom to countries other than the Commonwealth, whether on a visit, as recently to Yugoslavia, or as host in this country to the President of Italy last year or to the President of Germany only a few weeks ago. We are lucky to have in the Queen and in Prince Philip ambassadors for our nation of quite exceptional quality.
We can also, I believe, count ourselves fortunate as a nation that the succession is so firmly secured in the hearts of our people in the persons of the Prince of Wales, Princess Anne and the two younger Princes. It is clear that the Prince of Wales—and I know that your Lordships are gratified at his attendance from time to time in your Lordships' House—possesses his father's capacity for direct, penetrating and witty commentaries on the contemporary scene. It is also clear that both the Prince of Wales and Princess Anne feel a deep involvement over a wide spectrum of our national affairs. Not the least perhaps of the great services which the Royal Family renders to the nation is that it helps to bridge the generation gap in our country.
My Lords, I am sure that I am echoing the wish of all your Lordships when, in conclusion, I express the hope that in another 25 years a future Leader of your Lordships' House will have the honour of moving a further Address to Her Majesty and Prince Philip on their Golden Wedding.
When the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Jowitt, moved the Address at the time of the forthcoming marriage, he concluded by saying:
"In view of the very special and intimate nature of this Resolution, I would suggest to your Lordships that, departing from our usual precedent, it would be fitting that the Resolution should be presented…by the Leaders of the various Parties…and…the Archbishop of Canterbury."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22/10/47; col. 84.]
This precedent was followed for the Silver Wedding Address six months later, and I hope I have your Lordships' agreement
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that we should follow that good example on this occasion. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty The Queen to congratulate Her Majesty and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh on the occasion of the twenty-fifth Anniversary of their Wedding, to express the deep gratitude of this House for their contribution to the affairs of the nation and for their unfailing example in public and family life, and to convey every good wish for their continued happiness.—(Earl Jellicoe.)
3.13 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, in rising to support the Motion moved by the noble Earl, I can say little in addition to what he has said in relation to the feelings of every Member of your Lordships' House; and when I echo his phrase "it is with humble duty" that I support this Motion, I would add that it is not only with humble duty but with the greatest satisfaction, a satisfaction which is shared throughout the House.
I would remind your Lordships of the terms of the Motion, which not only congratulates Her Majesty and His Royal Highness on the occasion of the twenty-fifth Anniversary of their Wedding but expresses also the deep gratitude of this House for their contribution to the affairs of the nation and their unfailing example in public and family life. It is a fact of which we need to remind ourselves that we have been uniquely fortunate in our Royal Family. It is a remarkable thing that in this fairly restless age there is probably less criticism of the institution of Royalty and of the present holders than there has been at any time in our history. If one compares some of the criticism, particularly in the last century, with the absence of any real criticism and the acceptance and admiration which is felt by nearly every citizen in the land, that is a measure of their achievement.
The reason for this is not only the modesty with which they approach their task, their willingness always both to uphold their position and to behave like ordinary people in their dealings with ordinary people, but the fact that we know they work tremendously hard and are motivated all the time by this sense

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of public duty. A friend of mine, seeing the Queen the other day on a television programme, made a remark which I believe describes her contribution very accurately. He said, "She is a great public servant". Mixed no doubt with the interest and happiness of their family life, often spent under very pleasant conditions, must be what I can only consider is the incredible tedium of many of the duties which they so manfully bear, smiling and making everybody happy. The work that we put upon the Royal Family is remarkably onerous and their willingness to meet those obligations calls forth our deep gratitude. It is unquestionably a happy Family, and the House appreciated the noble Earl's reference to the presence of the Prince of Wales. Not the least of the achievements of Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh is to have produced such extraordinarily nice and intelligent children. It must always be a great anxiety to bring up the Heir to the Throne and not all Monarchs have been so successful in it; but here an additional ground for congratulation is that in the Prince of Wales and the rest of the Family we have such delightful and, I may say, intelligent young people.
My Lords, the noble Earl, very properly, referred to the service of the Royal Family to the Commonwealth. It is worth recalling that the Queen first heard the news of her Accession while she was in a Commonwealth country, in Kenya, when she had to assume these onerous and demanding duties. I am happy to say that for the most part in the flood of memoirs of conversations there has been little about the relations between Prime Ministers and Her Majesty and between Ministers and Her Majesty, and it is worth recording that those of us who have had the privilege of serving as Ministers of the Crown have always been met not only with great courtesy and kindness but with interested sympathy which I am convinced is as genuine as everything else that Her Majesty and His Royal Highness do. Therefore it is with a degree of satisfaction which has not been surpassed in our history, and as a really genuine expression of opinion, that I now so gladly support the Motion moved by the noble Earl.
3.19 p.m.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, I also wish, with humble duty and great sincerity, to support on behalf of my noble friends on the Liberal Benches the Motion which has been so ably proposed by the noble Earl, the Leader of the House. As he said, a Silver Wedding is indeed a family affair and an important milestone in a marriage. I am glad to say that my wife and I celebrated our own Silver Wedding shortly after I joined the House eight years ago, and in common with many other families of our generation we have had the great pleasure of watching the growing up and maturing of the young members of the Royal Family, particularly His Royal Highness Prince Charles and Princess Anne.
There is no doubt that the way in which the Monarchy in its totality has adapted itself to the very rapidly changing circumstances of the last quarter of a century while maintaining standards of a very high order has given a confidence and reassurance which has contributed a great deal to our social stability. Her Majesty, Prince Philip and the whole family have shown over these none too easy years a sense of dedication and duty which it is almost impossible to praise too highly. I think we are very fortunate indeed to have this family at the head of our nation. They are not just "Royals"; they are very human, sympathetic people. Moreover, they are blessed with a resilient sense of humour without which I doubt whether they could carry out the multiplicity of duties which they have to perform. For these attributes it is right that the nation should salute them and give thanks on this great occasion. I beg to support the Motion.
3.21 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON: My Lords, it is my privilege on behalf of the Lords Spiritual to support the Motion so happily moved by the noble Earl. We who sit on these Benches know at first hand, as we go about our dioceses, not only the affection which there is in countless homes for Her Majesty and for Prince Philip but also the immense influence of the example of their happy family life. It is sometimes asserted that a happy marriage has no news value. Whether that is true as a generalisation may be doubted, but it is most definitely not true of the

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life of Her Majesty and His Royal Highness. Their example gives encouragement and inspiration to innumerable families throughout the land. For this we thank God, as we also thank God for the example of ceaseless devotion to public duty which they give and for the way in which they care not only for causes but also for people. A family, as we have been reminded, is not just parents but parents and children, and our gratitude to Her Majesty and to the Duke of Edinburgh is joined with our gratitude for the example of the Royal Family as a whole: for the fine public service already being given by their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales and the Princess Anne, and for the obvious family affection which they all have for each other, so happily symbolised in the photographs in the Press last week of the Prince of Wales romping with his younger brothers.
A Silver Wedding, as has been said, is essentially an occasion to be celebrated within the circle of the family, and we are therefore grateful that Her Majesty and his Royal Highness are willing to share their private happiness with the nation on this occasion. We shall support them at the service in the Abbey with our prayers for their continued happiness. We shall show our gratitude with acclamation in Guildhall and elsewhere. But more: I believe, my Lords, behind this humble Address all of us, as individuals, with our humble duty thank them for what they do, for the example which they set the nation; and above all else we thank God for what they are. I beg to support the Motion.
On Question, Motion agreed to, nemine dissentiente.
Ordered, That the said Address be presented to Her Majesty by the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Privy Seal (Earl Jellicoe), the Lord Shackleton and the Lord Byers.

HEATHROW AIRPORT: CONSULTING GROUP'S REPORT
3.23 p.m.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether there will be opportunity to debate the report on Heathrow Airport made by the Metra Consulting Group before any Government decisions on the recommendations therein are made.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the noble Baroness, like any other Member of your Lordships' House, is entitled to put down on the Order Paper any subject for debate, by a Motion or an Unstarred Question. Subjects for debate are, of course, customarily arranged through the usual channels.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: Yes, my Lords, but I do not think that really answers the Question on the Order Paper. Could the noble Earl answer specifically what I have asked? I have not asked whether a private Member can put down a Question. I have asked whether there will be opportunity for debate before the Government take any decision on this report.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I am fully aware of what the noble Baroness put down on the Order Paper and I thought I had answered it. If what she meant was will the Government initiate a debate, I am bound to tell her that at the moment that is not our intention. But of course that does not prevent the noble Baroness from putting down for debate any subject she wishes.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether we shall be given advance information of the date of the publication of this report, or will it be necessary to put down a Question about that?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the report is not one which is to be published as such, but, as I have told the noble Baroness on previous occasions, it will be circulated to those interested and copies will be placed in the Libraries of your Lordships' House and of another place.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, will the House be informed in advance of the date when this report will be made?
EARL FERRERS: No, my Lords.

GENOCIDE CONVENTION
LORD JANNER: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper. Before the Answer may I offer my apologies to the noble Baroness for not having been present on the last occasion on which I tabled this Question. The fact is that because of traffic congestion I arrived a few minutes late.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will take steps in conjunction with other Governments to extend the provisions of the Convention on Genocide to provide compensation by the perpetrators of the crime to their victims and to the families of the victims.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE): My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for what he has said, and I am sure the whole House is very glad to see him in his place. The answer to his Question is this: No, my Lords, because genocide is currently under study by the Sub-Commission of the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, does the noble Baroness realise that entirely apart from the moral distress, for which of course nobody can get any compensation, there is a tremendous need to see that the victims of this heinous crime are not deprived of reparation for the damage that has been done to themselves and their families? Would she inquire into the matter, bearing in mind the very serious and commendable way in which after the war the late Dr. Adenaur in particular and the West German Governments dealt with the material claims of the victims, and the manner in which such countries as East Germany are not dealing with reparations of a similar nature?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, this particular study which I mentioned is on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. Compensation is not specifically mentioned but the rapporteur will, of course, be able to draw on material which is available in connection with war crimes.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, would the noble Baroness please do her best to bring to the notice of those who are at present dealing with the project, the fact that there is terrible distress among people who have been the victims of the crime of genocide, and that that should be put right?
BARONESS TWEEDSMUIR OF BELHELVIE: My Lords, I agree that there is no doubt about there being terrible distress, but it is going to be very difficult to get agreement on adequate arrangements for compensation, because the most likely perpetrators of genocide are nearly always Governments, and there is at present no means by which a Government could be compelled to make reparation to the victims of its policies.

THE CASE OF MISS PADDON
3.30 p.m.
LORD MAELOR: 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 there is any means whereby the sentence of Miss Paddon to 21 months' imprisonment can be reviewed.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS): Yes, my Lords, it is open to Miss Paddon to apply to the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, within 28 days of the decision of the court of trial, for leave to appeal against both conviction and sentence.
LORD MAELOR: My Lords, I want to thank the Minister for that rather satisfactory reply. Is the Minister aware that not a single Member of this House would condone the crime of baby snatching? Nevertheless, a number of us believe that circumstances alter cases, and there were peculiar circumstances in this case. The

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two women were friends, and the child was only taken to its destination. I want to ask two further supplementary questions: first, if this young woman was deemed to be physically and mentally unfit to have charge of her own child, is she not, on the same score, unfit to suffer imprisonment for a period of 21 months? Secondly, the sentence was described in all the papers as both savage and inhuman. I hold no brief for the judge, but was this fair to the judge? Under the Criminal Justice Act 1961 the judge—
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am quite certain that the question which the noble Lord is about to put is a perfectly legitimate one, but I think that he would be putting himself more within the normal rules of order of our House if he were to ask it straight away.
LORD MAELOR: My Lords, to put it then in the form of a question, is the Minister aware that under the Criminal Justice Act 1961 the judge can sentence a person if she is under 21 years of age either to no more than six months or no less than 21 months? Now that is a silly law, and I want to ask the Minister whether he will do all in his power to get it amended as soon as possible and so avoid putting judges in this invidious situation
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I think it is a fundamental position, certainly when a sentence is still capable of being appealed upon to a higher court, that the Home Office and members of the Government should refrain from comment upon the action of the judge on the material which he had before him. As the noble Lord will know, that material is very substantial in a case like this, and we should, in general, leave the matter to be dealt with by the properly constituted appeal court, if there is an appeal and the appeal is still within time. I think I may be forgiven by the House if I do not comment upon the first part of what the noble Lord says to-day.
On the question of Section 3 of the Criminal Justice Act 1961, the House may recall that this was a fruitful subject of debate during the passage of the Criminal Justice Act which we were dealing with in the summer. The noble Lord is not entirely right in what he said; in
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fact, the sentence must be no less than six months and no more than 18 months in prison, but there is still the alternative of borstal, which is something he did not mention. As I explained at the time of our discussions on the Criminal Justice Bill, this is one of the matters in front of the Advisory Committee on the Penal System, which is going to report pretty soon on the whole range of matters dealing with young offenders. As I explained at the time, to pick this matter out at this juncture would I think be foolish, because we are having a proper review of it. The time to deal with it is when we have all the information and the advice before us.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, may I ask whether it is open to the Official Solicitor to assist Miss Paddon?
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, the powers of the Official Solicitor never cease to amaze me, but I do not think that Miss Paddon needs the Official Solicitor at this stage because she has her own.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, is it not a fact that before this young woman removed her friend's baby for a quarter of an hour she had been undergoing a course of psychiatric treatment? Is it the norm in our courts of law, when it has been proved that the person before the court is probably of abnormal mind, that he or she should be sentenced to 21 months' imprisonment?
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I think the noble Baroness will appreciate that there is no rule in sentencing. The penalties laid down by Parliament are almost always as a maximum. The probation reports, the social inquiry reports and the other reports that are before the court are to enable the court to deal with the individual upon the merits of the offence, upon the background, upon his character, upon his previous convictions and upon all other relevant information. As I have said, I think I should be absolved at this stage, when we still have some weeks—I think a fortnight—to go before the time for appeal has elapsed, from commenting upon the decision that was made by Mr. Justice Boreham at Chelmsford Crown Court.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, arising out of this case may I ask the Minister whether it is true that when a child is given to foster parents the mother is not allowed to see it, as in this case? The fact is that this mother was not allowed to see her child for 18 months. It was essential for her mental recovery that she should.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I think that that really is another question. It may or may not have been one of the matters that was in the reports before the learned judge who dealt with this case. The noble Baroness shakes her head. Whether or not it was, I stand by the opinion that it is for the Court of Appeal to consider all these matters if an appeal goes before it.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, while agreeing with the noble Viscount that this would be a matter for the Court of Appeal, may I ask whether the noble Viscount can tell us that he has satisfied himself that this unfortunate woman is being properly advised legally with a view to making an appeal?
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, yes, most certainly I have. If there is one thing I have taken trouble to see about lately it is that the advice that is available to prisoners in Holloway, where she is in fact at the moment, is sufficient to cover all questions of bail and any other matter that might be relevant to somebody in this position. I am sure in this particular case that she is being properly advised, that she has seen her solicitor, and that the matter is very much under consideration. It is nothing to do with me, of course, what the advice may be.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am grateful and I fully appreciate the noble Viscount's position. But if this unfortunate young woman is receiving advice and may, for reasons connected with her psychological state, be unwilling to take it, would it then be possible to take further action along the lines suggested by my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner with regard to the Official Solicitor? As the noble Viscount will know, there have been famous cases in which, for one reason or another, people have refused to appeal.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, the conviction was on October 30, the sentence was on October 31. There are twenty-eight days respectively from each date during which she can appeal. I do not want in any way to suggest that interference should take place. I take note of what the noble Lord has suggested and the noble and learned Lord has said. If it should be thought fit, this point would be further considered. If the occasion arises, I will certainly remember what they have said.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that his final answer about having looked into the affairs of this unfortunate young woman justifies our belief in his kindness and human understanding of the problems that he has to deal with? But may I ask him, if he considers it relevant, whether when investigations have been made into the law will be look into the problem of appeal—and I will use the ugly word—by the "under-privileged"? Is he aware that they are sometimes struck with terror? I know of two cases where people are absolutely innocent and cannot possibly make an appeal. Can we get some formula by means of which justice can be seen to be done in the courts of appeal? Can it be looked into, or am I entirely hopeless in asking for some reform?
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, the noble Lord is not hopeless. He is very kind to me. But if somebody has been received into a prison, whether it is Holloway or another one, the first line of defence against injustice is the staff of that prison. They have to be properly equipped with the information they need on technicalities. This is what I was talking about the other day when I was referring to cards in cells, and the material that is before them. Above all, the staff have to be trained in their understanding. They have to be trained to be able to pick up the sort of case that needs help. If the noble Lord went to some of these prisons and talked to the staff, I think he would be convinced that we have a fairly solid bulwark against injustice in the people who operate there.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that it might satisfy many Members of your Lordships'

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House, if not all Members of your Lordships' House, if he could give an assurance that while this young woman is in prison she is receiving the medical consideration that her condition merits?
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Yes, my Lords. Again, this is where I have an advantage. I know the medical staff at Holloway, and having talked to them I have enormous faith in them. They are very skilled. They have a great diversity and range of experience and diagnostic and treatment powers. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, can be assured that this young woman, like the others in our care, is being properly looked after and that we have the facilities to deal with any of her problems.

ABERDEEN HARBOUR ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936) deemed to have been read 2a and reported from the Committee.
SCRABSTER HARBOUR (VEHICLEFERRY TERMINAL &c.) ORDERCONFIRMATION BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936) deemed to have been read 2a and reported from the Committee.

COMMITTEE FOR PRIVILEGES
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That in accordance with Standing Order No. 65, a Select Committee for Privileges be appointed, and that the following Lords, together with the Chairman of Committees and any four Lords of Appeal, be named of the Committee:

Lord Privy Seal (E. Jellicoe),

E. Dundee,

E. Longford,

E. St. Aldwyn,

L. Amulree,

L. Beswick,

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L. Brooke of Cumnor,

L. Byers,

L. Champion,

L. Conesford,

L. Henderson,

L. Molson,

L. Rea,

L. Shackleton,

L. Strang;

That the Committee have leave to report from time to time.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

PERSONAL BILLS COMMITTEE
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a Select Committee on Personal Bills be appointed, to which all Petitions for Personal Bills shall stand referred; and that the Lords following, with the Chairman of Committees, be named of the Committee:

V. Bledisloe,

V. Gage,

L. Cross of Chelsea,

L. Henley,

L. Stow Hill,

L. Wilberforce;

That the Committee have leave to report from time to time.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

ATOMIC ENERGY AUTHORITY (WEAPONS GROUP) BILL [H.L.]
3.43 p.m.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DEFENCE (LORD CARRINGTON), My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The purpose of this Bill is to transfer the activities of the Atomic Energy Authority's Weapons Group, together with its associated property, rights and so on—in practice, the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston and its outstations—from the Authority to the Ministry of Defence.
I should like to say right at the outset that the Bill does not involve any change in responsibility for nuclear weapons policy, but I will return to that point

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later. Perhaps I may begin by reminding your Lordships of the arrangements for nuclear weapons research and development in the United Kingdom.
After the last war, this kind of work was first undertaken in part of what is now the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment. However, the work demanded extensive and highly specialised facilities, and so a separate research and development establishment—the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment—was set up at Aldermaston. And in 1954 this establishment was transferred to the newly created Atomic Energy Authority, where it formed the basis for the Weapons Group. This now comprises not only Aldermaston but also a sizeable outstation at Foulness, and a few very small units mostly in the Aldermaston area. The main task of the Group, some four-fifths of its total effort, is research, development and production work on explosive nuclear devices for use in nuclear weapons; but the Group also undertakes some civil nuclear work as part of the Authority's programme, as well as some non-nuclear work on behalf of various Government Departments and outside customers.
As your Lordships know well, the problem of how best to organise Defence procurement has been with us for a great many years. When we came into office we set up a Project Team under Mr. Derek Rayner to study this problem, and its recommendations were published in a White Paper in April, 1971. The fundamental recommendation was that Defence procurement activities should be brought together into a single organisation within the Ministry of Defence; and this has been implemented by the setting up of the Procurement Executive inside my Department, embracing all aspects of Defence procurement from research through to production. An essential feature of the new organisation, to which I attach great importance, was the bringing together into the same organisation of all the Research and Development establishments concerned with defence. Apart from simplifying the policy control and direction, this has enabled a start to be made on rationalising the facilities and resources of the various establishments, and we are at present engaged in con-
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sultations with the staff associations and unions on our proposals for the first stage of rationalisation.
One of Mr. Rayner's recommendations was that the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment should be brought within my Department. Following consultation with the Atomic Energy Authority during the summer of 1971, to see how best the functions of the A.W.R.E. could be rationalised with those of the other research and development establishments, the Government decided that this could be effected only if the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment were brought under the same management as the other establishments. I accordingly told your Lordships, in my Statement on August 5, last year, of our decision to transfer the A.W.R.E. to the Ministry of Defence. This Bill is to give the effect to that decision. Perhaps I may very briefly explain to your Lordships the principal provisions of the Bill.
Clause 1 gives effect to the main purpose of the Bill, and it provides that from the appointed day those activities of the Weapons Group which involve work on explosive nuclear devices will be carried out by the Ministry of Defence and not by the Authority, unless the Authority is specifically authorised or a contract placed with it to do such work. It also transfers the property and so on—everything connected with the property—of the Group to the Secretary of State for Defence, with the exception of patents and other industrial property to which I will return later.
Clause 2 deals with the effects of the transfer on the people at present employed in the Weapons Group. We want all the people engaged on work now performed by the Weapons Group to continue their jobs in the Ministry of Defence, and this clause terminates their contracts of employment with the Authority and enables them to be taken into the Civil Service. There have been consultations with the Civil Service Commission and I can say that all the Weapons Group employees will be offered immediate and continuing employment in the Civil Service.
My officials have been consulting with the staff and trade union representatives about the terms and conditions of service for staff who will be transferred, and I

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am happy to say that good progress has been made towards reaching agreement. Some adjustments to present terms and conditions will be necessary, but the general principle will be maintained that, taken as a whole, terms and conditions after the transfer shall be no less favourable than those provided for in existing contracts.
The terms and conditions of non-industrial staff in the Authority and Civil Service are already very similar in many respects. There are, however, certain differences, the most important of which concern superannuation and retiring age. The Authority's main pension schemes, unlike that of the Civil Service, are contributory; non-industrial staff pay contributions at the rate of 6 per cent. of their salary, and to allow for this their salaries are in general 7 per cent. higher than in the Civil Service. This means that their net pay is marginally higher—about one-half of 1 per cent.—and also that their pensions, being based on gross pay, are 7 per cent. higher. At the same time, the normal minimum retiring age for men is 65 instead of 60. We have therefore agreed that non-industrial staff should be able to remain in the Authority's pension scheme, with the associated pay and retiring age provisions, if they so wish. Clause 2 provides the necessary powers; and I should like to add the assurance that there is no question of staff who opt to stay in the Authority's scheme being compelled at some future date to change to the Civil Service scheme.
The case of industrial employees is rather different. Their pay and grading structure has evolved on different lines from that of the industrial Civil Service, and we are examining this to ensure that the transfer from one structure to the other goes smoothly. Where the rate for the job in the Industrial Civil Service is higher, those concerned will get the benefit; in other cases, existing pay rates will be retained until they are overtaken. Understandings have been reached between my Department and trade union representatives on these and other conditions of service. Clause 2 also preserves the powers of Authority constables who are transferred with the Weapons Group and taken into the Civil Service.
826
My Lords, Clause 5, together with the Schedule, deals with the principles governing the exchange of information covered by patents and other technical information between the Secretary of State and the Authority. In general, the Bill leaves the ownership of existing patents and technical information with the Authority. This is because it has been found impracticable to segregate those patents which are relevant to the Weapons Group from those relevant to the civil activities of the Authority. There is, however, an important exception made under paragraph 3 of the Schedule, which is that information relating to explosive nuclear devices will become the property of the Ministry of Defence. But the Authority will be required to make available to the Secretary of State such facilities as he may need for the use of the patents remaining the property of the Authority. On the other side of the coin, the Bill also provides for access by the Authority to information of which custody and control will pass to the Ministry of Defence with the transfer of the Weapons Group. I think this is an important point, as the Government are anxious to ensure that the transfer of the Weapons Group does not impede the exploitation by the Authority of peaceful applications of nuclear energy.
Clause 6 is a logical consequence of the decision to transfer A.W.R.E. and its activities away from the Authority. The Authority's powers under the Atomic Energy Authority Act 1954 to produce, use and dispose of atomic energy and to carry out research were subject to the restriction that they were not permitted to develop or to produce any weapon or part of a weapon except in accordance with arrangements made with the then Minister of Supply and now with the Secretary of State for Defence. However, Section 2(2) of the 1954 Act empowered the Authority to conduct on their own initiative experimental work which might lead to improved types of explosive nuclear assemblies for use in weapons. Now that the responsibility for carrying out all work on explosive nuclear devices and the facilities for undertaking it are to be put into my Department, this power is now redundant and is repealed by Clause 6. Additionally, Clause 6 widens the prohibition placed on the Authority, in that it provides that they are not to undertake

827
any work on explosive nuclear devices, whether for warlike applications or otherwise, except in accordance with arrangements made with the Secretary of State.
My Lords, I will not dwell on the financial arrangements which are the subject of Clause 8, except to say that the net cost to public funds will be affected by the Bill only to the extent that, as I explained in dealing with Clause 2, there are some differences in the terms and conditions of service of employees of the Atomic Energy Authority and those of the Civil Service. Since negotiations are still in progress I cannot put a figure to this, but it seems unlikely that the cost will increase by more than £200,000 a year.
My Lords, perhaps I may end by making some rather more general comments. First, I hope that the transfer can take effect from April 1, 1973, both for organisational reasons and so that we can end the uncertainties for the staffs concerned. Following my Statement on August 5, 1971, it was suggested that to place the production of warheads for nuclear weapons directly under the control of the Secretary of State for Defence, and no longer under a separate Minister responsible to the Cabinet for nuclear matters generally, raises a point of constitutional significance. I think that this criticism overlooks the fact that in this very important area the responsibility for policy has been, and under the proposed new arrangements will continue to be, a collective responsibility of Her Majesty's Government. This applies as much to decisions on the nuclear weapons programme as to decisions on strategy, and this responsibility would in no way be lessened by the measures now proposed.
The Secretary of State for Defence is, and will continue to be, the departmental Minister responsible for giving effect to the Government's approved policy. At present, the development and production by A.W.R.E. of nuclear warheads required for the weapons programme is carried out under contracts placed by the Ministry of Defence with the Authority. After the transfer this will become a matter for direct management within the Ministry of Defence. In other words, there will be a change in the administrative methods, but no change in the essen-
828
tial responsibility. The work of the Weapons Group is predominantly military, and I am quite sure that it is right to bring it into the Ministry of Defence along with the other Defence research and development establishments, and under a single management organisation. It is only in this way that we can so use our resources as to meet the needs of Defence programmes in the most efficient and flexible way.
But in stressing the predominantly military nature of A.W.R.E. I am by no means overlooking the considerable contribution which it has made to basic nuclear technology, nor the extent to which the skills and special facilities at Aldermaston have been used to great advantage in some aspects of the civil nuclear power programme. Civil work at present carried out at A.W.R.E. accounts for about a fifth of the establishment's effort. Part of this is devoted to the Authority's research and development programme on the fast breeder reactor, most of which, of course, is carried out in the Authority's Reactor Group.
I can assure your Lordships that this work, together with the other civil work at A.W.R.E., will continue uninterrupted: the expertise and facilities at A.W.R.E. will be made available to the Authority and the Department of Trade and Industry under contracts which they will place with the Ministry of Defence. I am particularly concerned that my Department should maintain close relations with the Authority and the Department of Trade and Industry, just as it has in the past in connection with the military programme. All we are doing is simply reversing the present contractor-customer roles. Your Lordships may wonder about the effect that this transfer will have on the remainder of the Authority, and I can say here that the remaining part of the Authority—that is, the Reactor and Research Groups and the Safety and Reliability Directorate—will retain a vital role in the further development of nuclear reactors and other civil applications of nuclear research.
Finally, perhaps I may remind your Lordships that at the end of the last Session my noble friend Lord Alport urged Her Majesty's Government to ensure that in the present Session an appropriate number of Bills should be introduced in this House; and I recall that this proposi-

829
tion received a wide measure of support. My Lords, this Bill is my contribution to meeting the wishes of the House, and I hope—though I doubt it—that it will earn your Lordships' gratitude and will be given an unqualified welcome. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Carrington.)
4.0 p.m.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, picking up the last point of the Secretary of State's speech, I am certain that the House is grateful for the acceptance of its view, expressed so forcefully, that the early introduction of important legislation should take place more frequently than in the past. This has its disadvantages because I have been pitchforked in at a late stage and at rather short notice to reply to the Secretary of State on this Bill. The Bill itself is of interest. Of course, as he said, it does not come in any way as a surprise. It was recommended by Mr. Rayner and foreshadowed by the Secretary of State himself last August. As I myself said in the House, I think that the new system of procurement for weapons and other forms of defence equipment is to be welcomed. So far as I can see at this moment the new system is working well. I personally have no criticism of it.
But having said that, there are one or two questions that I should like to put to the Secretary of State at this stage. The time scale seems to have slipped a little. The Rayner Report, so far as I can recall, suggested that this transfer of the Weapons Group should take place on April 1, 1972. It is now taking place in April 1973. The complex negotiations with the Civil Service, or, rather, with the employees of the Atomic Energy Authority relating to their transfer to the Civil Service, seem to have dragged on. Again, my information, although it may be imprecise, is that some of the key negotiations were started only on the 2nd of this month. So, perhaps, when he replies the Secretary of State might indicate where the friction and difficulties have come about in the transfer of the Weapons Group to the Civil Service and to the Secretary of State's own Department. I know how difficult these things
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are and I am not making a big thing of it, but there seems to have been some slip.
Taking the list of clauses that the Secretary of State mentioned, may I ask one question on the transfer of the out-station at Foulness? Is this out-station going to remain at Foulness or, when the great airport is established, will it have to go somewhere else? My own recollection is that it lies to the North of the airport and therefore could remain undisturbed. But I think that noble Lords would like to know about that. Clause 4 deals with personnel. May I say that I have one or two probing Amendments to put down at the Committee stage? I am certain that the various issues are not of first importance; nevertheless, I think that a public clarification of the situation would be welcomed by the thousands of people concerned in their transfer. I have heard that negotiations are going reasonably satisfactorily but a statement in this House is always helpful.
I turn to patents. Perhaps I might link that interesting subject with a question which I think is of importance and which relates to the whole of the financial implications for the Defence budget, of the transfer of this very substantial organisation from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority to the Defence budget. I believe that we are reaching a critical stage in the financing of our defence programme. I touched on this matter last week and I will raise it again on the Order which I think we are to discuss on Tuesday next. I think it might be useful to do so then. But certain important new weapon systems are coming into being. If we talk about comparability, if the Serviceman is to be paid the equivalent of his counterpart in civilian life (as he now is) this very labour-intensive activity will cost a great deal more just in paying the troops. At the same time, the cost of the advanced technology that we must have if we are to achieve our defence aims will go up. So we are now transferring 5,700 individuals plus, presumably, a great deal of production costs to the Defence budget from whatever budget covers the Atomic Energy Authority. I hope that this transfer will not, as it were, be forced into a straitjacket and result in a reduced amount of resources required for defence. During the last debate, the noble Baroness. Lady Tweedsmuir,

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pulled my leg on this. I stand unabashed by what I said then. I think it is of importance and per contra I am hoping that a share of any of the earnings that may come from the patents which apparently remain with the Atomic Energy Authority will come as appropriation in aid against the expenses arising from the transfer of this large establishment.
My Lords, those are really the only points that I have to make. There is no doubt that the work done by the Weapons Group and the Atomic Energy Authority has kept this country in the forefront of technical advance—though perhaps we have not used the knowledge that we have acquired as wisely as we might. Nevertheless, the very great nuclear energy programme that we have undertaken in this country—and some extremely interesting other research work has been done as a result of studies here—is of tremendous importance to our standing in the world as a nation capable of understanding and executing advanced technology. I am glad that the cross-fertilisation of ideas between the Weapons Group and the rest of the Authority will continue. I am glad that the Secretary of State has given this assurance which I am sure will be welcome by everybody working in the Authority as a whole.
4.6 p.m.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, I am sure that when the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, says that the introduction of this Bill into your Lordships' House is something for which we should be grateful, we are grateful. But I hope that the noble Lord does not really mean that, because we are grateful to him for bringing the Bill first to this House, we are therefore not allowed to discuss it. He suggested that we ought to give it an unimpeded Second Reading because we are so grateful for his action in bringing it here. I believe that our best way of showing gratitude is to show that we take the Bill seriously and are prepared to discuss it in depth.
This particular Bill is one which at first sight seems quite reasonable; but I wonder whether, when we look at it carefully, it is really such a reasonable Bill. We used to have an Atomic Energy
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Authority. That Atomic Energy Authority has been split up. We have had a Nuclear Installations Act, which separated the nuclear installations part from the Atomic Energy Authority. We now have this Bill dealing with the weapons side, removing the weapons side from the Atomic Energy Authority. One of the great advantages of having a single overall Authority to deal with all atomic energy is that the whole of it is really one field.
The noble Lord said that in this Bill—and we see it when we look at the details of the Bill—any matter dealing with explosive nuclear energy is to be removed from the Atomic Energy Authority and brought under his own Ministry. This is a very queer sort of decision; because in one sense all atomic energy is explosive. One can set a certain defined limit: one can say that when the reproduction rate is less than 1 it means that you do not get an explosion; and that when it is greater than 1 you do get an explosion. This is a question of the chain length of atomic reaction. But this is a very arbitrary way of dealing with the whole matter. Supposing that we had decided to deal with the burning of eases in this way and were to say that any gaseous mixture that exploded was to be the business of the Defence Ministry; whereas any gaseous mixture which did not explode should be dealt with in some other Ministry. We should end up with a ludicrous situation because, after all, every motor car engine has an explosive mixture in it, and in fact progresses by a series of explosions inside the engine. So this is a very queer way of separating off a particular field of work. It is certainly reasonable to say that it is the business of the Ministry to be dealing with actual weapons. But this goes far beyond dealing with actual weapons; this deals with the whole study of all those matters which concern atomic explosion. This, in all rational procedure, would surely be the business of the Atomic Energy Authority, and to separate this arbitrarily from the Atomic Energy Authority and put it under the Ministry of Defence is I believe a retrograde step. I think it a move entirely in the wrong direction.
My Lords, when one is dealing with the application of scientific work to weapons it is important to realise that most of the

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essential basic scientific work comes not from the weapons side but from the investigation of the scientific problem itself; in other words, it is the Atomic Energy Authority which should, and probably will, supply most of the ideas. The noble Lord neatly inverted the whole position at the end when he said that he was going to have the consumer/contractor basis reversed. Exactly, my Lords. But what has he done? He has turned it not into a consumer/contractor basis at all, but rather on to the basis that it is the consumer who also does the contracting. In other words, the Ministry of Defence, the consumer, is now also to be the contractor. This is the exact opposite of what is meant by the consumer/contractor basis. I submit that the real purpose of the Bill and its effect has not in the least been made clear. It seems that it is an attempt to take a substantial amount of work and put it under the particular Ministry which likes to feel that it will have control.
During the war I spent some years in a Government Department working exactly in this kind of way. I was at the Royal Aircraft Establishment which was responsible for those matters which concerned military aircraft. It can be said that anyone had access to what they did, but that is quite untrue. You had access to what was done in the Royal Aircraft Establishment only if you were engaged on military work; if you were engaged on producing either aircraft for military purposes or anything concerned with aircraft for military purposes. This, so far from making the work better, made it worse. It inhibited development because, by restricting it in this way, the proper flow of information from the industrial and scientific bodies concerned with main development to the Royal Aircraft Establishment was never really fruitful.
It is true that the Royal Aircraft Establishment was usually able to get the information it wanted, but it was very difficult for bodies outside the Royal Aircraft Establishment to get hold of the information which was in the Establishment. That could have been useful for civil aircraft but it was not made available. It was only after the war when there was a deliberate attempt to break this down that any real progress was made. I think that the Royal Aircraft Establishment has
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improved enormously by being less of a military establishment than it used to be. It did excellent work at the time of the Comet disaster. A special tank was set up for investigating how the Comet had failed. And recently excellent work has been done on the "Concorde" development. But these are things which are being done not as military projects at all but as civil projects, and I submit that the attempt to separate the military from the civil in this way will be very much to the disadvantage of both.
My Lords, there are two other points that I should like to mention. The noble Lord has explained to us that the position of the staff will be properly safeguarded and I am prepared to accept what he says. But I would ask whether he has an assurance from the unions concerned that they are satisfied, because this is a very important matter. If the unions are not satisfied there may be some difficulties. The second point I would raise concerns safety. The noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, will remember that when the Atomic Energy Authority Bill was before your Lordships' House I raised the question of the safety of installations and asked to what extent the unit inside the Authority would in future be concerned with the safety of installations. As the noble Lord will remember, he gave assurances at the time which I was glad to have. But, as I pointed out to him then, I did not feel that they were as satisfactory as actually writing them into the Act. I believe this to be an important question because over a number of years the Atomic Energy Authority has had a unit at work dealing with safety in connection with nuclear work of all types, and they have an immense amount of expertise. When one separates off different parts of the work from the Atomic Energy Authority one ought to make certain that the services of that unit are fully available to any other body which is set up. I believe that where one has, for instance, nuclear installations in the country, it ought to be compulsory for them to consult this unit. That is not so at present, and I think that it should be. I believe, also, that if one is to have what at the moment I do not approve of—that is, the separation of the weapon section from it—in the same way there ought to be this same unit responsible for nuclear security.
4.18 p.m.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I would not want to oppose this proposal to transfer the Weapons Group from the Atomic Energy Commission to the Ministry of Defence; frankly, I do not know enough about the techniques of the matter to express a very competent view. But I would join with the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, in asking the Minister to explain in a little more detail, if he can, what was the actual compelling motive, the underlying reason for this, on the face of it, rational and logical reorganisation. Perhaps I got him wrong but I think I heard him say that the responsibility for giving the green light to any new development in the field of atomic weapons and new devices is collective—just as is the policy and strategy in the use of atomic power. Also that under the existing arrangements his Department was quite competent to see that the new kind of devices were what they wanted; that the general policy to be pursued was his, and that he was in any case in a position to give effect to it. If that is so, my Lords, why was it necessary to proceed with what is, after all, a rather complicated and difficult transfer involving all kinds of details—Service pensions, and goodness knows what?
Secondly I should like to ask, and in this I think I can follow the noble Lord. Lord Wynne-Jones: was there any material opposition to this proposal? Were the Atomic Energy Commission themselves happy about it? Or was any view expressed on the general lines of Lord Wynne-Jones's suggestion, that perhaps it might be better to leave things as they are; that the existing system is not necessarily inefficient; that you could make an equally good case, or almost an equally good case, for letting atomic energy be developed as a whole rather than splitting it up into its war weapons and its peaceful components? I cannot venture a definite opinion myself, but I think it might be in the general interest if the noble Lord could come a little cleaner on these rather fundamental questions.
4.21 p.m.
LORD DAVIES OF LEEK: My Lords, as someone who has links with a laboratory that has had the privilege of using some of the research and some of the work done by the Atomic Energy
836
Authority, I should like to pay tribute to the Atomic Energy Authority for the research work it has done in the field of radioactive isotopes and in other fields that are used in biochemistry and medicine. When I uttered a "Hear, hear!" as the Minister was speaking, he hinted that the peaceful uses of the atom would still go on as before. But Lord Sherfield's book on the future of atomic energy, which he was kind enough to present to the Library of your Lordships' House, puts forward certain caveats and other things at which we should be looking.
To say, "I would put forward this warning", might sound a little too pompous and didactic, so let me put it interrogatively. Are we likely to recruit the same quality of scientific experts to the Atomic Energy Weapons Division as we should to the whole atomic energy body if it were kept as one group? There is a growing resentment among many scientists in the world at the particularisation of atomic energy merely on the explosives side. I do not wish to repeat questions that have already been put by noble Lords, but there are certain questions to be asked. I think this is a good opportunity to pay tribute to the Atomic Energy Authority for the work they have done in the field of medicine and biochemistry to help people in research and for some first-class cures that have been made possible as a result of their work.
4.23 p.m.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, unlike my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones, I am not a professor of science. Where affairs in Essex are concerned, I am merely one of the locals. I want, very naïvely and innocently, to ask a question, and I hope that the answer will clarify my present state of mind. The word "Foulness" has sprung up again in a new guise. I had a few words to say a year or so ago in its old connotation in connection with the airport. Clause 1 of this Bill deals with the atomic aspect of Foulness. It does not mention the Shoeburyness military experimental establishment. I should like to know whether the non-atomic part of the Shoeburyness experimental establishment is to be taken over. I presume not. Will the atomic element in the Foulness establishment remain there when the airport is open? My noble friend

837
Lord Winterbottom has touched on this point, and I think it is important that we should have a reply from the Minister.
My Lords, it was my educational pleasure a year or two ago to go round Foulness, properly escorted, of course, and what I saw happen there during one minute of my visit rather startled me, and would probably startle a pilot who was coming down to land on the new Foulness Airport. So I am asking whether, when the airport is ready, this atomic portion of Foulness Island will be transferred to some other place. Incidentally, I might ask at the same time when the Shoeburyness experimental establishment is to be transferred. And will this new proposal contained in the Bill have any effect in delaying the construction of the airport?
4.25 p.m.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, perhaps I might first of all associate myself with the tribute paid by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, to the Atomic Energy Authority for what they have done in the peaceful uses of atomic energy. I think we should all join in that tribute. Certainly it is the intention of my Ministry to co-operate, to collaborate and to offer the facilites at Aldermaston in exactly the same measure as they have been offered in the past when the establishment has always had to cope partly with the military side and partly with the peaceful side of nuclear energy.
My Lords, let me try to answer some of the questions that have been put to me by various noble Lords. It is perfectly true, as the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, said, that the time-scale slipped; indeed, this Bill is exactly one year later than we had hoped it would be. The delay has nothing to do with the negotiations, but is entirely due to the legislative programme last Session. If your Lordships recall sitting most of the time through the Summer Recess, you will appreciate that to have imposed the present Bill upon that legislative programme would have ensured that it would receive an even more wintery reception than it has had, I am sad to say, from some of your Lordships this afternoon. I think we should have had to carry out the negotiations very much more quickly with the staff side and the unions than we
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have done. But there have been some quite difficult points to resolve. I can assure your Lordships that, apart from some comparatively minor points, there is nothing outstanding which has not been agreed. I believe that the assurance I have given this afternoon about employment, pensions and so on, together with a letter that I have written earlier to-day, should meet the very proper anxieties of those who work in the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment.
Both the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, and the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, asked about the out-station at Foulness. This, as noble Lords will realise, is quite unaffected by the Bill. The Bill does not do anything about the out-stations: all it does is to transfer their management to the Ministry of Defence. There is no nuclear testing going on at Foulness. But of course we are examining whether or not the high explosives which are used in conjunction with the nuclear programme are really compatible in that location with a new airport; whether it will be necessary to move it, and if so, to where. I would only remind your Lordships (the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, knows that the Shoeburyness station is going to be moved) that if by a decision on the siting of the Third London Airport you make it impossible to leave the Shoeburyness station or the Foulness station, about which we are talking here, at that place, then it is necessary to re-locate them somewhere else. I hope your Lordships will understand that if we are to have defence forces in this country there must be ranges where there can be testing and experiment.
I perhaps understand even better than the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, the pressures that there are on the Defence Budget, and in particular the increasing proportion of the Defence Budget which is spent on personnel rather than equipment. This is something which is affecting the Defence Budgets of every country in the West, but, of course, for obvious reasons, does not affect the countries of the Warsaw Pact in the East. This is something about which we shall increasingly have to be concerned, and I shall be glad to have a debate with the noble Lord about it next Tuesday. But, in so far as his concern is that the inclusion in the Ministry of Defence of the A.W.R.E. will have an effect on the Defence Budget, I

839
am glad to tell him that this is not so, because we already pay for it; it is already on the Defence Budget, and does not have any effect on it except in so far as the different terms and conditions of service will increase it by, as I think I said, about £200,000 a year.
The noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, and to a lesser extent the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, questioned the whole principle upon which this Bill is based. I confess that I start from an entirely different standpoint. I start from the standpoint of the Minister who has to run a Defence Budget of some £3,000 million a year and get value for money. A very laree part of the money—not perhaps such a large part as we should like—is spent on research and development and production. I do not believe it is possible to use economically the resources which I have at my disposal at the Ministry of Defence unless I am actually managing all the establishments where there is research and development and production for the Armed Services. For me, this makes an absolutely unanswerable case for transferring the A.W.R.E. to the Ministry of Defence, where four-fifths of its production—an enormous proportion—is on defence equipment. For my part, I regard it as absolutely essential, if we are to control the Defence Budget, to rationalise and to run things sensibly, that the Minister in charge of Defence should have the management of these out-stations.
I was rather interested to see that the noble Lord should have chosen the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough as the example with which he hoped to beat me, because I am wholly responsible for the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, and the noble Lord, if I understood him rightly, was praising the civilian work that that Establishment does. My Lords, I see no difference between the Royal Aircraft Establishment and the proposals which are in this Bill about the A.W.R.E. I assure him, if such assurance is necessary, once again that the civilian side of the A.W.R.E. at Aldermaston will go on in exactly the same measure as it has done in the past, with the co-operation of the Ministry of Defence. Does the noble Lord wish to interrupt?
LORD WYNNE-JONES: I thank the noble Lord. My point was that the A.W.R.E. used to be entirely a military establishment, and since the last war it has moved more towards civilian work. This, I think, is a very good thing and I can only hope that under the noble Lord's direction the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment will also move in the same direction.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I do not know that it will move in the same direction, because 20 per cent. of the work done there is already civilian work, and I should not like to see any decrease in the proportion of the work done for the Ministry of Defence when such work needs to be done. But, as I have told the noble Lord, I have every intention of seeing that the civilian work goes on in exactly the same measure as in the past.
I forgot to say earlier to the noble Lord that there is no intention of trying to stifle discussion on this Bill. I was merely trying to congratulate the Government, and in particular myself, on having honoured a pledge to bring in a Bill at the start of a Session. However, having sat in this House for many years now, I am not so foolish as to suppose that a remark of that kind would stifle any kind of discussion that your Lordships might wish to have.
The noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, asked me two other questions: first of all, whether the unions were satisfied. I think I answered that point in my reply to the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom. There have been some difficult negotiations, but I think that they are pretty well all right now. I can assure him that the safety arrangements will be exactly the same and that we shall have the same call on all these safety arrangements as we have now. I think I answered just now the point raised by the noble Lord. Lord Gladwyn; I do not think I need to "come cleaner". I have told him why I wanted the A.W.R.E. to become part of the Ministry of Defence: because it seemed to me straightforward and logical. There was nothing wicked or underhand about it, and I hope he will feel that—
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I was not suggesting that for a moment. All I was saying was that I understood from

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the noble Lord's speech that at the moment he had complete control of this weapons group. Therefore, if he had complete control at present as regards production and so on, what was the real necessity for transferring it? Really, I only asked a question.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, the reason is because I do not manage the group. It is managed by the Atomic Energy Authority. All I want to do is to manage it, because I spend the money, and it is spent largely on defence equipment. This is the whole purpose of the Bill.
My Lords, I said at the outset that I hoped the Bill would have the unqualified support of your Lordships. Of the noble Lords who have spoken, none gave it unqualified support, but perhaps I may take it that on the whole your Lordships, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, accept the principle of the Bill; and no doubt we can debate during the Committee stage some of the other points that have been raised by your Lordships this afternoon.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

SUPPLY OF GOODS (IMPLIEDTERMS) BILL [H.L.]
4.36 p.m.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD DRUMALBYN): My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Limerick. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The Bill is the first of a number of measures to help the consumer that the Government will be bringing before Parliament this Session, and I hope that your Lordships will be pleased, as I am, that it is being first introduced into this House. It should have fallen to my noble friend Lord Limerick to introduce it as it lies in his sphere of responsibility, but as he is at present representing Her Majesty's Government on a mission abroad, he has asked me to introduce it for him. I do so with pleasure, as I have for some years advocated the implementation of the substance of the recommendations in this regard of the Molony Committee on Consumer Protection.
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I must confess that I am a little daunted by the large array of lawyers on the list of speakers to-day. I feel rather as if I were in a den almost entirely occupied by legal lions, and the only exception, the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, is identified with the protection of the consumer. As one who is likely to be consumed in this particular debate, all I can say is that I rely upon her mercy, and I hope that the legal luminaries will also temper justice with mercy if they find that my speech deserves it.
One of the tasks that one has to perform in a debate of this kind is to try to make a Bill comprehensible to both legal and lay Members. I think, however, that the phraseology is sufficiently well known to your Lordships for me not to have to define my terms as I go along. The Bill is concerned mainly with two things; first, with those provisions of the Sale of Goods Act 1893 which set out the rights of buyers of goods; and second, and more important, with preventing the circumvention of those rights that the Act at present allows. The Sale of Goods Act provides in Sections 12 to 15 that certain terms shall be taken as implied in all contracts for the sale of goods. These terms are either "conditions", breach of which entitles the injured party to treat the contract as rescinded, or "warranties", breach of which entitles the injured party to claim damages for any loss that he has incurred. The terms cover four aspects. As to title, there is an implied condition that the seller has a right to sell and implied warranties that the goods are free from any undeclared encumbrance and that the buyer will have quiet possession. In sales by sample, there are implied conditions that the bulk shall correspond with the sample in quality; that the buyer shall have a reasonable opportunity of comparing bulk with sample; and that the goods shall be free from any defect not apparent from the sample. On a sale by description there are implied conditions that the goods correspond with the description and are generally of merchantable quality. And finally, if the buyer makes known a particular purpose for which the goods are required, there is generally an implied condition that the goods supplied will be reasonably fit for that purpose.
These rights, my Lords, are plainly very valuable to buyers. For many years,

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however, there has been concern that they have too often been whittled away or denied almost entirely by the operation in contracts of sale of exclusion clauses permitted under Section 55 of the 1893 Act. At one time (although I believe this is much less prevalent than it was) it became almost impossible to buy a new car without signing away these rights in the process. Many people buying electrical appliances have signed and returned the so-called "manufacturer's guarantee" and later been led to believe that by so doing they have excluded or limited their rights under the Sale of Goods Act. The buyer's rights lie in his contract with the seller and cannot normally be excluded by the manufacturer's guarantee. However, there has been much confusion in this area in the past and the Bill will clear it up.
The matter was first considered by the Committee on Consumer Protection under the Chairmanship of Sir Joseph Molony, Q.C. Although they were satisfied that the Sale of Goods Act provided a satisfactory framework of protection for the consumer, they drew attention to the favourable position which traders enjoy by virtue of Section 55 of the 1893 Act. It was noted that except where, through oversight or design, traders omitted to exclude their liability under Sections 12 to 15 of the Act, they were,
"under no obligation to sell goods which conform to any particular standard of quality or performance."
The Committee commented:
"We feel compelled to view the practice as a general threat to consumer interests, in the sense that heavy and irrevocable loss may fall on the consumer who is unlucky enough to get a defective article."
In their Report, published in 1963, the Committee recommended not only improvements from the consumer point of view in certain of the conditions implied in a sale of goods, to which I shall come in a minute, but also that in general it should not he possible for the implied terms to which I have referred to be excluded in a consumer sale.
The Committee's recommendations clearly had implications beyond the field of consumer policy. The Sale of Goods Act of course covers all contracts relating to the sale of goods, not merely those concerned with consumer sales; but the Committee's terms of reference were not
844
wide enough to embrace these. The whole subject was therefore referred in 1966 to the Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission for study, together with the questions of exclusion of liability for negligence and the use of exclusion clauses in contracts for the sale of services. The Commissions' studies on the last two of these are continuing; but they published their First Report on Exemption Clauses in Contracts in September, 1969. In it they reviewed the rights afforded to buyers by Sections 12 to 15 of the Sale of Goods Act and considered whether, and in what circumstances, it should be possible to exclude them. They recommended draft clauses to amend the relevant sections of the Act; these draft clauses form the basis of the present Bill.
On the main issue, the Law Commissions unanimously endorsed the view of the Molony Committee that sellers to private purchasers should not be allowed to exclude or limit the protective provisions of the Act. These they regarded as a basic code of fair dealing which should be seen unequivocally to apply to all consumer sales. The Commissions also agreed that the ban on exclusion clauses should extend beyond sales to private purchasers. They considered that the implied conditions and warranties relating to title should not be excluded in business sales. They were, however, equally divided as to the manner in which any further extension of protection of business purchasers should be achieved and how far it should go.
Their Report therefore put forward alternative recommendations. The first proposed that the bar on exemption clauses should cover the sale of consumer goods to business purchasers except where the buyer could be said to be in the business of dealing in, or with, the goods. This was intended to protect, say, a professional man buying a car for use in connection with his practice when he is usually in no stronger bargaining position than an ordinary consumer. It would, however, have left other business dealings to be settled by the buyer and seller on whatever basis suited them. The second alternative proposed the protection of all business buyers (including retailers upon whom their suppliers might have imposed exemption clauses) by enabling the courts to strike out any

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exclusion or limitation of liability if in all the circumstances to rely on it would be unfair. For reasons which I shall explain, it is this second alternative which has been adopted in the Bill—to which, after that brief outline of the history, I now turn. Before doing so, however, I should like once again to express our indebtedness to Sir Joseph Molony and his Committee, and also to the Law Commissions.
In line with the recommendations of the Law Commissions, the primary aims of the Bill are: first, to restate and bring up to date the conditions and warranties implied by the 1893 Act; second, to make void exclusion clauses in consumer sales; third, in business sales to make void exclusion of the implied conditions and warranties relating to title; and fourth, to regulate the exclusion in business sales of the other conditions and warranties implied in the Act. The Law Commissions' comprehensive examination of these matters, as set out in their First Report, related only to the appropriate sections of the Sale of Goods Act. We have thought it right to go beyond this and extend the scope of the Bill to sales involving hire purchase, to conditional sales, and to the exchange of trading stamps for goods. We believe that the same rights should be accorded to a buyer, whether he buys for cash or on credit and, in the case of a consumer, whether he acquires goods by purchase or by the exchange of trading stamps. Those pants of the Bill which deal with hire-purchase and trading stamps bring these forms of trading as far as possible into line with the sale of goods.
Against this general background it might be helpful to mention some particular points on the detailed provisions of the Bill. The first three clauses repeal and re-enact Sections 12 to 14 of the Sale of Goods Act. Clause 1 of the Bill makes no substantial changes to Section 12 of the Act, which deals with implied conditions and warranties as to title. The intention is that these rights should not be excludable in any sale, but it is necessary to provide for sales of limited title; for example, cases where the seller is unsure of his title, as he might be if he received the goods as a gift and received no warranty as to title. This provision is made in Clause 1(2). Section 13 of the Sale of Goods Act provides mainly that in a
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sale by description there is an implied condition that the goods shall correspond with the description. This is not altered, but Clause 2 adds a subsection to take account of the recent developments of self service where a buyer chooses goods for himself without actually speaking to the seller. The mere fact that no words are spoken is not to prevent the sale from being a sale by description. It is sufficient if the description is on or alongside the goods.
Clause 3 of the Bill restates the implied conditions and warranties concerned with merchantable quality and fitness for purpose at present set out in Section 14 of the Act. It provides, as both the Molony Committee and the Law Commissions recommend, that in any contract of sale where the seller sells in the course of business there shall be an implied condition that the goods supplied shall be of merchantable quality. This will no longer depend on the sale being "by description" and on the seller being a dealer in goods of the kind involved in the sale. The exceptions will be those dictated by common sense, such as defects specifically drawn to the buyer's attention before a sale, or defects which a buyer who examined the goods before buying ought to have seen. Further, under the existing provisions the condition as to merchantable quality is not implied in any sale by a private person, whether through an agent or otherwise. The Commissions found this unsatisfactory. They believed that a buyer purchasing goods otherwise than direct from the owner would frequently be unaware of the status of the owner. So Clause 3 now provides as the Commissions recommended that the condition shall be implied in sales by agents, except in cases where it is made clear that the sale is on behalf of a private person. The concept of "merchantable quality" is given, for the first time I believe, a statutory definition in Clause 7 of the Bill.
I now come to the nub of the Bill, which is Clause 4. What Clause 4 does is to leave Section 55 of the Sale of Goods Act as it is, but then to add substantially to it in such a way as to limit very severely the present freedom to exclude by contract the implied conditions. Thus the new subsection (3) provides that no exclusion in any sales of the implied

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terms as to title, freedom from encumbrance and quiet possession is to be allowed. Subsection (4) relates to consumer sales. It gives effect to the joint unanimous view of the Molony Committee and the Law Commissions that in consumer sales the clause excluding other implied conditions and warranties in the Sale of Goods Act should be void.
The definition of a "consumer sale" in subsection (8) is important. "Consumer sale" means any sale of goods by a seller in the course of business where the goods are of a type ordinarily bought for private use or consumption and are sold to a person who does not buy or hold himself out as buying them in the course of business. But sales by auction and by competitive tender are excluded. The Law Commissions were divided on whether sales by auction should be subject to any general ban on exclusion clauses. Auction sales have special features which justify different treatment from normal consumer sales. Like sales of goods by competitive tender, they are generally of a more speculative nature than ordinary sales and are recognised as a legitimate means of selling goods whose quality cannot be guaranteed. We have therefore thought it right to exclude both of them from the definition of "consumer sale".
There remains the question of what should be done about exclusion in business sales of implied terms other than those relating to title. This was of course outside the Molony Committee's terms of reference, and the Law Commissions, although agreed that there was a need to protect certain purchasers of goods buying otherwise than for private use and consumption, were equally divided as to how this should be done. Some considered that it would be sufficient to define "consumer sale" widely enough to include sales to those business buyers who seldom buy the goods in question and therefore may be no better able to judge quality than a private consumer. An example of this might arise in a sale of farm machinery to a small farmer. This solution would still allow exclusion clauses in the great majority of business contracts. The trouble is that, with exclusion clauses barred in consumer sales, the proposal could have the effect of leaving retailers to bear an
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intolerably heavy burden. They would be unable to exclude their liability to their own customers in the terms implied in Sections 12 to 15 of the Sale of Goods Act and they would also be unable to pass that liability back to the wholesaler or manufacturer if their contracts with their suppliers contained an exclusion clause. After wide consultation, we have concluded that this burden should not fall wholly on them.
Since the Commissions reported, we have been considering other ways of dealing with this problem and have consulted further with the various commercial and consumer interests concerned. We have come to the conclusion that the best course would be to adopt the proposal of the other half of the Law Commissioners that exclusion clauses in business sales should be allowed but should be subject to a test of reasonableness. Despite their difference of view on this issue, the Law Commissions were unanimous in their view that if there were to be any general control on business sales it should take the form of a reasonableness test. The Bill therefore provides that any clause excluding the implied terms of Sections 13 to 15 in non-consumer sales shall not be enforceable if the buyer can show that it would not be fair and reasonable to allow reliance on the exclusion. Such a provision seems to strike the most equitable balance between preventing the imposition of onerous conditions by strong sellers on weak buyers in business sales while preserving the freedom of the strong to deal with each other on whatever terms they choose.
The Law Commissions agreed that if exclusion clauses in business sales were to be subject to a test of reasonableness, the degree of uncertainty in such a test could be reduced if the courts were to apply certain guiding principles; and they set out a number of such principles—seven, I think—in their Report to which they envisaged the courts would have regard in considering individual cases. While we agree entirely with the Commissions that guide-lines should be provided, we believe it would be better for guide-lines to be set out in the Bill itself. This is done in subsection (6). In our view, those seeking to determine their rights and responsibilities should

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so far as possible be able to do this by reference to the Bill itself. Clause 4(2) of the Bill adds a subsection (6) to Section 55 of the 1893 Act setting out guidelines which we believe take account of those factors which the Law Commissions considered should guide the courts in such cases. No doubt this is something noble Lords will wish to examine in Committee. Clause 5 implements those recommendations of the Law Commissions concerned with the conflict of laws. Subsection (1) of the clause is intended to prevent attempts to get round the provisions of the Sale of Goods Act by making contracts which would normally be subject to United Kingdom law subject to the law of some other country. Subsection (2) stops up another escape route which might be offered by the Uniform Laws on International Sales Act 1967. So far as genuine international sales are concerned, the Law Commissions accepted that it would be undesirable to extend the proposed control to such sales, since to do so could place United Kingdom exporters at a disadvantage compared with their foreign competitors. Clause 6 of the Bill therefore allows exclusion clauses to be used freely in international sales.
Clauses 8 to 15 of the Bill re-enact provisions relating to implied terms in hire-purchase and conditional sale agreements. At present, hirers under hire-purchase agreements and buyers under conditional sale agreements enjoy the protection provided by the Hire-Purchase Act 1965. So far as implied conditions and warranties are concerned, in contrast to the provisions of the 1893 Sale of Goods Act, the parties cannot contract out of them. This means that hire-purchasers and conditional sale buyers are at present better protected than persons who buy for cash. They also get more protection than persons who buy on credit by means of credit sale. But generally this protection is less than would be provided to cash purchasers under this Bill. It seems to us that the only sensible thing to do is to give exactly the same protection so far as exclusion is concerned, no matter whether purchase is being made for cash, credit, conditional sale or hire-purchase.
Another anomaly at present is that hire-purchasers who are bodies corporate
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or hire-purchasers buying an article costing more than £2,000 do not get the protection against exclusion given by the present hire-purchase legislation. Here, too, it seems to us that the same principle should apply: that, so far as implied conditions and warranties are concerned, the same protections should exist in cash sale, credit sale, conditional sale or hire-purchase. Thus, the Bill also corrects this anomaly by giving the same protection to such hire-purchasers as is given to cash purchasers. Similarly it is intended to align so far as possible the warranties to be implied on redemption of trading stamps for goods. The Trading Stamps Act 1964 already implies certain warranties as to title and merchantable quality. But these can be excluded. Clause 16 of the Bill now brings those warranties into line with similar terms to be implied in the sale of goods and bars any attempt to exclude them.
My Lords, complicated as all this may seem, in essence what the Bill proposes to do is very simple: to protect the weak while allowing those who do not need protection to deal with each other on whatever terms they choose. It is common ground that additional protection for the consumer in respect of implied conditions and warranties has long been needed. But we do feel that we ought not to leave the small retailer and the small businessman without any protection, and that some regulation of the use of exclusion clauses in business sales is essential. There are some matters in this Bill which may well give rise to discussion in Committee, especially as the Law Commissions themselves were not fully agreed upon their recommendations about them. But, from the point of view of the consumer particularly, I believe that this Bill will be greatly welcomed as a notable step forward in the legal protection afforded to the consumer. I commend the Bill to your Lordships and I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
4.59 p.m.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, for introducing this Bill into the House and for his very clear explanation of a matter which could have been

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much more complicated. As the noble Lord has said, the Bill is the first for consumer protection, and I give him an unqualified commendation for being fortunate enough to introduce it into your Lordships' House. I hope that this Bill will be the forerunner of many. I feel that perhaps I should take back my harsh words when I said that the lines in the gracious Speech which related to consumer protection would not be carried out; I am very happy to eat my words.
In the realm of consumer protection, one of the most important Acts on the Statute Book has always been the Sale of Goods Act 1893. In my role as adviser to the consumer this has been literally a bible, and since we still work under the philosophy of caveat emptor we have constantly had to refer back to this Act. As your Lordships know, it makes the shopkeeper liable for the quality of the goods he sells but hitherto has allowed a contracting-out agreement. At present, as we all know, a customer often signs a manufacturer's guarantee which removes his—the customer's—rights under the Sale of Goods Act and may actually offer him less protection than he would have had if he had not signed. As the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has said, the Molony Committee recommended a change in this; and, of course, consumer organisations and women's organisations have for many years been urging an amendment along these lines. So we were very happy when, in 1966, the Law Commissioners started to study this and recommended in their Final Report that manufacturers' guarantees which did not give proper protection should be banned.
Here I would echo the tribute paid by the noble Lord to the work of the Law Commissioners: I hope that they will be used far more in the future, particularly for drafting Bills of this kind. So far as I can see, this Bill reproduces largely the draft clauses in the Law Commission's Report and is basically a lawyers' Bill. I think this is highlighted by the star-studded list of legal minds who are going to participate in this debate. Like the noble Lord, I felt that perhaps I should not be speaking at all. I would only say that I have studied this subject for many years and on behalf of the consumers I welcome the Bill.
I am glad to know that the discussion on the question of services in relation
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to the exclusion clauses is continuing because it seems to me that this is an area in which the shopper spends a great deal of money; in travel, laundries, removals—a whole host of services. Here we do not want unreasonably to limit the trader's liability to other parties in the contract. Although the Bill goes a long way to get rid of guarantees which restrict buyers' ordinary rights, I think there are some other restrictive clauses that we shall have to think about. I could not quite decide whether the conditions applicable to the retention of deposits were covered.
Then there is the date of delivery; and disclaimers about the responsibility of agents. I was particularly interested in the explanation given by the noble Lord on the clause in connection with business suppliers, because literally within the last few days I have been given a classic case of a small garage owned by probably one of the last garage proprietors giving this kind of service. This is the history of a gearbox which was fitted in a car and which literally fell apart within two months of supply. This small garage has been trying to get either the supplier or the agent to accept responsiblity for this, but in the final resort the small garage proprietor appears to be left with the question of having not only to replace the gearbox but to fit a new one completely free of charge; and through the whole jungle of guarantees and warranties he is unable to find out whose is the responsibility. I would add that the car is under the original twelve months' guarantee. So I am hoping very much that this clause will in some way enable a case of this kind to find a final answer.
I understand that the Working Party of the Law Commission considered the special difficulties in striking out exclusion clauses in service industry contracts. I recognise that there are special difficulties, but I hope that their deliberations will finally bring something to your Lordships' House in the form of further legislation. In general, this Bill appears to be a very fair rendition of the work of the Law Commissioners and it shows progress in consumer protection. It is of course subject to the same defect as all consumer legislation in that the individual consumer must finally use the law. I am one of those who hold the view that some agency should be empowered

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to take up and process individual complaints; that a country-wide pre-shopping and post-shopping advice service must be provided, and that the question of setting up a small claims court must be much more closely investigated. These are general criticisms of consumer advice provision which are by no means met by the appointment of a new Minister for Consumer Affairs, although naturally that is very welcome. Nor indeed is it met by amending existing legislation, excellent as this is. Nevertheless I give this Bill a hearty welcome and I wish it a fair passage through your Lordships' House.
Before I conclude, may I apologise if I do not remain throughout the whole of the discussion. I think this is probably the first time I have had to say this in all the years I have been in your Lordships' House, but I have an opportunity to go to the Tate Gallery, and even my work on behalf of the consumers must, on this occasion, take second place. My Lords, I wish the Bill well.
5.6 p.m.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I too wish the Bill well. If we are searching for the reasons why we now find ourselves frowning upon exemption clauses in contracts of sale we have to realise that, first of all, the law of contract as it applies to the sale of goods grew up at a time when in all cases there was some sort of equality of bargaining power between the buyer and the seller; and secondly, that that happy state of affairs has fairly recently been largely overtaken by events. Within the last 100 years if you wanted to buy, for instance, a carriage, there were coachbuilders in every town and in some of the larger villages, and if your coach-builder sought to impose upon you conditions of sale which you thought were unfair you had no difficulty in finding another coachbuilder. Of course, this was well known, so no coachbuilder would put himself in the foolish position of attempting to impose unfair terms upon his customers. If we take an industry like boat building to-day, I suppose much the same situation obtains. There are no doubt some giants in this industry, but I believe there are many small boatbuilders in the country to-day, and I do not believe that anybody seek-
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ing to buy a small boat would have any difficulty in finding a boatbuildcr to do business with him without in any way seeking to impose unfair terms upon him.
I do not think that the case against exemption clauses can be better stated than it was in the Report of the Molony Committee, to which the Minister paid tribute in his speech. That Report says at paragraph 435:
"The overriding argument in favour of prohibiting ' contracting-out ' is that is enables well-organised commerce consistently to impose unfair terms on the consumer and to deny him what the law means him to have. This benefit is obtained without the consumer knowing how he is being treated. If a particular consumer is alive to the position he will find it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to avoid submitting to the terms of business universally adopted. Because the percipient customer is in a small minority the trades concerned can afford to refuse to modify their usual terms at his behest. He possesses no bargaining power of sufficient weight to compel. This is the essence of the case for intervention in support of the consuming public. We endorse the soundness of the case and accept the need to ban contracting-out'."
In his speech the Minister referred, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, to bogus guarantees, and I wondered whether in this connection we might not avail ourselves of the recent precedent of the health warnings which are printed on cigarette packets, and require that every guarantee which takes away legal rights might be required to print in bold type at the very top words such as: "This guarantee limits your legal rights". However, I do not suppose we can do that in this Bill.
The Bill is, of course, riddled with technicalities and I find it difficult to make a Second Reading speech without descending into what are a series of Committee points. I wish to raise what one might call a borderline case in the context of being a Committee matter, so I will mention it briefly. There is an attempt in Clause 2 to deal with self-service buying and selling. The Minister, when commenting on this, referred to the element of "no words being spoken" as being one of the elements of a self-service sale. In Clause 2 there is no reference to this element. A self-service sale is defined in Clause 2 as happening when goods
"being exposed for sale … are selected by the buyer."

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There are two elements there. Being exposed for sale is one, but I do not think it helps us very much because in every shop, whether or not it is self-service, goods are exposed for sale. As for the second element, being selected by the buyer, here again we are not helped greatly. Suppose one goes into an ordinary non-self-service, old-fashioned green-grocery shop and says, "I would like a melon, please". The shopkeeper says, "Which one would you like?" and one replies, "I would like that large yellow one on the top of the pile"—that surely satisfies the description "selected by the buyer."
If we mean self-service—and in this clause we do—why do not we say "self-service", which seems a perfectly respectable, sensible and well recognised expression? I of course agree that the Statutes should be hesitant to pick up new expressions whenever they arise. Some new expressions are here to-day and gone tomorrow, like the top twenty tunes. I imagine, however, that "self-service" is an expression which has come to stay. As the Statutes pride themselves on calling a spade a spade, could not we in this Bill call self-service "self-service?" I appreciate that even this is perhaps a Committee point. I shall not, therefore, descend further into making a string of Committee points. With a few minor Amendments, which I hope we shall be able to introduce in Committee, I warmly support the Bill.
5.13 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, I greatly welcome this Bill. It is really an example of the law having to be altered because of changing economic conditions. As the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, indicated, our law used to say, "We must uphold freedom of contract. It is a free country. Nobody who does not want to do so is obliged to enter into a contract or agree to any terms other than those to which he chooses to agree." No doubt at one time that was so and if one took a lease on a house, the landlord having proposed a draft lease, one's solicitor went through it, perhaps made a few suggested amendments in red ink, sent it back, the landlord then sought to compromise in green ink and the lessee's solicitor said, "If you agree to this one
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further change, in yellow ink, we are ad idem." I think that the next colour to be used was purple. Nowadays, if one wants to take a house on a housing estate the owner of the estate says," I do not make any changes in my standard lease. This is my standard lease and I am sticking to it. If you want a house you must accept it. "It is no good saying to the Gas Board," I like your gas, but I do not like your standard terms of contract "because the Board will simply reply, "Sorry, chum, these are the only terms on which our gas is supplied."
Then there were the so-called guarantees imposed by the big man on the small man, the main object of which was simply to include the little clause at the end which said, This warranty is given in substitution for any warranty whether by Statute or otherwise ", and which simply took away the legal rights which the consumer would otherwise have had. While all this is an old problem, the right solution was never certain with, for example, proposals that there should be a public board which should go through any monopoly which had stiff terms of contract, as had been done with the railways.
We are grateful to both Law Commissions for this Report. It is one which I think must take the price for the degree of consultation. We are of course used to the Law Commission being much more fully consultative of all the interests involved than are either the Lord Chancellor's Law Reform Committee or the Home Secretary's Criminal Law Revision Committee. Here they really seem to have excelled themselves because they started off by appointing a Working Party which I see included five Commissioners from both England and Scotland, four representatives of the Board of Trade, one from the Scottish Office, one from the Treasury Procurement Policy Committee, two from the Bar Council, one from the Faculty of Advocates, two from the Law Society, one from the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, The Law Society of Scotland, the C.B.I., and three from the Consumer Council.
They sat and received evidence from all sorts of interested bodies, and it was only when all that evidence had been received and considered that the Law Commissioners got out their usual working paper, again with their provisional

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proposals, and these were circulated to the innumerable bodies and individuals specified in Appendix C. We are therefore grateful to them for all that. There is only one point I wish to raise in this context. As the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, so lucidly explained to us, among the central proposals it is said that if there are these objectionable exclusion clauses in consumer sales—the ordinary person buying something for his own use—they should be declared void, but in the case of non-consumer sales, concerning traders, one of whom may be very big and the other very small, while they should not be void a judge should be able to say, "In all the circumstances of this case it would not be reasonable or fair that the big man should be able to rely on this term."
The point I wish to raise is about the criteria or, as the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, called them, the guidelines. The Report is quite clear about this in paragraph 113, where it points out:
"… the courts would have regard in applying the test to any of the following elements of or surrounding the transaction, in so far as they are relevant in the instant case:

(a) the bargaining position of the buyer, relative to the seller and to other sources of supply at the time of the contract;

(b) whether the provision excluding or limiting liability is clear in its wording and scope of operation;

(c) whether the steps taken to bring the provision to the attention of the buyer were reasonable in all the circumstances, including any customs of the trade and any previous course of dealing;

(d) whether the buyer was offered and accepted a material benefit in consideration of agreeing to the provision;

(e) where the provision excludes or restricts liability unless certain conditions are complied with (for example, claiming within a prescribed time), whether it was, in the events that have occurred, reasonably practicable to comply with those conditions;

(f) whether the goods are manufactured, processed or adapted to the special order of the buyer;

(g) the ultimate incidence of risk and liability arising by reason of defects in the goods.

Your Lordships may think that those are seven very sensible criteria for the judges to take into account. I was at first rather puzzled by the fact that although there are draft clauses attached to the Report, these criteria were not set out in the draft clause. Then I discovered from a footnote to that paragraph that the reason appears to be that there is a draft
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clause attached to the Report in Clause 8(4), which states:
"In ascertaining the meaning of any enactment as amended by this Act regard may be had to a report of the Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission recommending that that enactment be amended.
In effect, the judges will be able to read the Report where they will see these things set out. This subsection the Government have not accepted and I think I understand why. I am afraid that I have said several times in this House that it is absolutely ridiculous that when an Act of Parliament is passed arising out of the Report of a Royal Commission, the Law Commission, or a departmental committee, the judges, when construing the Act, cannot look at it. That they cannot examine and see what the Report says is the mischief to be cured, or what the proposals are based on, or why they chose this form of words rather than that form of words, has always seemed to me to be an absolute nonsense. Of course the judges, or certainly some of them, do read the Reports in their private rooms; indeed, I have seen them sometimes having them on the bench in front of them, but they are not allowed to admit it. As I say, I think that is nonsense.
Some of your Lordships may remember that in a recent Bill in the lifetime of the last Government, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, moved a clause to this effect, that "judges in construing this Act can look at the Report on which it was based." Your Lordships accepted that, but in the other place this ran into great trouble and it was said to be a monstrous interference with the supremacy of Parliament—or something of that sort—and in view of the opinions expressed I can well understand the Government not putting that draft clause into the Bill.
If they are not going to do that, and the judges cannot look at the Report, then I should have thought that these seven criteria should be in the Bill. What in fact has happened is not that the Bill leaves the matter entirely to the judges without any guidelines at all, but for some reason which I have not followed—and it may be my mistake which no doubt the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will explain when he comes to reply—what they seem to have done is to have picked out two of the seven

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criteria mentioned in the Report, reworded them (though not I think advantageously) and then ignored the others. I quite agree that as drafted in the Bill the only two things they refer to here in Clause 4(6) are:
"(a) whether the buyer knew or ought reasonably to have known of the extent of the term;"
and—
"(b) whether in buying goods of the description in question the buyer was able to choose whether to buy the goods (from the seller or any other person) under a contract without that term or with a term less unfavourable to himself."
But they do not prevent a judge from taking something else into account because the opening words of the subsection are:
"In determining for the purposes of subsection (5) above whether or not reliance on any such term would be fair or reasonable regard shall be had to all the circumstances of the case and in particular to the following matters—"
then these two are mentioned.
It may well be said that it only says "in particular to the following matters" and that will not prevent a judge from looking at something else. But I am apprehensive that if judges are told "these are really the two things to which you ought to pay attention" then they will think that if they have paid attention to those two things they will have done their job. Some of the other five criteria I should have thought were so obviously desirable as matters to be taken into account. One to which I have referred is that if there is, for example, a time provision and you have to put in a claim within a certain period, if the big man is to rely on this condition is it not proper for a judge to say that it would not be fair or reasonable because the small man was in hospital having had an accident and he could not fill up the form in time. What is the objection, therefore, to putting the seven criteria, as they appear in the Joint Report, into the Bill? I should have thought that was what was really required. I personally would sooner have no criteria at all than have the two emasculated ones which at present appear in the Bill.
That is the only point I wish to raise. I very much welcome the Bill. I hope that we give it a Second Reading, and that it will soon become part of our law.
5.25 p.m.
LORD DENNING: My Lords, this has been said to be a lawyer's Bill. Maybe it is. But it affects, I should have thought, more than half of the contracts that all the people in this country make every day throughout the year: contracts of sale; contracts of conditional sale; and contracts of hire purchase. It has been my lot at the Bar and on the Bench to have to consider the operation of these exemption clauses, of the small print and of how we can get out of them. This Bill, to my mind, effects a most important revolutionary reform in the law of contract.
In 1893 there was a codifying Statute, the Sale of Goods Act 1893, which simply built on all the hundreds of precedents over hundreds of years and put them in the form of a code. It did not attempt to reform the law. The old Roman law said caveat emptor—the buyer takes his chance. The common lawyers and the Act in 1893 qualified that and said, "If the seller sells and does not exclude his liability, he warrants; he agrees that the goods are reasonably fit for the purpose for which they are sold and are merchantable". There was the qualification permitted by the common law—the seller could exclude his liability. Cases have shown that, however unreasonable it was, however small the print and however unequal the bargaining power, the seller could exempt himself from liability. May I tell your Lorships—because it was a case in which I was concerned and it is a leading case now—that in 1934, when I was at the Bar, there was the case of L'Estrange v. Graucob. It is almost a high watermark of the law as it has been.
It was a case where a lady who kept a small shop in North Wales was approached by a salesman who sold to her an automatic cigarette machine. The cost was payable by instalments. He produced to her a long brown form, with the small print at the bottom, and asked her to "sign here": and she did. The machine was delivered. It would not work, and she told them so. They sent an attendant three times, but he could not make it work, so she said, "I am not paying any more of those instalments". The company took her to the county court. When she said that the machine did not work, they said, "Look at the

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form". If she had read the form she would have seen the words:
"Any condition or warranty express or implied by statute or by common law is hereby excluded."
The county court judge tried to get around it, but found in favour of the company. I was at the Bar and appeared for the company in the Court of Appeal. In those days I was not concerned with whether it was right or wrong; I was concerned to win the case if I could. I said, "Well, she signed it. In the absence of fraud or misrepresentation she is bound". And the Court of Appeal said, "Yes, she is bound". So we won that case, most unrighteously. The lady had to pay for the machine which would not work. The reporters did not report the case at once; perhaps they did not like it. But my company were cleverer; they got the report privately printed, and I went round the county courts of England, as a junior member of the Bar, winning case after case, most unrighteously, for that company.
It was a little different when I got on to the Bench; I viewed things a little differently then. Leading up to that, I remember one occasion when we went to Northern Ireland with the car. Corning back we were given a sailing ticket which I was told to sign. I signed, and on looking at it I saw on the back in small print that the company would not be liable for any acts neglect or default or wilful misconduct by anyone whatsoever. They could have thrown the car into the sea and done what they liked. Then we had a case in the Court of Appeal. A man had bought a car on hire purchase and it was to be delivered to him the next morning. It was delivered very early in the morning without his knowing it and was left outside. When he tried to start it, it would not go. They had to tow it away. When they sued him for the instalments he said: "But it will not work; it will not go". They said: "Look at the clause; there is no implied condition or warranty as to roadworthiness or anything whatsoever".
At that time in the Court of Appeal we managed to raise a doctrine which is called fundamental breach; if the supplier was guilty of a breach which went to the root of the contract he could not rely on these exempting terms. We managed quite well for fifteen or
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twenty years; the Court applied the doctrine that the man could not rely on exemption clauses if guilty of a fundamental breach. But I regret to say that we were later told by your Lordships' House sitting judicially that we were all wrong and that there was no such doctrine in our English law; there was no such doctrine as this fundamental breach; you had to look at the clause to see what it meant. We did our best with that. Time after time we have construed these exemption clauses, as we think strictly, saying that a man is not to get out of his liability unless he expresses it in plain words. We could not always do that. If a man said that he would not be liable for any loss or damage we could deal with it; we could say that it did not exclude his own negligence. But if he put the words, "any loss or damage howsoever caused", we could not get round that. So, making one effort after another, we in the courts have tried to mitigate the evil of these exemption clauses.
Equally with guarantees. Your Lordships will know what these people used to do. If you bought a machine or a motorcar from a dealer, there would be a great red seal with a guarantee, and if you read it you found it said, "We will replace any part found to be defective within 12 months, but otherwise we exclude any condition or warranty expressed or implied by contract or by statute or common law or any wise howsoever". In other words, they sheared it down to practically nothing by calling it a guarantee. We have done what we can to remedy that in the courts, but we have not succeeded.
This Bill applies to sale of goods, hire purchase and the like. It does what the courts could not do but what your Lordships' House can do. It says in regard to consumer sales—that is, sales to the little man who is not protected, who buys or takes on hire purchase, perhaps, a motor bike or something else—that where the supplier puts in such exemption clauses those exemption clauses are void. There is no doubt about it. So the consumer is and will be protected in consumer sales. But then there is the other big branch of what might be called business sales, not consumer sales; for instance, that little case I told you about of the lady in North Wales. She was a

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shopkeeper. That would not be a consumer sale, as I read the definition, but a business sale as between business people, business houses. Often one is in a stronger position than the other. We have seen what some businesses do. You receive a letter with the conditions set out on the back—a whole lot of printed conditions that no-one ever reads—or on a ticket incorporating this, that or the other. In regard to these business sales this Statute—this Bill, as it is now—makes a most important reform which we have never recognised hitherto. The judges, the courts, can consider whether the conditions are reasonable or not, or, rather whether it is reasonable for the seller to be allowed to rely upon them. If it is unreasonable, the courts can disentitle the seller, or whoever it may be, from reliance on that clause.
This principle of reasonableness has never been accepted hitherto. There are vast bodies of opinion which say that it goes against certainty; that you ought to allow people to be certain, to read the words and know what they say. But it now gives the judges the power to shut out the plaintiff if he is unreasonable, and it is, as I suggest, one of the most important reforms in the law. I entirely agree with my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner that the Law Commission have set out the most valuable seven criteria for the courts to adopt in saying whether something is reasonable or not. Whether it is a big man—the great commercial concerns with their commercial contracts and the like—or a small man they can take everything into account to see whether it is reasonable. All guidance that can be given to the courts in that way, I am sure, everyone would welcome.
I would acid this. This does not apply to services, only to sale of goods, hire-purchase and the like. I hope that the time will not be far distant when it can apply to services, like the carriage of goods, where you find all the printed clauses at the back, or to the laundry to be washed, or the like. If, as the next step, the courts can be allowed to consider the reasonableness of those clauses—whether it is reasonable to apply them—that, I venture to think, will be the next important step in the whole of our civil law and the law of contract. But, speaking for myself, I repeat that,
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in my judgment this is the most important reform in our commercial law which has been seen in my time.
5.38 p.m.
LORD LLOYD OF HAMPSTEAD: My Lords, this is a law reform Bill in an unspectacular area, and a relatively non-controversial one; but, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, has pointed out, it is none the less one of very great importance. It illustrates in a striking way the tremendous contribution that can be made and is being made to the reform of our law by the two Law Commissions. Indeed, one feels constrained on this occasion, when happily the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, felt able to make a contribution to this debate, to say once again, as has been said often in this House, how great a debt we owe to him personally as the creator of this invaluable institution. It may be said, possibly, in some criticism of the Bill, that it is a rather unhappy example of the piecemeal way in which our legislation is reformed; and of course what one would like to see ultimately is some kind of consumer law code. On the other hand, I think we shall all agree that Parliamentary time is a very scarce commodity, and that we should seize every opportunity we can to drive forward with these specific proposals that the Law Commissions put before us.
Your Lordships have heard contributions from a number of very eminent lawyers in this House, and towards the I end of this debate there is little that remains for me to say. But I should like to refer to the exclusion clause aspect of this Bill. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, has described to us in his characteristically graphic fashion the struggles that the courts themselves have made to make some sense of our law, based on the principle of caveat emptor—let the buyer beware! Indeed, one may, with respect, pay a tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, himself as being one of the judges who has striven most strenuously to do the maximum degree of justice in this class of case. But, as even he admits, at the end of the day, the Judiciary have rather been defeated by the fundamental in-built principle, so incompatible with the present social and economic situation, of freedom of contract—this idea of

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notional equality of bargaining. Therefore, when even the skill and erudition of such a judge as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, is defeated in this respect, one must recognise that legislation is the only way in which something can be done about it.
The procedure adopted by the Law Commission in this matter, so well brought out in the speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner, of putting out a working paper first, having the fullest possible consultation and then producing a fully reasoned Final Report, obviously points to the most satisfactory way of producing adequate reform in a field such as this. Speaking for myself—and this view seems to be shared by others who have spoken—I feel that the Government have shown wisdom in choosing the opinion of those Commissioners who suggested that there should be some measure of control in regard to non-consumer sales. It is interesting to note that the Commissions were almost equally divided on this matter: in fact the situation was that it was virtually the English Commission against the Scottish Commission, with the exception of one English Commissioner who took the side of the Scottish Commission. I am not revealing any secrets in saying this, because of course it appears in a footnote in the Report itself. Though so frequently, when one is concerned with law reform, speaking as a mere English lawyer, one is forced to the conclusion that the Scottish law has on the whole taken the more rational course, on this occasion I am bound to say that I am glad that the Government have chosen the solution substantially put forward by the English Commission, and expressed an opinion which was shared by the distinguished Chairman of the English Commission himself, Sir Leslie Scarman.
It can be said—and this was one of the arguments adduced against this solution—that if the idea of reasonableness is introduced as a test this introduces a major clement of uncertainty in the law, and will impose great difficulty on the judges, and so forth. I think—and here again one can pray in aid the invaluable view of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning—that this point has been very much exaggerated. Our judges are extremely accustomed to dealing with the
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concept of reasonableness, and in fact Parliament has not infrequently expressly given them this power. For example, under the Rent Restrictions Acts, they have the task of deciding whether or not it is reasonable to make an order for possession.
I do not think it can seriously be suggested that in this sort of case there is so great a measure of uncertainty that one can say that the law is rendered unsatisfactory. I can see that there is an arguable case for saying that one ought to treat consumer sales and non-consumer sales in the same way, and thereby render the law more simple. On the other hand, this can lead to complications such as were pointed out very lucidly by the noble Lord who introduced the Bill, Lord Drumalbyn, when he pointed out some of the difficulties to which this might lead. On the whole, one would accept that a very sensible solution has been proposed to this difficult problem, and one is gratified to see that the Government have grasped this early opportunity of adopting it.
I would only wish to add, as a final word in welcoming this Bill, and recognising that there are compelling reasons why a piecemeal approach should be adopted, that I hope we may look forward to a number of further important instalments in the field of consumer law, particularly now that we have the benefit of a Minister in the Cabinet specifically charged with this function. I should like to take this opportunity of welcoming this development, and particularly the appointment to it of Sir Geoffrey Howe who, of course, has very considerable credentials in the field of law reform. His connection with Justice and such bodies over a long period sufficiently testifies to his law reforming spirit. One may indeed hope that we shall have a series of important measures of this kind. Perhaps the next one will arise out of the Final Report of the Law Commissions, to which we are very much looking forward, on the whole field of exemption clauses in relation to negligence, and (the point that was referred to by several previous speakers) exemption clauses in regard to service and other contracts. We have seen the working paper which the Law Commissions have produced—a very interesting and valuable document—and we can now look forward to their Final

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Report and, we hope, very early legislation. In welcoming this legislation, I should like again to reiterate the hope that it will be only the beginning of a spate of similar and equally significant legislation in this vital field.
5.49 p.m.
LORD JANNER: My Lords, this Bill deserves the very warm welcome which it has received this afternoon, and the Minister is to be congratulated on bringing it forward so early in this Session of Parliament. I would also congratulate him on the very succinct and effective way in which he introduced the Bill this afternoon. We were promised a Bill for last Session, and some of us had begun to wonder whether we were ever going to see it. But here it is at last, and when it comes into force millions of people in all parts of this country will be protected from getting faulty goods in a way which does not happen at present.
We have heard, and quite rightly, that ten years have elapsed since the Molony Committee made a full-blooded recommendation to ban exclusion clauses in contracts for the sale of goods. Ten years is a long time to have to wait for the implementation of a recommendation which hardly anyone has spoken against, and which all right thinking people support. It was only when the Law Commission reinforced the Molony Report's recommendation by their Report of July, 1969, that there were any signs of action in this matter. The Law Commission's Report is in my view—and, I think, that of everybody else—an excellent and painstaking document which demonstrates overwhelmingly what a sensible and skilled body it is. It makes one wonder how our legal system managed for centuries without a Law Commission. I should also like to offer my thanks and congratulations, on behalf of the community as a whole, to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, for having been instrumental in setting this Commission on foot.
The evils of the exclusion clause are well known to those people who have anything to do with consumer affairs, but are unknown to the great mass of people who are affected by them. They come in all sorts of ways, and this Bill seeks to deal with them in only one area; namely,
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sales of goods. We shall have to wait longer—although I hope not for another ten years—to see a ban on exclusion clauses in other contracts. The introduction in this House of a Bill of this nature indicates that the House can serve a very useful purpose when the other place is so heavily overladen with work, where the excuse is so often made—as when leave was given only a year ago for a Bill to be introduced by Greville Janner—that time could not be found for its Second Reading.
I have in mind, in particular, matters such as car parks and holiday brochures, It is sad to find a public corporation—such as the London Transport Executive—indulging in this particular abuse. If one of your Lordships were to park your car at any one of a huge number of London Transport Underground stations—as one might well do out of a public-spirited intention to contribute towards the relief of traffic congestion in central London—you would find that a very distasteful exclusion clause would protect London Transport from almost any calamity which might befall you or your car while in that car park. May I quote the wording of the exclusion clause to which I have referred? It states:
"The motor vehicle whilst upon the premises of the Executive shall be at the entire risk of the owner, and the Executive accept no responsibility in respect of loss or mis-delivery of or damage to motor vehicles, the contents thereof, or accessories thereto, or in respect of any injury to the occupants howsoever or by whomsoever caused or whether occasioned by negligence or otherwise. The Executive do not undertake to supervise vehicles left in the car park."
I regard that as a shocking notice for anyone to publish, and it is quite intolerable when it comes from a public body such as the London Transport Executive.
May I remind your Lordships that Parliament itself, even in very recent years, has blessed the principle of exclusion of responsibility? Section 29 of the Post Office Act 1969 almost entirely frees the Post Office from liability in whatever it does. Thus, if through gross negligence someone's name is left out of a telephone directory, or letters are mis-delivered, the Post Office is not responsible to the citizens for its negligence, even in a way that any respectable business organisation would be in similar circumstances. Owing to a statutory

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immunity which we have permitted to creep on to the Statute Book, the Post Office enjoys the benefit of what is, to all intents and purposes, an exclusion clause. The Bill at present does not apply to any of these services. It deals only, as we know, with exclusion clauses in contracts for the sale of goods. Nevertheless, it is a great advance and will have a good deal to contribute towards better consumer protection in this country.
The clauses of the Bill have been fully explained from both sides of the House. I would, however, refer to important features of some of them. The provision in Clause 2, that a sale of goods shall not be prevented from being a sale by description by reason only that the goods are selected by the buyer when they are exposed for sale and hire, is important. Thus, when a housewife visits a supermarket and selects those articles which she wants, she will not thereby be deprived of the protection given to those who buy goods "by description". Such a purchase will clearly be a "sale by description" after the Bill is passed. The new description of "merchantable quality" in Clause 7(2) is one of the important provisions, as it provides, in effect, that purchases should be free from faults; and Clause 3, which gives to customers the protection that their purchases should be fit for their intended purposes, is a very valuable one.
I regard subsection (4) of Clause 4 as by far the most important provision in this Bill. This introduces for the first time a complete ban on contracting out of the legal protection given to the buyer on a purchase of goods. In the case of a "consumer sale", as defined in Clause 4(8), it will be impossible for the seller of goods craftily to rob the consumer of the protection which the law intends him to have. This will mean that the miserable small print which has been referred to, inserted by some manufacturers and retailers, will no longer be effective. The worst offenders in this field have been the motor trade. This is hardly surprising when one considers that the motor trade also holds pride of place—if that is what one can call it—as the segment of trade whose members have most frequently been
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convicted of offences under the Trade Descriptions Act.
For many years, it was the invariable practice in that trade to require the buyer of a car to sign an order form which effectively took away his Sale of Goods Act rights and provided, as a substitute, the more feeble rights provided by the manufacturers so-called guarantee or warranty. In 1962, the Molony Report stated that at that time the practice of contracting out was "universal" in the motor trade. Things have improved since then. There are some manufacturers who do not insist on their agents and dealers using order forms which take away buyers' rights wholesale. Many garages, however, still do, especially those which belong to the Motor Agents' Association, which promulgates an order form designed to cut down the rights of a purchaser to the bare minimum. It reads thus:
"The seller undertakes that he will ensure that the pre-delivery work specified by the manufacturer or concessionaire is performed and that he will use his best endeavours to obtain for the purchaser from the manufacturer or concessionaire the benefit of any warranty or guarantee given by him to the seller or to the purchaser in respect of the goods and such undertakings are given and accepted instead of and expressly exclude any other guarantee or condition or warranty as to quality or fitness for any purpose."
The position about guarantees, of course, is very confused. Obviously they have some value to the consumer, and most people regard them as being a valuable means of getting faults in purchases put right speedily. No doubt sometimes they are. The trouble is that most people think that the guarantee is the only source of protection. This is quite wrong. It is the buyer's contract of purchase which gives, or should give, the major protection from the legal point of view. The guarantee has tended to obscure that important fact. When this Bill becomes law, the buyer will have those rights against the seller in any event. No small print or device by sharp operators in commerce or industry will succeed in taking away those rights. It is therefore of great importance that these new inalienable rights of the consumer should become very widely known. Those of us who have been in either this House or the other place for a number of years realise that it is not only important to have Acts passed; we must also see to

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it that the general community know what they are all about. I hope that the new Minister for Trade and Consumer Affairs will regard it as part of his responsibility to publicise by every possible means this new protection when it comes into force, because it will not be of much use if people are not aware of its existence.
A massive programme of advertising and education will be needed to get it across to consumers everywhere that in future they are entitled to look to the shop which sold them a product for the correction of any faults. This will remain an important question because we may expect guarantees to soldier on, even when this Bill gives assured protection vis-à-vis the seller. Manufacturers find that issuing guarantees helps business, and so long as that remains the case we may expect to find them floating around. They help consumers, too, but only as a second string. If guarantees are still going to be around for many years to come, it will be particularly important to get over to people the idea of looking to the seller in future for putting right things that have gone wrong.
Apart from cars, people do not often have to sign an order form when they buy something new in a shop. Legally, therefore, it does not often happen that tinder the present system, a buyer's rights get extinguished because as a rule a guarantee from a manufacturer cannot achieve that. It is only a contract with the seller which can have any effect on the buyer's rights against the seller. All the same, one finds cases where guarantees purport to take away rights. Fox example, in the radio, television and hi-fi industry, guarantees have almost invariably put upon the consumer the obligation to pay for labour charges in connection with putting right faults under the guarantee.
For instance, even the Philips organisation, which is a very important organisation, say in their guarantee:
"The costs of labour, packing and carriage are not covered by the Guarantee."
This, of course, is quite unjust. Why should one pay for the labour involved in putting right a fault in a new radio or record player which has just been bought? The labour charges are likely to be very much more than the cost of the faulty part, which is all that the
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guarantee will cover; and, of course, that is quite wrong. Legally, in spite of this clause in the Philips guarantee, the buyer, in my view, has the right to claim from the shop for the labour charges; but in practice this does not happen because of what the guarantee says. The public is bamboozled by the wording of the guarantee into thinking that it does not have redress, when in law it does. So that is another reason why it is essential that a big educating programme should be undertaken to inform the public about the true legal situation when they buy things in shops.
There are other occasions when a purchaser is requested to sign an order form. This can arise in respect of mail orders, and so on. A company called Gemini Engineering, for instance, produce what may be, for all I know, a very good shower unit for installation in people's homes; and they advertise widely in selling their shower units. This company use an exclusion clause which reads as follows:
"All the terms of this Agreement between the Company and the Purchaser are contained in this document and no statement, representation or description, whether made by the Company or its servants or agents on its behalf,"—
it is amazing what some of these people say about these matters—
"whether written or oral, or contained in an advertising literature or other matter issued by or on behalf of the Company, shall form part of this Agreement, or have any effect thereon, or be deemed to be a representation, warranty or condition inducing or forming part thereof".
There is one item I should like to see added to the Bill in Committee which in my view would clear up a somewhat doubtful point of law. It arises in this way. Often, when a member of the public has bought something in a shop and it goes wrong, he or she takes it back to the shop where it was bought and the shop, very properly, replaces it with another article of the same kind. The question is this: is that second article protected legally in the same way as the first? It may well not be. I do not know whether I am mistaken in this; but, of course, we have very eminent legal authorities here who may help. It is argued that it was not, after all, acquired by a sale of goods but by what is in reality an exchange of goods—the exchange of the faulty article for the replacement. As

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I read the Sale of Goods Act 1893, the legal protection for the buyer operates only where there has been a sale of goods, as in the case of the faulty article; that is, to use the words in the Act, where it is acquired through an agreement "at a price". There is no price for the second article, only for the first. Some lawyers argue in various ways that this cannot be a correct view of the law; but there must be, and there obviously is, some doubt. I should like to see an Amendment brought forward when this Bill is in Committee to make sure that a replacement article or substitute is equally covered. Perhaps the Minister would look into that point.
Now the most dramatic effect in practical terms which this Bill will have will be to give the buyer a right to compensation as well as a right to have faults put right. It will arise in this way. If I buy a new car and within a short time it breaks down, I shall be able to take the car back to the garage where I bought it and insist that they put the fault right free of charge. In addition, when this Bill becomes law I shall also be able to insist that the garage provides me with transport for the period during which my car is being repaired. This is how I read it: they must pay for the cost of hiring another car to see me through the time during which I am deprived of the use of my own car. This will make a tremendous difference in practice. For thousands of buyers the greatest bugbear of the existing situation has been the deprivation of the use of the article for the period when it is being repaired. The guarantee has never covered that additional expense, and the result has been that most people have either struggled through without their cars for however long it takes to get the car put right, or, alternatively, have paid out of their own pockets for the hire of another car. This situation will change, and I think it will have a profound effect on the motor trade.
But perhaps the greatest effect of all will be that, in the long run, quality control in the factories will improve. If those responsible for manufacturing and selling goods throughout the country know that there is now a come-back for the consumer, come what may, and that they will have to foot the bill for putting faults right and, in my view, for hiring
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another article, as I indicated a moment ago, they will probably come to realise in the fullness of time that the cheapest thing to do is to take better care to see that fewer faults are there in the first place. This could well be the most significant result of this excellent Bill: and, if it is, we shall all benefit enormously from that result. I congratulate the Minister once more, and I hope that he will take into account what has been said with regard to other abuses and get this Bill on to the Statute Book as speedily as possible. Your Lordships should tell the Government that we are prepared to do the donkey work and get through the first stages of any Bill if it is introduced into this House first, and then the other place will not have so much trouble with it when it gets there.
6.9 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLLBONE): My Lords, I see that my name is down to wind up this debate. I think it may be generally considered (to parody Sir Winston Churchill) that noble Lords have left me comparatively little "up with which to wind". However, a certain number of points emerge. The Bill has, I think it is fair to say, received a general welcome—a welcome which is not the less warm because it has been introduced early in the Session into your Lordships' House rather than in another place. I certainly agree with the last speaker when he said that this process results not merely in saving us some of the agonies of the last Session resulting from the piling of work on to us in July, when another place has processed it, but also enables a general saving of Parliamentary time to take place because we can iron out some of the weaknesses in proposed legislation and thus shorten the labours of the other place as well.
The Bill's scope extends to conditional sales, self-service sales, contracts by way of hire purchase and contracts in which savings stamps are exchanged for goods; which, I suppose, is strictly not sales of goods. No one has criticised any of these extensions of scope and I fancy that they will be generally welcome. The proposed Amendments to Sections 12 to 15 of the Sale of Goods Act have also I think escaped much attention because they are generally welcome.

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The debate has very largely revolved around exclusion clauses, whether or not these are of the type which are generally included in the Bill. These are not really—as I think some perhaps unguarded expressions from noble Lords would lead one to suppose—examples of the principle of caveat emptor. They are, on the contrary, examples of the principle that contract is free; and noble Lords have been disposed to say, and I agree with them, that changes in the relative bargaining power of the parties and, in particular, the power of what I might call "the small print", have combined to effect a certain amount of injustice. The noble and learned Lord, the Master of the Rolls, gave us a graphic and racy account of his misdemeanours both at the Bar and on the Bench; and I am not entirely sure that he was very fair to the law. I believe that one can, in fact, destroy some of these exemption clauses by a close attention to the nature of the defect which is discovered in the service or the goods.
Ever since the noble and learned Lord, Lord Devlin, made a very valuable dictum in the Firestone case to the effect that it is illusory to say we promise to do a thing but are not liable if we do not do it, I think that ingenious members of the Bar have been able to destroy a great number of these clauses. However, I am very glad to know that the Master of the Rolls says—and I agree with him—that it is high time that legislation took place to limit the possibility of these clauses in relation to sale of goods—and, as several noble Lords have pointed out, in the pipeline from the Law Commission there is promise of legislation ultimately covering exclusion clauses in contracts not covered by this particular Bill.
I do not share altogether the implied criticism of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, of other agencies of law reform, whether they be the Law Reform Committee or the Criminal Law Revision Committee or special committees like those dealing with contempt and libel which have been found necessary from time to time. Both Law Commissions necessarily are relatively small bodies and they would lose some of their distinction if they were not. There is plenty of law reform which has to take place through other agencies. I do not regard these
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bodies as poaching on each other's preserves; I regard them, on the other hand, as allies in a worthy cause.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, entered upon an interesting topic which he introduced by way of referring to the guidelines in paragraph 113 of the Law Commission's Report which he contrasted with the rather simpler guidelines contained in the Bill. I am not sure myself that he did it entirely for its own sake; because he was at pains to introduce to the House his view which was on another occasion shared by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, that courts ought to construe Acts of Parliament by reference to the Blue Books which preceded them. I venture to say to the noble and learned Lord that in one respect at least I have the advantage both of him and of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, in that I was for a great number of years in the House of Commons. I very much doubt myself whether, if he and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilberforce, had shared that experience they would be quite so confident that the intentions of Parliament as defined by an Act of Parliament which has gone through the process of Committee in another place can effectively be construed, even if one takes a commonsensical view of the matter and not a technical view of the matter, by reference to the Blue Book which preceded them. I think that that could be most misleading. and I think the other place were perfectly right in showing a certain amount of caution about the noble and learned Lord's well-known doctrine in that respect. Of course, lawyers and judges read Blue Books which have relation to Acts of Parliament which ultimately emerge. The noble and learned Lord, the Master of the Rolls, has more than once used a Blue Book to illustrate the purpose, the underlying mischief as it is called, of a particular Act of Parliament. But to construe particular clauses by reference to the preceding Commission or Committee Report is, I think, a dangerous undertaking and I am glad that on the whole the courts are not able to do it.
The noble and learned Lord did, however, contrast the actual guidelines in the Bill with the actual guidelines in the Law Commission Report. Part of the differ-

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ence must necessarily reside in the fact that whereas the Commission put its guidelines in the Report for reference but not as a matter of strict construction of an Act of Parliament (they did not design it to form part of an Act of Parliament) we have decided, as my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn explained in opening, to translate what was intended as a piece of text book guidance into the actual terms of the Act. Part, at any rate, of the difference between the two sets of guidelines can, I think, be attributed to this fact. Ours are simpler than those suggested by the Law Commission and I think none the less that they may take account of all the important factors.
In the first place, the fairness and reasonableness of an exclusion clause is, under the Bill, to be tested in the light of all the circumstances of the case, just as the Law Commission recommended; but the provisions of the Bill drawing the court's attention to the question
"whether the buyer knew or ought reasonably to have known of the extent of the term"
would we believe, cover the Law Commission's points (b) and (c) on whether the clause was clear in wording and scope and whether reasonable steps were taken to bring the clause to the buyer's attention. The other special point drawn to the attention of the court by the Bill, in contra-distinction to the Report, is
"whether in buying the goods of the description in question the buyer was able to choose whether to buy the goods (from the seller or any other person) under a contract without that term or with a term less unfavourable to himself."
The questions that the court might therefore ask itself are: did the buyer have a genuine alternative? If not, was it because of the unequal bargaining strength of the relative parties? That approach would cover the Commission's guideline (a) but would place less onerous requirements on the buyer to demonstrate that his bargaining strength was less than that of the seller, if indeed it was. It would also take into account guideline (d) whether the buyer was offered and accepted a benefit of compensation for the exclusion of liability and, we believe, also guideline (f) whether the goods were made specially for the buyer himself.
Of the two remaining guidelines laid down by the Commission, guideline (e)
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relates principally to exclusion clauses which limit the time within which claims may be made. I know that that guideline in the Commission's Report has received criticism on the grounds that liability can be considered fairly only in relation to events which were evident or foreseeable at the time when the contract was made. To take account of other and later events would introduce, so it is said, an intolerable degree of uncertainty to the contrary; and we did not think the intention of guideline (g), the remaining one, was at all clear. Obviously, my Lords, in Committee we can discuss all these related questions in greater detail than I have endeavoured to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Janner, raised one interesting point about a replacement article. With great respect, I do not think that an Amendment of the kind he suggested would be really necessary. I believe that in any case which I can foresee a replacement article would still be supplied under a contract of sale, notwithstanding that it was exchanged for an original piece of merchandise delivered under the original contract. I believe the courts would hold—although I agree that they do not yet appear to have had such a case—that the implied conditions were still appropriate; or at least that it was an implied term of the contract whereby the customer agreed to release his rights in respect of the original breach on terms similar to those applied in the original contract. Of course, if the manufacturer or the retailer replaces an article under the express terms of a guarantee in a case where the customer goes to him direct, the implied conditions would not apply, but here I feel reasonably confident that the courts would extend any terms in the original guarantee to the substitute article.
My Lords, I am glad that this Bill has received such favourable consideration from your Lordships. It is, of course, only the first of a series of Bills for consumer protection which we hope will be passed during this Session of Parliament. I was grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, for her graceful and gracious recantation of her slightly derogatory words during the debate on the Queen's Speech and for the kind way in which she opened the discussion which is now drawing towards its close. I thank the House and those who have taken part in the debate for their consideration of this Bill

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and I hope that we may now give it a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

PRISONS: CONDITIONS AND TREATMENT
6.25 p.m.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether it would not be wise for the Home Office to relax certain old-fashioned restrictions on inmates of Her Majesty's prisons and to establish regular means of communications between inmates and the authorities for discussion of conditions and treatment rather than to allow the iniative to pass into the hands of demonstrators. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I think the calm and dispassionate atmosphere of your Lordships' House at half-past six on a November evening is a suitable place in which to discuss the rather passionate background of the Question I have put on the Order Paper. I chose the form of an Unstarred Question to air the problem of prison conditions because I believe that airing is exactly what they need. I think that the official attitude tends to be rather stuffy, though I know that many officials are very progressive. In preparing what I am going to say to-night I have had a great deal of help from my own staff at NACRO and the Howard League, and my only fear is that the material will interfere with my respect for the clock. I shall do the best I can to be short, but there are a number of things which I think must be said, and there are very few people whom we are hurting to-night, save the Minister who is obliged to stay. So I am not going to cut, out of respect for your Lordships' feelings, what I have to say.
My Lords, I am quite certain that the Prison Service, from top to bottom, from the Home Office to the newest uniformed recruit, really is anxious to treat people in their charge properly and to make prison into something more than a purely negative experience. It is because of this, and because I believe that this can be brought about only by a vast improvement in the staff/inmate relations that I am so hostile to the machinations of the organisation called the Prisoners' Rights
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Organisation—PROP—which at one time, I think, did something to undermine these relations. This seems to me absolutely fatal. Ninety per cent. of the people in prison think that they were wrongly convicted, and those who do not think that feel that they were unfairly sentenced. So clearly there is a great deal of ground for grievance and for anybody to stir up trouble. But the grievances, whether real or imaginary, are, I believe, surpassed by the daily frustration caused by lack of communication and the feeling, which is certainly not imagined, that it is next to impossible to get anybody to listen, let alone to give an answer which is not felt to be a bureaucratic "brush-off".
Every prison governor knows that he is sitting on a volcano. I was in "The Tombs", the remand prison in New York, a month ago: it is a terrifying place—though perhaps this is not the place to say so. Among other things, I was watching high school certificates being given to graduates who had been on remand long enough to qualify, when a journalist came to my companion and said, "Have you heard? It has just come through on the 'ticker', that the warden of Washington Prison has been taken as a hostage?" And indeed, my Lords, he had. He was quite soon released in return for a promise of earlier hearings. But my companion turned to me and said, "This, you see, is what we have lived with at the back of our minds the whole time, ever since Attica."
We in this country are not, by quite a long chalk, as bad as that, but I have to confess that some remarks by Mr. William Cahn, President of the United States National District Attorneys' Association which were published in The Times last year, after he had made a tour of our prisons, were pretty depressing. Among other things he said:
"Overcrowding in British jails is a short fuse on a long stick of dynamite. We saw three men crowded into small cells and heard about the cells being locked at 3.30 or 7.30 until 7.00 or 8.00 next morning. I do not think that prisons should be like some sort of social gathering or country club, but this sort of thing is just not healthy."
We know this, my Lords, but it is rather depressing to find someone from the United States where, on the whole, conditions are so much more difficult than ours, making this kind of criticism. There was, in fact, a nasty feeling in the air

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in the summer when, as a result of outside agitation, there were some concerted acts of disobedience. The staff dealt with these acts in such a very old-fashioned, British policeman, way that there was no trouble of a serious kind and there was no violence. The members of the revolutionary organisation, like many better revolutionaries before them, are now fighting among themselves, and I think that this particular organisation will not give us much more trouble. But because all prisons are dangerous, I believe that we must try very hard to eliminate all unnecessary sources of friction.
I should like to begin by denouncing the petty restrictions on governors. I should like the Minister to study the standing orders which, with their weekly crop of amendments, adorn each govnor's desk, and wherever he can (which I think would be several times on each page) strike out the order and substitute: "Leave to the governor's discretion." I know that every governor breaks his standing orders every day of his working life in order to treat his charges better and more liberally than his orders allow. In the end, men have to come out of prison, and to prepare them for this their self-respect must be restored. That means, in the long run, trusting them. When to begin this operation is the most difficult thing to determine, and only the man on the spot can make the decision. But if we do not trust the governors, how can they teach trust to the men? They are not even allowed freedom to delegate. Governors have to do many things which in my opinion they ought to be able to pass down the line; and this is thoroughly bad for the morale of the prison. If the Minister would go through the standing orders with the idea that staff/inmate relations are the most important thing in prison, and that governors should be chosen because of their ability to control men in their own way, he would in my opinion do more to effect the sort of change that we all want to see than he could in any other way.
My Lords, the action procedure of reception into prison seems to be—and I think very likely was originally—designed to take away a man's self-respect. Such things as the substitution of a number for a name or of ill-fitting prison clothes for the man's own, or the
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failure perhaps of the police station to forward possessions, so that a man may be left several days unable to read without his glasses, produce bitterness at the beginning of a man's term. On the question of clothing, is it really necessary to fit everybody out with prison clothes when they have, and would prefer to wear, their own? Must we have uniformity? If we must, would it not be possible for men with more than short sentences to go straight to the tailor's shop and be fitted out with a new suit which they could then keep for the rest of their time? I understand that at the moment the tariff to get one is three ounces of tobacco. I think that this should be laid on in some other way.
Then there is the question of letters. Prisoners on remand complain constantly and from every quarter of difficulty in communication with the outside. In my opinion there is no excuse whatever for this. In the first place, it is difficult sometimes to get a sheet of paper. It is difficult sometimes to get a pen. It is necessary to get hold of the welfare officer or the chaplain, and they are very busy. I was speaking to a governor the other day who said that he would like to go out and buy 100 mirrors, but this was more than his job was worth. This is ridiculous. People in that position ought to be able to spend out of petty cash enough money to make the prison run properly.
I come to censorship. I think there is a case for censorship in the case of dangerous men who may be likely to escape. In the case of disturbed men, who may be very much upset by a letter, I think the more paternal sort of governor can sometimes save trouble by anticipating the effect of the letter. But surely in normal cases this could be a random censorship, and not 100 per cent. The fear of the authorities that if they allowed prisoners to write as many letters as they wished the staff would be flooded out, because of the censoring, has always been proved, whenever it has been tried, to be false. It was tried a few years ago in Broadmoor, as a result of the agitation of my friend Mr. Peter Thompson. There is now no restriction on letters, I understand; and no trouble whatever. The look on the Minister's face makes me hope that I am not exaggerating. I believe that it is one of the most important things of all. Few

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prisoners are anxious to write letters, and those few who are anxious to do so should be allowed to do so.
My Lords, particularly in regard to a person who is on remand, a governors application is required, which means turning up at 7.30 and all the paraphernalia that we used to know in the Army for far too many things. On remand, one has to do this to get extra appeal letters and every other kind of thing. This is an irritation which not only maddens the prisoner but wastes the governor's time, because when he is in the prison he must, under prison regulations, take all applications personally—another thing that I think is wrong. If a person wants to see a dentist while he is in prison, he has to go on sick parade at 7 a.m. and wait in his cell until 11 or 12 o'clock until somebody comes to see what is the matter with him. These are trivial things, but they are the kind of things which could be put right and the abolition of which would go a long way to avoid the risk of explosions.
It is not much to the credit of the powers that be that pretty well every improvement in the visiting of prisoners by their families and friends has been the result of volunteer action, though it is much to the credit of governors that many of them have given the volunteers every encouragement. But you really cannot shut a man up miles away from his family and make no proper arrangements for the family to visit. With honourable exceptions—none too many—visiting times are arranged for the convenience of the prison and never for the convenience of the visitor. I had to go and see somebody in Winchester the other day. Visiting hours are 9.30 to 11.30. The trains are such that you either catch the half-past eight or the quarter to nine, which, if you live out of London, as many visitors do, means starting very early, or you catch the next train at a quarter to ten, which means that you have only a quarter of an hour with your husband or whoever it may be. Governors and prisoners behave very well in breaking these rules, but my point is that those rules should not be there for them to break. I should like to see a directive to all governors of prisons to say that they must have a shelter for people who are waiting outside until the prison opens to
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visitors; and they must have a crèche inside the prison for children. Money should be put aside for this; and this is money the prisons should have to spend. We in the voluntary movement would provide the workers. If it is not sure what is wanted, the visitors themselves, if they were asked, would certainly tell you.
My Lords, there is a rather more serious but less obvious thing—and I believe this, too, may be important. I think that every governor in the service would agree that he wields enough stick, but not enough carrot. The cycle of behaviour of a fairly long sentence man is predictable. First of all, he suffers from shock and resentment, and in this time he may blot his copybook and lose his remission. Then he becomes apathetic for a period, and resigns himself. And finally, in the best cases, he makes an effort to get through the rest of his sentence constructively. He studies, paints or does something to make things go, and becomes a useful and good member of the community. Governors ought to be able to reward this sort of man for good behaviour. They want to, but they cannot. It was recently suggested by Mr. Hugh Clare that they should be allowed to award a good deal of extra remission during this period, but as things are, they are not even allowed to put back the remission which the man has lost earlier. I should like the Minister to look at this point carefully, because I think it is as important as any point that I am making.
The parole system has worked marvellously well for those people whom it lets out; but, as I know my noble friend Lord Hunt agrees, it has left many serious scars on those people it has not let out. I am inclined to think that the principle needs looking at again. At the moment, a man is eligible for parole after 12 months or a third of his sentence. A good many men are not suitable for parole at that time, and they get turned down—the prison slang is that they get "a knock back". That has a very bad effect on people, particularly when it has happened two or three times. As the cases come up every year, and as parole has been going for about four years, a man could have been turned down four times by now. This is not conducive to restoring confidence. My own feeling is that the eligibility for parole should be

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something that a man has to earn in prison; that he should not be automatically eligible at any time, but have to earn it on a governor's report. That would give the governor a carrot, and would, I think, give the whole prison an initiative and stimulus to work towards the same end. The one thing that all prisoners want to do is to get out of prison: and we might get a whole prison working in the same direction in this way which it would be very difficult to do in any other.
On training, I should like to ask the Minister how many men—I know he cannot give me a numerical answer—come out of prison having learned something which is useful to them and which they did not know before they went in. I am afraid that there are only a few. Only one adult in 35 receives vocational training, and in borstal the figure is one in four. The working week, though it has got better, is still only 28 hours, and the tragic thing is that 25 per cent. of the effective work force is employed on cleaning or sewing mailbags—which is quite a large proportion. I do not mind necessary cleaning, but I do not care much for unnecessary cleaning. I object very much to men sewing mailbags by hand, and I think that most people in the Service also object to it. I should like to ask the Minister to make his target for 1973 the abolition of mailbag shops. It is a task which is hardly better than picking oakum, and it is just as useless. I do not want the Minister to fob me off with the old fox-hunting defence that the fox throughly enjoys it. I know that there are a few old stagers in prison who get very good at this absurd job and they can sew 30 mailbags a day—or is it a week? I cannot remember which.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: A day.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: And these men make quite a decent amount of money by prison standards; but they are very few. All right, let them; but do not let us see even the most villainous young man, however wicked, in full health, coming from perhaps an athletic life, put on to this heartbreaking job. It really is not fit for our society. Where we provide proper work, I think we fail to give enough incentive by way of production
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bonuses. I believe that this is something that should be looked at carefully. I do not know whether this is included in the new Prindus scheme which the Minister mentioned last week, but it probably is.
As to prisoners' pay, we know the difficulties but I beg the Minister to be bold. I know that he cannot solve this problem, and I know that he cannot arrange for cards to be stamped and for a man to get full pay straight away, but I do believe that he could fairly easily pay more than he is paying. I see no reason why in open prisons, where there are very many less difficulties than in closed prisons, people should not do a full day's work and get a full day's pay. I believe that most people think this is probably what ought to be done. There has been a kind of block about doing this and I want to see the Minister kicking some of the bricks down. I should also like to know whether current rates of pay have even kept up with inflation, because I am not at all sure that they have.
There are one or two further points that I would mention. First, pre-release employment. Should this be restricted to men with four-year sentences? Could it not be made available for people serving shorter sentences? There is an anomaly that even if you have pre-release employment and are keeping your family, you cannot draw F.I.S. because you are not living at home but in prison. These are two pieces of bureaucracy working at cross-purposes, and I should have thought the situation could fairly easily be put right. I know that prison governors must be able to deal with violent and dangerous men, but is bread and water really the right way in 1972? I observe that there were 1,200 cases of restricted diet mentioned in the latest statistics, and they were all in the same sort of prison. Also, similar prisons had many more cases of restricted diet than others. I think it is time this was stopped. I do not believe it is an effective punishment, and any governor who cannot do without this is probably where he ought not to be.
My Lords, as regards sanitation, we all know that it is still disgusting; we all know that "slopping out" is a terrible thing. We all know there are difficulties about the right answer, and we all know that ours is the worst there is, and so I should not want that problem to lose the

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Minister's attention for one minute. Then there is the question of savings. A man gets £4 when he comes out of prison, which is the same as it was in 1964. I must remind the Minister that there has been inflation and that probably a man ought now to be getting £7. There has been an increase of the most complicated kind—so complicated that I have not brought the circular with me—which applies to homeless men in certain restricted conditions; but otherwise the ordinary man still gets £4 eight years later, after the biggest inflation ever known. Worse than that, the means test is applied rigidly. If a man has up to £5 saved, he can still draw his £4 on discharge, but if he has £6 in savings he can draw only £3; if he has £7 then he can draw only £2—so much so that the better type of welfare officer says to the man. "All right, let us take your savings and I will put them in a savings bank for you so that you will still get your four quid". It probably works all right in many cases, but it is the wrong way round, and it should not be there.
Lastly, as regards food. The allowance in prisons is £1·20 per head as opposed to £2·15 in a mental hospital. Curiously enough, I believe it to be sufficient. I have seen enough prison meals which were perfectly adequate and which the men liked, but I believe there are many prisons where this is not the case. If there are prisons where there are many complaints, then I believe this to be a question of inefficiency. I should like the Minister to tell us whether there are prisons which have regular complaints of this kind and, if so, why something cannot be done about it. There are people like Mr. Lyons and other experts who could probably do better than is being done at present.
My Lords, the biggest single failure—and my time has already run out—is communications. Few prisoners feel that anybody is doing anything for them at all. They are shunted from pillar to post; the staff are moved from one place to another; they never have the opportunity of forming a proper relationship, and the arrangements do not lay out before them opportunities for complaint or discussion. There should be wing meetings in every prison every week. There are in most
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central prisons, but I do not believe there are in local prisons. There were in Winchester when I went there the other day, and I believe there are some also in Swansea. But not many prisons have them. There ought to be prison committees over everything. There ought to be a kitchen committee, a television committee, a sports committee, an entertainments committee; and there ought to be "Any Questions" once a week, to give prisoners an opportunity to say what they like and blow off steam. This is done in the best central prisons, and it ought to be done everywhere.
The man who is shut up is deprived of initiative in the outside world, and he must be given more initiative in the world within which he is confined. I believe that in many prisons he is given virtually none. I believe this is the most important way in which one individual at the top of this organisation could change things. I do not think it would be difficult to change. I believe that more communication could easily be established, and I hope that the Minister will give this his attention. It is very easy to talk. The Prison Department has a terribly difficult job. I only ask that we do not make it more difficult than we need by failing to get rid of those rubs and blisters which are quite unnecessary, and it is with this in mind, my Lords, that I ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
6.47 p.m.
LORD SOPER: My Lords, I hope that my noble friend who has just sat down will not interpret a comparatively empty House as an indication of the triviality of the subject matter of his Unstarred Question. I assure him that there can be no more important topic than the one on which he has embarked; and I, for one, have found it impossible to fault any of the observations he made. I would respectfully suggest that perhaps a number of the things which he said were unknown to your Lordships until he said them. That in itself, I believe, is an entirely satisfactory state of affairs—only satisfactory in relationship to the problem which it reveals, and the need to look at this matter not so much as a series of complaints and injustices which should be put right but rather against a backcloth which is much larger. My noble friend

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does not need to be told by me (because he knows it better than most of us, probably) that he has only touched the tip of an iceberg, or perhaps has indicated the thin end of a wedge. As for myself, I should like to think of this not only as an attempt to deal with a number of sprats but also as an attempt to provide a sprat to catch a mackerel of a much larger size.
I hope that your Lordships will indulge me if I try to relate some of the things which have been said to a condition of affairs which is much more general. When I first began to be a chaplain at Holloway, and afterwards at Pentonville, the ethos, if I might call it by that name, of prison life was solitariness—one man to a cell, the prohibition of almost any contact except in the necessary procedure of work, and the total prohibition (which nevertheless was contravened) of discussion or talking at exercise. What has happened since those days, now 30 years ago, is that there has come into being what I suppose could be called a prison society; and that prison society should be viewed with the gravest attention because I believe it is likely to provide a very undesirable alternative to the real society from which, either temporarily or for very long periods, a prisoner is relieved of any responsibility and is shut off.
One of the most pernicious elements in the cell—and I use that word in both senses of its use—of that society is the crowding, as my noble friend has said, of two or, preferably, for homosexual reasons, three men into a cell. This is a total abomination. I plead with the Minister that whatever else he takes away from the conversation to-day, he will press on as quickly as humanly possible with provisions whereby men can at least tolerate life within the size of a cell intended for one, and not for two or three people. Here is the seedbed of a great deal of a thoroughly squalid and unnatural community.
When I was at Pentonville I was told—and I had no reason to doubt it—that about 3½lb. of tobacco was thrown over the prison wall into the grounds every week. Where did that tobacco go? I did not have it; the warders got only some of it; it was largely acquired by the "barons" and distributed by them. One of the most dangerous elements in any
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prison society is that it becomes a totally corrupt society, because those who have the greater power, and are the more corrupt, are liable to produce in that society the very worst elements that go with any community that we can think of. Therefore I should be extremely chary of any process whereby we attempted unduly to create within the prison the kind of society which I believe can, in the long run, be only deleterious to the true interests of 90 per cent. of the prisoners. That does not exclude the proper use of leisure time, and the occupation of that time in constructive and objective ways. But the idea of shop stewards and a trade union of prisoners within the prison itself is, if one thinks about it, utter rubbish and contemptible.
There is nothing more dangerous than the cultivation of this unhealthy society, and the inevitable promotion of some of the elements that make it so detestable, which are inevitable if we attempt to reduce the amount of solitariness to which a prisoner has hitherto been committed, and endeavour to provide him with some kind of social life in leisure or some useful occupation—much preferable to sewing mailbags. It is against this backcloth that I regard my noble friend's Question to-day as of supreme importance.
If we believe that whatever deterrent and remedial and reformatory processes that can be applied to a prisoner have the intention of returning him sooner or later. suitably improved in social habits and personal behaviour, to a real world, then it is of the highest importance that while he is within the framework of a prison society he should not be cosseted or encouraged into a kind of unreal world—an unreal world in which, as soon as you enter its portals, you are aware of its distinctive smell. I am talking now of the block prisons. I well recognise that when the Minister comes to reply he will tell us that what we are talking about is not some attempt to produce a vis a tergo impression on the Government, but an attempt to recognise that the Government are already in motion and what we want to secure is overdrive. I do not believe that the various experiments which have been made fall under the kind of condemnation that I have presumed to utter. But I am assured from my own continued experience that until we finally get rid

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of the block system of prisons we are in grave danger of creating the kind of society which, instead of seeking to return a man to probity and decency, will only drive him deeper into the dirt and misdemeanour of evil.
As I see it, one of the most important and significant elements in this discussion is the way in which we can keep alive and stimulate the real world in the minds and attitudes of those who for a time are necessarily exposed to all kinds of temptations, and indeed circumstances, which, temporarily at least, create an unreal world.
Here are some of the suggestions that I would respectfully submit to the Minister. I am impressed by the immediacy and availability of the telephone. The more I think about it, the more I am satisfied that a great many of the matters raised so eloquently and persuasively by my noble friend could find some immediate amelioration and help if, for instance—and I now chance my arm and make a concrete suggestion—there were upon every landing a telephone, which could be suitably monitored and which from time to time those who had adequate reasons for seeking to use it would be permitted so to do. They might, if this was expensive, pay out of their allowances for the use of the telephone.
What would it do? My experience as a prison chaplain is that there is nothing so impersonal as occasional letters, or so frustrating as the delay which often accompanies the answers to them. There is nothing so frustrating as the sense that by this means real contact is not being established, and the perturbations that follow are agonising. I am thinking, for instance, of women in Holloway anxious to know about their children. They write letters, but the replies come infrequently. I think of the immense satisfaction and improvement to their psychological condition if they can from time to time find directly and immediately at the end of a telephone the kind of information they seek, the kind of communication with the outside world—particularly that which is near and dear to them—which is now so much a matter of dull print and occasional postage.
Furthermore, if it be true that only about 37 per cent. of those entitled to
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various benefits within the Welfare State take the trouble to seek them, this is particularly true of people in prison. In my experience, they are, through carelessness, or perhaps inability to read the small print—or even the large print—unaware of what they can do. There is nothing that would stimulate their sense of self-reliance more than the opportunity to find a direct approach to such welfare authorities, and indeed potential employers, as might give them a chance when they come out of prison.
There is one thing that I am sure my noble friend would have added to his list of conditions which prevail among prisoners; and that is not only the apprehension felt by a prisoner when he comes into prison, but the even more terrifying apprehension that he has about a week before he is likely to go out of prison. This is due to the fact that he has been in a protected and a particular kind of society to which he has become acclimatised and conditioned. In most cases he is frightened of the world which awaits him when he gets outside the prison walls. The most likely welcome will be to take him to the local pub and "souse" him up, rather than give him any constructive help. The telephone carries with it a number of possible dangers, but I have every reason to know that probation officers and prison visitors are quite sure that this would be an immense improvement to the situation, so that communication can be maintained with the real world at the time when the menace of the unreal world is so compulsive.
This is not said in any spirit of sentimentality about prisoners. Professionally I am against sin; and practically I have had plenty of experience of what happens to people when they repeatedly behave in anti-social ways. But, as I see it, there is no justification for any kind of punishment which does not, however long the tunnel, indicate some kind of light at the end of it. There is nothing more conducive to persuading a prisoner to look at that light and take his comfort from it as the regular and periodic acquaintance with and renewal of contact with the real world. I am bound to say as I sit down that I do not believe in the prison system anyhow. But half a loaf is better than no bread; and this must serve in the interim between now and the time when we can reverse the

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whole idea of prison life as one of getting people away, putting them away and forgetting about it; the time when we can indeed demolish all the block prison systems.
I am persuaded that we do nobody any good by prison of the traditional type; that the recovery rate is extremely small. And, having but lately embarked upon an adventure in seeking to care for boys out of borstal, I am reinforced in the conviction that what is much more necessary than almost anything else at the moment—and I hope the Minister may feel disposed to say something about this—is a different kind of custodial treatment altogether. It may be that open prisons and suchlike institutions are moving in that direction. If that is so, then may the pace increase, and quickly! But there is no answer to about seven out of ten of the observations and comments that were so magisterially made by my noble friend within the framework of a prison system which does not totally and utterly reject the assumed premises upon which people hitherto have been incarcerated and treated in this kind of segregated fashion.
My Lords, as I have tried to say, the all-important element in a prisoner's hope is that he will not finally be frustrated in his attempt, if he wants to make it, and will not be finally denied the opportunity which may stimulate that desire, to return to a real world; and that real world, I am sure, must still be kept before his eyes within the walls of prison life and within all the framework of custodial treatment which very properly he may have attracted by his evil doings and ought properly to serve. It is in that regard that I have been very happy to listen to what my noble friend has said, and shall be equally happy to listen, I hope, to what the prisoner has—I mean, to what the Minister has to offer.
7.2 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I do not think I am that quite yet, at any rate. The noble Lord, Lord Soper, was good enough to say to me recently in respect of the speech I made on the humble Address that there were areas of it with which he agreed. I can return the compliment to-day, because there was very little indeed in the speech he made—if I may
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deal with the individual point about the telephone in a moment—when he was dealing with more general matters, with which I should wish to disagree; save, possibly, for the question of smell. It may be that I am not acute enough in the nose to notice it, but it has certainly not been something which has struck me in an my peregrinations around the prison system.
LORD SOPER: Not at Pentonville, my Lords?
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I have not been there, my Lords. That may be the exception, but otherwise it has not. The other point that I am not altogether certain about is exactly what he means by "the block system". If he means "Victorian wings", I am with him. In that case there is another area of agreement between us. When we come to the idea of the abolition of custodial treatment altogether, or indeed different sorts of it, I am only too happy to consider constructive proposals tending in that direction. After all, if we are talking about alternatives to custody I hope I have already demonstrated to the House in what I said on the Criminal Justice Bill that I was as enthusiastic about them as anybody.
However, rather than get on to major philosophical points on an Unstarred Question, it might be good if I tried to attend to the particularities of the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, and some—I hope I can cover the majority—of the things he said. I should like to preface what I say with this. Having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, and the items he produced by way of complaint, I would say that if I thought there was any one establishment in the prison system Which corn-billed all those defects I should be in despair. What I think the noble Lord has done—and I hope that those who have been listening to him will appreciate this—is to pick up from a large number of different establishments the one or two things that have gone wrong there. It really must be plain—and I must make this point in advance—that all those defects that he has mentioned do not occur simultaneously in any one single establishment within the prison system. It would be intolerable, I entirely agree with him, if they did.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, I must say one word to the noble Viscount. The feature which I think pervades most prisons is the lack of communication, which is something rather less concrete than the complaints I made.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I am going to come to that point, but I think that is not altogether right, either. It must be said that we do not operate a system where all these horrendous accusations can accurately be made about any one establishment. Going on from that, the fascinating aspect that I have found (the noble Lord was good enough to tell me in advance the points that he was going to make) is that there is not a single one of them—nor, indeed, Lord Soper's telephone—which is not already under active consideration by the Prison Department. I have been through this matter with the greatest care and I will refer briefly to what has been said, point by point. Every single one of those points is at this very moment undergoing study by the Prison Department.
First of all, the Question deals with old-fashioned restrictions. One has to bear in mind that restrictions of any sort in a prison are the attempt to secure a balance between security and good order, on the one side, and a constructive and humane régime, on the other. It is certainly not an immutable balance. One is always prepared to consider shifting the point, the pivot, and this is a process that goes on all the time. But both the noble Lord and his noble friend Lord Soper were very right and apposite in speaking about overcrowding as being a root cause of a great deal of trouble. To take three obvious points, problems about visiting, problems about pay and type of work and problems about sanitation are all inextricably tied up with obsolete buildings and far too many people trying to share far too few facilities. It is for this reason, if for no other, that even if there were not a question of the increase that we foresee in the prison population, we must go ahead with the prison building programme on which the Government are absolutely committed. This is a most important and fundamental point, and I agree with both noble Lords on it. That is one side of the problem.
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I also recognise, within what the noble Lord has said, a point that equally may not occur to some noble Lords who have not the familiarity with prisons that previous speakers have. The kind of small things, or apparently small things, on which the debate has so far concentrated can assume a quite disproportionate importance in the minds of people in a confined place such as a prison. A small complaint gets out of all balance in the importance which is given to it by those who think they do, or truly do, suffer it. So I am glad to be able to report an on-going review on these matters.
The first theme is one of management. As to the first half of the noble Lord's Question—and this attaches to a great number of the detailed points he made as well—the origin, as the noble Lord, Lord Soper, has indicated, of the present prison structure, the management structure and régime, goes back a long time to conditions which were totally different from those that we know to-day. They of course required a good deal less demand on staff in those days, both in time and in expertise. Apart from special conditions such as would be found, perhaps, at Grendon, with which I know the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, is familiar, or in "C" wing at Parkhurst, where we have a very interesting experiment going on, the type of régime of the old days has gone. What we are aiming towards now is the individual treatment and individual case work on prisoners, not the solitariness about which the noble Lord, Lord Soper, spoke. Of course if you change your entire philosophy there is a great deal to be said for looking again at your management structure.
We have already dealt with headquarters; we have already set up a regional system for the Prison Service, and what is now going on is an examination of the management structure within each establishment. Before I started to look into it, I found this a rather woolly idea. I did not know particularly what it meant. It is not the point about a functional group working; it is not getting the best out of the staff: it is not a question of how to deal with troublesome inmates. It is much more fundamental than that. In a nutshell, there have been identified by headquarters the kind of régimes that one wants to see in a good modern prison or borstal. A team is now out on the ground looking at some

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of these establishments to see whether they live up to the rôle that they are supposed to fulfil—and if not, why not? That is actually going on at the moment in the Midland region and it will cover the whole system. This is the sort of exercise which will pinpoint the underlying reason for some of the problems that the noble Lord spoke about, and I think this is a constructive way to do it. Incidentally, I would add that in the process the prisoners are being consulted as well as the governors and the rest of the staff, so that that in itself is an important piece of consultation. We hope that this will produce some proposals next year. In parallel with that there is at the moment in process a Working Party on rewards and punishments which was announced by my right honourable friend in September, and I hope that also will produce some results before long.
I will try to deal with some of these points within a reasonable time, although it may be that I shall be unable to get through all of them. In regard to restrictions on governors, what I have already said I think indicates that this is being done in any event. What the noble Lord may not altogether have put over to the House is that many of the restrictions contained in standing orders are the minimum. If, therefore, relaxations are made they are not breaches of standing orders; they are a reflection of the fact that the situation in the prison is such that you do not have to work on the minimum. You can be more liberal. This is not a breach: it is a perfectly sensible and legitimate exercise of discretion. We must have discretion for governors. The noble Lord is perfectly correct in saying that they must have the power to deal with a personal or a local problem, although at the same time one has to try to see that there is a uniform method across the system of dealing with prisoners. It would not be just if a governor in one prison was treating his inmates much more leniently or in a much more relaxed fashion than another governor in a similar prison somewhere else. This is the balance that one has to find in the process that is going on at the moment. I think that probably we are reaching the stage now where the governor is the manager, or even the managing director, of a much larger affair and he is much less the boss of a
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regimented penal establishment, as in the old days.
There is one other thing that I should like to add about governors. I think it is right that even if the complaint or the application is trivial there 'should be access to the governor if the prisoner insists upon it. Certainly there is an enormous amount of delegation—I think possibly much more than the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, gave us to believe. But in the end I believe it is right that the governor should be approachable by the individual inmate on something which he really wants to see him about.
As to reception, we must of course spot drugs and weapons—and I am afraid that we still spot lice. But I agree that the machinery and the method for carrying it out could be improved, and at this moment we have training on reception procedures for staff starting in one of the regions. We tend to do it region ally and when we get some results they will be spread round the whole system, With regard to clothes, the fit, size and range of all clothes has been very much improved recently. We have better shirts and better shoes, and all this is in fact halfway through a five-year programme of improvement. Of course women now wear their own clothes in prison, and if necessary they go out to get others in shops. We have not found it possible to follow this procedure with men, but we are attempting to allow men to take their outer prison clothing which has been fitted to them when they transfer from one establishment to another.
With regard to letters and pens, the noble Lord is not really fair to us on this point. The standard ration, of course, is one letter for which the State provides postage and another for which the inmate can buy a stamp himself in the canteen. But there is really not the shortage of pens that the noble Lord spoke about. We have just increased the supply of pens and there are very few wing officers who do not yet have them, and indeed many prisoners have them individually. I do not think the situation in this regard is quite as black as the noble Lord suggested.
This leads on to censorship. Of course the restriction on the number of letters went back to the weight of censorship, and that is one of the reasons why we

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have been trying freedom from censorship. This is now being tried in four open establishments, except for individual people who may have to undergo this particular procedure. Three women's establishments are soon to have this freedom and the aim is to relax censorship at all open establishments altogether. When that happens there will be virtually no limit on the number of letters that can be written, save for the cost of the stamps, for which the prisoner himself will have to pay.
LORD DONALDSON OF KINGSBRIDGE: My Lords, if I may intervene for a moment, may I ask whether there has been any increase in the number of letters written? I do not suppose the Minister will be able to answer me now, but I am most interested in it. I have always assumed that there would not be much difference—there was not at Broadmoor when the relaxation was made, but I should be interested to know.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I do not know whether I can tell the noble Lord that at the moment. The important thing from the point of view of the prison authorities is that there has been no fall-off in picking up welfare benefits. I particularly asked about this when I went to one of the establishments where this is going on.
The telephone was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Soper, and that fits well into the communications side. It is perfectly true that it is exceptional for prisoners to use telephones but again as it so happens we are experimenting at Winchester. There we have experimented by allowing unconvicted prisoners to ring up certain people. We are proposing to extend this experiment to Risley, which is another remand centre in the North, and we shall see what the results are and whether we can extend it.
The noble Lord mentioned visiting. Last year a survey took place with the co-operation of the Treatment of Offenders Committee of the Magistrates' Association, and they found that there had been a good improvement in the last two years. We spent £200,000 a year on improving visiting facilities. I agree with the noble Lord that there is a great deal that volunteers can and should do. I am
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afraid, however, that it is simply old and obsolete buildings being the problem in many cases. I agree it is deplorable, but what can one do, with the greatest ingenuity, unless one rebuilds or does major adaptations of the gatehouse, and this is going on in a number of places.
It is not true to say that timing is designed to suit the prison rather than the visitor. The noble Lord said that there were honourable exceptions. I would say the other way round, that it must be a case of dishonourable exceptions. A great deal of trouble is taken to fit in with special buses and trains and other visiting facilities. If Winchester is bad, one of the reasons may be the pressure on staff in attending courts. After all, Winchester is a prison that serves a large number of courts in that part of Hampshire and further afield.
On the questions of remission and parole, I will not go into these in detail to-day because these are very much matters that are now before the Working Party on Rewards and Punishments. What the noble Lord said was very interesting and I think that our minds are working along the same lines. What the conclusions will be I know not, but I assure him that he made good and valid points.
The number of people working on mailbags has been reduced from 1,900 in March of this year to just over 1,500 at the present time. Such work has almost entirely gone in training prisons. I will see what I can do in 1973, but the trouble is that while nobody likes mailbag sewing for its own sake, one is faced with the problem of providing a simple job which can sometimes be done in an individual cell and is susceptible of being picked up and put down by somebody who may be going for an interview or may be on only two or three days' remand. Simple, unskilled handwork is difficult to come by in industry nowadays. We are doing our best to replace mailbag work but, with the best will in the world, the alternatives are not easy to find. I agree with the noble Lord, however, on this issue—and I am not here going into the "foxhunting refuge".
Pay is another matter currently before the Working Party. The noble Lord mentioned bonuses and incentives. We have incentive schemes in operation, and about 4,000 prisoners under such schemes

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are now earning up to £1·84 a week. There are a large number of other establishments where work is done on piece rates, and that includes the cleaners and kitchen staff who are rewarded as a result of work study according to effort, which shows that this process goes right across the establishment. I assure noble Lords that these schemes keep up with inflation; the rates have been put up three times in the last three years.
Regarding the pre-release employment scheme, the reason for the four-year threshold is that it is considered—the line must be drawn somewhere—that that is the moment at which people can become institutionalised, and it may be useful to introduce them to the outside world. The trouble at the moment is that the hostels are under-used, partly because probation is taking away people who might otherwise be suitable, and it is difficult to find jobs of the kind that people can do in the immediate vicinity of the hostels we have. This is a very worrying situation.
As for "slopping out" and sanitation, the new prisons do not suffer from those indignities. Again, overcrowding is a basic cause. Old buildings are another. If we could get rid of overcrowding the position would be a little less intolerable; but the only real answer is major reconstruction. The discharge grant which the noble Lord mentioned is also before the Working Party, as are many of these points, including that of bread and water. The purpose of the grant has changed since 1964. It is now meant only to tide someone over his immediate expenditure until he can get supplementary benefit on going out, and an extra £4 can be paid direct to homeless people as an advance for rent. This is an improvement, though the noble Lord was a little "sniffy" about it.
On the question of food, the essence is training of catering staff and imagination in the use of money. I was pleased, after the business of the dogs and the prisoners at Leicester Prison, to read a transcript from a local Leicester Radio programme the other day which said that the food had been carefully looked at by people who I think were not likely to be biased in favour of the Prison Service, and we came out very well on quality, amount and variety. This is, therefore, some-
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thing that is very much in our minds. The important thing is to get the catering staff trained. The other day I went to Kirkham, where there is a training scheme running in conjunction with the Technical College in Blackpool. The food is excellent—I had lunch there—and the results of the courses will, we hope, improve yet further the standards as people go back to their prisons and borstals and put into effect what they have learned.
My Lords, I am afraid I have had to deal briefly with many of the points that have been raised in the debate, but one could write an essay on each one of them. I must, however, deal with the question of communications. I will leave out the existing channels of communication through which prisoners can go. I appreciate the interest of noble Lords in this matter, but there is a varied and very complex hierarchy of communication. It is important to remember that these communications exist. All I will say about them is that in the process a great number of grievances are put right. When they are not put right to the satisfaction of the prisoner there is usually a very good answer. If there is not, and if a mistake has been made, it almost always comes to light and is rectified. The official hierarchy of complaint and grievance procedure is thorough but, as a result is not necessarily very quick.
However, I feel that what the noble Lord was really asking was: how far in this day and age should prisoners have as it were a corporate voice in the discussion of conditions and improvements? I say "how far" because in about half of the prison establishments and borstals there are already schemes whereby people can take part in consultative committees of groups of one sort or another. For the most part these groups are functional. They discuss matters like catering, and they sometimes draw prisoners to some degree into the management of institutions and give them an opportunity to contribute to decision-making. Experiments are taking place to see how much further this sort of functional committee system can sensibly and safely be taken
We must, of course, take care to bring the staff with us and make certain that they are convinced, as are the prisoners,

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that this is a good way to go about the matter.
However, I do not think that committees of this sort provide the complete answer. I draw the attention of the House to the fact that they are widespread merely to show that it would be wrong to draw from the noble Lord's speech the idea that there are no channels of corporate communication in the system now, or that there is nothing but a gulf between the authorities and the prisoners. We are looking at matters in addition to the ordinary functional committees on television, catering and so on. There is at one prison a quite sophisticated experiment going on whereby staff/prisoner consultative committees are built into each level of the line management of the prison. For example, there are on each wing committees representing the staff and prisoners, with a central committee discussing matters that cannot be disposed of by wing committees. There is a good deal to be said for the noble Lord's suggestion that the wing should meet as a whole, rather than having elected committees. There are difficulties about this in large local prisons, as the noble Lord will recognise, but it is important to see that the management structure of the prison provides for points raised in discussion to be taken further. This is where we start to run into difficulty.
A talking shop may be all right but it can increase tension rather than reduce it, and that kind of situation arises when people start demanding things that neither the wing officers nor the prison as a whole, nor even my right honourable friend the Secretary of State himself, can provide. If you get to the situation where they are negotiating either against, or possibly over the head of, the local prison staff, then you get into a dangerous situation and one where you can cause more trouble than good. It is that sort of balance and care that we have to use in studying this machinery. We are trying to provide advances in this field. We have looked at difficulties that have arisen abroad and on the whole I think I can tell the noble Lord that we are pursuing this matter as carefully as we can and with a good deal of enthusiasm, though with some caution. These points really
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all pull together, because that also is a management matter.
What I must finish up with—I am sorry I have gone on for rather a long time, but the noble Lord asked me a great many questions, and he was entitled to an answer to them—is that when one is talking about these individual aspects of prison life and régime, on the one hand, and, on the other, the constructive approach that the noble Lord, Lord Soper, was particularly mentioning, of involving prisoners realistically in aspects of their life where they can participate to their own satisfaction and to the satisfaction of the staff, you have to talk about it against a background or found it upon a substructure of orderliness, discipline and mutual tolerance, at the very least, between prisoners and staff. I say "at the very least" because that has to be built up by every possible means so that you get the whole relationship: there is one of training staff and retraining them if necessary to deal with the individual aspects of each prisoner, which I mentioned before. We have to build it up to a total environment—if I can use the overworked word—of rehabilitation. But that kind of reform and rehabilitation will never be possible without that substructure of good management and orderliness. I believe that when my right honourable friend stressed this the other day he was perfectly right.
I have been reading (and I get masses of letters passed on to me from prisoners) of complaints from people in prisons where demonstrations and troubles took place. They said, "We took no part in these, yet we could not go out on exercise and the food was late and cold. We did not go to work. We have had no pay. The place has been in chaos. Why should we be subjected to this treatment?" Of course, if the staff are engaged in putting down a major demonstration and are getting people down off the roof, other innocent people do not get on with any rehabilitative work at all and it stands to reason that they suffer. I am sorry about that, but the first priority is to restore order and get things back to normal. That is the first way in which lack of discipline and order affects the individual lives and individual rehabilitation of the prisoners themselves. It is interesting, but it goes further than that. I know myself of one important

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meeting of senior officials in the Prison Department who were dealing with just the kind of thing that the noble Lord has been talking about this afternoon, but who could not meet because of the demonstrations. The meeting was put off, the discussions did not take place and the reforms were put back simply because they were diverted by people raising cain in one prison or another across the country. It is worth saying these things. I said so on television on one occasion because people should realise that this is what it means when people try to take the law into their own hands and upset authority and discipline. We must build in the way that the noble Lord has suggested, but we must build on that good order and discipline first. What has been so pleasant about this debate is that it has been orderly and constructive. I am grateful to the noble Lord for the Question and I hope that I shall be able to report further progress later on.